Film Review: Revenge of the Sith

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

• Publisher: 20th Century Fox
• Production Studio: Lucasfilm
• Release: 19 May 2005
• Genre: Action, Fantasy
• Director: George Lucas
• Producer: Rick McCallum
• Writers: George Lucas (screenplay & story)

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and... I didn't like it.  I believe the words I used to describe it were "so bad, it's... meh".  Well, we've got one more prequel to go, so let's see what we do with it.

I love how Revenge of the Sith's opening text crawl starts "War!", as if desperately trying to get our attention for once.  And considering how the other two prequels bogged theirs down with mentions of trade negotiations and senate votes, I'd say they finally have my attention.  We move from that to the first scene, a long one-take of a space battle already in progress.  The Separatist army, led by Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and a new villain, the kinda-sorta-droid General Greivous (voice of Matthew Wood), have kidnapped the leader of the Galactic Republic, Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).  Our heroes, the Jedi Knights Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan MacGregor) fly in to the enemy's command ship to rescue him.  Between this, the opening text, and how quickly they get both the Wilhelm Scream and the line "I've got a bad feeling about this" out of the way, it's as if this movie is trying its hardest to get back into our good graces, and you know what?  I appreciate the effort.

This sequence is basically a James-Bond style adventure, something the past two movies have tried, but failed, to accomplish.  Maybe it's because it actually embraces the swashbuckling attitude, with Obi-Wan being the go-to guy for all manner of silly one-liners.  They've even got their own "voice with an Internet connection" support guy in the form of R2-D2!  Eventually they make it up where the Chancellor is held, and fight Dooku to free him.  Anakin disarms the Count and has him at his mercy; after some internal deliberation, he simply decapitates his foe.  This exercise in less-than-noble morality does a fair job of setting up this movie's theme, of Anakin's tragic fall from grace, but more on that later.  For now, our heroes get double-backsies re-captured by Grevious, but get out of their jam by crash-landing the ship.  I don't know about you, but a certain Airplane! clip comes to my mind...

Dr. Rumack: I just want to tell you both good luck, and we're all counting on you.

When the dust settles, Anakin reunites with his wife, Padme (Natalie Portman), who tells that she is pregnant.  At first pleased by the news, a nightmare of her dying while giving birth troubles Anakin, who seeks counseling from Palpatine.  Palpatine awards him a spot on the Jedi Council, who in turn assigns him to spy and report on Palpatine, who is continuing to build his own political power.  So while the plot is still a little political in nature, something which bogged down the other two prequels, the focus has been narrowed down to specific characters, namely Anakin and Palpatine, which makes it considerably easier to get absorbed into.  One night, he meets up with Palpatine at an opera (or a Blitzball match, I couldn't tell).  When Anakin expresses his fears about losing Padme, Palpatine tells him a story about a Sith lord, his old master, who could use the dark side of the Force to prevent his loved ones from dying.  I've seen a number of online critics, such as The Nostalgia Critic and Awesome Walter, praise this scene as the best moment in the prequels, and even one of the best from all of Star Wars.  I would argue, however, that this is yet another instance of George Lucas hinting at more interesting stories but not delivering them, but there's still a lot on hand to like.  I mean, he even gets away with mentioning midi-chlorians again, and no one has yet bat an eye!  Now that's some good will.

The story benefits from focusing more heavily on just a few characters, namely Palpatine (left) and Anakin (right).

Meanwhile, the Clone Wars open up on multiple fronts, as Obi-Wan leads a Clonetrooper unit in a sneak attack on General Greivous.  Yoda has an adventure of his own, joining forces with the Wookie race, including Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), to defend against another droid front.  Back on Coruscant, Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and some other Jedi move in to arrest Palpatine, before he can grow too politically powerful.  In the fight that ensues, Windu has Palpatine on the ropes when Anakin walks on the scene.  After some internal deliberation, echoing what he would eventually do again in Return of the Jedi, Anakin decides to disarm Windu -- almost literally -- allowing Palpatine to Force-lightning him out the window.  Newly-disfigured, Palpatine re-christens Anakin as Darth Vader, restructures the republic into the Galactic Empire, and enacts Order 66, a secret directive for his clone army to murder the Jedi Knights.  All of them.  The montage of massacred Jedi that follows is dramatic, yes, but of little value to anyone whose knowledge of Star Wars is just from the movies, and not any supplemental material made either before or after.  I, for example, recognise a couple of these locations from playing Star Wars: Battlefront II -- and before you ask, the GOOD Star Wars: Battlefront II.

Nonetheless, Obi-Wan and Yoda survive their respective assassination attempts, because plot armour.  They reunite on Coruscant and uncover the horrifying truth, that Anakin has indeed turned to the dark side, and even murdered a temple's worth of child Jedi trainees for good measure.  When they report this to Padme, she struggles to accept it, and flies off to Anakin to assuage her fears.  Obi-Wan stows aboard with her, while Yoda stays to fight the new Emperor.  If you liked the Yoda/Dooku fight from the last movie, this scene delivers many of the same goods, despite another... charmingly embarrassing one-liner:

Yoda: Not if anything to say about it, I have!

I'm just saying, I don't think Yoda used this sentence structure all the time before.  While Yoda holds his own for much of the fight, he takes one fall down into a hidden air vent, and decides now is a good time to play dead instead of finishing the job.  Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Padme arrive at the volcanic planet Mustafar, where Darth Vader has just killed the last traces of the separatist army.  They try to convince Vader to ditch his descent into the dark side of the Force, but to no avail.  He chokes Padme around for a bit, and proceeds to duel Obi-Wan.  The fight choreography retains the high-energy pace of such scenes from the other prequels, with an added bit of improbability as the combatants balance atop pieces of the collapsing base.  However, I've finally noticed a flaw in this approach: everything goes by so fast that, combined with the camera angles they chose, it's hard to tell both sides apart.  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they had different coloured lightsabers, rather than both blue, because that's always been an easy indicator of telling who was who in these kinds of battles.  But, in the end, it's Obi-Wan who comes out on top.  Despondent, he leaves Anakin on the lava river's banks, legs severed and body burning, because somebody finally remembered what convection is.

As thrilling as the Jedi duels are, they aren't helped by giving both sides the same colour of lightsaber.

Afterwards, Obi-Wan regroups with Yoda and Padme as she gives birth to her twin children, Luke and Leia Skywalker, and promptly dies.  According to the robot nurse, she was physically healthy, but just gave up the will to live.  And I'm like... well, THAT's retarded!  I mean, yeah, learning that your husband went and betrayed everything you stand for would be crushing, but come on!  Did they just need to kill her off now because she wasn't in any of the next movies?  Why not just stick her on Alderaan with Leia and her step-father?  I mean, we never actually go there in canon, before it gets blown up by the Death Star!  Meanwhile, the Empire recovers Vader's body, and reawakens him in a new suit of armour.  When Palpatine informs him of his wife's death, he loudly shouts "No!", and a new Internet meme was born.  We end with the Skywalker babies being delivered to their new respective homes, ending on an homage of that classic shot from the first movie, where Luke's foster parents stare off into the distance of Tatooine, the planet's twin suns setting, or perhaps rising, on the desert horizon.  You are now free to turn off your TV.

