Serial offender - Dark Season (1991 CBBC)

Another delve into the murky world of childrens "serial" type programs has me arrive at one of the more highly regarded examples to come out of early 90's kids TV.....

Lets set the scene shall we..its the late 1980s, and a young man named Russell T Davies is working as a producer on the CBBCs summertime filler program called "Why Don't You?" (oddly enough, this show also featured a young Ant McPartlin in a segment showing how to make sandwiches..I digress). After he made numerous changes to the format of the show, he decided it would be a groovy idea to try his hand at screenwriting. He came up with the concept for a show named "The Adventuresome Three" and, abusing the BBCs internal mail system, he made sure that the script was put into the hands of the head of Childrens Programming, where it was promptly put in a drawer and forgotten about for 18 months.
Davies was not to be contacted about his scribblings until late spring of 1991, when Tony Robinson decided he wanted a break from writing and producing "Maid Marian and her Merry Men" , thus a gap in CBBCs schedules occurred.

Changing the name of the show to "Dark Season", because "The Adventuresome Three" sucked, filming began on the first three parter story, which began airing on the 14th of November 1991, and continued for the next six weeks, with two 3 part stories forming the first, and only series.

The series is sort of semi famous for featuring a very young Kate Winslet in one of her many roles before she got her tits out in Titanic, and also featured many people associated with British TV shows from the 70s and early 80s, chief among them being Jaqueline Pearce, who starred as Servalan in Blakes 7, and who had feature din another successful CBBC serial "Moondial" a few years before.


As is the norm for a CBBC serial, the heroes of the piece are teenaged children, with the leader of the three being the 13 year old "Marcie", who is basically an extremely skeptical paranoid conspiracy theorist detective type, and her two older mates, Reet and Tom, whose job it is story wise is to get into trouble in some fashion and/or provide much needed clues to Marcie so she can figure out whats going on.

Things get weird when one day a fleet of vans arrives at their school and the mysterious and sinister "Mr. Eldrich" announces that he is giving one of his new "Abyss" computers (a mixture of rebadged Acorn Archemedes computers and some early 90s laptops) to every child, free of charge.
Marcie gets suspicious as the idea of someone giving away thousands of pounds worth of computer equipment to school children means they must have some sort of ulterior motive....cue some sci-fi techno thriller elements which have links to the cold war..and the story moves on to its second part, in which a team of archeologists find some interesting ruins in the grounds of the school, however the ancient ruins turn out to be a cover story for something far more sinister involving cold war politics, and bizarrely, neo-nazi ideology...

Although the series was intended to just be a bit of "filler" until regular programming resumed, "Dark Season" ended up being something so completely different form the norm that it made a distinct impression on those who watched it. For a start, it more resembled adult drama than a childrens program, with a dark and intelligent storyline, albeit one simplified for consumption by a younger audience.
As Russell T Davies was a fan of Doctor Who, he incorporated many elements and references familiar to Who fans into the characters and storyline, most of which would be lost on anyone not familiar with the show, or anyone not familiar with BBC sci-fi in general (oddly, references to Dark Season have turned up in more modern Doctor Who, both on TV and in the books).
The shows only bad points is that due to its limited running time, the storys end up having that extreme "rushed" feel to them, which works fine for less sophisticated shows, but with something as high concept as what Dark Season was, it gives it the distinct feel that the BBC werent really concerned with the shows content, only that it had something to fill the empty programming block with, which to be fair, is what the BBC tends to do regardless of the programming genre.

Still, despite its flaws, Dark Season is still quite rightly a highly regarded bit of a kids TV curio, and we have never since seen anything like it in the kids schedules, and are extremely unlikely to either being as kids shows in this day and age don't like to provide any content which challenges the viewers mental capacities.

Dark Season is one of the few CBBC childrens serials to be released on DVD, although now out of print, it can still be found for purchase online, although it is somewhat rare. It can also be found to view by other means for those who know where to look.

