Venom movie review

Here's what you need to know; after a run in with the dubious Carlton Drake, Journalist Eddie Brock's life has completely fallen apart, but a whistle-blower within Drake's midst has a scoop that can not only get him back in the game but set him on a path to get his life back in order. What Eddie finds however is a bit more than he bargained for; twisted human experiments, aliens, and a voice in his head that hungers for human flesh. Now, as Drake's plot is set in motion, Eddie and his new friend must work together for their mutual best interest, survival, all the while Eddie must learn how to coexist with a psychopathic alien in his head that can, at any moment, take full control and become the murderous monster; Venom.
Would you look at that, Sony finally made that Venom movie they've been on about for years, and it isn't in the MCU, and it has no Spider Man, and it's a PG13, though the BBFC, the British Board of Fart-sniffing Cunts, gave it a 15. My dislike for the BBFC aside, you know what's worse than them, the gaggle of cock gobblers me and my friend were forced to endure the presence of for the entirety of the runtime, they were the worst assortment of people I've ever had to put up with in the cinema, and I'm stunned that they weren't kicked out. They were throwing stuff at people in the front rows, talking and laughing obnoxiously loudly, certainly an effort to get everyone's attention, they were on their phones, at one point one of them screamed for no reason, someone did tell them to shut up eventually which is good because if they hadn't, I'd have probably dragged them all out by their scrotums one by one and force fed them their own teeth, I fucking mean it. What was I talking about, oh yeah, Venom, sorry, got a bit off topic.


Venom's opening few minutes are actually really good, the music is ominous and effective, it sets the scene with very little exposition, and there's some alright symbiote action as one of them escapes and murders a pair of paramedics. I was impressed with Venom right out of the gate, and almost certain that by the end I'd be taking issue with its 32% Rotten Tomatoes score, like that score even means anything. Then we meet Tom Hardy as Eddie, which is where the film seemed to split my little group, as two of us liked him, and the third found him unlikable and annoying, and to be fair, when Michelle Williams is firing off about things he does wrong in his life, she isn't wrong. He's a journalist, he goes around asking difficult questions and bringing truth to the people, and that he does seem to do, he seems to the on the right side of whatever situation he's covering, far from licking the boots of Carlton Drake like his boss tells him to, he asks the uncomfortable questions, he seeks the truth. But while he does seem to be well meaning, when he's introduced, roaming the city on his bike in a leather jacket while a stylishly edited montage of his News show plays over top, it does seem a bit much, he comes across as a bit of a tool. And while we are led to believe that Carlton Drake personally ruined his life, the film doesn't sugar-coat that Eddie isn't entirely innocent, and he pays the price for his mistakes.

The Hyde to Eddie's Jekyll is where things get really good though, because Venom is undeniably the highlight of the film. Venom's dialogue with Eddie is everything I was expecting it to be with Venom's twisted philosophy and sense of humour, and that gives the film some really comedic moments as Venom talks to Eddie and comes out with some darky hilarious lines. Venom, in addition to being funny, has an enjoyable relationship with Eddie, as he starts out all murderous and sinister but gradually befriends Eddie. Though I do think that gradual ark isn't quite gradual enough as Venom goes from deceptive and evil to Eddie's new BFF in just a few scenes, and just in time for the final throw down with Riot, like a lot of things in this film, it feels rushed. Venom also has the issue of taking a while to get to the titular character; the amount of Venom after Eddie gets the Symbiote is perfect, but the film drags its feet in getting to that point, and the slow start doesn't do the film any favours, especially with a runtime under two hours and a rushed ark for its titular character when he actually does show up. Though this problem will undoubtedly be absent in the inevitable sequel because this film got all that origins stuff out of the way, which means we'll get an entire film with Venom rather than about two thirds of one.

