Rocky Horror Picture Show at the cinema!!

"Tell us about it Janet!" 

There's this film festival in my home town, Ostend. It's not that special, and in the past 5 years, I might have gone to three shows - and one (2 eps of a Battlestar Galactica season I think) got cancelled, so yeah. In fact, the first year was probably their best year as they had a lot more variety than they do now.
Anyway - a few days ago I randomly discovered they're showing Rocky Horror Picture Show. Later I found out the reason; Peter Suschitzky, who was the director of photography on this, is one of the guests this year.

There wasn't much info on the site, so I wasn't sure if this was going to be a 'special' showing where they encourage audience interaction, or a normal one. Being in Belgium, and in a boring seaside town, I had my money on a normal showing, with hardly anyone showing up, and -maybe- some people dressing up. Also, the show was at 5.15PM, on a weekday, so it wouldn't really attract a lot of out-of-towners.

But whatever. I put on the fanciest clothes I could find (going for the narrator look, but not quite succeeding) and off I go. Choosing the fanciest mode of transportation - the coastal tram! Got my ticket. Got into the room 10 minutes before the start. Near empty, so I take a spot somewhere in the middle. More people come in, far more than expected. Lots of young girls for some reason? A lot of them sit right behind me, boo. Also... a group of people dressed up! Well... most of them were just wearing cheap colourful carnival wigs and whatnot over their regular clothes. Well it's the thought that counts, and I was curious if they would be using any props. They were sitting in the back row, so I turned my head during the wedding scene, and yup! They were throwing rice! They did the usual stuff as far as I could see/hear. I think it might have annoyed the more serious people - I mean if you're new to RHPC it might just seem like a few drunk people causing a ruckus, and randomly shining flashlights at the screen! (of course it's not random, but if this is the first time seeing the film you might not get all the links!)

As for me, probably to the shock and amusement of the schoolgirls behind me, I sang - badly of course - along with a few songs, laughed at a lot of the little things that amuse me (and those are plentiful), and had a great time, even on my lonesome. I noticed a few details I hadn't noticed on previous viewings; the bigger screen certainly helped. The "nipslips" (surely this movie invented them?) are far more noticeable on a large screen as well heh.

They stopped the projection during the credits because they had a "surprise" - the director of photography was actually there!! We could ask him questions - this being Boring Belgium, no-one had a question of course. I had a lame back-up question but was too embarrassed to ask, and of course on my way home I think up a good one, that's typically Tem. ...I've forgotten it already though. And that's just old age.

Anyway - one of the guys at the back, who I'm pretty sure was the guy who laughed at basically everything, but especially Frank seducing Brad and Janet separately but in the exact same way - said he already did a show like this in Germany, which had a lot more people participating - well duh, I doubt that one was on a Wednesday afternoon in a little town. I've also learned that the girls sitting behind me were high school girls accompanied by their teacher!!! Funny. One of the girls complained that this isn't the sort of movie their teacher should take them to. She has a point in a way, but then again not - even if you don't "get" it overall, it has quite a few themes that can make a good class discussion. As for being inappropriate, in high school I saw Trainspotting (English class) and A Clockwork Orange (Ethics) which probably also aren't movies you should see as a teen. Then again, maybe you should, as I got older I got to see both of those in a different light, learned how to 'read between the lines' and actually get them.
And both are now two of my favourite movies of all time.

They might not have been if there wasn't some sort of learning process involved. I'm going quite off-topic with this but there was a discussion on my favourite/most hated (it's both) forum on the internet, NeoGAF, about Fight Club. Someone said it's a different movie when you watch it as a teen and then watch it again in your twenties or later. I have to agree with this. When I was a teen I liked A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club because of the violence, yo dude violence is cool hur hur. But then later I started appreciating movies in different ways, and I started to get the messages I missed as a teen. Nowadays, I can both enjoy the gratuitous violence in these movies (I am still a boy after all), AND understand the underlying (or actually super-obvious) themes.
It probably also helps that all four of the movies I mentioned here are coming-of-age stories, which I quite like in general. Coming-of-age stories in a very twisted way, maybe, but think about it. (actually a lot of my favourite movies seem to have coming-of-age elements in them - Amélie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Let the Right One in, just to name three more)

Back on topic - I had a great time and I'm happy I went even if I couldn't find any friends to go with. My friends in London are also fans and want to take me along to something like this, complete with dressing up, participating and everything. The hardest part is finding a date that suits all of us. It will happen though. Eventually. Don't dream it...

movie and tv series reviews

Alright, I haven't done one of these in quite some time, and felt like writing a lot, so here you go!!