Revenge of the Sith is, finally, the first Star Wars prequel movie I can comfortably call "good", despite the big hulking asterisk attached to that statement.  It still can't manage to shake off all of the baggage from its predecessors, such as a few odd scenes of so-called "romantic" dialogue between Anakin and Padme, but at least they actually serve the plot this time around, giving him incentive for exploring the dark side of the Force.  Perhaps the biggest problem is the chronic under-acting by many of its performers.  Yet, there are still some actors who manage to break out and have some fun with their roles, most notably Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan and Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine.  (Basically, if your name starts with a "Mc", you're in good hands.)  Yes, they delve into campy and even narmy territory once in a while, but I'll take that over dull surprise any day of the week.  And of course, the ending keeps piling on stupid moment after stupid moment.  But at the same time, George Lucas seems to be learning from his past mistakes, as there's a considerably better balance between exposition and action, and said action scenes feel more like the swashbuckling space adventure we've been starved of from the past two movies.  And last but not least, there's virtually no Jar-Jar Binks in this movie!  Yeah, he's got, maybe, one short line, and it's in plain English, not that Gungan patois.  Surely that would bode well for the future of Star Wars... if not for the fact that its eventual follow-up would be handled by a different director and writers entirely.  But that's a review for another day.  Until then...

This is IchigoRyu.

May the Force be with you.

Positives:
+ The plot is built around a distinct theme, of Anakin sacrificing what he loves for power.
+ A few good performances.

Negatives:
- Still a few weak performances.
- Multiple stupid moments near the end.

Acting: 3 out of 5
Writing: 3 out of 5
Special Effects: 4 out of 5
Visual Design: 5 out of 5
The Call: 75% (B-)

Film Review: The Phantom Menace

Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace

• Publisher: 20th Century Fox
• Production Studio: Lucasfilm
• Release: 19 May 1999
• Genre: Action, Fantasy
• Director: George Lucas
• Producer: Rick McCallum
• Writer: George Lucas (screenplay & story)

Previously on the SDP, I wrote about the changes made for the Star Wars special editions, which indicated Lucasfilm's growing addiction with CGI.  Let's see what that led to.

I did reviews for the first three Star Wars movies, but they weren't easy to write about.  For lack of a better description, they were all good in a sort of non-specific way.  I did manage to find running themes to base my reviews on, but those came along mid-way through the writing process.  But now that I'm entering the prequel trilogy, I think I'm in for smoother sailing because... hoo boy, I've got some quite colourful opinions on these movies.  On top of that, I'm more familiar with them, especially The Phantom Menace, it being the first Star Wars movie I saw in theatres.  So I kind of want to defend this movie, but as my last few reviews have demonstrated, nothing in life is ever that simple.  So let's see how I manage to divide up the good and bad from this infamous entry.

We start off on a ship orbiting the planet Naboo, which the Trade Federation have put a blockade over and are about to invade.  Two Jedi knights, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his senior partner Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) are dispatched to talk them out of it, but their demands only result in them almost getting killed.  They escape, of course, and sneak aboard the planet along with the Trade Federation's landing party.  Their army consists of many battle droids, a decision which not only lets the effects team add loads of via CGI, but are also a handy way of ramping up the action, while keeping the actual level of violence against humans down.  Gotta maintain that PG rating somehow!

Jar-Jar Binks is this movie's source of shoehorned-in comic relief.

Amidst all the mechanical chaos, our Jedi also find and rescue a new friend... the infamous Jar-Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), who takes them down to his undersea community of fellow Gungans.  *sigh* Believe it or not, I used to really like this guy.  Look, I was ten years old, and I had a thing for silly speech patterns!  Even now, I consider myself a bit more tolerant than most, but he's still not something I'd want to look in the face for too long.  And some Gungan-to-English subtitles wouldn't have gone amiss, either.  I have no frickin' clue what Jar-Jar said when explaining how he fell out with the other Gungans:

Jar-Jar Binks: You could say, boom de gasser, then crashed into the boss's hayblibber, then banished!

...I got nothing.  And all that said, the plot certainly could have done without him.  Sure, he guides Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan to their destination of Naboo's capital, but they very well could have landed closer to the city, eliminating the need for this diversion to begin with.  And incidentally, it's said they are driving their ship through the planet's core, but, uh... no.  If Naboo is anything like Earth, the actual core of the planet is gonna be immensely hot and immensely hard.  They'd all fry up, get crushed from the gravity pressure, or otherwise die before they got a few miles down.  And even if they didn't, we're talking a journey of thousands of miles -- the latter half of which would be spent fighting against the pull of gravity, by the way -- so by all accounts it should have taken them forever!  And they started pretty much where the Trade Federation's army landed on the planet, so surely it can't have taken them that long, since they're there before Qui-Gon and the others!  Basically what I'm saying is:

Jar-Jar Binks: Theysa settin' yousa up.  Going through the planet core?  Bad bombin'.

Dang straight.  But whatever, they snatch up Queen Amidala (Keira Knightley) from the Federation's clutches, and fly her off into space.  Their ship's hyperdrive engine got damaged in the escape, so they are forced to land on the nearest planet... none other than Tatooine.  Qui-Gon, Jar-Jar, the handmaiden Padme (Natalie Portman), and R2-D2, here one of Amidala's service droids, venture out into town to find some new parts for their ship.  It is here that they meet the future Darth Vader himself, a 9-year-old slave by the name of Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd).  Y'all gonna hate me for saying this, but his performance kind of, sort of... works.  At least Jake Lloyd acts something like a real human his age.  His lines are awkward at best, but do at least show the perspective of a kid who doesn't fully understand how the world works.  Compare that with all the other big-name performers they roped in to this thing -- Liam Neeson, Ewan MacGregor, Keira Knightley, even Samuel Frickin' Jackson -- who deliver 90% of their lines in what we MSTies can only describe as a "dull surprise".  Even Jar-Jar Binks has more spirit put into his (no less annoying) performance, and he's a computer-generated character!  Basically, what I'm saying is that in the land of the blind, the man with one eye and twenty-thousand midi-chlorians is king.

Speaking of, I'm not going to dwell on the subject of midi-chlorians.  The truth is, I couldn't care less.  But so we're on the same page, allow me to summarise what problems this brings up, according to everyone else.  Midi-chlorians are microscopic life-forms which, in large enough quantities, serve as a conduit for the host person to use the Force with.  No, they do not actually replace the Force itself.  But they do restrict who can actually wield the Force.  Where formerly, anyone in the Star Wars universe could earn this power through the right kind of training, that is no longer the case because they weren't born with the right genetic makeup or whatever.  What problem I do have with the concept of midi-chlorians is from a narrative standpoint.  They are used to tell the audience that a character is strong with the Force, but not to show it.  If they just wanted to set up power levels for everyone, they could have just measured Force energy in some consistently arbitrary units, without needing to tie it in to some explanation of how the whole Force thing works.  But hey, if no other (canon) works want to address the darn things, then I'm perfectly fine with it.  In fact, so will I!

No matter how cool the big setpieces are, the plot was made to serve them, not the other way around.

So how does Anakin show his set of talents?  He is a genius mechanic, having created C-3PO in a brief scene which is essentially a spot of plot-irrelevant fanservice.  He also built a pod-racer, a craft pulled from the front by a pair of jet engines, and possesses the super-human reflexes required to drive it.  To raise money to repair our heroes' ship, he enters himself in a race event, because somebody had just seen Ben-Hur the other day.  While this is a fun and tense sequence, it sprung in my mind this movie's fatal flaw, or one of them anyway.  I imagine they designed the setpieces first, and wrote a story around them.  This mentality also explains the narrative slog we have to deal with after our heroes finally leave Tatooine.  For your sanity, allow me to summarise.  Amidala tries to get the Galactic Senate to send an army to help out her home planet, but the Trade Federation blocks her motion, so she manages to get the chancellor replaced with Senator Palpatine (Ian MacDiarmid), a.k.a. the future Emperor.  Meanwhile, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan try to have Anakin trained by the Jedi Council, but Yoda and the others refuse, on the grounds that Anakin has too many conflicting emotions (read: he's gonna become Darth Vader in a few movies).  Qui-Gon insists on them doing so, because he believes that Anakin will fulfill a prophecy to restore balance to the Force, a concept which I have trouble grasping because nowhere is it ever made apparent how this affects the film's universe.  Again, too much telling, not enough showing.

