Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019) - PS4 Review

Review:
*Originally written November 19th, 2019*

There's no denying that EA has had a bad run with the Star Wars franchise since it became owned by Disney. Their 2 Battlefront efforts were slammed and hated (2 in particular, but, that has been fixed by this point and is actually quite playable!), but in all honesty, what people have wanted from a Star Wars game for quite some time now is a story focused action RPG that lets you be a Jedi and fills in the gaps between films. This is exactly what Jedi: Fallen Order delivers. It's far from perfect and feels a little unfinished, but my god, this is still the best Star Wars game we've had in quite some time.

Taking place between episodes 3 and 4, it follows Kal Cestis, a young Padawan who has been in hiding for 5 years since the events of Order 66, but gets put into an adventure involving a list of all the force sensitive children in the universe and must find the list before the Empire do. Along the way you meet a droid BD-1 who is your companion for the whole ride and a rag tag crew in the form of an ex Jedi Cere and her shipmate Greez.

Story wise, I was very impressed, Kal is a very likeable and easy to like character with a very strong motion capture and voice performance from Cameron Monaghan. We follow Kal as he slowly relearns his force powers and gets stronger throughout the game. His journey is personal, involving him having to overcome his guilt and trauma over Order 66 and goes to many places new and familiar within the Star Wars universe, I won't spoil some of the franchise cameos, but there's a few and they fit in quite nicely. But with the 20 or so hours I spent on Kal's adventure I really did grow to like him and honestly would not mind seeing him pop up in other Star Wars material down the line. Which is the only reason I assume they didn't give you the option to make your own character, as they want to use him in future films/Disney+ content. The dynamic with his droid BD-1 really is the heart of the game too, as most of the conversations as you're exploring is with him and the little droid is both adorable and filled with personality.

Technical wise, this game is a bit all over the place. Visually, it is pretty gorgeous and brings the Star Wars universe to life with excellent character models, environments, classic score and incredible sound design. What really lets it down is just how unpolished it feels at times. It's no surprise (Especially from EA) that a game has been released that is quite buggy with the intention patching it down the line, but it is no excuse and has become a complete frustration with this generation of games. The game crashed on me a few times in the second half, I was constantly finding issues such as just falling through the map, enemy AI's not even reacting as I was attacking them and them just randomly spawning right in front of me as I was walking. It would be a minor thing if this only happened a couple of times, but it was happening consistently, which is no excuse for a game of this budget and from a AAA developer.

Onto the good and great though. The combat is excellent and requires patience and actually learning the enemies moves and making use of blocking and dodging. It was very similar to Dark Souls, but obviously not as unforgiving. That said though, there are quite a few difficulty spikes that come out of nowhere, where even I had to reduce the difficulty just get through an area where they throw so many different type of enemies at you, it was more frustrating than fun. When the difficulty is fair though, encounters can be very rewarding and satisfying as you feel Kal get stronger and more experienced as you do working through the game. Mixing lightsaber play and force powers makes for some great fun as you can annihilate faces-less hordes of Stormtroopers with ease.

The boss battles make for some really cinematic and interesting fights. Like the combat with everything else, you're encouraged to think while you're fighting these bosses and simply button mashing will only end with you dead. The variety of bosses range from some Sith lords in the form of The Emperors underlings called "Sisters", the rest of the bosses are mostly a range of big creatures that are pretty intimidating to encounter at first, but you soon begin to realise they are pretty simple to take down once you know what you're doing. There is also some minor bosses littered throughout with random Bounty Hunter encounters, who, if you're not expecting it, can mess you up pretty quickly.

I was pleasantly surprised how much the game implores you to actually explore the world in order to progress, I spent so much time trying to figure out puzzles and gathering all the collectables I could (You can't sweep up straight away though, you have to unlock new powers in order to reach other collectables later in the game). It was just so much fun just to explore these beautifully created areas as BD-1 would point out items and really help you out. The structure of collectables was very similar to the Tomb Raider reboot, which isn't a bad thing, they took elements and changed it just enough to feel unique to itself. The problem with clearing up though is that the map you use from BD-1 is a complete mess and borderline incomprehensible, making it impossible to clear up collectables later in the game when I wanted to return to areas. The Dark Souls esque resting stations also lacked a fast-travelling option, which would have made things so much easier and saved so much time as it does get a little tedious to constantly have to backtrack (Which you have to do a lot). I really wanted to 100% this thing, but when the game made it this frustrating to just get back to the area where the collectables were, I did not care enough.

