This new show from Genndy Tartakovsky has only just started but it is already one of my favourite shows, fortunately for me it slots right into the “Big Giant Robot” theme perfectly.

How can you be sure this is going to be great?

Lets set aside the actual story and style for just a moment, I will come to those very soon. Lets also not focus on the fact the star of the show is a Big Giant Robot (how can that ever fail?) and instead lets just look at the man behind the show Genndy Tartakovsky.

If there are a few people currently making cartoons that I think are producing really interesting work he is one of them. Of course you have to include Matt Groening as the creator of the Simpsons and more importantly Futurama he is a huge influence. But if you look away from the main stream you start to see some of the really interesting shows being made.

Craig McCracken and Genndy Tartakovsky are the guys to watch. There work is cleverly disguised as kids shows, but they treat their audience with respect and slip in a few nods for the adults (As I write this I am actually watching McCracken’s Fosters home for imaginary friends). Between them they have made Dexters Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Fosters Home, Samuari Jack, Star Wars:Clone Wars, and now Sym-Bionic Titan. That is the sort of reputation you can’t buy, all of these shows are pure genius (I have warmed up to Clone Wars since the second series).

Samurai Jack is a greatly overlooked show, it is surprisingly deep and well written, the story of Samurai who is the only saviour for the world. Thrown forward in time to when his enemy is the all powerful ruler of the world he has to find a way back to his own time and save the world. Of course its not all the easy.

The most distinctive thing that always stood out to me was the style. Deceptively simple it is very expressive without being overly complex.

On to the show

That distinctive style is improved in Titan, carried off superbly it brings a great feel to the show. It has a very Anime feel but remains unique. Of course no matter how good the style is, it is nothing without story. Titan has story, setup, and ideas coming thick and fast, with enough left unspoken that you get the feeling there is a lot more to come.

The basic premise is Princess Ilana and her protector Lance escape from their plant under orders from her father. As the planet is over run he sends them to safety on a far off planet, crash landing they are presented with the earth forces headed by General Steel. Of course nothing is as it seems, and they are not as easy to defeat as Steel would like. Aided by their robot Octus they escape and need to find a way to blend into the population.

It is a classic set up, but watching does not feel forced or contrived. Although it is not all new, it feels fresh and it seems there is a lot of back story just waiting to burst through. Come the end of the first episode a huge fire monster has been sent after them. They are left with a moral question, should they face this threat and reveal their presence on the planet, or remain hidden and let the humans deal with the problem. They come through and you get the first glimpse of the Titan, with a neat twist that even Lance, Octus, and Ilana don’t know how to use the Titan.

The Titan transformation is very satisfying. You can feel the influences of classic shows like Robotech and Voltron coming through.

Great hopes

They are already up to episode 3 and I have enjoyed every moment of it so far. Some classic themes are coming through but all done with a unique feel. There has even been some surprisingly dark moments back on their home planet as the fallen hero Modula claims power.

I am looking forward to seeing how this will turn out.

Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crewes, Mickey Rourke, Stone Cold Steve Austin and cameo’s by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  It’s cast are all legends and almost all of them are used to headlining  their own movies.

Question:How can you possibly live up to that?

Answer: With some  good fights, lethal knife usage for brutal kills, lots of guns and a ludicrous amount of explosions.  The only thing Expendable about this is the plot which is vintage 80s storytelling (i.e. the story is more of an excuse than an actual plot and you know that’s deliberate here).  Oh and Charisma Carpenter has a small role in it and is still hotter than all of the explosions in the film combined.

The Glory

So much glorious content for action heads, although Arnie is only in it for a couple of minutes, he is a one liner machine in that time.  Dolph vs Jet Li, Stallone vs Stone Cold, when you’ve got fights like those, there’s no need to worry about plot, just sit back and make sure you’ve got plenty of popcorn as this film is an unashamed action film.  A reminder that simple can be brilliant.  There are highlights aplenty including Dolph being just plain awesome as a drugged up mercenary who’s gone way too far over the line, Terry Crewes with the biggest, loudest and most destructive gun there is and him doing an insane shot putt that has to be seen to be believed.  Jet Li deserves praise for showing more character than in a lot of his own films, he cracked me up a few times and still managed to crack the limbs of his opponents in usual fashion.  Stone Cold makes a helluva good bad guy and for the love of God just stop reading and go book your tickets.  Sly is Sly and that alone is worth watching a movie for, never mind with this kind of backup.  Randy Couture doesn’t get much character sadly but he is a beast of a fighter in it.  I wish there was more of him and Terry Crewes in it but hey, maybe a sequel, Stallone isn’t adverse to making those

Anyway, I loved this film and I really hope this does well enough to warrant a sequel because it was FUN, moreso than the A-Team, which tried to take itself seriously. The Expendables rocks and you really need a cinema sized screen and surround sound to do it justice.

Here’s a trailer because I can, and it’s great and I enjoy watching it..

