Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on April 15th, 2009
Gamestop reviewing Sales Policy, Capcom swears RE5 Versus code is not on Disc, and Third Party Wii Development Not Justified? - Welcome to the column that swears that the content for this week is 100% new (except for the 20 year old one-liners) and unopened (well until you click the link anyway) known as Dare to Play the Game.
Remember when I was supposed to start that Leisure Suit Larry game? Heck, I was going to have a review for you folks. So did I open some other game? Nooooo. What did I play: you guessed it, a lot of poker (World Series of Poker 2008) and a lot of Rockband 2. I started at my copy of Leisure Suit Larry quite endlessly most nights while watching tv and contemplating switching on my Xbox instead. This week, I make a vow…I will play LSL and I will sit down and at least start my review.
Posted in: Brain Blasters by David Annandale on April 11th, 2009
The current wave of extreme French horror marches triumphantly on. The latest wave-making entry is the Franco-Canadian production Martyrs, and it is as nasty as it is a vital piece of filmmaking. Writer/director Pascal Laugier, whose previous film was the honorable but not entirely successful House of Voices, here reveals himself as a force to be reckoned with. Horror fans, the genre is healthy and out to get your.
Pretty much every piece I've read on the film has been very circumspect about the plot, and I will not be the one to break ranks. I will summarize the set-up as have most others: a young girl escapes from a scene of horrific abuse. Years later, the now-grown woman (Mylène Jampanoï) in the company of her best friend (Morjana Alaoui, in an astonishing performance), shows up at the door of the people she believes were responsible for her torture.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on April 8th, 2009
Take-Two Shareholder Lawsuits, More Fable II DLC, & Nintendo weakening? - Welcome to the column that can predict to absolute certainty that the sun will set tonight (as long as they don’t have to prove it) known as Dare to Play the Game.
I would describe the last week as preparation for something better. I really didn’t play any games. Sure I did the usual World Series of Poker 2k8, Rock Band and even some Rocket Bowl but I didn’t really start anything. I decided to purchase a couple of budget games last week. The first one was actually a new release and goes by the name of Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust. I know what you are thinking. Why would I play such a crap game? It’s been panned by critics and it is just for teenagers who need to see boobies. Probably for the same reasons I picked up Rumble Roses for the 360 (to see boobies?). Besides that! Truth is I grew up with Leisure Suit Larry (yes, I was playing LSL games when I was a teenager) and part of me wants to see a good LSL game which I haven’t seen since they started making console games. So for $20, I’ll give it a whirl and hope at least the achievements are fairly easy.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on April 1st, 2009
Fable is Little Big Planet, Farting Infringement & No More Consoles? - Welcome to the column that passed up an opportunity on trade marking the phrase: Why So Serious? known as Dare to Play the Game.
I did it, I did it! Whoop! 1000 points has become mine in Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. This weekend I tried E-Swat once again. I found a lucky break on the 1st level that I had not seen in prior experiences with the game. That led to a pretty easy defeat of the 1st level boss. The 2nd level was honestly cake and I got the 30 achievement points. My remaining game related achievement was with Vectorman 2. Get to the 11th level. This might take a little while. So I started playing and playing. Levels were difficult at first (level 3 absolutely blows), but once I got over the hump of understanding the game, the levels started to go away gradually.
Posted in: Brain Blasters by David Annandale on March 27th, 2009
So, there have been approximately a godzillion zombie movies made over the years, and a goodly number of those just in the last few years. And there have been quite a number of very creative ones (Shaun of the Dead, Fido, 28 Days Later, but no, NOT the remake of Dawn of the Dead). Likely about to disappear from a theatre near you is one of the most interesting variation of late: Pontypool.
Directed by Bruce McDonald (most recently of The Tracey Fragments), and scripted by Tony Burgess (adapting a section of his novel Pontypool Changes Everything), Pontypool takes place in the eponoymous town, somewhere in the snowy wastes of rural Ontario. Grant Mazzy (erstwhile Nite-Owl I Stephen McHattie) is a former shock jock, turfed from his big city job, and now stuck hosting the morning show out here in the middle of nowhere. After a disturbing encounter with a babbling woman on his pre-dawn drive to work, he settles in behind the microphone to start his shift. Little by little, he and the station's crew of two (Lisa Houle and Georgina Reilly) discover that something really, really bad is happening in and around the town. What that bad thing is, of course, is your basic zombie apocalypse.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 25th, 2009
Netflix on the Wii, Drugs & Guitar Hero: Metallica & Call of Duty Dogs vs Nintendogs - Welcome to the column that think this is the gateway drug to Benny Hill episodes & Jerry Springer reruns known as Dare to Play the Game.
