Friday From the Archives: Shanghai Knights (2003)

"I was at first hesitant to see this flick. While Shanghai Noon, successor to Shanghai Knights, is still a personal favorite of mine, Jackie Chan's small atrocity, The Tuxedo, left a sour aftertaste in my mouth. I was corrected in the errors of my ways quite quickly, however. Take Rush Hour 2, remove Chris Tucker with Owen Wilson, add a 1800's England flavor, and you've got essentualy a very similar movie. It's coincidently another Jackie Chan buddy picture, and it happens to be among the very best. Shanghai Knights utilizes Chan's signature action-comedy mix to create a film that's both breathtaking and hilarious at the same time. Fight scenes are excellent; some of Chan's best work can be found right here in America. And while Jackie's not a cunning linguist, Owen Wilson has the majority of dialogue to speak of, and, for the most part, does a respectable and commendable job. Their new female partner (played by the lovely Fann Wong) is excellent and does a commendable job as well. The comedy between and sometimes during the fight scenes is good; although nothing special, I found myself laughing quite frequently. Also, this flick's narrative was quite good, and I enjoyed the whole flavor of the movie. It all fits together like a fine glove in Shanghai Knights and easily results in one of Chan's finest American works yet."

Fan art.

Friday From the Archives: Die Another Day (2002)

I never used to detest this movie. In fact, I can remember enjoying Die Another Day quite thoroughly with my crew in the theater. But time, and a second viewing, have not been kind. I’m a fan of the Bond film series, but Die Another Day is just a disreputable mess. While the action is solid, and the special effects are on point, the plot is nonsensical garbage. I’ll see if I can sort this out: Bond is captured by the enemy in a secret mission in North Korea, and from there he goes to Cuba to follow some guy named Zao, back to England to trail Gustav Graves, and then to Iceland, presumably for no reason except that the setting is a neat place to film stuff. See, I sorted the narrative out. Well, mostly. But these things don't matter to me, and shouldn’t matter to you. Halle Berry does absolutely nothing for me, but that may be due to the fact that she is a movie star, and I’m a lowly student from the Midwest. I suppose that I’m digressing, aren’t I? I mean to say that she is clearly not very good in her role as Jinx, and together with Bond they are content to trade insipid sexual innuendos throughout the film, something that was immensely annoying onw my second time through. At times, Die Another Day seems to wonder if it wants to go a completely different direction than the past films, or if it wants to pay homage to them. Frankly, I couldn’t care enough to hope for either route. I give the film credit for some fun action sequences, a rare humorous dialogue or two, and Pierce Brosnan for at least trying to make Die Another Day anything else but a chore to slog through. Unluckily for him, he isn’t successful. Try to avoid this one, people.

A Brief Message From Our Sponsor

Preach on, Ricky Tan.

Curse of Completionism

I've been sitting for several hours this week trying to eek out those last few emblems for the Dreamcast uber-classic, Sonic Adventure. I'm not sure why I am doing this other than some emotional satisfaction as there are no rewards beyond that that I know of. Simultaneously, the Thrasher is in rare form (not rare for him, but for mortals) in doing his thing on 007: Everything or Nothing, achieving those remaining golds and platinums. Though there are rewards for completing those things, I am quite confident that he would be finishing these goals regardless.

Reflecting this phenomenon was an article on IGN, which can be found here: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/118/1186682p1.html

It asks the question, "When is a game complete?" This is much more difficult to answer than it used to be. What more can you do on Streets of Rage than perhaps completing it with all the characters? There are no tedious things to search for and collect, no Pavlovian beeping sound marking an achievement, no online play. It was easy to declare when you had finished a game.

Now things are different, and I can sympathize with the author of this article when he expresses a feeling of dread when encountering new games in that he knows that there will be a serious time commitment in completing all achievements (though not fully. I don't pay for X-Box Live so I cannot complete all achievements unless I am playing a fully off-line game).

How do you feel about this? I know for myself that a game that has had the fortune of becoming part of my collection will most likely stay a part of it (I cannot trade my games just as I cannot trade my children, if I had some. I have, however, lost some games but I can assure any potential suitor that I would not extend that parallel to potential offspring. They were Gameboy games, to be fair. Quite small). And being part of my long-term collection, it does seem that we should push our relationship to the furthest boundaries possible. That is how I feel.

Friday From the Archives: The Italian Job (Eidos, 2003)

Want Mini-Coopers plus 8 other cars? Would you like to beat the game's main mode in the same time it takes to watch its film counterpart? How about stunt courses, a blazing sense of speed, and splendid graphics? If you said yes to everything but the second question, I'm right there with ya. Nobody wants to drop fifty American for a game that features a Story mode that can be conquered in two hours. The Story mode may be short, but the gameplay is the sweetness. Racing through tight traffic on two wheels (a feat only capable in the Mini) is as much fun as it sounds, and the frame-rate is at a respectable pace throughout the game. Where the game does slowdown, however, is the two-player races, and it can get pretty nasty at times. I also found that for a movie based game, The Italian Job is severely lacking in its relationship with the movie. It seems as though the developers were given very little film footage, none of the voices or likenesses of the film's cast, and hardly anything else. With games like Enter the Matrix out there, this is completely unacceptable. Other than that, there isn't much else I disliked about this job; exciting gameplay, detailed graphics and well designed stages are all on the plus side. Even so, I can't really recommend this game as anything else but a rental because just like he movie's slogan, you'll get in, get out, and hopefully you'll break even.

The Fight is Won! Shanghai Knights Online Game

Powered by Free Games | Free Online Games | Online Games - Kingofgames.net