Clever Geek of the Week

The Xbox One Just Had A Very Bad Day - Kotaku Australia

Microsoft came out this week to quash rumours in the lead up to E3 and reassure their fans about the more concerning stories regarding the Xbox One. Wait, did I say reassure? I meant outrage further.

The main bone of contention for the Xbone is the fact it will need to connect to the internet and phone home once a day to report, umm,  whatever it feels is necessary to report. If you don't have it plugged in (or have a particularly dodgy connection that drops out at the crucial time) then your single player games won't work. That's right, Microsoft will punish you for not connecting your console to the internet by blocking your access to games that don't actually need to be online.

This was closely followed by confirmation that you can trade games as long as the game publisher allows it. Essentially they have announced that any remaining illusion of game ownership is gone. 

But hey, at least you can turn of the Kinect if you feel creeped our by it watching you, all the time, like when you're sleeping.

So Microsoft, by alienating your core audience by offering a games console that focuses on features that offer more advantages to game publishers than actual gamers I hereby pronounce you 'Clever Geek of the Week'.

Kids Movie Review - Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

It was with some trepidation I sat down with the boys to watch Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.  Being the third in a series and only having seen the original, and not overly bad, movie.

The pre-title sequence section rolled and was entertaining enough to get me curious.  Then the opening credits started, full Bond style with Get This Party Started performed by Shirley Bassey.  Trust me, it is awesome.

The setup has hairless cat, Kitty Galore (Bette Midler) and her hench-cat, Paws (Phil LaMarr) stealing secrets from around the world.  Dog agents, Diggs (James Marsden) and Butch (Nick Nolte) are sent to foil Kitty's plans.  We get a flashback to what I assume was Cats & Dogs 2 showing how Kitty became hairless and why she wants revenge on Dogs and Humans alike.  We soon find out the Kitty's previous agency, MEOW, is also concerned so it is up to cats, represented by Catherine (Christina Apllegate), and dogs to band together to save the Human Race, with a little help from a Pigeon named Seamus (Katt Williams).

What follows is an enjoyable movie full of family friendly action and more than just a few themed sight gags, such as the vehicles used by the dogs to get to their headquarters have "Stay" instead of "Stop" on the controls.  There really isn't much more to say aside from Roger Moore making an "appearance" as the head of MEOW.

There are plenty of nods to James Bond and a fair few other movies (including Silence of the Lambs - I don't think the kids got that one).

There are certainly worse movies to watch on a potentially rainy afternoon.  With plenty of laughs for the kids and some decent gags for the grown ups Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore certainly is a decent family movie.

Again, I must defer to the experts for the final say.

J (9) - "It was funny and I like when *spoiler* (starts talking about the end of the movie"

M (5) - "I liked the movie. I don't have any favourite bits.  I liked the pigeon"

Case closed!

In a word - Meow!

Thomas Was Alone - PC Game Review

I picked up this title as part of a Humble Indie Bundle a little while ago and finally decided to give it a go.

Thomas Was Alone started as a flash platformer created by Mike Bithell and sooned gained enough attention and popularity to be developed into a stand alone title.  On the surface it seems rather bland.  Essentially you are guiding shapes through grey locations in order to reach a designated location.  As the game progresses you get introduced to more shapes, each with their own properties, and must utilise them effectively in order to get to harder to reach areas.

For example, Thomas is a red rectangle with a medium height jump.  Later we are introduced to a blue square that can float, a small purple rectangle that can double jump, the list goes on.  Some of the puzzles do take some working out while others seem to be an exercise in persistence.

What really sets the game apart is the atmosphere.  Each section is introduced with a quote.  Various people commenting about Artificial Intelligences and the consequences of them intermingling.  Once the game starts the narrator of the game, played by Danny Wallace, describes what the various Arftificially Intelligent shapes are thinking, with the dialogue appearing story style on the screen.  The sheer amount of character he adds to these simple shapes is nothing short of amazing and really helps to keep you playing the game.  You find yourself actually caring about the fate of these coloured blocks and it really adds to the sense of victory when you successfully traverse a particularly tricky area.  This is also backed up by the wonderful ambient music that permeates throughout the game.

