Now Watching: Zack Snyder’s Justice League

I described the theatrical release of The Justice League as a ‘joke’ in my review. I thought it was bloody awful. But I also said – ‘I don’t know how much of an impact the reported re-shoots / change of director had, but the inconsistencies in tone, style and structure are clear to see.’ And now I know. They had a big impact.

I really didn’t think The Justice League was salvageable but I decided to give this 4 hour ‘Snyder Cut’ a watch and see if I was wrong. And I’m kind of shocked to say that I was very wrong. This version of The Justice League is actually . . . good. Really good.

And now I’ve seen it, I’m completely baffled by how the theatrical cut was handled. Because as far as I’m aware, all of the footage contained within this version of the film – aside from an epilogue chapter – was already filmed. They had the footage. They had everything they needed.

This ‘Snyder Cut’ certainly isn’t perfect. It’s too long and does get too self-indulgent at times. But there are some easy ways to trim this version down to around the three hour mark without losing anything important. So why didn’t they?

The footage existed. All they needed to do was put it together and trim the fat. Instead, they decided to re-shoot perfectly good scenes and shoot new scenes that were significantly worse than what they already had to work with. They reduced the plot to a nonsensical mess, inserted bad comedy and a ridiculous subplot revolving around a Russian family. They f**ked with the colour grading making the film look ugly.

They shot an entirely new opening involving Batman that was so stupid you really wouldn’t believe it unless you’ve seen it. They cut pretty much everything about Cyborg’s character and turned their main villain into a total, personality void chump. They did all of this . . . and they didn’t need to.

I just don’t get it. They had the footage. All they had to do was cut it down a little and they would have had a pretty good film. Instead, they totally f**ked the film from beginning to end for no reason at all. What the f**k were they thinking?

I honestly can’t believe how good this cut of the film is compared to the theatrical release. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m no Snyder fanboy – I thought Man of Steel was okay at best, and Batman v Superman kind of . . . bad. But I have to admit, this version of The Justice League, whilst too long and self-indulgent, is actually really good.

Suddenly, Cyborg is a character. Can you believe it? But even more importantly, so is Steppenwolf. In this version, Steppenwolf actually has a personality. He has motivation and goals that you understand. All the characters are handled far better and they all play their own key role within the plot.

I think the final ‘epilogue’ stuff could have been cut – just end the film when you see Superman pulling open his shirt. I also thought the inclusion of Martian Manhunter was a little pointless and kind of ruined a nice scene between Martha and Lois. Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor is still a no.

This version certainly isn’t perfect – far from it. But it’s so much better than what was originally released that I can’t quite wrap my head around what the studio was thinking. If you’ve got a lot of time to kill then be sure to give it a spin. I’d actually recommend watching the theatrical cut first just so you can see how different and better this version is. Consider it educational.

6/10

Now Playing: Sunset Overdrive

Sunset Overdrive is a third person action / platform game that was originally released on the X-Box One in 2014, with a PC version (bundled with all DLC) released in 2018. I noticed it on sale on Steam recently and decided to give it a spin, attracted by the colourful visuals and environment traversal which appeared fairly reminiscent of Jet Set Radio.

What I discovered, however, is that Sunset Overdrive really isn’t anything like Jet Set Radio at all – despite the rail grinding and the ‘graffiti tag’ collectibles. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed by this – in fact, I was kind of surprised by just how good Sunset Overdrive turned out to be considering how little I’ve seen it mentioned or discussed since its original release.

It feels like something of a hidden gem and it’s one I’m very glad I picked up on a whim when I saw it go on sale alongside Quantum Break (review coming soon). Sunset Overdrive is set in Sunset City which has become overrun by ‘OD’ – mutated citizens who drank the latest energy drink from FizzCo. You create your own (fully voiced) character and you are, more or less, a superhero.

I don’t know if everyone in Sunset City can grind street rails, telephone / power lines or bounce 100 feet from cars, umbrellas and industrial fans, but you can, and the game doesn’t waste any time trying to explain how or why – you just can. But if you are a superhero, you’re certainly a lazy and reluctant one. Your primary goal is to save yourself and escape Sunset City.

 

The fact that your character is such a self-serving, sarcastic kind of asshole is one of the things I love about the game. The VA is perfectly on point throughout, at least for the female character type. Humour is at the forefront of a plot that sees you working with other survivors not just to escape, but to bring down FizzCo, which is attempting to cover up the outbreak by erasing the evidence – the evidence being you and the other survivors. FizzCo, naturally, has a robot army.

