Double Review: Prototype and The Room Rifftrax

Prototype

If this game were a man, I'd marry him and bear him at least 3 children. He's only mildly attractive but when you get into him you're like OH HOLY SHIT.

What I mean by that is, the graphics aren't that great, but the gameplay makes up for it and more. You play as Alex Mercer, who wakes up on a morgue slab just as he's about to get autopsied. He has no memory of who he is or what happened to him, so you're figuring this out as the game goes on. Also, Manhattan is being overrun with a virus that is turning people into zombies. FUCK YES ZOMBIES. Also you have a shitton of kickass powers. You can shoot a blade tipped tendril out of your arm (or shoot a whole bunch out and destroy everything within radius of you), run up fucking buildings, glide through the air like a sugarglider, consume people and become them whilst gaining their knowledge and energy, and TURN YOUR WHOLE FUCKING ARM INTO A GIANT DOUBLE-EDGED BLADE. HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THIS?!

I'm only about halfway through right now, because A) I like having a life, and B) shit is fucking hard at some parts. Seriously, there have been times when I just have to turn off the Ecks Bawks and meditate so I don't explode. Even though you have all these kickass powers, each enemy has a different weakness, so you're constantly changing which power/move to use depending on what you're fighting. Also, you're often fighting both the (virus) infected and the military, sometimes simultaneously. Because of this I normally use a hit and run tactic like the chickenshit I am. Jump from a high area, kill some dudes, then run away and let my health regen/consume bitches. It's how I roll.

Seriously, a kickass game. There are some people who bawl about it not looking great or being too similar to other games or not having a deep storyline, but they can go fuck themselves. I game to fuckin' destroy shit, not to get Schindler's List in high-quality game format.


The Room (2003) + the Rifftrax of it

Oh hi, Danny. I'd heard someone mention The Room about a year ago, but I never thought to look it up until about 2 months ago. Sweet Jesus. This movie may be worse than Manos: The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Seriously. The writing is atrocious, the acting is stroke-inducing, and you can FEEL the incompetence surging through your screen as you watch it. It garnered MST3K + Rocky Horror midnight viewings in which people throw spoons whenever the mindboggling framed picture of a spoon appears on screen, shout "FOCUS" when the film goes out of focus (and this happens quite frequently), reenact scenes at the front of the theater in costume, and fake walking out of the movie. I really need to attend one of these.

The plot...is nonsensical. The main plot appears to be a San Francisico-set love triangle between Johnny (Tommy Wiseau), a banker of indeterminate foreign origin (I think it's Latin Amerifrenchkoreansomalian), his future wife (NOT FIANCE) Lisa (Juliette Danielle), who is BEAUTIFUL (not), and Mark (Greg Sestero), who we know through at least 3000 lines of dialogue is Johnny's best friend. Then we have Lisa's mother, who comes in for 3 minute visits, introduces a whole slew of possible subplots that never get mentioned again (Lisa's mom: "I got the test results back today. I DEFINITELY have breast cancer." Lisa: "Don't worry about it. They're curing stuff like that every day.") There is also Johnny and Lisa's college-aged neighbor/surrogate son Danny, who seems like he's supposed to be slightly mentally challenged but no one ever says so, and who for five minutes is a drug dealer. Oh, and he has a crush on Lisa for the first half of the movie then just gets over it, I guess. There are also some other characters who do absolutely nothing and do not further the plot at all. Other than the main characters, I mean.

There are so many notable, shitastic things in this movie I don't even know where to begin. It's clearly not much more than Wiseau (who, as well as starring, directed and wrote this shit) masturbating over himself. The way he protrays his character as an innocent victim leads me and pretty much everyone else to believe that this is autobiographical. I'd love to know what this real life woman thinks now, if she does exist. The best part of it all is that he clearly made it to be a completely serious drama. When he found out that people were laughing at it, he did a 180 and claimed that it was intentional, and that the film was meant to be a black comedy. And thus thousands of Bullshit Detectors sounded.

