So, Blizzard has finally announced Diablo III. Yeah, I'm kind of excited about it. Err, scratch that. I'm more than kind of excited about it. I mean, I know it's still at least a year away, and probably two to be honest. But, I can't help it. I mean, this is Diablo III we're talking about here.
I can very clearly remember getting sucked into Diablo II (I never really got into the original Diablo, only ever really playing the demo). I remember the first character I created. She was an Amazon, specializing in Bow and Arrow skills. This was my first character so she wasn't very good. I remember thinking it was really worthwhile to get Magic Arrow to a high enough level that it didn't require any mana. My thought process was something along the lines of: "I can attack enemies at absolutely no cost to me whatsoever". The fact that at this point Magic Arrow gave no significant damage boost nor an attack rating boost didn't occur to me as relevant. She also specialized in Ice Arrow. This may come as a surprise, but my character wasn't very good against groups. But, in her defense, she made it all the way to Hell difficulty (she didn't really make any progress in Hell, though, and this was prior to the expansion, I'm not sure she would have fared well in Act V).
I think my second character was a Sorceress who played exactly like my Amazon (except she used Fireball instead of Magic Arrow as her main attack and Ice Blast instead of Ice Arrow as her secondary attack). I can't quite remember how far I got with her. I'm sure I got at least to Act II in Nightmare before getting bored of her.
I especially remember when the expansion pack came out. I remember because I was on a trip in Europe when it came out and it was at the house when I got back. I remember that I was on a completely different sleep schedule and so I played it until 6 am or so (having arrived back home around 9 pm the previous evening). I then pretended to go to sleep for an hour so that I would look like I had woken up to go to school in the morning. I'm pretty confident my dad wasn't fooled.
Sigh. Watching those gameplay videos made me miss that game a lot. Well, intellectually miss it at least. The fact that I still play it for a minimum of 5-10 hours a month means that I'm still quite into it. In my defense, it's the only game that my ancient laptop can play (and, well, it's still more fun than most games out for my PS3). Of course, since watching those gameplay videos, I'm back to more more like 5-10 hours a week, minimum.
Nowadays, I'm playing an Assassin (yes, you've probably noticed the pattern that I only play the female classes, and no, I don't really have an explanation for it, but it's primarily due to the fact that I like the play styles and I swear it's not just because they're girls). I think she's something like level 70. She just finally made it to Act V in Nightmare. It's pretty tough because I only play with the number of players set to eight. This means that the bad guys are scaled under the assumption that there are eight people fighting them, but I play alone. In practical terms, it means they have 4.5 times as much life and they give 4.5 times as much experience. Primarily, I do it because it means they drop a shitload more items and I'm kind of a magic item whore.
To be honest, playing an Assassin almost feels like cheating. I mean, she's so ridiculously powerful it all feels kind of pointless (of course, they still kill me regularly, so there's still some challenge to it). Basically, she has one move that is effectively capable of casting three of the Sorceress's most powerful moves (so, it terms of skill points one skill point in that Assassin's move is worth 3 Sorceress skill points into each of those other moves). Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Anyways, back to Diablo III. I thought it was interesting that there was an almost immediate uproar that the game was too bright and happy looking. In some ways, I can see what they're talking about. I mean, the graphics really do look very much like WoW, which has a cartoony look to it. Diablo has typically tried to avoid that cartoony look. But, at the same time, it's tried to avoid a cartoony look while effectively existing as a sprite based game. Last time I checked, sprites are drawings and considering that these move, there is kind of an inherent cartoony-ness to it all. And, in all honesty, the switch to 3-D was pretty much guaranteed. And, since they're going 3-D you know they're going to have to be at least a little careful on the polygon counts, just because they have to be ready to have hundreds of guys on the screen at a time, so the result is that they have to use an art style that can handle relatively low polygon counts. And, well, last time I checked, relatively cartoony characters do low-ish polygon counts pretty well. Besides, they have plenty of time to work on the textures to add some grit to the world.
To be honest, I'm excited about this switch to 3-D. I remember dreading it prior to the announcement (read as: when I'd dream of them finally getting around to making Diablo III), but having seen it in action, I'm happy with it. I'm a little nervous about all that knocking bad guys off the narrow bridge thing we saw the Barbarian doing, just because that means we can't pick up their item drops, I assume, but hopefully that won't be too big an issue (besides, it's not like I'm going to be playing classes that would be knocking guys off bridges anyways). I'm definitely excited at the prospect of the bad guys actually getting to have a sense of scale. That was something that the earlier iterations simply couldn't really do. Everything that was meant to be big just looked fat.
Watching the gameplay videos, I couldn't help but be curious about what the online component is going to be like. I mean, Blizzard almost certainly isn't going to charge for using battle.net, but what if they did? What if they decided to actually make a semi-cohesive world? I'm not sure people know this, but Blizzard kept updating Diablo II well past the point when most people were still paying attention to it (clearly, I'm not most people, I think). They kept adding new Unique items and created a special separate "Ladder" realm. Characters in this realm had access to potential Unique drops and super unique monster encounters that couldn't be found in the other realms. These realms were also regularly reset and all the characters deleted to allow players to regularly compete for something or other (ie-status).
I don't know how much of a success this was, but assuming they were happy with the participation and response was positive, what could they do next? What can they build into Diablo III to keep improving the online component? Could they build 40 person dungeons filled with bosses unlike anything the single player experience could imagine? Could they create some sort of guild system to help organize the player community for these events?
In short, could they make late-game playing in Diablo III similar to the late-game play of WoW? Would they want to?
I'm not sure they necessarily would. To be honest, if I had to sit and pick a game to play, I'm about 85% sure I would pick Diablo II over WoW almost any day of the week. I'm all about killing huge numbers of enemies to see what I find and I can do that in Diablo much more efficiently than WoW. On the other hand, I'm free to do other activities while playing WoW, but I'm not sure I see that as a major advantage.
