The Games of 2008!!

.. or rather, the games I played in 2008.. between my last game blog update and now...

I am putting up only short comments on each game, and please do contact me if you want more..

Splinter Cell - Double Agent : 86 - Very good game where we play both on terrorist side and National security side. Great graphics and good gameplay elements. But crashes for every reload in the "kinshasa" level - developers could have fixed this to make a V. Good game a GREAT game!!

Vampire - The Masquerade Bloodlines : 79 - Nice RPG where we play as a vampire - learning the ropes and then making choices to exist and help innocent people.

Medal Of Honor - Allied Assault : 81 - Old game, but given the time it came out, excellent graphics and lots of innovative gameplay.

Portal : 95 - Superbly innovative puzzle-solving game involving creating portals - takes a poor executed concept in "Prey" and gives it a super spin with GlaDOS as an amazing instructor and the best game ending song - ever!!

Gears Of War : 86 - Absolutely awesome graphics, and a very interesting "fight from cover" system, but that can be a drawback sometimes against multiple enemies. Also, a little bit frustrating "checkpoint" rather than a "save" system. Frustrating becoz we just get rid of a big enemy and then some small fry comes and hits us by accident then we have to replay everything again. But, overall very good game.

Call Of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare : 81 - Great concept, super fast action that keeps coming - no time wasted here. Checkpoint system used much better here. But, downside to all this is that game is pretty short and pretty easy to finish. No real stuff to explore or think and do.

SWAT 4 & SWAT4 Expansion - The Stetchkov Syndicate : 84 - Pretty interesting take on SWAT action. Feels realistic and rewards solid thinking and teamwork. Expansion pack adds to the same kind of fun.

HL2E2 : 92 - We continue on this fascinating adventure with Gordon Freeman and Alyx and it is as fun a ride as ever!! Great graphics, interesting puzzles, rivetting commentary and above all the one standout aspect of this series - great storyline development make this an all-out winner!

Bioshock : 90 - Very interesting premise of an under-sea city and cool "plasmid" gene modifications make for some great gameplay. Also good storyline development keeps the player hooked!!

Rainbow Six - Vegas : 80 - Another standard Tom Clancy offering. Involves team fighting and taking "cover" - good graphics, neatly done.

GTA III : 82 - The first of the GTA third-person view super-interactive series - seems a bit easy after checking out later GTA offerings, but very entertaining neverthless.

Beyond Good And Evil : 81 - really cool and interesting game - has a lot of "wacky" elements which keep the game going at good pace. Only small drawback is it has usual camera and movement problems seen in console ports.

Deus Ex : 91 - A really ambitious game (considering it came out very early this decade) trying to incorporate a number of unique and interesting features, each of which I have seen become USP's in future games. Has only some minor drawbacks like repetition of character models, which can cause confusion. A superb FPS/role-playing combo.

Deus Ex - Invisible War : 89 - More of the kind of gameplay seen in part1. Better graphics. Story nicely interwoven with elements of part1. Some gameplay improvements too, but there are other irritants (long dialogues, etc) which ensure there are still some minor flaws we need to live with.

Mass Effect : 86 - Nice mix of action and RPG elements. Story driven with game adapting itself to many decisions we make.

Grim Fandango : 74 - very interesting storyline and hilarious dialogues, but dated gameplay sometimes makes it a pain to play.

Left4Dead : 76 - Interesting game which pits a group of friends against a big gang of zombies. A smaller, smarter version of "Serious Sam" with a creepy horror twist. Would probably play much, much better on multiplayer.

So then, thats it for now from me... The time is fast approaching when I have to upgrade my system (or else) no new games will run on it :(
I will probably wait till QuadCore and a GTX (Dx10) card get into an affordable rate range before I take the plunge..

As always, till next time.... HAPPY GAMING!!

Kuselan - P. Vasu messes up... again!!

I can only say - this should have been a "good" movie - meant to showcase that even a "larger-than-life" Rajni can do meaningful roles ; but believe me, it isn't.

The film starts off ok introducing a barber (Pasupathi) who lives life with morals and a smile on his face. But even before he can be set fully, starts a round of crass comedy scenes which in turn lead to the introduction of the super-star who was a school-time friend of the barber.