I mentioned last week that I didn’t think I was actually going to complete Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. My defining sentence is that honestly I don’t think I’m going to get the achievement for Mean Bean Machine. I was wrong. I got three achievements this week. First I got enough Photons in Vectorman and then I found my way through the first episode in Comix Zone (which is actually a fun game if you can figure out the best way to tackle each room). Last but not least, I found my way to defeating Robotnik in Mean Bean Machine with a very well placed triple combo. Yatta, indeed!
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 18th, 2009
Sony Are Their Own Bosses, Stranglehold without Chow-Yun Fat & Capcom hates complaining - Welcome to the column that thought they were in the charge of their own destiny until they met Miss Dare to Play the Game known as Dare to Play the Game.
My gaming this week has consisted solely of beating the crap out of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis collection for 360. If you remember, I was at about 360 achievement points last week. This week? 710. I beat my own estimates (600) and exceeded them. In fact, out of the 34 achievements available, I only have 7 left to achieve. What is still giving me trouble you ask?
Posted in: Brain Blasters by David Annandale on March 13th, 2009
Well, I might as well follow up last week’s piece with my own thoughts about Watchmen, now that I’ve seen it. Let me begin with the most important point: these musings must be understood as provisional. My feelings are mixed, and I think I will have to see the film a few more times before I can come to a definite conclusion about it.
That caveat out of the way, let me begin by saying that, all in all, Zack Snyder's interpretation is staggeringly faithful to its source material. One isn't really faced with a question of what is changed, because the answer is, other than one significant aspect of the ending, virtually nothing, and even that aforementioned change is true to the spirit of the original, and the case has been made that it is actually an improvement. It is certainly an elegant solution to one of the more problematic, much-debated elements of the comic. In any event, the question is more about what is left out, and even that is precious little, considering the task of packing the entire twelve issues into the space of a single film. Yes, there is compression, yes, there are events passed over, but there is barely a moment from the text that doesn't show up in some form or other.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 11th, 2009
Extinction of Xbox 360 Elite, Van Halen Hero & Is there anybody left who can break EA’s NFL Monopoly - Welcome to the column that is considering releasing Gaming Column Hero where you write bad jokes, deliver second hand news and post pictures of hot women known as Dare to Play the Game.
My gaming week was taken up by Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for my 360. Even after my review was posted on Thursday, I spent most of the weekend exploring every sort of Genesis game I wanted to try out. However, the difference this time was that I was starting to get achievements. There were of course the easy style achievements like the ones in the Golden Axe series but then I also started to get some of the harder achievements like Columns (where the achievement title is very misleading). I have amassed 360 achievement points so far and while that may not seem a lot, it is a giant improvement from last week.
Posted in: Brain Blasters by David Annandale on March 6th, 2009
I'm not even going to try to justify considering Watchmen a cult film. Not on that kind of budget and mainstream-saturation advertising. But the comic book (let's avoid the artificial marketing term “graphic novel,” shall we) is another story, a work whose brilliance is equaled only by the fanatical reverence in which it is held by its fans. Now that's cult. I won't be seeing the film for another couple of days, so whether it does a good job or not I will leave as an open question (what is beyond question, however, is that, whatever flaws it may have, it has to be better than the what the original stab at adaptation, back around 1987 would have been – I read a summary of the screenplay, and “desecration” is too weak a word). What I want to consider today is the rather strange set of conflicting emotions anticipated adaptations such as this provoke.
The basic conflict is quite simple: fans have been regarding a film version of Watchmen with both rabid impatience and all-consuming dread. The latter is easy to understand. Watchmen, with its intricate narrative structure and stately pace, defies easy transfer to film, and audiences not ready to view a deconstruction of the super-hero might well put up a (misguided) resistance. But it's the former emotion that I find puzzling, even as it is one to which I am not immune.
![Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic (+ Digital Copy and BD-Live) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/watchmen-the-complete-motion-comic-large.jpg)
