#Quantum of solace pc review

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Quantum of solace pc review

Again, none of it is bad, but the mechanics just aren't compelling. There's the balancing act where players need to keep a wavering dot in the center of the screen with the left analog stick, there's a hacking mini-game where you'll need to match directional button presses in a kind of Simon Says variant, and then there are the quicktime melee events which get stale after a few uses. Every other mechanic just falls a little bit short. You can tell that the developers really wanted to make this game different than COD4, but that doesn't stop the roots of Infinity Ward's from being the silver lining in the package. They're all a little predictable – there's the requisite speeding train and museum levels – but at least you're not running down the same hallways over and over. Also trying to keep the action fresh are the levels which stay varied throughout. When the game tries it does do a good job of delivering intensity and flare but those moments are spaced a bit too far apart. Luckily there are moments when things aren't so mundane. That's fine if things are bright and flashy with lots of blood and guts, but when you're fighting a bunch of henchmen things can feel a little tired. Instead there are too many situations relegated to standard stop and pop gameplay.

That means that the free-flowing way of dispatching enemies from several different angles as was available in COD4 is no longer available. Another problem with the cover system is that the levels are built around the mechanic. It wasn't a massive annoyance, but the few deaths that I was able to chalk up to the faulty cover were a nuisance. Only to find out that I was perfectly aligned and it was the cover system screwing me up. There were times when I felt like I should be able to crouch behind something in front of me and I couldn't. The cover system is better than some (Kane & Lynch) but not as functional as others. It works similarly to what we've seen from the likes of Gears of War and others.Ĭlick+above+to+watch+the+Video+Review+for+Quantum+of+Solace+(HD+Available).īasically any surface can be stuck to by pressing A and you can even dash into a piece of cover by holding the button. Treyarch, figuring that they had a star that most would want to look at, decided to implement a cover system into the standard first-person shooter gameplay of QoS. The biggest deviation from the COD4 gameplay formula is actually one of the few moments when you'll be removed from Daniel Craig's point of view. As you'd expect, Quantum of Solace is played almost entirely from a first-person perspective. They're not bad additions, they just don't meld or work especially well with the rest of the game and therefore come off feeling very forced and artificial. It's just a bummer that roughly everything that was added in an effort to keep the game feeling fresh isn't done all that well. It takes the Call of Duty 4 engine and wraps it around the James Bond universe with a few new trimmings to try and keep the action feeling as fresh as possible. Of course, with every movie comes a game of the same name and Quantum of Solace is no different. Put a beautiful beau in a hot sports car, toss in a gorgeous babe for him to boink and then prop up a bunch of would-be henchman to stand in between our hero and his goal and you have the recipe for just about every Bond film in history.

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Both games include cover mechanics and on 360, the camera perspective will switch to third-person when entering cover. The take downs on 360 involve quick-time events because somebody thought that would actually be a good idea. In both games you can run, sprint, crouch, take cover, shoot from cover, blind fire, and perform take downs. The PS2 game includes three difficulty modes and the 360 game includes four. That’s the most obvious difference between the two. The PS2 game is a third-person shooter and the 360 game is a first-person shooter. A lot of what is seen in the films is just glossed over in the games during the cut scenes where dialogue is exchanged, usually between M and others at MI6, and as far as I can tell, most of the voice dialogue is ripped straight from the films. For example you’ll chase the Bomb Maker through Shanty Town and blast your way through the hotel in the Bolivian desert, among other recognizable events. However, some missions do let you play through sequences depicted in the films. You’ll play through many sequences not seen in the films that more or less “fill the gaps”, if you will, between major plot scenes. Quantum of Solace continues the story arc established in Casino Royale and Bond goes after key players in the terrorist organization known as Quantum. In Casino Royale, Bond gains his 00 Agent status and proceeds to stop a banker who services many of the world’s terrorists. You get to play through events from both Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale and I’ll give a very brief overview of both films. Anyway, I figured the 360 version would be good enough.

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I don’t know if Activision lost the license to the franchise or just won’t renew it but whatever the reason, players that want any of the Activision 007 games digitally get shafted. As of this review, many if not all the 007 games are no longer available digitally anywhere which kind of sucks and I regret not buying them on Steam when I had the chance. I wanted to play the PS2 version because it’s a third-person shooter as opposed to the other versions, excluding DS, which are first-person shooters. For this review, I played through the PS2 and Xbox 360 versions of the game.

