Do Trailers Give Away Too Much?

This is something that has been on my mind as of late.

"A good trailer is harder to make then a three minute short film"
- Peter Jackson

The thing I've been finding that trailers are giving far too much away and pretty much doing more damage to the film then good. the two genres that suffer the most from this are comedy's and action based films.

For example, if you saw the red brand trailer for Bruno then you saw about 80% of the gags in the film. which makes me think, is other 20% worth my $10? No. a film like Bruno humour is based on shock value and not knowing what he will do next. So bringing out a trailer that showed so much is a mistake and completely kills the re-view factor that helps the film to have a good box office.

With action films, the try to tell the basics of the story though quick edits and then try to end the trailer with "the money shot". The shot that cost the most and when you see it on the big screen it will blow you away, but most of the times it doesn't, the shot is already shown and the surprise factor of the shot is ruined and makes me wonder, why are filmmakers shooting themselves in the foot? Can the story itself sell the movie? and not some effect shot?

The first Star Wars prequel got the trailer right, it had a slow start then cut to fast edits and left the viewer deaf and blind by the time the films title appeared on screen. the drawback to this was that people thought that the film was going to be completely different from what they saw and kind of left a bitter taste in your mouth.

Here are some films that I feel gave too much away in their trailers:

• Pearl Harbour - that shot of the bomb dropping was amazing but when it happened in the film it just made me go meh, I had seen it, it hadn't changed so what was there for me to take away from it now?
• The Dark Knight - the only complaint in this trailer is the truck shot, yes it is awesome but i would have preferred to have been taken by surprise and caught off guard while in the cinema.
• Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever - the trailer gives away the ending.
• Step Brothers - same faults as Bruno, just gave too much away.
• Independence Day - watch the trailer and you can pretty much skip the film
• Kingdom of Heaven - shows too many key shots from the siege, but I will admit that the Second International trailer that had the rock soundtrack is one of the best trailers ever made hands down, it's fast, loud and gets you excited for medieval combat.

So what films do you think got it right? Which ones were just poorly done?

Games I Love: "The Last Ninja 2"

Lets go way back reader, back to the 80's, well late 80's that is.

Back to a time when gaming computers couldn't render complex images like circles and instead used squares.

The game I will talk about today is my favourite game for the Commodore 64, and your opening display was this:

This was the concole I had before my NES and we used tapes to load our games. I still remember the command to start loading a tape, press "shift" + "run stop" = "press play on tape" The counter on the tape would then load up to 10 or 11 and then you were presented again with the opening scene but with the name of the game you were loading, in this case "Last Ninja 2"

When I bought this game I had not played the first one. I actually bought it as part of a 4 in 1 series called "100% Dynamite." Which looked like this:

and here's my copy of the game itself:

Anyway, lets talk about the game.

The Last Ninja contains a blend of exploration, puzzle solving and combat. The object of the game is to journey to the palace of the evil Shogun Kunitoki to destroy him and retrieve the sacred scrolls. As the player progresses, Kunitoki's henchmen become more challenging as they learn the ways of the ninja.

The interface consists of the opponents' energy and collected inventory (on the right) and player's health (on the bottom). The world is viewed in an isometric perspective allowing the player to move in eight directions. Movements are relative to the direction Armakuni is facing but restricted to predefined paths (the scenery being inaccessible). Composure and precision must be used when navigating and jumping around obstacles, traps and fatal features of the terrain. By approaching and kneeling at certain landmarks, such as shrines to Buddha and water fountains, an indication of what to collect next is revealed. These items are often hidden in trees or bushes and flash shortly after a new screen has been entered.

Attack moves are executed by combinations of directional controls with the fire button for attacking the opponent's head, torso and legs. Weapons like the sword, nunchaku, staff, shuriken and smoke bombs, can be equipped.

So lets take a look at how the game look and played.

I know what you're thinking, "Paul where can I get this game today?" and the answer is yes. There are plenty of ways for you to play this amazing game.

It was re-released on Wii Virtual Console in Europe in April 2008 as the fifth Virtual Console C64 title, and in North America in February 2009 as one of the first three C64 titles.

But what if you don't have a Wii?

Well head over to The Last Ninja Archives, where they have the game, screenshots, and the soundtrack all ready for you to download.

