Rob Stoakes: TOP FIVE GOOD SERIES GONE BAD

Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Reviews

Top Five Good Series Gone Bad

Prologue

Now, if you own a Wii, know a friend who owns a Wii, stood in the same room as a Wii at some point in your life or simply have one working limb, the chances are that you have played Metroid Other M. For those of you who haven’t, you may have noticed that every single person on the earth is, for once, in agreement: Metroid Other M is not liked by a single right-minded person in the world. The general consensus is that it’s a barely mediocre game that is generally inferior to the otherwise brilliant Metroid series, a rental at best, and not really worth the price of a full-length game. Harsh words, but I’m sure you’re all saying “Well, I can think of worse.” but then you talk to the average Metroid fan and, well… wow.

I don’t think I’ve seen a fan base turn so suddenly and so quickly from loyal and obedient cash machines into slavering wild men. I personally feel that nailing your own genitalia to a train track and waiting for the 1534 to arrive is more fun than playing the festering pile of poo-poo that is Metroid Other M, but even I was gob-smacked by how many other Metroid fans agree with me. Even bonkers hardcore fanatics who actually paid £400 to read the manga and actually have an uncompleted Varia Suit in the garage have thrown their hands up and said enough was enough. The insane easiness, the lack of exploration, the idiocy of the “Can’t let you do that, Samus” rigmoral, and most of all, taking such an independent, strong, eats-nails-for-breakfast badass character like Samus Aran and turning her into a whiny, co-dependant, idiotic, fearful, lonely, I’m-such-an-innocent-flower-child, Bella Swan, can’t-shut-the-fuck-up, cowardly, I’m-just-a-little-girl-who-needs-compassion, brainless, self-doubting, worthless-without-a-man, nervous, roll-me-over-and-treat-me-like-a-bitch, stupid, moronic berk who stops every five seconds to monologue about ‘how young and naïve and afraid I was’ back when SHE SAVED THE UNIVERSE FROM MOTHER BRAIN and wonders ‘what Adam would do. Oh, if only Adam were here. Please Adam, make me your bitch! I’ve got a big cream arrow pointing down on my back. Come on Adam! Do me up the butt! Adam, oh Adam! ADAM, FUCK ME! ROCK ME LIKE A HURRICANE! ADAM! ADAAAAAMM!!!’ Oh Samus, you were once respectable.

Inspired by this, I decided to have a look at other series and franchises that started off great then suddenly became so bad, so absolutely dreary, a graph explaining how good they are resembles a graph about our current financial situation TOPICAL HUMOUR SNORT SNORT!

Number 5 – Digimon: The First Series

Most people will recall me mentioning my opinions on the first Digimon series, often called Digimon Adventure, in brief during the Digimon Adventure 02 (side-note, that’s a stupid name. Why not just ‘Digimon Adventure 2’ or ‘Digimon Adventure: The Second Series’ or even something as cheesy as ‘Digimon Adventure: A Whole New Something-or-other’, anything but that unnecessary and stupid looking zero) review, but not my full opinion. While it was true that I was more in the Pokemon camp, I did love Digimon when I was a mere stripling, and surprisingly, it’s probably aged a lot better than most shows that I watched when I was younger. I didn’t watch a lot of television back then, mostly tapes of really old shit, so there are only a few cartoons and shows I watched in the nineties then that I could tolerate now, examples being the bizarre and too-cheesy-not-to-love Pokemon (gee, what a shock) or the shamelessly innocent and old-school ChuckleVision (though I’d rather have my left foot gnawed off by badgers than watch one of the various Chuckle Brothers live shows) or the absolutely peerless game show Robot Wars (which I personally hold as the greatest television broadcast of all time and still demand an eighth series even six years after it ended), and surprisingly enough Digimon is one of them… to a point.

Firstly, I can never watch more than an episode a day because otherwise my ears might melt. The voice acting is abysmal, and I mean “The Time of The Apes” abysmal, especially later on when we get Metalseadramon (again, stupid name) shouting stuff like “Yooo have – failed, MEEE (!) again. I, wheel not tor-LERRHH-ate… FAAAAY-liure.” I would say that it’s hilarious, but my so-bad-it’s-funny appetite has been spoilt somewhat by the Finnish dub of Digimon which is just… it’s sort of like “I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the master is away.”

Secondly, I mentioned that the plot went snooker loopy half way in, but that’s slightly unfair. More, it was all well and good for the first story arc, then robotic Elvis monkey ninja showed up, and as you might have guessed, it went mental. Then a vampire came along and said “I’m going to the real world MWUH HAHA HAHA” and, while the villain himself was rubbish, the idea of Digimon rampaging around Earth was cool, then the vampire became some weird Godzilla spider man thing and just wouldn’t die. After that, these four dickheads came along to be massive dickheads, and the first one (“Yooo have – failed, MEEE (!) again.”) was crap, the middle two were so awesomely awesome that they out-awesomed the entire series, then The Joker showed up (?) and then they were attacked by a giant Rubik’s cube and it was over.

Most people’s reaction to the plot summary.

