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Gareth von Kallenbach (965 KP) rated Neofeud in Video Games
Jun 19, 2019
Some of the most popular games to be released in the mid 80’s to mid 90’s were the point and click adventure games. Sierra Online ruled the 80’s with games such as Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, while the 90’s was dominated by Lucasarts with their release of titles such as Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. These games were puzzle driven stories, where the main character interacted with their environment by clicking on items, pressing a button, and occasional mini games to complete the level. Sadly, except for very few remastered greats, there has been little to be excited about in this once popular and well-loved genre. This is where Neofued hopes to fill the gap with its mix of Blade Runner and District 9 storyline.
Neofeud is set in the not too distant future, a dystopian society where 1% of the wealthy Pureblood human megacorporation’s live in floating cities, and the other 99%, a mix of humans (Pure or otherwise), cyborgs and androids are barely able scrape by. Purebloods (those completely human) hold down low wage jobs, where those from the mechanical genepool (robots, androids, etc.) are treated as lower class citizens, living in Section 8 housing and off government food stamps.
You are Karl Carbon, a dishonorably discharged cop who now makes a living as social worker for Sentient Services. Karl is tasked by his boss (who for better or worse looks and sounds a lot like Emilio Estevez) to travel to a local ghetto to checkup on Johnny, an at-risk youth (artificial person). This will catapult Karl into an adventure, with a gangsta robot named Proto-J and Princess Cybil, a wealthy aristocrat who believes in equality for all sentient beings. Karl also travels to “The Arcade”, where robot gangsters and drug dealers hang out, and will even do a little time-traveling, but not more than 24 hours.
The game play is standard fare for this type of genre. The cursor can be changed from an eye icon to look at an item or object, hand icon to use an item, you get the idea. You collect various items that you then use on something in the environment to advance the story. Find a door knob on the ground? There will certainly be a door missing a knob to use it on. For any who have played point and click games in the past, the controls will be second nature to you.
The visuals are good, they aren’t great, but they are vibrant and gritty. There is a mix of 2D and 3D objects in the environment to tell the story. You will see lots of nods to the 80’s if you look close enough…”You made a time machine out of a DeLorean?”, Yes Marty, he did. I feel that someone familiar enough with classic 80’s movies will get more out of these little quips than those less familiar. That isn’t to say you can’t appreciate the game without this knowledge, you’ll just be missing a lot of the inside jokes that abound.
The voice acting is a mixed bag here. Some of the characters nail the dialog and help with character development. Unfortunately, the main character Karl tends to deliver an inconsistent performance which can seriously distract you during key moments in the game. That being said though, all the characters are voiced (no reading endless dialog boxes as you did in the 80’s) which is an achievement for any game. So while the voice acting isn’t always amazing, it’s still preferred to reading line after line of text when the characters speak.
The game clocks in around 15 hours, which is a pretty astonishing feat when you realize that the story, gameplay and art work was all done by one guy.
Is the game worth $14.99 on Steam? That depends on your nostalgia for a point and click adventure with a lot of references to 80’s films. The story is interesting, albeit a bit convoluted at times, and the characters range from likeable to annoying, but still have you rooting for them until the end.
http://sknr.net/2017/11/16/neofued/
Neofeud is set in the not too distant future, a dystopian society where 1% of the wealthy Pureblood human megacorporation’s live in floating cities, and the other 99%, a mix of humans (Pure or otherwise), cyborgs and androids are barely able scrape by. Purebloods (those completely human) hold down low wage jobs, where those from the mechanical genepool (robots, androids, etc.) are treated as lower class citizens, living in Section 8 housing and off government food stamps.
You are Karl Carbon, a dishonorably discharged cop who now makes a living as social worker for Sentient Services. Karl is tasked by his boss (who for better or worse looks and sounds a lot like Emilio Estevez) to travel to a local ghetto to checkup on Johnny, an at-risk youth (artificial person). This will catapult Karl into an adventure, with a gangsta robot named Proto-J and Princess Cybil, a wealthy aristocrat who believes in equality for all sentient beings. Karl also travels to “The Arcade”, where robot gangsters and drug dealers hang out, and will even do a little time-traveling, but not more than 24 hours.
The game play is standard fare for this type of genre. The cursor can be changed from an eye icon to look at an item or object, hand icon to use an item, you get the idea. You collect various items that you then use on something in the environment to advance the story. Find a door knob on the ground? There will certainly be a door missing a knob to use it on. For any who have played point and click games in the past, the controls will be second nature to you.