From this point, until about 15 minutes from the end is sheer crap - punch dialouges, songs, etc. meant to potray this film as one where Rajni (and not Pasupathi) is the hero..

Why have a song dedicated to 75 years Tamil cinema when only photos of some 5-6 heros are shown? Is that all Tamil cinema had to contribute in this timeframe?
Whats with having Chandramukhi-2, Padayappa-2 when the shoot bus has "Kuselan" on it?
How come Nayantara is the heroine in all the movies?
An actor gets Z-category protection while on a shoot? (oh yeah, terrorist threat)
Why do you need to have songs, period?
.. and the list goes on...

The movie ends ok, but then the overall effect is not very good.

Vasu (and Rajni) should have had the guts to stick to the original movie storyline instead of messing it up for the sake of money by trying to project this as a "superstar" movie.

Score : 52 (Disappointing end for a promising project)

The Dark Knight - Dark and Gripping!

One first impression - AWESOME!!

Christopher Nolan returns with a superb sequel to what was an interesting (& most required) restart to the Batman franchise. Teaming up with his brother, he delivers a dark and brooding story, which keeps the audience engaged thru' out.

Batman keeps doing good for Gotham, but not everyone perceives him to be a hero... meanwhile a while knight is emerging, DA Harvey Dent who seems to have the best interests of Gotham (and Rachel!!) at heart. This seems to be the perfect setup required for Bruce - let Dent take care of the criminals and end his taxing double-life as Batman...

....until of course The Joker turns up ; a man with no morals and a sheer mission to give the people a "better class of criminal", he shows Gotham how terrorizing a person can be, holding an entire city hostage to his antics.. brilliant!!

I wont discuss the story any further becoz it would be "spoiler-time", but suffice to say it packs in a lot of bang with dark themes and moral dilemmas, every major character has a part to play and is left to question their basic ideals..

Performances are all top notch with Christian Bale and Heath Ledger deserving special mention.. It is indeed a great achievement that Nolan managed to get this much of a good screenplay into what is essential a comic-book summer blockbuster without compromising on the big-setpiece action sequences...

My only real grouse is the ending (which I dont want to reveal) and also possibly using Two-Face pretty lamely (though his story arc lends a lot credence to the Batman-Joker rivalry)..

All said and done - a real gem and possibly the best comic book movie ever (possibly, only because I havent seen all the comic book movies)...

Edit : This came about during discussions on Muhi's reply - Now that Ledger is dead (but the Joker isnt) (spoiler in white), I am really interested to see what Nolan does with part 3. "The Dark Knight" is going to be very very difficult to live upto!!

Edit 2 : I am notching up the score by 2 more points after watching the movie again. Given the way the story goes, the ending is really very well done. Its just that when I was watching the first time, Nolan was setting the bar higher with every sequence and I expected a "bang" at the end. Of course, one question remains : How & when did the Joker rig up the bombs on the yachts, without anyone noticing? Fans have already answered on imdb saying he used the 1 year period from part1 to do this, but while this can explain everything else, it doesn't explain the yachts. (spoiler in white)

Score : 84 (DONT MISS IT!!)

Dasavatharam - mesmerising yet exasperating

Kamal does it yet again - just when you think he has a gem of an idea and and the implementation is also going brilliantly - something happens which makes everything a bit disappointing.

I felt a sense of Deja Vu after finishing watching Dasavatharam (same feeling after Aalavandhan) - at intermission time, I was thinking this is absolutely awesome, what a screenplay, what acting, what dialogues... but everything had unraveled by the time the movie was done!!

The movie starts off quite promisingly showing a caste conflict in the 12th century and then quickly switching to a chase in 2004.. A cold hearted killer is chasing a scientist (both played by Kamal) - the reward being a bio-weapon... The chase moves to India where we encounter a lot of other characters played by Kamal - I wont put any spoilers here and say who the characters are and what happens with each.. but it is an interesting mix.. Kamal also shines in the extra "11/12th" roles of story/script in the first half with lot of heavy and interesting dialogues..

