Bayonetta Review

I really was spoiled for choice on blog topics this week. I have a reasonably long list of potential things to blog about but I decided to go with Bayonetta because I think it'd be nice to review a game that was new for once. I also figured that the only reason I hadn't posted anything sooner was because I've been so engulfed in the world of Bayonetta, which kind of spoils the punchline as far as reviews go.

So yes, Bayonetta kicks arse. Not only that but it fires bullets into your arse as it kicks it. What am I on about here? Well as you may or may not have heard Bayonetta is a game in which you control a witch that looks like a cross between Catwoman and a sexy librarian who is capable of firing guns that she wears like high heels and turning her hair/clothing into giagantic monters to tear apart her enemies. Really, this is only a taste of what Bayonetta is like. The game is rediculous and over the top from the opening scenes and attempts to one up itself repeatedly until the testicle explodingly excellent climax. But when I say it's rediculous I mean so in a rather complementary way. It's not the Gears of War sort of rediculous where all the characters are unlikable badasses who probably chewed their way through their mothers birth canal and you can't help but laugh at the way they sound sexually gratified as they drive their giant, homoerotic chainsaw guns through an enemies meaty body. No Bayonetta has got rediculousness down to a fine art and seems to have a lot of fun showing itself off. It actually reminds me a lot of Weatherwoman that I reviewed ages ago back when my blog was still a primordial soup. It has that same strange, sexual, wicked style served with just a hint of Japaneseness.

Oh listen to me rambling and I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet. Bayonetta is an action game that mostly concerns itself with fighting a variety of enemies in a variety of ways using a variety of combos. That said, it really isn't necessary to master all the different moves within the game. If you're anything like me you are a bit too ham handed to pull of a wide variety of long and complex moves on the fly in the middle of battle a giant, stone, angel collosus. But the moves are all there for anyone to use in any way they see fit. Bayonetta comes accross as a hack'n'slash type of game but manages to strive off the usual boredom I find myself experiencing with those games with it's interesting and varied enemy design. It also mixes up the gameplay a bit by adding a level where you ride a bike (just as an example). Bayonetta really is a challenging game to review because it's so wild and fun that putting it into words just doesn't seem good enough. Within a single playthrough you experience so many strange things that I don't really know where to begin.

The difficulty level in the game are varied quite well. On it's easiest setting Bayonetta can be played one handed so that even your noobtastic mum can play if she feels the need. Or maybe it's just so male gamers can have a wank as they watch the nimble, leatherclad Bayonetta dance about the screen as she disembowels angels, who knows? But on the other end of the spectrum the difficulty is amped up quite heftally to ensure that you will often feel the brutal and humiliating sting of defeat as Bayonetta once again wails on your uncoordinated arse. But in between those to difficulty extremes is a nice place for average gamers like myself to start off before attempting the more challenging aspects.

But when all is said and done the fact of the matter remains that although I love Bayonetta and the way it executes everything so perfectly I have to admit that it won't be the game for everyone. Chances are there will be people who have read this and thought to themselves that this premise for a game sounds horrible no matter how well done and beautifully presented it is. I personally intend to explore every nook and cranny of this game personally completing each of it's challenges one by one and let me say that there are very, VERY few games that have compelled me to undertake such a huge task. Bayonetta comes highly recommended even if it won't be appreciated by everyone.

Pictured above: Bayonetta's approriately titled "Climax Edition"

PS. to make up for the distinct lack of humorous material amoungst this gushing review I'd just like to say "clit tickler." End Transmission.