Michelle Williams as Anne is a decent enough supporting character, the role she plays in the film is predictable; the tragic lost love that Eddie still loves, while she suppresses her still very alive feelings for him. This isn't as cringy a relationship as it could have been, and by the end of the film I did like the two of them together, even if Eddie doesn't quite get the girl in the end. But the film's antagonists are where the cracks really start opening up. Carlton Drake is our main guy, a scheming corporate guy with nefarious intent and that thinks he's a god, in fact he literally says it in one scene. The film goes out of its way to strip him of any humanity that he could have had, he's cold and unempathetic, even sadistic in some scenes, which is a shame in my opinion because like many a good villain, he thinks he's doing a good thing, and that's an idea that could have been built upon, but instead he's just an insane little man who's evil and must be stopped. But then there's Riot, which is where the film really misses the mark for me. Riot could have been an awesome villain, he plans to use Drake's space program to bring an invasion force to Earth, and it's clear in one scene that he's exploiting Drake to reach that goal, but the relationship between the two could have been better developed. It's not like the film gives that any time anyway, since it's a surprisingly short film at 112 minutes and Riot just kind of shows up in the finale for Venom to fight. Like Drake, he feels wasted, like the film could have done more with him, but didn't, a problem he shares with Venom in some regard.

But as far as issues go, the real problems, the ones that'll break the film for some people, are plot holes. Things are established early in the film, but ignored even before they're established as well as after, things like the Symbiotes only being able to bond with genetic matches, which is conflicted by Riot infecting everyone he touches, and Venom finding three perfect matches in a row, one of which just conveniently happens to be Eddie's ex girlfriend. Or how about this one, Anne gets an email about the evil shit going on at the Life Foundation, an email that Eddie reads instead, at the expense of his job and relationship, but she doesn't believe Eddie about what he finds at the Life Foundation after he gets the Symbiote, or a plot hole towards the end of the film that I won't spoil, all I'll say is that someone should have died but didn't and the film never addresses it, and why were Drake's goons hunting Venom with explosive drones despite surely knowing after six months of testing that they're weak to fire. Anne magically being a match for Venom does go some way to explaining Venom's change of heart towards Eddie, even though to even consider that opens up a whole new can of worms as to how the Symbiotes work, how do they decide their hosts, do they kill their hosts intentionally or is it just what they do, but then how did Eddie and Anne survive the symbiosis when the homeless people Drake was testing with earlier didn't. To tell the truth though, these don't ruin the film for me, I've seen worse plot holes in just the last couple of weeks thanks to The Predator not understanding how Evolution or Autism works, and nothing in Venom compares to that or the retconning of Pacific Rim: Uprising. Don't be confused by the way, me comparing Venom to two films I thoroughly dislike isn't me saying I dislike Venom, because I don't.

One thing I do dislike about Venom is an issue I also had with Black Panther earlier in the year, that being both films having heroes in Black suits and finales that take place in dark environments. In Black Panther, it was T'Challa and Killmonger battling to the death in Wakanda's Vibranium mines while both wearing Black Panther suits, in Venom, it's Venom and Riot battling to the death on Drake's launch pad at night while both being big black and grey monsters. Neither of these films are ruined by this, but it does stick out a bit that in the both films' big finales it's harder than it should be to really tell what's happening, though despite having a smaller budget, the visual effects on Venom and Riot here are actually better looking than the CGI Black Panther suits of Black Panther. This is a bit of a conundrum for Venom however thanks to Venom's design; he's a big, slimy monster with oily, shiny black skin and uncanny movements, even with the best visual effects in the world he's still going to look unnatural because that's just what he looks like. Riot isn't afforded the same cover thanks to his lighter, more textured skin, so weirdly, the more detailed monster in this film is also the more fake looking, while also coming from the Doomsday and Abomination school of being a big, grey, spiky monster that arrives in the finale solely for the hero to fight. On the plus side of Riot though, him forming weapons out of his body is cool to look at, and it's something that'd be interesting to see Venom get his hands on in the sequel, especially with the direction this film seems to be headed in the sequel by teasing Carnage.

