Marvel Double Feature: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

We never reviewed The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), but I thought that the video game was much better than the movie. In my mind, this is a franchise that was unnecessarily rebooted, and as a result that first film was meandering, uneventful, and tonally schizo. However, now that the origin story has been established once again, hopefully this series will settle for spectacle rather than hammy drama. Amazing 2 is a much better film than its predecessor. I suppose it makes somewhat less sense than the first one, and dramatically it's flawed; there's way too many villains in this one, and as a result the film struggles with developing the characters of both Electro and Green Goblin. It's never particularly clear, convincing, or believable why either bad guy wants Spider-Man dead, or why they're working together, or why anything is happening. Peter Parker and his girlfriend Gwen are the only characters given any room to breathe between the special effects. They're the only ones who need it, actually. Their relationship provides just enough of that emotional stuff to make the skyscraper battles and so on meaningful. And without the origin story in the way, Amazing 2 has time for some otherwise meaningless set pieces, meaningless in the sense that they lack pretensions to anything other than visual novelty. Put another way, this is a solid action film that doesn't try to be anything else. Its too long, and there's too many characters in it, but it delivers just the same.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

This one doesn't, however. I like the X-Men series, mostly because the concept is at least kinda relevant socially and politically (also because the mutants' powers are neat), but Days is one of the series' weakest films. It has moments, but like many blockbusters it's neither fish nor fowl, neither action nor drama, but some unwieldy and weak thing in between. Days suffers from a great generic compromise. The action sequences, particularly those at the beginning and end of the film, really work; unfortunately, it's the dramatic stuff in the middle that really doesn't. Outside of Wolverine and maybe Professor X, I had no real inclination to care about these people. That would be fine if the film was all spectacle and no character, but there's too much half-hearted, emotionally empty drama, and it stretches out the film to a painfully long runtime. In other words, most of Days is boring. It gives too much screen time to boring, uninteresting, and unimportant characters. I suspect this is a fundamental problem with the X-Men franchise, as the numerous characters require a great deal of balancing and prioritization in order to build interest in them. A few X-Men films have successfully found this balance, but Days isn't one. The promise of the opening sequence is lost on the rest of it. This film could be a decent 90 minute action film, but the melodrama drags things on unnecessarily for an additional 40 minutes. Could be worse, I suppose, but I recommend The Wolverine (2013) instead.

PS1 Review: Spider-Man (2000)

Here's another entry in our unofficial"Classic Games We Never Got Around to Reviewing" series. You may recall earlier parts of the series, including reviews of TimeSplitters 2 and NBA Street Vol. 2, two classics we never reviewed because we were lazy teenagers. But Thrasher is back at it again, taking a look at Spider-Man for PS1.

The 2D era was not kind to the wall-crawler, and at the time it probably couldn't be otherwise. To me, Spider-Man for the PS1 proved that the franchise belonged in all three polygonal, blocky dimensions. There's many commendable elements at work in this one, but first and foremost is the presentation. Though the story is a kind of comic book "greatest hits", structured as more or less a slew of cameos from villains and heroes of the Marvel Universe, it's culled together nicely as a narrative, in fact quite similar to the ways in which the recent Arkham Asylum and Arkham City have managed their respective rogues galleries. In Spider-Man, Peter Parker witnesses an impostor Spider-Man stealing one of Doc Ock's experiments: not only is Spidey framed for the theft and hunted by the police, but he must also fend off the challenges of villains such as Venom, Rhino, Scorpion, Mysterio and Carnage. It's a somewhat episodic approach that keeps the game from becoming repetitive. However, what's really worth recommending here is the superb voice-over work, particularly the voices for Spider-Man, Venom and J. Jonah Jameson. The writing is strong as well, effectively capturing the comic book's balance between humor and seriousness.