Ok, can we please choose a story and stick with it? I know we’ve got fifty episodes to pump out, but surely we can pace it better than this! You set up these villains to be mega-badasses who can destroy the world by sneezing and make Darth Vader look like Steve Martin, and they last for bout five episodes before another one pops up and says “Aha, but I am even stronger!” with all the sincerity of a puppy telling you that it didn’t shit on the rug. And the ‘DigiDestined’ (snigger) are always bloody searching for something. They just find ways to continue searching. “We need to find a way to Digivolve, oh, now we’ve got to find the tags, now the crest, now our parents, now the TV remote, where is that TV remote, there it is, there, there, not there, there, look, see, I’m pointing at it, come on, you bastards, just look!” This is the entire series. “Where is it? Here it is. Oh, what’s that? Where is it? FIGHT SCENE!” Lather, rinse, repeat… four times!

Number 4 – Carry On Films

The Carry On films are widely considered comedy classics, but, to be honest, are they really? Out of the 31 Carry On films that were made, everybody only really remembers about four; Carry On Sergeant, Carry On Screaming, Carry On Up The Khyber and Carry On Camping, Carry On Camping being often called the best despite being unremittingly shit. Oh, and there’s also bloody Carry On Henry and fucking Carry On Dick. Turn on ITV4 right now, and I can guarantee that one of those two is on. No matter what I do, no matter what day it is or what time it is, or even how long it has been since the last showing, they’re playing these two back to back for eternity.

For those of you who don’t know what the Carry On films are, you’re probably not British. For those of you who are British and don’t know about the Carry On films, you’re probably dead. Anyway, to explain, the Carry On films were a series of low budget comedies that ran from late fifties to the late seventies (with another in 1992 as a tribute/revival that lives in infamy for being as funny as watching a child die in the trousers of a smiling bear) which all had the gimmick of having the same fucking cast playing the same fucking characters in the same fucking situations. As you might have guessed, I don’t really like the more well known Carry On films. The best known ones are just a long string of knob jokes, well-endowed girls getting their knockers out, double entendres, Barbara Windsor wearing the lowest cut top she can find…

Well, thank goodness she’s packed that nonsense in.

... and Kenneth Williams being simultaneously camp as a row of tent, straight as a metre stick, bent as a ten pound note and classy as a glass statuette of a swan. However, the first ten Carry On films are comedy gold. Particular gems are Carry On Nurse, Carry On Cleo and, my personal favourite, Carry On Teacher, probably the most un-Carry On-esque film of the franchise. While Carry On films are known generally for their ‘ooh-errr-missus’ double entendres, the earlier ones based themselves more on farce and silly puns, especially Carry On Cleo for the classic “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it infamy!” That, and even in the worst, Kenneth Williams is always brilliant. Now if only it had stayed that way…

Number 3 - Spyro

Lots of people say that Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid sold the PlayStation, but if you asked who the mascots for the PlayStation were, it would eventually break down to either Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon, and, guess what, I fucking love the original Spyro trilogy. They are all incredibly fun games, with a quirky sense of humour and sublime 3D platforming. They all rest comfortably in my favourite ever games. In fact, though I want to keep you in the dark as to my absolute favourite game, film, TV programme (though I’ve already given away that one earlier in this article) and/or book of all time, but Spyro 3 is in the top five and is also higher than Pokemon. Not a particularly complex gameplay experience (though Square to Charge, Circle to Breathe Fire, X twice to glide and Triangle to hover are all imprinted in my brain like the function to breathe) the series was challenging rather than difficult, asking for the players to hone their skills rather than get lucky with a jump like most platformers. The stories were simple and had lots of interesting characters, and then…

… and then the PS2 came out.

The PlayStation 2 Spyro games are an anomaly in terms of how bad they are, because they change little but what they do change kills the entire franchise dead. They don’t change that much in level design, though the characters are quickly separated into groups called ‘Spyro, Sparx and Hunter, so they’re staying’ and ‘Everyone else so they’re going’. And the separation is carried out by an SS officer with a Lugar, and he brings in some Disney-esque charmless dead puppets, devoid of all emotion, function or purpose, only there to simply stand around and stagnate. However, they aren’t in it very much. No, the anomaly comes in the gameplay changes. Now there are different types of fire, which makes about as much sense as eating a dead rat as one of your five-pieces-of-fruit-a-day and have the same function, to make you puke. Also, it was made by completely different people, so the whole thing feels like a complete charade. Tom Kenny, the voice of Spyro in Spyro 2 and 3, is gone, replaced by Jess Harnell, who has dropped a long way from Wakko in Animaniacs, and the voice acting never gets much better. That and that there were bugged so far up the arse that they were literally spewing small insects up as if they were in Creepshow, and it doesn’t help the already abysmal graphics.

He’s single, ladies.