Fillum Review - "Juggernaut" (1974)

You know, to a lot of people these days, terrorism wasn't invented until September the 11th 2001, but, with like most Americanism, its completely incorrect.
People in the British isles had been enjoying the benefits of terrorism since the 1960s in one form or another, usually due to Irish nationalists thinking it was Ok to set off bombs in public areas so that they could somehow garner sympathy and/or fear, which would eventually lead to a united Ireland...then their loyalist counterparts would do the same to them....er, didn't work did it?.

So, what does this have to do with 1974s "Juggernaut"? (also known as "Terror on the Britannic").. not much really, although the first half of the film is spent blaming Irish nationalists for the fact that DIRTY HUGE GREAT BOMBS!!!!! have been planted on a British luxury cruise liner.....

The film stars an impressive (for the time it was made) ensemble cast, with Omar Sharif, Richard Harris, Freddie Jones, Roy Kinnear, Julian Glover, Cyril Cusack, a young looking Ian Holm and a very young looking Anthony Hopkins all playing major parts, the film also stars John Bindon in one of his typecast roles as a "heavy" (Bindon would later go on to narrowly escape being jailed for murder, and eventually died of an AIDs related illness), and a very young looking Simon MacCorkindale in a minor role as one of the ships crew.

Storywise, the film follows an "A-plot/B-plot" style, both of which intertwine somewhere in the middle...

A-Plot
Nicholas Porter (Ian Holm), the owner of a successful British Cruise liner company, receives a telephone call from a man with an Irish accent. The man, who insists on being referred to by the code name "Juggernaut", informs him that the companies premier cruise liner, the SS Britannic, has had several bombs placed on it, all of them wired to detonate while the ship is in the mid Atlantic, which is about 24 hours from now. Juggernaut demands £500,000 in cash to be left in two suitcases at a railway stations lost property office. Once he receives the money, he will give instructions on how the bombs can be safely defused. To show he means business, two smaller bombs are detonated in the vicinity of the ships bridge, causing minor injury to some of the ships bridge crew.
Porter is horrified as his wife and son are aboard the Britannic, however his attempts to peacefully resolve the problem by simply paying up are thwarted by the involvement of government anti terrorism authorities, who state that if he pays up, his government subsidy will be withdrawn, thus leaving the company an unprofitable one.
It is decided that as a full evacuation of the ships crew and passengers is not a viable option due to its remote location, a team of Royal Navy bomb disposal experts will be air dropped on to the Britannic in an attempt to defuse the bombs, whilst Superintendent McLeod (Anthony Hopkins) of Scotland Yard will investigate and hopefully arrest "Juggernaut".

B-Plot
The Royal Navy bomb disposal team arrives on board the Britannic, where the crew are struggling to maintain morale amongst both themselves and the passengers (Roy Kinnear really shines here as the ships entertainments officer, maintaining the facade of cheery optimism despite the fact that he, like everyone else on the Britannic, is terrified).
The first attempt to defuse one of the bombs, all of which are housed in oil drums and placed at strategic points below the water line, goes horribly wrong as Porters son wanders into the area where the bomb is and gets locked in. The resulting explosion caused by the remote bomb disposal robot triggering a trembler switch causes the death of one of the ships stewards who was looking for the boy and got trapped with him. The bomb disposal team changes tactics, Fallon (Richard Harris) allocates one member of his team to each bomb, he will begin trying to disarm the one he is at, with the remainder of the team following his actions, if he fucks up, then the next member continues on a different track until they have all been disarmed.
Another accident sets off a bomb when one of the team goes ahead and does something which Fallon had said he was going to do but didn't,resulting in another death and cutting the teams safety margin down. Fallon eventually finds that the path he has been following is in fact a wild goose chase, made up of a number of booby trapped puzzles which ultimately result in him finding a rude message hidden inside the bomb, however this reminds him of an incident during world war 2 where a German bomb maker did exactly the same thing, this piece of evidence allows McLeod to narrow down the list of suspects and eventually find and arrest "Juggernaut".
Realising the bombs have been made in a similar vein to the WW2 bomb, he manages to find the real detonator and, with a little help from the now captured "Juggernaut", figures out how the bombs are to be defused.