The visuals are good, they aren’t great, but they are vibrant and gritty. There is a mix of 2D and 3D objects in the environment to tell the story. You will see lots of nods to the 80’s if you look close enough…”You made a time machine out of a DeLorean?”, Yes Marty, he did. I feel that someone familiar enough with classic 80’s movies will get more out of these little quips than those less familiar. That isn’t to say you can’t appreciate the game without this knowledge, you’ll just be missing a lot of the inside jokes that abound.
The voice acting is a mixed bag here. Some of the characters nail the dialog and help with character development. Unfortunately, the main character Karl tends to deliver an inconsistent performance which can seriously distract you during key moments in the game. That being said though, all the characters are voiced (no reading endless dialog boxes as you did in the 80’s) which is an achievement for any game. So while the voice acting isn’t always amazing, it’s still preferred to reading line after line of text when the characters speak.
The game clocks in around 15 hours, which is a pretty astonishing feat when you realize that the story, gameplay and art work was all done by one guy.
Is the game worth $14.99 on Steam? That depends on your nostalgia for a point and click adventure with a lot of references to 80’s films. The story is interesting, albeit a bit convoluted at times, and the characters range from likeable to annoying, but still have you rooting for them until the end.
http://sknr.net/2017/11/16/neofued/
Gareth von Kallenbach (965 KP) rated The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) in Movies
Jun 19, 2019
The much anticipated second film in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Trilogy has arrived in time to reap box office gold much the way the previous films based on Tolkien’s works have. The film continues the adventure started in the previous film and finds the band of adventurers chased by a pack of Orcs and faced with the deadly and dark Mirkwood Forest as they attempt to reach The Lonely Mountain in time.
The journey is long and filled with peril as everything from Orcs to giant spiders stand in the way and should the group be successful in reaching their destination, there is the little matter of a giant and very nasty dragon named Smaug to contend with.
Undaunted the group press on despite finding danger a constant companion and once again give us a series staples of endless shots of them walking and walking in locales lifted from the Tourism New Zealand film room in between the amazing visual work that makes up the battle sequence and other-worldly visuals of the film.
Bilbo (Martin Freeman), is becoming more and more under the spell of the ring he obtained in the previous film and Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen), suspects that darker forces are growing and sets off to confirm his suspicions. This divides the film into two quest centric storylines that are sure to cause some division amongst fans of the series.
The film does manage to hold your attention throughout its 2.5 hr plus run time and does have a very enjoyable finale act as the arrival of Smug (Benedict Cumberbatch), for me has been honestly the most enjoyable of any of the four prior films in the series to date. His interactions with Bilbo and the group flesh him out to be more than a creation of CGI, but rather infuse him with a evil and complexity that make him a very compelling and dynamic character.
Despite the strong cast and amazing visual FX in the film that is captured very well by the 3D filming Jackson used, the movie does have it’s share of frustrations.
Jackson has once again loaded the film with tons of characters, scenarios, and padding that easily make up more than half of the film. The idea seems to be to show a greater connection to the original LOTR films and the inclusion of Orlando Bloom as Legolas and Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel is bound to cause controversy. On one hand it was great to see the two characters and the great amounts of action they brought to the film, but the entire time I kept thinking that there was no need for most of this extra stuff as it was included simply to stretch out the film in order to justify a third movie and ensure another big box office.
When the film reaches it’s conclusion it was very clear to me that they could have completed the film in two films had the removed all of the padding and fluff and stuck to the source material. Segments are drawn out or included that really do not need to be there no matter how exciting and visually appealing they may be.
When the film was first announced it was planned to be two films but was later expanded to three when Jackson took over as Director following the departure of Guillermo del Toro. If one film was sufficient to capture each book in the original series than three films for this one book is simply overkill to me and it undermines the source material.
That being said, I did enjoy the film as it works best for me if I look at it as “inspired by’ rather than a cinematic translation of the book and in doing so I was able to get caught up in the action of the film and the character’s.
In the end the film is a true delight filled with plenty of action and adventure and will keep fans old and new entertained as despite the issues I had with it, it was one of the better action/fantasy films of the year and is a great technological achievement.
http://sknr.net/2013/12/13/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug/
The journey is long and filled with peril as everything from Orcs to giant spiders stand in the way and should the group be successful in reaching their destination, there is the little matter of a giant and very nasty dragon named Smaug to contend with.