It has its problems for sure, but honestly, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is one of the best Star Wars games I've played in such a long time. It might be unpolished and filled with glitches, but when things are going smoothly, it is a blast to play and my 20 hours with it flew by thanks to the satisfying combat, engaging story and great new characters that earn its place within the Star Wars canon. All my problems are things that could even potentially be fixed with updates down the line, but I've got to judge what we were given at launch and the results are flawed, but still fantastic for the most part. I really hope EA continue to follow path of Star Wars games that choose story over multiplayer. Hell, I'd also kill for a remaster of Republic Commando at some point. Star Wars games might actually have a bright future again.

8/10 Dans

Star Wars Fallen: Jedi Order is out now on PS4 and Xbox One
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Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) - 4K UHD Review

Review:

*Originally written February 10th, 2019*

Wow, I'd not planned on revisiting this since its release in 2015, but thanks to my compulsive problem of buying whatever film comes my way and out of morbid curiosity to rewatch it, I ended up buying this on 4K against my better judgement, and to no surprise, it is just awful.

How do they keep getting the Hitman license so wrong? I'm not sure if this is a sequel to the 2007 Timothy Olyphant film at all, or just a straight up reboot? Not that it matters, as the actors are changed and I cannot think of a single reference to the previous film. I spent a lot of this just wishing I was just watching the 2007 film again. That film wasn't great, but compared to this, it seems like a damn masterpiece.

Everything going on here is just not what the Hitman games are about. The games are a series of missions where you have to creatively use your environments to take out your targets as stealthily as possible with a loosely connected narrative sending you to the next mission. There is not a single hit of this in Agent 47. It's a mindless display of awful CGI action, that is poorly shot and lacks any sort of impact. 

Every single bit of action is completely overblown, ugly and utterly stupid. People want to see Agent 47 carefully planning a mission and executing it flawlessly, not getting into gunfights in the middle of streets and purposely getting himself arrested, giving his name to the police and getting caught on camera. It's like the makers of this film have never even played the games.

God knows what they were thinking bringing back Skip Woods to write this mess. A man I'm convinced doesn't exist and is just a pseudonym used by studios to attach a name to a script that a 12 year old submitted. Honestly, look at this "Man's" history of films. A Good Day to Die Hard, Hitman, X-Men: Origins and Sabotage. Oof, this guy is just awful and I don't know who he is blowing to keep getting work in Hollywood.

The story here is just nonsense. Like I said, the Hitman games are rarely known for their stories, but at least they keep it simple and straight-forward. This is just an insane level of clones, cyborgs and conspiracy that I was pretty checked out by towards the end. I did laugh at just how bat-shit insane some of this crap got, but it's also so barbarically stupid and annoying. 

The only bright spot here is Rupert Friend, who does a commendable job as Agent 47, but everything they do with his character is just wrong. I've always felt to do a Hitman film they should have Agent 47 as the antagonist, a Terminator like figure throughout the film, rather than the clear-cut good guy they make him out to be here. Which is another problem translating the character to film. He's just not an interesting lead, he's a cold, calculated killer that doesn't say much, making for a very uninteresting lead. 


I know this franchise is being rebooted as a streaming platform show, which hopefully work a hell of a lot better than these awful films that are only good for a cheap laugh. When will we ever get truly great video-game movies? The nicest thing I can say about this is it least has an excellent 4K release, this should be expected from a film this glossy and new. And part of me sickly wants the 2007 film to get a 4K release at some point too....

3/10 Dans

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Ratchet and Clank (2016) - Film review

Review:

*Originally written May 3rd, 2016*

I was fairly excited for Ratchet and Clank when it was first announced back at E3 a few years ago, I'm a huge fan of the video games, so I was praying to god that they could make a good film out of it. With the creative team behind the video games working on the film, I was hoping that this could be the adaptations that breaking video game movie curse. It sadly wasn't.

Based on the first game in the series, Ratchet and Clank tells the story of Ratchet, a mechanic and last of his species who dreams of bigger things and wants to join the Space Rangers, a universe defending team. He gets his chance at this when he meets Clank, a small robot with information about an insane villain who wants to destroy the universe or something.

This franchise was always Pixar brought to life in video game form, so it was pretty ripe for an animated film. So it is such a shame that this fails to capture that magic that Pixar usually conjure. The look of game is captured pretty well. The animation does look pretty and the characters and design all look excellent.

Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical, but this was just a pretty run of the mill kids film filled with lame humour and childish gags. I know this is a kids film, but in all honesty, the target audience is people my age (18-20) who grew up playing the games. I'm not saying that it needed to be full of swearing and violence. I just expected funnier jokes than the cheap slapstick we got here.

It tells the same story the first game and the new one (Which is much better than the film). The voice cast from the game all the return, which was nice, including some voice work from Sylvester Stallone and John Goodman. 

The characters are the only real thing that saves the film from utter garbage. Ratchet and Clank are likeable as ever and Captain Qwark is still hilarious and everything that comes out of his mouth is gold, he's basically Zapp Brannigan from Futurama. 

This whole thing just felt like a cheap and cynical ploy to promote the new game. There's no heart or soul to this film at all. It runs at 90 minutes, but still feels so much longer. I wanted it to end so many times throughout.

One of the things that makes Ratchet and Clank so great is the creativity of the weapons, but there is nothing here apart from some guns that make no more than a cameo. All the action itself is flat and uninventive with no emotional weight either. It was all just so bland.


Ratchet and Clank isn't the video game movie adaptation you were hoping for, which is just a shame. It's just a cheap and cynical cash-in to promote the new game. The director of this is also directing the Sly Cooper film, my faith in that has dwindled.

4/10 Dans

Ratchet and Clank is out now on DVD in the UK

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House of the Dead (2003) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written December 7th, 2016*

Uwe Boll is a director I can only describe as "Pure autism" or "Puretism" for short. Every single one of his films is a pure trainwreck in every regard. But what makes this worse is just what a self-indulgent hack Boll is as a person.

This talentless twat thinks his films are actually smart art, better than filmmakers like Michael Bay or Eli Roth. I'm not a fan of either of those filmmakers, but they are a hell of a lot better than Boll. The best work Boll ever produced was the 'Rampage' trilogy, which was self-important and ultra-violent drivel with grade-school nihilism with its opinions on society.

House of the Dead on the other hand is just pure garbage. A lame barrage of early 2000's post-Matrix special effects. It is brutal. Not a single thing about this film works. It's filled with weird creative decisions, laughable acting, an atrocious script and poor direction.

Do you remember the live-action opening cut-scene of Resident Evil on PS1 back in 1996? That campy and cheesy attempt to make the opening of a game cinematic. It was charming, but in all honesty atrocious. House of the Dead feels like that, but stretched out to a 86 minute run-time, with none of the charm.

Every character is an obnoxious dick. Everyone is so self-obsessed. There's a character who gets a little chemical burn on his face and sees himself as a monster, so he gets to nobly sacrifice himself because there was no way he could live with a scar on his face. What a terrible message. 

The female characters are also a disaster. They are all reduced to either topless roles or cleavage. Honestly, each of them either get topless at some point or spent the whole film in a revealing outfit. It was pervy, weird and just disgusting. 

I don't have much of a memory of The House of Dead games. I know the cinema I go to used to have the light-gun arcade game, but I remember nothing about the story, so I can't exactly compare. I will say this film is called 'House of the Dead', yet takes place on an island? What a misleading and false title.

There are some amazing and spectacular creative decisions that have to be seen to be believed. Transition shots between scenes insert brief clips of the video game. What on Earth were they thinking? They also used a hell of a lot of lame freeze-framing rotational cameras during the action scenes. It was outdated horrificness. When characters die, the camera pans around them as the screen flashes red. See what I mean when I describe Uwe Boll's direction as "Pure autism"?


House of the Dead is a complete failure on every level. Awful characters, lame direction, stupid creative choices, a terrible story, poor action. There is nothing to recommend with this. One of the worst films I've ever seen. The only good thing I have to say about it is that the poster is at least good.

1/10 Dans

House of the Dead is out now on DVD in the UK
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Castlevania: Season 1 (2017) - TV Review

Review:

*Originally written July 8th, 2017*

"Bloodlines"

I have no really history with the Castlevania series. I played about 20 minutes of Lords of Shadow on the Xbox 360 about 6 years ago. So I went into this pretty blank, with not idea what it would be like and any familiarity with the characters. I was also pretty reluctant to watch this due to my general disdain for anime (Fuck anime). 

It was surprising to see I enjoyed this as much as I did. It benefits and suffers from only being around 90 minutes long with 4 short episodes. I felt like I barely had enough time to learn about these characters or even care about them. This is something that could be ammended with a much better second season (Which has been announced), but for the first season, things are pretty hollow, but easy watching.

