NEVER Watch these Movies

Today, I present to you, 3 of the worst movies I have seen yet, each of them differ greatly from each other, starting from best to worst. As the title says, I advise you to save your time and never watch these failures, as I took the principle of viewing them for the sake of reviewing and curiosity.

#728
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale(2007) 
Rating: 3.5

Way too melodramatic Uwe Boll! Jason Statham also was not suited as the main character for this medieval fantasy based movie in my opinion. Beware of many one-liners as well while this failing movie is filled with bad jokes, bad editing and bad characters. While at times it can look pretty, don’t be deceived by the content In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale provides. It’s like a beautiful graphical video game, without beautiful gameplay to accompany it. It also has a few similarities towards The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I wasn’t bothered by that.

Some settings also looked silly, there were cheesy effects involved and the plot suffered because of the things listed. And oh man that twist at the middle of the film felt bad, about Farmer being the son of the king of Ehb. The only redeeming factor is watching how the choreography can get hilarious at times(which by the way, is vast in numbers), other than that, avoid Uwe Boll movies like the plague. And yet I watch this…perhaps to remind myself how a bad movie is like. 

 

#699 
Philosophy of a Knife(2008)
Rating: 3.5

Yeah, Men Behind the Sun(1988) is a better title than this mess. Based on a notorious Japanese experimental base unit during World War 2, Philosophy of a Knife is a way too long of a docu/mockumentary(you decide, it claims to be an artistic interpretation after all) to truly enjoy with all of it's content. I dislike it when a film has way too much music playing. The emphasis shouldn't be on that, not in such quantities. It kept changing from black and white background scenes, to an old Russian man, who supposedly experienced this notorious camp Unit 731, to fast images of randomness. And every 20 minutes or so, a horror scene would happen.

Well, the only noteworthy scene is the tooth pulling one, those who fear the dentist(including myself) should stay far away from this scene, because it kept going on and on. All the other things lacked impact for me. It was fake, it was over the top, it was wrongfully directed, etcetera. This is, in actual sense, a waste of a movie. Purely an opinion. "The true history", hah! What a joke. 

For the "best scene" this ridiculous and pointless movie has to offer, click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or_nPc5RzQc

#726
Star Quest: The Odyssey(2009)
Rating: 2.5

Don't be deceived by the poster, because that is the prettiest thing it has to offer.

So many close up scenes with bad camera movement, ripped of characters from an obvious franchise, a ridiculous narrator and senseless plot, illogical things happening even for a sci-fi (the stars move around the spaceship...) and wooden acting. Space Quest: The Odyssey is my current fix of looking for a "so bad it's good" kind of movie, but unfortunately it isn't as funny as some horrible movies I have seen already. The settings as well as the costumes are cheap, the music does not go in harmony with this pile of junk and there is no actual sense of a huge war happening. The computer voices fail, the "action" scenes are poor, the special effects are cheap and the lore provided is nothing new at all and ridiculously bad.

The editing was amateur, plot explanation scenes looked like cheap commercials for alienating customers and viewing the spaceship gets rehashed. It’s at times like this, especially when randomly switching from the “story” to a lifeless planet or a solo crappy spaceship in space and quickly switching back, where I want to ask what the director was thinking. All I wanted to do with this was to laugh out loud, but I could only laugh while acknowledging it’s a “so bad it’s bad” movie. Sarcastic laughing at its finest. IMDb’s misguiding and embarrassing summary on this could not be even more far-fetched from what it truly is, a total piece of failure.

Delving into the Ocean of Books

Recently I have been delving into the endless amount of books available. Mostly non-fiction, I happen to be more interested in philosophy, science and religion in particular these days. And even chemistry and physics intrigue me now, which sadly was not the case during my high school years. I marked those two as "stupid" while at the back of my mind, I knew that they were difficult to understand.

My latest purchases have been Beyond Good & Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. I have yet to start on any of them, but I am sure I will be astonished someway or another by each of them in very different outcomes. Perhaps even reviews will follow.

For anyone reading this, what kind of books can you recommend to me? I am not limited to non-fiction only, so please, speak your mind when you do.