In the end, the heroes return to Naboo, and take back the planet on their own terms.  They manage to form an alliance with the Gungan tribe, once Padme reveals herself to be the real Queen Amidala, the apparent queen just being a decoy.  This was another homage to Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, a film which had already inspired many other elements from the previous Star Wars trilogy.  It's a nice concept on paper, but as executed here, there was no foreshadowing to be had, so it's just kind of random.

This finale represents a culmination of a problem that has been steadily growing throughout the Star Wars movies thus far.  In A New Hope, there was only one thread of scenes in the finale: the battle above the Death Star.  In The Empire Strikes Back, there were two threads, one following Han, Leia, and Lando, and one for Luke.  One lead into the other at such a pace that you got time to absorb both stories equally.  Return of the Jedi had three threads: Han and Leia on Endor's surface, Luke aboard the Death Star II, and Lando commanding the space battle above it all.  We are kept waiting a bit longer, but they still use certain turning points as moments to cut from one scene to the other, to keep the action going.  But now, with The Phantom Menace, we have four such plot threads: the lightsaber duel with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, the palace infiltration with Amidala, the field battle with Jar-Jar and the Gungans, and the space battle with Anakin.  And with the frequency which the film cuts between each of these scenes, oftentimes without waiting for a turning point, we don't get the chance to absorb ourselves in any of them.  For a film with such a devotion to spectacle, it fails to leave an impact.

As for that space battle, what is usually the highlight of any Star Wars film... it's just lame this time around.  Anakin flies up in a starfighter he was hiding in, taking off completely by accident.  His ship is on autopilot for much of the scene, and even when he shuts it off, there's nothing here to impress.  He contributes nothing to the battle until the very end, and none of the other Naboo pilots even acknowledge his presence.  And when Anakin does fire the fatal shot which ends up destroying the enemy space station -- which, coincidentally, also shuts down the battle droids on Naboo's surface, by the way -- he had no idea what he was doing.

And another thing, the Gungans suck at this whole war thing.  Their only weapons are these exploding energy balls, and they'd be bound to run out of them sooner rather than later.  But there's this one scene where Jar-Jar, ever the clumsy goofball, gets his foot stuck amidst the wiry guts of half a battle droid.  When he trips, the droid's blaster goes off, shooting another droid.  Jar-Jar does this again and again, taking down more of the enemy.  Now, if he managed to figure that out, then why, pray tell, doesn't anyone else on his side think to just take the droids' guns and use them against them?  Yeah, even in my less-critical youth, that bit always bugged me.

This three-way lightsaber duel is one of the few things about this movie that everyone seems to agree is still awesome.

The saving grace of this finale, at least, is the duel our Jedi heroes find themselves caught up in.  For one, their enemy is Darth Maul (Ray Park), who looks wicked awesome with his red-and-black face paint and the horns pasted onto his shaved head.  On top of that, he uses a double-bladed lightsaber, which opens up new opportunities for fight choreography.  The kinetic, acrobatic fighting style on display is a step above what was on display before, where the moves were slower and more calculated.  They say the fights from the old movies were better for that reason, and in a way I can see that, with the fighting styles serving the personality of the characters.  This is especially true for the end of Return of the Jedi, where Luke's strikes are calm and decisive, until Darth Vader gets into his head and he just snaps, carelessly wailing on the guy.  But I think the fight in The Phantom Menace captures this theme as well.  Where all the lightsaber users in the old trilogy were either aged or inexperienced, the prequels capture the Jedi Order, along with the Jedi Knights themselves, in the prime of their lives.

At the end of it all, Darth Maul eventually defeats Qui-Gon, only to be killed in turn by Obi-Wan.  The leaders of the Trade Federation are arrested by Padme and her squad, ending the invasion of Naboo.  And Obi-Wan adopts Anakin as his Jedi apprentice.  You are now free to turn off your TV.

I wanted to be nice to The Phantom Menace, I really did.  Fanboys have been using this movie as a whipping boy for everything wrong with the world, not just Star Wars, whereas for the longest time, I've preferred to defend it.  Maybe it's because I was young enough when I saw it in theatres, and because I've re-watched it on video so often since, that I've developed a sort of possessive admiration for it, like older fans have with the first trilogy.  But then again, all those repeated viewings have made me question quite a few things, and you know what?  I'm glad I now have the chance to air them all out.  I'm not mad at The Phantom Menace; I'm just... disappointed.  When this Star Wars movie actually wants to be Star Wars, it can be quite fun.  But it lacks the discipline to focus on those good aspects, and that's the biggest shame of all, really.

Positives:
+ A few brilliant action setpieces.
+ Another knockout score by composer John Williams.
+ Some stylish set and prop designs.

Negatives:
- The plot was built to serve the "brilliant action setpieces" without any care.
- Too much telling, sparsely any showing.
- Awkward comic relief.
- Whatever performances aren't annoying are just boring.

Acting: 1 midi-chlorian out of 5

Writing: 1 midi-chlorian out of 5

Special Effects: 3 midi-chlorians out of 5

Visual Design: 4 midi-chlorians out of 5

The Call: 55% (D+)

Film Review: Spectre

There's a pattern I've noticed with the James Bond series. For any given set of entries starring a particular actor, the fourth entry is the one where things go bad. For Pierce Brosnan, it was Die Another Day, which sucked. For Roger Moore, it was Moonraker, which sucked. For Sean Connery, it was Thunderball, which... didn't exactly suck, but still wasn't as good as the last movies. And now we come to the fourth Bond film to star Daniel Craig. Will it manage to break the "fourth-film curse" or not? Find out in an encore presentation of the 007 Golden Jubilee!

Spectre

• Publisher: MGM / Columbia 
• Studio: Danjaq / EON Productions 
• Genre: Action 
• Release: 26 October 2015 (UK), 6 November 2015 (US) 
• Director: Sam Mendes 
• Producers: Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli 
• Writers: John Logan, Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth

The Girls: The primary Bond Girl is Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), a psychologist and the daughter of Mr. White from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. For most of her role, she keeps complaining about the way Bond protects her from the bad guys, so her chemistry with Bond starts out rockier, and she doesn't exactly leave the best first impression. I will say that unlike most of his flings these days, Bond does seem to earn his night of sex with her, coming after they fight off Mr. Hinx. Rides off into the sunset... er, cloudy London morning with Bond. 3 out of 5.

Earlier on, Bond has a fling with Lucia Sciarra (Monica Belucci), the widow of a Spectre assassin. Being 50 years old during filming, signora Belucci is the oldest actress to play a Bond Girl. This decision caused some controversy among netizens, to which Craig (himself 47 years old) said, he's just dating women his own age. Well said. Still, wrinkles aside, Lucia Sciarra is basically an older version of Severine from the last movie. She's basically there for Bond to protect, get information from, screw, and forget about. And feminism marches on! ...Without them. Left under CIA protection. 3 out of 5.

The Villain: Franz Oberhauser, a.k.a. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), the leader of Spectre. He has a backstory with Bond: after Bond's parents died in a mountain-climbing accident, Franz and his father adopted him, only to allegedly die later on. I could probably best describe his portrayal as a cross between Donald Pleasance as Blofeld (from You Only Live Twice) and Javier Bardem as Silva (from Skyfall). In other words, he goes for the subdued menace of the former but cannot quite achieve it, ending up a bit quirky and too casual, which stands out especially considering the work he's done with Quentin Tarantino. Herr Waltz seems like he would be more at home portraying someone like Steve Jobs (although to be fair, you could say Apple is basically a real-world evil organisation anyway, lol) Arrested by M. 4 out of 5.