The Expendables Trailer

The main story is that Shu is sent on a job to deliver cargo, which turns out to be a girl code named HW9 (Human Weapon 9) that is smuggled out of an underground lab.  She has a normal temperature of 40 degrees and has been modified to be super human in terms of speed, strength, recovery powers and senses.  Everything except stamina… Without medication every 5 hours she develops a huge fever and would have died but for the super awesome crazy doctor they call Doc, who develops a suppressant for her condition.  Even with this though, under too much strain, she starts turning to glass.  Indeed the 8 HW’s before her all turned to glass and shattered as do the ones after her.  An interesting side effect is that whenever a man touches her, they get a shock, only girls can safely touch her.  Anyway the bad guy wants his experiment back, the good guys want to protect her. City Hunter did the same story a number of times but this spreads out the body guard episode to 12  enjoyable episodes.

The Good

It should be noted that Doc and his assistant Monica are legendary.  They are an amazing combination of comic relief while still being incredibly important to the story.  Without Doc, the show would have struggled for sure. He is an unashamed perv in a slightly frightening way at the begining but any scene with him and Monica in is good, she is awesome herself as she loves to cosplay but seems remarkably adept at everything she cosplays as. In that she actually has real nursing and real commando skills and quite possibly others.  The Doc is nothing short of a genius and his past when revealed actually provides reason for his skills, impressive.

Porilyn is another homage to City Hunter which had parts of Shinjuku under the control of a cross dressing man.  Porilyn runs Ragstown and is good friends with Shu and is acting on behalf of a sponsor when he hires Shu to deliver HW9.  Much as in CH, he ends up being useful information source although he also has his uses as a sniper and comic relief due to his cross dressing ways.

Sara, aka HW shows she has some fight but is limited by her condition.  I like her and with more episodes she could really shine, also the any man that touches her gets a shock is played well throughout.

The Bad

There are two young girls in the series that it could totally have done without.  Manami is the loud obnoxious girl who talks big and fails utterly to back it up and if she wasn’t a girl would be in my top 3 anime characters I want to punch.  The other girl Ayaka is quiet and I guess could be useful if the series was longer as she seems ok with a computer and isn’t a female Scrappy Doo like Manami but in this, all she contributes is to get the cops suspicious of them.

The Final Verdict

After all is said and done, I loved watching this show. It is clearly inspired by my favourite series but is done well enough that I don’t mind. I just wish they had learned from CH that you don’t need kids or teenagers to make a series but at least they managed to make sure the lead and a lot of the supporting cast were adults which is under utilized.  While I wouldn’t call this a 5* series, it has good pacing, girls aside has an interesting cast (even the gruff old police chief and his rival in the SWAT team are handled really well and don’t seem like simple background characters.  Overall a very solid 4* show.  If they were to ditch the two girls and do another 100 episodes I’d be very happy indeed.  Should it ever get released in the UK I will pick it up right away.

In the meantime, you can check it out at Crunchyroll.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/glass-maiden

The Good

As I said earlier, there is a lot to like about the new A-Team film, just courtesy of being the A-Team, it instantly has a theme tune to make most film soundtracks weep with envy.  Seeing BA’s van race around on the big screen, even if only for a few minutes was not only awesome nostalgia, but there’s something about that GMC van that still looks impressive.

I thought Liam Neeson was excellent as Hannibal Smith, he had a similar sense of authority and while no-one could possibly be as smug as George Peppard’s Hannibal, he did a fine job.  I love that you get to see the flight that makes BA forever afraid of flying with Murdock.  The two of them make a great duo throughout the film.  Murdock pretending to be a doctor was gold. Kudos to Sharlto Copley for that, he’ll never replace Dwight Schultz in my heart as Murdock but he did well enough for me to enjoy the character and not complain.  Replacing Mr. T is frankly impossible, the man was and still is charisma incarnate but I thought that Quinton “Rampage” Jackson did well and as I said earlier, I enjoyed his banter with Murdock and his development of a fear of flying.

The Bad

I rarely critise directing but this was so hit and miss it made me angry. The close ups of the words “Pity” and “Fool” on B.A.’s fists was good, and there were scenes which were VINTAGE A-Team but then you had the ridiculous. In Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, you have a legitimate tough guy, a baddass capable of beating up punks for sport.  You do not need fast edits during him beating someone up to make him look good, it actually looks crap and is hard to follow.  He was also called Bosco far more than BA which I suppose seing how the team’s history is rewritten in this kinda makes sense but it’s an unnessary change really.

There is a large emphasis on Face as the film goes on, I don’t mind that but Face is perhaps the hardest of all the roles in the A-Team.  You’ve got to be smooth talking, good looking, charming without being annoyingly arrogant.  For proof of how hard it is, watch the pilot of the A-Team, Tim Dunigan was playing the part of Face but is not Face, there’s something that Dirk Benedict has that others don’t.  Bradley Cooper is not bad, he’s a more rugged Face than Dirk and more believable in a fight but maybe that was the charm of Dirk’s Face.  The comedy of him calling out to BA in a fight, the way he didn’t look like a member of a crack team but was indespensible for his ability to get the team equipment, supplies and info, he didn’t need to be Hannibal-lite and come up with a plan.