Puffy64, who is known for making hard rock cover versions of old Commodore 64 games, released an online CD called Last Ninja 2 Tribute CD containing hard rocking interpretation of the musical score of Last Ninja 2: Back with a Vengeance, originally composed by Matt Gray. The album also contains one original tune by Puffy64 called Last Ninja 2 - Hymn.

Dragonforce is known to use the Last Ninja 2 theme as an introtape to their concerts.

Games I Love: Flashback

Flashback, released as Flashback: The Quest for Identity in the US, is a cinematic platformer developed by Delphine Software of France, a now defunct company, and published by U.S. Gold in United States and Europe, and Sunsoft in Japan. The game is listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling French game of all time.

Flashback was initially released for the Amiga in 1992, then ported to MS-DOS, Acorn Archimedes, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Nintendo in 1993. CD-ROM versions of Flashback for the 3DO, Apple Macintosh, Atari Jaguar, CD-i, FM Towns, MS-DOS and the Sega CD were released during 1994 and 1995.

Originally advertised as a "CD-ROM game on a cartridge", the game features fully hand-drawn backdrops and all animation is rotoscoped, giving movements a fluidity unusual for the time, similar to that of the earlier Prince of Persia. The rotoscoping technique of Flashback was invented independently of Prince of Persia, and used a more complicated method of first tracing video images onto transparencies.

The game is set in the year 2142 and details the journey of Conrad B. Hart, an agent for the Galaxia Bureau of Investigation, and his attempts to recover his lost memory to save the world.

By default, the DOS version has an extended introductory sequence and more minor cut scenes than the Amiga version, such as when picking up items. In the Amiga version, the user can see these scenes by enabling them (although with few seconds of delay every time the animations load) or by playing the game entirely from the hard drive. The Amiga version also had an option to zoom in on the action whenever Conrad opens fire. Due to criticism of the look, it was removed from all other versions. The message that Conrad writes in the ending was also different in this release.

The game was originally released on 3.5" floppy disk for MS-DOS. Re-releases on CD-ROM for 3DO, CD-i, PC, and Sega CD featured redone pre-rendered cinematic FMVs with audible dialog and sound. The Sega CD port also has voice work for gameplay and CD tracks for each level. The Jaguar port has the title screen that these ports have, but the music is different and the look of the title screen is all that it has from the CD releases.

In North America, the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo and Sega CD versions featured a Marvel Comics comic book within the manual in order to explain the initial story. The PAL Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo releases (There was no Mega-CD version.) omitted the comic and instead featured a textual prologue.

The Super Nintendo port was also censored, with New Washington's bar becoming a cafe and Death Tower being renamed Cyber Tower.

Flashback was and still appears to be mistaken as a sequel to Eric Chahi's videogame Another World. Although both games do share similarities, the storylines are completely different, and there is no major connection between two characters in Flashback. Flashback is mistaken as a sequel for the following reasons:

• Both games are published by Delphine.
• Another World also utilizes rotoscoped animation. Flashback's graphics are similar to Another World, but the gameplay backgrounds are digitized hand-done drawings, while the vectors are pre-rendered compared to Another World, which featured real-time polygons all over, though the 3DO port did have digitized hand-painted backgrounds.
• The gameplay of Flashback is based on Another World, but Flashback has step-based controls and also had a heads-up display while Another World didn't have any of these.

So this has been released on the IPhone and I really think you should check it out if you already haven't

Something That Annoys Me About Game Distribution...

I've been gaming since I was about 5 years old, playing Barbarian & Flimbo's Quest on the C64.  And for years I have bought my games at a video game store. It has only been in the past 5 years that I began to import games, and it is only in the past 12 months that I have used digital distribution.

I was on a Portal 2 thread this morning on GAF when I came across this post. Yeah I know, if this is true, WTF Gamestop?

I know that every gamer out there has their own personal horror story with Gamestop, and their stupid pre-order system, but I think this is one step too far. Are Gamestop that afraid of VALVe that they won't promote their digital platform or a PS3 game in case in the slightest of chances that the people will continue to just use Steam for their games? I know that some will, it's only natural.

Sorry for this small rant...

Back From The Park - Thoughts About Crysis 2

I finally sat down during my time off and both played and finished Crysis 2. I did play the first few levels of the game when it first launched but the DX10 version had some annoying glitches, such as a flickering effect that took place in any outdoor day time scenes. I recently found out that the reason for this glitch was because I am using a dual graphic card setup. So a patch was released and I downloaded it, and it fixed it.