To also address the rating, in Britain Venom has a 15 rating for horror, violence and strong threat, whatever strong threat means, but despite being censorious cunts, the BBFC saw no reason to cut or censor the film, making 15 an apparently redundant rating. Ignoring that Venom is a very violent character outside of this film, even ignoring that films like Deadpool and Logan were both successful despite their violence, this film sets Venom up as a very violent character who wants to eat and dismember people, and he does bite off a few heads in the film, bloodlessly of course, which again reminded me of Black Panther and when someone got their throat slit in that film. The film seems unable to commit to any graphic violence or absence of graphic violence, wanting to have its cake and eat it by having Venom ripping off heads, but then swiftly disposing of a shadowy body so as to hide any gore and blood. That lack of committal makes the film's violence feels weak and wishy washy, almost as if the plan was for there to be blood and guts, but it got cut out in editing, with the tin foil hat reasoning being that eventually Sony will discontinue their deal with Marvel and have Spider Man all to themselves again, by which point Venom will be an established franchise with sequels and spin offs that they can then retcon Spider Man into. I don't know if that will happen, but it doesn't change that, now considering the existence of Deadpool, there's no real reason for this film to be PG13, especially since it isn't in the MCU, so, Sony, Venom 2, make the BBFC giving it a 15 make sense.

Pile of bodies... Pile of heads...
Venom's been getting a very bad rap from the critics, but all this is to me is another example of the disconnect between critics and audiences, and since I'm not a critic, just an opinionated twat with a blog, I found myself really enjoying Venom for what it was. It has issues with its first act and plot holes for sure, and while I liked the Venom, Eddie relationship, it did feel rushed. Though not as rushed as Riot and Drake, who are completely wasted antagonists, Riot in particular who is reduced to nothing more than a monster for Venom to fight. The BBFC's rating is also disappointingly redundant, but that isn't enough to kill the film for me, I liked Venom, even as clean as he is in the film, and he really makes it for me. I'd gladly watch Venom a third time and I'd recommend it, it's worth's watching.

Battlefield 5: The Plot Thickens

This is getting out of hand, I'm spending too much time shitting on Battlefield 5 these days, but it's just so easy, and it needs to be done. a while ago I did a second post on the disaster that is Battlefield 5 in which I talked the stepping down/firing of alpha mong Patrick Soderlund and the games pre-orders being about as impressive as Soderlund's parenting skills, but there was also the little detail that the game comes out in a very crowded release window, and that, with the competition it's up against as well as the controversy, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty Trash Ops 4 were going to wipe the floor with it. Well, fast forward only a week and there's another event in this story of tragedy, Battlefield 5 has been delayed, meaning that it's now dodging Red Dead and Trash Ops' release gangbang, but is it enough to save this failure of a game, I highly doubt it, not with the controversy already surrounding it and with yet another controversy crawling out of the game's beta, so let's break out the paddles and beat this dead horse, again.

For the uninitiated in my apparent crusade against this insult of a game, let me give you a little recap; in May Battlefield 5 got its first trailer, which currently sits at twelve million views and four hundred and eighty thousand dislikes to just three hundred and thirty thousand likes. The trailer was bad, very bad, it was an ugly, poorly put together and jarring mess, and featured things that didn't make sense, like racially diverse British soldiers with Katanas and blue war paint, and of course, a woman with a fake arm, in the British army on the front lines in World War 2. This went completely counter to DICE's claims that Battlefield 5 was going to be authentic and "the most immersive Battlefield yet", a claim they backpaddled hard on after the trailer dropped, and it wasn't helped by a dull and confusing live show hosted by Trevor Noah, of all people.