So, assuming there are other people like me, then Diablo III could, maybe even should, very well be the WoW-killer that everyone's been looking for. It makes a lot of sense to me. WoW takes a huge number of the gameplay concepts of Diablo and uses them as the backbone for the most successful MMO of all time. But, it kept the MMO conceit of very simple, limited combat. Bad guys are meant to be fought one at time (not necessarily one on one, though, of course). And so grinding in WoW is a patient affair of slowly killing enemies one at a time. This is dissatisfying. Diablo takes the gameply concepts of Diablo and simplifies combat to the bare minimum and allows players to take on innumerable enemies at a time. This is very satisfying.
I would not be surprised if the online component of Diablo III is at least as compelling as the online component of WoW (keeping in mind that the online component of WoW is its entirety). But, if it's as compelling as WoW, then, well, Blizzard will need to charge for it. Or they'll be cannibalizing their own income stream while creating a new resource drain.
So, yeah. I'll be dreaming of Diablo III for a long a time, and eventually I'll get to play it. I can't wait.
That is all.
Francis
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Rock Band Post (Finally)
So, I've had Rock Band for a couple months now, but I haven't actually written a post on it yet. I've mentioned it in posts, but I haven't actually written a post dedicated to its pure, unadulterated awesomeness.
There's a couple reasons for this. The main one being that there really isn't much to say besides that it is incredibly, ridiculously awesome. I mean, everything about it is awesome. Playing it is a lot like playing the first Guitar Hero. It is filled with energy and excitement and ideas and you can't help but get swept up with them.
Just the character creation system had me completely consumed for at least the first month. I was literally creating characters and having them play gigs just to provide them with money to fill up their wardrobe and really look like rock stars. I very quickly had a full band of hot girls, slowly testing different looks and styles until each one had finally found just the right look. Of course, since that's happened I haven't touched the system again, but that's okay. This was just another way to get me into the game and the characters, and that's what was really important. And this is another similarity to Guitar Hero 1. Not all of the ideas have been executed to completion just yet. This is the start of something great; a remarkable start, but a start all the same. I would love it if there were additional costumes or hairstyles available for download. I'm also looking forward to them further expanding the creation system and adding more faces or more customizable faces.
Similarly, I think Band World Tour mode still needs some work. It's a really awesome idea and it's way better than slowly accessing a track list, but it's not quite right yet. I like that this mode eliminates the old proglem where there's a single song stopping all of your progress in the game, but it's significantly extending the game time without increasing the total number of songs available to me at all. The inevitable result is that I'll have to play the same songs over and over again, which isn't as much fun as playing new songs. It gets worse because you can't access any of the songs you've downloaded. This means that the entire Band World Tour only really uses less than half the songs I have (except during sets that are random or let me pick the set myself). I love the idea of fans (although at this point they don't actually serve much purpose) and playing bigger gigs earning more fans and money, but there needs to be a way to make it worthwhile to go back to Band World Tour after I've downloaded tons of songs. As it is now, I pretty much only do Band Quickplay because that way I can choose from all my songs and see them sorted by difficulty. Even when I've got a group that I've formed a band with over, we'll still end up switching to Quickplay mode after a little while because it works better to take turns picking the song we want to perform, rather than trying to find whole sets that we all want to play (in the end, we almost always just pick random). I don't know if maybe download packs should add extra gigs in the world or if gigs should often have a random song guaranteed to be either a bonus track or a downloaded song, but something needs to be done.
Drums, of course, have had me addicted for ever since I laid eyes on them. I am incapable of holding a rhythm, but somehow I've managed to learn...when I'm holding the Rock Band drumsticks while sitting front of the Rock Band drum kit and watching the screen. And that is totally awesome. I mean, ridiculously awesome. It's something I never believed I could do. At this point, I've now played drums to the point where I can five star almost any song on Hard and so I'm playing more and more Expert. Get that: Expert. This means that I actually know drum patterns at this point. That is crazy. It reminds me of what it was like to get addicted to Guitar Hero. All over again. Only it feels even better.
I've been surprised how much fun vocals are as well. I am one of those people who can't sing, but likes to think he can, and given some music is typically willing to sing, though typically fairly quietly because I don't really want people to have to listen to me. And, well, Rock Band will let you do that. And, I've actually managed to improve a lot in that area as well. When I started I could actually fail on Easy, and by this point I can survive almost any song on Hard. It'd be nice to someday be good enough to typically get four or five stars on Hard, but surviving is where I'm at now, and I'm proud of that. Yeah, that's right, proud of it. That's pretty awesome too, since there's not very many games where my ability actually gives me pride. I mean, doing the guitar and drums on Expert doesn't make me proud (although I do like showing it off).
But, what I've recently discovered is how truly incredible it feels to sing while playing guitar. Given a mic stand and a guitar, Rock Band completely changes. A wise man I know described this as a transformation from playing the game to performing. He's right. Although I've never been on stage playing an instrument in my life (but he has, os that's why i'm trust him on things like this), and I know I never will, this is what it must feel like to be actually doing it. Performing both instruments at once puts you entirely in the game. When you're performing like that, you're actually singing. When you're performing like that, you honestly can't tell that you're not actually playing a guitar. When you're performing like that, you believe that you're onstage. And it feels so good.
I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do just the guitar again and not feel lame. This is what karoake should be like (and with the help of alcohol, I'm pretty sure it is, but that's not the point).
But, so how do I feel about Rock Band versus Guitar Hero (3 and later)? Or, rather, how about I list all the ways that Rock Band puts Guitar Hero to shame?
