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Reviews
Thrillville (2006)
Worth a shot
This is a theme park management simulation game in which you control up to five different theme parks, each with their own unique themes, games, rides, and guest demographics. You'll be managing finances, building and customizing rides, placing food and souvenir kiosks, fraternizing with guests, and hiring and training your park staff. In addition, when you're not busy managing the park, you can ride any ride you've placed in your park, including roller coasters of your own design, and play any game. Riding rides and playing games will earn you money and other bonuses to help you better manage your parks.
Visually, Thrillville isn't all that stunning, even by last-gen standards, but the cartoony graphics hold up well overall. Gameplay itself is varied, so there will rarely be a time when you're stuck doing something tedious or difficult just trying to move ahead. The game challenges range from too easy to downright angering with difficulty, but they aren't essential to gaining new parks, usually just to earn a few extra bucks or unlock some small bonus, such as a new coaster blueprint, or decreases in loan rates.
All in all, unlocking new parks isn't that difficult. In fact, you typically won't even have to complete a significant amount of missions in your current park before the next one will become available. This makes it easy to manage and fine-tune up to five different parks at once, but this won't keep you as busy as you might think. Once a park is completed you'll find there isn't a whole lot to offer aside from building relationships with guests, a task that quickly becomes monotonous and repetitive due to limited choices for interaction. While the customization process will seem fun and engaging at first, eventually you will notice there are only a handful of themes for every section of every park, and you'll end up using the same themes over and over, simply because there really are no other choices.
Overall, Thrillville is a fun, interactive game for any age with a very short learning curve and plenty to keep you entertained the first time through. But it's limitations keep the replay value low, and completing every mini-game for every park seems pointless once you've run out of space to place anything new. I highly recommend checking it out, just don't expect a game that's going to entertain you through the long-haul.
Robot Chicken (2001)
Brilliant!
This shows has no plot line outside of a mad scientist who forces a home-made robotic chicken to watch random TV clips. It's all done in stop-motion animation and uses popular cartoon characters and toys from the late seventies and early eighties. The skits could be anything from a parody of a movie or TV show, a fake commercial, or just random events (presumably TV shows as the robot chicken is being forced to view a multitude of TV screens at the opening of every episode). The humor is often dark, dealing with subjects like psychosis, murder, terminal illness, abuse, rape, the awkwardness of adolescence, and violence in general, but the writers are not above making light of even that.
One memorable skit involved the three possible endings to a story in which an abusive husband murders his wife as his son and the Tooth Fairy listen in from the child's bedroom, at the end of which a parade of characters comes into the boy's room with banners proclaiming and celebrating it as the darkest sketch in television history. While the humor is definitely not clean in nature, it's appealing to older adolescents and adults, particularly those who grew up with the toys and cartoons they most often utilize in the show (transformers, thundercats, rainbow bright, smurfs, scooby doo, gi joe, etc.).
Doom (2005)
Not actually about Doom
I watched this movie long after it had been released to DVD and had heard quite a few scathing reviews. I went into this with low expectations and was only mildly surprised when it was all said and done. I'm a new fan of the Doom series, and have only actually played the first part of Doom 3 to completion. What I noticed first off is that the movie has little to do with the game, aside from monster design and the title itself. Personally, I think if you're going to do a movie based off a game, you should probably stick as closely to the source material as possible, and this movie shot that concept down, stomped on it, then threw it out the air-lock to suffocate on the barren surface of Mars.
I thought the acting as done well, and the setting looked as close to the game as one could hope. There were a bunch of slight references to the games, and the monsters themselves looked exactly like their game counterparts, but the story itself is almost completely different. I'm not even that versed in the canon of the Doom games and I could tell this movie had nothing whatsoever to do with them. All through the first half of the film, I was waiting for the one action sequence that would turn the whole movie around for me. When that sequence came, I was cringing. While trying to pay homage to the first person shooter, they managed to create the worst looking first person sequence in movie and gaming history. It doesn't even come close to simulating the feel of the games and it definitely cannot stand on it's own as a viable cinematic technique. Think cheap light-gun carnival ride.
Basically, the movie was alright. It's your basic sci-fi action flick with mutants and aliens, but it simply doesn't live up to it's name as a valid Doom story.
