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Dylan Chan
Reviews
Escape from Monkey Island (2000)
That's the second best Monkey Island game I've ever seen!
Ahhh the Monkey Island series, easily definable from other adventure series in the genre by it's witty sardonic humour, flavourful Caribbean back drop and... well... the monkeys.
Escape follows the same tried and true Monkey Island design that we've all come to know and love, albeit utilising 3d graphics and a new inventory and command system.
Gone are the days of point and click mouskateering, command and inventory panels. Escape uses the Grim Fandango GRIME graphics engine which is an improvement over the high res SVGA "pencil drawing" graphics of Curse, and continues the trend of past Monkey Island teams to utilise the latest technological advances in each new instalment of the series.
So how does it compare to past Monkey Island titles? Well, the humour is still there, Dominic Armato returns to lend his voice talents to the main role of Guybrush, and he lends the perfect bumbling and slightly naive touch to the well written script. Similarly, the scores of other characters are well represented and Lucasarts should be commended on the high level of authentic acting talent recruited.
The game play is typical wacky fair. The difficulty level is kept down due to the somewhat linear fashion that the game unfolds in. None the less, one is presented with suitably complex challenges and plenty of in-depth exploring will be required in order to complete the game. Lucasarts have also expanded upon the action sub-games within Escape. In MI 1 we were introduced to insult sword fighting and Curse continued this and added a kind of pirate ship shoot em up for good measure. Escape goes further and you'll find yourself engaging in monkey martial arts and cliff top diving.
The graphics are well rendered and I'm pleased to report that the blockiness and jagged edges some of us associate with low res 3d animations are not present in Escape from Monkey Island. The characters are cartoony cute, but not so ridiculous that you would mistake Escape for a Nintendo 64 game.
All in all Escape is a well made game, perhaps a bit short, but never the less a lot of fun, it will be interesting to see where they go after this, it's hard to imagine that the designers of the next sequel will be able to change much when it comes to the graphics or inventory systems, but if history is anything to go by, major changes are install. I for one can't wait!
Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (2000)
woosh, woosh... flog that dead horse!
The Star Trek merchandising bandwagon has been kicking around for a while now, and Voyager - Elite Forces is the latest in this long line of inter-galactic offerings.
The plot in Elite Forces is typical Voyager fare. Ship breaks down, ship needs new parts, parts located on a dangerous planet/space station/mysterious alien ship... hijinx ensue... The story and game settings are well varied and reflect the complexity of the overall plot. Indeed, Elite Force's best feature is it's story line and adherence to the classic TV Star Trek "feel".
Written around the ID Quake 3 engine, the levels and enemies on this First Person Shooter are superbly detailed and generate considerable atmosphere. I was reminded of First Contact more than a few times battling the Borg in EF. Of course with such impressive eye candy comes a price. Don't expect to be sucking down the frames playing on full detail, although truth be told the action never became so furious that I was hindered by the choppy play.
The weapons on offer are fairly uninspiring. There is of course the standard Federation issue hand-held phaser, the heavier assault rifle, and a number of other grenade, rocket launching and lightning gun clones borrowed from Quake 3. The main problem with the entire spread of weapons is that they all basically do the same thing in the same number of shots. Given that there is very little tactical advantage in using a varied selection as one might in Quake 3.. inevitably you play the entire game using the same gun.
The game itself is far too short, the levels are designed in the most rigid linear fashion I have ever seen in an FPS. You _must_ follow the same path, any attempted diversions or branch offs are stymied by barred doors and unyielding containment field. Consequently level completion can be achieved in surprisingly short time as it is simply a matter of following the corridor from point A to point B.
The first few levels offer a respite to the "keep shooting till their dead" strategy that dominates FPS type games. The mission objectives are cleverly designed and interact with the storyline well. However in later levels the gameplay returns to the enemy swarming, click the fire button as fast as possible action that we know all too well.
Elite Forces is not a bad game, it has a strong story line and eye popping graphics. The levels in the first half of the game are uniquely different and clever in their approach. Never the less, I felt a bit cheated at the speed in which I was able to finish the game and consequently the replayability factor is quite low. Similarly, the game play wasn't all that I had hoped for, some more battles with the Scavengers who showed a decent amount of AI, taking cover behind crates and the like would have been nice. The swarming berserker rush of mechanoids and oversized bug creatures in the latter half of the game loses lustre very quickly.
The game stays true to the TV series, something the nerds will appreciate. If that kind of thing doesn't bother you.. well, it's still good for a couple of days worth of entertainment..
Diablo II (2000)
Got a spare 3 months??
or 4... At least I think that's how long I spent playing Diablo II in every spare moment I could find, I'm not sure, I kinda lost track of time for a bit.
The concept behind making Diablo II so popular is ridiculously simple. Make an engine that can generate nearly infinite numbers of uniquely different magical items and people will play until the end of time trying to obtain a sword or a suit of armour that's just that little bit better than what you already have.
The stories and cut scenes that drive the game forward and link the various Acts are superbly done and contribute in some way to dispelling the "nothing but a clickfest" label that the Diablo games have been cast as.
Many spells and abilities are only available at level 30 or above and to fully appreciate these players are encouraged to move on to nightmare and hell modes in order to fully develop their characters. Indeed, the most powerful weapons and items are only available in these harder game modes and because of this Diablo2's replayability factor is very high.
The 4 character classes are both well balanced and varied enough that strategies that prove effective for one character class often prove disastrous for another. While Necromancers and Barbarians are traditionally the dominant classes, Blizzard has gone some way to leveling the playing field with their patch. The introduction of the D2 expansion pack also promises to introduce more characters and levels. The future certainly looks bright.
Diablo II is disarmingly addictive and it comes as a breath of fresh air in a crowded field of first person shooters and real time strategies that after a while begin to blend together in mimetic mediocrity.
Just remember to give your mouse hand a chance to recover every couple of hours....
Paradise (1982)
It's all about Phoebe...
Okay, I admit it. The only reason I rented this film was to see the gorgeous Phoebe Cates and those nude scenes which seemed to have gained more fame (or infamy?) than the actual film itself.
As many others have pointed out, this film borrows heavily from the Blue Lagoon but somehow manages to strip the emotion and warmth out of the formula.
I wandered through this movie totally oblivious to the death of the parental characters and I audibly yawned when Joffrey the minder died. Too much time is spent wasted on ridiculously stupid chimp scenes which one could over-intellectualise and proclaim as being a raw and uninhibited metaphor of the lives of Sarah and David, but in reality are there for cheap gags. As a result the movie seems too short even though you get the distinct feeling you have been sitting, watching it for a long time.
The continuity and time-span of Paradise seems horribly distorted. By the end of the movie you would swear that the two "cast-aways" had been lost out in the desert sea for no more than a couple of weeks. However, when Sarah conceives a child (towards the end of the movie) and she feels it kick in her womb (perhaps 20 minutes later) , you realise that the time span of the movie has been horribly compressed. As a result, I was left feeling baffled and rather surreal. There was no sense of extended isolation, self discovery or sincere empathy towards the characters as they never really seem to be in danger. Similarly, Paradise does not, nay cannot emulate the irony of Return to the Blue Lagoon, where Civilization is portrayed as the great destroyer or unmaker. The characters in The Blue Lagoon are wholly dependent on their little island, where as the oasis in Paradise seems like nothing more than a stop-over enroute. It's sad that it is nothing more than a rip off of The Blue Lagoon that misses the critical factors that made The Blue Lagoon so good.... but that's what it is.
In reality there is only one reason why you would want to watch this movie, and that is for the nude scenes of Phoebe Cates.. and trust me, they give the movie legs.