Other Henchmen: Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista), a hitman working for Spectre. Just as Silva from Skyfall proved to be the first iconic villain of the post-reboot era, Mr. Hinx could very well be its first iconic henchman character. In many ways, Hinx is reminiscent of Oddjob from Goldfinger. They both have similar physiques, hardly ever speak, can hold their own against Bond, and even their actors are both Asian-ethnic Americans with backgrounds in pro wrestling. Although, his introductory scene, where he kills a fellow Spectre member by jamming his thumbs in the guy's eyes, is a little hard to watch. Thrown off a train by Bond. 5 out of 5.

Max Denbigh, a.k.a. C (Andrew Scott), the head of the private Joint Intelligence Service. As it turns out, he is in fact working for Spectre, who intends to use the countries' intelligence against them. C, as he is nicknamed by Bond, is just a touch snarky and not exactly apologetic about stealing M's job. I could imagine him working out as 007's new boss, if not for the fact that he already got a new one in the last movie. And besides, Ralph Fiennes's M is just badass. Accidentally falls to his death in a fight with M. 4 out of 5.

The Gadgets: Q (Ben Whishaw) introduces to 007 the Aston Martin DB10, which exists only a concept car in the real world, and here comes equipped with guns, a flamethrower, and an ejection seat... only to give it to agent 009 instead and leave Bond with a watch. To be fair, the watch has a time bomb inside. That doesn't stop Bond from stealing the car anyway and using it in a chase with Hinx's Jaguar C-X75, another prototype car you will never be able to buy.

The Locations: Mexico City, Rome, Austria, Morocco, and London. The Mexico City scene was filmed during the Day of the Dead festival, as the opening one-take shot brilliantly shows off.

The Theme Song: "Writing's On the Wall" by Sam Smith. Sam Smith has always struck me as being a technically talented vocalist, who wastes his range on the most boring songs, and "Writing's On the Wall" is the most egregious example of this paradigm. In fact, this very song won my wildcard slot for Most Boring Song at this year's SDP Music Awards, if you recall. The song itself is about standing up to impending doom, but coming from Sam Smith, I don't feel it. He sounds too weak-willed, especially when you compare it to stuff like Tom Jones in "Thunderball", and even Adele's theme from Skyfall. I don't want to be too hard on this song, because it is melodically beautiful and has a few good themes in the lyrics. But I don't know, it's just not something I'd want to listen to outside of this movie. 2 out of 5.

The alternative-rock band Radiohead also submitted their own title song, simply named "Spectre". Obviously it was passed over, for some reason, but the band released it themselves online, at https://soundcloud.com/radiohead/spectre. It has the same kind of orchestral ambience of the Sam Smith song, but with an actual drum track... which I'm honestly not a fan of. Its irregular pattern tends to throw me off. And honestly, it's not too much of an improvement on the not-boring front, even if it does build up to something musically. I for one won't lose sleep over its exclusion in the film, but I guess you have to be a fan of the band in order to appreciate it fully.

The Opening Credits: Features ink and octopus motifs. The octopus has long been a symbol of the Spectre group, with the animal's tentacles symbolising the insidious reach their activities have all over the world -- AND NOTHING ELSE. There also flashbacks to characters from earlier in the Daniel Craig series (like what they did for On Her Majesty's Secret Service), re-creations of locations seen later in the film, and some shirtless shots of Bond in between all the silhouette girls, presumably in the interest of equal-opportunity fanservice. 4 out of 5.

The Source Material: The SPECTRE organization has largely been avoided in the official James Bond film canon, due to its ownership dispute between Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory. But you already knew that. Well, it turns out that in 2013, MGM, Danjaq, and the McClory estate finally settled the issue, returning the film rights of the Spectre name to MGM. However, I've noticed that in this movie, no one refers to Spectre by its old acronym (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion), so either that wasn't accounted for in their deal, or they just nixed it for the retcon.

The Plot: Our story starts in Mexico City, where James Bond foils a terrorist attack during the Day of the Dead festival, and steals a ring belonging to one of the perpetrators. Cue opening credits. Back in London, the new M is displeased over the collateral damage from that operation, and has 007 suspended. But what he doesn't know is that Bond was following instructions from his predecessor (the one played by Judi Dench), who sent him on the trail of a secretive criminal organisation. Bond uses the ring he found, along with the widow of one of the attackers, to infiltrate a meeting of this organisation, named Spectre. Meanwhile, M and the 00 section are being dogged by a man unofficially code-named C, who is the head of a new private intelligence company. In addition to shutting down M's department, C also campaigns for the formation of "Nine Eyes", an intelligence-sharing network of member nations, including Britain.

Meanwhile (again), based on intel taken from the Spectre meeting, Bond heads to the Austrian alps to meet Mr. White, who left his Quantum organisation (but not before being mortally poisoned). He tells Bond to find and protect his daughter, Madeline Swann, before committing suicide. From there, Bond travels to the clinic where Swann works, and rescues her from Hinx and his Spectre goons. Q also tags along, using the ring from before to discover that the villains from the last three films were, in fact, being controlled by Spectre. From there (again), the two head to a hotel in Tangier, Morocco, where Mr. White hid a secret room with information on a secret Spectre base in the desert. They get there by train, fighting off Hinx along the way.

At the desert base, Bond and Swann are greeted by the leader of Spectre, now named Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld announces to Bond that he was the mastermind behind the events in the previous movies. He captures and attempts to torture Bond, but Bond escapes and torches the place. Back in London, Bond returns to join forces with M and their other ex-MI6 friends, in order to stop the Nine Eyes program from going online. M and Q succeed in doing so, with C accidentally dying, to boot. Meanwhile, Bond and Swann are captured and taken to the old MI6 building (the one from Goldeneye on), which is about to be demolished. Bond rescues Swann, escapes the building in time, and shoots down Blofeld's helicopter. As Blofeld crawls out of the wreckage, he is arrested by M, leaving Bond to ride off with Swann.

The one word I would use to describe Spectre is "redundant". It tackles a bunch of themes already addressed by previous movies. Most notably, there's the question of whether or not the 00 agents are necessary in today's intelligence climate, which was already answered by the very last movie before this. Although, the NSA leaks from 2013 arguably make this discussion more relevant this time around. Apart from all that, there are many plot points from, and other references the rest of the series, almost to the degree of Die Another Day. And Spectre doesn't even have the excuse of being a milestone celebration! I mean, who commemorates a 53rd anniversary as a special occasion? And it's not just within the Bond franchise -- at a basic level, the plot is virtually identical to that of the recent Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. It even has scenes in Austria, Morocco, and London, to boot! Intentional or not, it sure was savvy of Paramount to move their movie's release up to the summer, instead of trying to compete with Spectre in November.

Also, I can't help noticing how many funny moments there are in this movie. The highlight of humour has to be the early car chase between Bond and Hinx, where the former tries and fails to use his car's gadgets, and later on gets blocked by an old man in a Fiat. They stand out because of the more serious portrayal of James Bond during Daniel Craig's tenure, and this very movie is no exception. Arguably, this just makes the humour funnier, as the jokes' juxtaposition against the rest of the movie's hard-edged tone offers effective contrast. I don't know about you, but I'd take that over a hundred Roger Moore one-liners. Quality over quantity, people.

Speaking as a longtime James Bond fan, Spectre left me more confused than anything. The film attempts to retcon into existence a backstory which links all of the Daniel Craig entries together, when they worked well enough without it. (Although I will say, the involvement of the Spectre group would make Silva's escape and assassination plot from Skyfall quite a bit more plausible.) Writers, just because you can use the Spectre name to replace whatever you were building beforehand doesn't mean you should! But all the same, it doesn't exactly bring those other movies down; it just gives the impression that the writers were making up stuff as they went along. So, is Spectre still a worthwhile film? Yes, actually. The action setpieces are brilliant, the big reveal is built up well, and its musings on the role of intelligence in today's world are still relevant. So yeah, the fourth-film curse probably does apply here: it may be the worst Daniel Craig 007 film, but by no means is it truly bad.