Kicking the Dog

Happy 2010 biatches! As alluded to in my previous post today I will attempt to review Kicking the Dog. Let me open the review by simply stating that Kicking the Dog is, by far, the worst thing I have ever reviewed on Infinite Possiblogities ever. That's right, it's worse than Zoey 101, Gerald McBoingboing and even worse than that wierd novalty egg fryer from Sam's Warehouse. Yep, I've reviewed some horrible abominations of entertainment before but this trumps them all. That said you're probably going to want to know what it actually is right? Well Kicking the Dog is an "Indie Comedy" about a bunch of unlikable douchebags talking about sex. That's really it. It's like if American Pie took itself really, REALLY seriously. I actually read some public reviews on this movie and a lot of people seemed to compare it favourable to other indie comedies like The Clerks and Superbad. But they seemed to be a bit confused, because The Clerks and Superbad are both good and this movie is trash. A friend of mine said it best when he described it as a whole movie of outtakes filmed like the final project for a first year film course at TAFE. But the assness doesn't stop there, oh-ho no. The film has NO character developement at ALL. NONE! I mean there are a dozen characters in this movie and they are all essentially the same. Just a bunch of jerks with stupid hairdo's wearing tight Jay-Jay's shirts and being obnoxious. But worse than that the characters remain unchanged throughout the movie, which is odd because the movie clearly sets up dilema's and dramatic situations that, even though predictable, should end in something changing. Just as an example of this there is this guy who really likes this chick, but then his slimeball cunt of a brother steals her away, fucks her and adds her to the long list of moron's who he has somehow seduced. The younger brother catches him IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ACT and doesn't even raise his voice. He quite literally just shakes his head and walks away. End of subplot. I mean...what the fuck WAS that? It was nothing and the whole movie is made up of stuff like this. It's set up like a college drama comedy but plays out like neither. Worst of all is that the movie is up itself. Throughout the whole movie I can feel every single person who made it jerking off at me. For all the failed goofball comedy and flat drama it's the films smugness that gets me. I mean take a movie like American Pie. It's goofy, over the top and concerned completely with sex and crass humour. You could never call it good, but it also isn't trying to be. Kicking the Dog tries so very hard to be a great indie comedy and it's very proud of the way it turned out even though it is utter garbage. It even had one of those video mantages of the cast just before the end credits as if to say, here's who played all your favourite characters. Maybe it was just so you wouldn't get confused as to which drama school dropout played which nameless dimwit? All it really did was give other film studios a face to attach to the names of the 12 actors that will never, ever work in film again. My friends and I groaned at this movie, writhing around on the couch begging someone to turn it off. When asked about special features I suggested that the movie should have a feature that tells the DVD player to melt the disc with the laser. I really don't know what more to say, it was simply horrible. I imagine that you probably think it couldn't possibly be as bad as I say. So to you I say this. "Go! Go rent that son of a bitch out and watch it from start to finish! Hell drag some friends into the mix if you think that their sarcasm or wit might make the experience more enjoyable. Let me tell you that I'm certain it won't. Watch Kicking the Dog, I double dare you!"

A Look Back On 2009 and the Decade

Well this posts gonna be a doozy to write. Let it be known that I have the foggiest of memories and can barely remember the finer details of high school, let alone the whole fucking decade. Speaking of High School the begining of the decade was when I first graced the grounds of my high school as a nervous, fresh-faced weiner who stuck to societies rules and social etiquets and didn't want to tread on toes. Now that we're coming to the end of the decade I've actually developed a personality and stopped catering to everybodies bullshit like the spineless, leatherbound gimp I once was. Who knows, maybe another 10 years from now I'll be some sort of oppressive dictator or suicide cult leader? As loyal readers I'm willing to give you some perks if that happens, just drop a comment as proof of your undying loyalty and I'll get the blood signature later. So anyway that's about all my alcohol abused memory can muster for the past decade, so let's move on to the main body of the work and look back on 2009.

2009 marked several special occasions for Infinite Possiblogities. It marked it's 100th post and welcomed it's first birthday. I must say that this old blog has done alright considering my grim predictions of it lasting for about 2 weeks. It's a place for venting, offering critical opinions and expressing ideas (and on the odd occasion it might even entertain someone...somewhere). So "Yay for me, I managed to stick to something and create something that isn't completely awful." Another big feature of 2009 was me finally getting my life together and undergoing my first year of uni. There I discovered that most students are complete morons who seem to think they are far more clever than what they actually are and my distaste for humanity was strengthened.

So now's the part of the post where I dish out awards for stuff that quite frankly nobody will give a shit about. So here we go.