Reviews on (deep breath): Star Trek: Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, Pacific Rim, Man of Steel, Bridesmaids, Airplane!,  Spaceballs, Bullhead, Nuit Noire, Burn After Reading, Salt, 127 Hours, Chronicle, Boy A, Piranha part II: The Spawning, Paradox, Dexter season 7, The Walking Dead season 3, True Blood season 4, The Borgias season 1 & 2, The Tudors season 1&2. 

Lego Star Wars 9492 TIE Fighter

My second Star Wars Lego set, and the obvious buy after the X-Wing.

It's a quicker, but also a less fun build in my opinion. Most of your time will be spent on the two wings, so that part's pretty repetitive. While putting them together, the wings are very flimsy, it's only when they're finished that they have some sturdiness.

The end result is great though, it's pretty big and looks good. The minifigs are great as well, I love how they all have this evil grin on their face haha. The pilot is my favourite.

I got this one for about €30 - if I had paid more than €40 for it, I would have considered it a bit of a rip-off. Like I said, the end result looks great, but the build is pretty simple and not that interesting. It does make a good pair with the X-Wing... but if you only have money for one set, skip this and get the X-Wing.

Some pics:

(don't throw black balls at crying baldies)

Lego 9493 X-Wing review

A May the 4th special!

A few months ago, I bought my first Lego set since... well since I was 12 or something. Several years ago, I saw some cool Lego Star Wars sets, and thought "hey, wouldn't it be fun to have these? I like Lego, I like Star Wars, so why not?" Well it took me until recently to act on it; partly because my cousin is starting his Lego phase, and partly because I found out it really isn't all that uncommon for adults to buy Lego sets, especially the thematic/movie ones, like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, on to the actual build of the X-Wing.
There were a lot of parts in this set that I definitely used for the first time ever (or maybe my memory isn't that good anymore, old man, etc.). There were some parts I definitely didn't expect in this build as well, I mean, green and blue bricks? For an X-Wing? How dare they!!!

Otherwise, it's actually a very fun build, very clever and surprising at times. The nature of the X-Wing means at times you are building things upside down, or in reverse, especially at the back (and the wings of course). This can be a little confusing (on my first build I honestly thought I did something wrong) but it all works out in the end. The best part for me is still the front/middle though, from the outside it doesn't seem like much, but it's actually a clever and "full" build, it's quite dense and uses a lot more bricks than you might think.

The mechanism for opening/closing the wings is fairly clever, however it's quite "digital", the wings are either open or closed, and when you close them down it's with quite a snap. The wings are sturdy enough, but it would be fun to have more control over the opening and closing.
And while I'm saying negative things: as a Star Wars purist it's a bit weird to see R2-D2 sit sideways in the X-Wing. I know this gets solved in the (far, far more expensive!) Red 5 set, but still, surely it wasn't that impossible to make the build a brick wider. Also, the X-Wings in the movies have rear landing gear, this one doesn't have that, when you put it down it basically rests on the engines. But this is nitpicking of course.

My first build took me about 2 hours, with a very short break in between, which seems to be the normal build time. A week ago, I took it apart and built it up again, that time it took me less than an hour and a half (I was interrupted many times, but I'd say definitely between 70-90 minutes). Again, I was surprised at how good the build really is.

The minifigs included are alright - R2-D2, R5-D8, Luke Skywalker (with lightsaber) and Jek Porkins (with blaster rifle). I'd say the other Rebel starfighters (Y-Wing and A-Wing) have better minifigs though.

I'd definitely recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in Lego or Star Wars. The X-Wing is an iconic ship, and the Lego build does it credit.