Duke Nukem Forever

What was once the biggest joke in the game industry has now finally been released after roughly 15 years. An old superstar of platforming and first person shooting genres has at last returned. His personality is the same old. He has noticed some of the competition in the industry and makes funny quotes about them. His motivation is once again to get "his" chicks back and to save the world from the aliens bend on doing the same thing all over again: abduct the hot women, and mutate and/or kill all of the rest.

Duke Nukem Forever is released and personally I couldn't believe it. It's finally done? No more switching between developers, acquiring licenses not only on the copyrighted material itself, but also on the various game engines the game has been developed on? No more game trailers, no more teasers? NO more Forever jokes? Indeed, the game has now escaped from development hell, and I have beaten it.

What I have noticed is that DNF is one part the same old Duke Nukem gameplay, one part borrows popular concepts that currently dominate first person shooters, and one part completely forgets about some features that made Duke Nukem 3D back in 1996 a classic. Let's talk about those different parts.

The arsenal is the same, except that a few new alien weapons are introduced, nothing out of the ordinary though. You've got one guy against a horde of aliens, you've got various kinds of level design, with a few basic puzzles and driving sessions thrown in. Occassionally Duke Nukem also shrinks into a tiny size, resulting into some interesting scenarios, and there is even a whole "relaxing" chapter in the game, where the hero takes a break from all of the ass-kicking and blowing everyone's brains out.

Best of all, Duke Nukem's personality is still intact. First introduced in Duke Nukem II(1993), the man has some new hilarious one-liners up his sleeve, such as "My balls, your face" but some of the oldies are also still there, such as "Hail to the king, baby", as taken by the movie Army of Darkness(1992). If you didn't know by now, Duke Nukem likes to quote several movie and game titles.

Now let's look at what all of the developers on this had decided to really change. In Forever, Duke can only carry 2 guns at a time, reminiscent of many other shooters today. Next, the game got linear, where most of the time it would be obvious to know where to go next. And, last of all, auto regeneration of health is also present, making it truly similar to the competition. These are changes that really weren't needed.

Why did this have to happen, if Duke Nukem himself could carry all of his guns in one go back in 1996, had to find medkits or just splashes of water to keep healthy and at the same time be able to use several paths to maneuver through each level, primarily by the use of air ducts? Were the developers really concerned that change towards the actual status quo was needed, or otherwise it would not bring out newcomers towards the franchise?

I think this was a huge opportunity to bring out some old ideas back into the current generation and be proud of it. Some of the old ideas were even entirely missing(the jetpack!). Honestly, it's dissapointing to see that Duke Nukem Forever changed its gameplay more to the likes of titles such as Call of Duty and Halo. So when we are speaking of originality, Forever missed out big time.

There is lack of exciting new content, including weapons, enemies and since Duke can only carry 2 guns, it feels less exciting to uncover any of the game's secret areas(which are more easily spotted when compared to Duke Nukem 3D), and find a gun there that you can only take if you leave another one. Except for Duke Nukem's personality and it's infamous status of development hell, the whole game is an average first person shooter for today's standards.

Which is really sad, considering it's very long development time. I'm not saying that Forever should had surpassed 3D in every way, but unfortunately the game is just way more average and squeezed between the millions of other generic first person shooters available now, and the only way the game is still selling is because of the 2 reasons I listed.

Stick with the three old Duke Nukem titles instead(I have yet to play the first two thoroughly though) and try Forever out. It's nice that the game is finally released, but I hope that whoever is gonna develop an eventual sequal will especially look back at what made 3D really outstanding for it's time.

Or, if 3D Realms allows it, someone should develop a sequel towards a certain game that in my opinion, was even better than Duke Nukem 3D in the 90's, featuring a ninja bodyguard with his own kind of Eastern humor to battle demons.

Rating: 6.5

Samsung Galaxy S II

At first, I was hesitating on blogging about this. But when I remembered the infinity amount of applications being available for this device, including small games, I decided on reviewing this in my blog anyway. Not that I am about to talk about every application, but perhaps in the future, another blog about this could suffice. And keep in mind that I am by no means an expert on mobile phones, plus I have yet to explore everything it has to offer.

Supposedly the Samsung Galaxy S II is the thinnest smartphone at the moment, safe for one obscure Japanese mobile phone called the NEC Medias. And even better, it feels quite light too. The interface is very good for being able to swipe through the options by the use of the touch screen. I happened to own an LG Renoir before this, which featured a touch screen too, but not this feature, so this is a big improvement for me.

