The Last Guardian: PS4 Review

The Last Guardian: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4

It's the holy grail of console gaming, and after some 10 years in development, it's finally here.

Begun in 2007 and with a development time that's been littered with expectation, Ico and the Shadow of the Colossus' developer Fumito Ueda's latest can only be described as an experience, albeit a flawed one.

Told in flashback and with voiceover, it's the story of a kidnapped boy who was taken under mysterious circumstances and left inside a castle, with his body tattooed with strange markings.
Next to him and chained for no reason lies a feathery furry beast, known as Trico. With spears in its side and shoulders, this wounded creature lies sullen and muted.

And this is where the Last Guardian begins as you decide what to do next.

There's little about The Last Guardian that won't be familiar to anyone who's ever owned a pet.

From removing the spears in the wounded beast in a show of humanity to tossing barrels for Trico to chew upon, this is about bonding with the creature from the get-go. The first moves force you into interactions with Trico, and he responds in kind, be it in anger or interest as you show your love toward an injured animal.

But as the game deepens, the bond grows as well. After the boy discovers a magical shield and projects it on to the wall, Trico's tail explodes with electricity shooting forth. There's an uncertain and unpredictable feel to the beast, and it makes the game feel magical as the two of you set out to escape from the confines of within.

However, while the bond between the pair is brilliantly realised, the gameplay is occasionally slighty frustrating.

There's no escaping the fact this game at time feels like a last gen console outing, in terms of how it looks, plays and with unstable frame-rates. And don't even get me started on the camera, which obscures some of the action, removes some of the marvel and generally frustrates more than it even remotely should.
There are moments when this game feels like a lazy port over and where it feels like the developers forgot they were even looking at a next gen console. The camera issue as mentioned is one of the buggiest ever encountered and it really does remove some of the feel of the game.

And then there are moments, when The Last Guardian makes you forget its flaws and hits you in wonderment.

There are cutaways that are impressive, suggesting scale and size that make the experience magical. There is a soundtrack that soars quietly and majestically in the background, binding the elements together in a cohesive tie that hits you more than you realise.

There are sequences when you simply find yourself looking at Trico, marvelling as the wind blows through the feathers of this dog / eagle / cat hybrid. There are moments when Trico behaves like your beloved pet, tentatively entering a space for the first time, with one paw first; and others where it goes bounding in full of infectious energy. This is where the power of The Last Guardian lies - its sparse storytelling gives way to an experience that's less about puzzle solving and more about the journey itself.

Much like Journey, Fumito Ueda's The Last Guardian is about feeling something.

And while it's nowhere near perfect, and its flaws almost threaten to topple it from its height, there's no denying that The Last Guardian is something sensationally special and magical.

Hitman: The Complete Season 1: PS 4 Review

Hitman: The Complete Season 1: PS 4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Square Enix and developed by IO

Hitman's decision to go episodic initially divided fans, as they felt it would rob the game of suspense and craft.

But what's actually transpired over 6 episodes is just how much the Hitman franchise has benefited from a breather within each release.

With the globe-trotting Agent 47 back on course for murderously controlled mayhem, the game's moving around from Paris to Hokkaido has really tested your understanding of how to execute 47's missions.

Stealth is always the key, though occasionally rushing in ramshackle has benefited; but the game's mechanics are suited extremely to patience and stealth. Paris may have started the game off with the feeling that there was a large space to explore, but it soon transpired this was one of the smallest levels, with hundreds of larger propositions revealing themselves as the game went on.

Graphically, Sapienza was the stand out of the series, an Italian coastal town that really stood out and looked incredible, as well as made the best of its open spaces and environment.

From the wide open world, it moved to the hustle and bustle of Morocco; this is very much a series that didn't want to feel repetitive and that wanted each episode to have its own feel, as well as ensuring there was time to breathe in between each level. If all of this variety were to have been contained in one game, detractors would have slammed its insistence to continually change things up, whereas the release format followed by IO really helped the series to a successful relaunch.

Along with an ongoing thread involving Agent 47 himself, the relaunch of Hitman and IO's development plan meant this was a series that really did reach its potential.

From the NPCs that felt like they had a life rather than just being presented for window-dressing to the tricky assassination games, Hitman: The Complete First Season 1 is really an incredible restart to the series - here's hoping IO builds on these incredibly successful foundations for season 2.

Fast 8 - First trailer drops

Fast 8 - First trailer drops

It's here - your first look at Fast 8!

