Fifth Film Review - Avatar

Avatar (2009)

Director: James Cameron Writer: James Cameron Producer: James Cameron, Jon Landau

Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Joel David Moore, Giovanni Ribisi

Studio: Lightstorm Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Film Partners

Avatar is unequivocally, completely, 100% the film that has been percolating in James Cameron’s head for the last fourteen years. It is not, in all probability, the film that you had in yours when you first heard that the man who directed Aliens and The Terminator was returning to sci-fi with a movie so ambitious that he had to build the technology to make it happen. If you can let go of your version and embrace Cameron’s – if you’re not, in other words, one of those splenetic internet fanboy types who’ve apparently made their minds up about Avatar before seeing it – then Avatar is a hugely rewarding experience: rich, soulful and exciting in the way that only comes from seeing a master artist at work.Let’s address the Big Question first: to use the key phrase so often used in connection with the movie, is it a game-changer? Yes, and no would be the cop-out answer, but it’s also the truth. Avatar employs technology necessary to render its largely computer-generated, 3D world that will give directors, including but not limited to Cameron, one heck of a sandbox to play in over the next few years. That’s how the game has changed off screen.On it, it may not be a game-changer, but no director to date has built a world of this scale, ambition and complexity before, and Avatar – much as the arrival of Raymond van Barneveld forced Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor to up his game – will have rival directors scrambling to keep up with Cameron. Avatar is an astonishing feast for the eyes and ears, with shots and sequences that boggle the mind, from the epic – a floating mountain range in the sky, waterfalls cascading into nothingness – to the tiny details, such as a paraplegic sinking his new, blue and fully operational toes into the sand. The level of immersive detail here is simply amazing.

And Cameron plunges you straight in, not even giving you time to don water wings. In a dizzyingly fast, almost impressionistic opening ten minutes, we’re introduced, in no short order, to everything you need to know for the next 150: about Pandora’s climate and largely deadly population, about Jake Sully’s situation, about the Avatar programme and the ruthless plans of the human invaders (led by Stephen Lang’s Col. Quaritch and Giovanni Ribisi’s Selfridge, a clear nod to Aliens’ Carter Burke, one of several touches reminiscent of Cameron’s earlier masterpiece). And then we’re off and running, literally, into an action sequence where Jake-Avatar barely survives encounters with unfriendly local wildlife that would make Ray Mears cream his shorts.And it’s here where Cameron begins the detour from the all-out actionfest that many might have expected, choosing instead to slow things down over a three-month time period in which Jake – hair and beard markedly growing in the live-action sequences – immerses himself in the Na’vi culture, and gradually finds himself losing his heart to their ways and practices, and, in particular, Zoe Saldana’s fierce warrioress, Neytiri. The lack of a ticking clock plot device here may deprive Avatar of momentum or drive through its middle-section, but it’s also part of Cameron’s agenda. After all, he’s also the guy who directed Titanic, and Avatar isn’t just about spectacle and stupendous action (though we’ll get both in spades), but a love story. We need hardly be surprised by this – every Cameron film, even True Lies, has a love story at its core – but the surprise here is how effective Avatar’s central coupling is, the emotion between Jake and Neytiri earthed by Weta’s astonishing digital effects. You can safely stow away all that spurious crap about videogame-style effects, or blue Jar Jars: this is truly next-level stuff, which doesn't smother Worthington and Saldana under a pile of pixels, but rather teases out and enhances the emotion in their excellent performances.The Na’vi, each of whom has clearly distinct features (no small feat for a clan of some several hundred creatures) may not always seem phot

o-real, but they do seem – and this is crucial – alive and extremely expressive, helped by the fact that the dead-eye problem, which has plagued mo-cap movies since their inception, has been well and truly solved.

