Review: Cloverfield

No allusions to 9/11 here foks.

From the mind of J. J. Abrams, we have Cloverfield. A monstrously hyped early release of this year. While I never cared much for his work on the LOST series, he had to have writing talent with the amount of people speculating about this one... Right? Perhaps people were impatient waiting for the next Blair Witch hit, or a fantastic american-made whack at monster films after the largely disappointing 1998's Godzilla. The fact that all that everyone had to go on was a title, a vague trailer, and a release date...certainly helped.

Whatever the reason, people were on this film like maggots on a corpse. I couldn't help but join them and see what all the fuss was about. With no outside narrative of any sort, and the complete perspective being from the point of view of the main characters, the style of the film greatly intrigued me. As it's only from these sorts of angles that you can truly get a sense of scale.

While Hud, the main wielder our window to their perils, did capture a decent few shots of the creature, he largely insisted on shaking the camera back and forth between his friends to catch their own reactions. This was as if the camera was duct taped to his head, as he couldn't just look at them quickly as he documented the catastrophe. In the realistic tone of the movie, this makes little sense, and made me lose touch with the concept of it being found footage, making me remember it's a movie.

I felt as if there was a tad too much focus on the people at the beginning of the film. The movie tries to juggle relationships and friendships of the people involved with the situation of the monster in an attempt to connect me to them emotionally, and instead of a good monster movie, I ended up with an alright drama and an alright monster movie.


"Hi mom!"

The special effects are good, for as much as you can see of them. It's hard to make out imperfections in the CGI with an epileptic nine year old on a sugar rush at the camera, but it's convincing. The creature apparently dragged little parasites onto New York with it, and these also attack the main characters. It helps to have the looming sense of danger of these things when they're waiting underground and lollygagging about their personal dilemmas, and you get no real idea of what havoc the monster is causing outside.

There isn't much to the storyline. What you can scrape up is that the monster may have been created by the military, and besides that there is sadly more you know about Hud and his friends. While this might be a good balance to some, and helps to aid the mystery of this creature, I felt just as out of the loop as the people involved did. This only made me more curious, while the film never gave anything more than a few hints and teases.

The focus of the characters and their drama, while giving decent dialog and acting, gave me the sense that I was missing out on the big picture. It made sense that they weren't able to watch the monster's doings constantly, it being from the perspective of fairly regular individuals like you and me, but then why not the perspective of someone who does know what it's all about? Why not someone associated with the military? The only information you'll gain from these characters will be ramblings of conspiracy from Hud. Which, I'll grant it, were entertaining and lighthearted for a film of it's nature.


Sorry Lovecraft fans, no Cthulhu this time.

Cloverfield is a good film. But as a monster movie specifically, it was a disappointment. The tense and realistic action sequences arn't enough to save it from it's own meaningless storytelling of the main characters, and the heavy mystery of the monster will only serve as a sly bait for the sequel, should they make one. Even with budgets of thirty million dollars nowdays, I still find myself returning to the Godzilla and monster films of old.

Perhaps this perspective just wasn't meant for monster flicks? Or maybe it'll be a long time before one is done right. Until then, I can only recommend 2006's The Host to rekindle your faith in recent monster films. Cloverfield isn't terrible, it's lackluster. It teases you with tastes of well-done action and suspense, but then leaves you starving for information and relevant story. An admirable attempt worthy of only three of our five Konatas.

Review: Super Mario Galaxy

Guess who bought a Wii today?!

...Not me. I think it's a gimmicky, mediocre attempt at a next-gen console. XD ...Hating the system aside, I'd like to point out a real gem among the library, chunked full of lame ports and party titles you'll only get decent playtime out of, unless you're a celebrity, a few times a month tops. So a good friend brought his over and I got to jam some Mario all night.

The Story

Guess what happens this time? Princess Peach kidnaps Bowser. Nah I'm kidding, it's the same old scenario. Albeit this time with the twist of space travel. Peach is abducted, Bowser is scheming to rule the universe, and it's up to Mario to save us all and restore order to the galaxies. It's definitely the most interesting of the series, but at the same time it'll be no chore keeping up with the overall plot.


Kidnapped again. Who'dda thunk? D:

The Presentation

For a Wii game, this looks spectacular. It oozes vibrant color and details. Shitloads of things shine, shitloads of things feature fancy texture tricks in general. If you want your Wii to show some muscle, this is the title to help you feel less insecure about choosing the hardware-handicapped console this generation. Some parts might feel a bit empty or bland at times, but overall the graphics shine. No really, they shine. There's bloom effects up the ass.

