Sean Lemme

I started blogging as a way to lazily pass my high school senior project and somehow I've kept doing it for more than half my life

Con-Fuse-d About What Happened to Overstrike

Fuse

Sometimes, in an attempt to judge a game on its own merits, we lose the overarching story surrounding that experience. Where did you get the game? How much did you pay? What was your experience like playing it? For most critics, it’s important to isolate and remove those details, to try to give an unbiased account of the game as it is, even though a review is still entirely opinion-based. Hey, people don’t want to read your blog, they want to know what you think of a game, that approach makes sense. But in this one case, I’m going to break from the pack and tell you how it really went down.

I am a member of GameFly, which I used to explain as Netflix for video games, but that makes less sense now since no one rents discs from Netflix anymore. I like GameFly, they ship from Seattle so I get games fast and their “keep it” option means I can get “like new” used games on the cheap. This is especially nice because they give members discounts on purchases based on how long you’ve been subscribed, consecutively. Sometimes they even sell games they have to many copies of on the cheap. Fuse was one of those games, I picked it up a couple weeks ago for less than $10.

I wasn’t super excited about Fuse, based on the reviews I had read about it, but I figured it would be fine. It sounded like the most OK game of all time, but it was an Insomniac game, and despite never really loving an Insomniac game, I think those guys are all right. So I bought it and I got it and I played it over a few weekday afternoons when I wanted to put off doing the things I needed to do.

Fuse is the story of a team of misfit commandos trying to stop an evil PMC from using an alien substance called, shockingly, Fuse. To do this, they themselves use Fuse-based weapons to slaughter thousands of people. The whole story kind of feels like a super generic GI Joe knock off, devoid of the brazen goofiness that makes that cartoon still remarkable. Our heroes are white guy, black guy, tough lady, and stealth lady. They each have one Fuse weapon – a shield, a sniper crossbow, a crystallization assault rifle, and a black hole machine gun. As you might imagine, the two girls with their way cooler, offensive guns are a lot more fun to play.

This game is clearly meant to be played with three friends, but if you chose to solo it like I did, you’re free to jump between all the whole team, letting you use your favorite set up for each situation. But the situations are basically shoot a lot of guys, do some light platforming, and fight a boss, so don’t expect to really ever want to use shield guy, despite his ability to absorb and shoot back bullets being pretty cool. Honestly, I played each mission as one of the characters, then stuck with the lady with the crystallization gun the rest of the game.

Levels in Fuse are long, with numerous firefights broken up a few objective segments and, as I said before, some light platforming. The platforming is super easy, the controls are tight, I always knew where I was going, and I feel like you probably couldn’t die without trying. So it all comes down to the shooting… Which is fine. It’s weird, because Insomniac is known for the inventive guns in their games, that the combat feels so spectacularly run-of-the-mill. It’s cover-based combat that isn’t bad, but no where near as satisfying as Gears of War. With only four Fuse weapons at your disposal, that twist on the shooting feels like it didn’t go nearly far enough. Mass Effect wasn’t an amazing shooter either, but it made it work by throwing in so many fun powers you didn’t have to shoot if you didn’t want to – Insomniac needed to step it up to make this game stand out.

But whatever, Fuse was OK. It cost me roughly a matinee movie ticket and gave me some great procrastination fodder. I wish it was better, I wish it was really special, but it’s a game that played it safe in every aspect. Which is too bad, because if you go back to the original Overstrike trailer, it’s hard not to think that Fuse got focus grouped to death. And hey, if you want to shoot for the middle, it’s hard to get any closer than Fuse.

The Next Gen Conundrum

It’s November now, which means just one thing: Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season is upon us. I mean, sure, there are other things going on too, like elections, Veteran’s Day, and Thanksgiving, but come on, we all know what’s up. In our capitalist, consumerist society, the reach of Christmas is vast. I think that’s part of why January is so depressing, since so much hype, for almost a quarter of the year, is focused on December 25. Anyway, Christmas is a big deal because of presents and Black Fridays is the biggest day of the year for shopping, you know this. If you’re a video gamer, this year will be especially tricky.

The way I see it, you’ve got four options. The first is the smartest, and the one I would recommend to pretty much everybody: Don’t buy a next generation console, wait for games you really want, maybe pick up a 3DS and Pokemon or something. New consoles are big investments, we’re talking low-end iPad money. The smart thing to do is wait until the demand goes down a bit, and a game you really want is out, before buying one. The more you know, the better you’ll be able to spend your money. So that’s one option.