Faithful also is the translation of Spidey's powers from comic panel to Dual Shock. Playstation web-swinging was in its very infancy here, only to find a kind of perfection a few years later in Spider-Man 2 for the PS2, but the foundation built with this this game is a solid one. Unfortunately, it's not as tight as it could be: though you can manually aim when swinging from building to building, too often your web-shooters will be unresponsive when leaping out impulsively. Same goes for wall-crawling, as the controls occasionally go a bit haywire when changing direction, particularly on ceilings. Part of the problem is unquestionably the camera angles chosen by the game. You have limited control over what you see around Spider-Man, which can compromise your ability to engage in combat by obscuring your enemies with obtrusive angles. In terms of controls, Spider-Man is clearly a first try as there's quite a few kinks and glitches to work around, but there's also more than enough novelty here to keep things amusing. Also, the game is a bit short, but I suspect that's almost always the case when a game is this much fun to play. There's a shocking amount of replay value on this disc too, provided you don't just enter in the cheat codes:  vintage comic book covers collected throughout the game, unlockable costumes (each with unique abilities and enhancements), training simulators and a "What If?" mode that makes playing through the game a second time highly entertaining. Nowadays it may seem a bit crude and basic in comparison with current generation superheroes like Arkham City, or even in comparison with later games in the Spider-Man franchise, but Spider-Man for the PS1 is still a fantastic game in its own right, well worth taking out for another spin on your backwards-compatible PS3.

Blu-rays We Love: Spider-Man (2002)

Last time we took a look at the excellent DVD for Rush Hour 2. Now we move on to the Blu-ray re-release of Spider-Man, a film we reviewed in the formative years of Code Redd Net, which at the time I boldly described as" the greatest super-hero movie I have ever had the privilege of seeing." Chicken Man said the film was "a totally rad experience if your sitting in the front row." Perhaps the movie doesn't hold up as well as  you might hope, but it's still fun to watch 11 years later, and there's plenty of bonus features on the disc to make it a worthwhile addition to your Blu-library.

The most obviously dated element in Spider-Man is CGI Spider-Man. It's not totally embarrassing or campy, at least not yet, but technological advancements in the technique have clearly come a long way since then. The blend of live-action and CGI is not terribly smooth when it comes to human imaging. For instance, the early scenes of Peter Parker's transformation into Spider-Man are particularly jarring in their transition from actor to computer avatar. Nevertheless, it's not too distracting. What I enjoyed about most about Spider-Man on this most recent viewing was its tone: a fine blend of humor and seriousness, in about equal measure. Unlike the recent Amazing Spider-Man, which unwisely hit fast-forward on the origin story, Spider-Man prolongs the first appearance of its properly-costumed crime fighter until just prior to the start of its second hour. When Amazing Spider-Man went straight to the crib sheet, it lost the emotional backbone of the story, what makes Peter Parker's personal tragedy so significant. Spider-Man does a fantastic job of  inviting sympathy for the awkward teenager, played with appropriate dorkiness by the inherently dorky Tobey Maguire. While Maguire does an admirable job in his dual role, it's the rest of the cast that really stands out. Particularly noteworthy is Willem Dafoe's turn as Norman Osbourne/Green Goblin, a role which gives the actor ample opportunity to pull faces. Even James Franco is pretty good as his spoiled son, Harry. Spider-Man may not have aged gracefully, but it's still a completely solid film that remains enjoyable on a second or third or even fourth viewing, which is why you buy something like this on Blu-ray, right?

Tobey Maguire as Spider-Lee

In terms of the Blu-ray disc, you get all of the bonus features from the initial DVD version, and there were plenty of those, plus some new things to go along with it: namely, a "Spider Sense Trivia Challenge" and the "Spider-Man Cutting Room Floor" feature, both of which add tremendous value to the disc. Most significantly, the Trivia Challenge is a game played over the film in which you must answer a series of multiple-choice questions. These questions range from plot details ("How much was the reward for lasting three minutes in the ring with Bonesaw McGraw?"), to production history, to questions regarding Spider-Man's comic book history. It's hit or miss with most of these questions, as they appear in a seemingly random order not at all tied to the plot of the film. Because the questions appear to be in a random sequence each time the trivia game is activated, I was often asked questions about plot details that had yet to be revealed (fortunately, they are not significant enough plot points to be considered spoilers). Also, since the questions are timed to appear every minute or so, they often appear over very exciting visual sequences. While this is not too much of a problem if you've seen the film before, it would've been nice if the questions were more plentiful during the film's more expository, and less spectacular, scenes and didn't distract me from a fight scene. Still, though, there's enough questions about the tensile strength of spider webs, for instance, to keep your interest while watching the film. The game keeps track of your score based on the number of correct answers and the amount of time elapsed in answering them, and rewards you with a ranking at the end of the film. I was given the rank of "Superhero-in-Training" and treated to a 15-second montage from the film of Spider-Man swinging around the city in his hokey wrestling outfit. Not much of a reward, but it's nice to be ranked based on your performance. Even though the questions do get repetitious at times, I think this is a decent first effort at integrating elements of Scene-It into a single film, something that I believe could immensely enjoyable when fully implemented.