The sound is...fitting. Mario sounds like mario, with his cheers of joy as he jumps about, and his screams of peril in the aftermath of your failure to make a jump or spend that last life wisely. The same applies to Bowser and the other primary characters. Not much talking, lots of meeps and cute vocalization. The music is nice, it brings some serious nostalgia at times, remixing the sounds of many classic songs.


Mario. He's a man's man.

The Gameplay

Fun! Lots of fun. You can spin shit, jump on shit, and zoom around from planet to planet. The level design is top notch, of course, it being mario, and the gameplay mechanics work well with the wiimote controls... For the most part. There's some parts where the controls require you to be extremely quick-thinking and have the steadiness of a surgeon. I.E. the ball parts. You roll around on a ball, and it's completely wiimote controlled. One level had me and my friend almost completely insane. We must have retried the god forsaken thing 20+ times.

Besides those few terribly frustrating optional (thank god) levels, which I don't think for a second a young kid could possibly have the patience to sit through entirely, they're overall designed and played out in a fun fashion. They feature everyone's favorite enemies, from the goombas to the bullet bills. Levels are diverse, taking place on classic green grassed earth-types, snowy terrain, and even lava-shooting deathtraps which make you seriously wonder how a plumber could make it through something that epic. Well, he's god damn Mario. That's how.


Oh thank god, I didn't know what he was holding.

The controls are simple, with nothing more to manage besides Mario and a cursor that collects star-bits. It might seem like a hefty multi-task at first to collect these bits by waving around your friendly blue star, and directing Mario, but it becomes second nature within not even a minute. A press of a button makes mario jump, and a flick of the wiimote makes him spin. You may also shoot star-bits using your star-cursor but I generally found that useless most of the time and prefered to save them instead to feed to gluttonous star-things called Lumas that if you satisfy their hunger enough, they TRANSFOOOOOOORM.

The game features a life system that pretty much works like health. You collect enough coins, or get a 1-up and you'll raise your "lives" to a maximum of 6. There's also another set of lives that act as continues, should the previous set run out. It's basically health. I might actually have them mixed up, but anyone could wrap their head around how it works entirely within ten seconds of playing. Mario touches an enemy and he loses a life. Mario lights his ass on fire and he loses a life. Mario falls into the deep, dark, cold, void of space and he restarts the level again. It works.


Spoiler: Holy shit, you fight Bowser.

The Final Verdict

Super Mario Galaxy is a cute game. It's a warm and fuzzy game. No matter how many spin-offs of this popular plumber they make, a handful of them are always worth playing. This is a more than decent game in all aspects, save for a few hair pulling levels and the fact that the overall concept hasn't changed much since the original games. It's hard not to like this game, and the reason why is the secret sauce that has kept the line of Mario titles going for over twenty years. A pinch of nostalgia, a dash of brilliant level design, and years of perfected fun platforming formula. Four, out of five, Konatas for you Mario, you crazy son of a bitch.

Hitman: Blood Money. One killer game.

Seriously though, all cheesy wordplay aside, let's get down to the review of Blood Money. Just this morning I completed the last mission of the game, and as Rob promised, it was awesome to the fullest extent of the word. I'll try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible while still going indepth on some of the things that really makes this title shine. Once again it's time to take on the role of Mr. 47.



Graphics: Though for some reason my copy of Hitman:BM(TOTALLY NOT PIRATED I SWEAR) wouldn't allow me to enable antialiasing at a setting higher than 4x, even when forcing it from Nvidia panel, the graphics in this game are pleasant and easy on the eye, not to mention very well thought out. The levels are very diverse, and each one has it's respective graphical style; nothing is out of place, and everything feels like it belongs. The character models aren't exactly OMGWTFGFX, but the gun models really look great, in my opinion; there's a nice level of detail, but they still don't "stand out" from the rest of the game. All in all, the game looks very nice, and you'll probably be too busy embracing the awesomeness that is the gameplay to even notice that some textures aren't 21093812312309x21903821093812 in resolution.



Audio/Music: Well, besides "Ave Maria" and the credits song, there's not much here to rate. The voice-acting is good, and you get to hear Diana's voice some more, so stop complaining, damn. Oh, there's some ambient music that kind of kicks in when the shit hits the fan in a mission. It's okay, I guess, nothing too noteworthy. The gun sounds are pretty well done...yeah, let's move on to the next category.