The Call: 75% (B-)

Indie-Cember 2: Never Alone

Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)

• Publisher: E-Line Media 
• Developer: Upper One Games 
• Release: 
• PC / PlayStation 4 / XBox One, 18 November 2014 
• Wii U, 25 June 2015 
• Genre: 2D Action/Puzzle 
• Players: 1-2 Co-op 
• Cost: US$15

Previously on Indie-Cember, I reviewed Go! Go! Nippon!, a dating-sim visual novel which would totally have been a generic addition to its genre were it not for the context of exploring a foreign culture. And because I have suddenly decided to arrange my reviews this month in some sort of narrative flow, I shall take on Never Alone, which does the same thing in the context of a platform-puzzler. ...Well, shoot, that seems to have given away my opinion on the game right off the bat, but stick around and I'll try to explain myself.

Never Alone takes place in the world of the Iñupiat, an Inuit society living in northern Alaska. The heroine of this story is a young Iñupiat lady named Nuna, who goes out hunting one day and gets chased by a polar bear, only to be saved by a white arctic fox, with whom she goes out on adventures of some sort. As you play through their adventures of some sort, you switch control between Nuna and Fox on the fly, as you utilize their differring abilities to solve platforming puzzles and move forward. Nuna can push blocks and, once acquired, throw her bola to hit distant targets, whereas Fox can climb certain walls and call on spirits to serve as platforms. The puzzles are no more complex than in, say, the Lego Star Wars games. A co-operative mode is also available if you have a friend handy.

Some passages require the abilities of both characters,
such as Fox making rope spirits appear for Nuna to swing on.

I'm not sure the controls are firing on all cylinders, however. Whichever character happens to be controlled by the computer can be a little sluggish in following your character's movements. It's almost as if the game was trying to coerce you into playing co-op, eh? Another specific gripe I have is how you throw Nuna's bola by holding the right control stick opposite the direction you want to aim in, and flick it across to throw. I found this a very imprecise mechanic at all but the shortest ranges. Honestly, it's at least as bad as the aiming controls in Yoshi's Island, admit it. And sometimes, you have to do so while you're being chased by someone or something, and given that you'll only have one or two spare attempts to hit your target, the aiming becomes a severe liability at all but the shortest ranges. At least you have infinite lives, checkpoints are frequent, and the overall pace of gameplay is quite leisurely, so it never feels too stressful. Also, as I was playing the PC version, I got stuck with a bug where I ended up controlling both characters at once, rendering the game impassable early on. This bug has been acknowledged by the developers, who have posted a solution here. I don't know if this is true for everyone, but considering the persnickety nature of PC gaming, I feel I should bring this to your attention.

Never Alone is based on lands in the real-world Arctic, so naturally the setting is going to deal with a lot of ice and snow. But, as we learned from Frozen, it is easy to make that sort of thing look pretty. And despite it all, some of the chapters nonetheless manage to stand out in terms of the sites and sights they present. For example, one takes place inside a giant ice whale, and another takes place on a cliffside village during an aurora borealis. Granted, part of the notability of these levels comes from the mechanics they introduce. The ice whale part introduces swimming (in which Nuna and Fox can never drown, as commented on by the narrator... I'm serious), whereas the other level I mentioned features aurora monsters which follow looping paths and must be avoided, lest Nuna and/or Fox suffer death by snatching. So it looks like I've solved the mystery of why each of these levels were memorable despite all of them taking place in the same biome. The soundtrack is ambient and, together with the setting and the relaxed pace of gameplay, does a great job of building the feeling that you are... well, not alone, because that would make a lie out of the title.

The game's setting is pretty much all ice and snow,
but some chapters mix things up visually.

The story is narrated at certain points by a storyteller in the Iñupiaq language (subtitled in English, of course), sometimes without breaking the flow of play. There are cutscenes, of course, but most of them are presented in a quasi-animated, leather scrimshaw style, as if to mimic styles of art that are popular up there. But those aren't the only cultural ties that Never Alone boasts. Throughout the game, you can find owls which will unlock video clips, called Insights, to play at your leisure. These Insights are mini-documentaries, only a couple of minutes each, about some Iñupiat cultural feature. These range from their unique beliefs to facets of their everyday lives, and all of them have to do with something that happens in the game. Indeed, members of the Iñupiat community helped write this game, and as such it really feels like those people are sharing themselves with the gaming world. It is for that reason that for all its insubstantiality, I can't stay mad at the game.

At first I was going to liken Never Alone to DLC Quest, in that it's an ordinary 2D platformer buoyed only by its context. But upon further reflection, I think Papo y Yo would be a more fitting comparison. It's simple, relying on just a few mechanics for most of its puzzles, and it's heavily steeped in a foreign culture and presented with great imagination. Either way, it's amazing the difference a little context makes. Without any of the trimmings of its setting, Never Alone would just be another puzzle-platformer with no replay value and not even a lot of first-play value. Also, US$15 is a bit much for an indie game, especially one this short. But if you could take just a couple of hours out of your time to breeze through this game and watch all the Insights, you might just walk away feeling enriched.

Positives:
+ Puzzle platforming with a patient pace.
+ Unique and distinct level designs, even within the confines of an ice/snow theme.
+ Wonderfully ambient and emotive.
+ The cultural insight videos enrich the story.

Negatives:
- Clumsy controls, especially with computer-controlled characters.
- Only about two hours long, with almost no replay value.

Controls: 2 bolas out of 5
Design: 3 bolas out of 5
Writing: 5 bolas out of 5
Graphics: 4 bolas out of 5

Value: 2 bolas out of 5
The Call: 70% (C+)

Indie-Cember 2: Go! Go! Nippon!

Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~

• Publisher: MangaGamer 
• Developer: Overdrive 
• Release: PC, 30 September 2011 
• Genre: Visual Novel 
• Players: 1 
• Price: US$10

After reviewing two Roguelikes back-to-back, even if they are really good Roguelikes, I feel like I need a break. Or, perhaps a vacation. And me being the egregious otaku I am, if I could go anywhere in the world on holiday, it would be Japan. What can I say, it is relevant to my interests. Well, realistically speaking, that would require so much preparation that Indie-Cember would be long over by the time I'd get going. So in the meantime, I've come up with a solution to address both my wishes. I'm going to review Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~, a visual novel about taking a vacation in said country.

Now, this review will be tricky as I'm nowhere near being an expert on the genre. I haven't even played any visual novels before this, unless you count the Ace Attorney series, which I don't because A) there's more to the gameplay than just scrolling through text boxes, and B) the underage girls in those games never whip their jugs out (thank God). But in terms of how we in the West associate with that genre, namely the "dating sim" type of visual novel, then Go! Go! Nippon! was what took away my metaphorical virginity.

In Go! Go! Nippon!, you, the player character, are off on a week's holiday in Tokyo, Japan, escorted by two sisters named Makoto and Akira. Makoto is the gentle, voluptuous older sister, and Akira is the tempermental, flat-chested younger sister. They stick rigidly close to the "yamato nadeshiko" and "tsundere" character types respectively. Although, if you stick around you might get to learn some secrets about them which, without wishing to spoil, bring in the feels like a... Well, I was going to say "tsunami" but that would've been tasteless. I'll get back to you on that comparison.

Makoto (left) and Akira (right) stick close to their character archetypes... at first. (ver. 2015 shown.)