Another is to go out and upgrade or buy a gaming PC. This is the most expensive option, unless you already have an all right computer and just need to do some upgrades. Titanfall, the most hyped next gen game, will be out on PC, just like most of the big third party games this holiday and probably going forward. Building a gaming PC is simpler than it sounds and being able to buy games on Steam, the Humble Bundle, and countless other online retailers means you’ll be able to save a ton on games going forward. But you will have to worry about things like drivers and in-game settings, plus, if you don’t already have them, a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and various cables. But if you’re in the market for a new computer this year, this is the option I’d recommend.

The third option is to buy a PlayStation 4, which comes out November 15. This is the system with the most goodwill, and at $399, it’s $100 cheaper than the Xbox One, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it became the fastest selling system in the early days of this generation. It’s also the most powerful next gen console, and already we’re hearing that games like Call of Duty run in a higher resolution on PS4. It’s still not PC, but the PS4 games will look good for a while. At launch they’ll have the new Killzone, which I’m sure will be pretty good, but not really great, as well Mark Cerny’s Knack, which might just be special. Also, that new Infamous game looks awesome and will be out next year.

On November 22, the Xbox One will be released for $500, which is a lot. But the system does come with a upgraded Kinect, which is capable of doing some pretty cool stuff. That means you get the most out of the box with the Xbone, as long as you believe developers will find interesting uses for Kinect going forward. Someone probably will, right? Also, the Xbone launch lineup is a lot stronger, with exclusives like Dead Rising 3, Crimson Dragon, Ryse: Son of Rome, and Forza 5 all looking at least interesting. Plus Titanfall will be out on Xbone next March, and that sounds like it will blow everything else out of the water unless something goes terribly wrong.

Which path is the right one to go down? The immediate gratification of the Xbone, or the popular, smart bet of the PS4? I really think if you want to have the most fun the Christmas, it’s probably on the Xbone, but after Tintanfall, who knows? The PS4 is more powerful, but it’s not necessarily night and day. The Xbone probably has the better controller, but everyone says the DualShock 4 is a massive improvement over Sony’s previous controllers, so you’d probably be happy either way. $100 is $100, but if motion gaming really takes off down the road, you’ll have to pony up for it on PS4.

I didn’t preorder either console, because that’s a crazy thing to do and the people who do that either have plenty of disposable income or are scum-of-the-earth bastards planning on reselling the system on eBay for a profit. So what are my next gen plans? I’m not going to lineup for a console, because I remember lining up for the Wii. I guess I’ll keep my eyes open, and I’ll be sure to read and watch next gen coverage on sites like Giant Bomb and Polygon. I guess if I had to pick right now, I’d probably go buy a PS4 and take my chances on being able to run Tintanfall on my rapidly aging PC. But man, it’s been a fun year for games and it’s going to be exciting right to the finish.

Horrorble: R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D.

A couple times now I’ve taken Halloween as an opportunity to review something truly horrorble, namely the second and third Transformers movies. But while Michael Bay is busy fending off air conditioner-wielding attackers, it looks like it’ll be one more year until I have to suffer through one of those again. And sure, Pain and Gain is a thing I could have watched, but I really don’t want to, ever. Plus since we’re both in the supernatural season and the era of the comic book adaptation, I thought one of this summer’s bigger flops, R.I.P.D., would be worth a shot.

R.I.P.D. stands for the Rhode Island Police Department. It also stands for Rest in Peace Department, which makes more sense in the context of this movie. What you might not realize, however, is that “Rest in Peace Department” is itself an acronym for “Rewrite Entire Script Tomorrow. It’s Not Pleasant, Enjoyable, Action Comedy Entertainment. Delete Everything Please. All Reasonable Theatergoers Must Evade Nearest Theater.” But nobody got that memo. Except for audiences, zing!

So hey, did you like Men in Black? Ghostbusters? How about Beetlejuice? R.I.P.D. is really banking on you enjoying those movies (which, yeah, I do) because all it does it take elements from them, mix them together, and then filter them through the incalculable blandness of Ryan Reynolds. Seriously, this is a movie about a secret police organization that hunts ghosts and is full of the bureaucracy of the afterlife and the goofiness of bodily possession. Here, let me tell you what’s up.

Ryan Reynolds is… Uh… Nick? Something like that. He’s a good cop, but before the movie even began he took some gold from a crime scene, along with his partner, Kevin Bacon. We don’t see that, what we do see is Reynolds getting it on with his wife nice and early, which I bring up because that was a tradition in the Transformers sequels too. Remember, even though he’s going to spend the rest of the movie almost entirely with men, he’s not gay. Definitely not gay.

