Infamous: Second Son - Game Review

Infamous: Second Son Review

Infamous: Second Son was one of the launching titles for the PlayStation 4, and I still have yet to review it. In all honesty, if I could sum this game up in one sentence it would be: I've seen better, and I've seen worse. If I had to sum it up in one word it would be repetitive. If I had to sum it up in two words it would be missed opportunity.

The biggest problem with Infamous: Second Son is all the attention given to the gameplay mechanics and little to no attention given to the story. The narrative is all over the place in this game. There's only a couple of characters in the story, and not one of them intrigued me. We have the main character Delsin, a punk graffiti artist who's snarky and sarcastic all the time. You have Reggie, his older brother who is a cop. Along the journey you will meet Augustine the antagonist. Then Fetch, a former drug addict. And then Eugene, the antisocial videogame nerd. The actual ground premise is pretty original, I'll give it that. In this world, there are a handful of people called bio-terrorists, and each of them have the ability to control a different form of matter, like concrete or smoke. Delsin somehow gains smoke powers and is questioned by Augustine, head of the D.U.P. (they're the bad guys). Delsin refuses to talk, and Augustine sends concrete shards in to every person Delsin cares about. The rest of the story is Delsin trying to find a way to save his friends.

The thing that kind of bugged me for the entire duration of the game was that I was always on the fence with how I felt about Delsin. He was funny when he was sarcastic but most of the time he was being a douchebag and was annoying to play as. The game didn't really give you any motivation to fight for Delsin's cause. All the other characters seem a little too cliché and vanilla for my liking, and I never really shared any emotions with them or had any pity for them. A big part of the game was choosing paths for the story. You can choose to be evil or choose to be a hero. A couple of times during the story you will be given a choice to take the evil path or heroic path. These paths give or deduct points based on what side you have done the most of so far [heros doing evil things deduct points, heros doing good things earn points, vice versa]. Other than giving/deducting points, these are pretty pointless to the outcome of the story. The next few missions are only slightly different than it would be if you had chosen the other path and the ending stays the same. You would think that with all these different choices and paths you can take, you would be given an ending specifically based off of every choice you make, but that never happens. There are only two alternate endings, and they are only based on whether you have more evil points or whether you have more heroic points. What's more, one of the two endings is horrible depending on which ending you have. Each different path doesn't really give you any unique upgrades or abilities, they're all pretty similar.

Apart from the fact that the different choices you make affects the enjoyability of the ending, the gameplay mechanics are pretty solid. When you are traversing around the fairly big city of Seattle, smoke powers are very annoying. You gain other powers throughout the game, to make traversal easier, but scaling up building pressing the jump button over and over again is so aggravating. In this big city there are a lot of citizens. These citizens have the worst A.I. I have seen in a while. It's ten times worse than the combat A.I. The combat A.I. is decent enough and serves a challenge, but it isn't entirely perfect.

Fighting enemies with all these unique powers is so much fun. When you are fighting enemies, you can shoot dodge and melee in a city with a lot of buildings. The landscape of the city does make for some fun battles at times. There are lot's of different enemies and the controls are never that complicated. While the combat is pretty decent, all the boss battles feel lackluster. There's nothing innovative about them, they're usually too easy but take a long time and just drag on.  The graphics in this game are amazing, and all the particle effects on screen at once look beautiful. Too bad they can't make the realistic looking character models feel life like. This game feels like it has been rushed. There is a lot of repetition in this game, especially in the side missions. A lot of the side missions feel too similar to each other and uncreative.

+ Amazing graphics       - Terrible/OK A.I.
+ Good combat               - Characters are transparent and vanilla
                                        - Plot underdeveloped
   6.4/10                  - Side missions all too similar
                                       - unnecessary  path choosing mechanic

The Gift - Movie Review

The Gift Review

The Gift is a movie about a couple moving back to the husbands home town and getting stalked by the husbands former classmate. In a nutshell. Now, I love when movies or games can take a simplistic or odd (or both) idea and make it work brilliantly. And that's exactly what The Gift does.

So the movie starts with the couple moving in to their new house ( a general rule it seems for horror/thrillers). While out shopping, they run in to Gordo, the husband's old classmate and things go downhill from there. Gordo tries to force their friendship and when they don't reciprocate the main conflict arises. It's hard to go into depth with this movie without spoiling it, since the story is so essential. First off, let me start with the acting. Joel Edgerton is the writer and director for this movie, whilst playing the ever so creepy Gordo. He nails being the socially awkward, twitchy guy that everyone dreads running in to. Jason Bateman plays the husband, in probably his first ever serious role and does a great job of it. It's always cool to see comedy actors or action stars experiment with new genres and doing their roles justice on the first attempt. In fact, the acting all around is fantastic in this movie.