Needless to say, this didn't go over so well with a fair few people, including yours truly, who thought that Battlefield 5's reveal was a shit show and that the game seemed to be pandering to Social Justice, an impression that was confirmed when EA and DICE went on the offensive, with DICE dev Alan Kertz boldly proclaiming that he is "on the right side of history" like a demented zealot, and EA Chief Design Officer Patrick Soderlund calling the game's detractors "uneducated" and giving them the ultimatum to "either accept it or don't buy the game," while both of them demonstrate how terrible they are at parenting by trying to hide behind their daughters and using them to justify their blatant agenda pushing and pandering. This battle between gamers and the cult of Social Justice continued, and intensified again after Soderlund rather suddenly stepped down from his position in EA, which prompted many a conspiracy theory as the next day word started to spread that Battlefield 5's pre order numbers were falling behind the competition by as much as eighty five percent, leading many, including myself, to believe that Soderlund was forced to resign by EA because of the damage he's done to Battlefield 5's and EA's reputation. This wasn't looking good for Battlefield 5 because being that far behind, and coming out a week behind Trash Ops and a week ahead of Red Dead, and having EA's battered and mauled reputation as well as its own controversy hanging over it, all made it look like Battlefield 5 was going to bomb upon release, a failure I personally couldn't wait to see, because EA and DICE still have a lot of learning to do, and they can seemingly only do it the hard way.

Well, I think we're all caught up, now let's get to the news. New developments in this saga of sadness seem, at least on the surface, to indicate that EA has learned, but I still have my doubts, in fact this new development only makes me more confident in Battlefield 5's failure. The news is that Battlefield 5 has been delayed by a whole month, now releasing on November 20th instead of October 19th, which EA claim is to further polish the game and make sure it's in tip top condition for the launch, but that's a lie, shocking, I know, EA lying. It doesn't take a genius to know why EA has pushed back Battlefield 5, it's because of Red Dead and Trash Ops, like every other bugger did, they clicked in that the original release date, sandwiched between the two most anticipated games of the year, was going to lead to lower sales, lower still thanks to those hideously low pre order numbers, so they made the decision to run like little babies, moving their game into competition with Fallout 76 instead.

On the surface, this seems like a smart move, and to an extent it is, sure the controversy was a gun in Battlefield 5's mouth, but it would have been Red Dead Redemption who pulled the trigger, not for EA's own lack of trying. So why am I so sceptical of this change in release date, I mean, I just said it's a good idea to avoid competing with Red Dead, how could I be suspicious. The answer is we are dealing with Battlefield; Titanfall 2's failure can easily be attributed to its going up against Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1, but what Battlefield 5 has that Titanfall 2 lacked is brand recognition, Titanfall 2 was only the second instalment in a series that hasn't had the best start with the first Titanfall, since it underperformed and was criticised for its lack of content, and while Titanfall 2 fixed that issue, that shaky foundation gave it a disadvantage when going up against the FPS giants it was pitted against, which was sad, because Titanfall 2 is awesome. Meanwhile Battlefield 5 is the twelfth release in a series that's been around for sixteen years, and the next release following Battlefield 1, which sold stupidly well upon release, even being bought and enjoyed by yours truly, while still being beaten by Infinite Warfare, of course. In a world where Battlefield 5 didn't declare war on its own audience, it should have been able to hold its own against Trash Ops 4 at least, but we're not in that world, and Battlefield 5 did start that war, right before immediately losing it.

What this looks like to a cynic like me is EA going into damage control; they're not going back to make the game better, they're trying to get away from Red Dead and Trash Ops because those pre order numbers have put the fear of God in them, and because they know, as does everyone with a brain, that the competition will demolish Battlefield 5. This, however, really isn't going to be enough to save the game in my opinion, because the damage has already been done, and EA's efforts at damage control will only help so much. We're not just on about Battlefield 5 at this point, EA's biggest issue here is its own reputation; EA is loathed far and wide by gamers for their anti consumer practices and their habit of running beloved studios and franchises into the ground.

