Trash VentThe number one spot to vent!

I consider myself a moderate gamer, loyal to the called ‘realistic’ or action/crime/suspense genre games such as the Grand Theft Auto series (my favorite one), The Warriors, Hitman: Blood Money and Max Payne series… in other words, I am a Rockstar Games junkie.

What I have not (so far) been a fan of is the movies of my favorite games, because they always seem to have let me down. Whether it’s the wrong choice of character for the antagonist, director’s eye candy additions to attract different (non-video gamer) audiences or other extras that are alien to the game and take away the nostalgic feeling of the game.

I understand that the movie producers demand return for their money, but as an artist I find it unethical to steal a concept or idea and turn it into something different than what it originally was. Let’s take Hitman The Movie for example… look at the photo of the Hitman, and compare it to this… wouldn’t Bruce Willis or even Billy Zane be a better candidate? What was the director thinking of going with a young and inexperienced looking actor to represent Hitman? And the storyline was shit with no actual relevance and connection to the game settings and plots.

Now back to this entry: past experiences with movies and their wrong representation of video games have left me no reason to be excited for the upcoming Max Payne The Movie releasing tonight.

While I am a big fan of Mark Wahlberg, again I am not sure if he is the right choice. Why? Well, first of all the Max Payne character in the video game is by no means a muscle guy like Mark is; he is your ‘nothing to live for’, rugged, smoking, average Joe cop. A better candidate would have been the actual character in the game - pictured right.

As for the the plot, watch the trailer and tell me what’s up with the winged creatures? What is Ludacris doing in the movie, to my knowledge, there are no references of him in the game!

Again, I hate to be pre-judgmental - but once again the movie will not represent what the video game is all about.

If you watch the movie this weekend, I’d love to hear your opinion and review.

Here are a couple of reviews of the movie that you may find helpful.

• Review by Urban Cinefile
• Review by Arstechnica Journals

Anybody get the feeling we all bought a star wars version of “God of War”? Not quite sure what designers were thinking about when they made this game but if there are copyrights for how video games play and feel someone is getting sued. Not to worry I am sure George Lucas has made more than enough money from the Star Wars franchise that he is probably sitting on a beach some where drinking liquor out of a cocanut cup with a toothpick umbrella.

Reviews seem to be somewhat mixed on this one. The game seems to be a love or hate between gamers. Although I am not a huge Star Wars fan the force unleased has met my expectations for what is considered a better than average hack and slash. Still feeling my way through the game I am sure that there will be more challenging levels and funky environments to come.

The game starts off by you having full control and functionality over no other that Darth Vader. You have to admit its pretty cool to have control over the baddest ass mother F*@#$& in the whole universe.  The only mistake I made was not going to the control panel and finding out how to do the combos correctly. Instead I resorted to NES style button smashing to hack my way through the first level.

Another thing that is enjoyable about the game is that there is no preschool tutorial that is mandatory to complete when you power up your system. From the word go your thrown into a war zone filled with giant Wookies to battle.

I would recommend this game to anyone that has a 6 foot cardboard cut out of Chewba standing in their living room, or if you just want to kill some time.