This film is very much one of its time, released during a period of near constant bomb threats in the UK due to domestic terrorism of one sort or another, the feeling of helplessness in the face of this is really well put across, especially by Roy Kinnears character.
The film is let down by the fact that although the Britannic is described as being a luxury cruise liner, it has that distinct 70s "cross channel ferry" feel to it, and all of the scenes of it at sea were shot in the appalling weather conditions as found in the North sea, this was due to the script requirements needing to show that an evacuation of the vessel was impossible due to poor weather conditions etc.

Nonetheless, "Juggernaut" works as a good example of a 70s/80s "Thriller" type film, everyone involved plays their roles really well, although Omar Sharif seems wasted in his role as the Captain of the Britannic.

Still, well worth a watch.

Serial offender - "Watt on Earth" (1991-1992, CBBC)

"Serial" type shows were a staple component of kids TV here in the UK from the 70s through to the late 90s, CBBC producing loads, many based on semi popular childrens books and many original productions.
Said serials would usually feature children being the "hero" in some fashion, and would often take place in some sort of fantasy/sci-fi setting.

Although a popular format for over 30 years, its popularity waned in the late 90s and such types of show are now almost totally unheard of.

"Watt on Earth" had 2 series, each consisting of 12 episodes, both written by the veteran TV writing team of Pip and Jane Baker, and centred mainly around the misadventures of an alien prince, the titular "Watt" (geddit? "what/Watt" on Earth...puntastic!) and his human friend Sean, whose job it is to keep Watt hidden from his family (all of whom are journalists of some description) and generally keep him out of trouble.

Watt, who is considered a child on his home planet, despite being over 300 years old in Earth years, is the last remaining member of the royal family, his parents having been "killed in an accident" arranged by his evil uncle who has designs on crowning himself king as he has grown a bit sick of merely being the planets "regent protector", unfortunately for his evil plans, Watt, being the remaining heir, will become king when he comes of age.
Watt is sent into exile on Earth by a faction within his planets government who are still loyal to the royal family until such time as they can remove the Uncle from power and restore Watt to his rightful place as ruler. The uncle though, who isn't stupid, catches on to this plot and dispatches his faithful right hand man, Jemedah, to Earth to hunt down and kill Watt......(wow, heavy stuff for a kids TV show from the early 90s eh?).
Watts people are energy beings, so in order to blend in, Watt and Jemedah use a technique called "Transanimateobjectification" to appear as numerous people and objects found on Earth, although Watt, being only a child, isn't able to use this ability properly, so whenever he changes himself, he often messes it up, for example, in the first series, his human disguise (A shell suit wearing man in his early 20s) is ok apart from his ears being backwards, and in the second series, he gets his ears on the correct way, but they are green. He makes similar mistakes when he tries to imitate inanimate objects as well, such as becoming a teapot that has 2 spouts, an apple what has a blue flashing stalk etc.

The series itself is a fairly bland, middle of the road bit of TV filler, and is packed with teenage cliches, such as Seans sister being obsessed with pop music, and some inoffensive humour, most of which is derived from Watts inability to understand human customs and situations. One such "comedy sequence" that jumps out is during episode 3 where a whole 5 minutes is spent with Watt hunting around the kitchen looking for food, and ending with him making a cat food and squirty cream sandwich, which he then finds disgusting, but still eats anyway (Watt must keep his energy up otherwise he isn't able to transanimateobjectify, therefore he spends a lot of time moaning about being hungry).

The first series deals mainly with Watt acclimatising to living on Earth, but also trying to find out what is happening back home, the second series deals with Watt returning to Earth after being away for a fortnight, although due to relativity issues, a year has passed on Earth. The second series ends with Watt returning home for good to take his place as king.

Like i said, this series isnt too bad, although it is unashamedly a bit of filler used to pad out the CBBC winter schedules schedules between 5:10pm and when Neighbours came on at 5:25pm, its hardly memorable though when put alongside other childrens serials of the same type (in many ways, the show resembles CITVs sci-fi sitcom "Mike & Angelo", another series about an oddball alien arriving on Earth and befriending a series of young children. A show which incidentally ran for 11 years, I dont know why because it was a bit tedious).