Some pictures:

Super Nintendo

I got my SNES when I was 12. It was my first "home console", having owned only a Game Boy before that. I bought it with Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Starwing (that's Starfox for my US friends). Videogames were super expensive back then, new SNES releases were about €75 (converted to modern currency!) so I never got a lot of games in that period, mostly games that were on sale. I think I ended up with about 15 games in total, of course renting some games as well.

At some point I stupidly sold my SNES and all my games (which included a special edition Super Metroid - that I later found out was worth quite a bit!) in order to get a Nintendo 64. Which was a bit of a mistake. And then 4 years later I sold that Nintendo 64 to buy a Gamecube. Also a bit of a mistake (not buying the Gamecube, but selling my N64). Seriously kids, never sell your consoles! You'll regret it later.

Anyway, a few years back I was very much in a retro mood and started buying SNES games again, and obviously a console as well. AND a switch thingy that let me play US games on a European SNES, mostly because I wanted to own Chrono Trigger, which was only available in the US. I managed to buy that - a few weeks before a Nintendo DS version of that game was announced. Yes.
Well at least I had a second chance to play some more SNES games, and I also got a few on the Virtual Console, so I was happy.

I am probably a bit biased, but the SNES really is one of my favourite consoles ever, maybe THE best ever, because it has such a high quantity/quality ratio in a lot of genres I like. Take fighting games for example; it had great versions of the Street Fighter 2 games, and Mortal Kombat 2 was easily the best 16-bit version. The RPGs on the system were also outstanding: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV to VI, Secret of Mana... yeah this was back when Square could do nothing wrong. I could give more examples in more genres, but I suppose I should get on with my top 10...

1) Super Metroid

This game is probably the reason why I love games with a strong, unique atmosphere. I mean, the intro alone...wow. The music is great, graphics are great, gameplay is great, boss battles are great... there really isn't a single thing this game does wrong. Well, there are some less fun sections later in this game, but no game can be perfect right? Overall, it really is one of the best games ever made.
Funny thing is, I only completed it a year or two ago, until then I never got to the end, despite really loving the game. It just confirmed my opinion that it's one of the greatest game ever.

2) The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

My first Zelda game, and still my favourite non-Ocarina Zelda. I still think it's a very pretty game with a lot of charm and personality. Just like with pretty much every game on this list, the music in this game was the soundtrack of my (misspent?) youth and some pieces have been permanently burnt into my brain. I should really do a replay of this some time soon...

3) Chrono Trigger

This quickly became one of my favourite RPGs, and get this - it's a game I haven't even finished yet!! Actually I can count the jRPGs I finished on one hand, but that's a discussion for another time. There isn't a single negative thing I can say about this game; not that it's perfect, but I feel this one should definitely be in the top 5 RPGs ever.


4) F-Zero

A SNES launch game, this showed off the console's "mode 7" way of achieving a 3D effect. I played this again last week, and while it's obviously very basic compared to its sequels and modern racing games, it's still very playable. It has some memorable sound effects and music as well. I'm a big fan of the F-Zero games, and between this, F-Zero X (N64) and F-Zero GX (Gamecube), it's hard to pick a favourite. So I won't :)

5) Street Fighter II Turbo

This was the game I bought together with my SNES. It really wouldn't surprise me if I spent about a hundred hours or more on this. Trying to discover new moves with every character, trying to beat the game on a higher difficulty level, trying to beat the game with as many 'perfect's as possible... I could always find a new challenge. I still play this from time to time on Virtual Console.

6) Starwing
The second game I bought! Obviously the 3D graphics were impressive at that time, but it was a really good game as well, a lot more than a "tech demo" as you would expect a game like this to be. It had great music as well.

7) Sim City
Even though I already had a version of the original Sim City on my dad's PC (a 386!!), I still wanted to experience this on the SNES. It adds a lot of charm to the game I think, with the music and changing of seasons and a few other additions. It's quite playable on a SNES controller really, even though I did sometimes misplaced certain things...

8) Donkey Kong Country
Those graphics, man!! Talk of the town when this game was released. If I get my facts right, the graphics were 3D but were turned to 2D, thanks to...magic or something.  In any case, it looked spectacular at the time. Oh and the gameplay wasn't too bad either really. And, as seems to be the norm for a high quality SNES release, the music was great as well.