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Apparently, Beenox ported the game to PC and Wii and Eurocom developed the PlayStation 2 and DS versions. Developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, the Quantum of Solace video game was released for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and DS in November, 2008. I thought Skyfall was excellent and I don’t remember much about Spectre. Since then, I saw both Skyfall and Spectre in theaters. I didn’t think it was incredible but not as bad as some people make it out to be. After watching Casino Royale, I watched Quantum of Solace and thought it was okay.

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I’ve always enjoyed the games but for the longest time, I was never into the film series until I saw Casino Royale which was years after it released and some time before Skyfall came out. Casino Royale 2006 is currently my favorite 007 film.

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The player follows through the plot of Casino Royale, from Bond chasing Mollaka through Madagascar, Bond infiltrating the Science Center to kill Dimitrios, saving Skyfleet from Carlos, killing Bliss en route to Montenegro, meeting Vesper, saving Le Chiffre from Steven Obanno and his men, saving Vesper from Le Chiffre, and finally confronting Vesper and Gettler in Venice where Vesper dies, at which point it flashes back to the present.īond and Camille soon arrive at a hotel in the middle of the Bolivian desert. Bond opens up to Camille about the death of his former lover Vesper Lynd, recounting the events of Casino Royale. Bond learns that Medrano killed Camille's family, and this is why she wants revenge. By this time, Bond has met Camille Montes who is seeking vengeance against General Medrano, who is trying to overthrow the Bolivian government. The game jumps forward to Bond crashlanding in Bolivia, where Greene is trying to buy land. Later, Bond spies on a meeting of Quantum members and photographs them among them is Dominic Greene, a well-known environmentalist. While he and M interrogate White, they are attacked by the traitorous MI6 agent Henry Mitchell, who is killed by Bond while White escapes. White, a member of the previously unknown criminal-terrorist organization Quantum. The game begins with James Bond kidnapping Mr.

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2.1 PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC.The game received generally mixed reviews from critics, with the PlayStation 2 version receiving the best reviews. The game was released on Octoin Europe, Novemin North America, and Novemin Australia. The game was also the first to feature Daniel Craig's voice and likeness, as well as those of Judi Dench, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Olga Kurylenko and Mathieu Amalric. Developed by Treyarch for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC (additional porting by Beenox), Eurocom for PlayStation 2 and Vicarious Visions for the Nintendo DS, the game was the first James Bond video game to be published by Activision, who gained the Bond licence from EA in 2006. 007: Quantum of Solace is a 2008 first-person shooter ( third-person shooter for Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2) video game based on the films Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

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Look to the left when you enter to find a phone. Continue after the parked trailer, and unlock the door. Tutorials, hints, lets plays.Įnter the parked trailer in the alley. 007: Quantum of Solace video walkthrough guide. 007: Quantum of Solace video walkthrough by DerfsonicGaming. 007 : Quantum of Solace sur PlayStation 3 : retrouvez toutes les informations, les tests, les vid.

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Download PSP Theme PSP Theme 007 Quantum Of Solace download The new James Bond (Nov. For 007: Quantum of Solace on the PlayStation 2, GameFAQs has 1 cheat, 2 reviews, 2 critic reviews, and 3 save games. Quantum Of Solace combina de forma brilhante as caracter. Look near the ammunition crate to find a phone. Climb the ladder in front of you to find a phone. Continue ahead, and look on a table to your right to find a phone.Įxit the building with the previous phone. Walk across the beach, and enter the building. There is a bar immediately after you make your way across the entrance. The phone is to the left as you are moving up that slope, before defending Camile. Make your way up the spiral slope just after the area you defended with the crashed helicopter. Download Guide to PSP - Quantum of Solace: Three easy steps to reading IGN strategy guides on your PSP: NOTE: Your PSP must be updated to version 2.0 or later. Look to the right after crossing the beam to find a phone. Continue after the sniper, and walk across the beam without falling. Enter the backstage area.Ĭlimb the red steps with black and yellow marks. Continue to reach a step ladder with a phone, just before crossing the water. Start the mission, and bypass the camera. Look on the ground before the hole to find a phone. Go to the top of the large staircase in the next room. Jump across a gap, and enter into the house. Continue into the building to find a phone directly in front of you. There will be an ammunition crate to the left. The phone is next to the bedside lamp.Ĭross the rooftops, and drop down onto a lower roof. Climb through the house window, and enter the bedroom. When the mission begins, go to the metal tables and chairs to the left. Look between the vases on the raised area at the base of the stairs to find a phone. Go through the mansion's kitchen and dining room. Go through the wine cellar, and enter the black and white tiled area. Look on the table with the chairs to find a phone.Įnter the mansion from the cellar. Look on the wall where you shoot the helicopter to find a phone. Go through the boathouse and the first greenhouse. You will know you are near a phone when you hear it or see it flash.

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If you have any questions, email me and I will do my best to get back to you. It is a work in progress, so no, itis not done.

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[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 10/8/21 - NO TIME TO DIE, THE RESCUE, MASS, LAMB, NIGHTSTREAM, and More

It's a very special week here at the Weekend Warrior because October 10 will be my 20th (!!) anniversary as a film critic and the 20th anniversary of me doing a weekly movie preview column, mostly about box office but also with reviews and other stuff. Pretty cool, huh? (I’m celebrating this occasion by writing this column to the music of Public Enemy’s Apocalypse 91 which is 30 years old this month.)

Of course, this column wasn't called The Weekend Warrior in the early days, as I was instead doing "Half-Assed Analysis” at a long-gone Hollywood Stock Exchange fan site called HSJ.org. But then, it was a conversation with Mirko P. from ComingSoon.net (R.I.P.) that got me on the track of changing the name to "The Weekend Warrior" even though it would be a year before I would actually bring it to ComingSoon for 12 ½ wonderful years. The column has gone through a number of transformations and evolutions and iterations over the years, sometimes it being called something different just 'cause I didn't want to go through the ordeal of explaining to one of my bosses at a website that "The Weekend Warrior” is my own, and if I leave, it goes with me.

Anyway, I have taken a few weeks off over the years, particularly earlier this year when it just didn't seem a good time to be trying to predict box office, and I was starting to get burnt out on reviews. Now, the column is kind of back to being mostly about box office but with a few reviews, which is how I've always intended it.

Who knows if I'm going to continue this on that much longer, because honestly, there's no money and very little reward, and it does take a lot of time to write this up each week, especially with all the work I have to do for Below the Line. Anyway, for now, I'm going to keep it going, and we'll see how it goes. But Happy 20th Anniversary to me, and I can promise you… there won't be 20 more. NO FUCKING WAY.

Before we get to this week’s theatrical releases, I feel the need to mention the first of a bunch of October horror film festivals, as NIGHTSTREAM will begin on Thursday and run through Oct. 13. This is an amazing streaming horror/genre film festival that was instituted last year by four festivals, the Boston Underground Film Festival, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, the North Bend Film Festival, and the Overlook Film Festival when all four were cancelled due to COVID. Some of these are still happening this year as physical in-person festivals but Nighstream continues on. Some of the guests at this year’s Nightstream are The Green Knight director David Lowery; Akela Cooper, who wrote the recent James Wan horror film, Malignant; horror and special make-up FX legend Greg Nicotero, who is also the showrunner on the Creepshow anthology series, and more.

There are so many movies and events going on in the week of Nightstream but some of the highlights include the World Premiere of Jefferson Moneo’s Cosmic Dawn, Scott Friend’s feature debut, To the Moon, and the Virtual Premiere of Scott Barber’s doc, This is Gwar, as well as much more.

You can see the full list of movies here and learn how to get a pass at the official site.

Let’s get to some other movies hitting theaters...

Obviously, the big release of the weekend and maybe the month is the 25th James Bond movie, NO TIME TO DIE (MGM), once again starring Daniel Craig in his final outing as 007, his fifth movie in a run that started with Casino Royale in 2006 and 15 years later, it’s coming to an end.

Obviously, this being Craig’s last stint as Bond is a big draw for the movie, but there are other interesting things to note First, it’s directed by True Detective’s Emmy-winning director Cary Joji Fukunaga, who is making his biggest budget movie to date, having started with smaller films like Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre, and then getting more attention for his festival favorite, Beast of No Nations, starring Idris Elba, who for a while, people seemed to want to play the NEXT Bond.

Much of Bond’s colleagues and friends from past movies are back including Naomi Harris as Moneypenny, Ralph Fiennes as M, Ben Whishaw as Q, but it also brings back Jeffrey Wright, who was introduced as Felix Leitner in Craig’s first film, Casino Royale, and also a few people from the last Bond movie, Spectre, which wasn’t received as well as the previous one, Skyfall. (More on those things in a bit.) Christoph Waltz played Blofeld in Spectre (for better or worse), and he’s back, as is Léa Seydoux, who played Bond's love interest, and actually she continues said role but brings more to the plot.

The new cast is pretty significant, starting with Oscar winner Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) as the new arch-villain, Safin, and actually, there’s also a new 007 in Lashana Lynch, who replaced Bond after he retired from MI6. There’s another “Bond Girl” (if you don’t mind the outdated trope) in Ana de Armas, who previously starred with Craig in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, which feels like it was made 500 years ago but actually has a sequel shooting as we speak. In fact, Armas seems to be getting the best notices from everyone who writes about the movie, even though her section probably isn’t more than 15 minutes long.

I’m not going to say more about the plot. You either don’t need to know it in advance cause you’re seeing it anyway or you don’t WANT to know anything, and good for MGM for being able to keep the plot and lots of stuff secret despite the movie being delayed for 18 months due to COVID.

That’s right. No Time to Die was probably one of the first movies delayed due to COVID, and it definitely wasn’t the last, but MGM (and EON Productions) really stuck to their guns, and didn’t allow a streamer to come forward with millions and millions of dollars to put James Bond on streaming. (Granted, Amazon did come forward and ended up buying MGM outright earlier this year, and we’ve yet to see how and when that will come to fruition. As far as I know, Amazon has nothing to do with MGM’s 2021 releases, of which there are a few still to come.)

Actually, the fact that MGM is releasing this one on its own is an interesting point in itself, because it’s been almost 20 years since the studio has done that with Pierce Brosnan’s last Bond film, Die Another Day. In the time since then, MGM has been co-distributing its films with other studios until fairly recently -- the last four Bond movies were released by Sony Pictures. I’m not gonna throw shade at MGM, because they’ve been doing a fantastic job with No Time To Die, essentially marketing the movie once back in early 2020 and then again for its final release spot this Friday. In between, the movie has moved a number of times as COVID just kept ambushing its planned release date. Any weaker studio (like, say Sony) would have just sold the movie off (as Sony has done many times over the past 18 months until finally having a theatrical hit with Venom). Interesting how that works out, huh? MGM took over Bond, and now it’s releasing the new Bond a week after Sony’s biggest 2021 hit, essentially killing its chances at having a decent second weekend.

Others are seeing how well Venom did and are assuming that the box office is back, and that Bond can do even BIGGER numbers, but you need to take a few things into account, including something called REALITY. And it comes from the wonderful box office archive site, The-Numbers.com, which I have been using for those 20 years mentioned above.

Up until Daniel Craig took over the role, the biggest opening for a Bond movie (not accounting for inflation) was Brosnan’s Die Another Day with $47 million. Casino Royale opened with just $40 million in 2006, but it proved to have significant holiday legs as more people discovered it and decided that the new direction of tougher and grittier and more violent action was for them. It made $167 million domestically and $594 million globally. A few years later, Quantum of Solace had a much bigger opening of $67.5 million but made almost the exact same amount domestically -- the reason? People didn’t like it as much as Casino Royale, so it was more frontloaded.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes took over the 50th anniversary Bond movie, Skyfall, four years later, and that was generally as well received as Casino Royale, so that it set a new opening record for the franchise with $88.3 million and OVER A BILLION worldwide. Woo! Three years later, Spectre was going to introduce two classic Bond villains, Blofeld and Jaws (played by David Bautista) but it once again wasn't received that well, and it opened lower with $70 million and “only” made $200 million domestically vs. the $300 million of Skyfall. It still made over $879 million globally, but a final movie for Craig was always going to happen.

Now I’m going to talk about why I don’t think No Time to Die is going to break the opening record set by Skyfall, and believe it or not, it's not because of COVID. This is the thing. Bond clearly peaked with Skyfall and then it dropped down with Spectre, and that movie wasn't that well-received either by critics or fans with 63% from the former on Rotten Tomatoes and 61% from audiences. That is basically Quantum of Solace numbers and down from Skyfall's 92% and 86%. You take that disappointment and then you add six years, which is how long it's been between Bond movies, and you have a lot fewer people interested in shelling out money to see another Daniel Craig movie. There's no way around the fact that people are just burnt out on Craig and maybe Bond himself, and it really would take a huge wave of positive reviews to get them back.

Also, and unlike Venom, Bond is about as white as you can get in terms of a fanbase. I'm sure there's some African-Americans and LatinX movie fans who enjoy the action and stuff, but do you think you would see the entire James Bond collection in their Bluray libraries? I'm sure there are some, but they may be outliers, because Bond is the kind of Baby Boomer anti-woke un-PC franchise that the Millennials have been warning you about for years. It also doesn't have as big a female fanbase as other franchises (like Marvel) so that's another audience that might not rush out to see the movie. Sure, some changes have been made, including additions like Lashana Lynch or as she's better known, "WHO?!?!?", and de Armas, as well, but it's still the same old James Bond. Fukunaga just didn't try hard enough to make the necessary changes, or maybe he wasn't allowed to, because EON's Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. WIlson still hold very tight reins on the Bond films. Whatever has been done may not just be enough and who knows how many will want to see No Time to Die just to give Craig a glorious send-off? There's also the matter of No Time to Die being almost an hour longer than Venom -- longer run time, less screenings, less money per screen. It's simple math.

I already reviewed the movie for Below the Line -- I liked it but had some issues -- and it’s sitting pretty at 83% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good sign for getting the interest of fans to return to theaters for a movie that won’t be available on streaming on VOD for quite some time, I’d imagine.

I’m feeling generally bullish (or is it bearish?) on No Time To Die, especially with how much better Venom: Let There Be Carnage did last weekend compared to my prediction (OUCH!) but I’m also keeping track of that REALITY I mentioned before. Not just COVID on this one, but also opening the movie earlier overseas where the movie can be easily bootlegged and put on piracy sites for people who just don’t want to chance it at movie theaters yet. (I’m going to be writing more about this soon, but I have seen probably 100 movies or more in theaters since they reopened in NYC, and I get tested regularly. I have not tested positive for COVID once.)

The movie has done very well overseas, scoring $121.3 million in its first weekend, but I still don’t think it will open over $80 million in North America. But I do think it will be close, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it opens somewhere between $75 and 80 million.

Without knowing if any of the movies below might be going wider (but highly doubting it), here’s what the weekend Top 10 might look like. Actually, let’s make that the top 8 cause last week’s #9 and 10 were so odd and I have no idea if anything is expanding wider, as I write this:

1. No Time to Die (MGM) - $76.5 million N/A

2. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $31.5 million -65%

3. The Addams Family II (MGM/UA Releasing) - $9.3 million -45%

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $ 3.5 million -43%

5. The Many Saints of Newark (New Line/WB) - $2.1 million -55%

6. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $1.3 million -45%

7. Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) - $1.1 million -57%

8. Candyman (Universal) - $700,000 -47%

I think there are just way too many great movies to pick just one "Chosen One,” but since I probably should decide, I'm going with Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's new documentary THE RESCUE (National Geographic). You may remember Jimmy and Chai from when they won the Oscar for Free Solo, and their latest is just as good. The rescue in the title refers to the 2018 rescue of an 11-kid Thai soccer team called the Wild Boars and their coach when they became trapped in the Tham Luang caves in Northern Thailand, as the annual monsoon season hits early, flooding the caves in which they’re exploring.

To fully understand how they got trapped, you have to have some idea of the structure of this underground cave system, and this film does a great job explaining how the monsoons create flooding in the caves and how much harder it is to get someone out of them when the rain just won’t stop. Two British cave divers, John Volanthen and Richard Standton, are called in to survey the situation and figure out if there’s a way to get the dozen trapped out alive, as time keeps passing until it seems like those kids are trapped without food longer than any human can survive. Seemingly, thousands of locals and foreigners come to the caves in hopes of helping, whether it’s trying to pump out water or dig new tunnels to try to find where the kids are trapped (which is a difficult task in itself).

There’s a good chance you were watching the news and you know the results of this elaborate and daring cave diving rescue, but you definitely don’t know how the plan was developed and pulled off until you actually watch it as it’s taking place. The underwater and cavern footage of the kids and their saviors is absolutely second to none, and it’s hard not to get emotional in the way Chin and Vasarhleyi assemble the footage with the music.

The Rescue is an amazing movie, maybe as good as the duo’s previous one, Free Solo, and it may be the best recapturing/documentation of an important news event that I’ve seen in recent memory.

I was seriously close to having multiple "Chosen Ones” this week, because there are a few other very good movies, including Fran Kranz’s directorial debut MASS (Bleecker Street), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and deservedly received mass praise and stellar reviews. I don't want to say too much about the movie, because its emotional power may lay in not knowing too much about it in advance. The simplest plot is that it involves two couples meeting in the room of a church to have an important face-to-face about a difficult subject, one that needs resolution and absolution from both parties. If you like great writing and amazing performances, than the work of Reed Birney and Anne Dowd (as one couple) and Jason Isaacs and Martha Plympton (as the other) will make this movie a can't miss.

Again, without getting too deep into what the couples discuss, Mass is written and directed similar to one might do a 90-minue one-act play, but it begins with us seeing the people who work at the church trying to set up the room where this eventful tete a tete will take place. It’s surprisingly witty and even elicits a few laughs from Breeda Wool, who is so nervous and awkward about the meeting that’s about to happen.

When the two couples arrives, that’s where we really get into it, but it still starts out slow, a re-aquaintance phase between the two couples, who clearly have a difficult past, try to get through the niceties before getting into the serious conversation at hand. And here is where I’m gonna put a HUGE SPOILER IN HERE FOR THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.

As with so many movies, Mass deals with gun violence and the survivors of the types of school shootings we’ve seen far too many times in the last two decades. Isaacs and Plympton’s son was killed by the other couple’s son, who turned the gun on himself. It creates this dynamic where both couples have lost a son they loved, but Dowd and Birney are put in a spot where they have to try to explain their son’s behavior and if they saw that he was capable of such violence before the shooting took place.

The actors are all terrific, and while you might think a dialogue-heavy movie with four actors sitting at a table might not do much for you… well, first of all, you can go see No Time to Die if that’s more your speed … but Kranz’s direction is more than just getting these emotional performances out of his actors but also capturing it on film and editing it to best effect. There’s even an imperfection to the camera work, sometimes focusing on one actor while another is talking, that makes this long conversation feel even more authentic, as if you’re a fly on the wall in that room.

Again, the writing and performances and direction of Mass makes it one of the most powerful dramatic works this year. I’d love to see any of the four main actors get awards attention, but especially Dowd and Isaacs, who have been so deserving of awards love for a very, very long time.

Icelandic filmmaker Valdimar Jóhansson's LAMB (A24) is a very different movie, this one starring Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason as Maria and Ingvar, a couple living on a sheep farm (or rather, a lamb farm -- I honestly don't know the difference) who make an incredible discovery when a lamb gives birth to a child they decide to raise as their own. Invar's brother Pétur is not only not impressed but he thinks they’ve gone crazy, but there’s a lot of far more nefarious things going on in and around their remote and isolated farm.

This is a really fascinating film, one that’s fairly subdued but Johansson and his cinematographer (Eli Arenson) beautifully capture the vast landscapes of Iceland and gives us a real idea of how remote and isolated the farm where it mostly takes place is. He also does a great job building on the mystery of this child and the tension that surrounds where it came from, and yet, I’m not sure I’d consider Lamb to be horror, even if A24 is maybe marketing it in that direction. Really, it’s more magical fantasy mixed with character drama, and Rapace is just great as always, really impressing me with her skills delivering baby animals and driving a tractor.

If you dig a bit deeper, you’ll discover that Jóhansson wrote the screenplay with one “Sjón,” an author who has contributed to Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (one of my favorite musical movies) and also wrote The Northman, Robert Eggers next movie.

This is a terrific debut by Jóhansson -- I have an interview with the director over at Below the Line, too -- and it will be highly interesting to see where he goes from here.

I was hoping to watch and review SOUTH OF HEAVEN (RLJEfilms), the new movie from Aharon Keshales, the co-director of the fantastic Israeli thriller, Big Bad Wolves, which stars Jason Sudeikis, Evangeline Lilly, Mike Colter, and Shea Whigham, but I fell foul of a lousy screener and just didn't have tie to watch it before writing this week's column. Sudeikis plays Jimmy, a convict who has served 12 years for armed robbery who gets early parole, and he swears to give his childhood love Annie (Lilly), who is dying from cancer, the best final year of her life.

I also didn't get a chance to watch Russian filmmaker Evgeny Ruman's comedy GOLDEN VOICES (Music Box Films), which opens in New York and L.A. this weekend. It stars Maria Belkin and Vladimir Friedman as Raya and Victor, the Soviet Union’s popular film dubbers who have been translating film classics into Russian for decades. When the country collapses in 1990, the Jewish couple decides to move to Israel in hopes of finding employment. When she answers a help wanted ad looking for “pleasant voices,” she ends up working as a phone sex operator catering to the Russian community in Israel while he falls in with black market film pirates.