The humour, like your character, leans heavily on the sarcastic and occasionally breaks the fourth wall and, like all humour, it’s going to be subjective and you’ll either find it funny or you won’t. Despite a few times when the game tries a little too hard, I’d say the humour stuck the landing far more often than not, at least for me.

Traversal of the environment is one of the most enjoyable aspects of SO, especially once you unlock the air dash. This is a game where you really can play ‘the floor is lava’ and string together a chain of moves – grinds, bounces, dashes, swings and wall runs – that allow you to rapidly cross the map without ever touching the ground. And the map itself is perfectly designed to facilitate this kind of free flowing movement.

Sunset Overdrive is accessible above all else – there’s no penalty to death, aside from reverting to a previous (and frequently generous) checkpoint during a mission. Despite the rapid traversal, you can still fast travel to key locations on the map even when moving, or in combat. You can pull up a list of all missions and challenges and replay them at any time – instantly being transported to a challenge location, even if it’s a new challenge you’ve not previously completed.

SO doesn’t waste your time, force you into lengthy slogs from one end of the map to the other or to unlock new challenges. Everything is easy to access and it lets you just get on with what you want to do. It’s remarkably refreshing in an age where it feels like so many games go out of their way to waste your time with pointless bullshit.

Traversal in the game is also a big factor in the many challenges you’ll unlock as you progress. These are all fun to play and replay in order to achieve higher ratings. I wouldn’t say the game is difficult – like I said, it’s designed to be immediately accessible – but that doesn’t mean it can’t present a challenge and the challenge comes in the form of mission rankings based upon your performance (combo score and time).

The cosmetic customisation in the game is great with plenty of weird and wacky combinations of clothing to pick between. You can further customise your style of play using various ‘amps’ to boost or enhance your abilities and weapons. There’s a ton of collectibles to find and SO is one of the few games where I’m happy to find them all – mostly because the game positions them in places where you’ll likely pick them up simply by traversing the map naturally during missions or en route to them.

And, in keeping with the theme of accessibility, if you do miss a few, you can always purchase a map from a vendor telling you where to find the rest – the game really doesn’t want you to miss out on anything.

Combat in SO is probably the weakest aspect of the game. Fighting OD is pretty fun and punchy as they explode into a pool of orange gloop, but despite the selection of zany weapons, you don’t really have to think too much about it, not unless you’re trying to rack up a significant combo score. But your combo is more reliant upon traversal than combat and continues to build so long as you don’t stop, touch the ground, or be interrupted by an enemy attack.

The combat is enjoyable for what it offers and I did really like the few ‘tower defence’ style missions (including traps) but you’re not just fighting OD – you’re also fighting FizzCo robots which become increasingly prevalent the more you progress in the game and they are, sadly, not half as fun to fight as the mutated, orange soda exploding monsters.

SO is bright and vibrant and runs practically flawlessly no matter how chaotic things get. Despite the somewhat weak combat, everything else about the game is pretty damn excellent – the visuals, music, VA, mission variety, challenges and, most importantly, the traversal gameplay.

I think the final mission missed a trick by not also introducing a massive OD horde into the mix – maybe using it as a weapon against FizzCo. I can’t really explain what I mean without getting into extensive story spoilers, but it’s so perfectly set up . . . and nothing comes of it. That said, I still enjoyed the ending and the way the story and characters progressed.

Sunset Overdrive is a refreshing and energetic game to play. It has a wonderful sense of fun and never takes itself too seriously. The humour may be hit or miss depending upon your taste, but in my view it’s a hidden gem and well worth your time, so be sure to check it out the next time you see it on sale.

8/10

Gallery: Control

Now Playing: Far Cry 5

Given that I kind of hated Far Cry 4, I didn’t think I’d ever bother with Far Cry 5. But when I saw it go on sale recently I thought I’d give it a shot. And I guess the best thing I can say now that I’ve completed it is that I don’t kind of hate it. But I do kind of not care. Whereas Far Cry 4 made me irritated and angry, Far Cry 5 didn’t trigger any kind of emotional reaction good or bad. It just kind of happened. And in a week or two, I’ll probably forget I even played it. I suppose you could say that makes it both better and worse than Far Cry 4.

Far Cry 5 tells the story of ‘The Deputy’, a rookie cop sent to apprehend Joseph Seed, the leader of a doomsday cult. Obviously, things don’t go to plan and you (The Deputy) find yourself leading a resistance movement against Joseph and his fanatical disciples. I quite like the concept of the story, but the execution . . . not so much.