I played the game on PC using my trusty Xbox/PS3 style controller.  The controls were responsive and accurate.  Given the simple gameplay this comes as no surprise.  I am pretty sure the experience would translate easily to other gaming devices.

All up Thomas Was Alone is an enjoyable experience.  The difficulty level varies throughout the game but I only found one or two levels frustrating.  If you are looking for a super hard challenge then this is not for you.  The game itself is quite short. I finished it over 3 nights, playing a little under an hour each night, but if you are an achievement fiend there are collectibles and additional goals and challenges to keep you going back for quite some time.

As a stand-a-lone title it'll set you back about $10 on Steam.  I'd recommend trying to get it as part of a discount package for best value.

Movie Review - Star Trek Into Darkness

JJ Abrams latest journey into intergalactic spectacle is certainly a, well, spectacle.

The set up sees James T Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) in trouble after a routine scan of a primitive planet doesn't go the way it should.  Stripped of his command Kirk is taken on as the first officer on  the starship Enterprise by Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood), the man who convinced Kirk to join Starfleet in the first movie.

Soon after a huge explosion takes out an archive facility an emergency meeting of the Starfleet high command convenes and they are attacked by one man, John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), introducing us to the ruthless villain of the piece.  Kirk gets put back into the boss chair of The Enterprise and is sent to find Harrison and blow him into as many small pieces as possible.

Beyond that, it is very difficult to talk specifics without spoilers.  But I can say we are treated to spectacular action that comes at a relentless pace with very little down time.  There is so much running in this movie I am actually having a hard time remembering when characters just walked.  Between explosions, fire fights, fist fights, running, explosions, jumping, explosions, jumping from explosions, running, running from fights, running to fights and general shenanigans it's a wonder the actors had any breath left to deliver their dialogue.

In the brief down times there is some great interaction between characters and Simon Pegg as Scotty stylishly delivers much of the needed sensibility in amongst the chaos.

The chaos sometimes seem to be put in place to stop us thinking about some of the plot devices slipped into the very few quiet bits.  For example Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock have continued their relationship from the first movie and suddenly there are tensions for reasons.  When we find out the cause they make sure something explodes before anyone has the chance to think, "Hang on, they have been together for how long and it took *spoiler deleted* to make her realise *spoiler deleted* about him?"

In the end however this is a fun movie with plenty of nods to the original series.  Those knowledgeable enough about the previous incarnation will probably guess the big twist before it happens but it doesn't detract from the sheer enjoyment of going along for the ride.  There are a few too many convenient occurrences but if you let yourself go it's easy enough to overlook them.

So set your phasers to stun and aim them at the analytical part of your brain. Then sit back and watch the running explosion zappy boom movie.

In a word - *Spoiler deleted*

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

I should begin this review with a confession. I didn't watch the entire movie. I bailed about half way through. I know there will be people who would say that I can't review a movie that I haven't watched all the way through. To them I suggest they consider this less as a review and more like a public service announcement.

H & G: WH (as I will be calling it from here on) is bad. There it's no other way to put it. The premise is that after Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) escape the gingerbread cottage they subsequently dedicate their lives to hunting down and exterminating witches, which actually seems promising, but it's an empty promise, made from the shadows, and you better check all the other shadows, argh, too late.

The biggest puzzle is how this can be so bad. It's got action packed battles with the sort of gadgets you'd expect from medieval Batman, any number of ways to gruesomely bring down the bad guys and freaking Hawkeye from The Avengers.

What we end up with are two leads who seem to want to play it as deadpan as possible meaning there is no chemistry between them or anyone else. The witches are trying (and failing) to be over the top scenery chewers which removes any sense of menace. The rest of the supporting cast are left not knowing how they are meant to play it and subsequently just come off as flat.

I admit to liking my fair share of bad movies, the sort that you can have fun watching even though you know you shouldn't.  The guilty pleasure movie is, well, a guilty pleasure of mine.  H & G: WH is too bad to even be put in this category.  It is appalling.  I can only guess it was pushed through to capatilise on the very thin link it has with The Avengers.  The only movie that I can think of that comes close to the sheer awfulness of this movie is Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter, but H & G: WH had me thinking that AL - VH maybe wasn't all that bad.  This movie is so bad it made another bad movie look significantly better!