2009 IP Award for Most Shithouse Educational Undertaking
This award was won in a landslide and goes out to Geology 110 and 120. Mountainloads of boring, inaccessable coursework coupled with a horrible excursion that took up an entire Saturday made studying rocks even more boring and painful than I could have ever predicted. Congratulations Geol 110/120, I hope I never see your metaphorical face again.

2009 IP Award for Biggest Disappointment
This one was not an easy task. Hardly a day goes by that something fails to disappoint me so there was a very large number of contenders. "Sadness" (the game in developement for the Wii) has failed to provide the world with any information or indeed any evidence of it's existence at all. You might recall that I listed it as a game I was looking forward to in 2009 but since then I haven't heard shit. Another contender was also from the list and that WAS released. That contender was The Conduit which failed to deliver in any of the areas it promised to. But I think the award has to go to Sam's Warehouse for shutting up shop and leaving me, once again, unemployed.

2009 IP Award for the Game of the Year
Batman Arkham Asylum is probably the winner here, although a special mention goes out to the Metroid Prime Trilogy which contains 3 of the best games of all time, two of which were remade with better control schemes, in one sexy package. If I hadn't already played them all before I'd have given it to them, but Arkham Asylum is so gosh darn good I don't think anything else can beat it.

2009 IP Award for Shittest Movie
This one's only a recent discovery and you can expect a full review of this one in the coming weeks. The award goes to Kicking the Dog, for proudly flying in the face of every single cinematic advancement we've made since the invention of the medium and failing to provide any entertainment to me or my friends.

2009 IP Award for Most Pleasant Discovery
I won $300 on a pokies machine, that was good. I became a frequent trivia goer which was a very nice discovery indeed. We Love Katamari would win the award if it were exclusive to gaming BUT I think the award has to go to The Big Bang Theory. I had initial reservations but some solid characterisation and respect for the subject matter has made The Big Bang Theory a winner in my books.

Lastly we have the 2009 IP Award for the Thing that has my Vagina Most Juiced Up which at present goes out to Bayonetta for the Xbox 360 and PS3 (just a week to go now, expect a review in the future). Honerable mentions include Final Fantasy XIII, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and the next Zelda game for the Wii of which nobody really knows anything. So anyway that's it for this post and all the posts of 2009. I'll be back in 2010 to do whatever crap I usually do. Let's hope 2010 will be an even better year for all of us and that Half-Life 2: Episode Three at least gets fucking announced. I mean COME ON guys, it was supposed to be out years ago.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Well there's no denying it folks, Christmas is once again almost upon us. I've recently been out looking at the local Christmas lights displays around town (one street in particular provides a massively enjoyable experience in that regard) and I've been Christmas shopping, struggling with my brothers to figure out exactly what it is my mother likes. But it never dawns on me just how close Christmas is until National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation makes its annual appearance on NBN (or Channel 9). It is also the time of year for my annual viewing of NBN because as far as standards go, NBN would be to scum what scum is to us (did you follow that? Feel free to read back over it). So anyway it's Christmas time and Christmas Vacation was on last night and gosh darn it I'm gonna review it in what will be the closest thing to a Christmas Special that Infinite Possiblogities will ever produce.

So anyway speaking of Christmas Specials I thought I'd share with you a little secret, they're bullshit in a stocking. They're so sentimental, sappy and full to the brim of little lessons and holiday well wishing. Any TV show or franchise that produces a Christmas Special is ultimately producing the low point for themselves. I particularly loathe appropriations of Charlse Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol.' But as always there's an exception to the rule and for me that exception is Christmas Vacation. As the third and best movie in the 'Vacation' series, Christmas Vacation attempts to systematically destroy and mock all the Christmas values and traditions that other Christmas Specials try to force down our every orifice. Granted, it is goofy and predictable and has one or two abhorrent actors in it but as far as light-hearted Christmas shennanigens go, this ticks a lot of boxes. If you're wondering what to expect the picture from above is quite telling. It's hit and miss the whole way through, for every fantastic 'driving under a semi' scene there is a ham handed, unnescessary and cheap gag like an old lady saying something random. But really, what the fuck do you want? It's Christmas time and there's fuck all else on. Eventually the movie builds into a rather spectacular climax as Clark Griswald (the father and focal point of the story) acts out what I consider to be the best "flipping out" scene of all time. It has an excellent comic rhythm to it that is unparalleled in my movie going experience. I've lost count of how many times I've seen this movie and it is the one part I still find myself chuckling at.