From the games of football, which consist of tossing a football back and forth whilst standing 3 feet from each other, the laughable dialogue including "YOU AH TEARING ME APAAAAAHT, LISAAA" and "It feels like I'm sitting on an atom bomb that is going to explode," and the characters that come from fucking nowhere, this film is unintentionally a masterpiece. I'd heard that you should first watch this movie with others, but I watched it by myself when I was sick and STILL had a blast. I laughed so hard I vomitted.

The worst thing about this movie are the sex scenes. There are 3 in the first half hour. Now you may be thinking, "FUCK YES, SEX!" but I assure you, watching these scenes will make you wish your genitalia would cease to function. There is NOTHING remotely sexy about any of it. And the shitty softcore R&B music just makes it all even more vomit inducing. I don't want to think about it anymore.

So, the Rifftrax. I was super stoked when I saw on Bill Corbett's facebook that they were doing this movie. And in my very biased opinion, they did a fucking superb job. The movie makes me laugh just by itself, but there were moments when I was literally crying with laughter with the Rifftrax. They completely nail Johnny's ridiculous accent and the constant "Oh hi, *insert character's name*" greetings. When Bill compares Lisa to "the bloated corpse of Britney Spears" I was immediately sold. The one thing I wasn't very fond of was that they do little sketches during the sex scenes so that they didn't have to try to riff that shit. I completely understand that, but the sketches aren't that great. The rest of the riffing is so good that this becomes a mootpoint, however.

So if you want to buy The Room, guess what! It's only $8.99 on Amazon (or free if you're a pirate)! Then buy the accompanying Rifftrax for $3.99. If you're not convinced of the sheer greatest of this shit, here is some YouTubage.

Sims 3 Review

So, being a Sims fan since it first came out, I was pretty damned stoked for the third installment of the series. Okay, I was fucking ecstatic. When I sat down to play for the first time, I was giddy with joy and the excitement of something new. However, over time that has mellowed out to "meh" and in some cases, outright disgust. There are great new aspects, but the cost of new things seems to be some of the old that were loved by the gamers and part of the reason why so it grew so huge. Without further ado, the super awesome review.

The Good

• Seamless neighborhood. Seriously, anyone who doesn't like this is a fucking fool. Those goddamn loading screens everytime I wanted to go to the park...grr.
• Traits. I enjoy my excitable, kleptomaniac, inappropriate, friendly vegetarian.
• SOME customization. You can change the Sims' voices, and create a style for interior decorating has killed many hours for me. I'll explain why I say "some" later.
  
• Some cool graphic effects. The light changes gradually throughout the day, instead of "Hey, it's 6 PM! BAM PITCH BLACK OUTSIDE." Also, plants move and sway, and according to some people you can see birds, but I'm not that observant and/or my comp sucks too bad for that.
• Moodlets. Again, just adds a sense of realism. Watching a good movie does make you happier, for at least a while.
• Jobs. I like the opportunities, or little projects that your sim can accomplish outside of work like reading a book, giving a speech, or delivering something to city hall. They boost job performance. While working, you can also choose how your sim spends their time. They can meet their coworkers, hang out and socialize, work hard, or slack off. Pretty nice.

The Bad

• Hardly any base game items. The ones that they have either don't look good or are obvious rehashes of those in Sims 2. But the obvious reason for this will be discussed later.
  