Then there’s the things that were changed from TV show to movie.  The A-Team shoot at and actually hit people with bullets! unthinkable! The only thing The A-Team ever hit was the floor, doors or walls, there wasn’t enough bad guys getting thrown by explosions – a staple of the original.  At no time did Hannibal disguise himself and the tone of the movie was far more serious than the lighthearted TV show I love.  Fans of the the building montage will be disappointed that there is no tank built out of a bus or anything similar.  No doubt it was to keep the more serious tone but in the Orange adverts before the film, the same cast showed that they can deliver the cheesey comedy of the original.  That’s a shame and a waste to me.

To Finish

The new cast is an A-Team, they delivered an entertaining  film, packed full of gun fights, explosions and plans coming together.  They are a fine team, but not THE A-Team, that shall always be reserved for The A-Team starring George Peppard, Dirk Benedict, Dwight Schultz and of course, Mr. T which was the most entertaining show on TV when I was a kid and is STILL one of if not the most entertaining shows on TV.  Much like the first Dukes of Hazzard film, if you can seperate your feelings concerning the old team or if you haven’t seen the original, you will enjoy this film (which is incedentally MUCH better than that film for comparison).  Of course if the sight of the A-Team shooting at people and not at the ground in front of their feet appals you, best not look…  But if you want a good solid action film, look no further.  I went in with low expectations, wanting to hate it but found myself enjoying it.  As far as remakes go though, this is good.  Unnecessary yes, different yes, but not bad, not bad at all and well worth a watch.  And when you do watch, you MUST stay to the end for a slightly longer and speaking cameo from the original Face and Murdock.  In fact, I’d say it was the best bit of the film because in one line Dirk Benedict  sums up why as fun as the film was it should not have been made – you don’t mess with the Face.

Back on the crusade to bring more giant robots to the site and my choice this time is another blast from the past.  Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs was along with Macron-1 and Robotech, a staple of my early morning viewing when I was a child.

The show is your basic futuristic western. The Star Sheriffs protect the New Frontier from Outriders, vapour beings from another dimension.  Because they turn into a puddle of vapour when shot, there’s a lot of killing of bad guys which wasn’t something you’d see in many other shows of the time.  Their boss Nemesis even goes as far as getting his forces to kidnap all the Wilderbeasts (think buffalo) just because he thought it would amuse him.  How can you not love a bad guy with so much power he invades another dimension and kidnaps an entire species just for fun (oh and he’s voice by Peter G1 Optimus Prime Cullen).

Big Giant Robots

Ramrod aka Bismark is a spaceship that transforms into a giant cowboy robot, his head is shaped as if wearing a cowboy hat and he has his gun in a holster at his waist – nice.  He also has an abundance of cannons built into his chest which are used simultaneously to obliterate enemies once they are stunned long enough to not dodge.  The packaging on the Complete Collection DVD would have you think that Ramrod, also voiced by Peter Cullen is the star of the show. That’s cobblers. The interactions between the characters is so much better and for the record, Ramrod is piloted, has no personality and only speaks during the same transformation used in every episode  – it’s good yes, the reason to watch or buy, no. Peter Cullen does deserve praise if only for voicing the Heroic robot, the Commander of the Star Sheriffs and the Commander of the bad guys which must be some sort of record for key roles in a good dub (he always does a number of bit parts too). I say good because I’ve heard the dub of Transformers Headmasters and I think there’s about 3 people did the voices for the lot lol.

The Star Sheriffs

One of the great things about this show is that the team is made up of sheriffs from different countries and are proud of it, wearing their country’s flag on their helmet and armour (although the Union Jack and the US Flag are deliberately mis-coloured for ease of animating).  The voice casts for the sheriffs are all superb and sound like they are having a great time with the different accents they get to use and it really brings the characters to life.

Saber Rider is a wonderful blend of the best of England and Scotland.  He has a great English accent and a Scottish family and plays bagpipes – wears the Union Jack and is the veteran leader of the Star Sheriff (despite not being that old at all) and is known as Top Sword as he is the best swordsman in the galaxy. He rides a mechanical flying horse named Steed and uses a saber (duh) and a hunting rifle. Even as a kid I knew there was something up with the way Saber Rider delegated everything to Fireball and sure enough in the Japanese version Saber wasn’t the leader but he’s definitely the brains behind the team whichever version, he’s dull but there weren’t many British commanders of big giant robots back then, wait there still aren’t… He also gets big props for calling everyone chum ^_^

Fireball – the youngest world champion car racer ever and the real hero of the show – he pilots Ramrod and drives a 6 wheeled racer called Red Fury Racer/Turbo (he calls it both inside one sentence in one ep.)   Regardless of the name, it looks good when drawn properly (and any car with a chain gun that comes out of the roof and rocket launchers out the sides is cool in my books.

