Networking 1 - Eat Them!

Another semi-regular feature where I look on Playstation Network and pick up a random game to look at. I'm sure I'm going to be beaten for some of the crap I pick up but hopefully I'll find gems. It also means my praise to Nuffle will have to wait until it's untopical but so bloody what? First episode is Eat Them!

As the screenshot above may suggest you're represented by a whacking great big monster and smash the bejesus out of anything you can get hold of. Essentially it's Rampage 2010 on the surface but it is a little deeper than that. Although you don't need to you can engineer your own evil monster of choice from various body parts you can unlock as you carry out challenges and follow the story through. The default monsters are pretty effective to begin with but it's not the same as creating your own beast. Granted that's the RPG Lanky coming out, I used to spend way too long creating band members on Rock Band 2 (before they made it harder to create an authentic band, well researched twunts) so maybe people will settle for the various different default creatures.

Visually the cell shading looks nice and in simplistic terms it's actually quite effective allowing you to tell the difference between police forces, convicts, the army and civilians just by colour of clothing. Kind of like an 8 bit game while looking obviously better and running smoother with more "boom" factor. Incidentally to fit in with the cell shaded look the story is actually built around comic issues which was a nice little touch. The sound is fairly basic in comparison but I guess that's to be expected with it, there's a distinctly chiptune style there and in keeping with the 8 bit style I get the impression Eat Them tries to convey. Of course like the old games there's also the fact it gets repetitive fast audibly. Think back to the same bar from Ghostbusters over, and over again and you get the point but if you're focussed on playing the game you can phase it out, or at least I do.

I've seen some people actually downgrade it for the missions, put simply to advancement in the game to the next issue in the series you need to medal in a series of challenges of increasingly difficulty in each story area to advance to the next section. The better the medal the more you unlock as well for body parts if you're interested in that (a few trophies rely on top medals as you'd exepect if you're into trophy hunting, also a trophy for viewing every part in creation mode). It doesn't seem to prevent story advancement so to skim through it doesn't matter much at all. The offending mission is "race" which entails running around a map to checkpoints within a certain time and doing as little damage as possible.

That seems to fly in the face of the idea of the game wherein people assume to just "smash things" is all you need. Personally it's why I've not played a lot of Rampage over the years, every now and then I play it for a while but never come back. Race helps to move you away from that, sadly that's the only difference from various methods of destruction. The story issues are well thought out with tasks like smashing prisoners out to work for you, bank robberies and helping the getaway cars get out and other nefarious deeds but to get to these you'll need to break things as quickly/effectively as possible.

It's not a bad game to play, the controls are fairly simple though in it's simplicity you're not really told how to do everything, I found out how to roar and intimidate by accident (L2) for example, which was useful as it stopped everyone armed or not from attacking me while I feasted on them to replenish my health (thus the name "Eat Them"), the more intimidating a monster the higher radius.

Essentially, it's an okay game. It's nothing special but it doesn't make me apprehensive of 'er indoors using the words "let's try that one" like some of the titles I've seen while skimming through. The destruction missions are fun to play, at first but I can't see me having the drive to replay them again and again for gold medals later on. Not a bad game and at £6.29 it's a bit of a better price than you would otherwise have for some titles but could be a gamble. I'd give it a stable 6/10

Childhood Revisited - Labyrinth

The first episode of a semi-regular feature now where I go back and re-watch things from my childhood and growing up and see how as an adult things have aged. Today comes from my little girl Sara who kindly lent us her DVD for a couple of days Jim Hensons' Labyrinth. For those who've never seen it the story is about a teenage girl called Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) who in quoting a line from her favourite play causes her baby brother Toby to be abducted on behalf of the Goblin King Jareth (David Bowie) and to win him back she must find her way through a large mazey type thing to his castle and confront Jareth to win him back. On the way plenty of peril and wacky Jim Henson characters.

I can't remember the first time I'd seen it, I'll assume it was on TV in around '87/'88 the first time and again when I was 13 for the Saturday matinee (miss the days when going to the cinema would cost just £1) with an ex-girlfriend though I'm sure I saw it between those two dates I'm sure I've not seen it since but I remember it as an old fashioned fairy story with some creepy moments and wierd and wonderful characters, but what do I see now?

Well for a start the soundtrack is still as good as I remembered it with some great songs (Magic Dance for Rock Band please?) though the score elements are very 80's with lots of big synth chords which could be very in your face but it's the songs which you'll remember from this sort of film anyway. Visually there was only one scene that especially looked dated and wrong. At some stage Sarah encounters "The Fireys" flame coloured creatures who had the ability to remove body parts willy-nilly and essentially were there to sing the song "Chilly Down" but due to the difficult nature of getting the effect of removing limbs to work it was filmed on a black screen and then refilmed with a backdrop but no puppets and merged via computermabob. An ambitious scene which looked off now, obviously understandable but only time I thought it looked "wrong".

Performances were fine, Jennifer Connelly (shocked to find only 14 at the time) was fine in the main role and carried the film well. Essentially she had to work on her own most of the time (thankfully it's the 80's and Henson. Now next to none of it would be practically done) and she did a good job for what it's worth. Opposite her Bowie didn't do too much bar the songs and I think Jareth is played in a campy villainous manner but it all works reasonably well. Something I noticed more now was the sexual tension between the two (part of this because of Bowies' tights and rather noticeable trouser snake (hypnotic)) which would've had another twist had they gone with the proposed Michael Jackson in the role! That said Jennifer was the wrong gender and too old for him (too soon?). The real stars though were the puppets, "Hoggle" was essentially the second lead and was superbly done and of course there's the typically individual looks of each other character.

In the end I still enjoyed it. The sense of menace wasn't the same and on DVD it felt brighter than I remember it being but it still did the job. Some of the childish perils ("The bog of eternal stench") were typically Henson, Python (screenplay written by Terry Jones) and certainly would still appeal to children. The songs were enjoyable, the characters memorable (Sir Didymus, the fox-terrier knight riding his english sheepdog steed Ambrosius still makes me laugh) and I'm glad it was made when it was and by the right people. Now, Labyrinth would be a highly CGI charged affair which would take away most of it's charm, nothing would've felt the same as all the practical stunts used in this and the interaction with the puppets would feel, almost flat. To me, watched with a family I can see this still has it and I hope that families will continue to enjoy it. Future Jr Lankys will certainly grow up learning to fear the "eternal stench" and look in terror at Barn Owls for generations!