And please, don’t start me on The Legend of Spyro reboot. Sure, Elijah Wood was literally born to play as Spyro, but the design of the new Spyro is so butt-fuck ugly I can’t look at the screen for fear of having my face burnt off by Satan. And if you’ve ever seen any terrible kid’s fantasy film made in the eighties and starring Rob Schneider, you’ve played this game before, only this is far longer and far worse. It’s so confusing and yet so stupid it deserves a reward for baffling me to the point of anger, and I managed to keep up with The Matrix trilogy.

Number 2 - Jaws

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

Well, the original was great. It was a slow movie, but that’s what made it so great. It was a build up on dread, the crushing horror that at any time a shark could and would tear you apart with not a care. It was a slow movie, yes, but never calm. The tension could be cut with a knife, and it was only exasperated by the fact that the characters themselves were incredibly likable. The acting was very good, convincing us that these were real people with real lives that could at any moment be simply torn away in a second’s notice. Not forgetting Jaws himself. Michael Myers is human. Jason Voorhees is human. Max Cady, Norman Bates, Curt Duncan. All human. They can be shot, stabbed, pushed down stairs and beaten up. They may be tough or clever or evil, but they are all human. Jaws is a shark, though, and sharks are tough and nasty bastards. The idea of being eaten is a frightening one, possibly the most painful way to die, and humans aren’t exactly very fast in the water. The victims in the original Jaws don’t die because they’re stupid. They die because they’re helpless, and against Jaws they can not compete.

Cut to the next three Jaws movies: “HEY! A SHARK! LET’S POKE IT! OOOH! OOOH! COME ON, SHARKY!”

Yes, the characters are almost all retarded lepers who simply don’t care about their own lives. They send much of the movie acting like unlikeable pricks who you’ve seen before in every Jason movie made, then die because of their own idiocy, and all the other characters go “So, why did he die? Let’s do the same thing as he did to find out.” And the acting doesn’t help, making the Finnish version of Digimon look like Lawrence Olivier.

I think the biggest problem with these movies though is the shark itself, which is ironic. The original had very little of the shark, and not knowing if and when the shark would attack made the whole film tense and suspenseful while Jaws 2 through 4 can all be summed up by shouting “OH MY GOD A FUCKING SHARK DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE WAS A SHARK IN THIS MOVIE BECAUSE THERE IT FUCKING IS!!!”

So, after that atrocity, what could possibly win?

Number 1 – Star Wars

Didn’t that come out of nowhere?

I don’t think I should explain this one, but I will anyway. Because you all know Star Wars, don’t you? That homage to stories of old, revolutionising sci-fi and filmmaking forever, bringing in a whole slew of new talent including some the best actors of the late 20th century, bringing old story telling conventions back into fashion, a grand and glorious tribute to samurai, western and fantasy stories which has given us many new ideas our generation takes for granted, such as the influence for great new fantasy locations…

… or am I talking about the shoddy, poorly-conceived pile of bum fluff, revolutionising futile money spinning and easily marketable creations forever, bringing in some hideously bad actors into fashion like a giant whack-a-mole for critics, a piss poor gibbering mess. Does this at all hold a candle to the originals?

The prequels are the ultimate example of a series selling out. If the original Star Wars is a Herculean super-billionaire scientist then the prequels are when he begins endorsing for Pepsi and becomes a shallow marketing whore. The series declined into a messy, dreary, tired bollock, becoming the most generic kiddie dross of all time, solely made to sell McDonald’s toys. Here at Sponge Culture, we hate the mediocre, the safe, the lazy and the overrated above all other than the genuinely bad, and Star Wars prequels couldn’t be more safe and lazy if it tried. And that’s before we get into the individual merits:

The Gungans. Those weird fish-like China-man stereotypes. Natalie Portman. The dickhead who played as Anakin ‘Whaaaaaaaaa! Whaaaaaaaaaa! I’m not a very good Jedi! No one takes me seriously. Whaaaaaaaaaa! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!’ Skywalker. The CGI that resembled a man throwing some drawings on paper and shouting ‘Whoosh!’ The Clone Wars movie. Jar Jar Binks! I think carrying on would be slaughter. The whole thing has been shackled down, a design-by-committee ‘weird-aliens, two three, whiny-young-adult, three four, Natalie Portman, four five. It’s made for kids, and I hate kids. Almost as much as I hate Metroid Other M. They scream, shout and shit all over the place.

Use a condom. End of review.

Rob Stoakes: Comparing Sorcerer's Apprentice to Scott Pilgrim VS The World

Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Compares

SORCERER’S APPRENTICE
2010
JON TURTELTAUB
WALT DISNEY PICTURES

to

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD
2010
EDGAR WRIGHT
UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Prologue

So not too recently I saw two films on the exact same day. The family-friendly magical adventure Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the nerd-friendly adapted-from-book adventure Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Which is better? Which is worse? Which contains more bread? Here is a recommendation for the two films as to which one you should see, though I’m so far behind, you probably have already seen them both, but shut up.

No fucking shit, Sherlock. How’d you work that one out? Was it the goatee, the hat, the long coat, the cane, the thick eyebrows, the evil glint in his eyes, the army of flying cockroaches or the fact that he's the guy who played Doctor Octopus?

