IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 31/12/2013

Despicable Me 2 (2013) Blu-ray Movie Review

A surprise hit for the joint French/ U.S. studio Illumination Entertainment in 2010, Despicable Me has become a lucrative franchise for the fledging studio, with very strong home video sales, this sequel and a planned 2014 spin-off movie Minions incoming. With Despicable Me 2, the filmmakers focus on the very best elements from its predecessor, that is; the comedic opportunities provided by the adorable Minions and the frequent use of slapstick comedy that the littlies love so much.

Having been drafted by the head of the Anti-Villain league (Steve Coogan) to investigate the threat of a new super-villain who has obtained a serum that transforms the recipient into a mindless mutant, Gru (Steve Carrell) must balance the demands of sole parenthood and his own loneliness, with the demands of a life of villainy that he has turned his back on. When Gru's minions are kidnapped and his assistant Dr. Nefarious (Russell Brand) abandons his employ, Gru will need to rely on his own cunning to solve the mystery of the phantom villain, whilst keeping the family unit together.
Despicable Me 2 does precious little to shake up the formula of the first film with the entire original cast including Steve Carrell, Russell Brand and Miranda Cosgrove all coaxed back into returning, while comedian Kristen Wiig joins the cast as Gru's off-sider and potential love interest. The fan favourite Minions, whom now sport more individualized personalities feature much more significantly than in the first and provide much opportunity for mirth, but while it must be said that the script plays far more to a younger age than say, your average Pixar film, there is still just enough adult laughs to keep parents interested. I also dare say that the film will play very well with young girls, with a carefully placed young love story thread.
Despicable Me 2 is certainly a fun and lightweight laugh and I dare say that quite a few copies will find themselves under Christmas trees this holiday season.
Video
Despicable Me 2 is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1, encoded with AVC MPEG-4 compression.
Despite what seems like an incredibly generous budget of some $76 million, it's a little bit of a surprise that the animation is adequate, but fairly unimpressive and certainly doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Pixar, or even DreamWorks. Of course, kids hardly care about technicalities such as bump mapping and texture resolution, but I can't help but feel how... cheap and plastic it all looks. Still, this more simple animation encodes with relative ease, and coupled with a consistently high bitrate means there is nary an artifact to marr a very good image.

As expected, the design of the film is conducive to efficient MPEG-4 encoding, with solid blocks of color and detailed lines. Coming from a newly minted and pristine digital intermediate, there are no film to video artifacts of other encoding based nasties to speak of. For all intents and purposes, this is a flawless transfer, which reaches the limits of current Blu-ray specifications.
Audio
Despicable Me 2 is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, at 24 bits.
I remember in the early days of 5.1 mixing for animated films that the modus operandi was to be as conservative as possible in order to not scare the littlies. Despicable Me 2 proves again how outdated that rationale was.
The front and rear soundstages are engaged equally, providing an extremely immersive, and aggressive track which doesn't forego any sonic opportunities. The low frequency mini-channel is frequently engaged and holds little back. Lip syncing is quite good and I didn't detect and transfer induced errors.
Overall, an impressive track which may surprise many a home theatre aficionada.

Extras
Despicable Me 2 is a little light-on for extra features, and what we do have is geared very much towards a much younger audience. Those seeking information on the complex procedural animation and mathematical processes that go into producing a final computer generated image would best look elsewhere, but for a younger audience, another 20 minutes of Despicable Me is no doubt a huge draw card. Let's take a look.
First up is the Audio Commentary with directors Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, which only the most dedicated of film fans, or those wanting some insight into the technicalities of CG animation will seek to listen to in totality.
Following on from the home video release of the first movie, we have an additional Three Mini-movies, which total around 20 minutes of footage. Most revolve around the minion characters, who I feel work much better in short bursts as seen here. Younger ones will love these, and I can admit to entertaining more than a few chuckles.

The bulk of the remaining extras consist of few brief featurettes, including Gru's Girls, which takes a look at the voice cast of the emotional anchors of the film, A Gru-some Transformation takes a look at the character development of the once feared adversary, whilst The Minions and the Evil Minions provides some more background on the fan favourite characters. Finally, El Hombre Malo explores one of the new characters to the franchise, whilst Gadgets Galore takes a look at the more absurd Bond-on-steroid weapons, which have become a hallmark of the series.
Finally we have a solo Deleted Scene which runs a scant one minute.

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Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) Cinema Review

2009's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs based on the much loved children's book was a labor for love for first time director's Phil Lord and Chris Miller and a financial and critical success for Sony Pictures. Naturally this ensured the film would receive a sequel. Surprisingly, it took four years to cook up, but the second serving of Meatballs is mostly fresh, but as is so common with sequels, does have a whiff of reheat about it. And if you think those puns are bad, wait until you hear the ones in the film!

The island of Chewandswallow, abandoned after the FLDSMDFR food replication incident, has continued to propagate and evolve a self-contained ecosystem of foodimals (that is; living and seemingly sentient animals made of food), which have completely taken over in the absence of the townsfolk. The inventor of the FLDSMDFR, Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is tapped by famous inventor Chester V (Will Forte) to assist with an expedition back to the island in order to prevent the feared creations from leaving the island and taking over the world, but no one is prepared for what they find there, nor are Chester's intentions necessarily pure of heart.

As far as children's entertainment goes, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 is perfectly serviceable, even enjoyable for a more mature audience. However, it suffers considerably compared to the vastly superior original, which on release was both original and fresh, and was crafted with clear and obvious reverence for the source material. Sadly, much of this seemed absent this time around, with much of the sharp wit replaced with wave after wave of groan inducing, food-related puns.
Naturally, whilst I recognize this is first and foremost a kid's film, there is nothing wrong with sowing small seeds for adult audiences to retain interest levels. This is something that its predecessor was more mindful of, and successful at.

