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Reviews
Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017)
Andromeda – Where potential goes to die
Regardless of your thoughts relating to the ending of Mass Effect 3 back in 2012, at least the Bioware team making that game had the excuse of being under the gun to create something in 18 months that was not only new, but also to build upon technical advancements made in Mass Effect 2. Such a limited timescale no matter your resources, leaves little time to explore the creative aspects that often need much input and refining to really make the material into something that will be interesting, and impactful to the gamer playing it.
I do not however, have such sympathy for the team that made this mess. Who not only had over 5 years, a budget of over $40million, but most crucially a free creative pass to make almost any sort of Mass Effect game they wanted to. The drip-feed releases of screenshots and game footage showed promise, especially with Mass Effect now transitioning to the Frostbite engine. The changing of the November 2016 release date to March 2017 again showed promise, that Bioware & EA were actually going to take real care with Mass Effect after they damage they took in 2012. I myself was quite hopeful that this was going to be a great game to put things back on track.
Then we got to play the game for the 10 hour trial, and
oh my. If it wasn't a matter of public knowledge they spent 5 years on this, I'd have thought they cobbled this together in a year, and then didn't bother to QA or beta test it. If there wasn't such a thing as a 5 year rush job for a production of this nature, then Mass Effect Andromeda is the first. Graphically the game is nice, and some of the scenery can even be breath-taking, but now we get to what really brings it down. The animations, specifically character face ones. I've never seen backwards progress on such a thing until now, the ones from the original Mass Effect back in 2007 are better than these ones, and they weren't the best to begin with! With this being a game you spend hours talking to people, this is a key basic you need to get right. When characters greet the news that they've lost a friend or family member with their eyes darting around, and producing a goofy, vacuous smile like they have mental issues, then you have a fundamental problem with your game. Serious stuff ends up inducing laughter, and the actual comedy just becomes slapstick comedy since even punches characters make don't connect as if you were watching WWE.
Enemies glitch out of nowhere, your party members glitch all around you in combat, NPCs appear/vanish from thin air, some cutscenes don't trigger, some quests don't advance, dialogue in hub areas all cut one another off, so you can't listen in to any of it. Heck, there was even a bug where my character turned into something like the liquid metal T-1000 from Terminator 2!
It ends up being death by a thousand cuts, a few of those issues you could live with, but being so many of them that directly impede or taint your experience, it goes beyond farce and definitely beyond unacceptable. It's not worth talking about the story or lore, which have their own issues.
At the most basic level, Mass Effect Andromeda fails to be a good, solid game first and a Mass Effect game second. There is undoubted potential here, but it's all ruined by the awful work made of putting it together. There's so much wrong that if you couldn't laugh at it, you'd cry instead.
Don't bother getting this for at least a year, when they've hopefully fixed it or you can get it at bargain bucket prices. It's not worth your time or money in its current state, more importantly a purchase for this game now, is telling Bioware & EA that it's okay to release games in this state, and it simply isn't!
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Beyond Star Trek
I went into this 3rd movie with hopes lessons were learned from the step back taken in the previous movie, sadly this wasn't really the case. The potential was there, and the seeds were even planted at the start of the movie for something great, but like Into Darkness they didn't return to those elements, and just pressed on to the drool & seizure inducing CGI action.
The title of this review I think is apt as these movies have now went beyond the Star Trek many of us fell in love with. Now we have a fairly generic sci-fi action/adventure movie series with elements of Star Trek tucked in to make it seem a Star Trek movie on an aesthetic and very basic level.
The opening 20-30 minutes of the movie was the section I liked most - aside from the very opening sequence which was just too stupid for words! I enjoyed this section so much because we got to spend some time with the characters with their hair down, and get to know them better outside of manically paced action sequences. The vast majority of the technical elements are fantastic, I thought the Starbase you get to see was just amazing, and most of the effects in general, albeit with a lot of camera shake.
Most of the crew interactions are well written and acted, the cast as ever were excellent. There were also some very tasteful acknowledgements to the passing of Leonard Nimoy which were handled very well, and without making a big deal of them.
As ever though, key details and other elements either don't get acknowledgement again or are just wrong to begin with. There are some of bits information that relate to the previous TV show Enterprise, and while it was faithfully followed visually. The plot elements and continuity to spring from that were either wrong, or didn't make sense relative to what happened in that series. There's also a "nebula" (I use quotes because it seems far more like an asteroid field!) the writers make a whole song and dance about that only the Enterprise has the sensors to safely traverse it, and even then it's quite dangerous. There's a fairly long sequence of the ship travelling through, yet when it's time to go back through for the final act, you don't even see this "nebula" again, and nothing is even mentioned regarding it!
We've had 3 "new generation" Star Trek movies, and it is the 3rd straight movie where we've had a villain looking for revenge and/or wants/has a WMD they're wish to unleash on the galaxy. It's just plain boring now, and leads to very weak villains. Krall is a cookie cutter as you can get as far as villains go, and Idris Elba many talents are wasted as a result. There's no moral grey areas, no commentary on the society of today, nothing remotely provoking for the audience to figure out or debate on. Those were the things that made Star Trek great, and they threw in action on occasion to mix things up a bit to help drive on the story, not be the story.