But post the interval, in a over-zealous attempt to define 10 full characters (which is one of my big grouses - this movie would have been great with maybe 6-7 of the characters alone, why add unnecessary flab?) the story goes haywire with no logical or coincidental (the movie relies a lot on this) links between scenes, just one special effects scene after another till a big finish with quite a few things left unexplained... not the kind of expectation the movie set up at the beginning..

Kamal is of course brilliant in all the roles, even in a couple where the make-up doesn't fit him properly at all.. As Fletcher, he is absolutely lip-smacking-enjoying-himself-brilliant-bad; as Balaram Naidu, he provides a number of laughs; as the script writer, some very sharp lines on the presence of God are delivered; and as Bush... does he have some fun there!! Asin is competent (though to call hers a double roles is stretching it).. Mallika Sherawat has a short eye-candy presence.. everybody else is basically a special appearance which they manage well enough..

Direction, Camera, Background score are all top-notch. Graphics are very good at most places (considering almost every scene needed graphics, only the really big effects look a bit tacky), songs are very average (only a couple stay hummable)... I just wonder how great this movie would have been if 3-4 avatars were cut and the running time added just a bit more for story development.. All said and done this is actually a pretty good movie but it should have been a bit better for the kind of expectations it set up!!

Score : 64 (Worth a watch, but oh it should have been special)

The Games people play!!

...errr... in this case, the "people" refers to only me :)

In any case, I am putting up this huge blog after months of non-updates on the gaming side - the excuse of course being - "its easy to play, but not to write about a great game"!! So, here goes, all the games I played after the laaast update, which was "F.E.A.R." way back in Jan 07..

Just a early heads-up, some of the games I mention in this list might be difficult to find on a store shelf near you. If you are really interested, check the net or ask me for more detailed reviews, and then you can place a special order for that game!!

Syberia and Syberia 2 : 84 - this one came out of nowhere, an adventure, puzzle-solving type game which just blew me away. We follow a New York attorney Kate Walker as she follows the childhood dream of a eccentric inventor as seeing live mammoths!! Long live automatons!!

Far Cry : 82 - a very famous FPS, it does live up to its reputation. It has everything we can ask for from a game of this genre and then some more. Guns, vehicles, AI, blasts and stunning graphics - dont miss!

Prey : 74 - Prey has a lot of potential - trying to mix some ancient cherokee "magic" skills with some interesting gameplay. The concept of using portals for getting between areas is also really good. But, this game gets a few basic concepts and repeats them over and over. Worth playing, but after seeing this - I cant wait to find what Valve can do with "Portal"..

NOLF and NOLF 2 : 86 - No One Lives Forever is one of the few games whose main protagonist is a female - and she grows to become a very good super spy ala Bond, James Bond - yes, I am referring to Cate Archer. This is one well rounded game - good action, good graphics, great locales all over the world, challenging puzzles to crack and one really mean sense of humour - dont miss the dialouges - they are worth stopping the action for!

Call Of Duty : 81 - The original Call of Duty - places us with various teams (American, British, Russian) in the push to capture Berlin during World War II. And it is one "realistic experience". Fans of "world war" themes will absolutely love this..

Psychonauts : 84 - Another game I hadn't heard much of - but was an absolute delight to play. A stunning 3D - platformer, we follow the adventures of Raz - training to become a psychonaut - people who save the world by fighting demons in peoples minds!! Yeah - really!! This gives rise to some really quirky and fun concepts and great dialouge too makes this a must-play. It looks like a kiddies-game, but believe me - everyone will enjoy it.

Condemned - Criminal Origins : 81 - whew!! A creepy horror game, where we battle for survival against some unknown but powerful entity.. There is pretty gruesome first-person fighting and an unrolling mystery.. a dark game which harcore gamers will love - but keep away from the very young..

GTA - San Andreas : 92 - I really dont have to say much about San Andreas - you are not even a bit into gaming if you haven't heard of it. This is a great game well worth the money you pay for it - there are some minor irritants, like forcing us to eat and exercise, but there is just so much interesting stuff to do here that we dont mind at all.

Prince Of Persia - the Trilogy : 91 - Really awesome, Sands Of Time, Warrior Within and Two Thrones combine some stunning gameplay with good dialouges, great graphics and a classic prince storyline. As I mentioned before, I loved the "time sands" concept - and thats jsut one of the great things in the game. A very minor irritant is the fact that sometimes we get the feel that this was meant for teh console - given the key combinations and camera angles we get to use and see.