Undaunted the group press on despite finding danger a constant companion and once again give us a series staples of endless shots of them walking and walking in locales lifted from the Tourism New Zealand film room in between the amazing visual work that makes up the battle sequence and other-worldly visuals of the film.
Bilbo (Martin Freeman), is becoming more and more under the spell of the ring he obtained in the previous film and Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen), suspects that darker forces are growing and sets off to confirm his suspicions. This divides the film into two quest centric storylines that are sure to cause some division amongst fans of the series.
The film does manage to hold your attention throughout its 2.5 hr plus run time and does have a very enjoyable finale act as the arrival of Smug (Benedict Cumberbatch), for me has been honestly the most enjoyable of any of the four prior films in the series to date. His interactions with Bilbo and the group flesh him out to be more than a creation of CGI, but rather infuse him with a evil and complexity that make him a very compelling and dynamic character.
Despite the strong cast and amazing visual FX in the film that is captured very well by the 3D filming Jackson used, the movie does have it’s share of frustrations.
Jackson has once again loaded the film with tons of characters, scenarios, and padding that easily make up more than half of the film. The idea seems to be to show a greater connection to the original LOTR films and the inclusion of Orlando Bloom as Legolas and Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel is bound to cause controversy. On one hand it was great to see the two characters and the great amounts of action they brought to the film, but the entire time I kept thinking that there was no need for most of this extra stuff as it was included simply to stretch out the film in order to justify a third movie and ensure another big box office.
When the film reaches it’s conclusion it was very clear to me that they could have completed the film in two films had the removed all of the padding and fluff and stuck to the source material. Segments are drawn out or included that really do not need to be there no matter how exciting and visually appealing they may be.
When the film was first announced it was planned to be two films but was later expanded to three when Jackson took over as Director following the departure of Guillermo del Toro. If one film was sufficient to capture each book in the original series than three films for this one book is simply overkill to me and it undermines the source material.
That being said, I did enjoy the film as it works best for me if I look at it as “inspired by’ rather than a cinematic translation of the book and in doing so I was able to get caught up in the action of the film and the character’s.
In the end the film is a true delight filled with plenty of action and adventure and will keep fans old and new entertained as despite the issues I had with it, it was one of the better action/fantasy films of the year and is a great technological achievement.
http://sknr.net/2013/12/13/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug/
BankofMarquis (1832 KP) rated Gemini Man (2019) in Movies
Oct 17, 2019
The Effects Just Aren't Good Enough
Ang Lee is a visionary Director that loves to push the envelope of advances in movie-making technology, so the plot contrivance of GEMINI MAN (a Government Assassin is being chased by his much younger clone) was right up his alley - and he makes good (enough) work of the technology that "de-ages" Will Smith and puts the older and younger version of himself on screen at the same time. This was also his 2nd film (after BILLY FLYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK) that Lee shot in 4K 3D at 120 frames per second (the "normal" shooting speed is 24 FPS).
He should have spent more of his time on the script..
Based on a long gestating screenplay written in the 1990's by David Lemke (and re-written in the 2010's by Billy Ray - THE HUNGER GAMES - and Mr. GAME OF THRONES himself, David Benioff), GEMINI MAN follows a Government Contract Killer, Henry Brogan (Will Smtih) who does "one last job" and is looking forward to retirement. His agency (under the leadership of Clive Owen) decides to "take him out" and sends "Gemini" after him. Brogan tries to escape but his every move is anticipated by the Gemini - a younger clone of himself (this is not a spoiler, it's in the trailer and ON THE POSTER). He is joined by a pair of "buddies" (Mary Elizabeth Winsted and Benedict Wong) in plotting how to outsmart himself.
This film had all the markings of a bad "B" film, but under the watchful eye of Lee and the charismatic performances of Winsted, Wong - and most especially - Smith, this film is actually quite watchable.
What doesn't work - the plot. To say it is contrived is to do a disservice to the word "contrived". It really doesn't give us anything new, it just gives us a bridge from action scene to action. Also, the reasoning of the Government to get rid of Brogan doesn't really work and Clive Owen - as the head of the Gemini program - and the main "suit" that is chasing Smith looks like he is sleepwalking his way through this film.