He has the Japanese flag on his uniform but displays no sign of any Japanese behaviour other than that of typical anime hero, well except using chopsticks in one episode.  He was the first anime character I ever cosplayed as, of course back then, I didn’t even know what cosplay was, I just wanted a red suit of armour like his.  I don’t know if any pictures exist, it was terrible, foam pads on a red tracksuit but it made me happy.  Why Fireball when as I know now and yet my brother knew back then, Colt is far more awesome, well Fireball gets to pilot Ramrod and I’d love to say it’s because he gets the girl in the end but the truth is he gets to press the red button tha transforms Ramrod and everyone knows my love of pushing buttons hehe.  Actually with hindsight I don’t think I even had that habit until I saw this show.

Colt – The man, phenomenal ability to go from clown to badass cowboy in 0.2 seconds.  His helmet has a cowboy hat rim to it and when he is not wearing that, he wears a real one and never leaves it behind.  He has the US flag on his armour and a superb cowboy accent.  He flies one-man fighter named the Bronco Buster and was a bounty hunter before he joined the Star Sheriffs.  His mentor in the art of gun slinging looks suspiciously like Clint Eastwood. He chases girls and gold with equally reckless abandon but when he draws his gun you know vapour beings are going home.  He also has the coolest theme tune and has great arguments with Fireball and April which are often highlights of the shows.

April Eagle – chief designer of Ramrod and daughter of Commander Eagle (head of the Star Sheriffs) has a French flag on her armour but like Fireball displays absolutely no trace of her native county’s behaviour or accent.  She has a pink robotic horse named Nova early on which isn’t used again and she usually stays behind in Ramrod to swoop in and save the boys bacon. Trained in karate, she’s not afraid to put anyone in their place but still has odd moments where she’s the helpless damsel in distress.

Changes

Originally a 1984 anime Star Musketeer Bismarck,  the mind blowing list of changes is available on wikipedia, I suggest checking it out to get an idea of just how much was changed, from replacing episodes and renumbering almost the entire series to creating an extra 6 eps of the show to replace existing episodes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber_Rider_and_the_Star_Sheriffs

Music

Also changed was the music, and the Japanese and US versions of this show couldn’t be more different and for once, the US comes off far better! It varies from the rocking futuristic western the show is to fun to epic. Colt’s theme is just awesome, when you hear it, you know good things are coming – it could be comedy or it could be action but Colt always delivers and his theme lets you know its coming. A huge thank you to Dale Schacker for creating a soundtrack I still listen to and love. It’s genius, especially the bull whip at the end of the intro, inspired.

Toys

Saber Rider didn’t make a dent in the UK so toys never came out, it was bigger in Europe though (especially Germany who got the DVDs long before we did grrr) and I did see some of the toys when on a holiday in France.  This would cause one of longest running and biggest rages of my life as we visited a town (don’t ask me which) and I saw a toy of Ramrod in a toy shop that was closed because it was a Sunday. My parents refused to go out of their way to visit the town again just to go to a toy shop to buy me a toy I couldn’t afford.  They had no idea just how rare this toy was, how important to me it was and just how much grief this would bring them.  I spent the rest of the holiday in a huff and would not see any Star Sheriff toys again for another 8/9 years until, thanks to the internet, I finally found a yahoo listing for a Bismark DX – for $300! Naturally I couldn’t afford it and that re-sparked the fire again. It would be another 8 years before I finally got my hands on the toy, thankfully for a mere $200 while on holiday in the US but still, when I think I could have had it when I was 9 for a fraction of that I still weep.

For a few pictures of it see here  http://www.flickr.com/photos/85964213@N00/sets/72157624024108482/

What do you think Top Sword?

The animation in Saber Rider is usually good for its time, peaking at very good for scenes they want to make the Sheriff’s look extra awesome. The exception seems to be some scenes with the Red Fury racer which make it look like it was drawn by me but on the whole good. More consistent than a lot of the shows its age.  As mentioned, the music is great, sound effects are ripped from the usual sources used for Transformers (you will hear Prime’s gun), GI Joe etc.

The only negatives are some throwaway episodes and flashback eps.  Sadly the story doesn’t always make sense due to some episode re-ordering which is inevitable but after initial wtf, it makes immediate sense.  Does it matter? to some maybe.  Me, I’m always happy to overlook this shows flaws because the upside is that its always fun.  The nameless Outrider troops are always comical (I love their dodgy accents) but at least unlike the droids in the Clone Wars, they are always shown to be a lethal threat to innocents and non-sheriffs, which makes the Star Sheriff rescues all the more enjoyable.  The big robot fights are your typical 80s/90s affair but Ramrod is one of the cooler looking robots out there IMO and having Prime’s voice during transformation always helps.

By now you’ve read how much of an impact this had on my childhood so I’m about as biased  as they come and obviously going to immediately recommend it to EVERYONE.  Naturally it isn’t for anyone that wants long drawn out story arcs or massive character development but it is a whole lot more fun.  It isn’t available in the UK but you can import it as it is region ALL and plays perfectly on the PS3 – Thank you World Event Productions!

Overall, a perfect 5 for anime robot lovers, probably rates about a 2 to normal viewers who probably stopped reading a long time ago as this was never going to be a show for them and is as much an ode to my childhood as it is a blog about the show. That is how intertwined this show and me are.

