X-Men: First Class: Review
X-Men: First Class Review
Following on from GeekTown’s restricted release of our teaser views and initial verdict on Twentieth Century Fox’s latest offering to the X-men saga I am delighted to finally unveil the hotly anticipated review! Prequels are a risky business and after the haphazard Wolverine origins story (which granted, did have naked Hugh Jackman in it, but even that couldn’t truly redeem it) I can safely bet that every single reviewer was prepared for another superhero nosedive and resounding cinematic belly flop. But gosh, I do enjoy being pleasantly surprised. I should lead on where we left off…
“Funny, engrossing and seductive, X-Men: First Class has claws and curves in all the right places.”
Charles Xavier
One of the central reasons that X-Men: First Class is so very enjoyable and far easier to subscribe to than its predecessors is because instead of creating a parallel reality, it slips the illusion around our current world with significant and humanity shaping historical events. Unbeknownst to most modern historians, major political clashes such as the Cuban missile crisis and Nazi Germany’s choke-hold during WWII were witnessed and transformed by mutants. Director Matthew Vaughn half jokingly pointed out during the roundtable interview at the weekend that mutant interference makes a lot more sense than what was actually reported during the infamous nuclear standoff between Russia and the USA and he’s not far wrong. Whilst the story is outrageous, it is so in the best way, in a way that you can get behind and cheer on with a big grin.
Erik Lehnsherr
The main action of X-Men: First Class is set in the 1960s prior to the turbulence of Nixon’s reign, at the height of the Cold War and the dawn of the Space era. However we are taken slightly further back still, to the 1940s and Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier’s incredibly opposite childhoods, where the boy who will become Magneto is discovered and tortured in a concentration camp in Poland whilst his antithesis enjoyed and exploited the spoils of wealth and telepathy. You may experience déjà vu as the film opens, frame for frame, the way that the original X-men movie did with Magneto’s dark initiation into mutant life. Matthew Vaughn elaborates on Bryan Singer’s introduction for Erik by delving further into his butchered childhood of murder, pain and torment at the hands of a power hungry Dr Schmidt; portrayed by a splendidly evil Kevin Bacon. In the same way that Wolverine was manipulated and molded by William Stryker in X2, Erik is depicted as a mutant test subject. Erik’s story from frightened child to vengeful mutant adult creates the backbone for X-Men: First Class.
Nicholas Hoult & Jennifer Lawrence
The film is automatically absorbing as it balances the truer elements of superhero fantasy without sacrificing characterization and tone for gratuitous explosions and incoherent, over packed storylines. The cast is a real dolly mixture at first glance and it comes as no surprise that it left many anticipators with their hackles raised. Sizable talent such as Oliver Platt and Jason Flemyng (Azazel) play in modest supporting roles alongside lesser known actors and actresses like Lucas Till (Havoc) and Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique) in considerably larger character roles. However, Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman have done a marvellous job defining each and every character, giving them all a sense of individuality and self containment that we arguably haven’t seen since the original X-men movie. Notable performances include an unexpected surge of acting prowess from Nicholas Hoult who plays a startlingly convincing Hank McCoy. From child star to teenage TV drama and now Hollywood, all I can say is bravo Nick!
X-Men: First Class
The characters effectively straddle the spectrum between Good, Evil and Misled with charm and intelligence and just the right amount of dark, raw emotion that really makes a great superhero movie. Charles Xavier is a prime example as he is an extraordinarily difficult character to relate to, but James McAvoy does an admirable job as he leads the audience through Xavier’s cocky handsome young adulthood into his future as the infamous Professor X. The journey shows the bald, wheelchair bound and monstrously powerful authority figure we had grown to recognize as an energetic, virile, fun loving young man with a full head of hair and one hell of a sprint time! McAvoy is a credible and charismatic Xavier and worthy of quite hefty praise for helping to endear the audience to someone who is, on paper, quite an unapproachable character. X-Men: First Class elegantly weaves a variety of intriguing and sensitive character relationships, not merely through Xavier and Erik but also a beautifully realized Mystique who provides a dominating outlet for the X-men’s sense of responsibility, vanity and mutant identity. Michael Fassbender is a devilishly attractive homage to classic Bond, only infinitely cooler, in his embodiment of Erik Lehnsherr and in this critic’s opinion, he carries the film. Alongside Fassbender, Kevin Bacon gives one of the finest performances of his seesaw career. He is the perfect villain; frightening, smooth and gifted. So many comic book villains have turned out to be lamentably camp and underdeveloped when they’ve reached the big screen but Shaw is a refreshing slice of horrifying.
