AVP Review!

The new Aliens Vs Predator game has been surrounded by controversy since the first screen shots were released. The game was fanatically hailed by AVP veterans as the second coming that would entertain us with up to date visuals while also resurrecting the forgotten series. People wondered if Rebellion still had what it took to birth an acceptable successor to the beloved franchise. Did they do it?

Everyone seems to say “NO” and it’s a big “NO”. Gamespot callously gave the game a 5.5/10 and I believe IGN grudgingly gave it a 7/10. The rest of the video game reviewers gave it similar reviews, mostly around the 5-6 / 10 ranges.

Why did these reviewers rate this game so low?

I have no idea. I love the game. I find that the mix of melee and long range combat brings me back to a simpler time when I used to come home from a long day of drudgery and load up Legends of Might and Magic. If you’re not familiar with that game it’s somewhat alike to the AVP combat system in the sense that you had to switch between long and close range combat.

Now, what really makes AVP special from my analysis is the way that the three species are portrayed. Rebellion seems to have really recreated the movements, points of view, and audio from the previous movies. The Aliens have the ability to climb on walls and whip their tails around, the Predators have been given their trademark abilities of cloaking, heat vision, and the athletic fortitude to leap from one tall structure to another, and the marines have a very nice arsenal of futuristic weapons copied right from the previous films.

This whole package is put together nicely with a 3 part (1 part for each species) single player campaign, multiplayer, and a “Ranked” multiplayer mode in which you can battle for XP to unlock different skins for each of your species. New Masks for the Predators, new people you can be for the marines, and a wide variety of different heads you can select when the using the aliens.

I understand that I’m handling this game with kid gloves but I have to admit that it’s a very well made game. The only issues that need to be addressed are these.

1. Multiplayer needs more maps.

2. Free Patches and add on, no nickel and dime-ing us.

3. Fix the Marine rifle butt attack to actually stun the aggressor 100% of the time as long as you get a direct hit. Sometimes you pistol whip an enemy and it does absolutely nothing.

4. There seems to be an animation when the alien attacks in focus mode with his tail, even if the alien is killed before he gets the tail attack off the winner of the battle still gets hit with the tail and dies. Even though the dead alien is not rewarded any points for the kill, which is a good thing its still irritating to get killed and having to respawn.

5. Fix the delayed animation of the predator when he throws or shoots a weapon.

In conclusion I would have to say buy it. If you are like me and need a NON-WWII shooter to keep you occupied then this is a wonderful game to add to your FPS collection. I just hope the servers really take off in the next few months with updates and patches to make this game even more enjoyable then it is today.

My new obsession!

Hello all,

Coolinator coming to you live from corporate slave land. I just wanted to tell my vast fan base out there that I have gotten pinball fever. No, I didn’t catch it from a street walking strumpet nor did I get it from a dirty hand rail. I caught it from Pinball Hall of Fame: William’s collection for the PS2 and I must say that this is the most impressive pinball video game I have ever played. To make matters even worse I’m also afflicted with the Arcade Machine bug as well! I’ve been doing tons of research on these wonderful little wooden boxes of yesteryear and I must say am having a wonderful time. Too bad I don’t have any space to put them because I would definitely toss some cash into the wind for my own pinball table and a new arcade cabinet or two.

I am no stranger to arcade machines because just by chance my family used to be neighbors with an arcade distributor and we purchased our own arcade machine. It’s Crystal Castles from Atari, a wonderful classic played with one button (jump) and a track ball. It’s old and dusty and I lost the keys for it but it still works just as it did when it came off the assembly line.

Here are some favorites I’ve been drooling over. If you have any Arcade Machine / Pinball stories please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below telling us your story.

Gothic 3 - Fast pace action...one click at a time

Hey guys,

It's a beautiful monday morning here in corporate slave land and I would love to share with you my first impressions of a game I was playing a little of this weekend....... Gothic 3.

The game itself is very well made. It takes a while to get used to the combat but once you get the hang of it your swashbuckling like a mad man. The game starts out with you and your band arriving on the shores of a fantasy-esq land. You seem to walk in on a band of orcs ransacking a town. The boss orc (the albino one) takes one look at you and then BOOM your in combat with people sword fight all around you. It was a good idea to throw you right into the action. After you defeat all the orcs you then begin to literally finish what the orcs had started by pillaging the town yourself. At this point though the town elder doesn't seem to care. So after your done taking grabbing everything that isn't nailed down you follow one of you chums to the rebel camp. The story then goes into this pseudo-Star Wars-ish storyline with rebels, an evil necromancer Xardas (sith lord), Evil orcs (stormtroopers), mercenaries (Bounty Hunters), and bandits. Right now I'm helping the rebels but I noticed that you can gain reputation with numerous factions so the game isn't linear. Yes, your first quest is going to "see the rebel base" but after that is finished you can be friends with whoever you please.