The brand new trailer featuring Vin Diesel as Dom Toretto and Dwayne Johnson has dropped.

Don't wait now - take the first look at The Fate of the Furious.

La La Land: Film Review

La La Land: Film Review

Cast: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling
Director: Damien Chazelle

The director of Whiplash delivers an homage to love and musicals that's all rush and very little drag, while reuniting stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling for the third time (after Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad).

Stone is Mia, an aspiring actress stuck in the role of a barista on the WB lot and frustrated in auditions; Gosling is Seb, a jazz enthusiast and purist piano player who dreams of setting up a club in the crummy dive which threw him out, but whose ambition is thwarted by bosses who want him to play the set list and nothing more.

The pair meet by chance a couple of times in the kind of coincidence that some would garner as fate and over the period of a year, told via Chazelle's four-seasons-in-one-film on screen titles, begin a gentle romance that's threatened by ambitions, reality and life itself.

La La Land is a bright, breezy, colourful homage to musicals of the past and a Hollywood of yesteryear.

It sets its store out in its very first opening moments, where a crowded LA freeway is turned into a free-wheeling fully choreographed dance number where car residents frolick on bonnets, in the road and on rooves with such abandon that it's impossible not to be carried along with the Another Day of Sun song.

Bathed in retro primary colours and nods to the Hollywood of the past (Mia's apartment has an Ingrid Bergman mural and The Black Cat poster), Chazelle's attempted to recapture the joie de vivre of the great musicals and the spectacles that were once so common place, but are now sneered at. Even throwing in some meta lines about whether people will love it or not, to which one character retorts "F*** them", La La Land is a throw everything at it piece, where a great amount brilliantly sticks.

This is cinema to swoon at, cinema to fall in love to and a film where the leads have the chemistry that's needed to pull through some of the slightly dodgier singing numbers they're gifted. They don't make movies like this anymore, and it's good they don't - because when one like this comes along, it knocks your cinematic socks off.

But while La La Land is a film of dreamers, it's also bathed in a sad melancholy that ebbs and flows with the tide of life as the year of their romance plays out and reality comes heartbreakingly knocking.

Stone and Gosling make the perfect pair, even if the second half of the film grounds their romance in tensions and drama as the rows grow between following your heart and your dream and dealing with the harsh realities of life. They are the dreamers many of us wish to be, and their ease of chemistry and tonic of romance feels beautiful to behold.

Consequently, it's the nostalgic escapism of Broadway swathed in the visual opulence of the past - but more crucially, La La Land is the tonic to the festive season - a timeless romance, swept up in the romance of dreaming, and all wrapped in a bright colour palette and with such heart, that it's impossible not to fall in love with La La Land - and fall hard.

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier' Epic Two-Episode Premiere Dec 20th - official trailer

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier' Epic Two-Episode Premiere Dec 20th - official trailer

Full Trailer for 'The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier'  Epic Two-Episode Premiere Debuts December 20th with 'Ties That Bind' Part I & Part II

Fellow Survivors, Today we can share the full launch trailer for The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier, the all-new season in the critically-acclaimed series. The season debuts on December 20th taking form of a special two-part premiere with two episodes debuting on the same day: Episode One: 'Ties That Bind' Part I & Episode Two: 'Ties That Bind' Part II. In the full launch trailer for the two-part premiere, we further explore the dire situation that brings newcomer Javier and his family together with the young survivor Clementine. We also catch a glimpse of familiar faces from The Walking Dead universe such as Jesus, while also getting some clues on exactly what this 'New Frontier' represents... The first TWO of five episodes in The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier will premiere digitally worldwide starting Tuesday December 20th on PC from the Telltale Online Store, Steam, and other digital distribution services, on the Xbox Games Store for Xbox One®, and on the PlayStation®Network for PlayStation 4. The episode will be available the same day for compatible iOS devices via the App Store, and for compatible Android-based devices via Google Play. Release dates for additional platforms will be announced in the near future.  Beginning in February, the series will also be available for purchase on a special 'Season Pass Disc' for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, which will include the premiere episodes for the third season, as well as access to all subsequent episodes in the five episode season for download as they become available.  Users can pre-order the season for their favorite platform now by visiting https://telltale.com/series/the-walking-dead-a-new-frontier/#buy. As a special bonus, PlayStation 4 digital preorders also receive a complimentary copy of The Walking Dead: Season Two and The Walking Dead: Michonne; while Steam users receive a discount of 10% for preordering.   When family is all you have left... how far will you go to protect it? Years after society was ripped apart by undead hands, pockets of civilization emerge from the chaos. But at what cost? Can the living be trusted on this new frontier? As Javier, a young man determined to protect his family, you meet a young girl who has experienced her own unimaginable loss. Her name is Clementine, and your fates are bound together in a story where every choice you make could be your last. The Walking Dead: A New Frontier will act as both a new beginning for players fresh to the series and unfamiliar with Clementine, as well as a continuation for players who have experienced Seasons One and Two. Players new to the series will be able to start a story that is tailored to this new beginning. Players continuing onward from prior seasons will have multiple options for quickly configuring their tailored backstory, or importing past save files from various platforms. Additional information on this feature will be detailed in the coming week.