It has so many applications that it would take several full days to go in depth with each of them. The Social Hub for example, connects your phone to the various social media being available online, such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, while keeping you updated with feeds and personal messages.

There is a dual-core processor inside, allowing for quick calculations of speed to be made. It allows Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which is always handy these days. And it also has some kind of Swipe feature for whenever typing out SMS messages, which I have yet to try.

Another application is the Android Market, which offers users free apps and charge apps for you to mess around with, play around with and be enthralled by it. Free apps like IMDb and Ebay instantly felt good to use, and I can't wait to see what is more available.

The camera application is gorgeous, not only is it 8.0 megapixel as before (the Renoir), it can also record High Definion videos, making it even more high-tech for such a small device. I have yet to start on the navigation application, but it looks great judging from first looks at it. And it's not just for driving, but also for when you're walking, which is a great feature for me.

And of course I had to check out on Angry Birds as well, the very famous app and a huge hype currently. As a veteran gamer, the game concept was nothing new, but I could see the charm the game brought to us, with it's cute sounds playing.

The S II's screen also apparently is well designed, plus it has multi-touch, making it great for games that utilize more than just one type of control. It even has SNES and PSX emulators already available somewhere, which is pretty surprising to see. At first I wasn't sure how these games could be controlled on a phone, but now I know.  

As you could see, I left out many, many features this phone has available. That's because I have yet to try them all out. But when speaking of first impressions, this is definitely a great smartphone to consider at the moment.

Top Ten SNES Songs

Purely out of fun, I decided on a new and simple Top Ten list. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System has so many memorable songs that it would be impossible to put them all up for only ten spots, but as I am typing this, and remembering certain SNES songs, I will share with you my current ten favorites. I decided to limit each song to only one game, and bear in mind, in this particular list, it doesn't mean that the number 1 spot is better than the other 9:

10-Mountains/Terranigma

It certainly made me feel like I could conquer mountains of conflict. Sadly the song eventually gets re-used a lot at the second part of Terranigma, but fortunately it gave me a strong impression the first time and whenever I listen to it again while trying to forget that awful second part.

9-Simon's Theme/Super Castlevania IV

What a great entrance theme to Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania in general. One of the best invitation themes towards the gothic atmosphere and Dracula´s castle the huge franchise brings to us. Many songs in the series have been remixed plenty of times, but Simon´s Theme has only been featured thrice. I was hooked the first time I heard this song as a kid and when I was whipping up the forces of darkness at the same time. 
 
8-Black Dream/Chrono Trigger

A thrilling and dangerous sounding theme. Upon first arriving at this monstrosity of a flying building, no one knew exactly what they would face. Turns out that it would be the hardest dungeon in the game, and Queen Zeal would wait at the top to show you who has a pact with Lavos. The Black Omen is a mysterious UFO from this legendary RPG, and certainly, no one who has played through it has forgotten about it.

7-Boomer Kuwanger/Mega Man X

This was a very hard decision, as Sting Chameleon has been my favorite for a long time, and for many fans, that would have to be Storm Eagle. But upon listening to this once again, the buildup is very rewarding, sounding full of action and even dramatic at the final part. Capcom really went all out with the first entry of the Mega Man X series, and still listening to this is proof of that claim.

6-Dark World/The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

I will never forget the moment I beat Aghanim and teleported into the Dark World, where upon looking at the world map, I was stumbled by the 7 crystal icons appearing now, indicating 7 dungeons were waiting, not to mention Ganon's Tower. This game marked for me the first time I was introduced to the game concept of there being a good and evil world. The song sounds like evil creatures marching proudly on their world that was once known as the Golden Land.

5-The Oracle/Secret of Mana

One of the most unusual songs heard on the SNES, this song would had never worked for me, unless I knew that Thanatos was the main antagonist of Secret of Mana and was bent on a gruesome vengeance after his suitable "host" suicides and he unleashes his wrath on the party members, hence the terrifying connection with this creepy song.

4-Sinistral Battle/Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

Definitely a serious contender for the best boss battle theme in the history of videogames. Of course, opinions always change, but the power that this song makes during the game is strong and everlasting. The Sinistrals were huge in size in comparison towards the party members, and their intentions were crystal clear.