• No Body Shop. Yeah, you can't make your own clothes, hair, skintone, eyes, etc. without going in some roundabout way. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was the reason why Sims 2 did so well--the vast options to customize our pixel people. But that just gets ripped away.
• Round pudding faces. Everyone has the same damn facial structure and double chins, even if they're the thinnest sims you can make. I readily acknowledge, however, that this may just be because I'm so used to Sims "You can make the eyes bigger than your goddamn head" 2 and I'll get used to it.
• Motive system seems off. While Sims sleep for fucking ever and are hungry all the goddamn time, I've only had to tell mine to pee twice. Um...if that happens to someone in real life they should probably see a doctor/drink way more water.
• Ridiculous behavior at times. After Woo-hoo (sex) they just go back to their "relaxing position" (stretched out on the bed with their arms folded over their torsos calmly) and chat. At least in Sims 2 they cuddled, and in some instances congratulated their partner (I'm not kidding). When feeding babies or toddlers, the bottle is pulled out of thin air, and when finished, vaporizes again. Also, all it takes to change a diaper is to toss the child up in the air spinning like a fucking top and they are instantly clean. I WISH THIS SHIT WERE POSSIBLE IN REAL LIFE. But since it's not, and this game prides itself on realism, and the other two were more realistic in this aspect, I don't understand why it would be so hard to put it in this game. Again, I readily accept that this is just something I'm being picky about and may get used to.
• Community lots. All of them, save for parks, are "rabbit holes" (meaning you can't actually see the interior. This makes since for workplaces and schools, but restaurants and stores? Honestly? Part of the fun of them was seeing your other Sims dining or shopping and having them interact together. I guess this means no hilarious shenanigans at nightclubs anymore, either.
• It's a whole different game. Fuck all this "it's simply a more realistic Sims 2!" Most of the features from Sims 2 ( and by that I mean "all of the good ones") are gone. It plays nothing like it. Playing feels like playing a game that was meant to be on a console ported to PC.
  

The What the Fuck, EA?

• Only one neighborhood and no option to make your own. In Sims 2 I never played the pre-made 'hoods except when I was learning how to play and trying out the new features. Why? Because I like creating ridiculous neighborhoods filled with mentally unstable pixel people and seeing the binary sparks fly. Shit is awesome. Plus I hate pre-existing storylines. I want my Sims to be the most ridiculous soap opera ever. Like Twilight but without all the suck and fail.
• Storytelling mode. This is the thing that has made me rage the hardest. In previous Sims games, you played one family at a time and all the other families were stuck in time, or limbo you might say. You would go back to them later and they'd be doing the exact same things as when you left. Now, however, they all continue living. Meaning they'll grow up, die, get jobs, meet new people, fall in love, wed, AND EVEN FUCKING MOVE OUT when you're not paying attention. No, seriously. I started a nice, charming little family and moved them into a house. After getting them accustomed I switched to another house. The Sim there was reading a newspaper that popped up saying that the other family had moved away. I went to view the neighborhood, and sure enough, the family's house was now occupied by a random family that I did not create nor put there. Needless to say, I was pretty fucking livid. If I create a damn family it's because I want to play them, fuckers. Further, I've also left a sim in a nice, stable spot, and returned later to find her pregnant and nearly broke. She'd apparently gotten knocked up some random townie and went on a book shopping spree.
• The Sims 3 Store. This is just fucking hateful, and what I think is clearly the reason why there's hardly any objects in this thing. They want you to pay more money for their crap! Yes, in this economy with a nearly 10% unemployment rate in this country, they expect you to pay $20 for a fucking binary code furniture set that still looks like shit, on top of a $50 base game. YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME, EA. How fucking greedy are you shitheads? Not to mention a high number of Sims players are teens and young adults, meaning we don't have that much money to spend. We got you to the point where you can boast that you have the highest selling video game. You should be paying us, because without us you'd still be making Sim Ant or whatever the fuck, you fucking twats.

Going off of that last statement, I think EA is just treating their customers like shit in general. When they started putting SecuRom on their disks, which is a copy-protection program that has been sued numerous times for being potentially harmful malware, they tried to silence anyone who lodged a complaint on their forum. They had also started the Sims store shit then, which was not popular, especially since regular players always had better looking stuff, and for free. So it seems like they're trying to force it by making customization much harder and not putting a lot of material in there. And I understand it's a business and they want a profit, but dammit, they've never had a problem before and they seemed to be doing as well as ever before they started this. After...I don't know.

I know I'm not the only person pretty disappointed. Just taking a cursory glance at some forums I see that many people have the same complaints. Many more people are just not buying it. EA clearly didn't understand the concept of "ain't broke, don't fix it." I think I'm going back to Sims 2.