But seriously, this game is better in every single way and the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour game just reinforces it. Rock Band captured the feel of the crowd and the stadiums and the stage performances way, way better. The things the characters do onstage are amazing to watch, whenever you get the chance. The character designs and art styles are totally cool, which was one of my main complaints about Guitar Hero 3. The writing is actually clever and funny. The song list totally blows Guitar Hero out of the water and is probably the best list since Guitar Hero 1. They got all the little things and the very big things absolutely right.
The downloadable content puts Guitar Hero to shame, every day of the week (well, every Thursday of the week, at least). I mean, think about it. I have 6 Grateful Dead songs on Rock Band. I have them because the guitar parts are amazing, but there is no Grateful Dead on Guitar Hero, and I don't know why. I have Boston's debut album. And, it is amazing. By the end of this month, I'll have The Pixies' Doolittle. Get that: Doolittle. Like, after they get around to releasing Nevermind, my life will be complete. Completely complete. I can barely even imagine how awesome it will be to do Nevermind from start to finish. It gives me shivers just thinking about it. And don't get me started on how awesome it is to have so many songs from The Police and Oasis and The Clash and from stupid (yet, somehow awesome) emo bands like 30 Seconds to Mars and The All-American Rejects and Paramore and Fall Out Boy. I mean, I even have a song from The Monkees, for goodness sake.
How can Guitar Hero compete with that? Well, they can't. So, their plan is to just milk the brand. They're releasing something like 3 different Guitar Hero games in the next 6 months (well, if you count the DS version, which I'm not sure should be counted). If I cared about Aerosmith at all, I might care about their Aerosmith version, but I don't; so, I don't. They've also announced that they'll be doing a similar Metallica dedicated game. Once again, I don't care. And then there's Guitar Hero: World Tour (subtitle: Playing Catch Up with Rock Band). They're adding drums and vocals, of course. And, well, their drums do sound pretty sweet. Otherwise, their feature list is made up entirely of functional improvements that people want to see in Rock Band. The character creation system will have more options than Rock Band. The drums will be quieter. The solo tour mode will be more like Rock Band's Band World Tour mode (while I'm sure the band tour mode will be exactly the same). They're even adding the music creation system that Harmonix said they wished they could get into Rock Band 1.
But, so my question can't help but be, so what are you offering me that Rock Band isn't? Keeping in mind, that I would be very, very surprised if, when I bought Rock Band 2, I wouldn't have access to the 50-some songs I've already downloaded. And the answer is, quite honestly, the name Guitar Hero. And, well, my response is: Guitar Hero 3 left a bad taste in my mouth, so, I think I'll pass. Which is too bad. I would really like it if Activision felt the need to actually differentiate Guitar Hero from Rock Band by doing things in a better or different way, rather than doing things the same way and shooting for feature parity (or, at this point, an incremental improvement over a game that will be about a year old when the new Guitar Hero comes out, so Guitar Hero will actually have to compete with Rock Band 2, which should have all the "features" that Guitar Hero has at an absolute minimum...possibly minus the quieter drum).
What I really want is to see Rock Band keep improving as a platform. A couple songs a week is an amazing start, but I want to see where it goes from there. I want to see singles and songs and whatever hitting Rock Band as often as possible. I know that's what they want as well, and I can't wait for them to get there.
That is all.
Francis
There's a couple reasons for this. The main one being that there really isn't much to say besides that it is incredibly, ridiculously awesome. I mean, everything about it is awesome. Playing it is a lot like playing the first Guitar Hero. It is filled with energy and excitement and ideas and you can't help but get swept up with them.
Just the character creation system had me completely consumed for at least the first month. I was literally creating characters and having them play gigs just to provide them with money to fill up their wardrobe and really look like rock stars. I very quickly had a full band of hot girls, slowly testing different looks and styles until each one had finally found just the right look. Of course, since that's happened I haven't touched the system again, but that's okay. This was just another way to get me into the game and the characters, and that's what was really important. And this is another similarity to Guitar Hero 1. Not all of the ideas have been executed to completion just yet. This is the start of something great; a remarkable start, but a start all the same. I would love it if there were additional costumes or hairstyles available for download. I'm also looking forward to them further expanding the creation system and adding more faces or more customizable faces.
Similarly, I think Band World Tour mode still needs some work. It's a really awesome idea and it's way better than slowly accessing a track list, but it's not quite right yet. I like that this mode eliminates the old proglem where there's a single song stopping all of your progress in the game, but it's significantly extending the game time without increasing the total number of songs available to me at all. The inevitable result is that I'll have to play the same songs over and over again, which isn't as much fun as playing new songs. It gets worse because you can't access any of the songs you've downloaded. This means that the entire Band World Tour only really uses less than half the songs I have (except during sets that are random or let me pick the set myself). I love the idea of fans (although at this point they don't actually serve much purpose) and playing bigger gigs earning more fans and money, but there needs to be a way to make it worthwhile to go back to Band World Tour after I've downloaded tons of songs. As it is now, I pretty much only do Band Quickplay because that way I can choose from all my songs and see them sorted by difficulty. Even when I've got a group that I've formed a band with over, we'll still end up switching to Quickplay mode after a little while because it works better to take turns picking the song we want to perform, rather than trying to find whole sets that we all want to play (in the end, we almost always just pick random). I don't know if maybe download packs should add extra gigs in the world or if gigs should often have a random song guaranteed to be either a bonus track or a downloaded song, but something needs to be done.
Drums, of course, have had me addicted for ever since I laid eyes on them. I am incapable of holding a rhythm, but somehow I've managed to learn...when I'm holding the Rock Band drumsticks while sitting front of the Rock Band drum kit and watching the screen. And that is totally awesome. I mean, ridiculously awesome. It's something I never believed I could do. At this point, I've now played drums to the point where I can five star almost any song on Hard and so I'm playing more and more Expert. Get that: Expert. This means that I actually know drum patterns at this point. That is crazy. It reminds me of what it was like to get addicted to Guitar Hero. All over again. Only it feels even better.