As is the norm for CBBC serials, it has never been released on video/DVD, although a book was available, so if you want to watch this series, youll have to head over to Youtube, where several people have uploaded the series in fairly high quality video.

Pilot erroR - Earth *Star Voyager (1988)

1987 saw "Star Trek: The Next Generation" hit the small screen to much rejoicing, and kickstarted a renewed interest in TV based sci-fi in general.
Disney, wanting a slice of that pie, decided to have a go at making a sci-fi TV series aimed at the teen/young adult market in the form of "Earth *Star Voyager", which originally aired as a 2 part TV movie in their "The Wonderful World of Disney" programming block...

The story begins in the year 2082, where the deep space exploration vessel "Vanguard Explorer" (dunno why, but for some reason all the ships in this film have really odd/complicated names) is drifting in space following a mutiny by its crew. The ships captain, Jake Brown, manages to get to an escape pod and flee his now crippled and useless spacecraft, leaving the mutinous crew to their fate, and probably impending death by suffocation (that's how we deal with mutinous scum round 'ere, ah tells thee!).

Six years pass, and one of the probes launched by the Vanguard Explorer returns data to Earth showing that a planet it has found, which is named "Demeter", could support human life.
As the Earth is now a polluted and overcrowded festering shit hole, the prospect of finding a new Earth type planet appeals to the world government, however the probes data is far from completely accurate, so it is decided to send a specialist deep space explorer ship to the planet..the titular "Earth *Star Voyager".

Thanks to the invention of the "Bauman drive", the round trip time will be a mere 25 years, with 1 year to be spent doing a full planetary survey, making for a total time away of 26 years. With this in mind, the space authority decides that the Earth *Star Voyager will be crewed mainly with cadets and recent graduates, none of whom are over the age of 25, with the ships initial commander being an experienced space commander who will be expected to relinquish his command to the 21 year old Jonathan Hays once he gets a bit too old to effectively command.
Once the survey has been completed and the ship returns to Earth, the long term plan is for a fleet to be constructed to evacuate most of the planets population to Demeter, however it will take about 40 years for all the ships required to be built, so therefore if Demeter isn't suitable, the Earth *Star Voyager can also survey any other planets it comes across on its travels.

With this in mind, the Earth *Star Voyager sets off, but, mere hours after its departure, the captain is killed in an "accident" involving a faulty airlock, and as they later find out, the ship is actually part of an evil plot by traitorous military officers to build the ULTIMATE DOOM WEAPON OF DEATH!!!11!!one!111!!11.

From the minute this film begins, you can easily tell this was a product of the 1980s.
For a start, the Earth *Star Voyager comes complete with extremely complex push button keyboard controls, poor quality vector graphic CRT display screens, hell, two crew spots are reserved for the ships aerobics instructor and the ships psychoanalyst...and then there are mullets, and lots and lots of "big hair" (it can be taken as written that at least one cargo bay on the ship is set aside for storing cans of hair spray and styling mousse).

Because the crew of the ship is made up mostly of teenaged children, the writers made sure they introduced romantic subplots nice and early too, and had the ships original captain mention he could perform marriage ceremonies (they probably had the ships entertainment officer arrange for a prom at some point as well, cuz we all know that all teenage Americans care about is dating, getting married and going to prom with a hot date, you know, cos thats totally bodacious dude).

One thing that wrankled me was that for a large and important mission, using one of Earths newest ships and traveling into unknown space via known hostile territory, the people at the space navy decided that including weapons on the ship wasn't really required above a few hand held laser guns, meaning that when the ship gets attacked, the crew have to cobble together some makeshift weapons, but thats ok, because the crew are all super geniuses and the bastard offspring of B.A Baracus and McGuyver, meaning they can take some spare parts and a roll of duct tape and turn it into a super powerful laser gun or something.

All that said though, I think that should Earth *Star Voyager have been made into an actual series, it would have been a fun watch and somewhat of a guilty pleasure. The pilot episode is a bit of a damp squib, as it seemingly tries to pack in three or four episodes worth of storylines into a 3 hour feature length episode, and doesn't adequately explain some of the things that are going off.