Plot

So, it isn’t quite difficult to choose an obvious winner. Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a complex story about a war between two different schoolings of magic; those who follow Merlin and those who follow the evil sorceress and Queen-of-Hearts-look-alike Morgana. As Merlin’s apprentice, Balthazar, played by Nicolas Cage, traps Morgana in a Russian Doll thingy along with his dead girlfriend, while traitor Maxim, played by Alfred Molina, tries to free Morgana. Then there’s Dave, the chosen one, played by Jay Baruchel, a twenty something who looks about ten with a voice that has embedded itself in my personal hell, who is destined to kill Morgana. Scott Pilgrim’s plot, by contrast is basically “Some guy has to beat his girlfriend’s seven evil exes to win her heart.” So, can you guess the winner? That’s right, it’s Scott Pilgrim.

The reason for this is all the background stuff that is in the, well, background. And, frankly, Sorcerer’s Apprentice doesn’t have any depth, which is strange because half the film is Nicolas Cage banging on and on and on about Morgana and Maxim and Merlin and how his girlfriend’s dead and how Dave shouldn’t fall in love and all this fucking back-story that goes absolutely bloody nowhere. There’s no subtlety in any shape or form. We don’t learn anything about the characters and they, in turn, learn nothing. Dave doesn’t evolve. He doesn’t change. He starts in the film as a whiny nerdy socially-awkward berk, and he ends the film as a whiny nerdy socially-awkward berk. There’s some side-plot where he dates Teresa Palmer’s character Becky, who is also completely fucking useless in this film. There’s not a lot of training either, surprisingly. Dave knows fuck all about magic, then Balthazar says “Bitch I be training ya.” And then five minutes later, Dave knows all the spells he needs to survive. And, when they say there’s a whole league of Morgana’s servants, they’re lying. There’s exactly five of them: Morgana herself (who dies two minutes after arriving at the end), Maxim, Maxim’s apprentice (who doesn’t cast any spells, doesn’t have a fight scene and has two lines of dialogue, both of them 'wry' [?] comedic quips), some Chinese dude (who has one fight scene and then dies) and some woman doing an impersonation of Florence Nightingale (who doesn’t even get a line or a fight scene before she croaks). Oh, dear lord, I’m quaking in my boots, these five guys say they’re going to rule the world, yeah, you go for it. This movie has nothing to offer beyond face value, which is a labyrinthine mess of all sorts of loyalties and love triangles that don’t make a difference and all this crap. The plot stops then starts over and over and over as if it’s a Kremlin that won’t start.

Scott Pilgrim, however, is an incredibly deceptive movie. I told you what the plot was, but not what the movie is about. The movie has so many messages and subtle little side stories that it’s almost impossible to figure them all out. The major arc is about evolution. Unlike most romantic comedy underdogs, Scott Pilgrim, played by Michael Cera (stop laughing), isn’t a kind, gentle soul who tries to show the girl just how bad for her the jocks she dates usually are, oddly a role Michael Cera plays all the god damn time. In fact, Scott’s a giant prick. He’s whiny, stupid, immature, arrogant, sheltered and lazy and, though ultimately good-hearted, has not a clue on how to treat people. He treats women like dirt, uses self-pity to drag them into pitying him too and simply refuses to accept the fact that anything’s wrong with him. At the end of the film, however, he literally defeats the last evil-ex by coming to terms with just how badly he’s been treating people. His girlfriend Ramona goes through an evolution, seeing as she was the one who wronged all her evil exes and simply tries to hide from the fact by running away all the time, repeatedly making the same mistakes and letting her evil exes catch up to her over and over. Again, at the end, she finally admits to Scott that she’s not the perfect woman she’s been made out to be, and in fact she’s probably not even the best choice for him. These are just two of the many, many evolutions. You could talk about the evolutions all day, but the point is that this movie has so much depth it’s almost bursting at the reams, and yet it never becomes confusing. It’s quite clear what each character goes through, and it also never detracts from the main premise of “Seven evil exes are trying to beat the shite out of you, Scott.” It’s fast; it never seems forced and flows brilliantly. If Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a Kremlin, then Scott Pilgrim’s a Boeing 747, pulsing along like mental. One point to Scott Pilgrim.

SORCERER’S APPRENTICE – 0 SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD - 1

Acting/Characters

Now this is where it really gets unfair. While yes, comparing Nicolas Cage to Michael Cera when it comes to acting is a bit like comparing Haute Cuisine to gravel over which would be a better meal, Nicolas Cage is so badly miscast, you could’ve put a hamster in the role of Balthazar and it would’ve made more sense. Here we have an actor known to be wild and eccentric, who less chews on scenery as tear chunks out of it with his jaw, who has frequently made otherwise bad movies into barrels of fun and steals the scene in much of his work, and he’s playing such a sedate, boring old man, it feels as if you cast Lawrence Olivier to play as one of the Mr Men. His character is a dull, boring old fart who is completely uninteresting, and Nicolas Cage adds nothing to the role. The rest of the cast of Sorcerer’s Apprentice is passable, but nothing to write home about, besides Alfred Molina playing a very good Maxim, bringing a spark of cynicism and life into what could’ve been easily a very boring carbon copy of every villain in every kid’s film ever made. However… there’s also Jay Baruchel as the protagonist Dave.