The most recent examples include their bastardisation of Command & Conquer and Mass Effect, their killing of Dead Space developer Visceral Games and their Star Wars game, and perhaps the most high profile debacle, the shit show surrounding Battlefront II, which did irreparable damage to EA and DICE, contributed to the current and on-going downfall of the Star Wars brand, and laid bare the extent and toxic nature of loot boxes for all to see, sparking endless debate as to their legality. therefore I said in my last post that simply booting Soderlund was never going to fix their problem, because this is just the latest in EA's long history of fuckups, and that distrust hangs over every new fuckup they make, making any effort EA makes to clean up its act pointless, because the scars are deep and that distrust will never fade. It's not just that Red Dead and Trash Ops are on its flanks, it's that the game is pandering to Social Justice and the company making it told its customers to get lost, and no amount of delaying will make that go away, it'll follow Battlefield 5 forever, not just because of EA's bloody hands, but because of Social Justice.

Social Justice is unpopular, it may have hegemony in all the major companies, political parties and amongst Twitter verified journalists, but the people on the ground, the people who buy the games, watch the films and TV, read the comics and cast the votes find it annoying, insulting and invasive. The reasons for this are numerous and a lot of them apply to Battlefield 5. First of all, among other things, Social Justice has no concept of satire, humour or subtlety, stemming from their oversensitivity, make a joke that's a bit spicy or takes the piss out of SJW's or, heaven forbid, do both of those things and they'll try to bring the hammer down on you because their ideology is flawed and weak, making it vulnerable to the slightest hit, even just a joke is too dangerous to be left alive.

And as for subtlety, well, that's the funny thing, you don't really have to look far for it, just look at Star Wars, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Marvel Comics, The Last of Us 2, the Arrowverse, WWII and now Battlefield 5, wherever it goes, Social Justice has to hog the limelight, it has to draw attention to itself, giving us things like the terrible writing in the Arrowverse and Star Wars, the forced diversity and inclusion of Doctor Who, Ghostbusters and Battlefield 5, and whatever the fuck the first half of the Last of Us 2 demo was. Not only has it infected and mutilated beloved franchises though, it's cast a shadow of doubt over everything that stars a woman or a black person, it's at the point where films like Wonder Woman and Black Panther not being SJW trash is a surprise, because Social justice is so invasive that it's made people paranoid that it's literally everywhere, a paranoia that's sadly very well-founded, even more so in the past couple of years because ideologues never learn and their faith in the cause cannot and will not be allowed to falter.

Particularly of issue in Battlefield 5 is the social justice commitment to representation and diversity, the belief that women and racial minorities, the eternal victims that they are, have been historically stopped from being represented in media by the oppressive white supremacist patriarchy, and must therefore be forced into that media to compensate for the historical domination of media by privileged, racist, sexist hwhite men. But the obvious issue here is that this is a World War 2 shooter, one supposedly depicting the war accurately, despite the little detail that minorities in the British Army were incredibly minimal and women weren't even allowed in front line combat. This gender and racial diversity does not reflect reality, in fact it spits in the face of reality by ignoring the reality of both the makeup of the British Army that fought and died fighting the Nazis, and the racial tensions in society at the time, but it does reflect social justice, hence the huge backlash and boycott.

 I chose the title of my first post on this subject very carefully; originally it was going be "Battlefield 5 and the Distortion of History", in reference to the reveal trailer's portrayal of World War 2, and my assumption as to the reasons for it, but when I found the Sodurlund quotes and my assumption was confirmed, I changed the title, "Battlefield 5 and the Vandalization of History," because vandalization is exactly what it is, it's an attempt to rewrite history to make it more contemporary and progressive with no fucks given as to what the millions of people who died in the war actually looked like or, more importantly, what they died for. And then they attempted to justify this blatant ignorance and ideological peddling by screaming 'think of the children,' in the context of a PEGI18 game, apparently completely unaware, or more likely, completely aware and banking on how children don't know a thing about history these days and are more likely to buy their revisionist cancer. But the one good thing about social justice is how easy it is to milk it for comedy, because the Battlefield 5 batshit train has no brakes, and it seems that just as it looks to have hit rock bottom, it manages to find a way to go even lower.

