Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 29th, 2009
Transformers are something near and dear to my heart. I grew up with them, watched all of the episodes, read many of the comics and watched the animated movie more times than I care to think about. When the original Rhino DVD set came out a few years back, I bought all of the volumes despite the hardship that roughly $50 a volume would cost me. Now, with the 25th anniversary of Transformers upon us, Shout Factory has gained the rights to the series and has re-released the first season to coincide with the release of the second live-action film. Is this simply an attempt to cash in on the mega movie hit of the summer? We shall see.
A civil war is ongoing on the planet of Cybertron. Fierce battles between the Autobots and the Decepticons have tore the planet apart and the energy sources at critical levels. The heroic Autobots decide to go to the planet Earth on the theory that these resources exist there for them to be able to use. However, the Decepticons decide to follow. Once in space, the Decepticons attack under the leadership of Megatron. Optimus Prime and the Autobots try to hold them off but soon both sides crash into the Earth.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on June 24th, 2009
360 Dashboard Speed, Moore vs Obama & Digital Downloads or Bust? - Welcome to the column that dares to cross the line but quietly goes back behind it afterwards known as Dare to Play the Game.
Cellfactor off Xbox Live was my main addiction this weekend. I have gained 115 achievement points and only three achievements stand in my way. Two of those achievements are All Rewards Unlocked and Marathon. All Rewards are Unlocked when you achieve 600k points, I am just a smidgen under 500k. Marathon is 1 million. Those can be done in time with a lot of grinding. However, there is one achievement that I can’t seem to get. Arena Master. As the name implies, I have to score 5 kills in a row without tasting death. I’ve gotten 3 a few times, and I think I did get 4 once. But 5? No such luck. (again, if somebody out there is willing to trade this achievement, I am more than willing)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 23rd, 2009
Racism seems to be one of those words that people like to throw around without a care to meaning or the concept of right and wrong. Many groups of people like to throw around this word for a variety of reasons but mostly to benefit themselves and not help the greater good. Spinning into Butter takes on the task of a white Dean of Students named Sarah Daniels who must examine her own beliefs when a black student named Simon finds racist notes that read “Little Black Sambo” and the aftermath that soon follows. It sounds like the premise for a rather simplistic race relations movie. However, what really comes next is something far different and has a couple of twists to boot.
Sarah Daniels (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) is the Dean of Students at a small college in Belmont, Vermont. When the movie opens, she is trying to convince Patrick Chibas (played by Victor Rasuk) to change his ethnic choice in a scholarship application from Nuyorican (of Puerto Rican descent who is born and raised in New York) to Hispanic. Finally they agree on Puerto Rican because it is determined that the board will not understand what a Nuyorican is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 17th, 2009
U2 was formed in 1976. Back then they were just teenagers figuring out how to play their instruments. But by the mid-80’s, they were one of the best bands in the world. Currently, they have sold more than 145 million albums worldwide and have won 22 Grammy awards. Rolling Stone has them listed as #22 in the greatest artists of all time. They appear frequently at the head of many human rights causes promoting social justice like Bono’s DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa) campaign. The Rebirth of Cool: U2 in the Third Millennium takes a look at the band from the failed release of “Pop” to their reborn commercial success in 2000 with “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” and continued superstar greatness in “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” in 2004.
“Pop” was released in March of 1997. It was an attempt at combining techno, dance and eletronica with U2’s traditional hard rock sound. It was unfortunately a failure in the overall scheme of things. It sold the least among any U2 album (1+ million in the US, 2+ million worldwide) and distanced a lot of fans from the band. U2 knew they had to take a different direction. They quite simply had to reapply for the job of the best band in the world.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on June 17th, 2009
Rock Band goes Country Tracklist, Ronnie James Dio Dropped & No Van Hagar? - Welcome to the column that sings for their dinner and any other meal too just to keep from paying known as Dare to Play the Game.
My two Arcade reviews for Wolfenstein 3d and Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars were posted this past weekend. In such, I played a lot of those two games. My mood of those games was a very positive experience as it was the only week I could think where I bought all of the new releases Xbox Live had to offer. In Wolfenstein 3d, I primarily played around in the opening levels of each episode getting used to the gameplay before I really try to finish. I had beaten the game a few times on PC and my goal is to ultimately beat all 6 episodes. The problem is I have a feeling it will be like Doom and might not happen right away. Then all of the sudden, I’ll get a groove and try to finish it in a couple of mad sessions.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on June 15th, 2009
It was the summer of 1993, this little review writer was on his way to college for the first time. Among the many things I took to college with me, one of them was a computer. The computer was top of the line at the time; a 486-33mhz processor chip and an 170 meg hard drive. I said meg. Windows 3.1/Dos 6.22 was the OS combination and it had one game on it besides Solitaire. A shareware copy of Wolfenstein 3d. The game had actually been already out for a year but it was a popular game and on my pc as included software. Upon entering college, I played that game for hours and the hours turned into days. I would eventually buy the full copy of the game along with level editors and various mods. Thru the years, I have revisited the game on consoles and again on PC. Xbox Live Arcade out of the blue decided to release a port of the PC game and encourage me to play the adventures of BJ Blazkowicz once again. I’m glad they did.
