XBOX Review: The Thing (2002)

Unfortunately, The Thing is more like a subpar Freedom Fighters than a truly engaging "sequel" to the 1982 film. It has the requisite squad tactics and some neat ideas governing emotional responses from your teammates, but those ideas are poorly realized and unfulfilled, and in some cases downright misleading.

The Thing is somewhere between a sequel and a loose remake of its parent film, set sometime after those events but essentially telling a remarkably similar story, at least at first. An alien race has surfaced in an Antarctic military research base, with the alien infection often taking the form of your human allies. As you investigate what happened to your colleagues, you must maintain their trust, in addition to watching your own back for lurking thing-creatures, which emerge out of your pals in a particularly gruesome fashion.

This is a fairly standard third-person action game with the exception of a neat trust/fear mechanic for your squad. It's neat-o in theory, anyway. Your squad (of up to four) get all a-scared by the alien creatures, as well as by gore, darkness, being alone, and so on. They'll hunker down and won't be helpful to you if they get too scared, so you settle them down by forking over firearms or health. You also never know when one of them will morph into A Thing, which you can check by drawing blood from them at any time. A cool idea, for sure, except that it doesn't work at all: a guy who tests positive for Human will turn around a minute later and reveal himself to be Thing the next, seemingly only because you're moving on to the next level and your squad can't carry over across the loading screen.

The Thing has more problems, unfortunately. Not only do the squad tactics barely function, but the enemy AI is generally incompetent and behaves strangely most of the time. The terrifying threat of aliens is rendered not so terrifying when they can barely navigate most doorways. Additionally, this game has some incredibly frustrating missions later on, only because the checkpoint and save systems are so poorly implemented. There's a whole lot of backtracking, repetition, and memorization depending on when you can find a save point, and how well you were doing when you found this save point.

In general, The Thing is not a good game. It's a decent quick fix for anyone desiring of a Freedom Fighters-style squad shooter, but it gets old quickly and does follow through on many of its promises.

Movie Review: Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)

Evidently Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is "widely considered" (that's a fun thing to say) to be one of the worst films on this, or really any other, planet. Wikipedia has it on a prestigious list of "films considered the worst" by "reputable critics." While my dedication to reviewing numerous Jean-Claude Van Damme films, as well as nonsense like this, may lead some of you to believe I enjoy pain, honestly I trust no one, least of all "reputable critics." To be sure, this film is hideous and stupid, but it's far from one of the worst. I just had to see it for myself.

Two agents, one a family man/divorcee/chain smoker FBI agent (that would be Ecks) and the other a cold-hearted assassin/mother/ex- or current government agent of another kind/maybe? (Sever), seem to dislike each other for a general (as opposed to a particular) reason. They must work together to keep a kind of biomechanical device, floating around in the bloodstream of a child, out of the hands of other government agents/corrupt assholes/who? I'm not sure who's working for whom in this one. I'm not sure what the biomechanical device does besides something bad. In fact, I'm not sure what really goes on in Ballistic. I'm not sure the producers or the marketing people did either. I suspect nobody does or did. Please read through the following synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

"Two former government agents square off as they search for the most deadly new weapon on Earth in this white-knuckle thriller. Sever (Lucy Liu) was once a top agent with the Defense Intelligence Agency, but she quit when her son was killed in a bungled raid organized by Gant (Gregg Henry), and has sworn to take vengeance against him and his colleagues. When Sever learns that Gant and his team are in possession of a remarkable new weapon -- a microscopic device injected into the victim's bloodstream which is benign until triggered, then kills immediately without leaving a trace -- she is determined to get her hands on it, whatever the cost. However, Gant has turned rogue, and FBI agent Julio Martin (Miguel Sandoval) has been ordered to find him and recover his new weapon. Martin needs the best man he can find for the job, and calls upon Jeremiah Ecks (Antonio Banderas), a former FBI tracker, to do the job. Ecks quit the Bureau when his wife was killed, but Martin informs Ecks that his spouse is actually alive and in hiding, and if he can bring in Gant, she will be returned to him. But Ecks has to face the most formidable adversary of his life in Sever, a master of mayhem bent on revenge."

lolz, don't work for the government, I guess. At best you'll have a hard time identifying where and with whom you work, let alone actually getting things done, saving children, capturing rogue elements, all that.