So really what are you, the reader, to make of this rather baffling review? That's a good question really. Clearly this movie is no masterpiece and yet I find it to be something of a holiday tradition. I guess it confirms my fears that having a distinct christmas theme seems to make people lower their standards. Being overtly critical of a Christmas Special is something of a moot point really. Saying a Christmas Special is bad is like complaining that the manure you ordered is a bit smelly because quite frankly what the fuck were you expecting? So as far as completely dumb movies go this one is one of the better ones and is made more forgivable by it's festive associations.

P.S. If you have any information regarding what my mum is into feel free to let me know. At the moment my brothers and I are working off the theory that she doesn't really like anything per se, but more has a long list of things she has no patience for and then just everything else.

Another Free Online Game

Might I suggest clicking the image to enlarge it, just in case you don't much care for squinting at your computer screen.

This time I don't know what the advertising strategy is. Anyway that's all for now, within a day or two I should be posting up something of higher quality so come back soon.

Evony, Kingory and Bloons TD 4

Never let it be said that I don't suffer for my blog. I know I seem to devote many game reviews to games I quite enjoy but on this day I'm demonstrating my devotion by ploughing through 2 games that I know will be complete shit spread on mouldy bread. I'm sure everyone who's used the internet during to past year or so has seen one of Evony's shameless advertisments. I see them everywhere I go. Evony's ingenious ad campaign seems to revolve entirely around the promise of breasts and being the ruler of a kingdom filled with underwear models. Gee Evony, I appreciate your help and all but in all honesty I'm quite capable of finding my own porn thanks. But anyway for those who are unaware this is an ad for an online video game. An online video game that funnily enough features no breasts, queens or anything more erotic than maybe a phallic building design or two. So I guess what I'm saying is that the ads are a big, jiggly pair of double D lies. What the game is is a dweeby little fantasy massively-multiplayer real time strategy game that looks like this.

WOW! How exciting! The game often promotes itself as "free forever" but really what they SHOULD say is "free forever except for some of the really good stuff that you have to pay for." Buy money or no money means very little if the game is good right? I mean I buy games all the time. But Evony is almost instantly boring. I got in and I immediately wanted out. Leaving and unsubscribing wasn't exactly an intuitive process. I'd walk you through it but to be honest I still don't know how I got out of that shit. This was a frustrating experience made even worse by the fact that even my computer didn't like Evony. My once happy, vibrant little friend was suddenly snarling and snapping at me like I'd dropped it in the bath or something. I guess this was because the game runs on your browser and doesn't "require any installations", a fact that the game itself boasts of. Now at this point some of you might be saying "but online games are as much about the community as they are about the game, surely there is a friendly community of loyal supporters behind this slightly troubled game?" Well far be it from me to judge a community, but let me show you a sample from the chatbox and you can be the judge of the Evony community.

"heyy every1 hu wants tah totally go out widd mah?? some hott dude"

- Evony's Finest Wordsmith

But enough with Evony, what about Kingory, that other game I wanted to flame? Well let me show you an ad for Kingory.

No I didn't post the wrong image. Kingory uses the exact same advertising strategy. More than that, when I registered and started playing I saw this.

And I experienced the same boredom, disgust and lack of sexy ladies as I did with Evony. Infact Kingory is the exact same shit just for people who thought the Yellow (asian) Power Ranger was more attractive than the Pink (regular old whitey) Power Ranger.