Parasite Eve (1998)
Good Fun
This game is definitely underrated. The graphics are lacking by today's standards, but the story and the gameplay hold up over time. This is a role playing game, and because it is a PS1 game, there is no voice acting, so a lot of time will be spent reading through the plot line, but the story is entertaining enough to make you want to find out what happens next, so it isn't as tedious as you might think. The game opens with you playing as Aya Brea, an NYPD officer back in good ol' 1997. Aya is reluctantly on a date at the opera house, when all of a sudden, everyone in the audience begins to spontaneously combust. Only Aya and the lead actress onstage are left unharmed, and as you question her, she reveals herself to be known as Eve. Eve tells you that your mitochondria are evolving, as are hers, causing each of you to undergo evolutionary changes. You then embark on a strange and difficult quest for answers, following the minute clues Eve carelessly leaves in her wake as she terrorizes Manhattan.
The gameplay itself is unlike anything that had previously been seen before, and is still quite rare in today's RPGs. While the fight system is still turn-based, you are not glued to your spot on the battlefield, unlike games such as Final Fantasy. You are free to move your character around as you please, giving you the unique ability to dodge attacks and position yourself to attack a location on the enemy that will cause the most damage. As you progress through the story and earn experience, your parasite powers evolve as well, giving you new abilities ranging from defensive and healing spells to full out mitochondrial liberation. You are also able to customize your weapons and armor, which can be carried over to a new save once you've beaten the game.
All of the enemies are mitochondrial mutations of common animals, insects, and bacteria, and even extinct species. This makes for a varied combat experience that rarely gets old. The combat locations vary as much as the creatures as well. You'll go all over Manhattan, from the sewers under Chinatown to the Museum of Natural History, and the Subway. There is even a fight in a runaway horse-drawn carriage! This game is worth checking out, even if you're into the more graphically enhanced games. It's got a solid story, great gameplay, and replay value to boot!
Final Destination 3 (2006)
horrid at best
I loved Final Destination and Final Destination 2. Both films were creative, suspenseful and unique. The plots were simple, but catchy. The suspense was heart-wrenching, and the gore was practical and horrifying. This movie, however is a complete failure on all these counts. Final Destination 3 makes little to no attempt at an actual plot line, aside from the basic 'death is stalking you' theme from the previous movies. The main characters seem to have no real agenda and just exchange weak banter as they try and convince their friends that something bad is going to happen to them.
The characters themselves are all tired rehashed stereotypes from modern Anytown, USA. None of which bothered to make any kind of connection with the audience before getting quickly and unimaginatively wiped out. For the previous films, I was on the edge of my seat, heart pounding, nearly sweating awaiting the next terrible tragedy to occur, cheering on my favorite characters and sighing with relief when they just barely made it out of danger. For the duration of this film, I was mostly sighing in boredom and biting my tongue as more useless dialog washed over the audience during scene after scene of the wind blowing ominously.
The deaths themselves weren't even done well enough to warrant bumping up the rating on this movie. Once again, in the previous films, each death was a masterpiece of suspense, gore, and imagination. This movie rushed through the main opening death scene, quickly shuffled off the easiest targets, and made absolutely no attempt at obscuring exactly how each person would die. I was able to guess about half of them, and the other half were so far fetched that it really knocked down the terrifying realism the other movies had portrayed so well.
If you absolutely must see all three in the trilogy, by all means, rent Final Destination 3, but do not expect the same cinematic masterpieces the other two will have you hoping for.
Silent Hill (2006)
Beautiful
First off, this is not a game clone. If you have played the original Silent Hill video game, you'll have a fresh outlook on the story to look forward to. While the changes disturbed me a bit at first, I feel they were necessary to the overall success of Silent Hill the movie. Alice Krige does a beautiful job of making sure her character, the religious zealot, Christabella, does not sound contrived in her dialog, which would have been an easy mistake. The game version of the character Dahlia Gillespie is shallow and unchallenging, but Gans has reworked her into a believable person with real emotions, and Deborah Kara Unger really brings her to life for the first time! The visuals are grotesquely beautiful. Each creature has it's own feel, it's own texture, and it's own personality. They are ripped straight from the tortured mind of an emotionally and physically abused little girl, and they have a way of reminding you what it was like to be so young; everything distorted and frightening in your nightmares. They look as though made of plastic, yet they have flesh and bone and blood...symbolic of the toys of a small child, yet they are tainted with the horrible reality of the frailty of living things.
The music is taken straight from the games, with minor 'facelifts' so to speak. Added instruments only make Akira Yamaoka's haunting melodies all the more addictive and frightening. This movie is a video game adaptation, yet has few of the pitfalls typical of the game movies before it. Do not be mistaken; Silent Hill is not a horror movie. It is at it's roots a drama...the story of a child forced down the path of evil to take revenge upon those who caused her such agony.