There's also a "Cutting Room Floor" feature which allows you to clip segments of the film and re-edit them into a short sequence with new music and sound effects. I was able to splice together Spider-Man's cage match with Macho Man Randy Savage with scenes of Peter Parker crying in his room, punctuated by comical sound effects and a somber musical score. It's a lot of fun, even though the interface for cutting the scenes can be cumbersome, and making changes later in the process can be quite difficult. This is definitely a feature I would love to see on future releases of Jackie Chan or Jet Li films, for instance, so that I could cut together all the fight scenes into one montage, but it works well for Spider-Man.

Finally, as indicated above, the Blu-ray includes all the bonus features from the original Special Edition DVD release in 2002. Of the three commentary tracks, only the one featuring the VFX crew is of any interest: director Sam Raimi does too much narrating and too much talking about himself on his track, while Tobey Maguire and J.K. Simmons' track gets awfully quiet for long stretches of the film. HBO's making-of featurette and E! Entertainment's "Spider-Mania" are typical Hollywood puffery, though the "Spider-Man: Mythology of the 21st Century" piece is a nice and thorough historical look at the character's cinematic development. Besides these longer extras, there's also an archival selection of theatrical trailers, TV spots, webisodes, screen tests, cast and crew profiles, and an outtake reel. All in all, it's a swell package that's worth picking up if you, like me, somehow lost your old DVD copy of the movie.

Give These PS1 Games Some PS3 Love

At Code Redd Net, we don't like to forget about the classics. That's why we're particularly fond of hardware that supports backwards compatibility, because we tend to favor games that last. Though current models of the PS3 do not play PS2 games, unfortunately, they nevertheless play PS1 discs. Something is better than nothing, I suppose. While there's certainly a score of outstanding PS3 games worth your time out there, you should always keep in mind the cavernous catalogue of excellent PS1 games waiting for you just in case there's a little downtime on the system's core software market (and they're almost always cheap, unless you really groove on RPGs). You don't even need a memory card to save your progress because the system creates a virtual one for you, not to mention an option to smooth out the pixel-heavy graphics. Bearing all this in mind, here's a short list of five phenomenal PS1 games not only worth your time, but worthy of your piggy bank as well.

Spider-Man (2000)

This is the first Spider-Man game to get it right, not only in all three wonderful dimensions, but in tone as well. In terms of capturing the feel of the comic book and cartoon character I remember, nothing else comes close to this 13-year-old. Despite lacking name value in the voice cast, or perhaps because of it, Spider-Man has aged very well: every character and every note sounds right. It's a bit short, say, about four hours, but what it lacks in breadth it more than makes up for in density. There's also a tremendous amount of extras to make bonus plays worthwhile if the nostalgia factor isn't enough for you. Controlling the webhead can be cumbersome at times, and the camera occasionally goes haywire, but it's no big deal. Future games in the series may have perfected the webswinging and combat, but that was only possible because the foundation that this game built was so solid. Featuring one of my favorite last levels, which I may or may not have actually spoiled in the screen grab above.

Thrasher Presents: Skate and Destroy (1999)

That oncoming train you see there is no doubt the best way to win a multiplayer game of Sick Fix: Chicken Man and I used to have a ball trying to produce the most spectacular wreck in that subway level. Multiplayer included, for the longest time Skate and Destroy was the premiere skateboarding simulation for those looking for an alternative to the zaniness of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. That position was taken over by the skate. franchise, and deservedly so, and as a result the "realism" of Skate and Destroy now seems dubious at best. Still, though, I love the rhythm of this game: there's much more emphasis on precision and angle than in its button-mashing brothers in the genre. Conceptually, too, there's a lot of interesting ideas no other skate game has tried to emulate, either before or since. For instance, after a two-minute session expires, security guards try to catch in the act, and you can use this extra time to earn bonus points before you escape, or you can be given the taser. Finally, Skate and Destroy has unquestionably the freshest soundtrack of old school beats on the system, a soundtrack we even honored with a Code Redd Net Award.