Cartoon Network Battle Crashers: PS4 Review

Cartoon Network Battle Crashers: PS4 Review

Cartoon Network Battle Crashers is definitely one for the fans.

Essentially a side-scrolling beat-em-up, the game's not really for those who can't get engrossed with repetition. Taking in characters from Adventure Time, Clarence and Regular Show, you have to traverse differing landscapes and simply beat down anything that shows up.

While collecting jewels and traversing three levels within six worlds.

Cartoon Network Battle Crashers very much feels like an arcade game exposed largely on a console as characters can be swapped in and out, and bring different propositions to the table, be it environmental saviours or pure powers of defeating waves of marauding baddies.

Switching characters mid-game is fluid and a clever touch to that side of things, but it does little to switch up the excitement of the game, which fails to fully utilise the colour and excitement of its characters, preferring instead to suck all the personality out of them in favour of nothing more than button mashing.

Ultimately, Cartoon Network Battle Crashers is a relative crushing bore that fails to garner any real excitement or much reason to continue playing level after level.

Love & Friendship: DVD Review

Love & Friendship: DVD Review

There can be no denying that Whit Stilman's Love and Friendship is a dizzying take on the meshing of an Austen novella, first published back in 1871.

Occasionally aloof and wrapped up in its own whimsical way with prose and the machinations of Beckinsale's Lady Susan, this piece is a pacy comedy mocking manners and cocking a snook at stuffy period pieces of the time, while still enjoying the trappings of such tropes of the genre.

For the period comedy, it’s off to the 1790s and to the world of “most accomplished flirt” and recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon (a good Beckinsale, revelling in the wicked ways of the word and general dispatches of disdain) whose desires to find a husband for herself and her daughter consume her daily interactions.

And that’s really rather it for the plot of Love and Friendship, a film that’s more concerned with a once over-lightly approach to many of its characters – and an approach which bizarrely suits Stillman’s execution rather masterfully. 

Employing the actors to stand directly facing the camera while posing and posting sarcastic text on the screen is one of the more bravura touches of the piece, simultaneously acknowledging the source material and also negating the need for expositionary introductions that would waste time in an already slim and taut running time.

Beckinsale excels in the role and demonstrates a lighter touch which has hitherto been unexplored and could see her destined for awards season if some are to be believed. While her Lady Susan moves from one portion of the chess board of life to another, it’s clear she has her intentions in focus, even if sometimes, the script demands more from the audience. This is not a film which stops to let you catch up or stoops to pander to the common denominator. And it’s also not a film that has a traditional Austen heroine, with Beckinsale’s Lady Susan having more in common with Clueless than other period fare.

If Beckinsale impresses, it’s clearly Tom Bennett as the blithering fool Sir James Martin who steals the comic limelight. His rambling and delight at the simplest of things suggests a naïvete that borders on idiot and is reminiscent of Hugh Laurie’s bumbling in Blackadder. However, his introduction comes at a great point for the film which begins to feel lost to anyone thanks to lighter characters and brief dalliances with them. And certainly his belief that there are 12 commandments is a delight to watch as he struggles with the idea that it could be anything different.

Perhaps though the lack of stronger male characters gives this piece a feminist watch that’s har  d  to escape and yet also delightful to revel in. This is a world where the women conduct the affairs and twirl around society with the men struggling to keep up – on this front, Stillman’s embracing cameras and sweeping dialogue shots do much to keep the viewer engaged.

Ultimately, Love and Friendship is a film of froth; a light adaptation that is a dizzying but slightly sophisticated affair, a film that revels in language and character and one that's grounded by a performance from Kate Beckinsale that will have you thinking twice about what she's done before.

16th Nov