3-Ankor Wat/Illusion of Gaia

Yet another song that is only more valuable once you have played through this difficult dungeon from Illusion of Gaia. And I won't lie to you; this song is the reason I am planning on traveling to Cambodia someday and witness the magnificent temples with their rich history there including Ankor Wat, Angor Thom and others. Isn't that just beautiful, how a song can inspire a person to achieve something?

2-Mute City/F-Zero

Such a badass song, it has pretty much been featured in every F-Zero game to date, and continues to be added in the Super Smash Bros. titles. Sometimes, I wish that Formula Zero races were already possible, if only we could start racing on the Moon for example, far away from the chaos on Earth, with high measures of speed, crazy courses and futuristic cars. A man can dream.

1-Booster's Tower/Super Mario RPG

And to finish it off, here is some nice elevator music from another great SNES RPG. I actually was searching for Booster's actual theme...until I heard the song playing right after the elevator music! So this link I provided is actually two songs in one! It doesn't matter really, as both songs come right after each other during the game anyway.

E3 2011 Thoughts

The main conferences are over, but the Electronic Entertainment Expo continues this week. Most of the announcements have already been made, as usual, so let's talk about that. Nintendo in particular, but first a brief summary about Microsoft and Sony:

Kinect games were rich on the show, as Microsoft attempts to achieve success with that. Regarding exclusivity, I still wasn't impressed with that, as the Xbox has always been loosely connected with PC games when speaking of availability. Of course, the Halo 4 surprise at the end was a great way to end it, but perhaps a bit too much simple games were shown on the Kinect, lowering the enthousiasm for any hardcore games still getting released on it.

Playstation Vita is a good looking handheld, with a fair price and promising upcoming games. The PSN issue was addressed and that was a good idea. The PS3 games were represented well, with Uncharted 3, Resistance 3, Battlefield 3 and a new Sly Cooper. That Playstation 3DTV was actually interesting, what with it's way to improve upon split screen gameplay. Sony had a nice conference as well.

Nintendo is a master company at keeping surprises and secrets. And this year was no exception regarding the Wii U. I'm a little dissapointed that Nintendo didn't go for a complete new name, but we will no doubt get used to it. The conference itself was fantastic, starting with the Zelda 25th anniversary and ending with tons of third party support and great looking games. From Nintendo itself, there weren't much surprises when speaking of software, except for Luigi's Mansion 2, but perhaps later this week, they might have one more announcement to make.

                                 

So, the only thing that was missing so far is a true software surprise, something out of the blue. But look at what we've gotten. Upcoming Nintendo 3DS games, a new console and strong third party support. Hardcore games have always been playable on Nintendo systems by the way, but now, the haters and the graphic whores cannot use their excuses much longer anymore, talking about the potential graphics and games being developed. The popular mainstream games will finally get developed for all three companies. No longer only on PS3 and XBOX 360, when speaking of all those shooters for example.

That controller for the Wii U adds a whole new level of possible gameplay elements, while it enhances existing Wii peripherals and cleverly incorporates a supporting screen. It's a mix of plenty of Nintendo's past innovations, and more. And if this is the real console pictured above, then it looks just as good as the Wii.

But it all comes down to the games. Never forget, WHY the NES and the SNES were so popular. Those were generations when graphics really didn't matter yet. But I don't have to explain anyone this, as the message has been drilled to death; gameplay first, all else second. It's great to see that the industry is so alive, innovative and growing so huge.

P.S. I was hoping for a new F-Zero announced, but I'm sure that Nintendo will deliver somehow anyway. 

P.P.S. Oh and SUPER SMASH BROS. is considered for both Nintendo 3DS and Wii U!

I.K.K.A. 2011 Spain

Traditionally I am about to write a blog about my attended Kenpo Karate tournaments, and this time the event was situated in Madrid, Spain.

Let's get right down to business. Starting at friday, Flok attended all 6 hours available seminars for the intermediates. First up was Bob White, which I remembered from Las Vegas, where he gave all of the attendees a nice warming up of freestyle techniques. Several of them were stretching movements that woke up some of my deeper muscles that have yet to be trained professionally.