Man, is this guy bad. I don’t mean ‘not that good’ or ‘bad compared to the rest of the cast’, I mean he’s fucking terrible. His nasally voice seems completely unable to express any emotion other than confusion, and his body language is almost like a cartoon character. When he seems depressed, he literally puts his face in his hands and droops his shoulders rather suddenly, taking lessons of acting from Mickey Mouse. NOBODY ACTS LIKE THIS!!! Would you like to drop your jaw to the floor while you’re at it, or turn your eyes into love hearts whenever Teresa Palmer walks by? You’re a human being, not one of the Looney Tunes.

Once again, Scott Pilgrim trumps this category with its superior casting. I mean, alright, I’ve never liked Michael Cera’s acting that much, but I actually couldn’t think of a better actor to play Scott Pilgrim, except for the fact that Scott Pilgrim in the books and the film is supposed to be twenty three, and Michael Cera himself looks nine. There’s also the fact that Anna Kendrick plays his younger sister, and looks a lot older than him, and I mean decades older. However, this doesn’t mean that she puts in a bad performance, and her and the rest of the cast is phenomenal. While each of the cast puts forward a very strong performance, two real scene stealers who I’d like to give special mention to are Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, Scott’s roommate and one of the best examples of deadpan comedy I’ve seen in a long time, and the relatively unknown newbie Ellen Wong as Scott’s ex-girlfriend Knives Chau, who is on fire and has to stop because she is frighteningly close to the source material. These two are in particular strong because, though not just because, their roles could’ve come across as deadly annoying, whether it’s Wallace’s smug wryness or Knives’ hyperactive schoolgirl demeanour, and instead they are on fire all the way through and get a lot of the best jokes. Point to Scott Pilgrim.

SORCERER’S APPRENTICE – 0 SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD - 2

Cinematography and/or Animation

Now here’s where it gets a bit more difficult to split, because both films have very good action sequences. While Sorcerer’s Apprentice goes for a CG-heavy zap-a-thon with lightening and spells rocketing all over the place, Scott Pilgrim goes for much more kung-fu heavy punch ups. Both do a very good job with their respective action scenes, and each action scene has a completely different feel and aesthetic attitude. The fight scenes in Sorcerer’s Apprentice draw heavy influence from the surroundings, such as statues coming to life, people throwing bins at each, while Scott Pilgrim draws influence in the fighting from the evil exes Scott is fighting. For example, the fight with the Japanese twins is full of CG animation of anime-esque monsters, while the fight with the film star is a gritty punch up with a harsher tone and next to no CG. However, in terms of action, I’m tempted to go with Sorcerer’s Apprentice, seeing as fighting is the only kind of action sequence there is in Scott Pilgrim, while in Sorcerer’s Apprentice there are car chases, fires, and all sorts of mad shit going on, almost like a fireworks display of wild speed. It’s just that the fight scenes in Scott Pilgrim are really, really good anyway. Now, because I didn’t make any jokes in that last paragraph, here’s a silly picture of Nicolas Cage and a point to both films.

SORCERER’S APPRENTICE – 1 SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD – 3

In terms of the CG itself, that’s a lot easier to decide, because Scott Pilgrim cheats. The CG in Scott Pilgrim is incredibly cartoon-like and unreal, with comic panels integrated into the shots and words like “Pow” and “Biff” and “Zap” and “Morrison” whenever anybody punches somebody else. So, yes, it doesn’t look exactly realistic. So comparing this to a film that is trying to look realistic is like trying to compare bread to The Rolling Stones. It’s not particularly easy, and Mick Jagger might have a problem with you trying to spread jam on him and eat him. Despite this, with Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the effects look pretty, but you can tell what’s real and what isn’t from a mile away, a bit like how you can tell a car horn from a man shouting "HONK!". And there’s a giant metal bird that looks as if it’s made of paper. Once more, a point to Scott Pilgrim.

WELL, GIVE US A CHANCE – 1 SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD – 4

Other Notes

So… yeah. Sorcerer’s Apprentice doesn’t exactly look too good, does it? However, I can actually think one point in its favour, and it’s a big one, because this is why Sorcerer’s Apprentice, no matter how bad or good it is, will make millions more than Scott Pilgrim. Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a family film. I know, I know. Sad, yes, but true. Scott Pilgrim doesn’t exactly have the widest of demographics. The less you know about video games, comics, children’s cartoons and just about any form of media that was around in the nineties, the more you’ll hate this movie. It’s so insanely nerdy; just about every line is a reference to a Super Nintendo game even Nintendo has never heard of. While I’ve always thought that if you have a target demographic, stick to it and don’t try to include people who definitely won’t like it, I can think of a lot more people I could recommend Sorcerer’s Apprentice to over Scott Pilgrim, which is a same because, and this might cause a little bit of controversy, but Scott Pilgrim is probably the best film of the past four years.