The Good - The game is beautiful - graphics and detail are superb, the music is epic, the character modification (equipment / skill) is easy to learn, and the quests just keep on coming. There is TONS to do in this game.

The Bad - With the exception of using bows and arrows and magic the combat system is very primitive. You can either click rapidly to do fast attacks or you can hold down one of the mouse buttons and release for a more powerful attack. The right mouse button is the parry / quick attack while the left mouse button provides a heavier attack. Also you can hold down the left mouse button to do a devastating blow or hold the right mouse button and the left button to do a thrusting attack which stuns the enemy for a second or two. The biggest problem that I have with it is that some AI are so dumb that you can just do quick attacks on them until they die. That doesn't mean combat is easy. Sometimes they will gang up on you and knock your ass down so fast it will surprise you. It works but its a very odd system.

Edit:

With the newest patch you can change the difficulty level and have alternate AI which makes the game substantially harder.

The Ugly - You NEED a high end machine to play this game. Yes, the game came out in 2006 but that doesn't mean your PC system is going to run it like nothing. Your going to need a good video card to play this. Even with my system as it is plus Gamebooster the game still hiccups a bit. At certain loading areas the game will freeze for a few seconds leaving you crossing your fingers hoping the dam thing didn't crash. Speaking of crashing the game is technically sound. It only crashed once on me and I have no idea what happened.

If you have a good PC and love RPG games.....I would definitely suggest you playing it. You can find the 3-Pack RPG bundle for around $20 dollars. Just this game and Loki alone are worth that much but you get Dungeon lords with the deal as well so it's an incredible buy.

Comments? Questions?

LOKI - The forgotten Diablo Clone!

Hey! Hey!

So starts a new week of corporate slavery and one of my most favorite things to do on Monday mornings is give you all a detailed summary of what PC games I bought this weekend.

Before I begin however, let me give you a little back story. A few weekends ago my friend and I visited our local Best Buy to see if there were any new movies or games we could pick up. As I was perusing through the PC game aisle I saw a 3-Pack RPG set which contained Dungeon Lord, Gothic 3, and LOKI. Now I must admit that I'm a big Dreamcatcher fan. They are a wonderful developer of action and adventure titles. I did quite a bit of research on these games in the past and I finally had the chance to pick all of them up at one time. I do think the price was a little high for them however. $20 dollars. I would have been sold at $14.99 but whatever.

When I got home I installed them all but Gothic 3 and Dungeon Lord seem to be very in depth games so I focused my attention solely on LOKI. Now for all you Diablo fans LOKI is literally a Diablo clone. If Blizzard Entertainment would have came out with Diablo 3 a few years back it would have looked exactly like LOKI. That doesn't mean it’s bad, it's actually very well made, the graphics, animation, sound, and voice acting are superb. The game itself (LOKI) like Diablo is pretty straight forward. Pick a hero, move around, talk to quest givers, and bash heads.

The only real problem I have with the game as of yet is the choice of heroes. You get 4 choices, 2 Women and 2 Men and I have to be honest here I really don't care for any of them except the Norse Warrior. The Amazon Shaman girl shows some promise but they just all fall under the "Blah" category in terms of interest. I understand why they did this to make it balanced but they needed to include at least one more Male character just to give it an extra little boost. They seem to be equipped with a multiplayer option but I haven't had the chance to play online with any of them yet. If I could get into the groove of LOKI this could be the Diablo-ish game to get me all warmed up for the soon to be released Diablo 3 game.

Have you guys ever heard of LOKI or the other games? And if so what do you think?

The RetroGen!!!!

Retrogen Review:

Hi guys,

My RETROGEN arrived in the mail yesterday and the minute I put my hands on it I started plugging in cartridges to give it a test drive. All of them seem to work fine EXCEPT Castlevania: Bloodlines. Which makes me very sad . The device itself is incredibly light and well made. The screen is a good size, it's not as big as it appears on the box or in pictures, but its a solid 2.8". The buttons are nice. It takes a little while to get used to them because they are set at an angle but they get the job done. I haven't tried TV out yet but I'm sure it works well. The music that comes out of it is slightly off. It's not a big deal really, I actually find it kind of funny.

