Lately superhero movies have been all over. Recently you've had Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Punisher: War Zone and The Dark Knight. The latest movie in the superhero trend is X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
This movie tells the story of how the character of Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, came to be who he is. It starts off around the time of the Revolutionary War when Logan is still a child. He comes into his powers and winds up running off with his "brother" Victor Creed, played by Levi Schreiber. If you aren't familiar with the character of Victor Creed he is later known by the name Sabertooth.
During the credits we then see Logan and Victor fighting in most of the major wars of the last 100 years. Of course they can do this because they are both mutants and they have the ability to heal their wounds. The movie starts off with them both fighting in the Vietnam War and we see that Victor has become a bit bloodthirsty. They are then approach by William Striker. You first saw him in X2 and he is the man who gave Wolverine his claws and metal skeleton. He recruits them to be part of a group made up entirely of mutants. You've got The Blob, played by Kevin Durand, Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds, Kestrel, played by will.i.am, and Bolt, played by Dominic Monaghan.
Wolverine eventually decides to leave the group and settles off with a wife and a blue collar job. Without giving anything away I will say that he is thrust back into his old life and agrees to take part in a procedure to cover his skeleton with an indesctrubile metal called Adamantium. This is also where he gets his trademark metal claws.
We also get a small glimpse of a young Cyclops but he doesn't play a huge part in the movie. The only other character that we meet is Gambit. This is the one character that fans of the X-Men series had been waiting a long time for. He was supposed to be in the previous movies but for one reason or another they could never work him in. It was nice to see him but I would have liked it if he had a bigger part.
Now the movie is meant to center around Wolverine but that doesn't mean we couldn't have had some more development of the minor characters.
But saying that this movie was good. I will say that it was definitely better than X3 but not quite as good as X2 or the original X-Men. But if any character was going to make for a good solo movie it's Wolverine.
The acting is good all around. Hugh Jackman does his usual good job as Woleverine. But Liev Schrieber was a bit of a surprised for me. I didn't think he would be right for the role but he did a good job. The villain William Striker wasn't too different than he was in X2 but with a different actor playing the role it brought a bit of a different perspective to the part.
The special effects and fight scenes were done really well. There are some big explosions and set pieces that came off very well. Now I'm not hardcore into the comics so I can't really say if they fudged any of the details of any of the character's back stories. I have been told that they did but going into this with only a base knowledge help and I think I probably enjoyed it more than I would have otherwise.
Now one weird thing was Patrick Stewart makes a cameo as a younger Professor X. But instead of putting him for hours a makeup chair they used green screen and altered his appearance on the computer to make him look younger. As I said the special effects in this movie are great but as soon as he is on screen it is a very obvious green screen effect. It only lasts for a few moments but it's a little off putting.
Now there are going to be more of the origins movies coming out. The next new one in the works is X-Men Origins: Magneto and that is slated to come out in 2011. Also around the same time they are already planning X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2. There are also rumors of Storm getting her own movie but it is not listed in IMDB and the odds of them getting Halle Berry to play the role are slim to none.
So if you are a fan of the X-Men series then definitely watch this movie. If you just like superhero movies than again this is one to check out. I think it also has enough in it to satisfy fans of action or fantasy. This is a good entry in the X-Men franchise and helps to show that it still has some life in it. After X3 I, along with a lot of other people, thought that the franchise was dead. But Wolverine was able to bring the franchise back to where it was before.
My score: 7.5/10
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Game review: Far Cry 2
First off to start this review I have to say that I did not play the entire game. So my opinion is based on what I did play. So I am not going to give the game a score because I think it would be unfair to judge it without having played through it from beginning to end.
So why did I not play the game through? The main reason is I just got bored with it.
Far Cry 2 is the sequel to the popular shooter series that started on the PC a few years ago. In the original you play a character that is dropped on an island and you have to fight off waves of enemies and eventually you are granted special powers through genetic mutation. Later games in the series expanded on this giving you more powers and changing your character is several different ways. But Far Cry 2 hasn't gone with the previous formula.
In this game you are one of several different characters in some unnamed African country that is in the middle of a war. You are tasked to find and take out an arms dealer named The Jackal. But before you get there you contract malaria. So throughout the game you make friends with people that can supply you with medicine. I guess this is similar to the system used in the previous games but it doesn't really grant you any special powers.