I’ve said it. Never expect me to give anything praise in any review ever again.

Scott Pilgrim elbows his way past the Invisible Man.

It boils me that Sorcerer’s Apprentice ticks all the boxes. It’s so obviously trying to be “Good” rather than “Great” because good’s easier and makes more money. Scott Pilgrim doesn’t tick the boxes, it just bites into the form and spits out the mush on the table before pulling out it’s PlayStation Portable and whooping about how badly it just ‘pwned’ Paul Phoenix in Tekken. Sorcerer’s Apprentice is just such bloody business-man-like designed-by-committee that it succeeds everywhere it needs to and only where it needs to. Let’s give a reluctant point to Sorcerer’s Apprentice and move on.

SORCERER’S APPRENTICE – 2 SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD – 4

Now for the soundtrack… well… I can’t actually remember a single song from Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

SORCERER’S APPRENTICE – 2 SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD – 5

Final Word

So the final scores are that Sorcerer’s Apprentice is quite clearly a lot worse than Scott Pilgrim. Go see that instead. End of review. Now piss off.

ROB STOAKES REVIEWS: Pokemon Emerald

Sponge Culture Reviews
Rob Stoakes Reviews

POKEMON EMERALD
2004
GAME FREAK
NINTENDO

Prologue

So I say I’m off for two weeks, end up skiving for four. Whoopsie daisy. Anyway, to compensate, a review for something halfway decent.

Some things are inevitable. Taxes. Death. Hatred of Piers Morgan. So my review of a Pokemon game wasn’t entirely unforeseen. I mean, come on, it had to happen at some point, seeing as I’ve been literally dribbling at the feet of the damn franchise since the first games came out, and have kept on saying bizarre phrases such as ‘gold standard in gaming’ and ‘one of the best multi-media franchises of all time’. It’s been an odd one, seeing as Pokemon Red/Blue isn’t my favourite game of all time, the Pokemon anime isn’t my favourite TV series of all time and other than Pokemon 3 and Pokemon Chronicles: The Legend of Raikou, the movies were shit. However, that isn’t the point.

The point is that the Pokemon games are among the best of all time… or at least, Pokemon Red and Blue are. Pokemon Gold and Silver are also of an incredible standard, and are actually probably better overall, at least from a technical standpoint. Oddly enough, the more advanced the system of games, the worse the games are. And what a good place to start… where it began to go wrong.

Plot

Pfffft! BAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!

Well, it does pretend to have a plot, at least in the same way a dog pretends to be a cat. Basically, it’s the same damn Pokemon game as the last. In a world where people use super-powered sports mascots to fight for money, you’re a dork who wants to be the greatest Pokemon trainer in the universe and also one of the richest. It’s essentially good-hearted mugging, but with a competitive element too. However, first you have to defeat eight gym leaders, particularly powerful Pokemon trainers, and then defeat the five best trainers in the world; the Elite Four and the Champion, all in one go. Along the way you face a criminal gang who wants to do some shit, oh for god’s sake I can’t do it. Why am I talking about the plot? It’s Pokemon! IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME GODDAM PLOT!

However, plot should never be confused with writing, and I feel that the Pokemon games have actually got some surprisingly good writing….

… seeing as they’re able to actually make this world seem convincing. Also, the characters themselves, even the ones you only speak to for a second or two are remarkably expressive. Is it the same here? Well, yes, but there’s less people to talk to sadly. Sure, the ones you find are as funny, quirky or dickhead-ish as in the earlier games, but the whole world seems oddly vacant. You get to a town, meet about five people, then walk for hours to the next town and meet maybe two people along the way. Aww, great, just brilliant, don’t try to give this world a personality or feeling, just leave it derelict and dead. I like to pretend that there’s been a nuclear holocaust, and the Pokemon are just the affected populace mutated beyond recall. The only people left are the villains, Team Magma and Team Aqua, two rival criminal gangs who are fighting for… what, exactly?

Oh wait, they aren’t criminals, they’re saviours of the world, because when I think of saving the world, I think of terrorism, violent wars and widespread destruction. Frankly, though, they’re trying to save the world from nothing in particular. This situation might be understandable if the world was in some form of turmoil, therefore adding to my nuclear holocaust theory, but otherwise it’s just bizarre. You see, Team Aqua are trying to flood the world, saying that the land will destroy everything and Team Magma think that the world’s sea need to be dried out because otherwise we’ll run out of land. That’s a clever concept to make a gang war for kids, but WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THESE IDEAS MADE A LICK OF SENSE? Seriously, why would you want to cause a worldwide drought, or even a worldwide flood? What would we drink? Where would we live? Who thought of this, dip-shits? Wait, some people choke on food? WE MUST PREVENT EVERYONE FROM EATING! Damn, we’re heroic!