In truth, the film is not without its flaws but in many ways these little foibles endearingly add to the entertainment! For example the rather adorable way that Fassbender’s Irish accent starts to trickle into his passionate display during the film’s climax or the lacklustre ghost of the deleted love story between Charles and the vaguely redundant CIA agent Moira. I’ll let you discover the other failings for yourself because that really is part of the fun, no? You get to moan at length about what you would have done differently and it’s one of the few movie genres where everybody gets away with acting like they could be the Coppola of comic books. But there is definitely much more praise than disappointment to be had for X-Men: First Class and overall its blemishes are minor in comparison to the film’s epic embrace of the genre, its deft handling of a young cast in another century and the carefully balanced relationship between superhero morality and human adventure.
8/10 – Funny, engrossing and seductive, X-Men: First Class has claws and curves in all the right places.
Review: Billy Connolly Live in London 2010 DVD
Billy Connolly Live In London 2010 DVD
It’s been 3 years since Billy Connolly has had a stand up DVD out, and it’s fair to say he has been missed. Much as I love the various travelogue shows and film roles, it’s as a stand up Billy is really untouchable.
His Live in London DVD is Billy Connolly as you’d expect. No frills, no gimmicks. Just a large hairy Scotsman on stage, telling stories and jokes, and having his audience in hysterics. Billy performs in his usual style of starting to tell a story, only to veer off on a wild tangent which (sometimes) loops back to the original point!
The whole show seems so effortless to Billy. Just him up there, chatting to his audience, and in the case of this show, the audience joking back (there’s an ongoing gag between Billy and the crowds over enthusiastic cheering at the mention of a city or country.)
The content of Billy’s material is as varied and random as ever. From god and religion, to building igloos in the arctic, to irradiating the ‘beigeness’ in society. Each segued into with the ease you’ve come to expect from a Connolly performance. It’s also nice to see he’s not mellowed with age, with a brilliant 10 min rant about sat-nav systems, or more precisely, to voice of the sat-nav system.
There’s not much more I can say about this DVD without giving his material away. It’s Billy Connolly doing stand up. What more do you need to know!
Billy Connolly Live in London 2010 DVD is available from 15th November 2010
9/10 – It’s Billy Connolly. Doing stand up. Buy it!
Review: Ricky Gervais ‘Science’ DVD
Ricky Gervais Live IV - Science
Ricky Gervais is back with his 4th stand up DVD. After Animals, Politics and Fame, we now have Science. Why it’s called Science i’m not entirely sure, as there’s only one singular reference to the subject in the entire show (it comes at around the 30min mark). My guess would be there was a plan to do the show on science at the start, so he had his rather fine sciencey sets built, but his mind wandered off on a tangent – much like he does in stand up – and the show ended up being about something totally different.
So if it’s not about science, what is it about. Well… initially, fat people and why he isn’t cruel to them. Then some musings over what is an ‘Act of God’. A brilliant segment where he takes you step by step through one of his childhood storybooks. Plus some heroin, autograph hunters and Susan Boyle thrown in for good measure. As usual, his stand up does take some very twisted and dark turns in places, but he still manages to keep you laughing throughout.
Although Science isn’t as strong as his earlier shows, I still found it extremely funny. Though, I would like to see the show based on Science that I suspect was the original idea, rather than the more generic (albeit very funny) Ricky Gervais stand up Science turned into.
DVD Extras
There are only 3 extras on the DVD, but well worth watching. First ‘Meet Karl Pilkington 2′ – which is Ricky throwing questions at Karl, which, much like on the podcasts, he then answers in his own… unique way. Also ‘Ricky in New York’ which is clips from a Letterman appearance mixed in with some self shot handycam footage of his time guesting on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
By far the most genius extra though is ‘When Karl met Warwick’, which involves Karl meeting the star of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and actor of diminutive stature – Warwick Davis. Under the guidance of Ricky, Karl is then coerced into interviewing Warwick… This extra is alone is worth buying the DVD for.
Ricky Gervais: Science is out on DVD – 22nd November 2010.
8/10 – Worth it for ‘When Karl met Warwick’
i-Mego Retro Heavybeats Headphones Review
i-Mego Retro Heavybeats headphones
Opening the pack, the first thing i noticed about the i-Mego Retro Heavybeats headphones was the really robust build quality. There’s no cheap plastic or flimsy construction here. It felt like a really solid quality product. I also love the design. Styled on the iconic classic microphone, the look is totally unique.
Thankfully they aren’t just style over substance either. The sound quality is superb, with the ‘heavybeats’ easily living up to it’s name. They also don’t neglect the higher frequencies, giving a solid performance with whatever my somewhat eclectic iTunes library threw at them!
I tested them out at the office to see how well they cut out background noise, and they actually did a pretty decent job of that too. They were also reasonable comfortable to wear for the majority of the day. The i-Mego Retro Heavybeats are some of the best we’ve had on a GeekTest and well worth a look if your in the market for some new headphones.