Silent Hill (1999)
dark, challenging, and downright scary!
If you enjoy a good mental challenge in your video games, and are attracted by the dark and frightening parts of the subconscious, this game is for you! The main action of the game is mostly comprised of exploration and solving riddles. You are left in a foggy town with little to no direction as to where to go or what to look for. Of course there is a path you are to follow, but the challenge is in finding it! Soon you will realize this town is not what it seems, as there are horrible phantasms running amok in the streets and inside the abandoned buildings. Your character is based on an average individual, and therefore his aim with a gun is average or poor, depending on how much you panic. This adds to the suspense of the game. There is enough gore to satisfy the blood-thirsty among us, and the story is open-ended, leaving a lot completely unexplained, which may be a let-down for those who are seeking definite answers at the end. However, if the ending you receive is not to your liking, when you play it through again, you may just uncover a new one. There are five in all, one of which is a joke ending, for those who need a laugh after all the torment. This game is horrifying and is best played when alone and in the dark. Happy exploring!
The Ring (2002)
The most psychologically terrifying movie I've ever seen
This movie scared the bujeezus out of me. That's saying a lot for someone like me, who has been watching horror movies since childhood. A lot of people may be disappointed that there is so little gore, but honestly, that is the very reason this movie is so great. This movie utilizes suspense and fear of the unknown in a way that I've never seen before.
The basis of the story goes as follows: A teenage girl is found dead, huddled in her closet. The friend who was with her that night is sent to a mental health facility. No one can explain what happened to either of the girls, so the grieving mother asks her sister Rachel, a reporter, to investigate for some answers. Rachel slowly pieces together the last few days of the dead girl's life and discovers that she and her friends all watched a mysterious videotape. She finds the tape and watches it herself. The video makes little sense and is mostly a series of frightening imagery and curious music. Immediately after she is finished watching, the phone rings. The voice on the other end whispers, "Seven days." For the next seven days, Rachel is subject to horrifying visions and physical anomalies, all while trying to uncover the truth behind "the videotape that kills you when you watch it". It's a race against time to save herself and her young son from a mysterious yet certain death.
The film utilizes suspense to frighten the audience. It's not immediately clear exactly what fate awaits those who've watched the tape, aside from the fact that after seven days, you will die. Visually, the movie uses subtle colors, causing the foreboding mood to nearly swallow the viewers whole. Imagery from the cursed video is reiterated throughout the movie in sometimes subtle, other times obvious ways. Fear of the unknown is the movie's weapon of choice. Gore is nearly non-existent; one of the images in the cursed video depicts a fingernail being torn from it's base, but it is shown in black and white and for less than a second. The only other time blood is used to terrify happens when a horse falls from a barge and is sucked into the spinning blades of the engine. Even this is not all that hard to watch, as all you can see is the water behind the vessel turning crimson a few moments after the horse goes under.
If you are tired of the same old Texas Chainsaw Massacres and Cabin Feveresque movies, check out The Ring. Psychological terror is far more disturbing than any limb-ripping bloodfest could be. You won't be able to sleep tonight.
An American Haunting (2005)
An OK movie, but hardly scary
I found this movie to be less than what I had hoped for. The story was good, and even included an ending I would have never guessed, unlike The Sixth Sense. I was disappointed in how they attempted to frighten you, mostly by having a window shatter at an unexpected moment, or some other loud noise pop out during a quiet scene. I honestly wanted to be frightened by it, but many of the scenes of possession came out quite comically. I nearly laughed out loud during a scene in which a girl was being slapped by an unseen entity. The way it was presented made it funny, not the actual content.
I was angered slightly by one particular phenomena; the director seemed to be using a technique that I've only ever seen in TV series'. A ghostly incident occurred and caused one young girl much suffering, and then later on in the film, the exact same footage was reused, I suppose in an effort to convey how the hauntings happened often and eventually became a nightly affair. I found it to be a cheap move, and distracted me greatly from the mood of the film. Another scene basically played out the way a re-cap show would have in a TV series. A woman has a vision and that vision is comprised of every haunting that had been seen thus far in the film. It also distracted from the mood.
Otherwise, I was pleased with the film. As I said before, the story is solid and intriguing. The acting is excellent, and the general idea of each 'haunting' or 'possession' could have been frightening if experienced in real life, but on the screen it came off as half-baked and a bit comical. My suggestion is to borrow this movie from a friend and save your movie-rental money for something a little better.