The map of Far Cry 5 is split into three main regions, each ruled by one of Joseph’s Lieutenants. As you would expect with a Ubisoft open world game, each region in terms of gameplay structure and progression is essentially identical You have ‘main’ missions, although these don’t actually progress the main story – more on that later. You also have side missions and collectible / busywork style quests – blow up 10 cult shrines / destroy 10 cult tankers etc.

So far, so formulaic. There aren’t any radio towers to climb, I suppose, but the main difference in Far Cry 5 when it comes to progression is the ‘Resistance Meter’ of each region. The idea is that every action you take to harm or undermine the cult will raise the Meter. ‘Main’ quests will raise it a lot, whereas smaller actions – like destroying a cult transport – will raise it a little. The idea, and I guess it’s kind of a neat idea, is that you can progress through the game by only focusing on the content that you want to engage with – all of it is optional.

So if you don’t care about the ‘main’ missions and just want to capture cult outposts and free cult prisoners, that’s a totally viable option – although it will take you significantly longer to raise the Resistance Meter. That’s why it’s advisable to mix things up and do a little bit of everything. Along the Resistance Meter are ‘event triggers’. These are unavoidable checkpoints that place you into a story based quest to progress the overall narrative of the fight against the cult.

Like so much of Far Cry 5, I can say I like the concept, but not the execution. These event triggers kick in so abruptly and in ways that make little to no sense. You can be talking to a friendly NPC in the middle of a friendly settlement and you’ll suddenly be ‘captured’ by the local Lieutenant . . . somehow. The game doesn’t even wait for you to be in a position where you might actually be vulnerable.

On two occasions I was piloting a helicopter accompanied by two AI companions when my screen suddenly turned black and I was, once again, ‘captured’ by the enemy. It’s stupid and it’s jarring and it creates a narrative disconnect from the main story and everything else in the game. This is particularly noticeable with your ‘buddy’ characters who simply de-spawn during these missions and then re-spawn once they’re done.

And these ‘event missions’ – I guess we can call them – often don’t make a lick of sense when taken within the context of the game world and the characters within it. During the final mission, for example, when you think you’re going to be leading some kind of assault upon the final ‘boss’ with all the people you’ve liberated . . . guess what? You don’t.

Nobody goes with you. Your companions vanish. It’s like nobody else exists. It’s as if all of these characters who have been fighting so hard to take down Joseph and his disciples don’t care when you’re actually going to finish them off.

The concept of the story isn’t bad, but the game does nothing notable with it. It feels completely disconnected from everything in the game and it results in a story that feels extremely shallow with a cast of disappointingly shallow characters.

It might have helped if the event missions had some kind of choices that would change the flow of the narrative and how each region / the characters within each region perceived you, or determined who lived and died. A branching narrative and a more dynamic world that reacted to your choices really would have elevated the story and made the way your progression is structured actually make a lot more sense.

But that’s not the only problem with the Resistance Meter and the ‘event triggers’. Sure, you can progress the Meter by tackling any content you want in any order you like but if, like me, you reach a point where you just want to focus on pushing through the story to reach the end, that Meter suddenly becomes an incredibly tedious grind. You might want to just get on with the main story but the game won’t let you – not until you grind out some more content to push that Meter up to the next trigger point.

What I like to call ‘progression fatigue’ sets in quite early in Far Cry 5 because once you’ve seen one region – you’ve seen them all. And although I like the companion system, they do have a limited number of lines that they like to repeat to the point that you kind of get sick of them. I did really like the helicopters though, mostly because once I’d bought an attack helicopter I kind of broke the game because I could simply fly from one outpost to the next and ‘liberate’ it without ever touching the ground. It made grinding out that Resistance Meter a whole lot easier.

Far Cry 5 is, of course, a first person shooter, but it’s also not a very good one. The weapons, aside from maybe the bow and the grenade launcher, kind of suck. The assault rifle feels weak and the shotgun is absolutely pathetic – it’s like you’re just releasing a puff of air at the enemy when you pull the trigger before they awkwardly flop over. Nothing packs a punch.

I really don’t think I have much else to say about Far Cry 5. I wouldn’t say that, overall, it’s a bad game – I just found it incredibly bland and mediocre. It’s another formulaic Ubisoft open world game that’s packed full of unfulfilled potential because they don’t dare stray too far from that safe, familiar and comfortable structure.

I’m sure the kind of people who loved the previous games will probably love this too because it’s more of the same. But I’m not one of those people. I didn’t want more of the same. I wanted Far Cry 5 to surprise me and do something new. I didn’t expect it to, but I think I was hopeful that maybe, just maybe, it would be a step up from Far Cry 4.