Pokemon

There are 132 new Pokemon in this game, and some of the others from the old games. About, I don’t know, four of them? Oh, and whoop-di-fucking-doo, the only ones that feature prominently are Geodude and Zubat, because we haven’t seen enough of them yet. They’re only more common than blades of the fucking grass. The new ones aren’t exactly brilliant. The starter Pokemon, for example, are fairly bland. Oh, except for the water starter, Mudkip, or, rather, the only starter. If you pick any other Pokemon, you are officially an idiot. It’s a Water Ground type, so it won’t be affected by Electric attacks, Water’s biggest weakness, it learns the best moves, has the best stats, has the best design, has the best ability, it can learn Blizzard, therefore meaning that it is weak to nothing, it’s… just… better. Few other Pokemon are really worth the time and effort for finding them, seeing as you can beat the entire game with just Mudkip and tower over all who dare oppose you. You are king, you are invincible. Take everything. Take all you see for yourself!

The other Pokemon are a standard affair. They mostly all take great influence from the animal and plant kingdoms respectfully. However, looking at them, I kept getting the feeling that I had seen them some place before. Most of them look not just like Pokemon from the first two games, it’s dead on exact. Case in point; here’s Pikachu and here’s Plusle. Here’s Caterpie and here’s Wurmple. Is this Pidgey, or is it Swellow? Mr and Mrs Rhyhorn, congratulations, it’s a Lairon. The list goes on and on, almost like a before and after exhibition of idiocy.

Gameplay

Gameplay is… actually, sing along with me; you can have up to six Pokemon in your current party, with reserve Pokemon in your computer. Combat is turn-based, in which your Pokemon can use up to four moves, or use an Item to help it win. You catch Pokemon using big red balls (I’d make a joke, but I’m above that… no I’m not. Tee hee, big red balls) all of which have six stats, HP (how much damage it can take), Attack (how much damage a physical attack will meat out), Defence (how much the opponent’s physical attacks are resisted), Speed (if your Pokemon’s speed is higher than the other Pokemon’s Speed, yours will go first), Special Attack (how much Special Attacks do) and Special Defence (take a guess, Sherlock).

I AM NOT GETTING ANY FORM OF DÉJÀ VU, I AM NOT GETTING ANY FORM OF DÉJÀ VU, I AM NOT GETTING ANY FORM OF DÉJÀ VU!

Brock Obama does not campaign for change.

Actually, the reason I’ve always preferred Pokemon’s gameplay to other JRPGs, besides the fact that Pokemon doesn’t have random encounters, can be completed in under a year and isn’t shit, is that you’re on exactly the same level as everybody else, so you actually need to think about what Pokemon you choose. Most other JRPGs think ‘strategy’ means ‘hit it until it drops dead’. You have to compensate for the weaknesses of one of your Pokemon with the strengths of another, or else you are doomed to fail… or considering this game, you aren’t. Yes, this might be the easiest game of the lot. So long as you know about keeping your Pokemon healthy, this game is a breeze. The trainers you fight are vastly under-levelled. While this was true in the start of Pokemon Gold/Silver, they made up for it by giving the Gym Leaders some insanely strong Pokemon, and also it made sense seeing as the world was a hell of a lot bigger. Hell, Pokemon Red/Blue didn’t bother with giving you hope; the game just put you up against Godzilla with a twig and said “Go for it.” Pokemon Emerald, on the other hand, gives you a fully armed and operational Death Star from Star Wars and panics, whimpering behind your back and pointing at a hamster wailing in fright. Even the Elite Four and the Champion, the five strongest Pokemon trainers in the world, were all defeated by my totally awesome Mudkip and some of the other Pokemon I picked up for when things got hairy. I had exactly three Pokemon, Mudkip, Abra and Minun, and I still wiped the floor with this game before the bus stopped.

Actually, now there is a new feature. Personalities. See, now you can’t just look at the stats of a Pokemon and say, well, damn, this Pokemon’s damn good with its Speed. You have to look at how it feels about you and what kind of Berry it doesn’t like and whether it prefers Roast Vegetables to Salad to accompany its main course… actually, this is also a lie, the changes are minimal when it comes to the Pokemon’s strength, its only function is to add another simple non-puzzle into making your Pokemon love you. Urgh, the love system. Look, it doesn’t matter. Your Pokemon will end up loving you no matter what. The only way to make them hate you is if you suck, and even then, it does bugger all to how much damage it does, it just makes one move stronger and/or weaker. So, basically, everything new this game adds is made redundant by its lack of impact.

Oh, wait, should I talk about the Pokemon Contests?

Oh boy… the Contests. It’s like combat, only you can’t do damage, and you don’t win anything. Basically, you have to use attacks to appeal to a panel of judges. Each attack has a certain effect and a type of attack, out of Beauty, Smart, Cool, Tough, Cute, Sexy, Knitting, Snowboarding and, most exciting of them all, the Latin Essay. Ok, some of those, don’t exist, but like it matters. Basically you have to appeal to whatever category your Pokemon best fits in and win a Ribbon that does bugger all for you. YAAAAAY!!! How… redundant. How fitting for this game. I’m just beginning to realise this might be the most redundant game to ever exist. Bad games do something. Good games do something. This game does absolutely nothing for anybody in the world. It’s the equivalent of making a cup of tea and not putting the teabag in.