What works - the interplay and "fun" of Smith, Winsted and Wong as the 3 "professionals" on the run - and outsmarting - "the Agency". These 3 work really well off each other and I would love to have seen a "Mission Impossible" style film of these 3 doing some sort of impossible mission. Special note needs to be made of Smith's performance - as the older Brogan. He is world weary and heavy, but still has the twinkle in his eye and the physical acumen to be a top assassin. This is the type of role that Smith - especially at his age and experience - is ideal for. His charisma shines and he holds his own in the physical/fight scenes. Also, Ang Lee knows how to shoot an action sequence. True, there is nothing "new", revolutionary or evolutionary in any of the fight/chase scenes, but they are put together in a competent, professional manner and did a good enough job.
And then there is the younger Brogan - "Junior" - played by a CGI "de-aged" Will Smith.
We've seen the CGI "de-aging" effect before - most notably in some Marvel Movies like CAPTAIN MARVEL - and while it works well enough, I just don't think it is quite there yet. You can tell that something is just a little off - not enough for it to really bother you, but enough to know that something isn't quite right - especially when Junior spends most of this film on screen with his older self. You see the "real" Will Smith up against the "copy" and the "copy" looks like...a copy. Also, the "de-aging" of the voice didn't really work for me. It sounded "off" and at times it sounded like bad ADR.
I was able to shrug off these slight technical anomalies and enjoy this film for what it is - a breezy action-er that certainly entertains for 2 hours. But it is no masterpiece and no "major" technological breakthrough. That will have to wait for another movie.
Letter Grade: B (mostly for the fun interplay between older Smith, Winsted and Wong)
7 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)
He should have spent more of his time on the script..
Based on a long gestating screenplay written in the 1990's by David Lemke (and re-written in the 2010's by Billy Ray - THE HUNGER GAMES - and Mr. GAME OF THRONES himself, David Benioff), GEMINI MAN follows a Government Contract Killer, Henry Brogan (Will Smtih) who does "one last job" and is looking forward to retirement. His agency (under the leadership of Clive Owen) decides to "take him out" and sends "Gemini" after him. Brogan tries to escape but his every move is anticipated by the Gemini - a younger clone of himself (this is not a spoiler, it's in the trailer and ON THE POSTER). He is joined by a pair of "buddies" (Mary Elizabeth Winsted and Benedict Wong) in plotting how to outsmart himself.
This film had all the markings of a bad "B" film, but under the watchful eye of Lee and the charismatic performances of Winsted, Wong - and most especially - Smith, this film is actually quite watchable.
What doesn't work - the plot. To say it is contrived is to do a disservice to the word "contrived". It really doesn't give us anything new, it just gives us a bridge from action scene to action. Also, the reasoning of the Government to get rid of Brogan doesn't really work and Clive Owen - as the head of the Gemini program - and the main "suit" that is chasing Smith looks like he is sleepwalking his way through this film.
What works - the interplay and "fun" of Smith, Winsted and Wong as the 3 "professionals" on the run - and outsmarting - "the Agency". These 3 work really well off each other and I would love to have seen a "Mission Impossible" style film of these 3 doing some sort of impossible mission. Special note needs to be made of Smith's performance - as the older Brogan. He is world weary and heavy, but still has the twinkle in his eye and the physical acumen to be a top assassin. This is the type of role that Smith - especially at his age and experience - is ideal for. His charisma shines and he holds his own in the physical/fight scenes. Also, Ang Lee knows how to shoot an action sequence. True, there is nothing "new", revolutionary or evolutionary in any of the fight/chase scenes, but they are put together in a competent, professional manner and did a good enough job.
And then there is the younger Brogan - "Junior" - played by a CGI "de-aged" Will Smith.
We've seen the CGI "de-aging" effect before - most notably in some Marvel Movies like CAPTAIN MARVEL - and while it works well enough, I just don't think it is quite there yet. You can tell that something is just a little off - not enough for it to really bother you, but enough to know that something isn't quite right - especially when Junior spends most of this film on screen with his older self. You see the "real" Will Smith up against the "copy" and the "copy" looks like...a copy. Also, the "de-aging" of the voice didn't really work for me. It sounded "off" and at times it sounded like bad ADR.
I was able to shrug off these slight technical anomalies and enjoy this film for what it is - a breezy action-er that certainly entertains for 2 hours. But it is no masterpiece and no "major" technological breakthrough. That will have to wait for another movie.
Letter Grade: B (mostly for the fun interplay between older Smith, Winsted and Wong)
7 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)
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