Angry Web

As you probably know, James Earl Jones did not play Darth Vader, but simply provided the dark, menacing voice we all recognize today. However, what if Jones had not added his voice, but rather the studio had kept original actor, David Prowse’s voice? Well…yeah…

Marvel Studios has revealed that they currently have 6 actors in the running for the role of Steve Rogers/Captain America in the anticipated comic book film adaptation, “The First Avenger: Captain America”. Who are these contenders? John Krasinski, Michael Cassidy, Patrick Fluger, Scott Porter, Mike Vogel and Chace Crawford. Test screenings of the actors will be taking place this week as the studio puts the actors on 30-day holds during the process.

“The First Avenger: Captain America” will be directed by Joe Johnston and is aiming for a July 22nd, 2011 release date.

The latest news from Latino Review has confirmed that writer David Goyer (Batman Begins, Blade) has been hired by Warner Bros to write the next Superman film, tentatively titled “The Man of Steel”. Goyer’s script, which will not be an origin story, is rumored to include Lex Luthor and Brainiac, and involves the financial struggle of the Daily Planet in the modern digital world. The film is also expected to set up a “huge Kryptonian mythology” – whatever that means. In addition, Brandon Routh and “Superman Returns” director Bryan Singer are not expected to return.

Can David Goyer finally bring some life into this apparent reboot and ultimately pull a “Batman Begins” with the “Superman” franchise? What do you guys think?

The Wrap has reported that a man named Robert Henderson has been sentenced for illegally trafficking counterfeit DVD’s of “The Dark Knight”. Henderson, who is from Grandview, Missouri, recorded the film on a digital camcorder in the summer of 2008 and as a result, has been given 2 years in federal prison as well as a whopping $24,738 in fines…AND…3 years probation.

According to the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, passed in 2005, new penalties were established for pirating films not yet released commercially. The penalty for first-time violators? 3-5 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. Suddenly, that movie ticket doesn’t sound so expensive, does it?

Moral of the story? Don’t mess with The Dark Knight because he will certainly bring vengeance on your ass.

Lionsgate has released a new R-rated trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s “Kick-Ass”. Check it out below.

“Kick-Ass” hits theaters this April 16th.

This week “Aliens Vs. Predator”  made it’s way onto the PC, XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3. I had the opportunity to play through the game, or games rather, on the XBOX 360 and have mixed feelings about it.

The nice thing about this game is that instead of having one long drawn out story, “Aliens Vs. Predator” is like having 3 games on 1 disc. You get to play as different characters and move through different storylines which keeps the game refreshing and makes it worth the price.

The first thing I noticed about it is that it isn’t easy to just buy the game and jump into it. As someone who has been playing games for over 20 years, I found the learning curve a bit too much for the average gamer and it took me a couple of hours to get used to the controls. Also, some of the game mechanics take a would-be amazing game and make it frustrating. For instance, playing through the Alien campaign allows you to defy the laws of physics by climbing on walls at fast speeds however those speeds deny the user the controls necessary to enjoy being able to make those moves.

Another production flaw I found with the game is that the levels are simply poorly designed and the camera angles don’t help much either. I can safely say that if a little more TLC went into the programming and design end of the game, there would be a lot more buzz about this release.

On the plus side, some of these mistakes are compensated for in the multiplayer aspect of the game. With 6 different game modes, AVP can actually be a pretty fun game with your friends. Giving you the ability to play as an Alien, Predator or Marine creates a nice diversity in modes like team death match. It is safe to say that the multiplayer saves this game from being completely mediocre. Even with titles like “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″, it is the multiplayer modes that make the game stand out above the competition.

Overall, this game has a lot of potential but it’s the small things on the production end that get in the way of me recommending people to run out and buy it. If you have some friends committed to getting it, it may be worth the $60.00 MSRP. If you are looking for a single player game that will capture the movie nostalgia, you might want to put this on the top of your rental list.