9) Pilotwings
Another one of those games I pick up every now and then. My skills have definitely decreased over time :( Tried it again last week, gave up on the third level after 3 tries or so. Well, I was going for a perfect score in everything heh. But really, it's a good game to pick up and play for half an hour or so.

10) Mortal Kombat 2
Excellent port of the arcade game. Again a game I spent probably over a 100 hours on. I still remember most of the special moves and fatalities!! As far as gameplay is concerned it's obviously inferior to SFII, but I  had - and still have - lots of fun with this.


Also some honorable mentions:
xx) Samurai Shodown
I'm a HUGE fan of this series, and the love started here. Comparing it to the actual Neo Geo release, the characters are way smaller on the SNES, and some effects were toned down as well, but the music is far superior. The atmosphere, of which the music is an important part, is the reason why I love this game (and the entire series) so much, so looking back at it, it really wasn't a bad port at all.

xx) Batman Returns
This is one of those games that are probably unplayable in modern times, but I remember having quite some fun with this. I liked that the game was quite close to the film when it came to atmosphere.

xx) Dirt Trax FX
Another Super FX game, this was actually a really fun racer. Even my sister liked it! I liked how the cars handled quite differently from each other, and the track design was really good.

xx) International Superstar Soccer Deluxe
I don't even like football games in general, but I played it at a friend's and I really liked it. One of the games I bought when I started collecting again.

xx) Killer Instinct
I was quite surprised when they announced a SNES port of this game - I was (very!) familiar with the original arcade version, and that game just blew away everything else when it came to graphics. It was supposed to be a launch game for the next Nintendo console - the arcade cabinet said "coming soon to Nintendo Ultra 64!!" LIES!!!! But that was Nintendo's fault really. Anyway, they obviously had to downscale the graphics and sound quite a bit, but the gameplay was mostly intact. It also came with a "Killer Cuts" music CD, which was a pretty good bonus.

Lastly, let me show of my very small collection:

Most of those are in great condition - F-Zero and Killer Instinct (both US carts) were even brand new!! Also, while the Zelda box was a little damaged, it was actually brand new and came with all the extras, as you'll see on the picture below:

Yes, complete with the map and that little, still sealed "top secrets" booklet. And a promo poster. I didn't pay much for it, and it's one of the items in my videogame collection I'm very proud of owning.

Righto, that's it! Feel free to comment with your own SNES-relates stories, or tell me I have bad taste in games, or whatever :)

Binary Domain review

Just like with Virtua Tennis 4, I bought this from greenmangaming.com when it was on sale a few weeks ago.    I knew it got somewhat mixed reviews, but for €6 or something I figured it was worth trying out myself.

Well, I finished the game yesterday, with a total of 10 hours of play time. Most of it was fun, some of it was stupid, some of it was frustrating, but in the end I would say it was worth my money - and time.

The game is very much the Japanese take on games like Gears of War and Mass Effect, in the sense that it's a squad-based third person shooter in a sci-fi setting. The gimmick here (because every game needs a gimmick right?) is the consequence system (basically a team mate trust system), and also the voice commands. Both, unfortunately, are flawed.

The trust system is a good idea in theory, but its implementation is rather crappy. One reoccurring problem I had was accidentally shooting a teammate in the back and thus losing trust as you might expect. Why did I shoot them in the back? Because the AI was so incredibly stupid to run into my line of fire - while I was shooting. 
It's not just that though, sometimes, mostly after an action scene, a teammate will start talking to you and you have to respond to what they say. While you have some options, most of the time just saying "yes" or "okay" will increase trust. So you start wondering what the point of these scenes is exactly.

Which brings me to the voice commands - I can honestly say I turned off that option after half an hour or so. It works, kind of, but since I was using my laptop mic it worked too much, and picked up sounds that weren't made by me, and made it's own interpretation of it. Which annoyed my teammates. So yeah, I chose the simpler option where you just choose commands and dialogue options with the press of a button.

