I love Harry Potter. Now that that's out of the way, I need to criticize this movie through teary eyes, because I was let down. First and foremost, it's just a ploy to get us to spend more money. The movie took a very small amount of material, and turned it into a full length movie; you could have walked out of the theater at any time, walked back in ten minuets later, and figured out exactly what you missed. That's bad. Movies need to be deep and involving, and you need to have to focus to follow them, like Inception. HP7 was not one of those movies. Second, there was a whole lot of pointless crap in it. At one point, Hermione was feeling sad, so the music on the radio became background music, and she and Harry started to dance around to it. I'm sure that was just a trick so the writers wouldn't have to think of an actual plot event to have happen. Thirdly, there was the part where Hermione read about the story of the Deathly Hallows, and it went into an animation of the story that looked like something out of an artsy film festival. It sucked! It was another time waster! Lastly on the hate list, the director obviously went out of his way to make the whole thing an analogy to 1930's Germany. The "snatchers" were nazi's (they even had red armbands), the "Mudbloods" were Jews (who were put on trial for their heredity), and Voldemort was Hitler. It all seemed really unnecessary, like the movie makers thought we needed to connect Voldemort to Hitler to understand how evil he is; we don't, everyone in America has read the books, we know Voldemort is evil, we don't need to be reminded of the Holocaust to connect the dots.
Lucky for all of us, there were some things I did like about this movie. The movie focused on two characters more than it ever had, Hermione, and Voldemort. I can't tell you about Hermione without a spoiler, so I'll only tell you that Voldemort has more lines in this one than he did in all six other movies combined. The last thing I liked about it was how you really got the feeling that the main characters were alone, and there was no one in the world they could trust. That's a really hard feeling to get from a movie, and HP7 did it.
Now, after all the negatives I've given in this review, I want to make one thing clear, the movie was good and entertaining. Come on, it was Harry Potter! But this time it failed to enchant me quite like the others did.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
the Fretless Bass reviews: Final Fantasy X
(WARNING! IF YOU ARE A FINAL FANTASY FAN, DO NOT READ THIS POST, IT MAY CAUSE YOUR INFERIOR SENSE OF JUDGEMENT OF GAME MERIT TO COLLAPSE OPPON ITSELF IN A BURST OF LOGIC!)
In order to start this review, I'm going to have to tell you a story.
It was the first month of high school, and I decided I needed a new activity. I said to myself "I'm a game and movie critic" so I went to sci-fy club! I ended up leaving and never coming back because I was the only person there not dressed in all black and wearing cat-ear dilly-boppers with purple died hair, but that's beside the point. The meat of this story is that while I was there, I mentioned that I hated final fantasy X, I was told to leave by the president of the club, so I did, jokes on him.
So I was chastised by a super nerd for not liking final fantasy X, well lucky for all of us, my brain works like an english report, so I will now state reasons and evidence for why I hated that game, and apply the problems to all gaming, because to me, FFX is the "what not to do guide" for all gaming.
I got FFX, and I was excited, I had recently finished playing Kingdom Hearts, witch is the ultimate example of game storytelling, and the main character in FFX, appeared in KH as a whinny, asshole, 10 year old.
I plugged the game in, and after watching an obnoxiously long opening sequence, I stood still for five minuets because it was never obvious that the cut-scene had ended. I was then taken through a sequence of moving my character five yards, then watching a ten minuet cut scene. Then, I was introduced to a plot so thick, you needed scuba diving gear to breach the surface. Characters were introduced with no backstory, people just started talking and interacting with them like they were introduced six hours ago, when in reality it was thirty seconds! During one of the ten minute cut scenes, your character is about to fall off a broken bridge, and some random guy catches him, and the main character exclaims this mystery guy's name and thanks him, they obviously new each other, I DIDN'T! And this is all during the time when only five percent of the time is gameplay and the rest is cut scenes, this isn't a game, It's a figgin' movie! (just so you all know, the reason I labeled this review as a movie, is because in my opinion, FF games are movies.)
Now for the real evil, Turn based combat. It's not fun. There, that's all the evidence I have, and it's good. Games are supposed to be fun, when you take one of the most important things in gaming and make it not-fun, you make the game not fun. Some people would say "Mickey! It's about strategy" Well it isn't, all you ever do in turn based combat is select attack when you aren't about to die, and eat a magic puppy intestine when you are.
So to sum it all up, FFX is a horrible game because, its more of a movie then a game, you can't tell if you need to kill the antagonist because he slept with your wife or if he stepped on your blue suede shoes, and you are about as involved in the combat as George Lucas is with making those three other Star Wars movies he promised us!
So if you are a die hard FF fan, and you read past the disclaimer at the top, I can guess that right about now, you're deciding which day of the week you want to set my house on fire, and I can't blame you. I just ripped apart a game that thousands of people would fight to protect. So hate me for it. But no matter how bad it gets, I can still say I was right about Obama, he said the troops would be out in six months, and two years later, we're still in the middle east, just like I said we would be.
In order to start this review, I'm going to have to tell you a story.
It was the first month of high school, and I decided I needed a new activity. I said to myself "I'm a game and movie critic" so I went to sci-fy club! I ended up leaving and never coming back because I was the only person there not dressed in all black and wearing cat-ear dilly-boppers with purple died hair, but that's beside the point. The meat of this story is that while I was there, I mentioned that I hated final fantasy X, I was told to leave by the president of the club, so I did, jokes on him.
So I was chastised by a super nerd for not liking final fantasy X, well lucky for all of us, my brain works like an english report, so I will now state reasons and evidence for why I hated that game, and apply the problems to all gaming, because to me, FFX is the "what not to do guide" for all gaming.
I got FFX, and I was excited, I had recently finished playing Kingdom Hearts, witch is the ultimate example of game storytelling, and the main character in FFX, appeared in KH as a whinny, asshole, 10 year old.
I plugged the game in, and after watching an obnoxiously long opening sequence, I stood still for five minuets because it was never obvious that the cut-scene had ended. I was then taken through a sequence of moving my character five yards, then watching a ten minuet cut scene. Then, I was introduced to a plot so thick, you needed scuba diving gear to breach the surface. Characters were introduced with no backstory, people just started talking and interacting with them like they were introduced six hours ago, when in reality it was thirty seconds! During one of the ten minute cut scenes, your character is about to fall off a broken bridge, and some random guy catches him, and the main character exclaims this mystery guy's name and thanks him, they obviously new each other, I DIDN'T! And this is all during the time when only five percent of the time is gameplay and the rest is cut scenes, this isn't a game, It's a figgin' movie! (just so you all know, the reason I labeled this review as a movie, is because in my opinion, FF games are movies.)
Now for the real evil, Turn based combat. It's not fun. There, that's all the evidence I have, and it's good. Games are supposed to be fun, when you take one of the most important things in gaming and make it not-fun, you make the game not fun. Some people would say "Mickey! It's about strategy" Well it isn't, all you ever do in turn based combat is select attack when you aren't about to die, and eat a magic puppy intestine when you are.
So to sum it all up, FFX is a horrible game because, its more of a movie then a game, you can't tell if you need to kill the antagonist because he slept with your wife or if he stepped on your blue suede shoes, and you are about as involved in the combat as George Lucas is with making those three other Star Wars movies he promised us!
So if you are a die hard FF fan, and you read past the disclaimer at the top, I can guess that right about now, you're deciding which day of the week you want to set my house on fire, and I can't blame you. I just ripped apart a game that thousands of people would fight to protect. So hate me for it. But no matter how bad it gets, I can still say I was right about Obama, he said the troops would be out in six months, and two years later, we're still in the middle east, just like I said we would be.
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