VGM #3

I've not had the best of days today, so here's a track that might hopefully get rid of all those negative waves.

Katamari Forever - Katamari on the Wings

This is a ridiculously catchy song performed by a Japanese group called Sukima Switch. It comes from the soundtrack of the deranged PS3 game Katamari Forever, part of the consistently-deranged Katamari series that began on PS2 with Katamari Damacy and has just seen its latest release, Touch My Katamari on PS Ryvita. I mean Vita. Why would you make a console that sounds like a snack food?...

Anyway:



Go ahead. Dance away.

This is indeed a disturbing universe - Epilogue

OH GOD LOOK WHAT I FOUND.







...There are no words.

This is indeed a disturbing universe

Continuing my tradition of talking about things that are no longer relevant, today I’d like you to cast your minds back a few years to a particularly bizarre PS2 game – WWE Crush Hour.

Wrestling fans may remember this game very well for a variety of reasons, while non-wrestling fans may have never even heard of this eccentric Frankenstein’s-monster of a game.

As a former/relapsing wrestling fan myself, anything containing the words ‘Stone Cold Steve Austin’ will pique my interests (see The Expendables, The Condemned, Celebrity Deathmatch...), so I had to try out Crush Hour. But this game... I can scarcely even find the words to describe it. For anyone unfamiliar with Crush Hour, the basic premise was to take the most popular WWE wrestlers at the time of its creation, give them their own grotesque themed car/van/bike/truck/STEAM ROLLER(?!), and have them fight each other. So in effect it was Twisted Metal with a WWE skin.

If, after reading that, what’s going through your mind is something akin to “What? That’s a crazy idea!”, you’re apparently thinking the exact opposite to the bosses over at THQ.

It really boggles the mind that this kind of mental spin-off can be produced. Taking one concept like wrestling, and combining it with something completely unrelated, like cars. If you’re going to do that, why stop there? Where’s EA’s Tiger Woods Kombat, or Konami’s Metal Gear Evolution Soccer? They’re nowhere. Because they’re insane ideas.

And Crush Hour’s gameplay is as insane as the concept. As if it wasn’t enough driving around in oversized, overdressed vehicles trying to explode other wrestlers to death, you also get the privilege of listening to Jim Ross talk about laser-guided rockets. Oh, and then there’s the INTRO:

Why can’t game devs just keep their licenses to appropriate outlets? Like, 007 Racing on PS1. That tied in the Twisted Metal framework with the James Bond license, and it worked to some extent, because Bond’s cars are well known for being kitted out with gadgets, like rockets and guns and shit. (Although don’t get that game. You could take someone’s eye out with one of those deathly-sharp pixels.) But then you get the ridiculous ones like WWE Crush Hour, or that STUPID Smurfs’ dancing game. I’m not even going to find out its title and italicise it, because I still haven’t repressed the memory of that gameplay video that made me want to die.

Can we just agree that wrestlers should remain in wrestling games, and footballers should remain in football games, and Smurfs should remain in... no, wait, they never made a good Smurfs game...

VGM #2

Apparently it was Valentine's Day today.

Anyway, here's another piece of awesome video game music for your enjoyment. You could call this my Valentine's gift to yous guys... if you're weird like that.


TimeSplitters: Future Perfect - Like a Monkey

If you ever played GoldenEye 007 on N64 and didn't play TimeSplitters on PS2, you're a criminal. You're missing out on the most enjoyable FPS games since GoldenEye. You're also missing out on an awesome soundtrack to boot, evidenced here by one of my favourite tracks from the third game, Future Perfect.



...The series had an affinity for monkeys.

A Short Time Ago, in a Cinema Not So Far Away...

On the exciting weekend that a Star Wars film was rereleased onto the big screen, I was taken to see Chronicle. Yeah. That actually happened. It’s been 2 days since The Phantom Menace came out, and I haven’t seen it yet. Even though I’ve been to the cinema. So, naturally I went into Chronicle rather grouchily, because while in my screen there would be a new, ‘original’, ‘superhero’ film, in another screen there would be Star Wars.

Moving on...

The first thing about Chronicle that I noticed is that it’s been done in the wildly-popular, definitely-not-overused, always-done-magnificently format of FOUND FOOTAGE. Thrilling. I wish Hollywood would stop doing this. Just stop ‘finding footage’. Every film of this type seems to go out of its way to shoehorn the concept of someone carrying a camera round for the entire duration, and generally it’s a bit awkward. The Blair Witch Project pulled it off well, as did Cloverfield. Chronicle decided to have its main protagonist wander around his school getting bullied, lugging this GIANT camera around with him. PRACTICAL. Star Wars had protagonists with lightsabers. Just sayin’.

The plot advances pretty well to begin with, as the film’s trio of leads (Andrew the camera guy, Matt the cousin guy and Steve the black guy) gain their powers, and develop them to greater strengths. There are a few scenes of the boys learning to telekinetically moving stuff around, which kinda reminded me of Anakin and Luke getting to grips with the Force in Star Wars. But it all builds well for a while, and it’s nicely paced as you start to get the idea that something big’s coming. The dialogue isn’t TOO awkward or generic for the most part, and the relationship between the three superfreaks is somewhat believable.

Aaaaand then it all starts to fall apart a bit. The plot reaches its zenith and begins to fizzle out. In the climactic action scenes it just doesn’t really seem to know where to go. It starts to get pretty predictable, and even a tad silly. There’s the increasingly weird and forced ways of utilising the FOUND FOOTAGE idea, as Andrew’s camera isn’t present towards the end, and also the sudden transition from Steve’s dea – oh wait, SPOILERS PEOPLE – to his funeral, frankly made me chuckle. I’m not really sure why, maybe it was just strange that the next immediate thing Andrew would film would be the funeral, and a strange way to reveal the death having not shown it in the actual confrontation scene. Plus there wasn’t much time in the funeral scene to reflect upon the tragedy. Not like Qui-Gon’s funeral.

Sooo, after it finished, I walked out feeling rather unsatisfied. Chronicle started out quite promising, but it fell into the usual clichéd traps of this sort of action film, and didn’t really bring anything new or exciting to the wonderful world of FOUND FOOTAGE. But it was sort of exciting, and I suppose it had some nice new twists to the ‘superhero’ genre, despite being riddled with the same old cautionary tale of not letting power go to your head. Like Star Wars.

In short, I had no strong feelings one way or the other. Except that we should’ve seen The Phantom Menace. Harumph.