Worthington, fully justifying all the hullabaloo about him with a controlled, charming and physical performance (both in and out of his Avatar), may have a magnificent Lee Marvin leading man monotone, but an even bigger asset is his soulful eyes, a quality that is retained and magnified in the larger peepers of the Na’vi. Jake and Neytiri’s burgeoning love is contained in the intricacies of detail in the eyes – a flicker of longing here, a widening of the pupils or a rolling tear there, that further aids the illusion that these conglomerations of ones and zeros actually exist. It’s a genuinely engaging relationship – just because they’re aliens doesn’t mean they have to be alienating.Mind you, despite all the advances and groundwork laid, we might be not quite ready to see two CG characters effectively dry-hump each other. That’s just wrong…But, as much as technology aids and defines Avatar, it’s also a love letter to humanity and the glory of mother nature. The analogy with the Vietnam and Iraq wars is obvious, but Cameron, in siding with the insurgents (hardly an all-American move, but then again he is Canadian), is also asking fairly complex questions about what it means to be human. “How does it feel to betray your race?”, Sully is asked at one point, but by then, Cameron’s point has been made: the humans here, Sully and an assortment of ‘good’ scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine, aside, are the monsters; avaricious, rapacious, planet-killers. There’s never any doubt that Cameron considers the Na’vi to be more human – freer of spirit and emotion, more connected to the world around them. At times – and this is perhaps Avatar’s biggest flaw, even beyond that bloody awful Leona Lewis song which mars the end credits – this manifests itself in New Age-y, hippy-dippy language and images that suggest that Cameron is one mung bean away from dropping out, man, and going all Swampy on our asses. In truth, the big idea here, that Pandora is a giant mass of connected energy and emotional synapses, isn’t really all that far away from Lucas’ The Force, and works just fine in the context of a sci-fi fantasy, which Avatar undoubtedly is, but there’s a fair amount of unintentional laughter to be had from watching hundreds of Na’vi, swaying like extras from the Zion rave scene in The Matrix Reloaded, surrounding something called The Tree Of Souls and banging on about becoming one with Mother Eywo. If there’s one element of Avatar that the made-their-mind-up brigade will use to mercilessly beat the film with, even more so than the somewhat prosaic plot, it’s this.But it’s hard to imagine even the most jaded and cynical having any issues with the last forty minutes, in which Cameron uncorks the action and shows all the young pretenders – the Bays and the Emmerichs and the Von Triers – how it’s done. The human attack on Pandora and the subsequent fightback, led by Avatar-Jake, is a largely sustained setpiece of quite staggering scale, imagination and emotion that manages to compress both the truly epic – a human attack on a Na’vi landmark that recalls 9/11 in its devastating imagery – and the thrillingly intimate, as Jake finally faces off against the excellent Stephen Lang’s Quaritch, a scenery-chewing bad guy so badass that he can breathe the Pandoran air without a mask. It’s a relentless sequence which, while not quite matching the emotional punch of Titanic’s three-hanky conclusion, will still leave you dazed, confused but exhilarated, a feeling that will be enhanced further if you can - and we really, really recommend that you should - catch it in 3D, where Cameron’s unparalleled and meticulously constructed use of the technique expertly envelopes you in the beguiling, exotic sights and sounds of Pandora, a planet (or, to be precise, a moon) that throbs and hums and teems with life and energy in three dimensions.

Fourth Film Review - The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker (2009)

Director: Kathryn Bigelow Writer: Mark Boal Producer: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro

Stars: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, Evangeline Lilly, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Guy Pearce

Studio: Summit Entertainment (US)

The Hurt Locker does not really have a conventional plot. Instead, the story is built around the last 38 days the three men in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad have remaining in their Iraq rotation. Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), just a kid but beginning to crack under the pressure, and the sensible Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), are simply trying to avoid the titular place that represents “ultimate pain.” They are both getting over the recent loss of a teammate to what seems like total randomness concerning who lives and who dies.

The new replacement, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) is a wild cowboy of sorts (as pegged by his superior officers), who prefers to detonate devices without his protective suit. “If I’m gonna die... I wanna die comfortable,” quips the cocksure sergeant. To his teammates, James’s recklessness represents a danger to their own well-being. They begin to wonder, which is a greater threat, the bomb on the ground or the man in the bomb suit.

The film avoids explicit political statements about whether the United States military's presence in the region is legitimate or unjustified. Implicitly positive or negative readings of the film's stance on the War in Iraq probably reflect the beliefs viewers carry into the theater than what's on screen. This is not a coward's way out for the filmmakers but rather an acknowledgment of the soldiers' reality. The film goes to great pains to present the challenges confronting them and how they function.
When staring at several bombs that need to be disarmed, philosophical debates about patriotism or warmongering are not the most urgent things coming to mind. Like its hero, the movie needs its adrenaline fix, but never at the expense of the drama that keeps the anecdotal narrative going. It comes by its thrills honestly, never losing sight of the potential cost in lives. These soldiers do their jobs while acutely aware they could be killed by some of the same people they are trying to save, but they try anyway.
Kathryn Bigelow knows exactly where to place her cameras and how to edit her shots so the viewer always understands, where the threat to the characters is coming from and where they stand in relation to each other.

