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Still Life (2005)
Another honorable effort, but not there yet.
'Still Life' is the 2004 Graphic Adventure computer came from the French developers Microids, and is a sequel to their 2002 game 'Post Mortem'. 'Post Mortem' follows the exploits of the American private detective Gus McPherson as he attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding his new client. 'Still Life' relocates the action to two separate locales and decades: modern day Chicago and 1929 Prague. Gus McPherson returns for the 1929 segments, while for the modern day segments his granddaughter Victoria, an agent for the FBI, is our main character.
Beginning in modern day Chicago, Victoria is investigating a series of murders of young women around the city, and the first task is to help the forensic scientist gather any evidence you can find, and to help photograph what's left of the latest victim. With not much to go on and her boss on her case, you direct Victoria to take a little break at her father's place, and while there, she discovers her grandfather's journals regarding a case strangely similar in to her own. This leads on to the player taking control of Gus McPherson as he travels across Prague investigating the murder of several prostitutes. Thus the game continues, alternating between Victoria's case and Gus's, and over the course of the game you uncover secrets linking both sets of murders, taking place over seventy years apart.
The game has a nice atmosphere, dark and foreboding, and the murder sequences and crime scene bring such stylish crime thriller films like 'Seven' to mind. The fact that Victoria looks a lot like Angelina Jolie, herself starring in several similar thrillers like 'The Bone Collector' and 'Taking Lives', adds to this feel. Both Prague and Chicago are depicted in a film noir style, filled with darkened streets and cluttered, dilapidated buildings housing terrible secrets. With the exception of the main characters, the other character designs are rather cartoon-ish, considering how much attention to detail the main characters and the settings have, but this is a minor point with the visuals, which are overall nicely captured. The cut-scenes occurring in each of the seven chapters of the game owe a lot to films like 'Seven' in their stylish execution, not only in terms of looks but also how it is edited and stylised. In the actual gameplay, the pre-rendered backgrounds retain this attention to detail, and it also allows for the game to be run on less powerful computers, which is a nice added bonus.
While the story is intriguing enough to continue with the gaming, it is not that great, leading to situations that either we have seen before in the films the game is emulating, or so out of the blue and left-field you do not know how they came to be. A lot of events and clues are offered but only a few of them are actually followed up or even referenced again. This is not because of playing the game to a successful conclusion either; the player simply is not given many choices but to follow the one path. There is not that much interactivity in the game, with few places to go in the atmospheric locations, few items to pick up for your inventory and few characters to speak to, and even fewer characters to actually see. The streets seem deserted for the most part, and police stations seem to be run by only a handful of characters. Dialogue choices, where available, are limited to asking an important story-based question or a miscellaneous, everyday question. There is not that much variety here. Key events in the game are depicted in cut-scenes instead of the player actually experiencing them or discovering them in a natural way, and this is especially true towards the end of the game. The dialogue ranges from being decently written, cast and performed to the other side of the spectrum, without dropping any real clangers at least. Sadly, this means that rather than being memorable for whatever reason, it just makes things by the book and dull. Occasional moments of interest are not really capitalised upon. The realism that is promised early in the game seems to be forgotten later on.
That is not to say this is even remotely a bad game. It is just disappointing that yet another modern Graphic Adventure game has gone the way of so many others, of promising much and putting in a respectable effort, but missing out on several areas. You can forgive a game a lot of its faults if there is at least the illusion of the game being limitless. 'Still Life' is among those games that could have been so much more, but it is just too limited in its execution. It is still an honourable effort and worth playing. The sequel was made a few years later, and hopefully this will expand a lot more in a story and set of characters with so much potential.
Transformers (2007)
Not one for Transformers Fans...
Transformers tries to be the big Epic of the year. It has incredible visuals, a multi-character storyline, and a lot of spectacle amongst other things. All of this in a running time of 2hr 45min, a respectable running time for an epic.
However, all this adds up to just a big, dumb action movie in the end, miles away from the original animated series, and compared to it, this film is very disappointing. The plots and characters are all over the place, losing track of some characters and plot lines here and there, all to make sure all the spectacle scenes can take place without any real logic or reasoning behind them. You can tell that at the pre-production stage the actions scenes were carefully written and choreographed, and the rest (characters, plot, basic story, logic) were added in as an afterthought. While the CGI is okay, the character designs aren't really good at all, the Transformers looking like a mess of mechanics instead of the amazing alien characters they once were.
And this is all spread out to almost 3 hours too! Big, dumb action movies are never supposed to be that long! In the end, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg just decided to make their own film out of the franchise, they don't really care about the franchise one bit. Even so, it could have been so much better than this. It could have been a decent 90 minute Sci-fi actioner and everyone would have been happy. And if they actually took the story and it's potential seriously, this could have been the Sci-Fi epic that they clearly think it is.
Alone in the Dark (2005)
Two tasks for future filmmakers:
Task a) When the current distribution rights for this film lapse, get another company to pick it up. Once there, change the title to whatever you want and remove the 'based on the video game...' credit (notice in the credits neither the company or the original creator are mentioned...), thus making it into an entirely new film, unrelated to the existing game series.
Task b) Purchase the rights to the game series, play each game, and create a whole new script, faithful to the spirit of the games in story and atmosphere. Bring back selected members of the crew and all of the principal cast (except for Tara Reid - just cast anyone in her intended role, no one will notice), work on the project for a few months and you will have a REAL adaptation of the game, and financial and critical success are yours!
In short, this is basically a bad but inoffensive action horror film, made worse and offensive by trying to be linked to a great and historic game series (no 'Alone in the Dark' games, no 'Resident Evil'). Actors Dorff and Slater, highly talented, highly unappreciated, and this doesn't help matters!
F - DO OVER!