Tech Specs:
Driver Unit: 2 X Ø40mm
Frequency Resp: 20-20KHz
Buy I-Mego Retro Headphones (£49) from Amazon
9/10 – A classy & quality product with a great sound.
Review: Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Darkside
Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Darkside
Ahh, today it feels like Christmases of my youth. It’s freezing cold out site and threating to snow. The tree is up. And I’ve just finished watching Star Wars on TV. Or rather Family Guy‘s take on The Empire Strikes Back – “Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Darkside” available exclusively on Blu-ray (BD) and DVD on 28 December from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
As with the Family Guy take on ‘A New Hope’ (Blue Harvest), we follow the adventures of Luke (Chris), Leia (Lois), Han Solo (Peter) and Chewbacca (Brian) as they are pursued across the galaxy by the evil Sith Lord, Darth Vader (Stewie). Like the original, the rebels are hiding out on the remote ice world of Hoth (cue AT-ATs with worms, Tauntauns with heads of old comedians, and the Wampa being replaced by Cookie Monster). Luke then takes the advice of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Herbert) and learn the ways of the ‘farce’ (by watching Val Wilder DVDs) under Jedi Master Yoda (Carl), and Han, Leia and Chewy head to Cloud City, only to be faced by Vader, and a giant chicken Boba Fett. Oh and Fox, you HAVE to produce some Peter/Han frozen in carbonite figures!
The thing I loved about Blue Harvest, which also comes across in Something, Something, Something, Darkside is that despite the fact they are obviously playing for laughs, theres still a lot of respect for the original source material, and they hit all the favourite lines and plot points of the film they’re spoofing. The use of the rotoscoped original film footage and sound effects and really makes this feel part of the Star Wars family. As with Blue Harvest I also loved they end on Peter (Seth Macfarlane) and Chris (Seth Green) arguing over whether the Robot Chicken Star Wars stuff was better (Robot Chicken being Seth’s own project, although Seth does voice the Emperor.)
“Family Guy” Something, Something, Something, Darkside” Blu-ray and DVD features bonus materials including digital copy, animatics and Family Guy trivia. There’s also a clip of the read through for the upcoming Return of the Jedi homage – “We Have a Bad Feeling About This”, which is sounding fantastic too, and I can’t wait!
9/10
Age of Conan : Hyborian Adventures – The Geektown Review
It’s been a while in writing, but we’ve finally got round to putting together the review for Age of Conan : Hyborian Adventures… The game that shall forever be know as the game that got us back onto the evil that is Warcraft…
HOW BIG?!
There are a couple of initial shocks with AoC. Firstly, the 30Gb is requires for installation. Secondly, the graphic requirement. I know AoC is a high end game, intended for new pcs with above average graphic cards, but I can say from playing this on both a high end platform and a ninja status pc, it has frame rate issues no matter what… Even in low density areas whilst standing still, you’re lucky to be getting any more than 40-50 fps on a decent pc, that is simply not acceptable. And when you entire a city or player heavy area, well, you might as well be reading a comic book, as the frame rate becomes like turning the pages.
GETTING STARTED
AoC Barbarian
If you say Conan to most people, and they’ll say Arnold Schwarzenegger. Age of Conan however, is not based on the 1982 Arnie movie, but based on Robert E. Howard’s original 1930′s Conan novelettes, with some inspiration from the later comic books thrown in.
First warning. Choose your server carefully. There’s a mix of PvE, and PvP servers, however most PvP is open PvP. That means every man, woman and child for them self! Currently, there’s also no penalty for ganking lower levels (although that is due to change in a future patch), so on PvP servers you’ll die at the hands of some high level grumpy teenagers on a regular basis.
Character select takes place on a boat where you can pick male or female from one of 12 classes, divided into four archetypes (Soldier, Priest, ‘Rogue’ and Mage). There’s all your expected classes (Guardian – tank, Priest of Mitra – healer, Ranger – dmg dealer etc…) plus a few hybrids, like the Herald of Xotli that’s a mage/melee class). Some classes however, are restricted to your race. Aquilonian (Rogue, Priest of Mitra, or Warrior), Cimmerian (Rogue, Bear Shaman, or Warrior), Stygian (Rogue, Tempest of Set, or Mage).
AoC, like most MMO drops you in a starting area. In this case it’s the island of Tortage. You’ve been unceremoniously dumped up on the beach after the ship you were a slave on crashed, and, after a brief conversation with a mysterious beach bum, you fight your way to Tortage City, rescuing a scantily scad maiden along the way (AoC does like it’s maidens scantily clad!).
