8 Things about Jurassic World

So after the diatribe that was Jurassic Park III and then the childhood soul crushing Godzilla, I was in no way keen to see Jurassic World. Just watch the first trailer, the idea of a genetically modified dinosaur isn’t so far fetched in the grand scheme of getting actual dinosaurs from mosquitos. But then right at the end you get a shot of Chris Pratt riding with raptors. Not being chased, riding! Then the second trailer came out, giving us more of Chris raptor-whispering. But then toward the end the trailer says the dinosaurs are communicating. Really, you are literally going with the dumbest part of the third – and worst – movie?

When my best friend invited me along to see the film on opening weekend I was not enthused. So little of my childhood remains untainted, take away Jurassic Park and all I’ll be left with is cynicism and… cynicism. Oh so much cynicism. But, then I went to see it and I can definitely say that the last remnants of my childhood remains somewhat intact. There’s still cynicism, but it’s a cynicism that warms the dreary remains of my English soul. That’s not to say the film is perfect – let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So here are 8 things in Jurassic World to gripe about.

Warning: There are spoilers.

Prometheus Done Properly

So the other night Prometheus was on TV. I watched it on opening weekend way back in 2012 before I started Going Spare (unfortunately, that works on way too many levels), so I never thought to do an 8 Things About Prometheus. Though it would have been incredibly easy. But watching it on TV, I realised just how spectacularly the film failed at its original aim. For those of you who remember, Prometheus, the prequel to Alien, was billed as going to finally explain the mystery Space Jockey and why he had a ship filled with xenomorph eggs. The finished product, however, went nowhere near answering this question in the slightest. Instead, it threw up more questions than it did answers. This is possibly because somewhere along the lines someone (the studio) decided that they actually wanted to milk more than one film out of explaining the Space Jockey-cum-Engineer question. Or, it was simply the Damon Lindelof effect.

Thanks for ruining LOST, douchebag.

Nevertheless, it gave me an idea for a post on how Prometheus should have been done in order to satisfy its original premise. Warning: there are spoilers, this post assumes you have already watched the film.

6 Things about Wolfenstein: New Order

I’m bored, more so now that I’ve finished Wolfenstein: New Order. So in order to stave off my boredom I figured I’d eject 6 – yes 6 – things about Wolfenstein: New Order (WNO from now on) into the world. You know, several months after the game came out and no one would be interested in reading a review. But hey, blogging is the future of academia (apparently) so I better get some practice in now. So be prepared for a non-peer reviewed assessment of Shoot More Nazis: 1960 Style.

8 Things About Godzilla

Pacific Rim is one of the best movies I have ever seen. A comment which will no doubt spark internet-rage over how the plot or the acting wasn’t great or any number of things. But that wasn’t the point of the film. The point of the film was this:

ROCKET PUNCH!!!

You see Pacific Rim understood very clearly what it was: it was a film about giant mechs having fisticuffs with giant Kaiju. Everything around that is just filler to build up to the MOMENT when two very big things go toe-to-toe. It’s what I wanted from the film and it’s what I got. And regardless of whether you liked the film or not you cannot deny that it is thanks to Pacific Rim that poeple got interested in the Kaiju genre again. Which is awesome because that generated the impetus to do Godzilla again. Only this time it was going to be better than the 1998 American version. How could it not? All it had do was do was what Pacific Rim did but with Godzilla. How hard can it be to fuck that up? And then I saw the film…

8 Things about Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite is potentially one of the best games ever made. And that is not an exaggeration. The fact that it’s such a great game has little to do with the mechanics of the game itself so much as the sheer amount of attention and detail that the designers put into it. That, and a brilliantly misleading ad campaign. From the very first Bioshock game I was introduced to the possibility that games could be actually intellectually stimulating. There is genuine philosophy in these games, philosophy that you could include in real academic journals. I could quite happily devote my career to writing articles about Bioshock for academic journals and those articles and the journals they would appear in would be credible. Which is awesome!

This latest instalment takes that to a whole new level. A level I will divest to you, my adoring reader (fucking adore me!), in 8 unbite sized chunks.

