Control Asylum

Yep, another post in which I will complain about the controls of Batman. In this case, this is one particular fight that just ticked me off. It's a fight with inmates while going after Killer Croc, so that's enough said about that.

You need to stealth around in a different way than the usual 'sit on the gargoyles' because reasons. What this means is that you don't have the usual hiding spots, and indeed can be spotted quite easily. And they have guns, so you need to sneak and not get caught or you die. A lot. As I did.

First problem: damn geometry. Often I tried to jump away, or over the fence, but I couldn't. Partly because it detected a corner I'm sure I was missing, but also because the controls. To run, you use Space. To climb things, you use Space. If you are near a fence, and run up to it, you will continue to run into it until you've stopped and repressed Space so that Batman then climbs. This means nothing is fluid, and you get trapped too easily and shot.

Another problem is animation. Quite a few times I got locked into an animation and then got shot. No I-frames here, Indeed, you can take full damage and not be able to do anything about it because you are opening a grate, or putting someone down, or anything.

Problem three is the time to get back to the fight. When you die, you have an animation from a bad guy while the game reloads from the checkpoint, which you could skip after a point. Then you need to travel back to the fight, have a cut scene (which fortunately you can skip) and then open the door and (for me at least) give them a minute to get into position so you don't die immediately when you go through (although given randomness, sometimes I still did). All that means it's some time between death and reattempt. Annoying.

It just got to the point of letting myself die rather than try to deal with this crap. I did EVENTUALLY get past that fight, so it's on with the story, but this just exemplifies that this is otherwise a good game, but there are a few spots where you just hit a brick wall because of some stupid combination of mechanics and stop having fun.

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Starship Lee

With the passing of the legend, let's bask in his career and check out... Starship Invasions!

An alien race comes to earth 'cos their sun's going to blow up, and decide earth is the place they want. However, there is already a race of aliens here, so they destroy most of them, except one ship that goes on to pick up a UFO researcher and a computer expert. Then there's more running around, and a big battle between ships and then the good guys win?

The effects in this are horrendous. This is buying straight into the Flying Saucer books, and I think they were inspired by the UFOs in the Usbourne books, because they look straight out of there. Part of this movie is incredibly dark in that the aliens are inspiring people to commit suicide (hey, M. Night, yeah they did that back in 1977!), including one of the "hero"'s wives.

But we are here for Christopher Lee, and he is the captain of the evil aliens. He stalks around the set and gets a lot of voice work in as all the alien talk by mental telepathy, so a lot of shots are them just standing there with voice overs playing. While he is the head evil, he's not trying too hard, and to sum up his experience on this, let's see a picture of him.

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First Alias

I'm shotgunning my way through Alias. Why? Because I haven't seen it before. Well, that's not exactly true. I did see the first few episodes back when it came out, but the slow drop feeding of information as to what's really going on just annoyed me too much to keep up with weekly progression. But when I can run through multiple episodes at a time...

The first episode sets up the premise: Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Gardner) is an agent for SD-6, a branch of the CIA... only, it's not! It's actually a cover for the bad guys, known as The Alliance, and she goes to the real CIA to become a double agent. So each episode is then getting a mission from SD-6, and doing the CIA's counter mission. She ends the first episode by getting some macguffin SD-6 wants, and saying she's in.

Getting an item the bad guys want and getting in that way is a beat that will recur in other episodes. And various groups being The Noun will also happen again. But that's in the future. Here we have the ongoing threat of Sydney's double agent status being under threat, and the slow uncovering of her history and finding out there was more going on than you thought. However that's doled out slowly, although it's not too crazy yet.

The other big set up is the idea that Milo Rimbaldi, a 15th century philosopher who somehow predicted current era technology and set up all sorts of devices and such to be uncovered for a ... thing. This isn't explained in the first season, and I have no idea why it's even in here, this ancient world tech going against the spy world scenario the rest of the series is working on. Hopefully it will be well paid off in the future (spoiler: it's not).