I've been surprised how much fun vocals are as well. I am one of those people who can't sing, but likes to think he can, and given some music is typically willing to sing, though typically fairly quietly because I don't really want people to have to listen to me. And, well, Rock Band will let you do that. And, I've actually managed to improve a lot in that area as well. When I started I could actually fail on Easy, and by this point I can survive almost any song on Hard. It'd be nice to someday be good enough to typically get four or five stars on Hard, but surviving is where I'm at now, and I'm proud of that. Yeah, that's right, proud of it. That's pretty awesome too, since there's not very many games where my ability actually gives me pride. I mean, doing the guitar and drums on Expert doesn't make me proud (although I do like showing it off).
But, what I've recently discovered is how truly incredible it feels to sing while playing guitar. Given a mic stand and a guitar, Rock Band completely changes. A wise man I know described this as a transformation from playing the game to performing. He's right. Although I've never been on stage playing an instrument in my life (but he has, os that's why i'm trust him on things like this), and I know I never will, this is what it must feel like to be actually doing it. Performing both instruments at once puts you entirely in the game. When you're performing like that, you're actually singing. When you're performing like that, you honestly can't tell that you're not actually playing a guitar. When you're performing like that, you believe that you're onstage. And it feels so good.
I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do just the guitar again and not feel lame. This is what karoake should be like (and with the help of alcohol, I'm pretty sure it is, but that's not the point).
But, so how do I feel about Rock Band versus Guitar Hero (3 and later)? Or, rather, how about I list all the ways that Rock Band puts Guitar Hero to shame?
But seriously, this game is better in every single way and the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour game just reinforces it. Rock Band captured the feel of the crowd and the stadiums and the stage performances way, way better. The things the characters do onstage are amazing to watch, whenever you get the chance. The character designs and art styles are totally cool, which was one of my main complaints about Guitar Hero 3. The writing is actually clever and funny. The song list totally blows Guitar Hero out of the water and is probably the best list since Guitar Hero 1. They got all the little things and the very big things absolutely right.
The downloadable content puts Guitar Hero to shame, every day of the week (well, every Thursday of the week, at least). I mean, think about it. I have 6 Grateful Dead songs on Rock Band. I have them because the guitar parts are amazing, but there is no Grateful Dead on Guitar Hero, and I don't know why. I have Boston's debut album. And, it is amazing. By the end of this month, I'll have The Pixies' Doolittle. Get that: Doolittle. Like, after they get around to releasing Nevermind, my life will be complete. Completely complete. I can barely even imagine how awesome it will be to do Nevermind from start to finish. It gives me shivers just thinking about it. And don't get me started on how awesome it is to have so many songs from The Police and Oasis and The Clash and from stupid (yet, somehow awesome) emo bands like 30 Seconds to Mars and The All-American Rejects and Paramore and Fall Out Boy. I mean, I even have a song from The Monkees, for goodness sake.
How can Guitar Hero compete with that? Well, they can't. So, their plan is to just milk the brand. They're releasing something like 3 different Guitar Hero games in the next 6 months (well, if you count the DS version, which I'm not sure should be counted). If I cared about Aerosmith at all, I might care about their Aerosmith version, but I don't; so, I don't. They've also announced that they'll be doing a similar Metallica dedicated game. Once again, I don't care. And then there's Guitar Hero: World Tour (subtitle: Playing Catch Up with Rock Band). They're adding drums and vocals, of course. And, well, their drums do sound pretty sweet. Otherwise, their feature list is made up entirely of functional improvements that people want to see in Rock Band. The character creation system will have more options than Rock Band. The drums will be quieter. The solo tour mode will be more like Rock Band's Band World Tour mode (while I'm sure the band tour mode will be exactly the same). They're even adding the music creation system that Harmonix said they wished they could get into Rock Band 1.
But, so my question can't help but be, so what are you offering me that Rock Band isn't? Keeping in mind, that I would be very, very surprised if, when I bought Rock Band 2, I wouldn't have access to the 50-some songs I've already downloaded. And the answer is, quite honestly, the name Guitar Hero. And, well, my response is: Guitar Hero 3 left a bad taste in my mouth, so, I think I'll pass. Which is too bad. I would really like it if Activision felt the need to actually differentiate Guitar Hero from Rock Band by doing things in a better or different way, rather than doing things the same way and shooting for feature parity (or, at this point, an incremental improvement over a game that will be about a year old when the new Guitar Hero comes out, so Guitar Hero will actually have to compete with Rock Band 2, which should have all the "features" that Guitar Hero has at an absolute minimum...possibly minus the quieter drum).
What I really want is to see Rock Band keep improving as a platform. A couple songs a week is an amazing start, but I want to see where it goes from there. I want to see singles and songs and whatever hitting Rock Band as often as possible. I know that's what they want as well, and I can't wait for them to get there.
That is all.
Francis
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Iron Man
So, I actually saw this on Thursday night at 8 o'clock, so if I had been really motivated I would have written this up then. But, well, I got distracted by something else that is going to earn a post one of these days, so I'll talk about that then.
Anyways, just to put this in perspective, I knew nothing about Iron Man prior to seeing the trailers start airing sometime a little over a year ago. Literally, I knew nothing. I did not know he was a comic book character. I did not know he had a popular Saturday morning cartoon show. I did know the Black Sabbath song, from Guitar Hero. Even when I heard about this character, I didn't really know if they were actually related or if Ozzy just thought it was cool.
So, yeah, I could be pretty accurately described as a n00b on this one. However, I did know that Robert Downey Jr. is awesome. I'm not sure when I learned that, exactly, but it feels like I've known that for more or less my whole life. Oddly enough, because I don't really pay attention to tabloids unless they have flattering pictures of starlets on the covers (and these days, it seems like they never do), so I honestly didn't know about Robert Downey Jr.'s forays into fun things like drug abuse and alcoholism, nor his many trips to and from rehab. I'm still not totally clear about why this is relevant to EVERY SINGLE FREAKING REVIEW OF IRON MAN THAT I'VE READ, but apparently it is.