It’s hard to believe that these graphics are over 15 years old for the most part. Sure, they redid parts of the title menu to make it Xbox Live friendly and added a few minor details, but it’s the same PC port brought over for the Xbox 360. Colors do seem a bit dated and there is that familiar clipping every so often, but it’s fairly easy to tell what is going on and they actually seem to move a lot cleaner and precise than on my 486. One could hope for an HD remake (or a port over of the 3do version), but this is one of the times I’m glad they didn’t.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on June 13th, 2009
The original Cellfactor was actually a technical demo published back in 2006 by Immersion Games. It was made for the Ageia Physx series of cards which later became a part of NVidia. This demo showed off things we in the first person shooter community took for granted, barrels and boxes. Barrels and boxes have long been staples in games for doing absolutely nothing but existing (occasionally a barrel might explode but that’s it). Thru this demo, your character could use his psychic powers to throw the items and watch as they interact with the environment. Then with help from Timeline Interactive, a PC game was produced in May 2007, available free to people who would visit their website. A couple of years later, they decided to make a Live Arcade game for the Xbox 360 using similar technology. Thus we have Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars. Eight hundred points later, it was worth the wait & the Live currency.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, the actual engine for this game has been around for a long time. This was a technical demo that was made to show off the graphics power for a series of PC cards. Then they went and got published with UBISoft (very well known for Unreal Tournament) and turned it into a heck of a graphical experience. Your character will fly around and the scenery compensates very well. There are minor graphical issues but nothing I felt that could be described as distracting. The seven maps included are fairly diverse and each show a wide array of color choices and palettes.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on June 10th, 2009
More Project Natal, EA Fight Night MMA Year Rotation & Should Apple iPhone Games be Rated? - Welcome to the column that would be interested in a hands-only controlled game if they knew where their hands had been known as Dare to Play the Game.
A funny thing happened to me with NHL 2k9 this week, I didn’t play it. Yes, it involved World of Warcraft and yes I am ashamed. Okay, not really but it sounds good when I apologize for playing a ridiculously addicting PC based MMO and trying to get my character to level 70. I’ll explain more under Mutterings. However, I did spend the time to try out two wonderful Xbox Live Arcade demos: Wolfenstein 3d and CellFactor: Psychokinetic Wars.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 3rd, 2009
Sword and Sandal films have been around since the early 1900’s and under the broad definition, Ben Hur was the first way back in 1907. However, under the more accepted narrow definition, this referred to Italian films that were based on loose plots around Greek mythology with giant muscle men and low budgets. The popular Sword and Sandal era was a period of roughly 10 years from 1957-1964 and started with the world-wide release of Hercules in 1957.. It kinda died out once the spaghetti westerns came around (giving Italian directors something else to do). Muscle Madness provides us with five films representative of the era including the likes of Steve Reeves, Alan Steel and Mark Forest. Let the cheesefest begin!
Giant of Marathon was made in 1959 under the Italian name: La battaglia di Maratona. The setting is 490 B.C. at the times of the Medic Wars. Philippides (played by Steve Reeves) has brought home to Athens the Olympic laurel crown and joins as commander of the Sacred Guard. Philippides is truly in love with Andromeda (played by Mylene Demongeot), daughter of Creuso who rejects him at first. However, there is a conspiracy afoot who try to influence Philippides with a seductive servant as well as brute force.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on June 3rd, 2009
Halo 3 ODST, Project Natal & Facebook on Xbox Live? - Welcome to the column that would have gone to E3 if the show organizers didn’t do background checks for booth girl stalking known as Dare to Play the Game.
Many video game columnists are currently at E3 getting all giddy over the latest announcements and acting important like somebody is supposed to be impressed with their credentials by being at this event. The rest of us get to sit back and feed off their info and wonder what it really takes to get into one of these things besides a plane ticket and some secret “handshake”. Okay, there is no handshake but it sure does feel mysterious. I would like to think in my lifetime I would attend one of these, but I’m not holding my breath. Maybe next year.