It does get annoying though when you get the smart arsed super kids finding solutions to seemingly impossible situations by more or less pulling ideas out of their assholes, and then getting all smug about it, and, with this being a Disney offering, the few fighting scenes in the film are non violent and a bit rubbish.

Its an entertaining enough way to spend 3 hours though, if you don't have anything else worth doing.

Overall - 7/10

Dystopiarama! - Weekend triple feature!1!!!!!

Ah well, now that the £5 cheapo video games have all been completed (deffo £5 worth..nothing more), its time to get back to watching fillums of varying qualities.....

This time round I dredged up an old, but favourite, film topic..Dystopian futures!.

Saturn 3 (1980)

Eeh by gum!, this films as old as I am!.
So, plot wise this film is a sci-fi thriller, set in some unspecified future time when Earth has become ridiculously over populated and its inhabitants somewhat sociopathic, almost the entire film, save for the open sequence and a teeny bit at the end, takes place on an isolated botanical research station located on Saturns 3rd moon (which by astronomical standards would be Tethys, although which one it actually is is never stated, but this would make sense being as about 90% of Tethys' surface consists of ice, you know which is good for turning into water to grow plants with an shit, yo..anyway..).The moon is inhabited by Adam and Alex, a couple who are both there to research more efficient ways of growing plants to assist with Earths chronic food shortages. Adam and Alex (Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett respectively) live a very comfortable life free form interference by the domineering Earth authorities, however one day their bliss is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel, although his voice was over dubbed by Roy Dotrice) , who brings with him a robot (arguably a cyborg) called "Hector".
Problem is, Benson wasn't supposed to be the one to deliver, and more importantly, train, via the use of direct mind impulse transference, the robot being as his mind was too disordered and prone to outbursts of extreme emotion and violence.
In the end, these violent, jealous and lustful thoughts (once he has got an eyefull of Farrah that is) end up being transferred to the robot, who, without any kind of moral guidelines, goes on a murderous rampage etc etc etc.

The film itself isn't a bad one, its not a good one either. For a start, Kirk Douglas was 64 at the time of filming, and even though he was in fairly good physical shape, theres something decidedly creepy about seeing a man who could be your grandfather engaging in simulated sex, nude scenes and sexual dialogue with a woman who was 32 years his junior.
The story is a tad predictable from the word go, and the special effects look extremely bargain basement, because the filming was fraught with problems, mainly stemming from the fact that ITC films had pissed a shit load of money up the wall on the film "Raise the Titanic!" which ended up being a massive box office flop, therefore the budget for this film ended up being stripped to the bare minimum required in order to get it finished.
The screen play was written by the semi famous writer Martin Amis, who later went on to write a thinly disguised book about the production, chronicling his own observations. He makes mention of an aging film star who is obsessed with his sexual virility (*coughkirkdouglascough*) as well as the numerous cost cutting measures and script changes required on short notice in order to accommodate them.

Entertaining?, not really, more, interesting than anything else.
Overall - 4/10

Omega Doom (1996)

Director Albert Pyun carved himself a nice little niche in the mid ninties through to the mid noughties, a niche which earned him the moniker "the Ed Wood of modern films" for a while.

Omega Doom is similar to Pyuns 1989 film "Cyborg", insofar as it concerns robots/cyborgs getting up to shennanigans in a dystiopian and post apocalyptic future.

Omega Doom (Rutger Hauer) is an android soldier who fought in world war 3, however on the last day of the war, a gun shot wound to the head erased his programming, making him forget his primary directive to KILL ALL HUMANS!!1!11!11one!1!.
Some time later, OD wanders into an abandoned French town (the original script called for the film to be set entirely within the boundaries of a post apocalyptic EuroDisney) to find that two factions are battling for control over the ruined buildings. One one side are the "Droids", a motley group of old robots, some of them ex-military, some of them servitor robots, and on the other side are the "ROMs", a trio of identical female robots who are much more advanced than the others, but are too few in number to take over completely.
The two factions share an uneasy peace, however secretly both sides are eager to find a rumoured cache of firearms that they believe to be hidden somewhere in the area.

