THE AVENGERS Review!

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!



The wait is finally over, and “The Avengers” has been unleashed upon the masses to record-setting box-office returns. After finally getting around to seeing it, I can safely say that it’s undoubtedly one of the best comic book/superhero movies of all time, and certainly the best “team” movie of all time to boot. That being said, it isn’t without its flaws in the least, so let’s go diving in head first and see what it’s all about here.

First off, getting Joss Whedon to write and direct “The Avengers” was a stroke of genius. His time writing the “Astonishing X-Men” comic series was the best handling the X-Men had gotten in ages, and makes me yearn for a Whedon-directed X-Men film so much it hurts my balls just thinking about it. He manages to juggle a roster of iconic and lesser-known characters without a majority of them feeling short-changed (except for Hawkeye, but mostly because he spends the first chunk of the movie possessed by Loki) and just seeing Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor all together on the big screen makes me feel like I’m 8 years old all over again.

The casting of the film is a mixed bag. I know we’ve seen all these guys already beforehand, but seeing them come together here really displays the flaws here in terms of the cast, namely Scarlett Johanssen as Black Widow. She doesn’t come off as that strong badass chick here like she did in “Iron Man 2”. Granted that she has her share of badass moments (namely the interrogation with Loki) but by the time the final battle comes around, both she and Hawkeye just seem like they were shoehorned into the massive battle. If anything, I’d love to see her get replaced (and Black Widow as a whole actually) in future installments, namely by Ms. Marvel, because if it’s one thing this team needs, it’s a powerhouse superheroine.

As for the rest of the crew, the more I see of Chris Evans, the more convinced I am that he’s the perfect choice for Captain America. His new costume, not so much. It looks like he’s got a condom head, but hey, at least he doesn’t look too ridiculous (see the early 90s movie with the rubber fucking ears). Personally I loved his WWII garb from his movie last summer, maybe another variation of that would have been better suited, but hey, that’s just me. Robert Downey Jr and Chris Hemsworth as Iron Man and Thor respectively are great, but Mark Ruffalo surprisingly steals the show as Bruce Banner, and holy mother of fucking shit, the Hulk moments are so great that I nearly had an orgasm watching them unfold on the big screen.

As for the film itself, it was a wonderfully realized ultra-epic comic book adventure. One thing I noticed is a decent amount of backlash from comic book fans about stuff they consider “wrong” with it, but I’m not going to bother picking it apart. I could if I really wanted to, but god-fucking-damnit, I’m not going to. Why? Because it delivered the goods in terms of what I wanted to see: an ultra-epic presentation of Marvel’s greatest superheroes teaming up and going on a full-scale Earthbound-battle ground. I didn’t go as gaga over it as so many others have, but I thoroughly enjoyed it for what it is, and that’s all that really matters.

In terms of the eventual sequel, well, I’m looking more forward to that happening than I was to this film believe it or not. Seeing Thanos at the end of the film snickering to The Other makes me swoon and hope for a full-blown intergalactic Avengers film that takes the grand scale of this film and makes it look like a low-budget D-movie. Make it happen for fuck’s sake Marvel! I haven’t read a Marvel comic and not been disappointed in quite a few years, but goddamnit, Marvel’s films since Iron Man (namely the main Marvel movies, the other ones owned by different movie studios like “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” and “X-Men: First Class” don’t count) haven’t let me down, so I’m holding faith for them until I’m proven wrong.

It goes without saying that if you haven’t seen “The Avengers” yet (and I think there’s only like five people on the planet that haven’t) you definitely should. It’s the best Marvel superhero movie yet, and one of the most enjoyable superhero movies of all time thus far. Go see it goddamnit, you’ll be glad that you did.



Oh yeah, seeing how well “The Avengers” turned out makes me wish DC and Warner Bros. would get their shit together and follow the Marvel trend of releasing superhero movies to lead up to a Justice League flick. Instead, we get excellent Batman movies, an abysmal Superman flick (“Superman Returns”) that’s so bad it gets rebooted (next year’s “Man of Steel”) and a Green Lantern adaptation that makes my asshole pucker just thinking about it. Come on guys, get your shit together for Christ’s sake.

Uncensored "NFL 98" Review for Sega-16

Football.

Personally, I'm not that much of a fan. I've just never really been able to get into the sport, just because to me it's just plain fucking boring. Being an avid hockey fan, I've heard from tons of people that my beloved sport is too boring as well, but how in the hell can such a fast-paced game be considered boring compared to fucking football? Maybe it's just me, but a sport where you're flying up and down the ice slapping at a puck while beating the shit out of the guy trying to knock you over sounds a lot more fun to watch than a sport where you line up over and over again for a couple seconds of guys grabbing and falling all over each other to grab what's basically a dead pig and run with it.