So, be warned, I'm clearly incapable of giving a proper review of this movie because I didn't know enough about the character or the actor. But, luckily, I've been bombarded with this information for the past two weeks or so, so I could probably just lie about already knowing it and move on. But, I'd like to do this differently than everyone else. I won't talk about how Robert Downey Jr.'s past makes him the perfect actor to portray Tony Stark, because it's not. Dammit, I am going to talk about it. Never mind, on to my thoughts, just remember that I don't actually know Tony Stark's past, nor do I particularly know Robert Downey Jr.'s past, so when I talk about these things, I'm making shit up (hardly unusual).
Anyways, let's start with the experience. Clearly, it was awesome. Everyone and their brother, mother, grandmother could tell you that. Even the trailers ahead of the movie were awesome. There weren't too many but they were: a new Batman trailer (hell, yes), a new Indiana Jones trailer (OMFG!), and an Incredible Hulk trailer (okay, they can't all be as awesome as the first two) and that was it. Yep, just three trailers. Nice. Briefly, I would just like to say that I'm quite happy with the switch in Batman from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal, because Jake's sister is awesome and hot and Katie Holmes is not awesome and just pretty. On the other hand, the switch from Jennifer Connelly to Liv Tyler in the Incredible Hulk sequel is not welcome. Jennifer Connelly is an amazing actress that adds credibility to the project and is also really, really hot when playing a scientist (I will reserve judgment on Liv Tyler's hotness when playing a scientist, but I didn't even like her that much when she was playing an elf, which should be easy). At the same time, I imagine that the switch from Eric Bana to Edward Norton could be very good (not that I don't like Eric Bana, but, man, Edward Norton, you can't really argue with that).
Okay, obviously, that wasn't the experience. That was irrelevant. But, that's how the experience started, with awesome trailers. It continued with both well done action sequences (that had some shaky cam, but typically only during explosions, which I'm pretty sure has been considered fair since at least the original Star Trek, so no complaints there) and some hilarious quotable lines, entirely from Mr. Downey Jr. There were these nearly perfect special effects and a focus on characters that is highly reminiscent of that Spiderman sequel, as well as Batman Begins.
Clearly, this was an origin story, and so the focus was on his origins. We spend a lot of time in that cave, but only after taking some time to find out what he was like merely a day before his world came crashing down on him (and he ended up in that cave). And, well, he was a comic book character living large. He believed his own BS and lived it every day. But, and here's why I don't think Robert Downey Jr.'s past is relevant to his portrayal of Tony Stark, his vices don't rule him. He is in control of himself from the beginning. He just doesn't care about the world around him, because he's billionaire genius Tony Stark.
And, well, why should he? He's the head of a massive and massively successful weapons research and manufacturer. He believes he's doing good by keeping the army safe and well armed for its wars. That's all he needs to soothe his conscience and do whatever he wants. And even then, it's clear from his home that whatever he wants is hardly even that bad. Yes he drinks and only talks to/sleeps with beautiful women, and well, we don't know if he does drugs since this is PG-13, so they probably don't want to push the limits more than necessary, but otherwise his house is filled with the types of toys anybody would dream of. Classic cars (okay, I'm not into that, but I can still respect it, especially since it's clear he spends time working on them himself), cool robots and other electric gadgets (with cute/clever personalities too), and a machine/design shop that can produce something as awesome as his Iron Man suit in a matter of hours.
Those are the toys of someone who is wasting his life playing games, not someone who necessarily has problems or needs anything like rehab. It's easy to imagine how his home came to be. He slowly filled it with his heart's desires. And note that they weren't vices; they were toys. Because he's a bored genius looking for entertainment and finding it by giving himself the power to exercise his genius at will.
But, really, the moment he realizes that his work is not doing the good that he believed it was, he changed. He invented multiple amazing things, immediately (partly out of motivation to survive, but whatever, and I wish they had put in some dialogue during that cave sequence notifying the audience that he was creating something spectacular with that little round light source, because I had assumed it was some old invention of his that he was remaking from scratch, not the awesome creation that would allow Iron Man to exist). His conscience is no longer soothed and he realizes that if he wants to do good, he, himself, has to actually do good. And so therefore he does.
That's what I got from the movie, at least. Maybe the comics present a different story. But from what I could tell, all of his "vices, largely public in nature" simply arose from the fact that he didn't care what the world thought of him since he believed he was amazing. Once he stopped thinking he was amazing, he decided the world needed to think he was amazing, and so of course he relishes telling the whole world: "I am Iron Man".
So, yes, Robert Downey Jr. did a great job portraying Tony Stark, because Robert Downey Jr. is an incredibly versatile actor. He has almost all the fun lines in the movie, and part of the reason is because he can deliver them perfectly. He can pull off hilarious and cocky and he can also be so intelligent that those around him are confused and uncomfortable. And, well, that's what makes Tony Stark such a fun character, and that's why I knew Robert Downey Jr. could do it right. It's not because of his past, it's because of his awesomeness.
The other actors I was pretty indifferent to. I've never been a huge fan of Jeff Bridges, although I really like his voice. I kind of wish it felt like he had more of a plan than he did. I mean, he's the bad guy, and I totally like the start of his plan: you know, kill Tony Stark to wrest control of the company from him. But, well, he doesn't seem to improvise well. He tries to legally gain control of the company, which is a fine back up, but then he becomes obsessed with the Iron Man suit. And, well, let's be honest. What's he going to do with it? Sell it. Okay, sure, that should be fine. But he's going to have tons of legal struggles in any situation with that plan.