Rumor has it Christopher Nolan has been approached to handle the reboot of the Warner Bros. Superman franchise. Looks like Nolan’s treatment of the Caped Crusader will earn him a chance to give the Man of Steel a proper entry perhaps without a superhero kid with asthma.

Ahh… White Knight Chronicles. I was so excited for thee when you were known as Shirokishi Monogatari (Japanese; Literally – White Knight Stories) back in 2007 when the game was announced. There were rather some high expectations for this game. Developer Level-5 was hailed to be the new contender and rival to Squeenix and potentially produce high quality RPGs as the latter.

Early builds of the game demonstrated extreme detail in combat. Contact between weapons, their targets and shields would act as you would expect them to if you were to see it in real life. Blocking with a shield would properly deflect an attack and the shield and it’s wielder would recoil. Instead attacks animations will follow through and pass through your character model regardless if there was a block animation or not. There were also team attacks that no longer seem to be present in this final version of the game. At one point your party members would be able to restrain an enemy while your character would be free to land an attack. This is not to say the combat is bad, it’s actually enjoyable. The combo system is fun to play with. You learn moves with points you earn from leveling up. Each of those moves will become an individual attack you can select and assign on the combat bar. The combos are stringed together by each of those attacks that you can assign in place of a single move. Each character has a selection of skills he or she can raise. They are common for the most part among all the characters: skills in sword, great sword, bow, polearm, divine, elemental, axes, and staves. Your characters are not limited to one skill set so theoretically you could max everything out.

The equipment system is rather impressive. Each piece of armor will show on the character models, whether it be weapons, body armor, gloves, or capes. The system of upgrading a single weapon tends to keep an early level weapon up to par with weapon shops a few cities ahead of you. You can also combine weapons to create more powerful ones and add elemental attacks to them. The only gripe here is they are done at separate vendors instead of at one place. So if you can’t remember a certain ingredient needed you have to run between the two vendors to get it right.

The story is generic. Save the princess is how it starts off. And there’s is one Super Mario moment (“… but the princess is in another castle”) that really invokes a nice facepalm. The character development is somewhat stagnant and hard to believe. The relationship between Leonard and Cisna feels awkward and forced, but I personally believe that the fault could lie in the poor voice acting. I really wish they included the Japanese voice track, maybe then the screaming in vain wouldn’t be so cringe inducing (Think Darth Vader Episode III).  However the creature and monster design is nice. There is a creature with a city on its back and the White Knight itself is very beautifully designed. The landscape throughout the game is done very well and the scale of the game just in setting alone is grand.

There is also an available online mode where you can use your custom made avatar to play with friends on Level-5′s service called Geonet. You can customize a hometown a la Dark Cloud and partake on sidequests co-op with your friends. The option first becomes available once you buy a quest from a guild in town and you reach the world map and it sort of becomes a mini MMO (Yeah I know that’s an oxymoron). Oddly enough some elements of this game are reminiscent of Final Fantasy XI (Provoke, Pentaslam, Skewer, Last Resort) The avatar you create is at the beginning of the game and oddly is included in your party. He or she does not actually play any role whatsoever to the story, it’s just there, doesn’t talk, doesn’t cause anything to happen or change the course of the story in any way. But if you leave the custom character out of your party, which I did, it still levels up as the rest of your party does so you can use it online.

When it all boils down, this generation of gaming consoles has been lacking on the JRPGs, particularly since the higher caliber RPGs have extremely long development cycles.  And due to that, the variety of games has gone down.  While games like Demon’s Souls were good, they were also fleeting. WKC had the potential to be memorable and a great experience but sadly falls flat. Let’s be honest here, a lot of us are just waiting for March 9th, so it probably wasn’t the best idea to draw out the localization process to release the game a month before Final Fantasy XIII. White Knight Chronicles would have been a great thing to have 6 months after it’s Japanese release, not an entire year.