So when I knew I had two weeks’ vacation coming up, I always book the week of E3 off, I looked at my PC pile of shame list and decided it was time to take another crack at Crysis 2. For those who are wondering, I played the game on the normal difficulty. I played it at 1920x1200 and all settings set to “Extreme”.

My setup is:

• Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 960(3.20GHz,4.8GT/s,8MB)
• 12GB 1333MHz (3x4GB) Tri Channel Memory
• Dual 2GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card

From the outset Crysis 2 is story driven. Unlike Crysis, which has the bare basics of a story, which was purely for setup, Crysis 2 is set after an Alien invasion of New York City, and the heavy story hand of the game is played from the beginning. The first Crysis biggest fault was for about two thirds of the game, the gameplay was open and the story was slowly told to you. For the final third the game became extremely linear and the story was way too heavy handed and it totally spoiled the final act of the game. Crysis 2 finds a far better balance between story and gameplay, it’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a big step forward from Crysis.

When Crysis 2 was been previewed and promoted Crytek spoke about the game been set in an “Urban Jungle” and would bring New York’s vertically into the gameplay. While there are moments in the game when you are about twenty to thirty stories above ground and you can see the war between the humans and Aliens been fought below you, I much preferred the open world feel of Crysis then the vertical world feel of Crysis 2. I do love the little details of Alcatraz grabbing onto a ledge and pulling himself up, or seeing his feet kick up when you are knocked down by an explosion.

The controls have evolved too. In Crysis you use the middle mouse button to access your suits abilities and while you can still do this in Crysis 2. The three main abilities have been mapped to the keyboard, “Q = Armour”, “E= Stealth”, “Shift = Power”. At first I found it a little awkward to get use to the keyboard mapping and continued to use the middle mouse button to access the abilities. That was until I was in the middle of a battle and then the keyboard mapping clicked with me. When I was using the middle mouse button I generally or naturally stopped moving to take a look at what I was selecting, but the keyboard mapping I found the battle sections became far batter and felt more natural as I was able to easy switch depending on the situation.

The main issue with Crysis 2 are the set pieces. The game pretty much boils down to you entering an three or four levelled area, and pretty much get from A to B, and sometimes for variety you may to do X, Y & Z  on the way to B. Yes it is cool and impressive to run up three flights of stairs and then jump out of a window and deliver a crushing fist stomp to your enemy. But I much preferred the openness of the first Crysis that really allowed you to create you our path. Crysis 2 does give you a larger path to traverse then most first person shooters today, it’s just feels more linear compared to the first game.

Photo Blog: Dublin 22nd July 2011

Was in Dublin last week for the Irish Premier of Horrible Bosses and I had a full day to myself so I took out my Sony Alpha and took some pics

Hope you enjoy them.

For the complete set CLICK HERE for the slideshow via Flickr

What Games Define Gaming For You?

If someone were to walk up to you and they had no comprehension of games and gaming culture; and they asked you to define what games define games. Which one would you choose?

I know, an extremely tough question to answer. Where do you even start? Do you go back to the 70's and explain Pong or Pac Man? Or maybe the 80's with Nintendo coming to the forefront, and use a game like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda, or even Metroid?

So what I am asking the community to do is pick 3 games. They can be any genre, from any gaming generation, and from any platform.

So here's my question: What three games define gaming for you and why?

What Is Your "30 Minutes To Kill" Game?

I was thinking the other day, what game do I always play just to kill time? For example, I was waiting for the Arsenal versus Liverpool game to kick off this morning and I had just over 30 minutes to wait so I turned on that game that I always turn to in times of boredom - Team Fortress 2.

I know most people debate whether Halo or Call Of Duty give the better online experience, sometimes the Battlefield series is thrown in there too, usually by the PC community; and while I will admit that all those games are great online in their own way. I have always found Team Fortress 2 to be the most accessible and most fun, and isn't that the whole point of a game? To be fun?

When I decided to get back into PC gaming back in 2007, I decided to first get myself a laptop, and then I went online and asked around what should I get for it, and about 99% of people said The Orange Box, and through this I was introduced to Steam.

So I played through Portal, then the 3 Half Life Games, and then I went to play something else. It wasn't till about late 2008 till I first sat down and played Team Fortress 2, and since then it has been my go to game for boredom. I love the cartoonish art style that was inspired by by the art of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell.

