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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Underwold Awakening

Okay So I've tried once before to do a movie review and I just found it hard and complicated, the movie in question Harold and Kumar in 3D.  I didn't post it for a good reason, mainly being that I had rewrote it 4 times before saying "Eh, screw it".  But here I am again like like a teenage boy at his favorite porn site wanting to do more than look at the oh so pretty pictures.

Selene is back!  And better than ever.  More death is being indiscriminately dealt in more unrelenting ways than in any previous installments of the franchise.  For those of you who don't know Underworld is a Vampire vs. Werewolf movie franchise that stars Kate Beckinsale as the vampire huntress Selene.  Selene is what is called a Death Dealer, think of a Spartan from Halo in vampire form.  Needless to say she is badass beyond belief and has all of the "qualifications" to get the job done.

The first two movies focused around her love affair Scott Speedman's character, Michael Corvin, who also happens to be the long lost descendent of Alexander Corvinus, the father of Vampires and Werewolves.  The meet after she is hunting a Werewolf in a hospital where he works, he gets bitten, but she spares his life because something about him seems "different".  They later encounter each other again, somehow he gets bitten by a vampire and becomes a new breed of immortal, a hybrid of the two.  Long story short he's strong, they stop the war to be temporarily hunted by both sides.

Michael as a hybrid.
In the Second movie, Underworld Evolution, they must stop the first vampire, Marcus, from awakening his brother, William, the first Werewolf.  They pretty much get hunted by Marcus while trying to be the first to reach the tomb where William is locked away.  On the way there they meet Alexander Corvinus, who allows her to drink his blood knowing that it will give her awesome abilities (like survive in the sun and resurrect other vampires).  They find the tomb, fight toe to toe with Marcus and William and eventually win.  Hooray!  Peace at last?  Not quite.

So rise of the Lycans, while important, does nothing for Selene or her plight.  What it does do however, is show how the whole war started between the two immortal factions.  Pretty cool, but not super important here.
Movie poster of the original Underworld.
Sometime after the events of Evolution humans are made aware of both Vampires and Lycans.  Their response was not one of joy.  They ended all conflicts between each other and decided to start hunting down the immortals and use their own weapons and ammunition against them.  In the middle of the conflict Selene and Michael try to escape but are otherwise prevented from doing so, starting the events of Underworld Awakening, and coincidentally starting the spoiler warning of this blog post.  Seriously though, if you don't want to ruin the events of the movie and you're going to see it, skip to the bottom, get the rating and go see it.

So Selene is captured, they are taken to a genetics company, the one who first discovered the immortals, Antigen for study.  Twelve years of so later she is freed by another who is being held by Antigen, she thinks that it is Michael.  Selene escapes and starts a hunt through the city for them.  During her hunt she meets another vampire named David, shortly after they meet Selene gets a vision of her rescuer being cornered by "Lower Lycans", Lycans who have de-evolved to a wild beast like state.  They go to rescue and find a little girl and not Michael.  On the way back to Davids coven they are further attacked by the Lower Lycans and the girl, Eve, reveals her true nature as a hybrid and Selenes daughter.

Quint Lane, Giant Lycan.
Once they arrive at the coven Davids father, Thomas, immediately recognizes Selene as a Death Dealer and says shes not welcome, this sparks a debate amongst the coven of whether or not to restore the Vampire name to its former glory or hide like dogs.  Selene learns from David the events of "The Purge", when the Vampires and Lycans were hunted down, and decides that she won't stay and endanger the coven.  Antigen is uncovered to be Lycans trying to create a new race of Super Lycan that is immune to silver, but they need Eve's hybrid blood in order to do so.  They attack the nest and reveal the first Super Lycan, Quint Lane, the son of Dr. Jacob Lane, Antigens chief researcher, and the one who uncovered the Vampires and Lycans.

They get away with Eve and Selene decides to enlist the aid of a human, Detective Sebastian, and they launch an assault on Antigen to get back Eve.  Needless to say a lot of badass fight scenes ensue.  Dr. Lane is trying to harvest the genes of Eve to use on the new Lycan race but because of Selene is forced to relocate.  Selene see's this happening but Quint steps in to interfere.  Lane takes Eve into a transport van but Sebastian is there to intercept and disable it, Eve gets free and starts to go toe to toe with Lane, who has also been experimenting by injecting himself with Eve's genes.  Meanwhile Selene finds the mysterious Subject 0, Michael, in a third Antigen lab and frees him before going to fight Quint for the final time.  They have and epic fight but Selene eventually outsmarts him by making him revert to human form and cutting open his chest and putting in a silver grenade and blowing him up form the inside out.  Even eventually kills Dr. Lane by ripping his neck out.

Eve, Selene's Daughter.
At the end of the movie Selene, Eve, and David all run to the roof to try and catch Michael but he is nowhere to be seen and Selene can be heard saying that despite the humans now knowing of Vampires and Lycans neither race will be destroyed forever and that the war will continue.  Underworld 5?  Only if they can do it right.

Overall the plot was really cool, but nothing fantastically original.  What I found to coolest is that you actually find yourself feeling sad for the Vampires after what the humans did to them, essentially making humans one of the bad guys.  However they did do all their twists right to make a good action horror movie, the action is intense as one would expect from an Underworld movie.  Plenty of gunplay and unique weapons that only a Vampire would even dare attempt to use show up again, which is far from a bad thing, I mean, at least their being creative.  The score for the movie only helps to add to the already dark scene for the Vampires due to its heavy undertones that make the suffering feel all too real. 

Stephen Rea as Dr. Jacob Lane.

The acting is actually pretty good, Stephen Rea (V for Vendetta) does an exceptional job at Dr. Lane and really can be said to steal the show.  Kate Beckinsale, though nothing super unique, shows just how much she's settled into the role of Selene, by acting on of the most comfortable and non-forced roles I have seen since Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark.  Theo James and Michael Ealy both do fantastic jobs in their supporting roles as David and Sebastian respectfully, and I really hope that they make appearances in the next Underworld movies, should they be made.

Overall I liked it, and thought it was just a fun movie, if you like traditional non-sparkly vampires check it out.  If you like good action movies check it out.  You'll be sure to get your moneys worth.  Also don't be too concerned if you haven't seen the previous movies, theres a nice recap at the beginning of Awakening for you.  And with that being said, Underworld Awakening gets 8 dead Lycans, out of 10.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Top 5 Games I played in 2011

Okay so sorry I haven't posted in a while but my laptop died, and well, I've been trying to fix it.  But here we are anyways, I see the error in my ways and I now say, lets get on with the show!!

As everyone else feels a compulsorily need to spew things about how certain games are better than others in a sense of scoring and ranking that are so convoluted they don't give a true sense of the fun that resides in them, especially when looking at the last years games in review.  I have hence decided to do the same, only mines all based on level of fun and not music, voice acting, or lack there of, and graphics.  These are games that I just enjoyed and I could really care less about what was wrong because they were just fun to play.  So a heads up not all of these games came out last year, these are just my favorite ones that I picked up and played last year, all of which however I've never played before last year.

5) Warhammer 40k: Space Marine
If you don't know anything about W40K the biggest thing to take away from it is this: Space Marines are badass.  Seriously whats not to love about an army of dudes who are about 3 feet taller than normal humans wearing cars for body armor and cutting their enemies down with swords that more resemble a chainsaw than anything else.  And because Space Marine let you focus on playing as one of these titans of war it was sooooo worth playing through.  I'd even dare to say that it lets you feel more badass than when you curbstomp a locust playing Gears of War.  This with the combination of some seriously fun, yet difficult, online play makes for one really great game.

On top of that all there is a multitude of deadly weapons in you arsenal that it makes it difficult to choose what guns to go into combat with.  The single player story holds true to any setting in the 40K universe and the games feel is exact for setting the right mood.  All in all if this is one you were on the edge about whether or not to buy let this be your inspiration to get it, its well worth it.