This film is unashamedly a pastiche of  "Wandering Samurai" type films mixed in with "Mysterious stranger western" type films, hell, theres even a "saloon" in the town where a timid governess robot serves water to both sides to use as fuel.
OD appoints himself to be the local "lawman" and put an end to the feud, mainly via killing the leaders of the opposing factions who are constantly stirring up trouble and picking on the drifters that occasionally ride through the town.

The action scenes are silly in the extreme, with "gunfights" being replaced by quickdraw type duels in which both participants are armed with some sort of laser edged throwing knives.

Even though the film is very slowly paced, and the story isn't terribly demanding, "Omega Doom" still makes for a good viewing.

Overall - 7/10

Battle Truck (1982)

(This film was also released under the title "Warlords of the 21st Century")

Mad Max and its sequel, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, set a standard in the film industry and created a new type of post apocalypse film which featured people using vehicles and scrapping it out over fuel reserves after some off screen war had pretty much fucked the world up.
"Battle Truck" came out 1 year after Mad Max 2, and features, you guessed it, a Truck that is used for battle, manly battle involving a gang of ruffians picking on people in order to steal their supplies of fuel, food and pretty much anything else that takes their fancy, and thus far they have done quite well out of this wrongdoing being as no one can stand up to their massive armoured behemoth.

A small village called Clearwater becomes the next target for these ne'er do wells, who are pretty easy pickings being as they generally live a peaceful existence similar to the Quaker lifestyle, however this time round the bad guys get some trouble in the form of a mysterious motorcyclist named "Hunter" (Michael Beck - in one of his many B movie roles since his A list career ended when he decided to sign on to star in the awful "Xanadu" ).
As it turns out, a young woman who Hunter brought to live in Clearwater after he rescued her from being attacked by the baddies is the reason they have come, because she is the Big boss baddies daughter!.

Yeeaaaahhhhhhhh....This is a shite film, even the titular "Battle Truck" looks rubbish, and Michael Becks acting in the role of Hunter is really poor, you can tell hes only doing it for the pay day and not out of any particular interest in starring in this piece of dodgy sci-fi shit.

Overall - 3/10

Cheapo video game bonanza!!!!

I fancied a change from watching B-Movies, so for this time round I settled on reviewing a gaggle of bargain bin second hand games I picked up whilst in town the other day...for the princely sum of five English pounds...

Duke Nukem Forever (2011)

Yeeeeeeeeees, this one cost me a whole £2 it did.
Ive always liked the Duke Nukem games, ever since I got hold of Duke Nukem 3D on the Sega Saturn way back in good old 1996, and I certainly got my moneys worth out of that game ah tells thee (I still have it along with my Saturn, packed away in a box).
For me, Duke Nukem, along with DooM, Quake and a couple of others whose names escape me, marked the start of the FPS genre as a whole, and harkened back to a more simple time when all that an FPS player was required to do was shoot anything that moved with whatever weapons they could find and use best, there was no need for any intricately detailed stories, complex puzzly bits or even the need to consult online guides whenever you got to the point where you didn't have a fucking clue what you were supposed to be doing...see something...shoot it...that was all you needed to know.

Duke Nukem (Taking) Forever began development in 1997, a fact referenced in the games opening sequence, and as I'm sure we are all aware, the game went through numerous hands before finally someone was in a position to say "yes, its finally going to come out, stop bothering us".
Most reviews I've read or seen covering this game pan it mercilessly, citing that its humour is in poor taste/not politically correct/blatantly offensive etc, and that the gameplay is linear, predictable and doesn't feature good enough multiplayer elements to make it worth bothering about and so on....to these points I say, good, I'm glad you hate it.

The reason I say this is because I, like many others, believe that "modern" FPS games have gotten just as stale, repetitive and quite frankly, boring, as what these 1st/2nd generation FPS games such as Duke Nukem managed to get. Hell, Even the Nukem series fell afoul of shifting tastes when the games "Time to Kill" and "Land of the Babes" ended up trying to emulate Tomb Raider by becoming 3rd person shooters and failing miserably.


The game itself offers a simple plot line, 15 years after Duke saved the earth from alien invasion, he finds himself having to do it again, for the same reasons...the aliens are stealing our babes!.