The World is Not Enough (2000)

N64 TWINE is a better game, but its PS1 brother has enough unique features to recommend it for fans of the franchise. As I mentioned in my review, the best part of PS1 TWINE is the "Russian Roulette" level, where you can gamble like a true addict, much to the consternation and cell phone distress of MI6. Plus, there's a significant number of film clips that set up the levels nicely. For whatever reason PS1 always lagged behind its Nintendo competitor in the first-person shooter department, so TWINE is the probably the best of an admittedly limited bunch.

Smasher regains his strength by having a soda and a sandwich
he found on the ground. This makes sense in a beat-'em-up.

Fighting Force (1997)

Here's another PS1 game with a superior N64 relative, though in this case the disparity in quality is much more minute. Fighting Force in its original PS1 incarnation may have a plethora of loading screens in addition to being more difficult than the N64 version, but for the sake of convenience this one is a completely satisfactory substitute. Furthermore, Fighting Force is one of the last true beat-'em-ups ever released, without a doubt the best one in the post-Streets of Rage, 3D era. It's not perfect, but I have a hard time imaging a more enjoyable co-op experience outside of PS2's Everything or Nothing. And clocking in at just under two hours to complete, Fighting Force never becomes tedious or over-long. If you want a mindless brawler for your PS3, this is your only choice.

Jet Moto (1996)

For a long time the only PS1 games I owned were a Playstation Magazine demo disc and Jet Moto. That I was content with this situation should attest to how enjoyable Jet Moto was and still is (that demo disc was beautiful too, and I miss those things). Jet Moto, it should be said, was an amazing game for 1996. I still think the graphics are decent, and I'm amazed that the tracks, intricate as they are, can support up to 20 racers at the same time. But what I remember most about Jet Moto was how fast and how difficult it was: not only were the races crowded with opponents, not only were the bikes almost uncontrollably fast, but the courses were laden with obstacles and cliffs. I still have not made it past the second round of the season without using cheats, thanks in no small part to a series of particularly brutal levels in the bayou. It's difficult, certainly, but it's not frustrating. No other game, even on PS3, can really keep up with this one.

Spidey Varial

Said it before, but I'll say it again: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is the best PS1 game. There's so many reasons why, and I could list them all day, but one of the more novel features is the playable Spider-Man character, long before Amazing Spider-Man refashioned the superhero into a hipster poser photographer/skateboarder.

Looking a bit husky there, Spidey.

You can unlock the webhead in THPS2 by beating up on Career mode with your created skater. When that's all done, you're treated to this spectacular footage:

PS3 Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Remember all those hideous Spider-Man sidescrollers for the NES, SNES and Genesis? Except for Maximum Carnage, maybe (it was a decent beat-'em-up, though it was also helluva tough), it's clear that Spider-Man was a superhero property perfectly suited for polygonal gaming. Spider-Man for PS1 was the first one to truly get it, and as I've argued elsewhere, Spider-Man 2 for PS2 was the end-all be-all. The Amazing Spider-Man for PS3 is the first game in a while to return the series to the free roaming format that made Spider-Man 2 so delightful, and it more or less works here too. It's not perfect, nor is it as dynamic as its predecessor, but it's still a fine rental/used purchase for both casual and hardcore webheads.

Despite being based on the subpar film of the same name, Amazing wisely opens up a few days after the film's climatic battle. This time Spider-Man has to break the Curt Conners/the Lizard out of his jail cell in order to find an antidote to a rapidly spreading disease caused by Conners' experiments. In doing so, Spider-Man crosses paths with Alistair Smythe, sans mullet because the 90s are over*, and bitter because one version of Conners' antidote accidentally cripples him. Spider-Man has to run about the city, completing various tasks and fetching certain items so that Conners can concoct his antidote. Between missions, you are relatively free to dart about the city, web-swinging, fighting petty crimes, taking photos, and so on (alas, there's no rescuing balloons for children nor can you bounce at the disco anymore as you could in Spider-Man 2). For the most part, the story told here is engaging and pretty to look at, and for me this game is a much more entertaining product overall than its film counterpart. However, there is a major issue with the opening: things start out with an extended cinematic, from the first-person view of Peter Parker, but it goes on forever. I had time to do the dishes while it was going on. This is not much of an issue later on in the game, but it's a dreary opening if you're looking to pop the game for a reasonably timely thrill. I did, however, enjoy the in-game use of Spidey's blackberry to tell the story, a device which keeps you informed of the story while you dash around town punking out muggers and carjackers. Similarly, a version of Twitter pops up onscreen whenever loading the next mission, and the fake tweets of your fellow NYC denizens follow the main story. It's a cute device that adds another layer to the narrative.