I don't have to explain to anyone what the game is about. I love how well the game is supported, the PC version has been patched over 190 times while the XBOX 360 has 4 patches (the last one on July 21st 2009) and I don't even think that the PS3 version has even been patched. Oh Yeah, and the game is completely free.

So my question to you dear reader is, What Is Your "30 Minutes To Kill" Game?

Is Too Much Of A Good Thing Actually A Bad Thing?

Yesterday I got the blu-ray of "Senna" which is so far my favorite film of the year. When I put on the disc last night to watch it, I noticed that this disc also included the "Extended Cut"; since I had already seen the cinema cut I figured I might as well check it out.

The cinema cut of "Senna" is give or take 100 minutes, which is a fine length for a documentary. The extended cut runs to nearly 3 hours. The main difference between the two cuts is what is know as "talking heads." The original cut of the film featured only archive footage and voice over and it created a really strong emotional narrative, because of the talking heads the extended cut feels clumsy editing and suffers from poor pacing.

When I originally wrote about Senna, I said that:

"Where Kapadia's 'Senna' documentary works is in its ability to appeal to wide array of audience members. For the fans of the Formula 1 racing there is a copious amount of footage documenting select races and the events taking place around his career. Rather than use cutaway segments to show various celebrities and sports men and women discuss their memories and recollections of Senna, Kapadia instead utilizes a voice-over to accompany the archive images on-screen. By allowing the voice-over of the various people associated with Senna (most notable this consists of McLaren's team principal Ron Dennis, his mother, father and sister, F1 team Doctor Sid Watkins, and Brazilian commentator Reginaldo Leme) to supplement the footage, it both preserves he power of the on-screen image and provides the audience with additional information regarding the situation or event that is being presented.

To the regular viewer, you feel emotionally attached to a man who affected the lives of millions positively in his home country of Brazil. A perfect mix of a movie, in which you can watch as either an auto-racing fan, or someone who has never heard of Senna; It delivers on a highly emotional level, surrounding you in the warmth that he brought to many."

And this I still believe to be true. If the extended cut has shown me anything, it's just how perfect the original cut was.

Do Review Articles Really Matter If There Is A Score At The End?

This is something that has always bothered me about the whole game journalist scene. If you spend your time writing a review for a game and it's a game you really liked and want people to play and it receives a score of (for example) 8.0. Yet when someone opens the article on IGN and just scrolls down to the bottom and sees the 8.0 and goes: "8.0?!? Why so low?"

When did a 8.0, on a scale of 1 to 10 be considered low?

Maybe it's a hype thing, maybe it's because we as consumer receive too much hype for a game, and this leads to an expectation that, if "IGN keep writing about it then it must get a 10 or an 9.0 at least." I know that sites like IGN need articles to create traffic so that they can create revenue and pay their employees.

But what if IGN just ditched the review score. As a site across the board just said "No to scores" and if someone wants to know if they should buy a game, then they can read the review article and then make an enlightened decision instead of basing their purchase on a number and then if the game fails to meet their high expectations because of the knowledge passed on to them by that number with its added plus or minus they feel let down by the (a) the reviewer and (b) the site.

Those First 30 Minutes.....

A friend of mine wanted to get into PC gaming so I gifted him The Orange Box as a "Welcome to PC Gaming" gift. He had never played any of the Half Life series but he had heard a lot about them and how good they are.

So a few days later I was chatting to him and asked him what he thought about the gift I sent. he loved Portal and Team Fortress 2, but found Half Life 2 (HL2) too slow and nothing happens. My first response was to raise my eyebrow and think, slow? nothing happens? Did you play the same game I did?

I know that HL2 doesn't have action from the start, but that's a good thing. You are drawn into the world, from watching and listening to all the other passengers, been told to pick up the can, to when you walk out for the first time into the square and seeing the whole 1984 vibe the place gives off, to walking through the housing complex.

So my question to you dear reader is: Is a game better to have a big set piece opening? like the ship invasion at the start of Halo? or the opening of Uncharted 2? or do you think that games would be better served with a slower opening 30 minutes? Like HL2 or Okami?

The Point Of All This...

The main reason I am starting this blog is so that I can have a single place online for the majority of my writing that exist online. I know most of them have been now deleted since 1UP has shut down and has no content past the main page.

So at first this will be a collection point, and I hope to add to it over time.

Here you will find, film reviews, game reviews and just thoughts about everything and anything that comes to my mind.