Star Trek has indeed went "Beyond". Sadly past what made it great, now it's something less as a result.
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek returns to Warp Speed!
I must say, as an avid Star Trek fan for most of my life I was very sceptical of this new movie. I felt there had been too many failures by the creative teams in Voyager, the opening 2 years of Enterprise and the previous 2 movies that they should just let things rest a while and then bring in new people.
We've seen so many prequels recently and there have been a lot more failures than successes and thank god they done this one right! It's action from the get-go and the film for the most part is high paced.
Hat's off to Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Ben Cross and Leonard Nimoy who put by far the best performances. Every scene that's has Leonard Nimoy were done wonderfully and a true tip of the hat to classic Star Trek.
The special effects are top-notch and bring a fresh new view of Star Trek. J.J. Abrams was right in saying this isn't for any Star Trek "purists", we'll all have to adopt the Star Trek philosophy and keep an open mind for this film in order to truly enjoy it. For example, planet Delta Vega that was in the William Shatner pilot episode for Star Trek, was near the Galaxy's edge. Here, it's almost within a nats wing of the planet Vulcan, you'll just have to let little things like that go.
My only real criticism of the picture was that I thought they overdid the comedy side a bit. I don't mind a few funny bits here and there, but I thought they did too much. Aside from that, it's a good start to build upon and I hope the sequel to this will focus a bit more on the characters just established here now that the base has been set.
Ahead Warp Factor 9!
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Great on its own, not so in the context of the rest of Star Trek...
I had pretty high hopes for this film, everything seemed to be falling into place in the months before release, especially with such creative people brought in for the film.
When it finally released and I went to see it, I was quite satisfied at the time of watching. Strong cast, excellent special effects especially the final space battle, great sounds, and music from the late Jerry Goldsmith. For any regular movie goer or sci-fi fan, this is probably a very good film to watch it stands pretty much on its own merits well.
Afterwards when getting the DVD, I saw how weak the film was. In essence its merely a weak rehash of Star Trek II & VI, borrowing plots and concepts from them and recycling them for the TNG cast. There are many issues regarding the plot that really defy belief, some examples include:
The whole B4 plot. Doesn't anyone remember Lore? Well, the characters sure don't! Where has Data's emotion chip vanished to? It was in the last film, now its gone here without any explanation. An Ion storm stops Data from beaming the body parts of B4, so they take a shuttle down, yet when on the planet the skys are perfectly clear, what happened there? I know the whole memory transfer from Data to B4 is like the "Katra" from Star Trek III, but why is Data transferring ALL his memory? Which likely has sensitive military information, yet they directly download it into the brain of this mystery android they just found. Isn't that a bit well.....stupid? Enterprise gets to Romulas, but they're left in the lurch for 17 hours. Now with Shinzon dying and not being too far off from death, why are they opting for theatrics over haste? We finally meet Shinzon and he tells Picard to meet again "tomorrow", so he's closer to death again before they even make a move to capture Picard. Romulans create Shinzon, then stuck him in the dilithium mines and savagely beat him for years. So why does he now seek to bring glory to the Romulan Empire by destroying the Federation?
Apart from the first 3 things I mentioned, I missed everything else until I got the DVD and could watch it a few times. It makes me wonder why with so much money they could screw up the story so bad. But then again they had a budget of $60million and if IMDb bios are correct, Patrick Stuart got $15million for the film. If that came off directly from the film's budget (and i'm assuming it has) then its no wonder how shoddy the film was, and why Stuart Baird was moaning about budget problems. Patrick Stuart is one of the best actors around, but does he (or any other actor for that matter) really justify that much money for a few months work? His pay in this film was equal to the money he made in his whole 7 year run in the TV show.
The film is good on first viewing, and if you ignore a couple of iffy things in that first viewing, then its worthy of a 9/10. 4/10 anytime afterwards, the music and special effects make it just watchable.
Trek XI will have to be MUCH more thought out than this mess, or Star Trek will go back to the cold for at least 10 years i'd reckon.
Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast (2002)
The Force is strong with this one.
I pre-ordered this game in January this year and got my copy 2 days before the official release date, and i wasn't disappointed.
I can't credit John Williams and CO enough for the superb sound and music, you really feel like you're in the middle of a Star Wars film, blasting Stormtoopers or Saber Fighting a Sith Lord.
The story is a bit predicable, but if you're a Star Wars fan, you won't care!
The saber fighting is superb in single player mode, fast paced and very Episode I and II like! The force powers are well done, divided into 3 levels, level 1 a basic version of that force power and level 3 the most powerful version of that force power.
You can also live your Darth Vader dream and grip an opponent and throw him off an edge or just crush'em!
The movie cut scenes are a bit blocky but they're well enough done to get jist of it.
Multiplayer Saber physics are changed in the multiplayer mode, the saber fights are slowed down considerably due to the lag factor, you'll find out what I mean when you play it.
But all in all a fantastic game, one which any Star Wars fan should have! It should also appeal to Star Trek Elite Force fans too, with the same game engine and the nice guns you get in the game.
Rating 9 out of 10