So when the game starts you quickly find the thing that turned me off from this game, the transport. Far Cry 2 is not linear and has a pretty open world feel to it. So that means that you have to drive or walk from place to place. But even when you are driving you can spend 10 or 15 minutes just getting from one place to another. You are given a GPS and a map to help you but that doesn't change the distance you have to travel. Now along the way there is a good chance you will run across a guard post or a small group of enemies that you have to take out. This is annoying because your health can go down really quickly and sometimes ammo is a bit sparse. Now the game does not use the system that a lot of FPS games have used lately. Where you get hit a few times and the screen goes red so you hide for a few seconds and go back to normal. Far Cry 2 uses a traditional health bar. When your health gets really low you can hit a button and that will cause your character to dig a bullet out of their leg or arm or if they are on fire to put themselves out. Then you use a health pack, which in this game is a needle, to refill your health. This makes the game quite a bit harder but not impossibly so.
The guns in the game are pretty standard. You have everything from standard pistols to AK-47s and even rocket launchers. Early on in the game you are given a flamethrower and the flame physics in the game are pretty good. If you do it right you can start a fire and watch it spread over to your enemies. But most of the time it will just go out. The guns feel pretty good and do about as much damage as you'd expect in a game like this. But the most annoying thing is if you pick up an enemy's gun there's a good chance it will jam on you. You can try to fix it but there's a chance you won't be able to. So in a heated firefight this can really hurt you.
There is a shop in the game and the currency the game uses is diamonds. But what sucks is there are only so many in the game and they are hidden all over the place. Your GPS does have a tracker to help you find them but sometimes you'll wind up getting yourself shot up and using your ammo to get them.
I think this game had the potential to be a good open world shooter but the amount of time you have to spend getting from place to place just makes the game way too long for its own good. If you are a fan of the genre you can check it out but be prepared to see the inside of your car a lot more than the barrel of your gun.
So why did I not play the game through? The main reason is I just got bored with it.
Far Cry 2 is the sequel to the popular shooter series that started on the PC a few years ago. In the original you play a character that is dropped on an island and you have to fight off waves of enemies and eventually you are granted special powers through genetic mutation. Later games in the series expanded on this giving you more powers and changing your character is several different ways. But Far Cry 2 hasn't gone with the previous formula.
In this game you are one of several different characters in some unnamed African country that is in the middle of a war. You are tasked to find and take out an arms dealer named The Jackal. But before you get there you contract malaria. So throughout the game you make friends with people that can supply you with medicine. I guess this is similar to the system used in the previous games but it doesn't really grant you any special powers.
So when the game starts you quickly find the thing that turned me off from this game, the transport. Far Cry 2 is not linear and has a pretty open world feel to it. So that means that you have to drive or walk from place to place. But even when you are driving you can spend 10 or 15 minutes just getting from one place to another. You are given a GPS and a map to help you but that doesn't change the distance you have to travel. Now along the way there is a good chance you will run across a guard post or a small group of enemies that you have to take out. This is annoying because your health can go down really quickly and sometimes ammo is a bit sparse. Now the game does not use the system that a lot of FPS games have used lately. Where you get hit a few times and the screen goes red so you hide for a few seconds and go back to normal. Far Cry 2 uses a traditional health bar. When your health gets really low you can hit a button and that will cause your character to dig a bullet out of their leg or arm or if they are on fire to put themselves out. Then you use a health pack, which in this game is a needle, to refill your health. This makes the game quite a bit harder but not impossibly so.
The guns in the game are pretty standard. You have everything from standard pistols to AK-47s and even rocket launchers. Early on in the game you are given a flamethrower and the flame physics in the game are pretty good. If you do it right you can start a fire and watch it spread over to your enemies. But most of the time it will just go out. The guns feel pretty good and do about as much damage as you'd expect in a game like this. But the most annoying thing is if you pick up an enemy's gun there's a good chance it will jam on you. You can try to fix it but there's a chance you won't be able to. So in a heated firefight this can really hurt you.
There is a shop in the game and the currency the game uses is diamonds. But what sucks is there are only so many in the game and they are hidden all over the place. Your GPS does have a tracker to help you find them but sometimes you'll wind up getting yourself shot up and using your ammo to get them.
I think this game had the potential to be a good open world shooter but the amount of time you have to spend getting from place to place just makes the game way too long for its own good. If you are a fan of the genre you can check it out but be prepared to see the inside of your car a lot more than the barrel of your gun.
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