The second black belt was José Enrique Hernández, who gave a seminar of counterstrikes which was pretty much all about adapting towards the situation. This would be the first of several seminars where I had to train with Spanish people, which created some interesting moments of communication.

The third of them was Vasilis Vezyrgiannis from Greece, who showed towards us rearrangements on standard Kenpo techniques, and ultimately to combine them towards different results. Other members in our group agreed on the same opinion that the topic of this seminar was intriguing, but the execution was rather lackluster, for the man only talked about 2 techniques for 1 hour, and most of the time we were pretty much waiting for the next part of the seminar to happen, as we constantly had to train this on ourselves.

After a siesta, the seminar day continued with Doreen M. Dirienzo, who teached us to look and feel, everything that Kenpo Karate stands for. That includes stances, freestyling, techniques, forms, in particular the stances were addressed here, something that normally only our own dojo addresses towards the members. Dorien went pretty deep with the topic of looking and feeling here, making it one of the better seminars.

The next one up was another nice seminar, where José Maria Gutiérrez spoke about anticipating moves and the timing needed to counter them. Gutiérrez is actually a funny guy towards the English speaking people because of his English accent. Two examples given: "My English is generally bad" and "Thank you for here.". We were free to develop our own random attacks while our opponents would had to anticipate, time and counter them, resulting in some very interesting situations.

Finally for today was Zach Whitson, who gave a seminar that reminded me of the second seminar, but the execution was different, as the movements that were being used were constantly moving. Basically once one guy would block an attack, the other guy would had to block another attack, and it went on forever. Learning and seeing these counterpoints reminded me of those crazy old Kung Fu flicks, and I'm sure that you know what I talk about then.

On saturday, the tournament was held, and as always this day was the busiest day of the event. I attended three divisions this year, and one of them happened to be a surprising consequence by another person in our group. We managed to grab PLENTY of medaillons once again, which is very good.

I did Short Form 3 at the Forms division, resulting in a score of 7.2 on an average scale by three judges, which is pretty good considering the judges would only give out 6's, 7's or 8's as scores. Seeing as it was different in Ireland last year(7's, 8's and 9's), this was an improvement for me.

And then I finally started freestyling at the competition level, which resulted in some much needed experience. I lost both matches in it, but I am glad to have experienced it, as it has motivated me to train and to get better at this.

The first match was against a veteran Irish green belt that eventually would become the champion of the Freestyling +75 KG division that day, so it is actually cool that I lost to the champion. The end score was 3-1, that single point was because he hit me straight to the face, which is prohibited.

About an hour later, I had to replace a member of my dojo at the team sparring division because he was exhausted by the freestyling division I mentioned before(Ending up at the second place!) and had an injury on his feet. Basically it means that a group of three people would had to face another group and the end scores would determine who would had won.

I faced another veteran Irish, but this time a brown belt. I tried my best, but was completely dazzled by the fact that he won with 7-0. It's crazy, once you are in that spot, it is way different than walking around it and looking at the competitors. I was told later on that my guard was always low, resulting in him getting easy initiations to score points. Around the fifth point, as the referee said "FIGHT" for the umpteenth time, the Irish man gave me a spinning backkick that was so unexpected that he hit me with full contact on the abdomen. I collapsed on the ground, as I could not breath anymore. The medic people were already alarmed, but fortunately I was able to recover and finish the fight. This was a moment never to forget.

On sunday, there were two more seminars planned. First up was a seminar by Alexandre "Pequeno" Nogueira, the 6x times World Champion in Mixed Martial Arts. His hour was all about wrestling and ground moves, which was pretty intense at times. I can't say that I am a huge fan of ground moves, but I enjoyed this lesson nonetheless.

The final seminar was by Norman Sandler, a small but wise man that gave us extensions on normal Kenpo techniques, such as Glancing Salute and Snapping Twig. Another pretty deep seminar, I can't say that I remember much from this one, perhaps I was too tired at the moment. Still, I am glad to had attended all available seminars. The brotherhood dinner followed later that evening, and was entertaining as always.

Adaptation was a very important ideology and many times indirectly mentioned this year for sure. Thinking about it now, it has always been very important, haha! The next tournament in 2012 will be in Utrecht, The Netherlands. You can count that almost everyone in our dojo will be attending then!