This was originally just going to be about the delay, but while I was delaying myself by playing Tomb Raider and Doom, there was yet another development in the saga, and it might be the funniest one yet, though given how slow I am at this game, by the time I get to the end of this, there'll already be something new. At some point in the past few weeks, the Beta happened, I don't know or care about the details of this beta because I have no desire to financially support Battlefield 5, but the Beta's chat seemed to have a very strange habit of censoring certain words and phrases, the kind of words and phrases that give me a raised brow. First off, the more innocuous ones; 'dlc' and 'lag' were apparently blocked by the chat filter, with an exception being that 'dlc' was allowed if it was prefaced with 'free'. This is already shady enough on its own; think about it, not allowed to discuss lag, despite what the git gudders like to claim, lag is an issue in online games from time to time, and EA, surprise surprise, has a history with dodgy or outright broken servers, it stands to reason then, as shady as it would be, that EA wants the topic of lag to be off the table in that game chat, no doubt in the hopes that the topic will just be forgotten or ignored.

DLC is the much more interesting one however; I said in my first post on this game that the free DLC will garner some degree of good will, what EA does with that good will is their own business I guess, but it seems that they really want to hold onto it, so much so in fact that you're only allowed to talk about it in the chat if you're talking about how free it is, how ironic. As sloppy and obvious as this is, it's clear that EA is actively trying in their Beta chat to engineer and control what I said about DLC and lag, presumably because in their minds if you ignore it, it goes away. But that's the tip of the iceberg muh dudes, because then they went and censored 'white man' and 'Nazi' like proper retards. 'Nazi,' censoring the word Nazi in the chat of a World War 2 shooter might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard, behind censoring Nazi iconography in a world war 2 game that is, it's like talking about the Bible and not bringing up God, or talking about feminism and not bringing up unattractiveness, bite me. If you were still not of the belief that Battlefield 5 is a vandalization of history, I can't help you, because the war was fought against the Nazis, their role in history is major because they were a primary catalyst in the largest conflict in human history, and the atrocities committed by them have shaped the world into what it is now and forever discredited entire political and philosophical ideologies, but let's ignore the immeasurable importance of the Nazis in World War 2, in this World War 2 shooter, because the word has some nasty connotations.

Ironic isn't it, it's those very negative connotations that make the Nazis so significant in history, but EA thinks that those connotations are too negative for people to be exposed to, like EA thinks we're only allowed to see and discuss the nice things that happened in history in a game depicting its darkest hour. Double ironic given how the Left uses the word Nazi and its nasty connotations like they were going out of style, trying to persuade everyone that anyone who opposes them, from the lowly internet shit poster all the way up to Leader of the Free World, the God Emperor himself are Nazis. Triple ironic since it was the Nazis themselves who engaged in control and censorship of language, as well as tried to rewrite history to shut down ideas that opposed theirs, so well done acting like Nazis while trying to stop us talking about Nazis while trying to convince us that Trump is a Nazi, idiots. But then there's the cherry on top, the pot of gold, the spoils, the climactic facial, they're censoring the phrase 'white man.'

As stupid as they appear, they know full well that the discussion about Battlefield 5 prominently features its forced representation; that its inclusion of women and racial minorities is dishonest and disrespectful by belittling the sacrifice of the white men that fought in the war, an opinion that's been dismissed in some corners of the internet as, you guessed it, white supremacy and bigotry. But then they go and try to take that shit down in the game chat by filtering it out, by censoring it, while other phrases like 'black man' and 'Asian man' are allowed, similar to 'dlc' needing to be prefaced with 'free' to be allowed. This is a blatant attempt to engineer the chat, though rather than the goal of retaining good will, the goal here is purely ideological, though the method of thinking is the same, ignore it and it will go away. The progressive left hate white people, a statement that's very bold and hard to sell to anyone who hasn't spent the past few years with their finger on the pulse of the culture war, but their belief in the progressive stack and historical oppression is the bedrock on which they justify their racism, the last acceptable from of racism it seems, as discrimination against white people, particularly men, is observable in several big companies and parties, from Google to the BBC to the British Labour Party.