Still, there is enough to occupy most fans of the original - the oft-used, but always hilarious 'Rat Bird' sight gags are back with a vengeance, and the entire cast, save with the recasting of cop Cal Devereaux return. At the end of the day, if the job of a sequel is to provide more of what audiences loved and further the universe that the film operates in, then one can rightly say, 'bon appetite'.

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Killzone: Shadow Fall PlayStation 4 Review

Killzone has been an interesting franchise for Sony and has very much been a mixed bag. The infamy began during the PS3 unveil at E3 where Sony showed what clearly was a complete farce in terms of the visuals of the PS3 Killzone, and so it became true once the system and the game finally shipped a few years later.
So again here we are, a new console launch and a brand new Killzone game, although there has been some signs that this time it would be different. The PS4 is clearly a capable PC to hit what Guerilla has always wanted in visual fidelity and this is also the fourth Killzone game, surely they couldn't get it wrong this time, but in some ways they did.
Killzone: Shadow Fall tells the story of a Shadow Marshall (who you play as) that witnesses their father's murder at the hands of the Helghast forces during the early part of the game. A VSA warrior takes Lucas under his wing and trains him up to the highest levels of the military.
After the bloody war at the end of Killzone 3, the Helghast are granted refugee status in the VSA held lands, but must stay behind a wall. With the Helghast constantly trying to escape and overthrow the VSA, it is up to you to go behind enemy lines and infiltrate the enemy. However, as is generally the case, all is not what it seems with this tale of war.

As you would expect, Killzone: Shadow Fall is a first person shooter with a few puzzle elements thrown in to mix up the gameplay. If you have played a Killzone game in the past, all you are really gaining by moving to the PS4 system and this game is increased visual fidelity, but considering that Killzone has in many cases always been a showcase for the power of the systems on offer, this is of no surprise.
The game is set over nine chapters of varying length, but one of the most puzzling things about the game is that the first two missions are some of the poorest in the game and some of the most frustrating. Killzone: Shadow Fall is a game that clearly prides itself on wide open areas for combat, but in the early game, this is actually detrimental to the experience, with the game failing to in many cases tell you exactly where to go next. We found ourselves stumbling about trying to find non-existent checkpoints and there is some back tracking to be had as well, which is something that Killzone has not been known for in the past.
Once you get past those first two chapters though, the game begins to actually tighten up in gameplay and so it is very much worth getting through it. The puzzles throughout the game generally have you picking up an object and placing it into a slot to unlock doors or open new areas to explore. And this is where Killzone Shadow begins to show its problems.
The puzzles are not varied, and by the end of the game, you will start to detest them - especially when the game is throwing two attack spiders, and missiles directly at you whilst trying to solve them. It just becomes a frustrating experience.

And the rest of the game doesn't change too much either. It's of no surprise that the main aim is to shoot as many guys as you can, but one area where the game does excel is giving you choice. Each area generally gives you the opportunity to tackle the situation in varied ways.
Having watched a few streams of this game to see how other players are handling the combat, it is clear that not many people will play Shadow Fall in the same way. If the game is feeling tough and unfair, it's usually a case that you just haven't considered a different way to approach the situation, as opposed to the AI being cheap. That is actually a feather in Killzone's cap.
The main problem we have with the game is that the campaign really is a bit non-sensical and also not that interesting to play through. We found ourselves pushing through the campaign just to get to the end (to be able to write this review), as opposed to actually enjoying what was on offer. And that is probably because Shadow Fall feels too much like its predecessors. It is fair to expect that going into a first person shooter that the gameplay could be fairly generic and seen before, but when it mimics as much as it does of its prequels, it disappoints like Shadow Fall does.
As mentioned earlier, the game does have some lush, open environments that the combat takes place in. Keeping the navigation issues aside, it really is a sandpit for you to play in and take on the tasks in the way you wish to do so. From the open vistas of the forest style missions through to tight confined areas on spaceships, Killzone does have a wide variety in the locations for the gameplay.

This means it is no surprise that the graphics are some of the most impressive seen in a console game to date. This is the game you buy to show off the PS4, to see what the machine is capable of at this early stage of its life. One thing we noticed is that in the tighter areas like corridors, the graphics fidelity increases significantly, but drops (although not to a poor level) when in wider, outdoor locations.
This does allow the game to keep a constant frame rate aside from a very minute number of locations remains rock solid. It has a 1080p resolution when used on the right television and really is gorgeous. It is the best looking PS4 game in the launch line up by a wide margin.

Where you will find some good gaming is the multiplayer side of the game. Typically with a first person shooter, they will include a number of modes (and Killzone does, and quite a few to boot), but you will have to choose a specific server for each mode to play them. This generally leads to games not being played on every game type. Killzone: Shadow Fall fixes this by including all game modes in a round system.
For example, if you include all modes on the server you run (or join), then it will cycle through each game type every couple of minutes changing up the gameplay and keeping it fresh. The multiplayer side also has bots which is interesting especially as this is the first Killzone you need to pay to play online (via PSPlus).
However, other than that, Killzone: Shadow Fall is a typical launch game that shouldn't have been. This is now the fourth game in the series (and that is not counting the VITA and PSP variants) and to have such a generic game and story is disappointing to say the least. With the history of the series, it seems that it should be pushing the franchise further than it has. Given it's a launch game, it is impressive in the state that it is in, but we really should be expecting to see more out of a game like this - and to be honest, so should you.

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