The only thing that isn't too good about it is the D-Pad which surprised the hell out of me because the D-Pad on the Retrogen "looked" a whole lot better then the GenMobiles one. The D-pad is a big solid silver disc on the left hand side. It works well with platformers and shooter games but is almost impossible to use during a fighting game like Street Fighter II or Samurai showdown. There is also a bit of slowdown that effects certain games. An example of this would be that I get a little slow down in Contra Hardcorps and quite a bit of slowdown in Earthworm Jim. You can barely notice it though so it won't hurt your experience.

Final Words:

The Achilles heel of this portable is the D-pad. Everything else is done very well. The screen is a perfect size and the graphics are clear, the buttons are responsive and spring-y, and the music is OK. If you could overlook the crappy D-pad then I would say pick it up. If not just wait for the GenMobile.

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To Purchcase:

http://www.gsubooks.com/

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For further information about the new retro Sega systems and hand helds please click on the link below.

http://the-coolinator-lounge.blogspot.com/2009/08/whats-deal-with-retro-gaming-part-2.html

Thanks for reading and comments are always appreciated!

Fantasy movies and why we love them!

Since I’ve been somewhat of a downer lately I felt that I should write an upbeat post that shines a spotlight on some of the greatest feel good fantasy films of all time. The good old days before CGI ruined the media world.


Now I know what you’re thinking, Fantasy Movies usually are stigmatized as either really nerdy or really girlie but my dear friends you must understand that the oldest and greatest stories ever penned were fantasy in concept. The hero’s journey has been around since the dawn of man and has been retold time and time again throughout a multitude of different cultures across the face of the world. As simple as this formula is it is timeless and resonates with all of us because we too have encountered the hero's journey in our own lives and probably haven’t even noticed!

The Hero’s Journey:

The Call to Adventure
Accepting the Journey
Teacher coming down from the mountain
The Ordeal
&
The Triumphant Return

Just from memory I'm going to pick a few movies that I’ve seen in my life and talk about the impressions they made on me and what special messages I believe were hidden within them.


Let's begin!


Highlander

Recently I created a thread on the SpoonyExperiment.com forums regarding the Highlander series. The original movie was an epic adventure filled to the brim with swordfights, immortals, and large supernatural electrical storms but other than all the flashy special effects the movie touches upon a timeless motif.

Immortality

Since the beginning of time Human's have been attempting to make sense of their environment. How they would do this was to categorize all the elements and emotions they felt and anthropomorphize them into one specific deity. This deity of course would be immortal and embody their specified element (Earth, water, fire, wind, lightning, etc), emotion (love, jealousy, hatred, happiness, etc), or vocation (Medicine, blacksmithing, war, hunting, etc). In the movie Highlander however we see that the immortals have no power other than their universal immunity to death, unless of course they are decapitated. In an odd way they are similar to the Gorgans's from the ancient story of Perseus. All of them are semi-immortal unless their heads are separated from their bodies. The premise is gruesome but somewhat feasible if you think about it long enough.


Another idea which is taken from different stories throughout the ages is the battle of good and evil. It’s never said out loud but the personalities of Connor and his adversary Kurgan are polar opposites in every way. Connor is kind and thoughtful while Kurgan is a violent sociopath. The world of the immortals gets even more intriguing because they live among regular people but sadly have trouble taking part do to their long lives and sterility (all immortals seemed to be sterile until the newest Highlander movie "The Source" where it was shown that they can impregnate women some how..... but who cares about the Highlander sequels, they are all screwed up beyond recognition anyway), so by nature they are outcasts.


If you have already seen this movie and want some more immortal sword fighting action I would suggest giving the TV series a try. It really dives deeper into the world of immortals, the battles they fight, and how they interact within society.



Willow


Right from the beginning the movie draws inspiration from the biblical story of Moses. A woman who is holding a baby is being pursued and as a last ditch effort so save the child she sends it down stream. Luckily for the child it gets picked up by a nearby village of little people. I guess you can call them Hobbits, or dwarves, but in this specific movie they are called Pecks. I think? Peck may be a derogatory word used to describe them but I’m drawing a blank right now so it will have to do. They however are a good people who survive through agriculture and seem to be at peace with the land. After the baby is found by the main character (Willow) and his family they discuss about what to do with the child. The child is not of their race and must be brought to the council so that the elder can decide on what do to with it. This part in the story is known as the call to adventure because the Elder picks Willow to be the person to deliver the child to a nearby Human village. From there it the story goes on an exciting journey throughout their world. Chock full of Evil Sorceresses, a Skull Knight (General Kael!), and a multitude of other characters that really make the experience enjoyable. Mad Martigan is the typical Han Solo-ish character that starts out as an opportunist and as the movie progresses transforms into the white knight of the film. There are some very interesting supporting characters and different kinds of entities that draw the viewer deep within their world .

