Farming Simulator hits

Farming Simulator hits

FARMING SIMULATOR 15: A RELEASE DATE AND NEW SCREENSHOTS Welcome to the new generation of Farming Simulator! Sticking to the recipe that has so far proved such a smash hit (over 2 million units sold on PC and consoles with the previous 2013 version), the Farming Simulator franchise will be entering, in October, in a new era! A new graphics and physics engine, new visual effects, a new interface, new gameplay mechanics, new vehicles and, of course, a new and vast game environment... Farming Simulator 15 combines all the right ingredients to offer the richest and most detailed farming experience ever, coming to PC on October 30! Console players may rest assured that they have not been forgotten: the game will also release on PlayStation®4, PlayStation®3, Xbox One® and Xbox 360® early 2015. To wait patiently for the release on PC next month, take a big breath of fresh air with new screenshots of Farming Simulator 15, that bring us to the beautiful countryside of the new Nordic environment! Farming Simulator 15 will be available for PC in stores and for download on October 30. The game will also be available on PlayStation®4, PlayStation®3, Xbox One® and Xbox 360® early 2015.

Assassin's Creed Unit Season Pass details revealed

ASSASSIN’S CREED^® UNITY SEASON PASS TAKES PLAYERS ON NEW ADVENTURES

Season Pass Lets Players Further Explore Paris, Journey to Saint Denis in Dead Kings, and Travel to Asia in Assassin’s Creed^® Chronicles: China

To view the trailer click image below:

Sydney, Australia — September 23, 2014 — Today, Ubisoft^® detailed the contents of the Season Pass for Assassin’s Creed^® Unity, the highly-anticipated title for Xbox One, the all-in-one games video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation^® 4 computer entertainment system and Windows PC. From the busy streets of Paris to the dark and rural city of Saint Denis, the season pass allows players to further explore Arno’s story. Players will also be introduced to Assassin’s Creed Chronicles, a new Assassin’s Creed saga that takes players on adventures to lands and time periods previously unexplored by the franchise.

The Assassin’s Creed Unity Season Pass contains:

·         Assassin’s Creed^® Unity Dead Kings- a new story campaign that takes place after the events of Assassin’s Creed Unity. Arno leaves Paris for Saint Denis, a troubled city with a mysterious and extensive underground that holds the crypts of deceased French kings.

In this self-contained set of missions, players will explore the murky depths of the Basilica and fight merciless adversaries to uncover the darkest secrets of the city. Arno will equip the new Guillotine gun, a deadly explosive weapon for short and long range combat. In addition to the main missions, players will discover new open-world activities including treasure hunts, murder mysteries and contracts, as well as new co-op missions. Additional weapons, gear, skills and outfits can be unlocked and carried over to the main game.

·         Extend Arno’s journey in Paris with more missions, weapons and customisation options for players looking to further explore Assassin’s Creed Unity and the French Revolution. Players can upgrade their customised Master Assassin and take on three added missions. Additionally, players will get over 30 new weapons, equipment, and outfits, including the exclusive Fleur de Lys sword on launch day.

·           Assassin’s Creed^® Chronicles: China- a new stand-alone Assassin’s Creed experience delivering a new story, setting, and gameplay type. In this 2.5D reimagining of the celebrated franchise developed by Climax Studios, players will perform parkour on the Great Wall of China, kill from the shadows and take the leap of faith. For the first time ever, players will be transported to the Middle Kingdom in the 16^th century, where the last remaining Assassin of the Chinese Brotherhood has returned to her homeland. Players will be immersed in a vibrant setting, inspired by traditional brush paintings and Chinese architecture from a pivotal, historic time period in one of the greatest civilizations in history. Hell-bent on revenge, Shao Jun will use the skills she learned under legendary Assassin Ezio Auditore to exact vengeance. Players will be able to rely on stealth to accomplish their mission, as well as Shao Jun’s martial arts training and all-new Assassin gear.

Assassin’s Creed Unity Season Pass grants access to all of the aforementioned content, which will all be released by early 2015.

For the latest on all of Ubisoft’s games, please visit ubiblog.com. 

Sunset Overdrive Live Action trailer

Sunset Overdrive Live Action trailer

Some of you may have heard that Insomniac Games and Xbox have been filming a live action trailer to promote the upcoming Xbox One exclusive, Sunset Overdrive. Over the past several months, the team put together an extensive production crew, drafted an array of storyboards and scripts, and created realistic costumes, props and backdrops to replicate the colorful scenery from the game.