Story: What are you, some kind of nerd? Go read a book. In all seriousness, Blood Money's story is so-so until the very end, which is where it becomes one of the greatest experiences I've had in gaming lately. A wheelchair-bound badass recounts tales of 47's jobs leading up to their eventual 'capture' of the agent, these tales being stories of the jobs you'll be doing throughout the game. From a vineyard in South America, to a suburban neighborhood in the USA, from Mardi Gras to Mississippi, Blood Money's story takes you to plenty of interesting locations, with each one being completely different from the next; No two jobs will feel the same. While some may say BM's story pales in comparison to earlier Hitman titles, I felt it was completely on par. Very solid.

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Gameplay: This is the sweet spot; there are so many choices to make, so many different ways to accomplish one goal, so much variety that it ensures you won't play each mission only once. Do you want to plant a mine and wait for the target to stand under the chandelier? Or maybe you want to poison their drink and have it sent to them. Then you could rig the propane grill to explode, or just cover the top in lighter fluid. If that's not your style, though, you can always just shoot the bottom of the target's glass jacuzzi out from 50 feet below, then laugh as they plummet to their inevitable doom. Though you could also just replace their prop gun with a real loaded one, and make another man a murderer. And as always, if none of this gets the job done, nothing at all is stopping you from going in guns blazing with your trusty Silverballers.

Really, though, the point I'm trying to make with all these choices? Replayability! There are so many different ways to complete one mission that you really can't only try one, unless you're some kind of skank; and we don't like skanks reading this here blog. As you progress throughout the game, various upgrades become available for your main arsenal of weapons, including silencers, new firing mechanisms, scopes, grips, larger clips, and better bullets. The player can also buy the equivalent of HP Potions in the form of a bottle of pills, several bulletproof vests that increase in effectiveness, better lockpicking equipment, extra mines for more explodey funtime...

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Overall: I won't hesitate to say Blood Money is the best Hitman game I've played, honestly. I'll have to play Contracts and get back to you on that for a final decision, but for now BM takes the cake easy. If you hesitated to buy this game at all, stop. It's well worth what you'll pay, and trust me, you won't regret it at all. Plus you get to kill clowns, and who hasn't wanted to kill a clown?




Hitman: Blood Money gets a total score of 5/5 Konatas.




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More Screenshots:

(note: that little square is a glitch with my capture software, not the game itself)

3 license games done right

1. Transformers (PS2)

Who doesn't like Transformers? Well, you might not like them so much when they're used as a vehicle, no pun intended, for product placement and gimmicky, unnecessary revival of a series that has been going strong for two decades. I'm looking at you Michael Bay. While the movie wasn't that bad, the game based on it is extremely mediocre, and a nasty distraction from the one good whack at a transformers game this generation.

An extremely solid title with expansive environments, strong variety in weapons and items, polished graphics considering the console it's on, and very fun run-and-gun style gameplay. My only gripes playing this were the limiting 3 transformers you're able to play as, and the sharp difficulty curve. Other than those, this is a strong recommendation to anyone who's any sort of a fan, and even action gamers who might not be. Besides, it's around 20 dollars now anyways. Fo' (Out of five) Konatas.

2. The Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (PS2/Xbox/PC)

Next in line is everyone's favorite green meanie, the hulk. This guy's fuckin' pissed and it's no wonder being as how tight those jeans must be on his junk. This title is extremely fun to play. It's a fantastic example of a licensed game because of the fact that it'd be an awesome game even if it wasn't about the hulk and his pissed off doings. The storyline is decent enough to hold your interest, and the gameplay is everything you should expect out of being able to play this guy.

Cars crumple like paper under your strength, the streets line with cracks and show nice variations of damage as you rampage throughout. It's very open ended, mission based, and the learning curve is extremely easy. Just simply beat the shit out of everything that does, or does not move. Here's to looking forward to Radical Entertainment's next gen game, Prototype, which will feature the same engine and concept. Four and a HALF Konatas for this kickass use of a license.

3. The Punisher (PS2/Xbox/PC)

Frank Castle's one bad motherfucker, and if you don't believe me, you haven't seen him stab a guy straight in the face with a combat knife and then turn around to stick his buddy's ear to a drill.
This game capture's this anti-hero's gruesome nature of justice perfectly. The executions and interrogations are brutal, and they did not skimp on the gore. You'll never be more than a minute away from seeing bucketfuls of blood, and being able to blow off limbs as your enemies scream in agony is a testament to the lack of morality in this true-to-comic incarnation.

While the graphics haven't aged well, and the storyline feels a bit empty and uninteresting at parts, it's a good deal at it's bargain bin price nowadays. If you're the kind of blood junkie sadist I am deep down, you'll lose your kicks of God of War soon enough, and this is a wonderful adaptation of the Punisher to turn to. Three and a half Kona's for this more-than-decent title.