Perfect Dark HD Remake

You know me, I love to holiday at Nostalgia Resort and to me nothing is more nostalgic than playing a classic game from the Nintendo 64 era. Unfortunately all of my N64 controllers suffer from terminal 'Mario Party Syndrome' and the combination of limp, unresponsive analogue sticks and the use of buttons to control aiming makes playing Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64 a nightmare. Luckily Rare have decided to remake many of their classic N64 titles and release them on the Xbox Live Marketplace. They did Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie and now it's Perfect Dark's turn.

So yeah it's boring old game review time. That and it's a game I actually like, so sweet burns are looking highly unlikely at this point. I guess you'll just have to wait until next week when I will hopefully be reviewing some high budget porn (I'm not joking, it's gonna be fun for all). So anyway the thing about Perfect Dark is that it reminds me of what's wrong with modern First Person Shooters. Perfect Dark has lovely environments to explore, varied and interesting missions as well as a large variety of rediculous weapons to kill people with. A modern shooting game has about 5 different weapons that you use to shoot boring characters with from behind cover in a long boring corridor. In Perfect Dark you can sneak up behind a stationary guard , literally pop a cap in his ass and watch them leap comically in surprise like a cartoon character in a mouse trap. In Perfect Dark all the enemies all act like they're auditioning for the part of a murder victim in a highschool production of Agatha Christie. "Why...me?" a dying guard will say with his last breath as he falls to his knees. It's fantastic. A modern FPS sacrifices fun for realism and I really miss it. Perfect Dark is acutely aware of what makes a game fun and has seemily developed the whole game around that knowledge.

Not that Perfect Dark is (dare I say it?) a perfect game. The story IS bad, even if it is easy to skip and it has a fun, campness to it. It's all about secret agencies and government conspiracies that (get THIS) eventually lead the story into outter space with peaceful and hostil alien factions. The worst thing of all is the escort segments of the game. There's nothing more annoying than some fuckwit AI running irratically in circles in front of the enemy until they get shot dead. It's not the worst AI I've ever seen, nor are they the most stressful escort missions. It's not even close to being a deal breaker but they can get annoying at times. But you know what? Fuck it. Perfect Dark is one of the greatest FPS games I've played in years and it's 10 years old. The controls, the graphics, the multiplayer and the framerate have all been vastely improved upon the original, which was in itself a fantastic game. If you've never played it before you should buy it. If you HAVE played it before then you'll probably want to buy it again anyway because of it's slick improvements.

Alice in Wonderland

Before I begin my usual tyraid into what's wrong with the world I thought I'd just clear something up. I've never actually read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through The Looking-Glass and so I'm sorry to all you puritans out there who will no doubt find my review ill informed and intolerable. BUT what I figure is that any decent movie adaptation deserves to be treated as its own work. Actually bad ones do too but that's beside the point.

Anyway so a couple of months back I was shown the trailer to Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland movie and I got excited. But excitement can be bittersweet mistress, especially when she wants a threesome with her ugly sister disappoinment. And that's exacltly what Alice in Wonderland was, a Ménage à Troi with high expectations and inadequet payoff. Now because I'm cynical I tend to not get too excited about a lot of things for fear of having my soul crushed, but this was Tim Burton doing Alice in Wonderland with his usual superstar tag team of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. It had all the ingredients and skills at hand to be a delicious 3 course meal of enjoyment. But instead what we got was more like a teacake. It was good, but I was hungry for more. So what was wrong? Let us dive right in.

The movie starts off in the real world during the "bonnet drama" era. Alice is a lively, free spirited sort of gal feeling all the pressures of a sexist and elitest society. The movie follows Alice around for 15 minutes or so as she interacts with various characters who you just know are going to have themselves injected into the wonderland world as a fantasy persona. Yeah, that's right. It seems that the movie industry has imposed some kind of law in which if a movie starts off in the real world and then goes into a fantasy world then the fantasy world MUST be reflective of the real world and how the main character views it. So instead of a genuine fantasy world most of the time what we're really getting isa creative visualization of the thought process and of personal growth and discovery. Which I guess is fine but why can't I just go to a freaking weirdo place just because it's there anymore? Now it's all dreams and ambitions and fears and shit and it's all getting a bit pretentious and lame to be honest. Anyway so then Alice follows the rabbit down the hole and the adventure begins.