One big schtick they have to keep people watching is ending each episode on a cliffhanger, which is usually resolved in five minutes in the next episode. While it seemed exciting at first, that quickly wears thin.

So, a decent beginning all up, but there's a lot of pieces yet to be placed.

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Arkham Asylum

Yeah, let's get back into playing a full on vidya game, and let's dip into the well received classic Batman: Arkham Asylum.

So far I seem to be about halfway through. Not that you'd know that from my percent complete score, but there are also a ton of collectibles I've not gotten, and plan on getting after completing the story mission. (I hope, if the game lets me.) I know some of the big story points already, but it is quite different seeing it unfold, and I get to experience all the in-between bits of getting from place to place and fighting all the peoples myself.

And I am playing on Normal... and I'm terrible at it. It took me ages to get past Bane, and the controls don't help. My usual fighting style is spam buttons until the mooks are down, but for the mini-bosses you need tactics. And good controls. And what I don't have are good controls. (I'm on PC, using a keyboard.) I indicate direction, and double tap to roll away and WHY DID I JUST JUMP FORWARD INTO THE ATTACK??? Happens many many times. And it doesn't seem to matter which way the camera is point, nor the Manbat himself, he just jumps into damage. That's not making the game fun.

Still, I am slowly getting through it, so back to it!

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The Only

I remember liking this movie a lot. Great effects, good action, what's not to like?

Jet Li is in a multiverse and he's killing himself. Because why not? And as he does so, he gets more powerful. After a neat twist set up of the repeat of the opening scene, we get Good Jet Li against Evil Jet Li, with Jason Statham helping. After a fight scene or three, we get the last second 'no wait, which one is the right one?' and then a happy ending.

Unfortunately, the effects don't really hold up. Obvious CGI all over the place, and it does not look good. And the movie is a lot shorter than I remember, but then that's good in that it doesn't outstay its welcome. The premise is nice (killing selves over the multiverse), although I'm not sure it holds up, in that as people get older their other selves will die and they should become more powerful? And other plot points you aren't supposed to think about.

This was during Jet Li's big screen time, and written and directed by the X-Files pair James Wong and Glen Morgan. At the time, it was a big deal... but it hasn't aged well.

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The 10th Victim

Oh Italian cinema, I will never understand you. But I do like some of the movies you produce. Such as The 10th Victim.

To help with violence, there's the Big Hunt, in which people sign up to kill other people. Some times they are the hunter, but other times they are the victim. We start with the 9th killing by one person, and then she has just one more hunt to go before she gets the big money. And her victim happens to be a rather charming guy. She goes after him, he's not sure about her, they move uncertainly, until at the end when... actually, I'm not sure what happened at the end there...

The two stars are Marcello Mastrolanni, playing Marcello Poletti (it's rather amusing when someone's character is the same name, because you start to wonder if they do that to make it easier, because the actor can't get complicated, or it's just coincidence...). And the other is Ursela Andress, playing the American Caroline Meredith, which even with the voice over she isn't convincing as. As well as pretty actors, we also get a lot of pretty scenery, and lots of location shooting around Rome and Italy.

Still, I'm not sure what to make of it all. But it's definitely something.

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Kung Fury

This is so 80s it hurt. And it's available for free watching on Steam.

A cop gets kung fu powers, and does his job that way. But Hitler comes from the past, and so he must go into the past, but goes to far into the past, and has to back up, and...

That sounds weird, and it is weird. But I watched with a big grin on my face. And it's only 30 minutes! (I see that it was Kickstartered, and if there was a sequel to this, I suspect he would be overwhelmed with monies.)

There's so much packed into this, it's amazing. It flows quickly and gives a lot to play with. And despite some extreme 80s moments, this is well done with the latest tech, especially around Triceracops. (Yeah, that's what I said.)

Anyway, if you haven't yet, go watch it!

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