Now I was not totally new to Manga, I had seen some before but never really knew it was a specific genre all its own. Things like “Battle of the Planet” and others had been on TV and I had always loved that Japanese style. But don’t forget this was before the Internet, there was no way of finding out any of this stuff. Looking back at it now I wonder how I ever managed… but you had what you had, and I was luckier than most.

As it turns out I had seen the Studio Ghibli classic “Castle in the Sky” year before and loved it. But with no way of ever really finding out anything about it, other than its name and the fact I loved that style. If I had seen “Totoro” or “Spirited Away” at that age I would have been forced to find out more about these amazing films.

But I digress, just looking at the cover I knew I had to watch it!

The first viewing

Nikobe was insistent we had to watch it straight away, no time for the normal “Street Fighter II” on the SNES. This was the most important thing that day, and I have to say he was right.

We watched it in silence, right from the beginning it was no ordinary film. Even now it has a style all its own. The visuals were astounding, the sound work amazing, everything about this film was polished and first rate. Unlike anything I had seen before this was animation as I had always wanted it, and it had a strong message that.. in places on that first viewing.. I didn’t understand.

When it finished we watched all the way to the end of the credits. Partly out of respect, I have always tried to stay right to the end. If someone can spend so much of their life making something, the very least I can do is stay to see their name appear on the screen for 20 seconds. But also because we were both dumb struck. What was that we had just watched? Did all that really happen just then? What happened at the end again? Did they solve it? Was that Akira? So Tetsuo can do that thing with his mind, and so can the other kids? Sol is fantastic, can you really make space lasers like that? And he could fly.. is that the mind thing again? Where did those creepy kids go? Are they kids at all? That bit with the flying thing in the lift was cool, what about the bikes at the start.. yep!… how about that bit…… and so on. I think it is probably fair to say we descended into just listing out the cool bits of the film at this point. In my (and Nikobe’s) defence. We were 13 at the time.

The upshot was.. we watched it again. I don’t think we even discussed it. While we were saying how cool it was we just rewound it (yeah.. remember doing that?) and watching it from start to end again.

Eyes open

Akira is a very abstract film in many ways. It has a lot of idea you need to get into your head and no explanations at all. You either love it or hate it, and if you can’t keep up then you have a problem.

After about the fourth of firth viewing (I had my own copy by then) it all starts to come together. Now you are over the shock of just how amazing this film is you are down to its story and production, and this is one of those very rare films that does not disappoint. The sound track is excellent, and every frame is filled with stunning art work.

I can only hope that everyone sees this film as their introduction to Manga and Anime. This film is a true masterpiece, just don’t expect every anime to be this good.

Where to now

So once you have seen this where do you go next? Fortunately this was the time Manga really took off in the UK. I started collecting “Manga Mania” from about issue 4 and saw a whole new world. I just fell in love with Anime and Manga and wanted everything I could get.

At the time “Manga Mania” had just started the complete strip of “Dominion: Tank Police”. That was my first introduction to Masamune Shirow and started a love of his work that would eventually lead me to “Ghost in the Shell” another of my favourite film, and I believe sets the standard by which all Sci-Fi should be judged. But his earlier work was showcased and I really enjoyed it. “Dominion” of course, but “Appleseed” was just as good.

Many others came and went, and I can’t say that many others really grabbed me until I saw Adam Warren’s “Dirty Pair” or Kenichi Sonoda’s “Bubblegum Crisis”. Among all the manga that I thought was OK, there were some that really stood out, these alone were worth getting the magazine for. But all of them were interesting and new.

A fortune on video

So when ever I had the money (not often) I would have to make the trek to one of the larger towns and check out the videos. There was an influx of anime to match the growing demand.

For me this was a blessing and a curse, because along with all the good films there were utterly crap ones. Not just bad, I mean really terrible. Manga Entertainment who were one of the main importers had the most wild quality control. By now I had managed to convince Sideswipe he would like this stuff, little did I know he would go on to become the ultimate collector and otaku (Thanks!). So we would go and look at the videos and buy a few, most of the time we were disappointed but sometimes hit gold. It is thanks to him I found out about Lupin III, and I was able to find Tenchi Muyo and Gunsmith Cats. These were the things we lived for.

This lead to one of the other tricks that really annoyed us all. They would release the first video, not telling you it was the first in a series of 100 episodes (I’m looking at you Slayers). This is what finally put me off, I still love it and look for the best bits but I hated being drawn into these cons. Sideswipe however has never really got out of that trap, and I am hoping at some point he will put up some pictures of his front room.

My pride and joy

From my love of Anime and Manga sprung my love of Japanese culture. That has lead me on to watch Japanese films, something that I don’t think I ever would have done without my start in seeing Akira. I might never have seen classics like “Seven Samurai” or “Battle Royal” without it.

Thank you Nikobe for getting me started, and thank you Sideswipe for taking it to 11!

But there is one other thing Akira has given me. Two amazing posters that have sat in my closet untouched for about 15 years. Sideswipe and I went to a little exhibition, we were a little disappointed but I came away with three things. A cell from Akira itself (which got damaged when it was taken off my wall.. different story) and a pair of limited edition numbered prints. There were only 1000 made in the first run and were supposed to retail for £100 each.. I managed to get them for £15 because the person selling them had no idea what they were.

