Nioh: PS4 Review

Nioh: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Koei Tecmo

Based on original material by Akira Kurosawa, Team Ninja's latest has elements of Japanese samurai, dastardly mixed up with the bastard hard playability of Bloodborne and Dark Souls.

It's the story of William Adams, a western samurai who finds himself entangled in the Japanese civil war. As the war grows in stature, supernatural elements are inveigling their way into proceedings, adding further elements of chaos...

Nioh may have the aforementioned elements of Dark Souls with it, and it's very much a similar MO to these games.

From light to heavy attacks, dodging to picking up health and using inventories, this is something you've seen many times before. But once again, concentration and patience are needed to ensure that you get through what's going on in the combat front and come off relatively in tact.

Though in fairness, every attack is going to leave you gasping for life and hoping no surprise foes are waiting around the corner to pick you off. Readying yourself to combat and choosing the right stance also helps you deal with the combat, though to be frank that takes a little while to ready yourself for and to get into.

Cameras can be locked on to help dispatch the bad guys - it's all very familiar.

And yet the developers of Ninja Gaiden and the Dead or Alive series know exactly what players of this genre want - from simple combat that rewards learning to powering up and collection of loot, Nioh ticks all the relevant boxes.

From shrines to pay respect to and health to collect that looks like Jak and Daxter's way of powering up, the game's got what it needs in place to ensure that it plays well. There are epic elements within the sprawling world as well, and there's clearly an homage to the times settling in as the game carries on.

Missions are dictated through the map and take you through the history of Japan - it's a nice reverence that plays well as the game takes hold.

Occasionally, though, some glitches in the camera slow things down. From missing walls to circling cameras, sometimes, it's hard to focus the game onto the actual screen and to see what's going on.

And a lack of an idea of where you're going sometimes means you can spend a lot of time going back and forth down corridors you've already been down but only realised late in the day that that is what's happening.

Ultimately, from meleeing to simple combat, Nioh is a game to sink time into. It rewards long term investment and isn't for a simple 10 minute play. It's a solid, occasionally glitchy, RPG that surprises early on in the year.

New Resident Evil Biohazard DLC drops

Hi family,

Resident Evil 7 biohazard DLC Banned Footage Vol. 2 is available today on PlayStation 4  and will also be readily available for anyone who has purchased either the Deluxe Edition or Season Pass. This Vol. 2 pack includes "Daughters", which features a deeper look at the Baker family’s life before the tragic events of Resident Evil 7 biohazard. Also included is "21", where players will need to gamble with their own life in a deadly game with Lucas Baker. An extra gameplay mode titled "Jack's 55th Birthday" provides a race against the clock as players serve up the Daddy of the family, Jack Baker, with tons of treats for his special celebration. (Please note that PSVR is not supported in "Jack's 55th Birthday.")

Banned Footage Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 will be available to purchase for all other platforms on February 21st. Deluxe Edition and Season Pass owners will get the Banned Footage contents as they release per above and an additional story episode with more details to come. Finally, in winter 2017, all players will have access to the free "Not a Hero" content, introducing players to a new separate storyline away from Ethan’s saga in the main game.

The Great Wall: Film Review

The Great Wall: Film Review

Cast: Matt Damon, Tian Jing, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau, Pedro Pascal
Director: Yimou Zhang

On paper, it's easy to see why The Great Wall exists.

A Chinese director (famed for The House of Flying Daggers and Hero), a Western star (Matt Damon) and a chance to concoct a Chinese - US co-production to rake in some of the take of a Chinese box office.

After all, xXx - The Return of Xander Cage tried to negotiate similar waters.

But on screen, the CGI creature-feature feels more like a gloriously costumed B-movie that never scales the emotional heights it could have easily achieved.

Damon is William, a mercenary who's part of a band of men after the black powder for its magic properties to turn air into fire. As the group's wittled slowly down, William and his fellow conspirator Tovar (Game of Thrones' Pedro Pascal, the film's comic relief) find themselves attacked by a mystical creature and captured by the armies on the Great Wall.

Led by the Nameless Order, the duo is let into confidences when they produce the slaughtered creature and discover an endless eternal war is being fought between the marauding relentless Tao Tei and the protectors of the Wall....

An emotionless bedraggled Damon as William, complete with mumbling bizarre Irish brogue, initially does little to dispel the feeling that The Great Wall is a a CGI fest that plays up its legends element and the fantastical edges.

Characters within the film aren't exactly well developed, and certainly William's behaviour sits at odds with any decisions he makes further on in the film (largely, due to a lack of back-grounding) that propel portions of the narrative.

While the white-wash debate has dogged the film, it's perhaps pertinent to note that most of the Western behaviour is that of rapscallions and skull-duggery. From Defoe's Mad Monk-esque wannabe thief to Tovar's plunder-them-and-run ethos, only William changes his MO due to exposure to the Chinese traits of honour and trust. Sure, there are moments when the white man saves the day, but largely it's due to a shift in mind-set and needs to be viewed as such.