Each of the three lead actors -- Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty -- deliver seamless and convincing performances that are highly reflective of the pains both physical and psychological; there's an air of authenticity to each part, and the varied personalities allow for a much broader and far more convincing environment.
Don’t miss this Oscar winner as it goes far beyond action into almost existential excitement, fear, despair (one soldier bemoans how nobody except his parents, who "don't count," will care if he's killed in action).

Third Film Review - The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight (2008)

Writer/Director: Christopher Nolan Writers: Jonathan Nolan, David S. Goyer, Bob Kane, Bill Finger

Stars: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Aaron Ekhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman

Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

With the Bruce Wayne/Batman backstory firmly established, “The Dark Knight” fans out to take a broader perspective on Gotham City -- portrayed as a seething cauldron of interlocking power structures and criminal factions in the densely layered but remarkably fleet screenplay by helmer Nolan and brother Jonathan.

Using five strongly developed characters to anchor a drama with life-or-death implications for the entire metropolis, the Nolans have taken Bob Kane’s comicbook template and crafted an anguished, eloquent meditation on ideas of justice and power, corruption and anarchy and, of course, the need for heroes like Batman -- a question never in doubt for the viewer, but one posed rather often by the citizens of Gotham.

Indeed, with trusty Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, superbly restrained) and golden-boy District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) successfully spearheading the city’s crackdown on the mob, even Wayne himself (Christian Bale) figures his nights moonlighting as a leather-clad vigilante are numbered. The young billionaire hopes to hang up the Batsuit for good and renew his relationship with assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

But Batman’s stature as a radical symbol of good has invited a more sinister criminal presence to Gotham City -- and, as seen in the crackerjack bank-robbery sequence that opens the pic, one who operates in terrifyingly unpredictable ways. Utterly indifferent to simple criminal motivations like greed, Ledger’s maniacally murderous Joker is as pure an embodiment of irrational evil as any in modern movies. He’s a pitiless psychopath who revels in chaos and fears neither pain nor death, a demonic prankster for whom all the world’s a punchline.

After Ledger’s death in January 2008, his penultimate performance (with Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”) will be viewed with both tremendous excitement and unavoidable sadness. It’s a tribute to Ledger’s indelible work that he makes the viewer entirely forget the actor behind the cracked white makeup and blood-red rictus grin, so complete and frightening is his immersion in the role. With all due respect to the enjoyable camp buffoonery of past Jokers like Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, Ledger makes them look like...well, clowns.

The pic shrewdly positions the Joker as the superhero-movie who threatens to target Gotham civilians until Batman reveals his identity. Batman, Gordon and Dent uneasily join forces, but the Joker seems to have the upper hand at every step, even from a jail cell; the city, turning against the hero it once looked to for hope, seems more fractious, vulnerable and dangerous than ever.

The Dark Knight pivots with similar ingenuity on a breathless series of twists and turns, culminating in a dramatic shift for Dent. This subplot reps the film’s weakest link, packing too much psychological motivation into too little screen time to be entirely credible. Yet Eckhart vividly inhabits the character’s sad trajectory, underscoring the film’s point that symbols of good can be all too easily tarnished.

From Wayne’s playful debates with faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) about the public perception of Batman to the Joker’s borderline-poetic musings on his own bottomless sadism, the characters almost seem to be carrying on a debate about the complicated realities of good vs. evil, and the heavy burden shouldered by those fighting for good. One of the few action filmmakers who’s capable of satisfying audiences beyond the fanboy set, Nolan honors his serious themes to the end; he bravely closes the story with both Gotham City and the narrative in tatters, making this the rare sequel that genuinely deserves another.

Viewers who found “Batman Begins” too existentially weighty for its own good will be refreshed to know that “The Dark Knight” hits the ground running and rarely lets up over its swift 2½-hour running time. Nolan directs the action more confidently than he did the first time out, orchestrating all manner of vertiginous mid-air escapes and virtuosic highway setpieces (and unleashing Batman’s latest ooh-ah contraption, the monster-truck-tire-equipped Bat-Pod). In a fresh innovation, six sequences were shot using Imax cameras.

Second Film Review - Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass (2010)

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Writers: Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, Mark Millar, John Romita, Jr.