Throughout the various levels, you pick up the same guns you used back in 1996, and for the most part you use them to punch holes in the same aliens you shot at in 1996.

Although the game has numerous flaws, chief among them being the fact that you can only ever carry 2 weapons, one of which really, really needs to be a rocket launcher of some sort, and the fact that most of the games weapons are inaccurate and underpowered, the rest of the games problems are identical to whichever CoD game is out this month/whichever CoD DLC pack is out this month, namely stuff like your guy not being able to step over small terrain features, not getting much protection from cover and sometimes it not being terribly clear what you're supposed to be doing.

Duke doesn't give a fuck about all this stuff though, as throughout the game, he makes numerous swipes at "modern" FPS/3PS games, including Halo, CoD, Gears of War, Dead Space etc, they even manage to throw in a few references to games such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario, Portal.

On its own though, without the rose tinted lens of nostalgia, Duke Nukem Forever is a thoroughly average game, and I can understand why those who have only ever known the modern incarnations CoD/MoH/BF series don't like it, I can also understand why bleeding heart Social Justice Warrior types dislike the idea of a hyper-masculine wisecracking asshole like Duke getting his own game without him having some sort of defining element of tragedy in his background.

So yeah, although I liked this game, it isn't a particularly good one, and only really worth the £2 I paid for it. I wouldn't mind giving the DLC for this game, "The Doctor Who Cloned Me" a go at some point in the future, but not today..

Overall - 5/10





Homefront (2011)

This one cost me £2 as well.....


So, apparently, in the year 2027 the western seaboard of the USA is invaded by Korean communist BASTARDS hailing from the recently reunited "Greater Korean Republic" which since the problems in the middle east turned into a full scale shooting war has become somewhat powerful and even more belligerent than usual, probably because petrol prices suddenly rocketed up to about $20 a gallon...ooh er!

There was a film made in the mid 80s called "Red Dawn" in which the USSR invaded the USA and a young Patrick Swayze and his teenaged chums fought them off...this is the same thing...just updated due to the fact that the Russians are supposedly our bezzie m8s now...hmm.

A straightforward "modern" FPS this be, being fully "CoD compliant", with a gritty, emotional storyline, lots of hi tech gadgets and plenty of foreign devils for you to empty your 5.56mm assault rifles into as you and your chums at "la resistance" heroically fight the good fight to make the world safe for democracy again.

Speaking of the storyline, many of the bits of background are filled in via collecting newspaper clippings you come across here and there while you move through the various war torn streets, and most of them read like they were written by the unholy sexual union of dubya bush, alex jones and the entire staff of FOX news, concentrating mainly on how the US military has been reduced in size and firepower during the early 21st century now that warfare would mostly be conducted via electronic means as opposed to good old shooty bang bang....obviously, this was a reyt silly move as those pesky commies moved in and proved they had the biggest and most potent sexual organs as they stamped on uncle sams face and then teabagged him.

Unfortunately though, the single player campaign ends up being a wee bit linear, although it tries to break this up by having rail shooter bits and even bits where you pilot choppers and stuff, theres nothing in there to push your skills to the limit, nor are there any nasty hidden things that jump out and surprise you.

All in all this isn't a bad game, but in all honesty it contains nothing new, hell, I didn't even have to take a gander at the controls, being as they were more or less identical to the "standard" layout for FPS games in this day and age. The single player campaign is bland at best, I managed to complete it in its entirety in one afternoon with very little challenge on my awesum l337 skillz. It seems that, like with so many games these days, its all about the multiplayer DLC.

Overall - 4/10


Rainbow Six: Vegas (2006)

Eeeeh, Tom Clancy eh?, he didn't half love his realistic war simulations, and this realistic war simulation only cos me a quid.
Last time i played anything with the words "Tom Clancy" written on it, I believe it also had "Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow" on the box, as well as the PS2 logo, so its been a while.

So, in 2010 some terrorists do something requiring the intervention of Team America etc etc etc...bang bang, boom boom, die commie bastard, America FUCK YEAH! and so on.