Okay, that was a big rant that came out of nowhere. Now where was I? Oh yeah, I wrote a review of the surprisingly good "NFL 98" for Sega-16, so here's the uncensored review for your reading pleasure...and I think I need a zanax...enjoy!



NFL 98
Published by Sega
Developed by FarSight Studios

Ah yes, it’s that time of year. The time of year when guys across the nation get their recliners, easy chairs, and couches set up to watch good old fashioned NFL football, plus set up their fantasy leagues and even fire up the latest edition of the Madden franchise for good measure (also known as “tools”). When it comes to football video games, Madden has pretty much always been the first football video game franchise to come to mind whether they’re a fan of the sport or not, and for good reason considering the Madden franchise has been around seemingly forever. Back in the day though, before Electronic Arts scooped up exclusivity rights to make games featuring the NFL and its players (and actually have to put out good games to stay competitive in the marketplace, instead of shoveling out the same goddamn game year after year with little minor changes and tweaks), EA had some competition, and one of their best competitors was none other than Sega, who released their own NFL games for a long time, going all the way to having Joe “I fucked your mother” Montana as a spokesman to eventually just using the NFL moniker.

Since the early days of the Genesis, there was football. From the original Joe Montana-brand that would evolve into various Sports Talk-branded installments, to the more commonly-titled NFL 95 and Prime Time NFL Football, Sega always seemed to have their collective heads in the football arena. The franchise would skip a year with NFL 97 hitting the Saturn, with this last hurrah being a swan song of sorts. Yes, NFL 98 marked the end of an era in many ways. NFL 98 wasn’t just the last official football game to be released for Sega’s aging 16-bit juggernaut; it was also one of (and I think maybe the) last North American games to get released for the Genesis period. EA had already released their last football hurrah for the Genesis with Madden NFL 98, and it wasn’t long before Sega followed suit. Despite the long running Sega brand of football that had become a staple of the Genesis, NFL 98 really doesn’t do anything new or truly different at all than any of its predecessors, but what really shocks the shit out of me personally here is that isn’t necessarily a bad thing here either.

One of the things that always made Sega’s football games so accessible to me was the ease of being able to pick up the controller, fire up the cartridge, and just have fun on the field. You didn’t need to be a football expert or necessarily know what a Nickel play is or the pros and cons of lining up your offense in the Shotgun formation. Yes, there is a little bit of a learning curve for those who don’t know all that much about what all goes into playing on the grid-iron, but the accessibility of a number of games in the franchise don’t really hamper the overall gameplay and enjoyment out of Sega’s NFL games. NFL 98 follows the same kind blueprint, almost to a tee.

The football plays themselves come off as being a bit smoother than in the previous iterations of NFL 95 and Prime Time, with throwing the ball, running it, and running defensive plays just feeling simpler to do and pull off. Granted playing 16-bit football isn’t necessarily fucking rocket science, but with NFL 98 it just feels like this just feels plain right to put it bluntly. With the Sports Talk games themselves, I always felt like something was missing from them, and while the previously mentioned installments of the series improved on what had been lacking, NFL 98 feels the most authentic and complete of the whole bunch.

Graphically speaking, there isn’t anything in NFL 98 you haven’t already seen plenty of times before. The graphics engine by this time was really starting to show its age, but it still manages to work for what it is without coming off as archaic. Sound effects are pretty much the same recycled crowd cheers, grunts, and hits that have been around forever in the franchise, which isn’t such a bad thing really as it all still sounds relatively good. Game modes are typical including the Exhibition, Playoffs, etc., all of which was pretty much standard at this point when it comes to the football video game world.

All things considered, for every little thing in NFL 98 that we’ve seen and played over and over again before, this is probably the best iteration of the franchise to hit the Genesis. Holding a place in 16-bit history as one of the final American Genesis games to hit the legendary console makes NFL 98 worth checking out alone, but once you get past the aged aesthetics and recycled presentation, you’ll find yourself with a surprisingly deep football game that you’ll keep coming back to for a while. You can find it pretty cheap on eBay, and there are even groups of people all over the internet that have made numerous mods to the game to include updated players and teams. That in itself serves as proof that one way or another, Sega football left as much a lasting impression on gamers all over the country as EA’s Madden games leave on gamers and jock wanna-be’s wallets.

7/10

Uncensored "Nightmare Circus" review for Sega-16!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Uncensored "WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game" Review for Sega-16

That's right folks, Sega-16 is back and better than ever...which makes me quite happy for a lot of reasons. In celebration, I finally got to play a good game for once (fuck you "Wrestle War") with "WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game", and I damn sure enjoyed it too. Check out the original review here:

http://www.sega-16.com/2011/08/wrestlemania-the-arcade-game/

With all that being said, here's the complete uncut and uncensored review for the game, so enjoy bitches, we're back!



WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game (1995)

Published by Acclaim Developed by Midway/Sculptured Software



When one thinks of the Genesis and wrestling video games, the first thought that pops up is the Acclaim WWF trilogy. Super Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble, and Raw; all of which have their share of flaws, but remain fun regardless. In the mid-90s, Midway decided to release a badass WWF-based arcade game, using the same sort of digitized character model graphics engine which they managed to find massive success with using in the Mortal Kombat games. The end result is WWF Wrestlemania, which wound up being a hit and spawning numerous console ports. Even though the days of the Genesis were coming to an end, Sega’s 16-bit system got their own version (as did the abominably shitty abortion of hardware known as the 32X attachment, which isn’t all that different from this version), and amazingly enough, it wound up being the best cartridge-based port of the game.

WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game features a handful of the wrestling organization’s top wrestlers at the time: Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Razor Ramon, Lex Luger, Bam Bam Bigelow, Yokozuna, and Doink the Clown; all of whom are nicely rendered and animated here on the Genesis. Unlike the Acclaim trilogy mentioned before however, instead of focusing on typical wrestling grapples and such, Wrestlemania instead opts for a super-over-the-top/Mortal Kombat style of fighting action. What’s even more surprising here is that somehow, it manages to work out very well. Between the Undertaker firing spirits and demons like fucking creepy-ass fireballs to Bam Bam Bigelow’s flaming head butts, the game is a welcome change of pace instead of following the same archetype of wrestling games in the past. The action that Wrestlemania offers is fast and frantic, and the totally over-the-top nature of it just makes it that much more enjoyable.

Voice clips from announcers Vince McMahon and Jerry “The King” Lawler are included as well, and while they are relatively sparse compared to the arcade counterpart, their funny quips and dialogue are a nice touch. The game’s sound and music clips as a whole are pretty nicely done as a matter of fact, and combined with the graphics engine, round out a very nice presentation package. The character models themselves aren’t as large or detailed as the arcade game, which is to be expected of course, but for what it’s worth, the end result here is pretty admirable.

One thing I often noticed growing up and being a Genesis owner is that if a game was released on both the Genesis and Super NES, nine times out of ten the Super NES version was the better one in terms of presentation and overall quality, just because of the fact that the Super NES had better internal hardware to work with (“blast processing” my ass Sega). With Wrestlemania, not so much. The Super NES version notoriously left Bam Bam Bigelow and Yokozuna off the character roster, and also only allowed up to three characters on the screen at once. With this Genesis port, not only do we get all the characters, but it also allows four of them on screen at once. This may all sound trivial now (and it kind of is but I don’t really give a shit, I’m 27 years old and playing a Genesis so what dignity I had left is long fucking gone here, let’s be honest), but back then for me, this was a huge deal. Not since the first Mortal Kombat game (which featured a code to unlock all the blood and fatalities of the arcade game, unlike the Super NES which didn’t) could I say that my Genesis got the better port, so this being the way it was then with Wrestlemania warmed my little pre-teen Genesis-loving gamer heart so much that it may have caused my first ever erection (maybe).

As much as I love Wrestlemania though, the game isn’t without its flaws. Even though the Genesis version allows four wrestlers on the screen at once, there is a noticeable degree of slowdown that occurs. It’s not much of a surprise that this is the case, considering these were the waning days of the Genesis’ lifecycle, and developers were really pushing what the aging console could do at this point. Also, considering that this was a game originally created by Midway, the same crew behind the secrets and Easter egg-laden Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam franchises, there aren’t really any extras to be found here. There were long rumors that Adam Bomb was a hidden character within the game, but I’ve never been able to find him, nor have I ever heard of anyone finding him in either the arcade version or any of the home console ports. It’s really a personal minor complaint from me however, so it doesn’t take away any of the game’s overall fun factor.

All in all, WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game was a blast to play back in the mid-90s, and it’s still a blast to play even today. If you’re a 16-bit wrestling game purist and have trouble getting over anything that isn’t quite like the Acclaim trilogy of WWF games, you may have some trouble getting the most enjoyment out of Wrestlemania. That being said though, it’s kind of hard to say no to what basically amounts to being a nigh-Mortal Kombat game starring the best pro wrestlers the WWF had to offer of the 90s era. It’s easy to track down and won’t cost you an arm and a leg on eBay, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

8/10

Uncensored "Judge Dredd" Review for Sega-16!