Stars: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage

Studio: Marv Films, Plan B Entertainment

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a geek who wonders why no one has ever tried to become a costumed superhero before. As his friend Marty (Clark Duke) explains, “Because they would get their asses kicked.” Marty’s not wrong. Dave doesn’t heed his pal’s advice, dons a wet suit, wields two batons, creates the alter-ego of “Kick-Ass” and goes out to fight bad guys. We soon see that despite Dave’s enthusiasm and bravery, he’s only playing at the amateur level. The pros are Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), an adorable father-daughter duo who go out for ice cream by day and render criminals into slaughtered remains at night. The two storylines converge as mafia boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) puts out a bounty on the superheroes that are hurting his business despite the popularity of Kick-Ass as an Internet and pop-culture sensation.

Cage may be the biggest name actor in the film, but he makes a delightful turn in an important supporting role that helps bolster the world while helping to ground Hit-Girl as a real character who isn’t a disturbed individual despite her disturbing actions as a murderous vigilante. But the two real stars of the film are Johnson and Moretz and their performances are key in helping to combine the film’s cartoonish mayhem with a charming naivety and bravado.

The performance people will be buzzing about is Moretz. Hit-Girl steals the show with her brutal-yet-stylish kills, foul-mouthed dialogue, and her disarmingly sweet face. Hit-Girl is like the child on the front of a cereal box except the cereal isn’t a nice mix of toasted oats and marshmallows but of razorblades and shotgun shells (part of a balanced breakfast). If you take a step back, the idea of Hit-Girl is disturbing. She’s a child with no regard for human life or a modicum of mercy. But in the world of Kick-Ass, Hit-Girl is a cartoon. Her father puts a bulletproof vest on her and then shoots his little girl so she won’t be afraid when she’s looking down the barrel of a Glock. First off: who is making bulletproof vests in child sizes? Secondly, a vest may stop a bullet, but it won’t stop a little girl’s ribs from breaking apart. Hit-Girl is grounded in an emotional reality by her relationship with her father, but she, like all the other film’s characters, exist in a comic book world full of bright colors and blazing destruction.

However, it’s Aaron Johnson’s performance that holds Kick-Ass together and gives the film an emotional center. He’s a powerless Peter Parker and he’s skilled at getting his ass kicked, but we never look down on Dave or scoff at his noble intentions. He’s naive and he’s out of his depth, but he’s brave and his desire to do good is good enough. When Kick-Ass fights off three bad guys who are attempting to beat up on another person, he says he would rather die protecting a helpless stranger from three thugs. Superheroes let us imagine ourselves as protectors who can do great things. Dave just makes himself the star of his own superhero comic He may get his ass kicked, but Johnson makes Dave come off like a hero and not a schmuck. As Dave looks into his bedroom mirror and tries out one-liners against imaginary bad guys, Johnson manages to take what could feel like an unnerving Travis Bickle moment and transforms it into feeling like a kid playing superhero in his back yard.

But how do you blend such disparate characters into one story and one world? Ask director Matthew Vaughn because he found a way. For a film that could be wildly schizophrenic, Vaughn rips forth method from the madness and keeps the characters sane despite their insane actions. Working from a charged script he co-wrote with Jane Goldman, Vaughn electrifies the world of Kick-Ass with crackling dialogue, likable characters, and array of miscellaneous tools of destruction that I won’t spoil here. Vaughn’s trick is to not rip comic book characters out of the books and into a real world, but to rip out comic book pages, anime, B-movie action, and push the real world inside the gleeful chaos that cranks what you love about pop-violence entertainment and pushes the envelope of destruction as far as it can go.

Johnson and Moretz give terrific performances and Vaughn’s direction is borderline-supernatural, but as I’m sure you can tell by this point, the real star of the film is violence. It appeals to the child in all of us who laughed when Daffy Duck had a shotgun explode in his face or when Wile E. Coyote fell off a cliff. It devilishly snickers at the little bastards we could be when we happily took our action figures, made them fight, and then put one of them in the microwave to see what would happen (the result: our parents got really pissed off). Kick-Ass appeals to that kid who loves violence and still grew up well-adjusted…for the most part. For the part that remained in a state of arrested development, the film uses piles of corpses and twisted expectations to connect our childhood love of cartoon violence to the mature content we demand as adults. The coyote must now splatter on the desert sands, the duck must now have his head blown apart, and an 11-year-old girl must swear like a sailor and connect bullets to bad guys’ vital organs. If the performances, script, and direction of this film didn’t mix perfectly, we would find ourselves shifting uncomfortably in our seats and/or leave the theater feeling dirty. Instead, we’re cheering and laughing all the way back home.