So if Go! Go! Nippon! can't innovate on its characters, what does it do to stand out amongst so many dating sims? Context, context, context. As I stated before, this game is about exploring various real-world sites around Tokyo and abroad, with Makoto and/or Akira as your tour guides (they even made little uniforms for themselves, how cute). How it works is for each of the first three days, you get to pick from six (eleven in the 2015 version, more on that later) destinations to visit for that day. Your guide(s) will describe the various sites and sights of Tokyo districts like Ginza, Akihabara, Shibuya, Shinjuku, et cetera. They take you to different landmarks and restaurants, and spout tidbits of trivia about them all along the way. As somebody who has already been around Japan more than once, I may not have learned all that much from this game alone, but you probably will.

Apart from choosing your destination for each day, there's nothing much in the way of answering multiple-choice questions or anything like that, which would give you a chance to project your personality for the virtual characters. If I may be permitted to use my imagination for a bit, I would have put in a handful of multiple-choice questions, where the answer you choose would elicit a different reaction from whom you were speaking to, but not immediately trigger a different scenario to play. But each response would build up an invisible counter, or set of counters, resulting in a nuanced picture of your personality that the characters can respond differently to. Again, I don't know if this a standard trend in this genre, so I don't know how valid it is for me to be complaining about its absence.

Then, after three days of free-wheeling fun, the plot gets a bit railroad-y as the girls take you on an overnight excursion to Kyoto. The same tourism approach is still in place for this chapter, and it's fun to see both Makoto and Akira play off each other, but my problem is that the Kyoto part is always the same for every game you start. There are many other places in Japan they could've done in Kyoto's place, so why couldn't they have done that like they did with the Tokyo chapter? After that, you get one of two endings based on which sister you ended up taking with you during the first three days. At the very least, these endings reveal hidden depths of the girls, and with them bringing down the feels like a... ton of bricks, that's what I wanted to say before! Yeah, that'll work.

This game depicts numerous real-world locations around Japan. (ver. 2015 shown.)

Visual-novels are some of the most bare-bones games in terms of graphical presentation, but Go! Go! Nippon! is even more deficient in this arena (I assume). It has a nasty habit of breaking the "show, don't tell" rule of storytelling, as sometimes the characters will talk about something specific in the area that isn't shown in the background art. And some places don't even have background art, but just cut to a picture of the sky! The character portraits don't move at all either (unless you're running the 2015 version) There are little touches I do like, such as the fast-forward button and the two language tracks displayed at once. Having both English and Japanese text together means that you could even learn bits of the language if you'd care to study it, isn't that cool? (The 2015 version adds more language options, namely Chinese and romanized Japanese as of this article.) The translation is fine, apart from a few instances of "om nom nom", because... funny?

Before I end this review, I wish to inform you that there was recently a major update made to this game. So I shall. *ahem* There was recently a major update made to this game. Called Go! Go! Nippon! ver. 2015, this downloadable upgrade adds five Tokyo excursions to the 6 from the base game, effectively doubling the content. They also added widescreen display support, as well as "animations" which "morph" the character portraits to simulate the characters' chests rising and falling with their breath, or their hair waving in the wind. Now, this is paid DLC, and I said before, it's pretty sad when you have to pay extra for a decent experience. But I'm not mad, because both the base game and the expansion are cheap enough (you can get a bundle of both for US$15). It's not like some $60 multiplayer-only FPS with only, like, four maps and a $50 season pass on top of that! Because that would just be stupid! ...Right?

So, has Go! Go! Nippon! sold me on the visual novel genre? Eh, not really. In terms of its characters, it doesn't evolve much beyond the standard archetypes, but that's not to say I didn't develop some sort of emotional connection to a degree. The real reason to try this game, if any, is for its Japanese tourism trivia, so if you're planning to go there yourself or it's just an interest, it won't hurt to check it out. It would have been stronger, though, if I had more say in how my player-character acted with them. I do see a lot of potential in this genre, however, that wasn't realised by Go! Go! Nippon!. If you readers know of any better ones out there, I'd be willing to check them out.

Positives:
+ Lots of interesting facts to learn about Japan.
+ A satisfactory Japanese-to-English translation.
+ Give it time, and you can form a real attachment to these virtual girls.

Negatives:
- Breaks the "show, don't tell" rule on numerous occasions.
- Not much in the way of player choice.
- Too little content (unless you buy the 2015 upgrade).

Design: 3 tours out of 5 (Base game) / 4 tours out of 5 (ver. 2015)
Writing: 4 tours out of 5
Graphics: 2 tours out of 5 (Base game) / 4 tours out of 5 (ver. 2015)
Value: 2 tours out of 5 (Base game) / 3 tours out of 5 (ver. 2015)
The Call: 60% (C-) (Base game) / 75% (B-) (ver. 2015)

Game Review: Super Star Wars

Super Star Wars

• Publisher: JVC / Lucasarts 
• Developer: Sculptured Software 
• Release: 
• Super Nintendo, November 1992 
• PlayStation 4 / PS Vita, 17 November 2015 
• Genre: 2D Action (Platformer, Run & Gun)
• Players: 1 
• Save: None (SNES) 

America has come down once again with a case of Star Wars fever this year, owing no doubt to the upcoming release of the new movie, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Therefore, in terms of video games, the talk of the town is on the new Star Wars Battlefront for the PlayStation 2 and XBox... sorry, I meant the other Star Wars Battlefront for the PlayStation 4 and XBox One. DO YOU SEE HOW ANNOYING THIS GETS!? Title aside, Star Wars Battlefront (the new one, that is) is yet another of those multiplayer-only shooters in the vein of Titanfall and Evolve, which thought they could get away without any single-player story content but still sell at full price. On its own, it's simply bound to get old fast. In comparison to the old Battlefront duology, each of those games being stuffed with enough features to choke a Sarlacc, it is unforgivable. I haven't played EA's Battlefront yet, nor do I ever plan to, but I'll end this rant by saying the game can go take a proton torpedo up its exhaust port, if you see what I mean.

Fortunately, I have something else to fall back on, as the powers that be saw fit to release ports of Super Star Wars for the PS4 and PS Vita. I'm a bit curious as to this decision, as the original game came out in 1992 for the Super NES, a non-Sony console. Indeed, it used to be available on the Wii's Virtual Console shop, along with its sequels based on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but those have since been taken down due to an expired licence or something. Well, whatever you're playing it on, you're getting more or less a straight adaptation of the original Star Wars film. A young man, Luke Skywalker, comes across a pair of droids carrying plans for the Death Star, a planet-destroying space station built by the Galactic Empire, and he must bring them safely to the Rebel Alliance. But you already knew that.

Much of the game is played as a jump-and-shoot platformer, similar to the Contra series. Super Star Wars makes some welcome evolutions to Contra's formula, however. Your blaster fires automatically when you hold down the fire button, and while doing so, you stay locked in place so you can aim in multiple directions without also moving around. And perhaps most importantly, you can take more than one hit per life! Yes, you have a health meter in this game, and not only are health pickups plentiful, with little ones coming out of nearly every enemy you kill, but you can extend it with "Health Sword" powerups (because the health meter is drawn like a lightsaber, I guess...). Other pickups include blaster upgrades, invincibility shields, thermal detonator bombs, and Darth Vader heads which doubles the points you earn for a limited time. Over the course of the game, Luke gains a lightsaber in addition to his blaster, and later on you can choose to play as Han Solo or Chewbacca instead of Luke, who lack the lightsaber (and the awesome, almost overpowered spinny-jump slice that comes with it), but start off with a blaster upgrade and/or a longer health bar.

By holding the fire button, you can aim in multiple directions.