Now what I remember Wonderland (or Underland in this movie) to be like is in many ways very different to what the movie presents. I acknowledge that maybe I'm the only one who thinks this but to me Wonderland was always a place where random, inexplicable shit was constantly screwing Alice over and fucking with her mind. Alice was a fish that was so far out of water that she was in fucking space and gasping for air. In the movie she's the fucking chosen one. Instead of being a fish out of water she's a champion of the people. Instead of stumbling from one oddball character to another they all get together and discuss the current political climate. I mean even the Mad Hatter is saned up so that he can step in as something of a role model to Alice. I mean the world is still nice; it looks great and there are still hints of insanity and such but it's not the same. It feels more like Middle Earth has been redone on magic mushrooms or acid. It might sound fun but it's just not the same. So anyway shit in Wonderland gets sorted, Alice returns to the real world on a hero buzz and gives a big fuck you to the real world in the form of a dance she picked up from the Mad Hatter. A dance that made me die a little inside.

So what does all this mean in terms of quality? To me Alice in Wonderland was ok. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't great either and quite frankly it stands as a low point in Tim Burton's career. I suppose it had to happen eventually. Nobody can just keep making awsome stuff over and over again, can they?

I Find the Implications of this Picture Amusing

Heartbreak High

Have I ever mentioned my fondness for the 90's? It probably comes as no surprise to some of you considering what a cynical, melancholic sort of decade it was (and I am). For me, the 90's had some very important television series, albums and of course videogames. In fact, the 90's was really THE decade for gaming in terms of big innovations and historically important titles (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time I am in awe of your golden cartridged beauty. You make me weep). Heartbreak High is a show I only vaguely remember from my daydreamy youth. But lucky for me the all kids channel ABC3, which I blogged about a while back, has actually managed to deliver a nugget of enjoyable 90's nostalgia in all it's mullety, backwards cap wearing glory.

So anyway, you know how I've made something of a habit out of belittling highschool drama's and sitcoms in this blog? Well Heartbreak High bucked all expectations and has rekindled my faith in the genre. Granted, it's over a decade old and has apparently failed to influence any of the current, popular series from the genre BUT...actually I really don't have any argument against that. But fuck it, Heartbreak High is actually pretty darn good and I'm going to continue holding it up as a shiney example of highschool goodness no matter what you fuckers think (please keep reading my blog...I really do love you...really).

So what's it all about then? Well I haven't really seen enough episodes to name characters and discuss plotlines but the show is essentially what you get if Skins knocked up Degrassi High and they're child was sustained with nothing but Pearl Jam and gritty cement for the first year of it's life. Everything about Heartbreak High is edge. It looks like it was filmed by stoned multimedia students, the cast dress like they're volunteer models for a sewing class at a homeless shelter and everybody goes about their day to day activities with either a snarl, a sullen look or like they're an angsty lone wolf. Grit and angst are really the words for this show. None of this bubbly tween crap or that Neighbours whinginess. This is teen drama injected with a hefty dose of hormones. The style of the show feels very authentic even if it is a tad archetypal. But you know what? Teans really ARE wreckless, emotionally overcharged, horny little bastards so the stereotype, when treated with respect, rings quite true to me.

Now to the bad parts. My main fault with the show is ironically one of the things I find so appealing. Heartbreak High is ultimately timelocked in the 90's and with it's total embracing of the trends of the time it essentially cuts it off from other generations who aren't into the whole grunge scene. If I showed this to some kid from the iGen (fuck that name) in 10 years time I daresay they will snort obnoxiously and say the 2020 equivalent of "that show is totally bogus." Shows like this mostly survive for the benefit of the generation for which the attitudes and influences of the time that were actually shaped by them in some way. So while I may not think it's the best show of all time or anything, it's certainly an important landmark in my memory and my nostalgia. That and it's a million times the high school tv series that Zoey 101 could ever hope to be.