At some point this year I will finally get them on my wall. I promise!

I don’t know what it is that has never really worked for Downey, but is has certainly re-established himself since Iron Man came out. He can carry off the narcissistic Tony Stark like no one else, and is definitely fun to watch.

The concept of Iron Man itself is one of those comics that passed me by. Of course I know of Iron Man, and a basic understanding of the story but beyond that I really don’t know how Iron Man fits into the Marvel universe. Some of that history is coming out in this film, along with references to other films in production. I counted three, but I might have missed something.

So how does this one stand-up? In short it has its moments, but overall it does not have the same feel or impact of the first.

What’s happened?

This is still a great film! There is plenty of action and the effects are even better than the first film. But it just does not have that feel that makes the first film so much fun. In the first you have a very gritty opening and the growth of stark from a self-obsessed arsehole to self-obsessed super hero.

Here I didn’t feel there was much in the way of story. There were plenty of characters, and quiet a few of them were very interesting. From Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, or Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow but none of them had much time to do anything.

There was some action with them, and Black Widow had a chance to show her fighting credentials, but that was about the sum of it. Which is a shame because I was expecting something more between her and Iron Man.

While Nick Fury was there to push The Avengers idea into the film, again his character was never really explored in any way. Not really a surprise in this film I suppose, but a shame.

For me the star of the show has to be Sam Rockwell. He is always fantastic in everything he does, and again here he is stealing the show. But the film doesn’t give him the chance to do much more than just be a pissed off CEO who likes to shout and resent Tony Stark. But his scene where he is showing off his weapons is great fun.

The biggest let down for me was Whiplash. The scenes where he is not fighting are OK, passable. But when it comes to action there is just not enough. Even though the film is long enough, and plenty of time is given to show the characters. Nothing much seems to happen. I didn’t feel like I saw much growth apart from a tiny moment with Tony Stark and his dad that I thought was very nicely done.

Conclusion

There is no denying this is a good film. It is great fun to watch and the effects will make you smile. But there was a lot that I think could have been trimmed or at least taken in a different direction.

Get your popcorn and settle in!

Don’t forget you need to stay right to the end of the film. Get right through the credits and there is a treat waiting for you!

The World

So asides from that mechanic how’s the rest of the game? good but nothing groundbreaking sadly.  For when it was released in Japan (ie last year) the graphics are good but have since been superceeded a lot. I have to give props to the town designers though.  The towns are lively and although they aren’t filled with side quests for you, they are often full of background info and pointers to help you out if you are lost. It is a welcome change to see multiple shops of the same type in the big city – not enough games have this even if the duplicates sell identical ranges. It just seems more real and is another draw into the world.  The world itself is split into areas, you have bog standard fields, desert and canyons as well as mines and caves & dungeons – typical fair asides from the awesome city on the back of a giant creature.

Characters

At the start you create your own avatar, who is a member of your party and used in the online mode. Sadly it isn’t you who transforms, Leonard is the main character in the story mode and the one who transforms. Still, you can do some nice setups for your avatar in single player, using the White Knight to knock a golem senseless and let your avatar pick up the final hit for the VERY satisfying kill.  There isn’t a single character I absolutely wanted to gut but at the same time, I can’t say Leonard or any of the others are characters that will stick in my mind for life.

You get plenty of options for building your character’s appearance, but when it comes to upgrading their skills it’s no Dragon Age Origins – you only chose which weapons/magical powers to use for your character and the others in your party. Essentially you pick whatever skills you want from different skills trees, the more from one tree you pick, the more skills (and more powerful) you unlock. The catch is, that there are general stat boosts in each tree so just maxing out one tree without paying attention to the others is going to end up with you missing a ton of various hp and magic,dext upgrades while spreading them out and you may not have enough deadly techniques. A surprisingly good system.

Combat

Combat is plentiful due to respawning random encounters. You can see the enemies on the map but if you or your allies stray too near then the enemies will move towards you. With that said, you can just keep running in a lot of cases and not have to fight if you so wish, which is a relief if you are directionally challenged like me.

You use action points to do attacks and can make custom combos. You are restricted to assigning moves to 3 command bars and then chose pick attacks during combat from there. After each attack you have to wait for your character to recover from the attack and then you can pick another attack. The heavier the armor, the longer this takes.  You can switch between characters but its a case of using select and then picking from a list rather than the more refined button combos of games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2.  My biggest annoyance with the system is that you can’t pause the action to send commands to your team. After playing games which let you (and to great effect) I found myself not worrying about using my allies. The AI is in fairness, good enough to keep them alive and they do fine at healing you and your other allies when they can. You can set up some great individual combos but again sadly these don’t link up with your teammates.

Also it should be mentioned that the fights and enemy HP are designed fairly well. Killing regular foes is fairly quick but killing a giant foe as a party of humans will initially take a long time, transforming and it’s a relatively quick and fun experience. I didn’t have to grind through any area repeatedly killing enemies because the next group were one shotting me. The difficulty throughout is set on the side of easy but boss fights are still a challenge if you didn’t prepare and used all your action points on your way to the boss.  I’ll still take a fun 5 minute over a laborious 10 minute boss fight just because the boss has insane HP.