But don't think for a second that this is an easy game. It may look like you have a long health bar even without upgrades, and enemies don't seem to do much damage, but there are a lot of enemies. And if you do lose all your health, all your upgrades go along with it. I do hate when games do this, because it makes it that much harder to get back on track. Furthermore, enemies can push you around easily, which makes what few spots of precision platforming all the more treacherous and unfair. Not helping is the semi-isometric perspective the walls and floors are drawn in, making it a bit tough to determine where each platform begins and ends. Oh yeah, and there's no mercy invincibility, either. That seems to be a running theme with 2D platformer games I've chosen to review. Also, there's a timer counting down as you play each level, but before you start panicking, you don't die when it expires (cf. Mario and Sonic), you just don't get a time bonus at the end. Granted, points are important in this game, as you're given extra lives at certain milestones (cf. Sonic again), and trust me, you'll need them.

And then the levels themselves offer their own flavours of unnecessary challenge. The first major wall of difficulty comes in the form of the fourth level, where you're inside the Sandcrawler searching for R2-D2. About half-way through, just after the only checkpoint in the level, you have to get past these laser grids which block you when you get close. You're supposed to get past these by sliding (hold Down and press the jump button), but it's more of an art than a science, and you're liable to get hurt by at least one, if not all of them. And then there's a surprise waiting for you when you get down to the final floor: instant-kill lava, or sand, or something. Normally you can make longer and higher jumps by holding Up and pressing the jump button, but don't do it here or you'll just hit the ceiling and lose distance instead of gaining it. And you're expected to fight a boss over the stuff. And if you do die here, you go all the way back to the middle of the level, just before the aforementioned laser gates. The Sandcrawler scene is not the only tough level in the game -- the one right afterwards has some precision platforming which has claimed many of my lives -- but it does set the tone for the rest of the game.

Vehicle sections punctuate the gameplay experience.

That's not exactly true, however, as some levels break up the side-scrolling action by way of 3D vehicle sections. In these levels, you pilot a landspeeder or X-Wing fighter and gun down a specific number of targets before you're allowed to move on. They use the same perspective-scrolling technology (a.k.a. Mode 7) seen in games like Pilotwings, F-Zero, and Super Mario Kart. It shows effort, which I like, and if I'm in a good mood I would call it fun. But the vehicle controls are a bit too floaty for me to really get into it. It's almost as if these things ride on air or something! (It's funny because that's exactly the case.) And riddle me this: how come we can only change direction by spending jet fuel? The L and R buttons go unused during these levels; if you felt you had no other options, surely they could've been used to turn or strafe, right? Super Star Wars only offers three of these levels, but it's nice to have that variety. I'd say you'll never get bored playing this game, but then I reflect upon how long and monotonous the other levels are and I'm forced to retract that statement.

The soundtrack is appropriately John Williams-y, and the opening cutscene recreates the movie's famous text-scroll admirably. Unfortunately, all the other cutscenes are just scrolling pictures and text; given what the Super Nintendo can do with manipulating images, I felt that more could've been done in this regard. As for in-game storytelling, the levels are all based on events from the movie, albeit expanded for action's sake. As I said with GoldenEye 007, it's always nice to add content to a story you're adapting. So for simply being an adaptation of the source material, Super Star Wars does its job well, and for being a jump-and-shoot platformer, it also does its job well. I can understand if its tough, but mostly fair, difficulty gets to you and prevents you from enjoying it in full. In the end, it's a pretty good game, but play through it again? I'd rather kiss a wookie!

Positives:
+ Subtle improvements to the jump-and-shoot formula.
+ A faithful adaptation of the source material.
+ Occasional vehicle stages.

Negatives:
- Generally intense difficulty.
- Overly long and repetitive levels.
- Floaty controls in the occasional vehicle stages.

Controls: 3 Health Swords out of 5
Design: 3 Health Swords out of 5
Graphics: 4 Health Swords out of 5
Sound: 4 Health Swords out of 5
Value: 3 Health Swords out of 5
The Call: 70% (C+)

You might also like: Contra 3: The Alien Wars, Mega Man X, Super Metroid

Super Star Wars was followed by two sequels: Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in 1993, and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in 1994, both based on the films they were named after, obviously. There aren't enough differences in those games to warrant their own reviews, but I would like to say a few words on them now while I have the opportunity. All those sequels are equally as hard as the original Super Star Wars, but add a password system for saving progress, which is good, and ditch the timer system, which doesn't really matter. Also, Super Empire Strikes Back introduces Force powers, but they're integrated in a pretty stupid way. You can only get them in one level, during the Dagobah swamp scene, and you can only find them by using the "flying" Force power, which you have to pick up in the previous stage! At least you start out with the lot in Super Return of the Jedi, but why bother when you can play as Chewie, who has a spin attack which refuels automatically and keeps you invincible while it's active?  Remember: let the wookie win.  Either way, if you got through the first Super Star Wars intact and found it fun, try these games out as well. But not Battlefront; that game can go deep-throat a lightsaber for all I care.

Game Review: Time Crisis II

Time Crisis II

• Publisher: Namco 
• Developer: Namco 
• Release: 
• Arcade, 1998 
• PlayStation 2, 1 October 2001 
• Genre: 3D Action (Rail Shooter) 
• Players: 1-2 
• Save: Memory Card (74KB) 

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed the first game in the Time Crisis series. Despite its flaws such as the steep difficulty curve, I find it sad to remark that it's become increasingly hard to find in arcades these days. The same cannot be said of its sequel, Time Crisis II, which launched in 1997 or 1998 and is still relatively common to this day. Now, how could that be the case? And why did Namco wait until the PlayStation 2 came out before making a home port? On the off chance I'll be able to answer those questions, let's see what's changed.

Our excuse plot this time around concerns an industrialist named Ernesto Diaz, who has just finished launching a network of communication satellites into space, only as a cover for sending nuclear weapons up there as well. This time around, VSSE sends two agents (named Keith Martin and Robert Baxter) to stop him in his tracks, kicking off a series tradition of colour-coded heroes in red (for Player 1) and blue (P2) outfits. There's also an allied informant named Christy Ryan who tips off VSSE about the evil plot, but she gets captured in the opening cutscene and doesn't show up again until the final chapter. This game doesn't nearly pass the Bechdel Test, is what I'm trying to get across. Oh, and Wild Dog returns, this time demoted to the rank of mini-boss.

TCII finally adds a visual warning for shots that are about to hit you. (PS2 version.)

But where TCII fails to innovate in terms of story, it does so in gameplay. At long last, there is a visual aid to warn you when an enemy shot is about to hit you, in the form of a red ring called a "Crisis Sight", as the game puts it. It only lasts for half a second or so, but when it is on screen it stands out, and let's face it, it's better than nothing. Oh, and if you remember struggling to keep your time limit up in the old game, you're going to love this: instead of carrying over throughout the whole game, your time limit resets for each scene, and if it runs out, you merely lose one life instead of the whole game. Also, your gun's magazine holds nine bullets instead of the six from before. That's something else, I guess. I know this doesn't have much to do with difficulty, but TCII replaces its predecessor's time-based ranking with a more traditional scoring system. You get point bonuses by landing shots in quick succession, landing a series of shots without missing, and by landing shots on the hard-to-find gold-uniformed enemies who gave time bonuses in the last game. Shooting an ally character, by mistake or otherwise, docks you a few points instead of a whole life as in other rail shooters, which again helps make for a less stressful experience than usual.

The story mode is once again on the short side, clocking in at 15 to 20 minutes, and combined with the more forgiving mechanics, it makes the game feel like less of a challenge than before. The PlayStation 2 version fails to include any additional campaigns, as with some other games in the series. That's not to say TCII lacks any replay value, however. To get the full experience, you'll want to play on both the P1 and P2 sides, as they will occasionally branch off into different paths and converge later on, giving the different players chances to see scenes from different angles.