Hardware

So now we get into the only way a Pokemon game hopes to actually advance in any way, shape or form. The hardware. And does this game improve? Despite being on a whole new system… no it doesn’t.

Well, it does in some areas. For once there are more than three colours, and the music sounds like its being played on real instruments… well, a piano and a trumpet. It doesn’t do anything else too well, but whatever. As for the graphics… well, they aren’t worse than Pokemon Gold/Silver… actually, scratch that, they are. Oh, the Pokemon designs aren’t bad. They’re a somewhat similar standard as before but with cleaner lines. No, I mean in the animation. Actually, again, scratch that, because there isn’t any. There’s a difference between animating the sprites of the Pokemon and simply moving them from left to right, Game Freak.

In fact, this game is actually smaller than before. The world’s a hell of a lot smaller than before. It takes about five minutes to walk from one side to the other, while in Pokemon Gold/Silver, hell, even Red/Blue, it took hours to get everywhere by foot. Some people might say “good, because I have stuff to do” but that’s not the point. The world in Pokemon Emerald feels small and rather insignificant. Also, we’re back to eight gym leaders rather than sixteen. Even the gameplay length is shorter. And there might be even less Pokemon than before. That’s Pokemon Emerald. Half the size as Pokemon Gold/Silver and it certainly shows. If Pokemon Gold/Silver was all of Ronnie Corbett’s unnecessary cameos in one person, then Pokemon Emerald is Ronnie Corbett himself.

Other Notes

I just have a word about the designs of the actual people in this game, because it’s a strange point nobody else has brought up. The majority are fair enough. The male protagonist looks like a total bellend, the baddies are even bigger bellends, the trainer types fit into their stereotypes, so it’s all good… then you see some of the female characters. Now, video games have never been disciplined when it comes to exploring and understanding sex…



… but there’s always been an understandable if not justifiable reason for it. It’s Character Design 101 to make your characters appealing. That’s why almost all Final Fantasy male characters are either gay-fan-fiction-bait mega-hot lady-boys or manly-power-house muscle-bound uber-studs, and all the women make Audrey Hepburn look like Ann Widdecombe. Another good point is that uber-sexy characters are only in games targeted to the age group interested in that sort of thing, late teens to early thirties, and certainly not in a game aimed for eight year olds upwards, that’d be silly…

… and then you get to the character selection screen.

My jaw landed on the floor when I saw the female choice. I know, the whole ‘appealing character rule’ but DAMN! Who the fuck is this? Not too shabby for somebody younger than me. Her hips are wider than her shoulders. She wears hot-pants. Isn’t she ten in the anime? Seriously, Japan, what the fuck? What the hell’s up with this chick? Did she hit puberty when she was five? Frankly, this makes me both disturbed and jealous. The ladies get to be the cutest girl in school; us blokes, we get stuck with a white-haired dork in a stupid bandanna.

I might be the only person bothered by this sort of stuff, but I can’t help it. Sexiness doesn’t belong in Pokemon. Sure, there were moments in the other games, but they had context. The Beauties were sexy in the first and second games because they were, well, Beauties so it wouldn't make sense if they weren’t sexy. In Pokemon Emerald, sexiness is only here for the sake of it, like putting a live walrus in the middle of a restaurant because you’ve taken the statuette to be cleaned. Yes, it’s there, but it doesn’t compliment anything, it’s just a distraction, howling and spitting and everybody feels dirty. It’s especially distressing when the Lasses show up, wearing school uniforms with plaid mini-skirts, or the Team Aqua Executives, who proudly show you their Wonder Bras, or even the fourth gym leader Flannery or the second of the Elite Four Phoebe, the latter in particular for dressing less like the fourth most powerful person in the world and more like Samus Aran if you collect every single item in a Metroid game. It just doesn’t belong here. It’s frightening. It feels like the kind of thing that would be mentioned in a political-horror story set in a dystopian future, not the game franchise that gave us Pikachu.

Final Word

I’m being overly hateful. This is actually a really fun game. I mean, it is Pokemon. On its own merits, it’s a good game, fun and interesting. It’s certainly not bad. The problem is that it’s just so un-inspired, a complete rehashing of the old games. It’s a perfectly functional game, but it feels like a step backwards, mostly in the technical side. Eight gyms instead of sixteen, no moving animations, a smaller world map, a smaller… just smaller. The whole thing seems like a lower quality version, the Rich Tea Biscuit nadir to the Chocolate Hobnob zeniths that were the original two GameBoy games (or six, or even seven, but possibly less or more or AAARRRGGGHHH.)

The Pokemon themselves are simple rehashing of old designs, or, if not that, then incredibly stupid, the pretence of a story is a long and annoying chain of XP grinds and the game as a whole subtracts less from Pokemon Gold. This is a good game, perfectly enjoyable and I had a whale of a time playing it, but this is where everything started to go wrong for Pokemon… or was it? Maybe Diamond/Pearl would be better, right?

Next week, something that isn't Pokemon related.