* and not just any mullet, a green mullet, my goodness

The key to Spider-Man 2's success was not the free roam structure itself, but the ways in which you could move within that open city via webswinging. Whereas before swinging between buildings only required the push of a button, SM2 required a strategic understanding of the environment: in other words, your webs had to be attached to something in order to work. As a result, swinging through the city felt dynamic and required a certain degree of mastery. Unfortunately, Amazing does not emulate this and instead returns to a somewhat detached method of moving Spider-Man through the city. Though there is some concern placed on your surroundings (for instance, generally speaking you cannot immediately webswing without a building nearby, but this is only the case when falling from significant heights), webswinging nevertheless loses some of its novelty and can become tedious after a while. Still, though, the webswinging and combat animations are fantastic, much better than those in SM2, and the same goes for the voice-over work, which is actually quite excellent. Speaking of combat, Amazing manages to almost completely imitate Arkham Asylum/City when forcing you into rooms rife with thugs and mutants: right down to the abundance of ventilation ducks and stealth takedowns. This works fine except for the fact that the AI is clueless and unchallenging, even though taking them down with Spider-Man's arsenal of web-and-wrestling based slams is pretty fun.

Amazing suffers from the same problem that kept SM2 from true greatness: once the main conflict is wrapped-up, there's not a whole lot of interesting things to do. Well, there's a whole lot to do, but so little of it is actually worth doing. You can collect comic books from rooftops, which has the added bonus of unlocking full-length digital comics, and you can snap photographs for a local news reporter (but not for the vaunted Daily Bugle?), and you can always go back to busting lowly thieves on the beat, but so what? After you get done tangling with skyscraper robots, catching purse-snatchers makes for some really boring legwork. Nonetheless, I'm willing to endorse this game for a week rental or purchase at your local used games emporium. If you're looking for a free-roaming Spider-Man fix, Amazing should be enough.

PS2 Review: Spider-Man 2 (2004)

"Ya get out of the club!"

PS1 Spider-Man was wonderful. Spider-Man 2, though, is everything that game couldn't be on lesser technology. Spider-Man, even more so than Batman in the recent Arkham City, was made for free roam, and SM2 is a rare instance when the unashamed appropriation of a popular and contemporary style (in this case of Grand Theft Auto and its loose approach to video game narrative) works so very well. You have free reign over a virtual, amazingly detailed, faithful NYC. Getting around the boroughs, by slinging webs from rooftop to rooftop, has never been any better. Instead of the nonsensical aerial travel of past games, in which your webs were seemingly attached to invisible buildings, here your webswinging needs to be carefully planned. Whereas before you simply pressed the appropriate button and off you went, SM2 requires you to scale a tall building, for instance, so your webbing has an anchor. From there you can swing from the next building, provided there's one around, building momentum all the while as you gleefully skim the skyscrapers. There's an art in such webswinging, surely, but it's never frustrating, only addicting. Combat is similarly revolutionized. Combos are streamlined, varied, and contextual, and you can earn increasingly complex and spectacular moves as you progress (including our favorite, the spinning grapple piledriver, which can be delivered from the top of the Empire State Building if you're willing to work for it). Obviously, the main storyline of the game follows that of the movie, but it deviates to allow for more villains and more challenges, and when you're not directly engaged in these events (and the game rarely forces you to be), you can pursue a variety of jobs on the side, like delivering pizzas, taking photos for the Daily Bugle, and stopping petty crimes on the street. They're fun diversions for a while, but once you run through the main story, it quickly becomes busywork. Because of the scale of the game, I presume, the graphics suffer for it, and criticism should also be extended to the voice-overs, which range from decent at best, to downright horrible at worst. Toby Maguire sounds particularly unenthusiastic to be there. Still, though, SM2 is the premiere Spider-Man experience on any console, and little touches, like your ability to hang defeated thugs from street lights, indicate the kind of complete world you're dealing with here.