However, despite some truly impressive costuming and eye to detail from WETA's props to the sumptuous colourful costumes to differentiate the wall-based fighters (though reminiscent of the Power Rangers' colourings), the Nameless Order is eye-poppingly gorgeous. And shonky CGI aside, the initial attack on the Wall and the subsequent holding off of the Tao Tei is solidly executed, a visual symphony of a Cirque du Soleil themed attack that benefits more from the human touch than the endless rows of creatures surging towards it.

It's just a shame that The Great Wall doesn't embrace enough of its lunacy and premise of aliens invading the Wall of China and the end effect is an undeniably B-movie film that's soulless on the human front.

With weaker Chinese characters propping up parts of proceedings (Jing's Commander Lin starts off promisingly before being confined to the ramparts' sidelines and sharing glances with Damon's William), the film needed either a stronger script and interactions to pull it through or less reliance on the slow-mo CGI critters flying through the air approach to keep the 100 minutes alive.

With its video game ethos, wannabe epic and questionable CGI, The Great Wall hides a kernel of an intriguing and entertaining film. It's just unfortunate that the severe under-cooking of many of the elements within mean this is one wall that's actually not really worth scaling.

NieR: Automata 'Glory To Mankind' Trailer

NieR: Automata 'Glory To Mankind' Trailer

GLORY TO MANKIND!

NEW TRAILER EXPLORING THE STORY OF

NIER: AUTOMATA AVAILABLE NOW

SYDNEY, 14^TH February 2017 – Square Enix Ltd., today unveiled a brand new story-driven trailer to introduce fans to 2B, 9S and A2, the assembled army of androids enlisted to help reclaim mankind’s disturbing dystopia in the upcoming action-RPG, NieR: Automata™.

In NieR: Automata, Humanity has been driven from the Earth by mechanical beings from another world. In a final effort to take back the planet, the human resistance sends in 2B, 9S and A2 in a hope to destroy the invaders. A war between machines and androids rages on... A war that could soon unveil a long-forgotten truth of the world.

The new “Glory to Mankind 119450310” trailer is available on YouTube or below

NieR: Automata is developed by SQUARE ENIX and PlatinumGames Inc. and will be available on 10^th March 2017 for the PlayStation®4. A free playable demo is also available to download now from: http://bit.ly/2k9txbV.

Silence: Film Review

Silence: Film Review

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, Adam Driver, Yosuke Kubozuka,
Director: Martin Scorsese

Rounding off Scorsese's religious trilogy (Kundun, The Last Temptation of Christ), the occasionally bum-numbing Silence, with its 162 minute run time, is very much a story of endurance.

Garfield and Driver play missionaries Rodrigues and Garupe, whose faith is severely tested when one of their own, Father Ferrera (Neeson) disappears bringing the word of the Bible and spreading faith in Japan in 1633.

With authorities determined to root out Catholicism before it even gained groundswell support, Rodrigues and Garupe are forced to scrabble around in darkness, hiding in hillside huts and administering to those seeking absolution by night.

But when the pair split up after learning authorities are on their tail, Rodrigues faces the deepest darkest night of his soul after he's betrayed.

Silence is Scorsese's cry out to a deity that so often many believe works through silence and offers little by way of absolution when great suffering is visited on so many.

It's a reflective and reflexive suffering piece about the purity of faith in the darkest of times and certainly in large parts of its second half, it becomes an internal piece rather than an action filled denouement to all that's passed.

It's distinctly blessed with some fairly visceral and extremely powerful imagery - from the opening scenes of Neeson's Ferrera watching fellow priests tortured by boiling water as the mists of Japan waft mythically through proceedings to striking shots of those convicted of Catholicism strung up on crosses and left on the sea's edge to be broken by the continual flow of waves, this is a film that doesn't shy away from the realities of what the authorities would do.

And yet in among the philosophical edges, and the increasing likeness that a bearded, long haired and bedraggled Garfield bears to the allegory made real of a 1633 Jesus undergoing trials, there's an emotional devastation that's hard to shake. It helps that there's a lack of soundtrack ( a crushing nod to the silence that bedevils our protagonists) and few of Scorsese's trademark zooming shots - this is a stripped back version of the meister's behind the camera work)

Garfield delivers a powerful and haunted performance as the wise Rodrigues (standing in juxtaposition to Driver's brash and impetuous Garcia whose patience is in short shrift);  and he manages to convey the internal struggle with heartbreaking ease and nuance. From the continual requests of confession from the Judas-like Kimichi (Kubozuka) whose family was killed because he was Catholic that test his patience and his resolve to the desire to find Ferrara, Garfield shoulders a large portion of this film and more than suitably delivers.

Neeson also delivers strong scenes as Ferrera as the price of martyrdom weighs heavily down (and to say more is to offer spoilers) and as the adaptation of the 1966 novel by Japanese Catholic author Shūsaku Endō resolves.

Silence is a demanding film in many ways; and while the reward is certainly not in the on-screen pay-off, it's perhaps more Scorsese's intention that this soul-searching film stays with you and nudges you to question it and yourself in the days after viewing.

The Light Between Oceans: DVD Review

The Light Between Oceans: DVD Review

Making great fist of the desolate New Zealand coast and aiming for emotional devastation but landing somewhere nearer trying experience, Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance's The Light Between Oceans aims big in its period affectations.