I mean, seriously, there's going to be tons of proof that the first inventor was Tony Stark. I mean, he's going to have to secretly kill a lot of people to hide the fact that he stole a working prototype of the little round light source, as well as designs for the Iron Man suit from Tony Stark. In fact, even if Tony had died when Jeff Bridges (sorry, I didn't really like the name Obidiah Stane, so we're calling him Jeff Bridges) physically took the thing out of his chest, there's going to be a ton of evidence that it was Jeff who did it (including the well known fact that the little round light source was keeping Tony alive and, oh, would you look at that, it's now being used to power an Iron Man suit, I bet Tony sacrificed his life for that Iron Man suit, yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense).
So, yeah, I wish his plan went farther than simply obtaining the giant freaking suit. Yeah, I know he feels invincible in it, but I imagine that, as the head of the company once Stark is dead, it's not in his best interest to go to war with his primary customer. I mean, that's just a guess, but it seems reasonable.
Let's see, then there was Terrence Howard, who basically had nothing to do. So, yeah, I'm pretty indifferent to him to. I guess we'll probably see him suit up in the sequel, although I'm curious where the little round light source is going to go since Terrence Howard's character (whose name I never caught) doesn't have that convenient hole in his chest that Tony does.
And then there's Gwyneth Paltrow. We don't see her in stuff much, so I guess it's exciting just to see her in a major movie, and, well, she certainly is beautiful. I guess, I kind of feel like her performance was hit or miss at times, and it seemed to always miss during the most important conversations. Her entrance is perfect. She's sending some young slut home after a hot night with Tony Stark (Christine Everhart is the character's name, I didn't recognize the actress, and I'm kind of hoping she's a recurring character...also, I was a little confused about how Tony and her ended up in Malibu, considering they started the night in Vegas, but I'm sure that's not important). She conveys this perfect amount of indignation and haughtiness, with just a tinge of jealousy, as she lets the girl know just what Tony thinks of her (or, rather, that he's already forgotten her, which you can clearly see on the girl's face when she talks to Tony again, later in the movie, and he basically doesn't remember her at all...so, yes, this is why I want her to be a recurring character).
But after that perfect entrance, her interactions with Tony often times just don't feel quite right. Multiple times it sounds like she's...blubbering (I feel like that should only be used when talking about pirates). She doesn't know what to say when he asks her to stick her hand inside his chest and so she just talks, and talks. Again, when he asks her to dance and then has a drink with her outside, she's just awkwardly talking when it's clear that's not really what he wants her doing. Maybe that's what Pepper Potts (yeah, I'm not a fan of that name) is like in the comics, but it doesn't feel right. They present her as the assistant whose job is to make Tony's life function even as Tony is consistently sabotaging those efforts just by being himself. She should be eminently competent, especially in the weird and uncomfortable situations that Stark's shenanigans create. And they illustrate this perfectly with her entrance.
But, then we don't really get to see it ever again. It's like for the rest of movie she's out of her element and unprepared (which could be reasonable considering she was hired at sometime in the past to keep his life together, not to infiltrate the company and steal secrets, or fall in love with him, but you'd hope that the requirements for keeping his life together would include dealing with situations like these, you know, just in case). So, yeah, this inherently felt wrong to me. But, it could be just me.
Also, and this is a big complaint, when they're out there on the balcony together, she totally leans in to kiss him. Now, once again, maybe something very much like this happened somewhere in the comics (and in any case, this isn't Gwyneth Paltrow's fault, so I'm not blaming her), but I cannot possibly imagine that's how it should be. Seriously. Tony Stark's the one who just saw her looking stunningly attractive and she's still his employee. He should be making that advance and she's the one that should be pulling away because she's not comfortable with it. It's pretty clear that he's comfortable with it (and why shouldn't he be?), so it doesn't really make sense that she leans in, but then he pulls away.
Okay, on to special effects. This one is pretty short since the special effect were just about note perfect the entire movie. The suit building apparatus thing was incredibly well done and got extra points for that scene where he can't seem to get the suit off (which I assume was done with real plastic, instead of CG, but just helped to maintain the reality of it all). The suit itself looked great too. The closest comparison is Spiderman, and it looked a lot better. When flying, it didn't have nearly as much of a CG feel to it, and when he's walking around, it didn't have that man-in-a-suit feel to it, so it wins on both counts.
I have two complaints, though. The first one is with the very first Iron Man suit he creates. For the majority of the battle, it's walking around very machine-like. The movements are all stilted and slow and just what you'd expect. But, suddenly it because highly maneuverable and we see him do some ducks and maybe even a roll, which just looked completely out of place. Also, and this is being nit-picky with the design more than the special effects, but I didn't like the decision to make Jeff Bridge's Iron Man suit fly using rockets on the bottom of the feet. I understand that they didn't have Tony's designs, so they'd have to improvise on the flying, but that just didn't feel right. All that smoke coming off in order to gain lift just felt out of place in the otherwise pristine flying that the Iron Man suits pull off. But, I guess I'm willing to forgive it, since that's clearly a decision made to help make the evil Iron Man suit feel out of place. Since it doesn't belong and it shouldn't exist (because it pollutes), the audience has even more incentive to root for Iron Man.
In summary, the movie was awesome. I can easily imagine looking for excuses to see it again (for example, aww, darn, Speed Racer is sold out...well, how about seeing Iron Man again?). Reviews that call it better than Spiderman 2 or Batman Begins are exaggerating, but it's still very good. It's truly a great way to start the summer movie season.
That is all.
Francis
Anyways, just to put this in perspective, I knew nothing about Iron Man prior to seeing the trailers start airing sometime a little over a year ago. Literally, I knew nothing. I did not know he was a comic book character. I did not know he had a popular Saturday morning cartoon show. I did know the Black Sabbath song, from Guitar Hero. Even when I heard about this character, I didn't really know if they were actually related or if Ozzy just thought it was cool.