The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises

In lieu of more formal reviews of these two summer blockbusters, Thrasher and Chicken Man got together for a little podcast to discuss the past and present movie versions of Batman and Spider-Man.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

For Your Viewing Pleasure, Chickenman's Top Ten Video Games (Part Six)

Rehash of Games So Far:
The Sims (PC)
Star Wars: Battlefront (PS2)
Hitman: Blood Money (PS2)
Everything or Nothing (PS2)
Rise to Honor (PS2)

The only way I can think of how to improve Arkham Asylum is to have an unlockable, playable Michael Keaton version of Batman. It is so well done. I admire the decision to produce a game with a unique storyline instead of trying to replicate The Dark Knight movie. Even more pleasing is the fact that it makes a great effort to stay consistent with the Batman canon and tradition, such as including many of the voices from Batman: The Animated Series, showing the developer's ability to both pay homage to long-time fans, as well as being totally accessible to those who might not know who Killer Croc is. This is in deep contrast to the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, which I feel does the double task of disappointing Spidey fans as well as insulting its viewers by being consistent with neither the comic series or its own movies (Eddie Brock is mentioned by name in the first movie, but is treated as a new employee to the Daily Bugle in the third)! However, one of today's honorable mentions is Spider-Man 2 game based on the movie, as it included the long dreamed-of feature of the ability to freely roam Manhattan, therefore being, in my view, the first Spider-Man game that let the player actually feel like Spider-Man (in the sense of being a masked vigilante who stops random street crimes). It actually would have my vote for best super hero-themed game prior to the release of Arkham Asylum (which itself is topped by Arkham City, but we'll conveniently ignore that for the sake of this post). But to make this about Batman and not Spider-Man, I would like to finish off by mentioning the things that make Arkham Asylum so great: its ability to capture the overall Batman theme of fear and darkness, faithfulness to the character, a fun and challenging fighting system, and stealth levels that don't suck (I didn't mention that yesterday for Rise to Honor, but it is a prime example of this problem). It sets the bar for what a comic book hero game should be.

Honorable Mentions:
Spider-Man 2 (PS2), Spider-Man (DC), Comix Zone (Genesis)

Finishing the Archives: The World is Not Enough (1999), Spider-Man (2002), and The Italian Job (2003)

Every Friday (or Monday, alas) we celebrate the heritage of Code Redd Net by posting a retro-review from our considerable back catalogue of embarrassingly naive, but nonetheless entertaining and heartfelt, movie and game reviews. Please pardon the prose; most of these articles were written in our immediately post-pubescent years. Hopefully you find them as enjoyable as we do.

Let's just kill this weekly feature once and for all, shall we? Only three more movie reviews to go. First up, we have The World is Not Enough. I already wrote a piece on why I thought TWINE was underrated, so here's our original, sophomoric thoughts (Chicken Man first, and then my own thoughts):

"The World is Not Enough, the 19th Bond movie, is probably the most action packed Bond movie yet or until #20 comes out. As Thrasher and Chickenman have said, we like movies containing action & comedy, and with some cool boat chases and shooting scenes, with some wise cracks this movie makes a must-see. In TWINE an evil anarchist named Renard steals plutonium to blow up Istanbul. Bond's mission is to protect Sir Robert King's daughter, Elektra. And use her as bait to find Renard and his plans. His chase leads to Valentine's (back from Goldeneye) casino and beluga plant. In attempt to stop Renard from stealing the bomb, Bond runs into a stunning IDA physicist, Christmas Jones. If you have not seen it, we highly think of this 007 flick, not just because it's Bond, but that it's 007 Licence to Kill action."

"Being the 19th Bond flick, this title had a lot to live up to. In the action department, this film delivers. 007-isms abound, and the action is almost non-stop, with some awesome stunts. Believe me, the boat chase is pretty friggin', good. Other than that, the plot is predictable, but still good stuff. But what 007 flick doesn't have any Exotic women? None, and that's a good thing. If you ask me, Denise Richards in a tight T-shirt is the best part of this movie. Action junkies, go wild."

Scathing. Insightful, truly. I speak of my own review only, of course.