Kick-Ass transports the viewer into a world of superheroes without superpowers, the celebration of online celebrity, and a level of exaggerated violence that would border on disturbing were it not imbued with childlike joy. It’s Looney Tunes, anime, first-person-shooter videogames, and gritty violence mixed with the innocence of Golden Age comics. It’s a delicious concoction that won’t only kick your ass, but will punch you until you’re smiling through a bloody mouth and broken teeth. Then you’ll ask for seconds.

First Film Review - The Departed

The Departed (2006)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writers: William Monahan, Felix Chong, Alan Mak

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Whalberg, Alec Baldwin

Studio: Warner Bros.

The Departed is a tale of Boston Irish tough guys on both sides of the law. Matt Damon gives the best performance of his career as the creepy and conceited young wiseguy Colin Sullivan who becomes the protege of south Boston's biggest gangster: ageing sociopath Frank Costello, played by Nicholson. Costello secretly sponsors Colin through police academy to become his personal executive-class snitch on the inside. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio is William Costigan, a moody kid with a brace of uncles known to the authorities, who is now genuinely trying to make it over to the right side of the tracks with a career in the police. He is headhunted by senior intelligence officers, fatherly Martin Sheen and his attack-dog lieutenant Mark Wahlberg, who offer him a new opportunity: use his family connections and credibility to go into deep cover in Costello's gang.

It's a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, with Tony Leung and Andy Lau, and where that movie emphasised a cool and elegant symmetry between the doppelganger finks, with the storyline indirect, and the violence kept relatively low, Scorsese's movie dots the is, crosses the ts, stomps the skulls and puts Rolling Stones numbers on the soundtrack.

Damon and DiCaprio are nicely contrasted; where Sullivan is smooth of face and style, Costigan is resentful, hunched and clenched, as if wearing a wire coat hanger under his jacket. He just has to sit there and take it when he is harangued - very wittily - by Mark Wahlberg's magnificently abusive undercover cop Dignam, for no reason other than to subject him to a little forensic ball-busting. Costigan makes the mistake of coming back at him with a quotation from Hawthorne, and Dignam jeers: "Wassa matter - you don't know any Shakespeare?" Frank Costello, wearing his own learning lightly, at one stage taps his head with gravitas and growls: "Hey - heavy lies the crown!"
Everyone gets good lines in Monahan's screenplay, but the lion's share, understandably, goes to Nicholson himself, each witticism a diamond in the most dangerous rough imaginable. Having menacingly asked after the ailing mother of one of his courtiers, and been told that she is "on the way out", Nicholson grins as if receiving good news. "We all are!" he declaims. "Act accordingly!"

And he certainly does, growling and snarling like an aggregate of the previous dark destroyers in his career, and incidentally finishing the movie with a half-moon gout of blood on his lower lip, as if reprising his Joker from the Batman movies. What a barnstormer this is from Nicholson, the kind of performance that no one else could possibly do, but which he could probably do in his sleep: and in his more heavy-lidded moments gives the impression of actually doing - without it ever being less than fantastic value for money. At one stage, musing angrily on the presence of a suspected rat in his ranks, Nicholson actually does an impression of a rat: two big front teeth suddenly pop out over his lower lip and that great snub nose twitches malevolently. I can't see Pacino or De Niro getting away with it. Whistler once said his exorbitant fees were not for the hours' work at the easel, but for the experience of a lifetime, and that is what we are getting with Nicholson: a great screen actor whose charisma has, through the decades, rolled over like a recurring lottery jackpot. Will the 69-year-old Nicholson get a part like this, with a director like this, ever again?

As for Scorsese, it is a return to the fluent, muscle-flexing movie-making with a visible directorial signature. Gangs of New York, though very good, was atypical. This is an unapologetic, unironised crime-family drama, which the director puts over like a roundhouse punch. It certainly felt like a work from Scorsese's golden years, and even has a scene in an old-fashioned porn cinema, of the sort once patronised by Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and which surely ceased to exist long ago.