As for the home version, there are numerous unlocks to be had. For your first play-through, you'll have a limited number of continues, but this can be extended by either beating the game or using up all your continues, until you eventually unlock the Free Play option. By beating certain score and/or time targets, you can unlock alternate fire modes similar to the special weapons in later games. On top of that, there also shooting-gallery minigames to be unlocked, some of them based on Namco's old gun-game machines, and a series of "Crisis Mission" challenges which you'd be mad to attempt to earn all the medals on.

Both the first and second-player sides branch off to different paths at times. (PS2 version.)

Speaking of the home version, it is backwards-compatible with the PlayStation's GunCon, but also came bundled with a new light-gun model designed for the PS2: the GunCon 2. The GunCon 2 adds a few extra buttons, including one below the handle if you want to pantomime reloading the magazine, along with a D-pad up along the back. Even though TCII doesn't use these extra buttons for any specific features, the D-pad in particular is a very ergonomic option when used as a button to hide and reload with. As for re-creating the two-player experience of the arcades, your options are either split-screen or to link up two PS2 consoles by their iLink (a.k.a. Firewire) ports. Don't remember iLink? That's probably because it was abandoned by later models of the PS2, even before the redesigned version from 2004. Besides, this option would require you to own two TV monitors, two PS2s, two copies of the game, and two GunCons. If you're that intent on re-creating the arcade setup, you're probably better off buying an original arcade cabinet.

If I had to guess why, I'd say the lasting appeal of this game owes itself to the inclusion of a two-player option. The Time Crisis II arcade cabinet basically consists of two side-by-side machines which can either run independently or in co-operative multiplayer. Think about it from the arcade operator's point of view: you can get more income from a game that supports two people than with one, i.e. the first Time Crisis. As for the home port, it's nice that Namco went above and beyond the call, and added unlockable content to pad out the game's short running time. But TCII's lasting legacy is how it brought its series to a more accessible level of difficulty, and whether it makes the game more fun or too easy to be fun is a call best left for you, the player.

Positives:
+ New mechanics and rules make the game more accessible.
+ The two-player co-op mode.
+ The new GunCon 2, designed for the PlayStation 2 version.

Negatives:
- The new mechanics do take away most of the challenge from the first game.
- Still on the short side.
- Imperfect multiplayer options on the home version.

Control: 3 crisis sights out of 5
Design: 4 crisis sights out of 5
Graphics: 3 crisis sights out of 5
Sound: 3 crisis sights out of 5
Value: 3 crisis sights out of 5
The Call: 75% (B-)

Game Review: Time Crisis: Project Titan

Time Crisis: Project Titan
Publisher: Namco
Developer: Flying Tiger Development
Release: PlayStation, 20 June 2001
Genre: 3D Action (Rail Shooter)
Players: 1
Save: Memory Card, 1 Block

A lot had changed in the Time Crisis franchise between the release of the first game and the Summer of 2001, the general release date of our current subject. In the arcades, the sequel Time Crisis II made multiple long-lasting changes to the series formula, mostly for the better, and the spin-off Crisis Zone shook things up in its own direction as well. But neither of these games were given home ports in a timely fashion. Maybe Namco was just waiting for something better than the PlayStation to run them on, as both games were eventually ported to the PlayStation 2, another development in that aforementioned time frame. But before those games came to be, Namco and third-party developer Flying Tiger gave PSone owners one more run with the gun, with the console-only sequel Time Crisis: Project Titan.

Project Titan once again stars Richard Miller, the leather-jacket-clad one-man-army from the first game. This time around, he has been framed for the assassination of the president of Caruba, a fictional Caribbean island, and has 48 hours to clear his name. You won't be able to get a handle on the stakes outside of the opening cutscene, however. Without wishing to spoil, the game has a nasty habit of discarding plot points at the end of each of its four acts, as if this inanimate work of software had somehow come down with a case of ADD. With wishing to spoil, however, the real assassin (who looks nothing like Miller, by the way) pops up for the boss fight in act 2 and is abruptly killed in the following cutscene, at the end of act 3 we learn the president of not-Aruba was alive all along, and the fourth and final act deals with a titanium-enhanced army led by -- of course, -- Wild Dog, which is plonked upon us with virtually no foreshadowing.

The story fails to live up to its potential.

Oh, and the first act takes place on a yacht owned by Kantaris, the villainess arms dealer from the first game's second story, but it neither resolves anything from that past plot, nor does it advance the current plot in any way. It's just a total waste of a level which could have been better served showing Richard on the run from the not-Cuban authorities, for example. And no, getting to see Kantaris's low-polygon body in a bikini top does not help matters. While I'm digressing on the subject of graphics, Project Titan attempts a more detailed look than the first game, and it works for the most part. One of its nicer touches is that enemies in each of the four acts sport their own sets of costumes, each still retaining the series' trademark colour-coding by rank.

So if the story's a giant waste of time, does the gameplay manage any of the heavy lifting? Project Titan revives the rules set by the first game, meaning that you have to keep your time limit up lest you suffer death by the clock, and you have to guess when enemies will land direct hits with virtually no indication, lest you suffer death by loss of hitpoints. There is a new mechanic added from the original game, where if you can land a combo of 30 hits on enemies without missing, you'll earn an extra life. It's hard enough to get so that it doesn't break the game by offering you too many lives, but considering that none of the other Time Crisis games offer any methods of restoring player-character life, it's better than nothing. Another change occurs in the boss fights, where you can switch to different cover positions while hiding. Mostly, this is used to follow the boss as he, or it, moves from place to place. Given its limited implementation, this isn't much more than a quick gimmick, although variations on this system were eventually incorporated into later games, namely Time Crisis 4 (Arcade/PlayStation 3, 2005) and 5 (Arcade, 2015).

In boss fights, you have to follow your targets
by switching cover positions.

Project Titan once again supports the GunCon light-gun controller, and once again offers the same degree of button customisation. Regular controllers are also supported, and oddly enough, it is here that Project Titan offers its greatest improvements. First of all, it supports the analog sticks on DualShock and other controllers. But more importantly, there is a new lock-on mechanic where if you move your cursor close to an enemy, it will automatically snap to him. It can even follow arms, legs, heads, and other body parts as the targeted character moves around. This system isn't so overpowered that it makes the game feel like it's on autopilot, but it gives anyone the speed to come within shouting distance of the default record times. Yet it was never implemented into any of the other Time Crisis home ports, and that's a real shame.

The story campaign in Project Titan lasts longer than in the original, adding an extra fourth act on top of the usual three (ironically, you have fewer continues to finish the game with than before), but unlike the home version of Time Crisis, there's no additional campaign to pad out the first-play length. With that in mind, the game ends up as a niche title for only a certain kind of Time Crisis fan, namely the kind who seeks out more of the challenge of the original. Anyone weaned on the newer, friendlier entries will get turned off by its tougher conventions, not to mention the relative lack of value. If you are interested in the unforgiving early years of this franchise, I'd recommend you start out with the original Time Crisis home port first. But when you're ready to move on, you wouldn't do too wrongly to make your attack on Titan.  (Lame joke is lame.)

Positives:
+ Retains the challenge of the original.
+ Lock-on system makes the game more playable for controller users.
+ A more detailed graphical style.

Negatives:
- Lousy story, with many dropped plot points.
- Awkward voice acting to match.
- Failed to implement modern conveniences from Time Crisis II.
- Multi-cover system works, but is limited to boss fights.

Control: 4 lock-ons out of 5
Design: 3 lock-ons out of 5
Writing: 2 lock-ons out of 5
Graphics: 5 lock-ons out of 5
Sound: 2 lock-ons out of 5
Value: 2 lock-ons out of 5
The Call: 60% (C-)