4) Vanquish
For those of you who don't know the next generation of solider doesn't reside in some fancy training routine, bio-injections, or even some gun that can do it all.  It resides in a set of "Smart Armor" that not only lets is occupant access Terabytes of information on the battlefield but also allows them to survive in a multitude of environments.  And that, my friends, is exactly what Vanquish is shooting for.  For those of you who don't know Vanquish is about a new weapons platform that gets its first real test of a combat situation when Earth gets threatened by some douche with a robot army, and since you're in the weapons platform, you gotta stop him.  Pretty cool huh?  Or it would be if it wasn't like many other Sci-Fi titles in the world today. 

What really sets Vanquish apart is the game mechanics and how they all revolve around the central idea of the armor you're wearing.  For example you can slide to maneuver quickly, all of you're guns are one gun that can rearrange itself due to carbon-nano polymers, and it can even inject you with concentrated adrenaline to slow down time.  This plus the awesome futuristic setting, of a probably future, makes the game rather believable.  The game has a ton of replay value if for no other reason than because how many games are this fast paced as a Third Person Shooter.  All in all this game is fantastic and comes highly recommended.  Oh and did I mention its made by the same team who made Phantasy Star?

3) Dragon Age 2
 The one reason I love and hate BioWare is that because their games are just too fantastic, for the most part (SW:TOR was a little disappointing to me), and Dragon Age 2 was no exception.  Though I did buy the game a little later than others did I thoroughly enjoyed every last minute of it.  The game shares the same name and setting as DA:Origins, but the similarities stop there.  Combat is completely different, the story structure has changed entirely from one giant overarching story to one overarching story with about three sub-stories built into it.  Hawkes decisions and actions completely change depending on what your gender and class combination's are and the game play is exciting all the way through.

The thing I would have to say that works best about it is the lack of freedom to travel outside the city, for the most part.  It's kind of a peculiar thing to say but it works, it really helps the story focus on Kirkwall and Kirkwall alone.  With the combination of some truly awesome endings depending on how you go about a couple of the major story intersections Dragon Age 2 is the perfect game for anyone who likes fantasy RPG's.

2) Skyrim
Bethesdas newest installment into The Elder Scrolls series hardly needs any introduction, base description, or even a recommendation to buy it.  If you're a fan of The Elder Scrolls you've already gotten it, if you think you might like it you've already played it and have probably bought it if you have the means to play it.  Its no wonder that it would end up here, or even as to why its here, its a great game.  Rarely does a game come about that honestly offer almost 400 hours of gameplay and deliver, but Skyrim did, and it did a damn good job at it too.

The side quests are fun and entertaining, some of the errands are cool, despite being as cookie cutter as you can possibly be, and the Dragon Fights are top notch.  The unique and rare items are wondrously designed, character balancing is superb, and most importantly the game is done right.  Its a good day when a true single player game can hold up in an online multiplayer world, and not only stand its ground, but surpass its competition, when its competition are all multiplayer focused games.  Major props to Bethesda and major props to Skyrim.

1) RIFT
RIFT, the top game I played last year and the only MMO that I have ever thought was capable of standing a chance at beating WOW at its own game.  RIFT offers something truly unique that most other MMO's can't come close to matching, and that is quite simple: randomized server-wide, non-sponsored events.  Thats right, RIFT has a unique system that at any point in time an invasion can randomly occur in any zone and the players are the ones that must stop it by closing Rifts and defeating the boss.  The players also gain a currency for closing them and can use it to upgrade their items. 

The best part about RIFT though is the class system.  With only four classes to choose from and 10 specializations each character has a versatility that is almost unseen in any other game on the market today.  All classes can tank and almost all classes can heal making RIFT a truly unique MMO that stand about the rest.  If you haven't played RIFT yet, or are even wondering about it give it a shot, its only $20 and comes with a free month trial, this game is highly recommended.

So that is my top 5 games I've played of 2011, if you are looking for a time killer of any kind check em out, you'll get your moneys worth.  Hrm I wonder if next week I should divulge the top 5 things in entertainment I'm looking forward to this year?  Nah that would just be too stereotypical.  Well this week was fun, till next time guys.