8 things about Oblivion

So the other night I went to see Oblivion and seeing as the internet is all about ruining things (just look at the porn industry) I thought I’d turn my sights on the latest of Cruise’s Scientology propaganda. Although if it is about Scientology then by the thetan did they hide those messages well. This is no Battlefield Earth, this is something completely different. Which might be a good thing considering that film was utter crap.

However, and I cannot overstate this enough: OBLIVION IS THE MOST CONVOLUTED FILM EVER. OF ALL TIME. The number of plot twists in this film is truly staggering and they mount up like a rickety house of cards built on another rickety house of cards built on top of an electric fan. It’s not that the film doesn’t make sense, there’s kind of a plot by the end of it. It’s just that by the time that the film has finished, its gone through so many twists and turns that you’re fairly certain that whoever wrote this thing had dementia and the only thought they managed to retain throughout the writing process was “Oh, it’s time for a plot twist”. This is a film that fails to keep up with itself.

THERE WILL BE PLOT SPOILERS!!

8 things about Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil is one of the classics of survival horror games. I started playing in time for Resident Evil 4. I hate to admit it but zombies are one of the few things that freak me out. I can watch any horror movie and yeah I’ll be scared and flinch (hey, it’s just a sign my reflexes are prepared to keep me alive) but after I finish watching that’s it and I carry on with my day. Zombie movies always leave an impression with me though, they creep me out in the way that Spooks creeps me out, it’s so bad that even the enticement of sex has proven to be inadequate to get me out of my malaise.

That zombie movies creep me out so much is a little wierd seeing as they’re actually all pretty boring. The plots are almost always identical and boil down to the fact that a bunch of people, no matter what skill set they have, will invariable fail to beat the zombies. Dumbasses. So enough about my phobias and more about Resident Evil which as of the fourth instalment got a little more action orientated and was brilliant. I never finished it due to a minor tecnical difficulty but what I played I enjoyed. Then along came RE5 and yes Sheva was only there as a gimic to prove that Capcom didn’t hate Africans and her AI turned out to be really fucking stupid a lot of the time (proof that Capcom isn’t racist) but I still enjoyed it . I used her in exactly the way she was meant to be used, as a mule to carry all the ammo I knew I’d need but didn’t have space for. Am I racist? No. Sexist? Yes. Needless to say I enjoyed the game and when word of RE6 came out I thought as long as the AI partner is improved I’ll be happy with that.

So, not actually really aiming to buy it until it got cheap I happened to receive it as a gift. And, well… Well, here’s 8 things about Resident Evil 6:

8 things about Assassin’s Creed 3

I first played Assassin’s Creed because it was a friend’s copy and I thought I’d give it a go. And to be honest it was a bit of a wierd experience, I wasn’t expecting the whole Abstergo tapping into your DNA to look at your ancestor’s pasts plot line. It struck me as the most convuleted way to explain why a game set during the Crusades had a HUD (Heads up Display). Add to that the gameplay was pretty repetitive and finishing the game was a bit of a slog by the end of it. And it left the whole thing without an end, it wasn’t even really a cliffhanger because I’d be fucked if I knew what was going.

This is plot.

Then along came Assassin’s Creed II which I ignored until I could get it for about £10 second hand and the guy at the store said it was a lot better than the first one. I wish I’d bought a brand new copy because Ubisoft deserved the money, which is a statement I never thought I’d say. I played it and I figuratively jizzed all over it, which is a statement I’m not surprised by. ACII was brilliant and I loved every minute of it. I loved Brotherhood too, though I didn’t have as much of crisis over it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was smaller. Then there was Revelations which again didn’t feel as big as ACII but improved upon everything else so far. There is not an aspect of the ACII games that I do not love.

So when Assassin’s Creed 3 came out I pre-crisised and got ready for more joy than I could contain. I ordered the standard version because the one lesson I learned from Revelations was that there is absolutely no point in buying the special edition versions whatsoever. So I got the game and here are 8 things about AC3 that you probably don’t care about: