Book Review #6 - Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (2000)

              Dan Brown is great at crafting adventures that keep you wanting to continue reading. The short chapters allow for easy breaks and also entices you to keep going. In the first Robert Langdon adventures, we get to travel to the Vatican and Rome. The mystery revolves around the Illuminati and their quest to destroy the Catholic Church. The book keeps the mystery all the way to the end. As mentioned earlier, it keeps you interested through and through. Sometimes it feels a little too much like a planned puzzle. No killer would symbolically place everything along a path that can be deciphered by following centuries old books, but you have to suspend your disbelief to make this work. The book gives us great descriptions of the scenery they are in and makes Robert Langdon a compelling lead character. It’s a good read for anyone, advanced or beginner, which explains Dan Brown’s popularity among the reading community.

Score : 8 / 10

Wednesday Night Ramblings – August 5 2015 – Aliens: Colonial Marines, Rare RepPllay, RIP Roddy Piper

           This week we start we some sad news. Legendary WWE wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper passed away last week. Piper was one of the driving forces of wrestling’s skyrocketing in popularity during the 80s. He spent a lot of time being Hulk Hogan’s arch enemy. He was one of the most entertaining characters and cut fantastic promos. One of the most touching things I read was Bret Hart’s public comments. He spoke about how Piper gave him one of his first big breaks by dropping the Intercontinental Championship to Hart at Wrestlemania VIII. He also said that Roddy Piper was the only wrestler to visit him in hospital when he had a stroke. By all accounts that I’ve read, Piper was a great family man who helped out whenever he could. His episode on the Steve Austin podcast where he spoke of his difficult upbringing is one of the episodes of that show. It’s hard to believe he’s gone at a relatively young age, 61 years old. RIP Hot Rod, you will be remembered for a long time to come.

                After much delay I finally started up my video game rental; Aliens: Colonial Marines. I didn’t want to believe the negative hype. There is no way that the game could be that bad. It’s a shooter where you get to take on the Xenomorphs. I’ve seen the videos showing how much work was put in to get the details right. There’s no way this could suck! Sadly, I was wrong. I’ve only played the first level so far but oof, it is not good. The graphics are really bad. For something that was released in 2013, it should look a whole lot better than this. It looks more like an early Playstation 2 game than a late Xbox 360 game. The gameplay itself though does not feel right either. The aliens pop out of nowhere, and not in a good way. Instead of being scary it’s just annoying. One second there’s nothing, next you’ve got 3 in your face. I’ll keep at it, I’ve told myself I’m going to finish it but it is going to be a chore. 

                It wasn’t all terrible stuff in videogames this week though; I picked up Rare Replay. I’ve been back and forth on this game a few times. When I first heard about it at E3, it was a no brainer. 30 games for 30$, 10 000 gamerscore! How could I say no? Then the news came that the games that came out on Xbox 360 previously were just going to run on an emulator of the 360 version with no new achievements. So if you completed Banjo Tooie then it was still completed, no new achievements for you. This brought down the actual Gamerscore of Rare Replay to 4 000. I felt lied to and was very angry. After some time passed I got over it and finally bought it on release date. So far I’ve only paid Jetpac and it has been fun. There’s still a lot of games to go, I’m going to have many hours of fun with this. 

                It’s been a good haul for cheevos this week. Please see below;

Batman: Arkham Knight

Choice of Weapons - 5G - Use all five batmobile weapons successfully in one tank battle

Rare Replay

Join the Jet Set - 15G - Jetpac: Play the game for the first time

Unphased - 10G - Complete a Jetpac snapshot

They Came From Outer Space - 25G - Jetpac: Complete of the Jetpac snapshots

Theater Patron - 10G - Filled up your first ticket with stamps

Aliens: Colonial Marines

Oorah to Ashes - 10G - Collect a dog tag

Field Promotion - 10G - Earn Rank 2 as a marine

Ready to Fry Half a City - 5G - Edit a Marine Loadout

Another Bug Hunt - 5G - Complete a challenge

Adios, Muchachos - 20G - Gib two enemies at once

Eat This! - 10G - Kill a Xenomorph with a shotgun at very close range

Entry Phohibited - 20G - Kill 10 Xenomorphs that are using vents

Coming Outta the Walls ! - 10G - Kill a Xenomorph climbing on the walls or ceiling

 Personal Friend of Mine - 10G - Collect a legendary weapon

No offense - 20G - Melee a Lurker that is pouncing towards you

Another Day in the Corps - 20G - Complete Distress

The Complete Asylum #7 - Age of Tomorrow (2014)

Plot

 (from imdb.com)

Mankind must fight to survive as Earth is invaded by hostile UFOs bent on destroying the planet. As the epic battle wages on, astronauts sneak aboard the mothership where they discover a portal to the aliens' home world. They manage to alert Earth before they are brutally murdered. Left with no other choice, Earth sends an elite military team of science and combat specialists through the portal where they attempt to stop the invasion from the inside out. But is the battle already lost for humanity?

Review

 This week we’re going into the more sci-fi direction with the Asylum. This movie has a couple of people who have actually starred in something relevant; Robert Picardo and Kelly Hu. Right away you can tell that they are real actors compared to anyone else they share scenes with. They are able to convey different emotions and make things sound interesting, something 95% of the rest of the cast can’t do. Most of the extra soldiers walking around don’t look like they’re in a battle, they look like they are bored. 

The plot is a ripoff of a whole bunch of movies, but we’ll get into the specifics of that later. It somewhat works most of the time. We get multiple perspectives so it makes the alien invasion feel bigger then if it were just one person we were following. The aliens themselves have 2 different shapes. One’s a flying orb that shoots laser or teleportation beams, depending on how important of a character you are. The other are humanoid creatures, really just a guy in a suit. The guy in a suit is not fantastic, they never really zoom in on them either. I think they have this weird open mouth with teeth. You see it sometimes but not always. 

Overall this movie is not high on the Asylum standard. It’s not so ridiculous it’s fun and you never really care about the terrible actors. The CGI is getting a lot better so I will give them that.

Worst Scene 

At one point the firefighter is being chased by an orb in an office building. He sets a trap by connecting his phone to a fire extinguisher and calls it. The orb gets attracted to it, then a text comes up saying “SCREW YOU” and the whole thing blows up, killing the orb.

Lawsuit Potential?

            There is a lot to sue here. This movie is supposed to be a ripoff of Edge of Tomorrow, but that seems to be the only movie they don’t steal from. We’ve got lines from Terminator spoken verbatim and Robert Picardo tries to replicate the Bill Pullman speech from Independence Day and fails miserably. The big studio lawyers could probably find a lot of things to make money off in this movie.

Score: 4.5/10