Moving on now to our review of Spider-Man (once again, Chicken Man, myself second):

"Spider Man, co-created by Stan Lee, stays closely to the original comic story except for a few instances. If you're a fan of the comic a fairly recent comic entitled "Ultimate Spider Man." There is also "Peter Parker/Spider Man," "The Amazing Spider Man," and "Spider Girl." About the movie, a totally rad experience if your sitting in the front row. Tobey McGuire was also in Star Wars Episode I as Jar Jar Binks (according to the SNL episode he was in). In the box office it was a total blowout the first weekend. Thrasher and ChickenMan think this is your best bet for some action and somewhat of a drama. We call it draction. Spider Man 2 is believed to come out by 2004, so we'll wait until then."

"Based on the comics published by Marvel, this film had the potential to be a special effects masterpiece. It's that and so much more. To be exact, this flick is the first big blockbuster of 2002. Great CGI (Computer Generated Images) scenes of spidey doing what he does best. Make sure that your theatre has great audio capabilities, because if it does, your in for one great movie experience. The story, while it strays off the comics a little, fits perfectly into the big screen. Toby Maguire is great as Spidey, although the movie lacks some of the famous Spidey-wit that the web-slinger is known for. I must say, this is the greatest super-hero movie I have ever had the privilege of seeing. And if you pay close attention, Stan Lee makes an appearance. All in all, go out and see the movie, that's my best advice."

My best advice, indeed.

Finally, here's what Chicken Man had to say about The Italian Job:

"This movie had a great cast, some of my favorite actors like Seth Green, "Turkish" from The Transporter, and Jack/Steve from Fight Club. The plot was cool and fresh from what I've seen of late. It had some great cars in it like the Vanquish, BMW M series, and not to mention the Mini Coopers. I myself played the game before the movie and it didn't take anything from the experience but added to it. The best movie I've seen since Shanghai Knights. You know, it's a special feeling when you're in the theatre and watching a movie and you know you're gonna check this movie out again when it comes out. As I've seen, if you can make a game out of a movie a lot of the time it's pretty good. I've had my fair share of disappointments, but this is not one of them."

And that's a wrap. Look out for a new (non-weekly, but recurring) feature, called Retroness, in the very near feature.

A Concise History of Code Redd Net

It all began on November 8, 2001, or thereabouts. Originally known as Code Redd.net, what was to become the Code Redd Net of today started innocently in ChickenMan’s basement during one of our marathon Saturday afternoon/evening gaming sessions. I had some experience in writing reviews for GameFAQs (my output during this time consisted of this charming piece) and my own personal sites (which I started up and dropped at an alarming pace and which, thank goodness, have long since ceased to exist). I suggested we start up a Geocities page and play around with its Pagebuilder feature, which required absolutely no knowledge of that tedious thing called HTML. All we needed was a name. I believe we bandied about a few ideas first before we decided upon our unusual moniker. Now, the exact details are fuzzy in my mind, but I do know that we took our name from the new (at the time, anyway) flavor of Mountain Dew, Code Red. As far as I can remember, our only justification for choosing that name was that were simply liked the soda a whole lot and we were strapped for ideas. Of course, to protect ourselves from litigation and brand confusion, however unlikely that seems now, we added an extra “d” to Redd. And that was that. We took on the aliases of Thrasher and ChickenMan to protect our loved ones from harassment or embarrassment, I suppose. Geocities.com/codreddsite was up and running, and slowly.

Reviews, always our bread and butter, were split between games and movies, though far more emphasis was placed on games than movies. Our first two reviews, Spy Hunter for PS2 and Rush Hour 2, have remained perennial favorites through a kind of affective blinding. In other words, our tastes have certainly matured beyond them, but we cannot untangle our memories from these objects. They stay with us no matter how much cultural education/exposure we receive, and that, I suppose, is in the very machinations of nostalgia, that’s how the phenomenon of mass culture works. Naturally, our reviews tended to cover only those things which we were interested enough in to rent or buy, hence the general scarcity of negative reviews (far as I can remember, we only scorched a few products, such as Die Another Day, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Spy Hunter 2, and The Tuxedo). Our interaction with popular culture was limited to our tastes because we simply didn’t have the monies, connections, or inclinations to cover more items. I would argue, however, that this made our site more inclusive, more of an ultra-specific fan culture (which included our love for Jackie Chan, James Bond, Mr. T, Spider-Man, Sonic, and anything else we fond amusing or “cool”) which communicated with whatever audience we could muster by sheer enthusiasm, rather than by some notion of comprehensive “objectivity” espoused by the popular press. We had our tastes and we had to freedom to do as we pleased, and that was particularly pleasing to our younger selves.