Anyway, Ryan Reynolds goes to work and tells Kevin Bacon he feels bad for being a dirty cop, and Kevin Bacon’s like, “yeah, you’re right.” Oh, and they stop by some weird medal Reynolds has in the station, I wasn’t sure what was going on with that. Way to go, dude, I guess. Anyway, then a fat naked guy in the shower tells them they found a meth dealer and they should go arrest him. Cue a massive strike force full of cops and SWAT teams storming a warehouse full of explosions and slow motion. That was fast.

Ryan Reynolds chases the meth dealer up a bunch of stairs, but can’t find him. Instead, Kevin Bacon appears from out of nowhere and says he can’t risk Ryan Reynolds turning him in, so he shoots him a bunch with what looks like an AK-47, so, you know, not a cop gun. Ryan Reynolds falls all the way to the warehouse floor, then gets up and sees time frozen around him. He walks outside and gets sucked up into the sky. A lot of the CGI in this movie is bad but this part looked kinda cool.

Before Ryan Reynolds can face his final judgement, he gets sucked into a small office room, where he sits across from Mary-Louise Parker, because this is a movie directed by the guy who made RED. Actually she’s one of the better performances in the movie, she seems like she’s having fun, at least. She tells Reynolds that she runs the R.I.P.D, a bunch of ghost cops who arrest escaped souls who make it back to earth. Also, souls transform into monsters because people did bad things in their lifetime. Anyway, she says she knows Reynolds did some bad shit, and if he joins the force, he can help himself in the eyes of God, I guess, although the movie never explicitly alludes to any religion.

So of course he joins up and immediately meets his new partner, Rooster Cogburn – I mean Roy, a 19th Century lawman. Jeff Bridges is here Academy Award-winning performance again, although this time he’s the comic relief. See, it’s not exactly like M.I.B! In this movie, the old guy is the fun one and the young guy is white and just the worst. They go on a mission to learn the ropes, and boy is Ryan Reynolds in for a surprise!

The first thing they do is go to Ryan Reynolds funeral, where we see Kevin Bacon putting the moves on Reynold’s widow and also learn that R.I.P.D. officers can’t reveal their real identities. In fact, to everyone else (including Kevin Bacon, this is important, remember this) Ryan Reynolds appears to be James Hong and Jeff Bridges looks like a super model. All right, you’re probably thinking, this is an opportunity for some funny jokes. Nope! Instead, what we get is a lot of sexism, a little racism, and a couple half-hearted moments when Jeff Bridges acts indignant because guys hit on him. Oh, and I swear every shot of his lady form has “Let’s Get It On” playing in the background.

As they go on their first case, Jeff Bridges shows Ryan Reynolds the ropes, particularly that Deados reveal their true monstrous selves when exposed to cumin for reason even the movie just shrugs its shoulders at. This leads to their first arrest, which turns into their first kill and Reynolds finding gold that resembles the chunks he and Kevin Bacon stole. So, with the help of informant Red Sox fan Mike O’Malley, leads to some more CGI fights and the realization that the gold chunks are actually fragments of the Staff of Jericho (Caine, I presume) and the key to letting evil souls invade earth.

You fucking guessed it. They just had to god damn do it, didn’t they? It’s another fucking movie with a magical pillar that shoots a beam of light into the sky to let an invading force fly to earth. Fuck this trope! So stupid. ARGH. HATE. HATE. HATE. No more. Never again.

Anyway, at this part, Mary-Louise Parker says, “You guys were reckless, I’m gonna have to take your badges.” Because, again, no original ideas. But Bridges and Reynolds go down to earth again and basically start following the case anyway, almost totally unhindered. They arrest Kevin Bacon, bring him in, and find out that was his plan all along (F#!@R) and he assembles the Staff of Jericho, escapes, and starts summoning a bunch of Deados to earth.

Our heroes goes after him, killing a bunch of Deados along the way, until the get up to the tower where the dumb thing is happening. There, Kevin Bacon stabs Ryan Reynolds’ wife, because he needs a human sacrifice and wanted to be a dick about it. Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds kill everybody, Bridges destroys the staff, and Reynolds kills Bacon. As the world is saved, Reynolds comforts his dying wife, who can finally see him again. They get closure, but then Mary-Louise Parker intervenes and lets the wife wake up in the hospital. Then Parker says you guys are going to be partners for a long time. Hooray! They get in the car, and Bridges says, by the way, he got Reynolds a new human form. It’s a little girl with headgear. Hilarious!