So, yeah, I could be pretty accurately described as a n00b on this one. However, I did know that Robert Downey Jr. is awesome. I'm not sure when I learned that, exactly, but it feels like I've known that for more or less my whole life. Oddly enough, because I don't really pay attention to tabloids unless they have flattering pictures of starlets on the covers (and these days, it seems like they never do), so I honestly didn't know about Robert Downey Jr.'s forays into fun things like drug abuse and alcoholism, nor his many trips to and from rehab. I'm still not totally clear about why this is relevant to EVERY SINGLE FREAKING REVIEW OF IRON MAN THAT I'VE READ, but apparently it is.
So, be warned, I'm clearly incapable of giving a proper review of this movie because I didn't know enough about the character or the actor. But, luckily, I've been bombarded with this information for the past two weeks or so, so I could probably just lie about already knowing it and move on. But, I'd like to do this differently than everyone else. I won't talk about how Robert Downey Jr.'s past makes him the perfect actor to portray Tony Stark, because it's not. Dammit, I am going to talk about it. Never mind, on to my thoughts, just remember that I don't actually know Tony Stark's past, nor do I particularly know Robert Downey Jr.'s past, so when I talk about these things, I'm making shit up (hardly unusual).
Anyways, let's start with the experience. Clearly, it was awesome. Everyone and their brother, mother, grandmother could tell you that. Even the trailers ahead of the movie were awesome. There weren't too many but they were: a new Batman trailer (hell, yes), a new Indiana Jones trailer (OMFG!), and an Incredible Hulk trailer (okay, they can't all be as awesome as the first two) and that was it. Yep, just three trailers. Nice. Briefly, I would just like to say that I'm quite happy with the switch in Batman from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal, because Jake's sister is awesome and hot and Katie Holmes is not awesome and just pretty. On the other hand, the switch from Jennifer Connelly to Liv Tyler in the Incredible Hulk sequel is not welcome. Jennifer Connelly is an amazing actress that adds credibility to the project and is also really, really hot when playing a scientist (I will reserve judgment on Liv Tyler's hotness when playing a scientist, but I didn't even like her that much when she was playing an elf, which should be easy). At the same time, I imagine that the switch from Eric Bana to Edward Norton could be very good (not that I don't like Eric Bana, but, man, Edward Norton, you can't really argue with that).
Okay, obviously, that wasn't the experience. That was irrelevant. But, that's how the experience started, with awesome trailers. It continued with both well done action sequences (that had some shaky cam, but typically only during explosions, which I'm pretty sure has been considered fair since at least the original Star Trek, so no complaints there) and some hilarious quotable lines, entirely from Mr. Downey Jr. There were these nearly perfect special effects and a focus on characters that is highly reminiscent of that Spiderman sequel, as well as Batman Begins.
Clearly, this was an origin story, and so the focus was on his origins. We spend a lot of time in that cave, but only after taking some time to find out what he was like merely a day before his world came crashing down on him (and he ended up in that cave). And, well, he was a comic book character living large. He believed his own BS and lived it every day. But, and here's why I don't think Robert Downey Jr.'s past is relevant to his portrayal of Tony Stark, his vices don't rule him. He is in control of himself from the beginning. He just doesn't care about the world around him, because he's billionaire genius Tony Stark.
And, well, why should he? He's the head of a massive and massively successful weapons research and manufacturer. He believes he's doing good by keeping the army safe and well armed for its wars. That's all he needs to soothe his conscience and do whatever he wants. And even then, it's clear from his home that whatever he wants is hardly even that bad. Yes he drinks and only talks to/sleeps with beautiful women, and well, we don't know if he does drugs since this is PG-13, so they probably don't want to push the limits more than necessary, but otherwise his house is filled with the types of toys anybody would dream of. Classic cars (okay, I'm not into that, but I can still respect it, especially since it's clear he spends time working on them himself), cool robots and other electric gadgets (with cute/clever personalities too), and a machine/design shop that can produce something as awesome as his Iron Man suit in a matter of hours.
Those are the toys of someone who is wasting his life playing games, not someone who necessarily has problems or needs anything like rehab. It's easy to imagine how his home came to be. He slowly filled it with his heart's desires. And note that they weren't vices; they were toys. Because he's a bored genius looking for entertainment and finding it by giving himself the power to exercise his genius at will.
But, really, the moment he realizes that his work is not doing the good that he believed it was, he changed. He invented multiple amazing things, immediately (partly out of motivation to survive, but whatever, and I wish they had put in some dialogue during that cave sequence notifying the audience that he was creating something spectacular with that little round light source, because I had assumed it was some old invention of his that he was remaking from scratch, not the awesome creation that would allow Iron Man to exist). His conscience is no longer soothed and he realizes that if he wants to do good, he, himself, has to actually do good. And so therefore he does.
That's what I got from the movie, at least. Maybe the comics present a different story. But from what I could tell, all of his "vices, largely public in nature" simply arose from the fact that he didn't care what the world thought of him since he believed he was amazing. Once he stopped thinking he was amazing, he decided the world needed to think he was amazing, and so of course he relishes telling the whole world: "I am Iron Man".
So, yes, Robert Downey Jr. did a great job portraying Tony Stark, because Robert Downey Jr. is an incredibly versatile actor. He has almost all the fun lines in the movie, and part of the reason is because he can deliver them perfectly. He can pull off hilarious and cocky and he can also be so intelligent that those around him are confused and uncomfortable. And, well, that's what makes Tony Stark such a fun character, and that's why I knew Robert Downey Jr. could do it right. It's not because of his past, it's because of his awesomeness.