The animation is pretty gorgeous, I loved the look of everything. There's a variety of grotesque looking creatures and some stylish and gory action. It's also pretty dark, with some really gruesome moments, including an implied baby death, which was pretty cool.

My biggest problem with the show was just how short it was, despite enjoying it far more than I thought I would. I'm not entirely sure why this was even a season of TV due to its short length, it would have easily fared better as a film. The story was pretty simple and straight forward, so it was a shame they really didn't spend much time to flesh out characters that much, making everyone some pretty blank. 

There is a decent musical score throughout, but the voice acting ranges from good to downright awful. Most of the main cast are fine, it's when we get to the minor characters that the vocal performances turn absolutely abhorrent.

I don't have anything else to say. Castlevania was a better videogame adaptation than most, but it suffers from its short length, despite its beautiful animation and stylized violence. Hoping the show will improve a lot more going forward.

6/10 Dans

Castlevania: Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix worldwide
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Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written February 6th, 2017*

"Game over"

For better or worse, there are now 6 live action Resident Evil films and also a few animated ones. The live action ones I have have been following since they started when I was very young. I rewatched them recently as an adult leading up to the release of 'The Final Chapter' and they... were pretty bad. There's a small group of people who see the series as some misunderstood masterpiece art. I will never understand these people.

Whatever, with all its highs and lows, after 15 years the series has finally reached a somewhat conclusion with this 6th entry. Calling something 'The Final Chapter' has never worked, and it doesn't here. Not only is calling this the "Final chapter" an outright lie, as a whole, the film is a complete nightmare and an editing travesty.

The story is fairly simple and rushed. It has the thinnest of premises and just really goes with it at a relentless pace until it just... ends. There is no real significant character development here, which is just insulting considering we're meant to be getting some sort of resolution for a character people have been following for 15 years. The only thing we learn new about Milla Jovavich's Alice is a complete middle finger to everyone who bothered to get invested with her story.

I was in disbelief at how they pissed on their long-term fans by delivering such an unsatisfying story that shits on everything that came before it. On top of that, they even had the balls to end the film with a tease of a sequel. A FUCKING tease for a sequel in a film titled 'THE FINAL CHAPTER'. What the fuck. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with the people involved in this trainwreck?

Aside from the lead, Alice having not much to do, we're given a supporting cast of characters that amount to zero. Albert Wesker still looks absurd and out of place, but this time he's given nothing to do, he's just sort of there. He pops up every now and then, but nothing memorable. Everyone new, I can't even remember. Ruby Rose is there for some reason. Characters die and I don't even learn their name. The camera sometimes linger on their dead face like we're meant to care about them, despite not knowing anything about them.

I gotta talk about the biggest mistake this film made. Despite failing on every level as a finale to a franchise. The Final Chapter's biggest crime is easily its editing. This is honestly one of the worst edited films I have ever laid my eyes on. I could not tell you what the hell was happening. Never before have I seen such a clusterfuck of quick-cutting, poorly framed action. Within each action scene I genuinely believe there were 5 cuts a second. It was incoherrent to the extreme. There was no excuse for this. Paul W.S. Anderson is not a good director, but I know he is capable of passable action scenes. What the fuck was this?

At the very least, I did laugh at how bad some of it was. There are some hilariously awful lines delivered by a suprisingly commited Iain Glen, he was amazing. Hamming it up to 11 nearly every chance he could get. He nearly managed to bring some life to a film as dead as its monsters. So, yeah, I laughed at how bad it is, so I enjoyed it a bit more than Afterlife in a way. So that is something at the very least.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is an insult, a complete farce that shits on everything that came before it. A mockery to everyone who bothered to invest in the character of Alice and these 6 films. Dark,ugly and one of most poorly edited films of all-time. I will not miss the Resident Evil film franchise. It will be rebooted at some point, but for now, It's been a weird and oddly interesting ride at times, even entertaining to a point, but good riddance. You won't be missed.

1/10 Dans

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD now in the UK
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Assassin's Creed (2016) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written January 1st, 2017*

I'm no stranger to the Assassin's Creed franchise. I've finished all the main games bar Syndicate and Rogue, but I have been a huge fan so I was pretty excited when Michael Fassbender would be starring in an adaptation of the series from the director of 2015's Macbeth (Which I loved).