If it was the first movie you ever saw in your entire life, I bet you’d find R.I.P.D. a littler overwhelming, but a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we live in a society where popular culture and entertainment are widely and easily consumed, so for pretty much everyone, that won’t be the case. No, for us, we’ll see this as the lifting of elements from other, better films without the addition of anything meaningful to make it worthwhile. It’s exactly the kind of movie you probably wouldn’t walk out of the theater for, but certainly will have forgotten its existence in no time.

Yeah, Jeff Bridges is fun, if you can get past the weirdness of him doing True Grit as a comedy within a whole other movie. But holy shit, who cares? Especially when Ryan Reynolds both is given nothing and brings nothing to the starring role. There are enough juicy ideas in R.I.P.D. that I understand how it got made, but it’s almost entirely a waste. At one part Ryan Reynolds throws Jeff Bridges into a bus. That’s kind of funny.

James Hong doesn't know what he's doing in this either.

James Hong doesn’t know what he’s doing in this either.

Pitching Tents 02: Halloween Special

I certainly hope everyone is having a spooktacular Halloween! I know we were, because up until the last minute, I had no idea what to pitch. It’s so hard coming up with a new idea for a horror movie, there are just so many of them! Basically anyone you can possibly think of has tried to kill people in a movie at this point. Even yourself, as seen in movies where the killer has split personalities (which I won’t spoil here) or even more abstractly, like in Mirrors (I think). Ooh, what if the monsters were the heroes and the villagers were the villains? Congratulations, me, I’ve just come up with Bride of Frankenstein.

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Make Us Blind So We Can Never Look Back

CHVRCHΞS – The Bones of What You Believe

First Haim, now Chvrches, it’s like I don’t know what the hell to believe anymore. There are these super pleasant, catchy, fun albums buoyed by actual talent that all the websites I go to for music review love …And I just can’t be all about them. I want to be, I mean, I really loved this year’s Tegan and Sara album. How is this different? I can’t really tell you. That’s annoying. I’ve been putting off writing about Chvrches for like a month now because I can’t really tell you why I like it, but I don’t love it.

Who are Chvrches, you ask? What do they sound like? Why is their name spelled so stupidly? I can answer two of those three questions. Chvrches are are a Scottish synthpop trio, led by singer Lauren Mayberry. They make music that just drenched in catchy synth hooks, but it’s Mayberry’s voice that has made the band the talk of town for going on a year now. There is literally nothing in the world I’m less qualified to write about than the strengths and weaknesses of someone’s singing – so, uh, she sounds good? She definitely stands out, and when you get to “Under the Tide,” which is sung by bandmate Martin Doherty (who’s not bad), you’ll be confused and angry that the lady’s pretty voice is stuck in back.

There’s also a bit of a bite to these songs. Lyrically and musically, Chvrches isn’t afraid to go dark. I think that’s what helps differentiate it in my mind from popular dance music, which, as far as I can tell, is entirely about getting slizzard and fucking. Of course that’s not the only thing thing that separates The Bones of What You Believe from Rhianna, or whoever is popular now. This music sounds like humans wrote it, for one. I get kind of a M83 vibe on some tracks, maybe a bit of New Order on others. These are favorable comparisons.

But I dunno, man. Everyone talks about “The Mother We Share,” which is a great song. I actually think the song that follows it, “We Sink,” is the best on the album. I think I really like The Bones of What You Believe, but it just doesn’t stick with me like my favorite albums do. Oh, maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I should stop trying to look for my new favorite album every year. Huh. That’s a dour note to end on… Candy for breakfast!

Favorite Tracks: “The Mother We Share,” “We Sink,” “Night Sky”

T3 67: Top 10 Annoying Children in Movies

When you were a little kid, did you ever imagine you got to join your favorite characters on their adventures? Obi Wan would teach you in the ways of the force, maybe, or Indiana Jones would need your help to secure a precious artifact, for example. Well, the filmmakers behind those films thought you had those fantasies, at least. That’s why they wrote little kids into the later movies in those storied franchises. The problem is, often the resulting characters were more annoying than anything else. That’s why this week we decided to count down our bottom 10 kids in film. It’s totally wizard!

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Super Effective

Pokémon Y

Pokemon turned 15 this year. There are now over 700 different pocket monsters, divided over six generations of games. I’ve played one of the first in each generation: Blue (and Yellow), Gold, Ruby, Pearl, White, and now Y. In all that time, I’ve changed quite a bit. I’ve gone from being massively obsessed with the series, desperate to see it’s characters rendered in their full 3D glory on my Nintendo 64, to accepting the series as a constant. One that changes only enough to stay relevant, but keeps a strong tie to its roots. Pokemon games have a formula that really works, and by tweaking it in a few meaningful ways, Pokemon X & Y stands as the best game in the series yet.

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