Remember Judge Dredd? He's a legendary comic book character that infamously got a shitty movie adaptation in the 90s with Sylvester Stallone in the title role. Naturally, there was a video game tie-in to coincide with the film release, and just like the movie, the game sucked ass. You can read the entire original review I wrote for Sega-16 here:
http://www.sega-16.com/review_page.php?id=470&title=Judge Dredd

In the meantime, here's the full-on uncut & unedited review for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!





Judge Dredd (1995) Published by Acclaim Developed by Probe



Why did I do this to myself? Why did I waste so much of my childhood on shitty comic book character-based video games during the 16-bit era? Reflecting back on that time, I can’t honestly say it was time well spent (to say it lightly), with shit-fests like Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Wolverine: Adamantium Rage, Justice League Task Force, Batman Forever, and more besides hitting my Genesis just based on the fact that they starred the comic book characters I loved so much. They also have something else in common too, they were all published by Acclaim; the now defunct publisher responsible for bringing a number of licensed video game tie-in’s to video game form. Judge Dredd is one such game, and like the ones I just mentioned above, it’s pretty fucking wretched.

If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “who the hell is Judge Dredd?”, then flash back to 1995, because just about everyone else in the country was asking themselves the same thing. Judge Dredd is a surprisingly legendary comic character made famous by starring in the long running British comic book series “2000 AD”; a comic series that has seen great comic book talents like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison tackle the character. American film rights were purchased (it was originally planned as a vehicle for Arnold “GET TO DA CHOPPA!” Schwarzenegger) and eventually it wound up starring Sylvester Stallone in the title role instead. The film itself was practically universally panned by audiences, fans of the source material or not, and because Acclaim could not leave any stone unturned in terms of video game cash-ins, here we are with Judge Dredd.

Now, finally on to the game itself, Judge Dredd puts you in the role of the tough-guy super cop, as he traverses various hazards of the Cursed Earth taking on all sorts of generic baddies and scumbag criminals. That in a nutshell is the overall gameplay, or rather, lack thereof. Walk right, shoot bad guys, rinse and repeat. There are a few weapon upgrades, and you do have the option to actually apprehend and arrest some perps that surrender, but that in itself proves to be kind of challenging thanks to the wonky and unresponsive controls. Even if the controls weren’t so ungodly, it wouldn’t help the fact that the overall gameplay just isn’t any fun. It’s boring and monotonous, and by the time you actually manage to make a perp surrender, you end up shooting them accidentally because your gun is on permanent rapid-fire and you end up losing some health over it. Why does it have to fucking be like that in the first goddamn place? So make that boring, monotonous, and frustrating to boot.

The graphics aren’t anything special, and in all honesty appear to be a little too darkly rendered. Seriously, sometimes it actually becomes pretty difficult to see what all is happening on the screen. I understand that the environment is pretty much a barren wasteland, but come on now, somebody turn on the lights here. This becomes increasingly noticeable once you beat the movie-based levels and reach the areas that are actually based on the “2000 AD” comic and face-off against the Dark Judges on Deadworld. Like I said before, I know this is a post-apocalyptic setting and all that, but at some points in the game it just gets plain goddamn ridiculous.

While keeping the later post-movie levels in mind, the Deadworld stages are worth the price of admission here. They are actually decently designed and pay a nice homage to the actual source material (i.e. not the shit-fest of a film) with the Dark Judges looking appropriately wicked. That being said though, the boss fights in the game as a whole are woefully unforgiving and cheap. There’s no strategy to any of them, just kill them before they kill you. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if the game offered a bit more variety than the tiresome bore it winds up being, but the end result is just a miserable endeavor.

The game features a password system, which is a plus because Judge Dredd is a pretty challenging game. There are enemies aplenty and it doesn’t take too many hits to gnaw away at your health either, but this isn’t made any better thanks to the game’s shortcomings in terms of control responsiveness and basic overall gameplay. With all that being said, once you run out of lives and its game over, you’ll be too bored and underwhelmed to even bother punching in the password characters to pick up where you left off.

Looking back on the Judge Dredd character, he’s actually gotten a surprising number of video game adaptations on later consoles as well as the PC. Sadly, none of them have been anything remotely better than anything tolerable. It’s a shame really, because Judge Dredd as a character remains one of the most intimidating and unapologetic tough guy, bad ass motherfucker characters to ever be seen in the pages of a comic book, and he deserves a capable video game treatment that would rightfully do him justice. Come to think of it, he kind of deserves a proper film treatment as well. Wait, what? There is a brand new movie called Dredd on the horizon starring Karl Urban? Will it be any good? Could it be any worse than the Stallone version? Who knows? One thing is for sure though, if there’s a video game adaptation of it, Acclaim isn’t around to make it. That in itself is one thing that we should all be thankful for.

3/10