This is a very good movie and I must insist that all of you reading this should go and see it for yourselves. It is one of the last great fantasy films of all time. You shouldn’t miss it!



Krull

The world of Krull is a magnificent place. The environment is truly pristine and the inhabitants are colorful and pleasant. There is however an antagonist of mass proportions terrorizing the land. His name is the Beast and he commands an army of armored soldiers called Slayers who are equipped with weapons that are far superior to whatever the Krullites wield. The Beast is described as an all powerful entity who travels from world to world conquering the lands and doing what he pleases with the populations. The movie begins with Cowyln and Lyssa’s marriage to unite the kingdoms and from what it looks like after years of slayer onslaughts there isn’t that much left of either fiefdoms. As the wedding ceremony is about to be completed the slayers attack with a almost unstoppable power. They swarm the castle, grab Lyssa, and haul her back to the Beasts castle which seems to resemble a giant out of place mountain. To make matters worse this castle has the ability to teleport anywhere the Beast pleases and Cowyln is shot to pieces and has to be nursed back to health by the wise old hermit Ynyr. This is the mentor motif. An old sage of some sort who comes down from the mountain to bestow his knowledge on the up and coming hero. The movie Highlander had this as well with the teacher known as Ramirez (Sean Connery). Unfortunately most mentors tend to have short life spans after assisting their hero and meet their demise half way through the story. To make a long story short Cowyln who is commanded by Ynyr to find the “Glaive” which is an awesome weapon that looks like a gold five pointed star with blades that come out of the points. Its very well made and just to see it in action towards the end of the movie is well worth the wait. Now a lot of people were critical of how the weapon is used at the end but I for one thought it was done very well and I will explain why. The Glaive is supposed to embody power while love is represented in the form of fire. If you have seen the movie it’s a little easier to understand but it all comes together from one quote from the film.

“Power is fleeting, Love is eternal”

The reason why this cryptic message is so important is because the glaive (Power) is not strong enough to defeat the beast. Yes, it is used in many other important tasks within the Beast’s castle but it falls short of finishing the job. Only the fire (Love) of Lyssa and Cowyln together can vanquish the evil Beast and send him back into the void of space.

This is a very powerful movie and I remember searching for it forever before picking up the VHS (which I still own). It’s an amazing story that brings a message of how friendship and love is important to vanquish the evil and vices in ones life.

So ends this posting. I hope you have all enjoyed it and if you haven’t seen the movies I listed about please find time to watch them at least once. They are films that are very well made and have yet to be matched by any present day works.

Honorable Mentions:

Conan the Barbarian

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Beast Master
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LadyHawke
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Highlander III
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Legend
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Dark Crystal
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Labyrinth

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Hawk the Slayer

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Tron

YouTube is the greatest

Like many people out there I'm a YouTube addict and I have stumbled across the whole spectrum of what Youtube can dish out. We got video gamers giving reviews, we got people jumping over stuff on bikes and cars, we got aliens , and sea monsters. NO JOKE! Its freaking on there triple pinky swear!

So anyway, a few days ago I was doing my usually boycott of cable television and surfing Youtube for some entertaining stuff and Ka-blam! I found the coolest stuff this side of the hemisphere. Let me dish it out for all you philistines.

Super Cool Youtube Sites!

Classic Game Room - In my opinion one of the most professional YouTube Channels I have ever seen. Great editing, great commentary, the works.

Happy Console Gamer - I must admit he is somewhat new at the game but this guy has a rockin' video game collection and some knowledge to boot. Also, he seems like a super cool dude cause his name is "Johnny Millenium" and his sidekicks name is "Rob Man". Now those are some pretty cool names.

Spoony / The Spoony Experiment - This guy is not just the run of the video game reviewer. He also does movies too! Excited yet? Well guess what, this guy has to be some kind of film student or something cause he gives the most indebt movie reviews out there. He really gets in touch with how good or ........terrible some of the movies he sees and he doesn't mince words either. Hes a straight shooter and that makes me want to buy him an iced coffee!

Cambo - This guys name is Cambo with some numbers at the end I can't really remember too well. Eitherway he posts these radio shows on his site by this guy called Webster Tarpley who is some kind of super genius. I kid you not dear friends. TheCoolinator would never lie. Ya, some of the stuff that he talks about are way over the heads of many people but who cares! Hes like a good Lex Luther or something. Check him out.

Nathan Barnatt - This guy is an excellent physical comedian. He has numerous acts that he brings to the table. A nerd guy name Kieth Apicary, a crazy candy lover names Trale Lewous, and some dude called Simmins Dupont that has a kickin' moustace!

Check these guys out. They are good peoples!

Until next time!