Looking back now, though, for all of our inclusiveness, CRN was quite the ambitious undertaking for two doe-eyed middle-schoolers. We clearly tried to mimic the appearance of most game/movie review sites, and this was difficult because the Geocities Pagebuilder was a beast to handle back then. We also tried to provide many of the same services that they did – at one point, we had our Games and Movies pages (both of which were subdivided into Reviews and Previews), our Beats page, Staff pages, Opinions page, a News page, a Newsletter (and I have to wonder if we actually sent any newsletters out), a “Grillz” page (similar to Opinions, I suppose, but perhaps nastier in tone), Links, a Message Board, a Chat Room, and more. And not only that, we also branched out into “colonies” which aimed to exclusively cover Bond, Sonic, and Spider-Man topics. Our naïvely comprehensive approach strikes me as hilarious now, almost satirical. I wish we could say parody was our purpose, but we were earnestly trying to be a significant source of so-called “objective” commentary on media. Reading over our archives from those days, our earnestness is infectious rather than cloying.

When the original site was removed from Geocities following its closing in 2009, I nearly missed my chance to archive it. CRN was something which I had nearly forgotten about when I went to college. I made sure to let ChickenMan know about it, and we decided that a blog might be a nice way to continue on. College is a weird time for everyone. People change and move away, you make new friends and forget about others, and tastes/interests change immensely (fortunately, ChickenMan has stayed true to himself, though his insight has grown tremendously). No longer could ChickenMan and I spend our afternoons locked in a middle school keyboard lab (our “office” or “base of operations,” you might say) updating the site. Several states now separated us. Thankfully, the proliferation of digital technology made communication much easier and fluid across great distances, but it wasn’t until we had our respective degrees that we mobilized CRN once again.

Nostalgia does funny things to us, especially now, when our technology makes access to these fondly remembered products nearly instantaneous. You can download you memories now. It makes us fond for things which aren’t really “old,” or for things which didn’t interest us before (such as commercials and bad PS1 games). But if nostalgia has ever ringed true, CRN is as good an example as any other. And it moves beyond just remembering what once was; CRN has grown considerably, beyond a simple exercise in nostalgia. Our reviews have only gotten better, even though they share the same format (300 words or so of blocky, unorganized text, at my insistence), and we are far more prolific than ever before. We now review books as well, which, as ChickenMan has told me, seems like a strange fit in the CRN universe, and our extension into the social network has been nothing but a positive experience for us. We continue to grow our inclusive community.

When I look back at our old reviews, I often laugh at our prose, but not derisorily. I laugh joyfully at the words, or rather, between them. I can see the friendship which was the groundwork for CRN somewhere in the spaces. I hope this is visible to whatever readership we have or may have in the future. If it isn’t, and our readership is in fact nil, I know that this brand of nostalgia has served its purpose admirably.

Friday From the Archives: Spider-Man (PS2, 2002)

Every Friday we celebrate the heritage of Code Redd Net by posting a retro-review from our considerable back catalogue of embarrassingly naive, but nonetheless entertaining and heartfelt, movie and game reviews. Please pardon the prose; most of these articles were written in our immediately post-pubescent years. Hopefully you'll find them as enjoyable as we do.

I haven't played this game for years, but many of the comments below still ring true for me. I do think this game is a substantial upgrade from the original PS1 titles, although I do enjoy the more comic book flavor of the older games as opposed to this movie-based style of this and Spider-Man 2, though that may simply be attributable to fact that I don't like any of the Toby Maguire films. I may have to YouTube this Green Goblin cheat, because I recall nothing like that.

"Spider-Man the movie game improves upon the previous Spidey games in so many ways. The first titles were fantastic, but this game captures the sense of being Spider-Man so much better. Much more of the action takes place above the stunning recreation of NYC. Aerial battles are terrific, and the camera has improved greatly. Now, you can lock onto villains, making it much less of a headache this time around. One of the biggest improvements has to be the replay value. Golden Spiders are hidden throughout the level to find, and some exclusively on certain difficulty levels. Plus, the cheats are great, but perhaps the Green Goblin cheat tops them all. A stunning game."