I also just haven't gotten around to JUSTIN BIEBER: OUR WORLD (Amazon), directed by Michael D. Ratner, which seems like the fourth or fifth documentary about the global superstar, this one that goes into the making of his 2020 New Year's Eve concert after a three-year hiatus atop the Beverly Hills Hilton for 240 invited guests and millions via livestream. It will stream on Amazon Prime Video this Friday.

A couple horror movies streaming this week are THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE (Netflix), the new movie from Patrick Brice (Creep), which hits Netflix and involves a masked assailant targetting a high school graduating class to expose the darkest secret of each victim, forcing a group of misfits to band together to stop the killings.

Shudder gets V/H/S 94 (Shudder), the latest anthology horror movie made up of five installments, directed by Simon Barrett, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, and Timo Tjahjanto. I haven't watched it yet but that's quite a rogue's gallery of horror/genre filmmakers there.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video are the next two installments of this year's batch of Welcome to the Blumhouse movies, Axelle Carolyn's The Manor, an eerie tale set in a retirement home and starring the legendary Barbara Hershey, and Ryan Zarazoga’s Madres about a young Mexican-American couple having their first child in ‘70s California where he’s sent to work on a farm where the wife finds a talisman and a box with belongings of the former resident. Both of them debut on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, too. Also, you can read my interview with Ms. Carolyn over at Below the Line.

Other movies that just didn't fit into my schedule this week include:

ASCENSION (MTV Documentary Films) VENGEANCE IS MINE (Vertical) PHARMA BRO (1091) KNOCKING (Yellow Veil Pictures)

Next week’s wide release is David Gordon Green’s horror sequel, HALLOWEEN KILLS!

[terryblount]

Team Sonic Racing – Review

One of my favourite things in gaming is the subliminal rivalries between protagonists. Sam Fisher has Solid Snake, Duke Nukem has Serious Sam, Nathan Drake has Lara Croft, and of course, Sonic has Mario. While they start off as a product of fandom, I like how these little feuds inevitably trickle down to a developmental level. Because whenever studios start competing, you just know someone will end up with a great game.

I therefore think Sonic has every right to star in a racing game even if ‘The Blue Blur’ could probably outrun all the karts and then some. To me, a Sonic kart racer is a salute towards the long-standing duel between Sega and Nintendo trying to one up each other. While other kart games tend to feel like a knock-off of Mario Kart, the attempts by Sega somehow always felt more like a proper challenge.

That moment when your game is just as good as Mario’s

The PC has criminally slim pickings when it comes to the selection of decent kart games at our disposal, and Team Sonic Racing represents a good choice. All the strengths that Nintendo fans have been enjoying for years can be found right here. However, I was confused by several decisions made by Sumo Digital in the aftermath of their previous game, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. When compared with its prequel, certain aspects of Team Sonic Racing just feel like a step backwards.

Sub Sonic

This is still a great Sonic racing entry, so let’s get the nasty stuff out of the way starting with this game’s biggest let-down: The plot. Indeed, here we have a kart racer where someone actually deemed it necessary to shoehorn a story into the career campaign. I have probably driven virtual karts almost as much as my actual car, and I have never felt like the experience would be enhanced by, or even needed, a story.

Perhaps this is his biggest rival.

The narrative plays out within cut scenes between races, where characters speak to each other in a speech bubble, JRPG-style. Basically, a tanuki named Dodon Pa holds a huge racing tournament for the friends and foes of Sonic. He need to examine how well groups can race together so that he can develop an engine that runs on the power of… teamwork.

That’s right, teamwork. As a surprise to no one, Doctor Robotnik/Eggman joins in on the action with the ultimate goal of stealing this extraordinary new engine. It’s up to Sonic to protect his friends, and thwart the plans of the rotund, mad scientist. Again. Though, I have no idea why Doctor Eggman wants this engine so bad because he hasn’t got friends anyway.

Not the worst example, but it is all downhill from here.

I can usually turn a deaf ear towards the cheesy dialogue in Sonic games, but the exchanges in Team Sonic Racing’s story are on the level of an explosion in a cheddar store. Which nine-year-old was tasked with writing their lines? It becomes utterly cringe-worthy at times, and this represents the final nail in a coffin for a story that should not have been told in the first place. Nothing beats a good old career mode, and I have never been this grateful for a skip button.