Online

There is also a fairly large online mode to keep you busy. The online is a pain to set up – there is an additional free signup required on top of PSN and it’s case sensitive… Anyway once set up it’s easy, you can set up your own guild or join a friend’s or some random person and take part in quests. You can build up your guild from a grassy area with a couple of equipment vending stalls to a small town which may appeal to some. I’m more interested in wailing on trolls but I appreciate it is there and did waste an hour or so building up a little village just because it was there. By building up to a town, you also gain the ability to just mine/farm items required for mixing into new items which if you were going for those trophies would be invaluable. The quests are up to 4 player and while some can be solo’d, you’d need to be a much higher level to try.

Story

I enjoyed the story but minor spoiler hated the Bowseriffic rescue efforts throughout the early goings on but it improves as you get further in to the game. The story wants to be epic but doesn’t pull it off in the same way FFXIII does. I wouldn’t be suprised if this was intended as being a trilogy and that this is just the first part. In fact by the time you get to end game, things were just getting really good and it is set up nicely for a sequel which has already been announced and I would readily recommend that based on this game.

Overall

White Knight Chronicles is a highly enjoyable action rpg, or is it an mmo? it kind of blurs the lines. The graphics and story are good, but like pretty much everything bar God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 get blown away by FFXIII.  If this had come out a few months earlier it would have had a much better chance of making a big impact. Same applies to Yakuza 3 which I have brought and remains virtually unplayed because Sega decided to bury it by releasing an rpg the same week as a new FF… STUPID.

Back to WKC and given the lack of competition for online multiplayer console rpg/mmo games, I hope it will find its own place amongst gamers as I enjoyed my time with it and I hope to get back to it at some point as the single player story mode is only part of the many things to do in it.

The only thing I can say is that this is the year for games with stories and rpg elements, FFXIII and Dragon Age Origins Awakenings, more Valkyria Chronicles DLC and even Yakuza 3. My free time has never been more keenly contested.

Anyway, the first thing about Dragon age: Origins is the choices available. You have the usual choice between 3 races, humans, elves and Dwarves and 3 classes, Warriors, Rogues and Mages (unless you’re a Dwarf) and there’s plenty of customization to be done once you pick.

Initially you play through one of 6 different origins stories depending on your race and class.  From here on the real choices that affect the whole Dragon Age world begin.

Tough Choices

Throughout the game you are presented with a number of choices which will determine your allegience to one party at the expense of another and a whole bunch of seemingly low importance side quests that appear to have little impact, many of which do have little impact but some of which you just won’t appreciate until you finish game, and it tells you what happened to the dwarf who asked for your help. Over the course of the game, a King dies and you will have a big say in who the new monarch is. Play your cards right and it could even be you as King or Queen but again, that depends on if you’re eligable – race,class and background and choices made.

Combat

Combat in Dragon Age Origins runs in realtime, but depending on your style of fighting it may seem a straight forward slugging contest, especially if it is a fight between warriors but it is quite possible to run around as a rogue and stab people in the back. You can bring up a menu and pause the action and assign each of your squad members a target and action. It’s not until you play another game that doesn’t give you a chance to pause that you realise how awesome that is (White Knight Chronicles I’m looking at you!).

The difficulty is well adjusted. Normal provides an enjoyable challenge without really causing any times where you’ll hit a point and go I can’t do this. The difficulty can be changed at any time and the console versions don’t differentiate between difficulty when handing out achievements/trophies. Easy is just that, easy. A useful way to burn through the game if you are more interested in the story but you may feel a little unsatisfied. You won’t be up against as powerful foes and things like potions will rarely be needed as opposed to vital. It is much faster though as you won’t need to pause the action to dish orders as enemies will fall sooner.

Hard and above introduce you to friendly fire, the number of times I’ve been hit in the back because I gave the ai mage access to the biggest spells in the game is a lot but in fairness much of the time it was following orders – if a group were attacking the healer, burn them all. Of course that was me being cheap and abusing friendly fire not being on. On higher difficulties I’m sure you order them around more or don’t give the AI orders to use the big spells and then you manually switch to the mage and use them yourself when the time is right.

Allies

Building up your allies to fight the Darkspawn invasion is the main aim of most of the game, these allies will be useful fodder/footsoldiers in the final fight and along the way you recruit members for your party (or not in some cases depending on your choices). Even once you recruit members, you have choices in how you deal with them which can result in them hating your guts to ultimately challenging you or at the other end of the spectrum, getting romantically involved. Allies perform better if they like you and cheap gifts only go so far, you may end up going off on side quests for them or coming to a decision and thinking twice about if you really want to do that because you know that they are going to go mental over slaughtering innocents (of course a couple are the opposite and rage at you for going out of your way to help people).