Insomniac Games and Xbox’s end-goal was to bring the humorous and over-the-top elements of Sunset Overdrive’s Awesomepocalypse to life, showcasing the games’ unconventional weapons, ferocious mutants and tongue-in-cheek satire. However, Sunset Overdrive proved to be too crazy and insane for anything real-life.

Also, check out the interactive version of the behind-the-scenes video (complete with additional content, surprises and Easter Eggs), and learn why creating a live action trailer for a game as crazy and action-packed as Sunset Overdrive may not have been the best idea. Some games are just too big for that.

The Equalizer: Movie Review

The Equalizer: Movie Review

Cast: Denzel Washington, Martin Csokas, Chloe Grace-Moretz, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo
Director: Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen)

It's the one man might of America versus multiple Russian gangsters in this latest hell-hath-no-fury-like-Denzel-scorned outing that feels like something from the 1980s.

Reuniting Denzel with his Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, the duo set out on updating an 80s gritty UK crime series that starred Edward Woodward as an avenging angel.

Washington is McCall, whose life is a measured calm and precision, and whose past is a mystery. Working in a DIY store and living his evenings reading books at a local diner, he forms a friendship with child prostitute Teri (Grace-Moretz) who's under the control of Russian gangsters. When she's beaten to a pulp, he decides to exact vengeance. But his brutal act of revenge stirs up a hornet's nest and soon, bigger sharks are circling.

The Equalizer is in parts brutal, but a solid thriller, that skimps a little too readily on the action in favour of ponderous build up and stylish slow-mo shots aimed at looking cool more than anything else.

Denzel goes for measured and zen-like calm as he trots out an intensely brooding version of his Man On Fire routine, with each take down he enacts being characterised by a gloomy stare as he visualises how it'll all go down and an over-reliance on choreographed slow-mo shots. Choosing to spend time dispensing healthy living advice to a colleague who wants to be a security guard, advice to Teri on a singing career and sucking on his jaw to demonstrate when he's really ticked off, there's little call for Washington to be anything other than emotionless and completely invincible throughout; with the exception of a handful of scenes which see him soften and open up when his back story is hinted at about two thirds of the way through the film.

Predictably, the story follows a very well-trodden, if somewhat ambling path, with Grace-Moretz's damsel merely book-ending proceedings, and Fuqua choosing to drag out the film for as far as it can be stretched as McCall takes on the one-note villainous Russians - who aside from Martin Csokas's snakelike Fixer barely register.

Short, sharp bursts of brutality punctuate the at times sedentary proceedings as the one-on-one talking ends in bone-crunching agony for those opposed to McCall (and with a final showdown in McCall's DIY store offering up plenty of OSH related issues and conveniently placed weapons). Fuqua chooses to rely on those to provide some life in among the beautiful cinematography and endless grey dusky cityscapes.

City vistas glisten in the dark with a brooding gritty underbelly and Fuqua's framed some wonderfully evocative shots - from fans all whirring in the DIY store to alleyway take downs - but it doesn't distract from the pace of the film which really never feels like it's fully kicking in or building to an emotionally invested climax, given how invincible McCall appears to be - and how outclassed the Russians are when facing him.

All in all, The Equalizer doesn't do subtle - even from allegories and allusions to the books he's reading - the tension is relatively non-existent and the game of cat-and-mouse somewhat lacking in suspense, but yet I couldn't help but entertained in this vengeance tale that's all style and very little substance.

Whether that's grounds enough for a sequel and an unending franchise is debatable, but, as with the TV series which ran for 4 years, you wouldn't bet against McCall.

Rating:

Only Lovers Left Alive: Blu Ray Review

Only Lovers Left Alive: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Madman Home Ent

Jim Jarmusch's latest, Only Lovers Left Alive, is the (slight) story of vampire lovers Adam (Tom Hiddleston channeling lounge lizard and Iggy) and Eve (a more animated Tilda Swinton than I've seen in years).

The duo have been together for years and have seen it all - but are currently living apart. She in Tangier, he in Detroit. He's become a recluse within the walls of his mansion, bitter at how the "zombies" have taken over the world, playing music and having Anton Yelchin's Ian running errands for him - including sourcing old guitars from rock history. 