A prickle of hedgehogs

Despite the story made a flub out of introducing the notion of teamwork, Sonic Team Racing’s main selling point is that you can race both against and with other people on the track. Whether it be couch co-op or online, the emphasis here is racing as your only little squad in a style that reminded me a lot of Need for Speed: Carbon.

What you can therefore expect is a lot of slip-streaming, helpful shunts as well as sharing items with your team all so that your overall positions can contribute to the win. It really does not matter who crosses the finish line first since the game assigns a consistent score to each place. This was a nice feature since I found other team-based, racing games still emotionally blackmail you, player 1, to cross the line before anyone else.

Drive in the yellow trail for an extra speed boost!

This makes for an interesting dynamic not just in terms of how the game plays, but also how Sumo Digital could make one vehicle type actually feel completely different from the next. As I mentioned, karts leave behind a yellow trail for the team to slipstream in, and if anyone missed the item collection points you can toss them a rocket or a boost power-up. Players can also shunt, or be shunted by, their mates back into the race at full speed if they spin out.

Also encouraging the notion of working together is that your squad of three always consists of three different kart types. The technique cart types, driven by characters such as Tails or Silver, drift just a tad more easily around the corner, while the speed type cars of Sonic and Amy have a higher top speed. The power type vehicles of Knuckles and Big are a bit more sluggish, but they are far less affected by knocks and rough terrain.

His car is actually pretty solid on the track

You can really tell the difference between them, and each type of kart encourages a slightly different play style. Players that really want to dominate the competition in a tactful way should combine the strengths of their carts, and thankfully the AI make excellent racing partners.

Further encouraging the notion of team work is of course the Team Ultimate power-up. Like the All-Star ability in the previous game, this power-up grants you a substantial boost in speed and invulnerability. The only way to obtain this beauty is by doing all the team based activities I mentioned above. Nevertheless, let me reassure those more inclined towards playing solo that Team Sonic Racing offers every race mode in both team and single-player options.

One step forward and two steps back

It was surprisingly good relationship therapy for me and my girlfriend to play in cooperation with each other in a kart game for once, but I do miss the transformation aspect of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. The tracks felt far more vertical and dynamic with this mechanic, and considering that Mario Kart 8 has also jumped on the anti-gravity bandwagon, I have to wonder why it was omitted in the latest Sonic kart racing game. It gives Team Sonic Racing a slightly dated feeling akin to older kart games.

I also have misgivings about using wisps (remember Sonic Colours?) to symbolise power ups since it took some memorisation to learn their purpose. For example, you pick up a white wisp, but what does it mean? Is it a projectile? No it’s a boost. Okay now a blue one. Is it a shield? Nah it’s a block. Not a major issue since you instinctively remember their functions eventually, but I should note they failed to contribute to the gameplay as much as I hoped. In general, the power-ups feel a little ineffectual, and I gave mine to my team mates most of the time.

Drive through the red arch for a score multiplier, drive through the yellow for score. Do you have any idea how hard this is????

At least I can tell that Team Sonic Racing really wants me to feel rewarded in my driving skill. Rewards become substantially more generous at higher levels, but there are also single player events designed to train the player. These races are time trials in things like drifting while collecting rings, or a particular favourite of mine where you must dodge through little robots to learn evasive driving.

They are superb little distractions to sharpen your edge on the competition, but I must say that the requirements for gold medal, heck even for silver medal, are a little steep. I am the laziest achievement hunter in the world, but at one point in the career I needed a silver medal to unlock the next set of races. Not cool.

Kart racing delight

Team Sonic Racing fell short in a few areas for me mainly because I feel like Sumo Digital was really giving Mario Kart a serious run for their money at one point. Don’t get me wrong, I really love Nintendo. I just feel like this game made unnecessary sacrifices for the sake of the whole team racing dynamic, and I think Sumo Digital would be wise to reintroduce them in coming titles.

As it stands, I can still see myself returning over and over again to Team Sonic Racing for the rest of this year at least because there is still tons of sweet kart mods to unlock, and so many gold and platinum medals keeping me awake at night. This is an essential game for Sonic fans, and a lovely quantum of solace for the kart lovers that feel like their first choices are growing a bit long in the tooth.

Number of tracks

Vehicles feel unique

Selection of characters

Kart customisation

Soundtrack

Inconsistent difficulty spikes

Awful story

Ignores strengths from previous game

          Play time: About 14 hours total. Single player campaign around 12 hours.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an Xbox One controller

Team Sonic Racing – Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/