Hitman - Blood Money : 82 - Another classic Hitman - where you can choose to be a "all guns blazer" or a true "silent assasin" on a number of interesting locales and missions - the ending is also good - with the seeming Hitman "death". Fans - dont miss!

Indigo Prophecy : 81 - Not sure if I have written on this before - but it follows a "movie" like look and we play along as detectives trying to solve a case. Lots of new concepts implemented here and there is a great "impending crisis" atmosphere.

Painkiller & BooH expansion : 79 - A straight FPS - has all the usual frills and all done very well - a new addition is the capture of "souls". Good one for FPS folks..

King Kong : 76 - A short but excellent game following the same track as the movie - and it allows us to play as King Kong too!!

NFS Carbon : 75 - Yet another in the NFS stable - I wouldnt say this is as good as the earlier "Most Wanted", but its worth the ride. All the usual NFS stuff with the new canyon fights - but it is a bit irritating to restart the canyons from start if we fail even at the very end.

Liquidator : 50 - err - why was the game released when all that was meant to be in it was not put in? Only the "options" screens are impressive looking..

Ok folks, thats all the games I remember playing over the last few months - hope you enjoyed reading about it (and wished you could play them too!!). I will update again sooner (or later) on new games I play and anything else I might have missed here.

Till then, have fun - and KEEP GAMING!! (The Orange Box is here - YIPEEEEEEEE)

Transformers

Well, well, well - talk about a rollicking fun ride on a blockbuster Hollywood summer movie!!

This one is a straight "formula" movie, uses all the usual "big" movie tricks but still impresses thanks to a great and "simple-at-heart" screenplay and some wickedly stunning visual effects!!

Adapted from the age old (for me atleast) comic and TV series, the movie features a group of "alien-advanced technology" machines/robots which are looking for something called the "cube" and can transform themselves into the shape of any machine which they observe. There are some good robots (Autobots) here and many are bad (Deceptions) and one teenager called Sam holds the key to finding the cube.

From here on its the standard story - if the bad bots win, the human race will be destroyed, Sam joins up with the good bots and starts the chase for finding the cube - interspaced with efforts to impress the girl of his dreams (from his childhood) who doesnt even know he exists..

But what makes the movie work is the warm, human touch to the screenplay - the robots used the "world wide web" to learn about humans and speak with human voices!! There are many simple and funny moments - a great example being the scene where the robots try to hide from the sight of Sam's parents lest he be grounded!!

The graphics/visual effects are of course ASTOUNDING! Right from the beginning when an army helicopter turns into an attacking machine, there is no letup to the amazing sights we see on screen!!

The acting is par for this sort of movie, but it must be said that Shia Labeouf (Sam) fits his role to a "T".

Overall, my only grouse with this movie is in the climax which is not really as entertaining as the rest of the movie and doesnt seem too inventive but well the graphics more than make up for it.. and of course, the logic leaves a lot to be desired, but hey this is a "comic-book" movie!!

Score : 73 (Dont MISS this on the big screen - its a lot of bang for the buck)

Tagged by Naren - 3 themes/ideas for Tamil cinema

Ok here goes - fulfilling a tag by Naren quite some time back. BTW, all tag trail followers - unfortunately "the buck stops here" for this one!!


Idea 1 : The "book adaptation" - I mean the "real" one - not the kind where songs and fights are inserted into a perfectly good book to make it seem perfectly bad!! I think we did have few, very few of these in the early part of last century - but I cant recall anything which was more recent.

Idea 2 : The "courtroom drama" - again this has been "mildly" (to put it mildly) tried out before - "Naan Avanillai" being a recent example - but a classic courtroom movie could work wonders for the intellectual viewer..

Idea 3 : Hey, you guys took all the "good and easy" ideas and left me to wonder here :) - in any case, here goes my final idea - the "mental movie" - yeah - you read right
"mental" - a classic example would be "A Clockwork Orange" - where we really plough into the "psyche" of a protaganist..

Well - thats it from me and remember this tag trail stops right here!!

meme:tamil.cinema.themes.ideas