I feel I should try to add something positive, and all I can come up with is the opening credits where the time between Hansel and Gretel's escape and when this... movie... is set is shown by stylised animation resembling wood cuttings and olde style news sheets with flames and a dramatic score.  It goes on too long and I was yawning by the end of it but it is still the best part!

H & G: WH is a wasted opportunity turned into a waste of a movie and all I can say is do not waste any of your time watching this.

In nine words - They should have been the ones who got baked!

Copyright Craziness Takes Down Retro Game Site

Underground Gamer Goes Down Citing Legal Problems (TorrentFreak)

I came across this disturbing news while trying to find out why I couldn't access Underground Gamer.

For those who don't know, Underground Gamer was a site that offered bittorrent files for games with the strict rule that they would not allow anything released in the last 10 years. It was set up to preserve games no longer supported or even playable on modern hardware. It was a treasure trove for unreleased betas and many of the entries included historical information, video footage and all sorts of associated information. Core site members would even track down rare titles and restore and preserve them to ensure they were not lost. In essence this was no Pirate Bay, UG was dedicated to keeping classic games alive. Good luck finding a still playable data cassette of Mission Impossible for the Commodore 64.

In summary the site administrators took the site down after receiving a threatening letter from a copyright focused legal firm because FIFA 98 was available for download on the site.

FIFA 98... As in 1998. The letter wasn't even from the developers or the publishers. Some law firm took it upon themselves to draw up a legal threat over a 16 year old game that is no longer developed, supported or even sold, anywhere, at all.

Also consider that this game ran on Windows 95 and 98 so good luck actually trying to profit from something that won't even run on modern PCs (don't believe that compatibility crap buried in your system settings).

So here is a classic example of what is wrong with copyright "law".  When a site that is dedicated to preserving media that is disappearing, and has a dedicated user base that fully supports its ideals, can be taken down because a money grabbing legal firm that isn't even directly representing the company that released a product 16 years ago tasked action against it then some serious reconsideration needs to be undertaken. No-one is losing a sale, no-one is losing money and NO-ONE is profiting illegally from anything on UG.

So, legal firm, go prosecute some real crime.

Amy Pond Escapes New York, Goes Intergalactic

Amy Pond is going to be a bad girl for Marvel

Marvel has announced that Karen Gillem is joining the ranks in the upcoming Guardian's of the Galaxy. Not to many details at this stage but it is reported that she will be playing the main female villian in the piece.

If I knew anything about these particular heroes beyond the face that one of the main characters its a genetically enhanced raccoon then I could speculate further about her role.

I just know it's going to be hard to watch this movie without expecting The Doctor to come strolling in, stern faced, saying "Amelia Pond, what are you doing?"

Movie Review - Pitch Perfect

After digging up the soundtrack for this movie today what choice did we have but to put it on the big screen this evening?  And since it is pretty fresh in my mind... Review time!

Pitch Perfect sees Beca (Anna Kendrick) being almost forced to go to college by her father however she is too alternative to want to do what everyone else does.  We know she's alternative since she has slightly untidy hair and wears darker eye makeup than everyone else, oh and she wants to skip college to become a DJ.  When her father says that he will let her drop out of college and take her to LA if she still doesn't like it after a year, but she has to try to get involved more, Beca ends up joining the Barden Bellas, an all female acapella group that has been trying to win the national championships for years.

Caught up in the rivalry between the Bellas and the college's champion singers, The Treble Makers, Beca soon starts clashing with the Bellas' leader, Aubrey (Anna Camp), who insists that strict discipline and perfecting the same routine they have always performed is the key to winning the championship.  Beca, of course, has other ideas.

Straight up, this movie is fun.  It does not take itself seriously and the comedy swings from clever word play right through to full gross out humour, and it all works.  Australia's own Rebel Wilson steals much of the show as Fat Amy with what is arguably her best ever performance.  The gags are shared amongst the main players and supporting actors nicely and the laughs come through nice and steadily throughout.

Since this is a movie about acapella groups it goes without saying that a lot of the emphasis is on performances and vocal arrangements, and it doesn't let you down.  The musical set pieces are spectacular and certainly add much to the enjoyment of the movie.

So it's simple.  See this movie, enjoy this movie and have an awesome time.

In a word - acca-awesome!