Movie Review: The Love Guru

Mike Myers and Justin Timberlake, two people that I am generally not a fan of at all. However, in this movie the both of them are just funny as all hell. With Myers playing an Indian guru and Timberlake a "bad-ass"(and I use the term loosely) canadian hockey player, you should know right off the bad. This movie I think also has a special place for me because my girlfriend has been making me watch lots of Bollywood movies(Indian movies) and there are lots of jokes about things that frequently happen in those. Hearing Justin Timberlake say "Don't look at me with that tone of voice or I will punch you in the shirt!" is still more then enough to cause me to crack up.
Overall: [9/10]

Video Game Review: Legendary

Overall: [7/10] Legendary is a game that your probably going to pass over, not because it's bad, but just because the timing on the release was poor and there wasn't much hype around it. Lost in the sea of Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, Fable 2 and Call of Duty: World at War lies this game, but even tho I only spent a week or two with my copy, I will one turn return to finish it, this I know. The game has some interesting mechanics, and the enemy AI is quite intelligent, sometimes annoyingly so heh. Facing enemies such as Gryphons and Minotaurs, while wielding machine guns and fire axes is an interesting experience to say the least.

Story: [9/10] The story for this game is that a rich collector of artifacts wants Pandora's Box, so he hires a thief to get it for me. When the thief opens the box, instead of releasing the "evils of the world" as in the myth, it releases all sorts of mythological creatures. Now he's trying to survive and re-close the box before the creatures completely destroy the world.

Graphics: [9/10] Buildings crumble, rubble is thrown, fire hydrants can be opened, cars are lifted....the graphics are nice in this game. I wouldn't say the graphics are necessarily any better then other 360 games, but what is done with them is better.

Sound: [8/10] The music of the game fits, the downfall is there's not a ton of emphasis on ambient sounds, so there's not a whole ton of build up to things. Instead of "I hear the werewolf...getting closer...where is he?! I can hear him!" you get more "dum de dum dum OH SHIT WEREWOLF SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT!!"

Weapons: [8/10] Legendary has at least 7 weapons, and I'm not sure if I've seen them all. Ranging from pistols, to shotguns, to machine guns and of course a rocket launcher. The usual suspects of weaponry make appearances here. The ability to drain the "essence" of a mythological creature you kill and use the essence to use powers(such as healing or a knock-back wave) is the most unique weapon in the game. Sometimes however you use more life trying to get the essence so you can heal, then the healing actually does. It's times like those you wish for an old fashioned med-pack.

Multiplayer: [?/10] Unfortunatly, with all the other games that came out it's rather hard to get a multiplayer Legendary game going, as such I can't give a fair review on this part. I can say the concept of it sounds intriguing. You play as one of two teams of soldiers, and there are AI werewolves as well. Each team has a generator and the objective is to kill enemy players and werewolves to get "essence" from them and instead of using it for your powers, fill the generator with it. First team to reach X amount of "essence" in the generator wins.

Movie Review: Hancock

Hancock, starring Will Smith and Charlize Theron, is a great movie. Seeing Will Smith play a "less then wholesome" character alone is worth seeing the movie for. Fans of comic books or super hero movies will get a kick out of the idea of the "asshole" super hero and of the portrayal of super heroes later, others will just get kicks out of the action and great jokes that occur throughout the movie. I didn't see it in theaters(or the theatrical version) so I'm not sure with the differences are, but I'm pretty sure you can't go wrong either way. The only real complaint I had was the ending starts to go in a direction that is highly annoying, but luckily they correct that. The only thing I could say would improve this movie, would have been a cameo by Stan "The Man" Lee, just like in all the Marvel Comics movies.
Overall: [9/10]

Game Review: Left 4 Dead

Here's my first review of a game and it's the one I've been spending the most time with lately.

Overall: [9/10] Left 4 Dead is only on Xbox 360 and Windows computers and the basic idea is that zombies are overrunning the town(or world) and you want to survive. The amount of weapons in the game is smaller then most other video games, but it works here for some reason. There are only 4 playable charectors, and there's no difference in them for play style. They each have their own appearance and personality, but no different abilities or items or weapons or anything. The enemies are basically the same thru-out the game, average people turned zombies, but with enough "special infected" thrown in to keep it fresh. The dark atmosphere really adds to the game, and being able to turn on options to make it appear as an old school zombie movie is just iceing on the cake.

Storyline: [5/10] The story is pretty basic, a virus has spread turning people into 28 Days Later style zombies, and they are infecting everyone, killing those who are immune. There's no twists or turns in the story, but with this game you don't need them.

Graphics: [9/10] The graphics on this game are as good as any other on the 360. Blood splatters in ways you would imagine and remains, people look like real people, doors break as you expect, etc.

Characters: [4/10] The characters are fun, but with no real differences between them there's really no point to picking your character, unless you just HAVE to be the biker or the chick or something. The characters are as follows:

Bill - The vietnam veteran who doesn't know anything except war. He's atleast slightly happy about the zombie apocalypse, because he gets to go back to fighting instead of the dead end jobs he's been occupying.








Francis - The biker, bar brawler extraordinaire. While everyone else stockpiled food and necessities for the zombie apocalypse, Francis grabbed a gun and started having some fun in a world without police, without law and without order.








Zoey - The college chick, failing all her classes in her first semester of college due to spending all her time in her dorm room watching old zombie movies. On the brink of flunking out of college the zombie apocalypse occurs, guess she's glad she spent all that time "studying" those movies.








Louis - The company man, he was working as a Junior Systems Analyst in his company's IT department, trying to work up the courage to quit. Next thing he knows it's the zombie apocalypse, guess he doesn't have to worry about quitting now, just about surviving.








Sound: [7/10] The ambient sounds give the games a truely creepy feel. Nothing will get you on your toes more then walking around in the game when you suddenly hear The Witch sobbing.

Weapons: [2/10] There are only 6 guns in this game. A pistol that can be dual-wielded if you find a second, a Sub-Machine Gun, a Pump-action Shotgun, an Assault Rifle, a Hunting Rifle and an Automatic Shotgun. The 2 explosives used to finish the arsonel are a Pipe Bomb and a Moltov Cocktail. A small list for a First-Person Shooter these days, but in this game, less is more.

Multiplayer: [9/10] This game truely shines when you get three friends to play with and you four work together trying to survive, not that the AI is bad, but it's just better with people. Got more then 3 friends? Go into versus mode where 4 of you will be the survivors and up to 4 more of you play as the "special infected" and if you kill a survivor they join you as an infected.