Once inside the city, the game gives you the choice to switch from the normal MMO ‘day mode’, to a single player almost RPGesque ‘night mode’, allowing you to level through a large chunk of your first 20 levels solo. This introduces an interesting dynamic for an MMO. Although there is only the one starting area for AoC, this system allows Funcom to tell the same story from mutiple angles, depending on your character class. So stealth classes are sent to eves drop on conversations about the locations of prisoners, whilst the warriors are send in to bash some heads and rescue the captives. This helps re-playability, as you want to play through with each class to see how the story fits together.
AoC quest box
The start zone of Tortage is very nicely put together, with voice overs for all the quests, which are presented in same sort of cinematic way you get face to face conversations in single player RPGs such as Neverwinter Nights giving you various optional replies… not that they make any difference to the outcome, but at least they tried, and it’s a nice change from the usual MMO box of text. It does make it somewhat of a disappointment when you get into the larger world though, and voiceovers are almost non-existent. Would have been nice if they’d spread the voice work around, rather than loading it all into the starting area.
COMBAT
This is one area where Conan tried to differentiate itself from the WoW clones, and has a nice little twist on the traditional MMO combat system. Your 1, 2, and 3 keys are set to swing your weapon left, right, and forward. These correspond to shielded areas on the target, so if your opponent has his shield stacked to the left, hit him on the right. This also effects the way the combos operate, as you use the 1, 2, 3 key system to advance the attacks. Its a nice touch, and does help bring a feel that your connected to the combat.
INTO THE WILDS
After leaving Tortage, you move to one of 3 cities, depending on your race. This is a bit irritating if your friends have decided to play Necromancers, and your playing a Guardian, as you’ll be split into separate zones. Having said that, moving around Hyboria, is fairly fast due to the fact it’s all done with loading screen, rather than connecting flightpaths, or long runs through dangerous lands. As convenient as this is, it does rather make the world incoherent, as you never get a feel of how one area connects to another.
From here on in it’s pretty much your standard MMO fair. Kill X number of fluffy things to get Y. Fetch me this. Carry me that. They have stolen the EQ2 climbing idea though, so it’s sometimes means climb here and Kill X, but you get the general idea! Some of the instanced quest appear to be nicely thought out, but this is where the problems start…
THE ISSUES…
If i had to sum up AoC in one word. Buggy. Buggier than an ants nest that’s decided to throw a mixer party with the local woodlice log and is serving dragonfly wing vol au vons while dancing to Now that’s Buggy vol 56. I’d possibly even go as far to say it’s buggier than SWG was back in the day (yes, that buggy!) I’m sure these quests will be fixed over time, but after finding the umptenth quest you try non-completable you start loosing the will to play. It may be interesting and well written, but if you can’t actually finish it, whats the point!
Secondly, the servers appear to be incredibly unstable. You’ll be lucky if you can play for more than an hour without the server ping jumping up and over 9000ms, causing the entire game to freeze for several seconds, sometimes it settles, other times it simply crashes the game and kicks you out. As I’m writing this review, the servers have been down for hours, fixes have been applied to the problems, and those fixes have caused further problems…
They also seem to spend each week nerfing, boosted, then nerfed classes again, not allowing any sense of stability in game play and causing the player to feel completely uninvolved in the entire game. I know it’s a new game and things need balancing, but i’d rather they fix the stuff which is genuinely broken rather than messing with the stuff that is at least playable.
TO SUM UP
AoC Guardian
First impressions of the game are good, the ideas, graphics and gameplay seem well thought out and interesting. But, thats were it ends… The game is seriously flawed, with almost constant server issues, graphical glitches and quest bugs… The more you play, the more bug. It does start to feel like there are more bugs in this game then players.
I am really sad over this whole thing, as this game does have potential for being a great MMO, but, it seems Funcom decided to issue it as a “pay-monthly” beta instead… Worse still, there are supposedly plans to make a console version of AoC, so you rather get the feeling they decided ‘lets use the PC suckers to iron out the bugs first’.
There is little balance between classes making PvP more of an annoyance than fun. The game is highly demanding on any pc, and crashes even if you look at it wrong. The 18+ certificate on the game has done nothing to reduce the amount of children playing it, this is quite clear when you are constantly ganked by someone twice your level, while his parents watch Eastenders and he sits on his pc in his Transformers pjs in his room!
Geektown has been discussing this review for sometime, we both see the potential to the game, but also can not ignore the numerous issues…
Crom would be disappointed with this poor show of a game, less action and adventure, and more frustration and disappointment.
for all its faults AoC is pretty
Since drafting this review, both myself and Dave have left Age of Conan, as the frustration being caused could have become fatal… The actual end result was nearly as bad… After 2 months of playing, and one final particularly buggy gaming session which ended in another server boot, one of us shouted in frustration ‘Oh FFS, i just want to play something that works!’…
Hence, the re-installation of World of Warcraft… A game we both swore we’d never return to after escaping it’s evil grasp…
Damn you Age of Conan… By Crom and all his devils, damn you…