Ballistic is the kind of thing I would've liked (probably not loved, but certainly liked) when I was 13, so there were moments in this film that I enjoyed very much. Sever's shootout with the cops is serviceable enough for action cinema, although Ecks and Sever's titular showdown on a rooftop turns out to be a big ruse (more like Ballistic: Ecks and Sever, right?). Ballistic may be bland, but it has the good taste to be short and moronic, and those are the hallmarks of inoffensive cinema. Look, people get chased and cars get flipped over and secret agent-y things get done and Banderas smokes a bunch. It's filmed in a way that doesn't hurt your ear or eye holes to watch. Is it especially stimulating, revelatory, educational, beautiful? No. Is it one of the worst films around? Hardly. It's bad, but it's not that bad.

PS2 Review: Headhunter (2002)

I miss Winback. I miss the covert operations of a relentlessly optimistic Jean-Luc and his trusty laser-sight. Sure, there was a sequel, Project Poseidascrewoff, but it was worthless (to say the very least). Fortunately, Headhunter is kinda like Winback. It's good. It does the job. There's significantly fewer laser traps, but there's still plenty of crates to blow up. Always a good time with crates around.

Best part: you can toggle those sunglasses on or off at any time,
depending on your mood or the time of day, I guess.

Basically, what you have with Headhunter is a near future Los Angeles in which, among other things, law enforcement has been privatized, and criminals have their organs harvested for use by rich folks. You play as Jack Wade, an amnesiac bounty hunter who wakes up in and escapes from a funky laboratory. Jack wakes up in a hospital and an old agency pal explains that he was once the finest headhunter in all the land. In order to uncover the truth, Jack must re-acquire his headhuntin' license through a series of virtual reality tests, while simultaneously investigating the murder of a bureaucrat.

Headhunter has three main parts: the virtual reality tests, the missions, and a few motorcycle segments. First, let's pursue this Winback comparison a bit further. Like Winback, this is a third-person actioner; you hug a lot of walls while shooting it out with your adversaries. Unlike Winback, though, you can actually shoot your gun while moving around; and as a result, you rely much less on cover than you may have in Winback. Unfortunately, you have little control over your aim; you can lock on to baddies, but you can't aim for the head, and you often inadvertently target nonthreatening objects (specifically rats) instead of those individuals shooting at you. The controls are a bit sticky in general, and the camera is both obtrusive and obstinate in terms of mobility. This becomes a real problem during the occasional "stealth" segment, even though "stealth" in this game is essentially limited to a single neck-snapping move Jack performs from behind. It doesn't matter how fast or slow you approach an enemy for the stealth kill, even if you run up to him full-tilt down an empty hallway, so long as he doesn't lay eyes on you. Finally, there's the motorcycle portions of the game, which I found particularly painful. Jack's seemingly nimble Yamaha or whatever handles like a rig, and no matter how hard you slam into oncoming traffic, you come to a complete stop. When you hit the gas again, Jack invariably performs a wheelie, and why not. There's really no reason for these motorcycle escapades to exist because, with the exception of a bomb chase later in the game, you only use the cycle to get from one mission to the next; no freeway chases, no shootouts, nothing. You could've just taken the bus and it would've been just as thrilling.

I hate that bike so much. Save the environment and walk, Jack.

I like Headhunter, though. Take away that stupid motorcycle and this is a solid third-person shooter. It has some control issues, but it makes up for it in other areas. In particular, the music is fantastic (though a bit repetitive), as is the voice-over work (though the gravel-voice cynicism of Jack Wade makes me miss the earnest, pre-pubescent whine of Jean-Luc). Headhunter's writing is not much better than Winback, but it's certainly performed in a much more convincing fashion. I can't really complain about the length of this game, though I would've liked an incentive to play through it again, or even a multiplayer option. Headhunter's a worthwhile purchase.