Might as well complain a bit more - it has the typical Japanese stereotyping, so one of your squadmates is a big, smack-talking black guy. And the tendency to give stupid, "unique" names to things is also there. "Hollow children", really? They're just androids, you know.
The main character - what was his name again? - is just as replaceable as any other main character in most action games. The game's difficulty is also a bit off, it has some frustrating boss fights, especially in the middle of the game, but towards the end it becomes a cakewalk. Personally, I hated chapter 4, the structure was awful and I had the most frustrating moments in it (but then I absolutely loved chapter 5, so that balances it out I guess).
Lastly, sometimes the cutscenes are longer than the gameplay sections - I can get very annoyed at this as I want to play a game and not watch it.

As for the good things: shooting up robots feels great, taking them apart piece by piece is visually very satisfying. Where you shoot them has an impact as well: shoot their legs off and they'll come crawling to you, while still firing. Shoot their gun arm off, and they'll pick up the gun and start shooting with the other arm. Shoot their head off, and they'll malfunction and shoot the other robots. It's a fun system really.
The boss battles are a bit of a mixed bag, and most of them basically come down to "shoot the glowing bits!", but some of them are quite satisfying.

The story then, only really starts getting interesting in the last two chapters. For the most part it's not exactly subtle, and sci-fi fans have surely come across this kind of story before (see: Star Trek The Next Generation: is Data a person or a thing?) They don't handle it too badly though, and I thought the ending was fairly satisfying. There are multiple endings based on the consequence system, and mine was a happy ending for most characters, but one guy died. How are they going to explain that death in the sequel, hmm? :)

Well, there probably won't be any sequel since the game didn't sell enough and got only average reviews, but I would be interested in one. As long as it has more robot shooting, less cutscenes, and better team AI.

Anyway, while I listed plenty of reasons why it's not a great game in my opinion, I had fun with it. I won't recommend the game to everyone, but if the concept of shooting hundreds of robots to little pieces appeals to you, and you can overlook some of the flaws I mentioned, you'll enjoy this. If I used a score system to review games, this would be a 7.5/10. But I don't, so ignore that.

To conclude, a few pics I took:

Commander Shepard? 

It's the Cole Train, baby!!! 

Very slick shop front. 

Big robot.

 Even bigger robot. 

Spec Ops: The Line (mini-review)

I saw this game on a lot of "best game of 2012" lists, so I bought it last month from amazon.com for PC/Steam (it was $10 together with 2 other games I think).

I'm not a big fan of military shooters to be honest, but from what I've read about the game, it's not quite your average Call of Duty game, and the story is also about the morality of war and violence. I certainly liked the sound of that!

But even then, it might be "different" but that doesn't automatically makes it good. So, I started playing it a week ago, and finished the game after a little over 6 hours of play time (on normal difficulty).

I absolutely loved the setting. Dubai more or less destroyed by a huge sandstorm gives the game a bit of an apocalyptic atmosphere, which I always enjoy in videogames and other media.
It plays out like a typical military squad shooter for the most part, so expect to hear things like clicks, MO, and things like that.

The actual gameplay (in which I mean the actual running and gunning) is alright, but in no way exceptional on its own. If it weren't for the setpieces, story and very dark last hour or two of the game, it would've been an average game. The best thing you can do is go on spoiler free, but even when you know what's going to happen, the journey you make in the game, and the end result, is very satisfying. I don't know how others felt about it, but I was sort of...emotionally tired at the end of the game. Calling it shell-shocked would be an exaggeration, but certainly the feeling was similar. In those 6 hours you see some awful things, you do some awful things, and in the end you've killed hundreds of people, for what, exactly?

I'd recommend this game even to people who aren't into military shooters. The first two hours or so might be typical military shooter stuff and mostly very cliché, but later on it gets a lot darker, and once you get what the developers tried to do with this game, you'll enjoy the ride. Like I said, the setting and atmosphere are great, and outweigh the somewhat average gunplay.

I took some pictures while playing, I guess some are sort of spoiler-ish as they're taken in the last 2 hours or so of the game, but it doesn't reveal anything story-related.

The title screen changes depending on how far you are in the game. This was close to the end...

It's that sky tennis thingy! With strung up bodies...

It's that artificial palm tree island!

 "Do you feel like a hero yet?"

"To kill for entertainment is harmless"