But it’s not. It’s not as irritating, I suppose, but that’s not exactly high praise. I don’t even know why I bought it now. I mean, what did I really expect? I guess I’ve only got myself to blame. See you in a few years when I pick up Far Cry 6 on sale. Maybe they’ll win me over with that one.

5/10

Suburban Killbot Year 9

Well, I guess we’re still stuck in a global pandemic. And just when things seemed to be getting better, another variant pops up and it looks like things are only going to get worse.

I’m continuing to push my e-books. I’ve done free promotions and paid advertising and although they’ve given my work a short term boost, long term . . . not so much. I think most people do like the work, although getting people to leave a rating, let alone an actual review feels almost impossible.

I know from my analytics that those who read Queen of the Seven Spheres almost immediately go on to read the other two books in the series, which I wouldn’t assume they’d do if they didn’t like it. But nobody wants to rate them, at least on Amazon.

I’ve done better with ratings on Good Reads, but at the time of writing, Queen only has 7 ratings from the 200 free copies I’ve given away in promotions. I’m not sure if it’s worth doing another with such a low return. And I really need to write something new. I want to finish up the Hunter trilogy next, even if nobody ever reads it.

Here’s my updated mosaic. I guess I’ll see you next year. Maybe.

Now Playing: Control

Control is a third person action game in which you play as Jesse Faden, a woman on a mission within the mysterious Federal Bureau of Control. The game doesn’t tell you much up front. And honestly, the less you know going in, the better. That’s why I’m going to keep this review as spoiler free as I can.

The first few hours of Control aren’t particularly inspiring. The environments are clean and striking, and the destruction physics are impressive, but the combat . . . not so much. But stick with it, because once you begin unlocking various powers, Control suddenly (and unexpectedly) becomes one of the best superhero games you’ll ever play.

The combination of telekinesis and levitation completely transform the combat. And when you factor in the environmental destruction, Control doesn’t just feel great to play, it looks pretty spectacular, too. Your base pistol also undergoes a welcome transformation as you unlock new modes of fire that you can switch between on the fly.

Control may get off to a slow start, but once it hits its stride, it doesn’t let up. It’s one of those games where the combat becomes so fun, that you really don’t mind when the next wave of enemies spawn in – you just want to keep fighting.

Aside from the combat, the best thing about Control is the world and the lore contained within. I’m not talking about the story – which I’ll touch upon later – but the setting. The Federal Bureau of Control is an organisation dedicated to the discovery, study and containment of mysterious artefacts.

As you explore the Bureau, Jesse will uncover many videos, audio recordings and written documents describing the various artefacts, their history and effects. Typically, I tend to skip through these kinds of collectibles but in Control, I was happy to read, listen and watch them all.

That said, I do wish more of the lore contained within these optional collectibles was presented more prominently within the main story. You’ll miss out on a lot of important, interesting and fun information if you ignore them.

Because, I hate to say it, the main story is probably the weakest aspect of Control. Jesse (mild spoiler) enters the Bureau searching for her brother, Dylan. But the ‘relationship’ between Jesse and Dylan just doesn’t work, and it’s a shame the game revolves so much around this plot point.

I guess the intention was to provide a more personal stake for Jesse within the story, but Dylan is such an irritating, unlikeable weirdo, that I just didn’t care about him at all, not when there were far more exciting secrets to discover hidden within the Bureau.

That’s what I enjoyed most about Control – exploring the Bureau, uncovering secrets, learning about the artefacts and completely trashing the environments with my newly acquired superpowers. Dylan? I couldn’t give a flying f**k.

There’s a moment when the game seemingly ends and I was pretty disappointed. Fortunately, it was only a ‘fake’ ending and there was more yet to come. Unfortunately, the real ending is just as disappointing. It’s pretty anti-climactic and, given how challenging some of the fights throughout the game can be, incredibly easy, too.

Control gets off to wobbly start but soon begins to soar. Sadly, it doesn’t quite stick the landing. Thankfully, it does come with some pretty fun DLC, including a pretty cool Alan Wake crossover and a post-game expansion that I found far more interesting in terms of story than the main game.

Overall, I’m glad I picked up Control. I was a little wary of it because I’d only ever seen footage of the first few hours of play and those really aren’t representative of what the game becomes as you progress. The world is great. The combat is fun. It’s a shame the story focused too much on the wrong thing, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment too much. If you see it on sale, be sure to check it out.

7/10