I love the way the movie is shot and the undertone to it as well. The house the couple moves in to is a fairly large flat, with a LOT of windows and glass walls. It gives it the sense of no privacy whatsoever. And it's always uncomfortable to see people, even if it's just a movie, pry in to other people's lives and ask intrusive questions to the point where it's eerie. Now, The Gift is a psychological thriller. If you watch all the Paranormal Activity movies to get pumped for this one, it won't have the same elements that make it scary or suspenseful. The premise is so simple, that if anyone tried hard enough, the events in this movie could actually happen to you, yet it still works. Granted, the pace of this movie isn't always fast or even moderately fast. There are some pointless scenes in the movie, possibly to add more screen time, but the story never loses it's grip on you.

All the lead characters are interesting so you never feel bored, even if the movie isn't going as fast as you would like it to. The story is full of secrets and twists and turns so that once your set on a theory or belief, most of the time it whisks you away from it. This movie personally also had some of the best suspense I've ever felt. It was so atmospheric and I couldn't help grinning in the theater when my stomach knotted up. There isn't any thematic music that keeps on playing over and over ( a la Jaws) but the sound effects are great. Every small noise is magnified when everything is dead silent, like a creaky door, and it all works perfectly. There is no slashing or stabbing to anticipate at anytime. Gordo is unpredictable which kind of fuels the creepiness factor and makes it more interesting. The suspense is more about one strange man taking ahold of a couple and ruining their lives making them paranoid.

Joel Edgerton must be a mastermind, because he somehow incorporated the feeling one has when they feel like someone's watching them in to this movie. That was probably the most enjoyable aspect of the movie for me. Throughout the entire movie there is this sinking gut feeling that things are not going to end well and the build up is incredible. Gordo is unpredictable, so there's really no guessing as to what he's going to do. The build up for the movie is great, however the actual reveal is not so great. It's just not all completely there and underdeveloped. There isn't much of a resolution either, the twist ending is left up to your interpretation. Sometimes that can be frustrating with movies, and sometimes it's fun to peel the layers away and digest it for a while. I ended up deciding that the ending was good, just underdeveloped and I liked digesting this movie and pondering about it.

-Underdeveloped end          + Incredible suspense

-Slow paced at times           + Superb acting

                                             + Great story with twists and turns

                                             + Simple and realistic premise

8.3/10

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Movie Review

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Review

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is the 5th Mission Impossible Movie. This movie has a lot to live up to, considering the success of Mission Impossible 3 and 4. Mission Impossible 4 lacked a good villain that was convincing and brutal, like Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in the third movie. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation has a good villain, which is... good. The quiet yet intimidating Sean Harris delivered his lines in a creepy almost Alan Rickman way, which I liked a lot.

The plot follows Tom Cruise trying to take down an anti-IMF, a terrorist group led by Sean Harris called the Syndicate. The story is pretty gripping at times, and the dialogue is delivered extremely well. That's not say that the dialogue is great at all times. There were a couple laughable one-liners, but other seemingly cheesy lines sounded fine when Tom Cruise said them. The supporting cast is great, and there are a couple funny moments with them. It's a shame, since you don't really get to see much of the supporting cast throughout the movie. Simon Pegg probably has the most screen time apart from Tom Cruise. Jeremy Renner is kind of at the sidelines, and is not really as interesting as he was in the 4th movie.

There is a lot of action though in this movie, and a LOT of intense moments that I loved the Mission Impossible series for. I won't spoil them, but there are moments that make you clutch the seat. There is a teeny bit of suspension of disbelief required in these moments, but Tom Cruise plays it off so well. There is a little bit of Character development, but not as much as I'd like. The first Mission Impossible had the most character development, since it didn't really have to worry about the supporting cast as much. The movie brings in some unneeded cast members, like the black guy from Mission Impossible 3. All he did was add a couple of extra seconds to the running time. Maybe if they cut down the cast then it would be a lot easier to focus on the characters people want to see.

The action in this movie is still great, with the occasional car chase and such. The cool thing about this is there are 4 movies like this one already, yet they still manage to shake it up and it still works! Some sub plots were unnecessary, but for every unnecessary sub plot there was a heart pounding intense action scene.

+ Great action and suspense                              - Supporting cast not all needed

+ Tom Cruise delivers dialogue well               - Not enough character development  

8/10