Fifth Game Review - Need for Speed: Undercover

The fifth and final game i have chosen to review is Need for Speed: Undercover the 12th installment in the popular racing game. Need for Speed: Undercover was released in Europe by EA on the 21st November 2008 on various platforms such as Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii, PSP and the Nintendo DS. The plot of the game is, the character is a police officer who goes undercover into the criminal underground of Tri-City. Which is a fictional city where the game is based in. The character has to complete dangerous jobs' and compete in races if you are to infiltrate the members of the illegal street racers and car thieves. After so long the character continues to prove himself as a brilliant street racer and wheel man. The further you get into the game the more you have to take out different criminal "friends".

Gameplay

This game features a new open world map that has a 100 miles of road and a large highway system that makes it the largest EA has created so far. The game has four environment's that consist of Palm Harbor, Port Crescent, Gold Coast Mountains and Sunset Hills. Them four boroughs all make up Tri-City. The longer highways make it more realistic. Also, unlike previous Need for Speed games, the whole map is open from the start of the game. In the game, the police system is similiar to what it was like in Most Wanted and Carbon. The bar graph that moves between blue and red which mean "Evade" and "Busted". Police tactics such as "road blocks" and "spike strips" all feature. The damage system also returns in this game and it's similiar to ProStreet. The only difference is the damage is only seeable but doesn't affect performance and is automatically repaired after every police pursuit or career race. The customisation of the cars is also quite similiar to ProStreet but the graphics and detail have been enhanced. The character can also earn reputation as they progress through the game by doing side missions or doing manuevers in a police chase.

Graphics

As soon as i started playing Undercover the first thing i noticed was the terrible frame rate in a game that's had a dependable series. I also noticed while driving through the city, it was bathed in fog and parts of it will suddenly appear as if it had just been teleported. In general the city is boring and that includes the design. Full Motion Video is used in the game but the acting is rather over the top by Maggie Q who plays Chase Linh in the game. Their acting in this game as if their expecting an award of some sort.


Sound

Undercover does boast a very good soundtrack in the game. Well known music artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Pendulum and the Prodigy all have songs featured on the soundtrack. So the strong soundtrack that has plenty of variety for everyone. Although if you're playing the game on the Xbox you can always just use your own music which is probably the best option for some people. The sound effects are good with all the car sounds such as squealing tires to the engine revving at high speed. However the sound effects for collisions are pretty much silent as if their not dangerous. The little voice over work that is done, mostly from police dispatchers and police who radio for help is pretty good.


Conclusion

If you like racing games in general then this game is worth a rental at least. In my opinion there's too much to do and is probably missing something that could have made this game one of the best around.

Fourth Game Review - Sonic the Hedgehog

The fourth game i have chosen to review is Sonic the Hedgehog the flash game based on the hugely popular game for the Sega Mega Drive. Apart from the flash version of the game, it can also be played on platforms such as Game Boy Advance, Xbox Live Arcade and the PC. In the game you can chose 4 possible characters and 2 secret characters to unlock in a single player game. The characters are Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna and Cream the Rabbit. The game features a password saver so you don't have to start the game from the beginning all the time. The main object of the game in Sonic's perspective is to prevent Dr. Robotnik from collecting six of the Chaos Emeralds in order to rule South Island. You must go through six zones that each has three stages or acts until he confronts Dr. Robotnik for the last time in the Final Zone.

Graphics

The side-scrolling levels in Sonic the Hedgehog are very vibrant colourful. The characters, in general, are good sized although due to the graphics they have been cropped to account for the small screen dimensions. The frame rate is also OK. Overall the gameplay is satisfying and easy to get into. The levels aren't that hard to complete but collecting a decent amount of gold rings is also a good challenge.

Interface

As its a flash game the controls are very simple to remember. The left and right keys are to move, to make Sonic jump you use the space bar on the keyboard. Also, to spin dash you have to press and hold down the arrow key and then press the space bar.

Gameplay

The game play is satisfying and easy to get into although the graphical issues do break it which is to expect as it is only a flash game version. As you need high scores to access the bonus levels the framerate struggles to keep up and it's impossible to enjoy the design, visuals and the music because you keep losing lives due to it not being able to keep up.

Sound

There isn't much to say concerning the sound apart from the music and sound effects are identical to the actual game. The jumps, explosions and rings are all the same and the music is still the same from Green Hill Zone to Scrap Brain Zone to Dr. Robotniks theme. Only difference is the sound effects on the menu screen.

Conclusion

Overall the flash version of this classic is well worth playing. It's just as enjoyable as playing it on the Sega Mega and it will bring the memories of playing this brilliant game all back.