The film has now come, it's bombed at the box-office and it was panned by the critics. My expectations were lowered a lot, but I actually ended up having a decent time with Assassin's Creed. It's a bit messy and muddled, but it's visually beautiful, features a usually great performance from Fassbender, but above all, I was very entertained. I actually quite liked a film based on a video game. It might just be a late Christmas miracle.

The story sadly does not take from any of the games. It instead follows a new character, Callum Lynch played by Fassbender, who is a death row inmate who's death is faked as he's transported to the Abstergo facility where the Templar Order put him in a machine called the Animus that allows him to access the memories of his ancestors who were assassins, where he needs to find out what happened to the Apple of Eden.

Olden days Fassbender

Yeah, it's convoluted nonsense. It at least captures the nonsensical silliness of the games by taking itself far too seriously. The Animus machine makes no sense at all. Rather than the VR like bed of the games, its instead a weird attachment to the users head where they're able to run around in a confined space. Without the help of visual effects in the scene, it would have looked laughable.

Much like the video games, all the best stuff is when the lead is actually in the Animus focusing on his assassin ancestor. In many ways the stuff in the Animus feels like a video game where the audience in thrown in the middle of a mission 3 or 4 times in the film. While these scenes aren't entirely meshed well into the film, they are at least the most visually stunning, mirroring what made director Justin Kurzel's Macbeth so great.

Despite being based on a mature rated franchise, the violence in Assassin's Creed is sadly toned-down for a teen audience. Characters use knives and swords, but it is all next to bloodless. Things cut away and get a little choppy during the set-pieces in order to get its 12A/PG-13 rating. Although, knowing Fox, there might be an uncut version on the Blu-ray release.

Fassbender fighting round the world

Even with the toned down and hastily edited action, where Assassin's Creed disappoints most is with its characters. Don't get me wrong, the cast are all fine, working with what they're given, but despite Fassbender's modern day character, there is nothing to anyone else. Fassbender's assassin ancestor Aguilar is a paper-thin character, he barely says anything and we know nothing about him. I do like the look of his character though. Marion Cotillard isn't given much to do, neither is Jeremy Irons as the villain of the film, despite have evil intentions?

Assassin's Creed is what it is. It's a dumb, yet beautifully shot action film based on a game where people access their ancestors memories. It's not amazing, but it is very entertaining 110 minutes. Which is more than I can ask for with a game based on a film.

7/10 Dans

Assassin's Creed is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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Need for Speed (2014) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written May 7th, 2015*

Need For Speed is the first in the franchise of films based on EA's Need For Speed video-games. The first thought you would have is "Based on a video-game it must suck", but thankfully due to Aaron Paul's performance and some extremely impressive practical effects and lack of CGI, Need For Speed is actually a very solid adaptation.

Aaron Paul plays Tobey Marshall a petrol-head who is framed by Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper) for the death of his friend after a street race gone wrong. After being released from prison he and Julia (Imogen Poots) join a cross country race in order to exact revenge on Dino.

Practical car stunts

While the plot sounds relatively simple, it takes a really long time to get to the actually race. About an hour is given to building Aaron Paul's character, which is a nice change of pace from the way these films usually are, but at the same time it extends the running time of the film to a breaking point. A good 30 minutes of this film could have been cut.

The cast is pretty impressive. Aaron Paul is excellent and handles his first post Breaking Bad role extremely well, he isn't as good as he is in that, but he displays emotion and proves he can be a leading man for films. Imogen Poots is just there, she's fine and has solid Chemistry with Paul. Cooper is forgettable and pretty boring as the antagonist. The supporting cast is really strange, for some reason Michael Keaton is in this, he's OK and has some charisma and fun with his role, but he's mostly a non-entity.

Aside from Aaron Paul, the best and most surprising part of Need For Speed is its the very impressive direction and lack of CGI and a lot of practical effects, which is sadly far too underused these days. It makes the action and racing scenes that much better, you can really tell these were real cars getting trashed and destroyed.

Aaron Paul

People will compare this to Fast and Furious, which is a very fair comparison, but I felt that Need for Speed handled street racing far better than any of the Furious films. In all honesty the Fast and Furious films were never any good until they ditched the racing for over-the-top action and brought in The Rock, which fared the series much better than the Point Break rip-off story with increasingly worse sequels until the fifth.

Need For Speed might lack a strong script and goes on far too long, but thanks to the inclusion of Aaron Paul and practical effects, it's kept from being the rubbish everyone expected it to be. There's room for improvement and there is a sequel in the works, which is set in China. I just hope Aaron Paul's back for it.

6/10 Dans

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