She, on the other hand, also leads the solitary life, getting blood from Christopher Marlowe (a wizened John Hurt). When she calls Adam one day, she decides to head to Detroit to be with him, amid concerns over his mental health.

Adam's elated to see her but things take a turn for the chaotic when Eve's sister Ava, a wild child (Mia Wasikowska) shows up and throws everything into turmoil.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an impeccably cool piece of cinema, with a playful tone at its heart.

Admittedly nothing really substantial happens within this tome as it unspools; deadpan comments over knowing and influencing famous people are made by the duo and that's about as exciting as it ever gets.

But it's just Jarmusch being a bit playful throughout - he evocatively manages to conjure up the worlds they live in; Hiddleston's Adam, surrounded by wires and useless technology, lives in a world of clutter. His only interactions are with Anton Yelchin's hanger-on Ian andJeffrey Wright's doctorfrom whom he sources blood.

There's dry humour aplenty in the piece as well - from visual gags such as Hiddleston's dressed up doctor wearing shades in a hospital and causing his supplier to jump to verbal jousting and acidly goofy one-liners which come out of nowhere, (the doctors in the blood bank are Dr Faust, Dr Calgari and Dr Watson) the screenplay carefully mixes cool with audience pleasing moments.

Visually impressive, moodily sombre in tone in places yet deliciously deadpan in others and with little going on outside of the atmospherics, you could be forgiven for not diving into Jarmusch's take on the vampire world in Only Lovers Left Alive..

However, it's due to the leads that it largely succeeds: Hiddleston's introspective and almost suicidal Adam, with half of his face covered with lank dark black hair and Swinton's animated, platinum blond locked Eve are eminently watchable thanks to some real onscreen chemistry. Which is just as well, because occasionally the film meanders and appears to have no overall plot or point.

All in all, Only Lovers Left Alive is a mischievous yet laid back movie, a vampire film with a more satirical than scary bite.

Extras: Behind the scenes doco, deleted scenes, trailers
Rating:

Enemy: Blu Ray Review

Enemy: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Madman Home Ent

In Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, the Incendies director takes Jake Gyllenhaal and doubles him up. One Gyllenhaal is Adam Bell, a college lecturer whose world is a pattern that repeats itself as he drifts from one lecture to the next, and spends time with his girlfriend (Melanie Laurent). 

One day, he's recommended a movie by a colleague and appearing to see himself in the film, his world completely changes as he tries to track down the actor (played by a second Gyllenhaal, who subtly shifts traits). Initially reticent to get involved, Bell becomes obsessed in tracing this doppelganger...

Enemy is adapted from The Double by Jose Saramago and is as suspenseful a watch as it is baffling. Opening at an erotic dance club with a woman squashing a spider and ending with a real "What the?" moment, it's devoid of definitive answers as it spins its tantalising web.

Villeneuve's scattered clues throughout this Lynchian style piece and it clearly would benefit from a second screening as you try to take in all of what appears to be going on under the surface. What part do the spiders play? Why is there an exact double with a version of a similar girlfriend attached to each? Why is there a shot of a spider with ginormous legs stalking over the cityscape that Adam lives in? Is any of it real or is the duality happening within his own mind a la Tyler Durden? So many questions, so much endless discussion - and yet, Enemy is as thrilling a watch as it is indecipherable.

Beginning with a quote that "Chaos is order yet undeciphered" the hook pulls you in as the monotony of life, repetition of routine and the menace of the score begin to bite and inveigle their way into you, burrowing deep inside your subconscious. Themes of escape, conformity, oppression and philandering are all buried within and given life by the subtlest of performances.

Unsettling and disturbing, with plenty of food for thought, Enemy is a fascinating and compelling watch as the slow pans and swoops through a bleak yellow landscape seal you in their web. 

See it at least twice to work out what's what in this creepy mind game that's one hell of a trip.

Extras: Interviews, trailer

Rating:

ZB Review: Sin City 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

ZB Review: Sin City 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This week on Jack Tame, I was talking the return of Turtle Power and Sin City's long awaited sequel.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/listen-on-demand/audio/387933952-darren-bevan--at-the-movies

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/listen-on-demand/audio/387933952-darren-bevan--at-the-movies