Sidequests

On the subject of sidequests there are many, many of which offer little reward other than a token reward but a clean concience. Others provide more substancial rewards in XP, gold or loot. And there is a lot of loot to be had in this game. Some people may get annoyed that they can’t carry it all and at times even if you buy every backpack you can, you will still end up passing over some although as you get further through, you don’t need to worry as much about looting as your gold rewards get bigger and some of the loot gets far more valuable than others so that you can dispose of without real fear of needing that 5 silver seeing how that helm was 3 gold. If you gotta get them all then if you buy the Warden’s Peak DLC you can store items you won’t need for a while there once you have completed it. The DLC has also some nice equipment and is a good buy.

DLC

On the subject of DLC, it’s been confirmed they will be providing DLC for 2 years! From what they have done so far, it integrates well. The Golem Shale is well worth getting and not just for his brilliant rants about birds (spend years as a statue outdoors and you’d probably feel the same), anyway he is awesome. There is a big expansion pack scheduled for March but apparently DLC doesn’t work with that, I’ll post an update once it’s out but even if that’s the case, with new NPCs, equipment and areas I expect it will turn out to be worth it, if there’s one thing I can say is that more Dragon Age is always a good thing.

So with so much more DLC to come, the potential for certain choices to affect things could be somewhat daunting but there’s no use guessing what will come. If all else fails and you don’t like how a choice ended up comes the end of the game or when a new DLC is released then you can always play through again, and you won’t mind either. I’ve been through three times and found new things each time. Using different team members at different times can give different choices and dialogues and can make fights far easier or difficult. There are still endings I haven’t seen and ideas for characters I’d like to try out.

Which Version?

If you are in the slightest bit interested in RPGs, you have to get this. Then you may have the choice of what to get it on. Well the 360 loads faster than the PS3 and the PS3 is behind on DLC because of the Sony testing program or Bioware being lame depending on who you listen to. On the flip side, the PS3 looks a bit better than 360 and is less likely to die from being on for long hours. Nikobe’s 360 started dying during DAO and my 360 started dying from Mass Effect 2 so if possible you should probably go with the PC, its better than both and has tools to let you do all sorts of modding. For the record I got the Collectors Edition on PS3. The bonus DVD wasn’t great to be honest but it had a code for more Dragon Age goodies and an armour for Mass Effect 2 which as it turns out is by far cooler than any of the other armours in the game even if statiscally it isn’t better than the pre-order bonus ones. Yes it is weird unlocking 360 content with a PS3 but well done to EA for getting it to work.

In Summary

Massive replayability with a great storyline and more content coming makes Dragon Age Origins an easy recomendation to anyone with any freetime. Actually it doesn’t matter if your time isn’t free, this is a game that you make time for. While playing you think I’ll just finish this sidequest, which leads to this and another well I’ll do this… before you know it you’ve been playing for hours more than you intended.

Out now is “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”, the latest home release from Dreamworks Sony/Columbia. Their work keeps getting better and better, the last film (Monsters vs Aliens) is probably the best they have done. But there very best just does not compare to the standard set. Gaff-tastic: My fault! I even laughed out loud when they showed the classic Columbia title screen that has brought me so much joy over the years, should have remembered that.

Cloudy is a great film, we all laughed out loud at various bits. The voice acting is top notch, the story is a lot of fun, the animation is excellent. But somehow its missing something…

Characters are king

Dreamworks Everyone is very slowly learning what it is that makes Pixar the masters when it comes to animation. It is nothing to do with the technology used or how spectacular you make it look, it is all about the characters. You have to feel connected with them, then the audience will go anywhere you want them to go.

The first thing that struck me about the film are the actors they have managed to get to voice these characters. Casting Mr T is pure genius, he is a stand out character that is a lot of fun to watch, without having to reference “The A-Team”. I would love to see a film with just him. But the rest of the cast are just as good, and the addition of Bruce Campbell rounds it all out nicely.

Designed by test screening

The story is a little goofy, but you are willing to suspend your disbelief because it is just so much fun. Any story where it rains steaks is not going to be a serious drama, but there are some odd moments. You will be watching, laughing along quiet nicely and just enjoying the ride, then something just stupid happens and snaps you back to the idea they designed this film with test screenings and 10 year olds in mind.

I will give you an example. You are watching the two main characters having their heart to heart, it is all going well when the phone rings to break the moment. Classic story fare, nothing wrong with that. The guy, uncomfortable, says he has to answer it and breaks away… and walks straight out of a window. What? Why, just because there has not been a laugh for a minute and the test screening said the 10 year olds where getting bored. There is nothing wrong with doing stupid things, but there has to be a good reason for them otherwise you are just playing with the audience and that is no fun for the adults who are enjoying it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love abstract humour and this film has it in spades. Just these little jolts were a shame.

Conclusion

This is a great film, lots of fun for the whole family. Is it worth buying? Probably, it is worth seeing. There are some excellent scenes, and you will laugh a lot. By that measure alone it is great. But it does feel hollow, where as Pixar film will leave you with something to think about, this will leave you with nothing. There is nothing wrong with that, it is just a shame.

Get it, see it, enjoy it, and tide yourself over until “Up” is released next week.