God this game is boring, no seriously, all you do is walk along, run into some terrorist guys, shoot them and then move on to the next bit, rinse and repeat until completion.
Because this is a "Tacticool" type FPS, the controls are nice and complicated so you can carry multiple grenade types, weapon attachments and even order other guys around, where their input into the particular situation is of dubious quality, and also make use of various types of vision goggles so you can actually see what the fuck you're supposed to be shooting at.
Add to this the fact that as per usual, sometimes its difficult to be able to clearly understand what you're supposed to be doing, and the fact that your support guys quite often get in your way, or get themselves killed while milling about in the open, and it becomes pretty clear pretty quick that, as per the norm for this day and age, no one gives a fuck about the single player campaign, its aaaaaallllll about the multiplayer.

*yawn*

Overall - 4/10

Sunday Shooty film bonanza!

Another slow day..so i guess that means its fillum time again!.

Today I decided that I was interested in seeing some gunplay, so I cranked out some less well known shooty type films...

The Wild Geese (1978)

Based on the book of the same name, but making some major changes to the plot, this ensemble cast action film tells the story of a group of mercenaries who are contracted by a merchant banker to rescue the deposed president of the fictional central African country of "Zembala" so that he can broker a deal with the much more western friendly ex-president to copper mining rights in the country and make himself even richer.
The mercenaries manage to complete the mission, but find themselves double crossed and abandoned, with the ruling dictators special forces platoon, the "Simbas" hot in pursuit of them, leaving the mercenaries to try and figure out a way to escape.

This film has some big names in for the time it was made, Roger Moore, Richard Burton, Stewart Grainger and Richard Harris being the main ones, and it manages to tell an intelligent story about central african politics whilst living up to its "action-thriller" tagline.
Nonetheless, I liked this film, and recommend giving it a watch.

A sequel "Wild Geese II" was released in 1985, however it starred none of the surviving characters from this film, and had no related plot details, other than it centred on a group of mercenaries hired to compete a difficult mission.

Soldier (1998)

Kurt Russell stars as "Todd", a super soldier who was been trained form birth to know nothing else other than constant warfare. After 40 years of service both on Earth and in space, Todd and his unit of super soldiers are replaced by a unit of genetically modified soldiers.
Todd is seemingly killed when he and a few other men are pitted against the leader of the new soldiers, played by Jason Scott Lee, in order to prove that the new soldiers are best, with his body being dumped on an unnamed planet that the authorities use as a rubbish dump.

Todd awakens to find himself trapped on a world with a small hidden community of colonists whose ship crashed there whilst on its way to a new planet, and he struggles to adapt to a way of life that does not involve him being ordered to kill. Eventually though, his would be murderers return with orders to kill anyone found on the planet, and Todd fulfills his desire for revenge.

A straightforward sci-fi "revenge" type action film, lots of shooting, explosions and mindless violence, but also a very well written story, which is unusual for this type of film.
Kurt Russell does a really good job of playing the emotionless Todd and really shines in the various scenes which show Todd struggling to come to terms with the human condition.

Another film that is well worth a watch.



Mean Guns (1997)

Vincent Moon (Ice-T), a representative of an international crime syndicate invites a motley assortment of hitmen, thugs, punks, pimps, pushers and other ne'er do wells to a meeting held in a new prison which has been built by the syndicate legitimate business arm.
He explains that each person there has betrayed the syndicate in some way, and as such, it has been decided that they will use this opportunity to clean house by having a battle royale within the prison walls, with a prize of $10 million being split three ways between the last three people left standing.
Eventually, they whittle everyone away until they have only 3 people left, and then Moon reveals a twist to the real ending of the game.

This is an extremely silly film, but, oddly enough, its actually somewhat enjoyable. The cartoon-esque gunfights, coupled with the mambo soundtrack give the film a surreal atmosphere, which is upheld by genuinely good bits of dialogue between the people fighting for their lives within the prison walls.
Many of the films plot points are difficult to grasp on the first viewing, but all in all the main characters are very well rounded.
This film is 90 minutes of pure "no brainer" fun, interspersed with big gunfights, worth a watch.