Beautifully shot and framed, The Light Between Oceans is the film adaptation of ML Steadman's post war story. Fassbender stars as Tom, a World War I veteran who simply wants to recover from the horrors of the Great War (or as he understates he's "just looking to get away from things"). Ending up in the Lighthouse service and asking for a posting on Janus Rock which overlooks the oceans, Tom meets Vikander's Isabel on the mainland and despite his withdrawn nature, an instant attraction blossoms.

The pair's marital bliss is hit by double tragedy with miscarriages and when a boat washes up with a dead man on board and a crying baby, Isabel pleads with Tom to raise the child as their own. Reluctantly, he agrees and the pair settle into a familial life, blissfully happy.

But years later, on the mainland, Tom meets the widow and grieving mother (a dignified and gravitas-filled Weisz) and a chain of events is guiltily set in motion.

The Light Between Oceans benefits from a great solemn first half, that hits all the emotional beats required.

In among some stunning cinematography and some melancholy moments that border on the darkness, Cianfrance draws the best from Vikander with some truly heartbreaking and devastating sequences playing out as Isabel loses two children (the first in the most harrowing of circumstances). But the film hits a stumbling block as it saunters towards the end (which no doubt is in large part the fault of source material) and negotiates both time jumps and desperation for closure, sacrificing the emotional heft that's needed to allow the choices to feel quite so cataclysmic for all involved.

Of the two actors, Vikander's the strongest and most adept at translating her arc to the screen, and while Fassbender's stoic outlook on Tom is nigh on aloof, he's helped by some choice morsels of dialogue that provide insight where characterisation on screen can not.

His ethos of "I just try to keep the light burning for whoever needs it" is laden with tragedy and selflessness but the implications of this lightkeeper doing more than his duty unfortunately never feel fully fleshed out on screen as the film slips into melodrama and divergent endings.

With Cianfrance using cutaways to the rolling oceans and the cruelty of nature a little too often to segue between it all, The Light Between Oceans struggles to really find its own voice in its back half. Granted, the emotion is there initially and it's hard not to get swept up in the bleak unfolding tragedy of Tom and Isabel; but the final strait and its long dawdling route to get there mean its emotional effectiveness is muted and stilted, despite some of the finest efforts of its central cast.

Never as devastating or as provocative as it should be, this effective translation of Steadman's source material may look rich on the exterior, but its core is flawed when others come into the picture and its attempts at emotional resonance are thwarted.

Rating:

Ouija Origin Of Evil: DVD Review

Ouija Origin Of Evil: DVD Review

There's just something about creepy kids that the horror genre has to keep mining  (just ask The Omen) - and Ouija: Origin of Evil has managed to add another one to the pantheon, thanks to this film, based on a board game (one of the wildest conceits the horror world has perhaps seen).

After a wildly financially successful but critically mauled first outing, the sequel, acting as a prequel heads to 1965 Los Angeles and to a widowed mother Alice (Reaser) struggling to make ends meet after the death of the patriarch. Equally struggling are daughters Paulina (Basso) and youngest Doris (Wilson, looking like a blonde CGI'd younger version of Reese Witherspoon).

Mum Alice is a medium, scamming people who visit but justifying it by offering them comfort for their pain. However, when business isn't powerful enough to keep the foreclosure ghosts away from their door, on Paulina's advice, she gets a Ouija board to use as a prop for her seances. But when youngest Doris claims to have been contacted by her father, something starts to go awry....

Ouija Origin Of Evil is at best a carbon copy horror film, filled with enough references to the past to stop it from being its own thing.

From the start with its usage of the old Universal logo to its vintage setting, use of significant moments from the era in the space age and execution (complete with the circles on the film used in the past to tell projectionists to change reels), this is a flick that's derivative of the genre and that squanders its genuine unease and unsettling set up for something rather familiar.

The deal's sealed when the priest played Henry "Elliott from ET" Thomas shows up outside the house, complete with suitcase and shadow in a blatant rip off from The Exorcist.

It's a shame because aside from the schlock standard jump scares, there's something relatively uneasy about the rather claustrophobic proceedings. From a soundtrack that exudes quiet rather than the traditional blast of a scraping OST to get the requisite jump moments to the evocative period setting, the beginning of Ouija Origin Of Evil is deeply unsettling thanks to tight camera angles and spooky goings on within the tightknit family.

However after Doris is possessed and her mouth starts apeing Munch's The Scream, the film starts to falter and the tropes and inherent illogical silliness that plagues some horror films infects the narrative, and it falls into a trapping of usual stock scares as the back half plays out and the malevolent moppet gets her grips into the family.

While it scores for being a bit more dour and downbeat than the usual fare trotted out for Hallowe'en, there's a feeling that Ouija: Origin Of Evil's more subtly written moments (grief of family, post-traumatic coping) are more successful in hitting the emotional beats than its schlockier edges.

But it still feels like this sequel is possessed by a rogue force rather than a benevolent one intent on ensuring the experience is a smoother ride - it's likely to be as successful as the first, but its derivative edges and reliance on illogical missteps mean it's creatively trapped in the past.