You might ask yourselves why I chose to dive into two games that I knew would be shit. So what was the point? To prove to myself that I'm right about the sorry state of the world I guess. But not everything on this post is about rubbish. To make up for the crappy online games I just flamed I thought I'd share one last online flash game called Bloons TD 4. Bloons TD 4 is a quaint little tower defence game that is simple, colourful and addictive; which is really what you want in an online game. Something you can whip out for a few minutes while you wait for your cuppa soup to heat up. The simple elegance of Bloons stands in complete contrast to these overblown, overcomplicated sacks of garbage known as Evony and Kingory. It also didn't need giant knockers to get me to play it.

ABC 3 Launch Special

It seems that for once in my life I am able to talk about something cutting edge in my blog. It's not every day a new TV channel is launched and what with it being a channel that revolves entirely around children and tweens I figured I'd be crazy not to sink my cynical fangs into the soft, supple target that is ABC 3. So last Friday I sat down in front of the TV and watched The Countdown to ABC 3.

Ok, so the countdown was actually on ABC HD but it had the same hosts and shit and it played out like a massive ad for the channel so I figured that it was a good place to start. Speaking of the hosts, you know how I'm constantly accusing children's television hosts of being dumbed down goofballs who unconvincingly act excited and enthusiastic but really when you look into their eyes you can see that they are devoid of all humanity? Well consider my hypothesis once again officially supported because these hosts met every single aspect of my low expectations with open arms. You may detect a hint of extra bitterness as I speak of the hosts because my friend sent in an hilarious audition video for the job and he would have been a thousand times the host that they are. I considered entering also but abandoned all hope after seeing my friends video because I knew that as long as his was so much better than mine I would not get the job. For neither of us to get it and instead have these souless clowns grinning obnoxiously in the faces of all the children from accross Australia just doesn't feel right. Stupid mankind has failed me once again.

Anyway so apart from the hosts tossing about there was a buttload of promotions for the new shows, there were interviews with hosts and actors FROM the new shows, trailors for the new shows and basically just a bunch of dicking around. There was this utterly redundant running gag about this reporter guy looking for the remote to switch the new channel on. Luckily the Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd happened to pick it up on the way in. That's right, the PM was the very last special guest on the countdown. It was kinda weird to watch really. About 5 minutes in he stopped being the father of our nation and turned more into the embodiment of everybody's daggy dad. In a strange way I liked it, it actually humanised the man watching him trying to be hip to all these new shows and the like. I also thought to myself "I'm so glad my dad is not the Prime Minister."

So anyway then the channel was turned on and the hosts started gabbing on some more and began to promote the show they were about to run. Let me come clean with you at this point in case I haven't been clear on the matter, but every single show on ABC 3 was overhyped before they had even premiered. So anyway on came Prank Patrol which is basically a "Punk'd" for kids in which some kid gets to play a prank on a victim of their choice. It's a pretty solid idea let down by an abundance of padding. The most annoying aspect to the padding are the "Prank Ninja's." Just in case you weren't already COMPLETELY sick of ninja's appearing half-arsedly in practically everthing then in comes the Prank Ninja's doing nothing but add unconvincing and annoying gags to the show. Nobody in the show seems to be into the idea in the slightest, but there they are, the fucking Prank Ninja's doing useless shit and giggling like fucking chimps (no joke). I have this other friend (that's at least two that I have) who's into the whole ninja scene and I was just so glad that he wasn't there with me to witness this bastardisation. But at its core Prank Patrol has a very good thing going. You meet the kid, you get a walkthrough on the intricate details of the prank and then you see the whole thing unfold beautifully. My suggestion for improving the show would be to cut out all the unnescesary crap and have two pranks per episode rather than one.

Then on came CJ the DJ. Not much I can really say about it really. It basically consists of bright colours and voice acting that Stephen Hawking could do a better job of. By this stage I was completely worn down from all this ABC 3 buisiness and decided I needed some food and a life so I turned it off at this point. I have to say though for all the negative things I've said the channel does show promise. Just as an interesting side note the old episodes of that 90's television classic Heartbreak High will be shown on ABC 3, I have no recollections regarding the show's premise or quality but I have friends on Facebook who are excited. Does that sound convincing to anyone?