The other actors I was pretty indifferent to. I've never been a huge fan of Jeff Bridges, although I really like his voice. I kind of wish it felt like he had more of a plan than he did. I mean, he's the bad guy, and I totally like the start of his plan: you know, kill Tony Stark to wrest control of the company from him. But, well, he doesn't seem to improvise well. He tries to legally gain control of the company, which is a fine back up, but then he becomes obsessed with the Iron Man suit. And, well, let's be honest. What's he going to do with it? Sell it. Okay, sure, that should be fine. But he's going to have tons of legal struggles in any situation with that plan.
I mean, seriously, there's going to be tons of proof that the first inventor was Tony Stark. I mean, he's going to have to secretly kill a lot of people to hide the fact that he stole a working prototype of the little round light source, as well as designs for the Iron Man suit from Tony Stark. In fact, even if Tony had died when Jeff Bridges (sorry, I didn't really like the name Obidiah Stane, so we're calling him Jeff Bridges) physically took the thing out of his chest, there's going to be a ton of evidence that it was Jeff who did it (including the well known fact that the little round light source was keeping Tony alive and, oh, would you look at that, it's now being used to power an Iron Man suit, I bet Tony sacrificed his life for that Iron Man suit, yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense).
So, yeah, I wish his plan went farther than simply obtaining the giant freaking suit. Yeah, I know he feels invincible in it, but I imagine that, as the head of the company once Stark is dead, it's not in his best interest to go to war with his primary customer. I mean, that's just a guess, but it seems reasonable.
Let's see, then there was Terrence Howard, who basically had nothing to do. So, yeah, I'm pretty indifferent to him to. I guess we'll probably see him suit up in the sequel, although I'm curious where the little round light source is going to go since Terrence Howard's character (whose name I never caught) doesn't have that convenient hole in his chest that Tony does.
And then there's Gwyneth Paltrow. We don't see her in stuff much, so I guess it's exciting just to see her in a major movie, and, well, she certainly is beautiful. I guess, I kind of feel like her performance was hit or miss at times, and it seemed to always miss during the most important conversations. Her entrance is perfect. She's sending some young slut home after a hot night with Tony Stark (Christine Everhart is the character's name, I didn't recognize the actress, and I'm kind of hoping she's a recurring character...also, I was a little confused about how Tony and her ended up in Malibu, considering they started the night in Vegas, but I'm sure that's not important). She conveys this perfect amount of indignation and haughtiness, with just a tinge of jealousy, as she lets the girl know just what Tony thinks of her (or, rather, that he's already forgotten her, which you can clearly see on the girl's face when she talks to Tony again, later in the movie, and he basically doesn't remember her at all...so, yes, this is why I want her to be a recurring character).
But after that perfect entrance, her interactions with Tony often times just don't feel quite right. Multiple times it sounds like she's...blubbering (I feel like that should only be used when talking about pirates). She doesn't know what to say when he asks her to stick her hand inside his chest and so she just talks, and talks. Again, when he asks her to dance and then has a drink with her outside, she's just awkwardly talking when it's clear that's not really what he wants her doing. Maybe that's what Pepper Potts (yeah, I'm not a fan of that name) is like in the comics, but it doesn't feel right. They present her as the assistant whose job is to make Tony's life function even as Tony is consistently sabotaging those efforts just by being himself. She should be eminently competent, especially in the weird and uncomfortable situations that Stark's shenanigans create. And they illustrate this perfectly with her entrance.
But, then we don't really get to see it ever again. It's like for the rest of movie she's out of her element and unprepared (which could be reasonable considering she was hired at sometime in the past to keep his life together, not to infiltrate the company and steal secrets, or fall in love with him, but you'd hope that the requirements for keeping his life together would include dealing with situations like these, you know, just in case). So, yeah, this inherently felt wrong to me. But, it could be just me.
Also, and this is a big complaint, when they're out there on the balcony together, she totally leans in to kiss him. Now, once again, maybe something very much like this happened somewhere in the comics (and in any case, this isn't Gwyneth Paltrow's fault, so I'm not blaming her), but I cannot possibly imagine that's how it should be. Seriously. Tony Stark's the one who just saw her looking stunningly attractive and she's still his employee. He should be making that advance and she's the one that should be pulling away because she's not comfortable with it. It's pretty clear that he's comfortable with it (and why shouldn't he be?), so it doesn't really make sense that she leans in, but then he pulls away.
Okay, on to special effects. This one is pretty short since the special effect were just about note perfect the entire movie. The suit building apparatus thing was incredibly well done and got extra points for that scene where he can't seem to get the suit off (which I assume was done with real plastic, instead of CG, but just helped to maintain the reality of it all). The suit itself looked great too. The closest comparison is Spiderman, and it looked a lot better. When flying, it didn't have nearly as much of a CG feel to it, and when he's walking around, it didn't have that man-in-a-suit feel to it, so it wins on both counts.
I have two complaints, though. The first one is with the very first Iron Man suit he creates. For the majority of the battle, it's walking around very machine-like. The movements are all stilted and slow and just what you'd expect. But, suddenly it because highly maneuverable and we see him do some ducks and maybe even a roll, which just looked completely out of place. Also, and this is being nit-picky with the design more than the special effects, but I didn't like the decision to make Jeff Bridge's Iron Man suit fly using rockets on the bottom of the feet. I understand that they didn't have Tony's designs, so they'd have to improvise on the flying, but that just didn't feel right. All that smoke coming off in order to gain lift just felt out of place in the otherwise pristine flying that the Iron Man suits pull off. But, I guess I'm willing to forgive it, since that's clearly a decision made to help make the evil Iron Man suit feel out of place. Since it doesn't belong and it shouldn't exist (because it pollutes), the audience has even more incentive to root for Iron Man.
In summary, the movie was awesome. I can easily imagine looking for excuses to see it again (for example, aww, darn, Speed Racer is sold out...well, how about seeing Iron Man again?). Reviews that call it better than Spiderman 2 or Batman Begins are exaggerating, but it's still very good. It's truly a great way to start the summer movie season.
That is all.
Francis
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