All this does of course is pour jet fuel on the fire, which makes me again question my belief that there's method to this madness and that they're actually not completely retarded, I don't know anymore. No situation or argument about race and racism can ever be resolved by trying to control and censor it, but if you're neck deep in it and there's no way you can win, you would, at least in the moment, have the upper hand by shutting up your opponent, but all it ultimately does is make you look cowardly and censorious, which you would be by trying to silence people who can run your religion through the wringer. Moreover, it speaks volumes to how weak your religion is, or for that matter, how emotionally weak you are, that a simple descriptive phrase like 'white man' that's completely inoffensive to someone who isn't racist needs to be censored, but remember, the progressive left are racist, if you don't believe me, just think back to the mass triggering a while back that came from those "it's okay to be white" posters, a genius campaign in that it's only racist if you think it's not okay to be white, if you, yourself, are a racist.

This is, of course, yet another piece of evidence that the reasons behind the game's forced diversity are wholly ideological, it was already impossible to deny if you'd read Soderlund's interview, but now it's even more impossible, somehow. But again, all censoring people will do is pour jet fuel on the fire, because in trying to cover up the truth, all they've done is make that very truth plain for all to see, again. I genuinely do question what they're doing at this point, granted, I was questioning from the second I saw that trailer, but at least then you could argue that they were trying to escape the wrath of Twitter by flying into the storm of Battlefield fans and history enthusiasts instead. But then Soderlund called everyone stupid and told them not to buy the game, a stance the universe took note of in some beautiful karma. But, like we didn't already know, are they actually believers or are they just pandering, this decision to censor 'white man' makes the former an undeniable certainty, because only a true cultist is that stupid and censorious.

The Battlefield 5 disaster is a show that just keeps going and going and going, and while I was mad when it began, now I've sat back, beer in hand, and just decided to enjoy it. It really does baffle me just how firm in their path not just DICE or even EA, but large chucks of the entertainment industry are, how determined they are to cling to their beautiful tower of progressivism and diversity even as the tower burns and crumbles around them. Think of it as a cautionary tale about the dangers of dogmatism, that eventually you'll reach a point that you and your ideas are monolithic and all opposition comes from a place of malice and evil. Add onto that how no one ever seems to want to take responsibility, just look at AE's former CDO, the man who's such a good parent that he'll contort reality and lie to his daughter about the truth, then use her as a shield from criticism, clearly very responsible. Not to mention his former fellows are, themselves, a gaggle of idiots motivated by the power of greed and a head scrambling devotion to a backwards cause. So to probably not bring an end to this stirring tale, I'm still not getting Battlefield 5, the volume of shit surrounding it is just too much, and I have way less incentive to buy it to begin with since I was always a CoD player rather than Battlefield, but with that franchise now dead to me, it looks like I'm shit out of luck. I'd still strongly advise against giving these cock gobblers a penny come November, but I still have no right or power to stop you, only myself, and my money's already safe and sound in Square Enix's wallet because unlike EA, the product they offer is actually worth my time and not determined to insult me.

Tomb Raider (Definitive Edition) video game review (2018)

Here's what you need to know; while on the hunt for the fabled lost kingdom of Yamatai in the Pacific, the Endurance is wrecked in a violent storm. Among the survivors is young archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft, who now finds herself stranded on a secluded, inhospitable island, one that becomes a living hell for Lara and her friends when they encounter its cultish and murderous inhabitants. But the island is not what it appears, and with escape not being an option, Lara must unravel the mystery of the island and defeat the evil that calls it home.
This is another one of those things I've already done, I reviewed this game back in 2015 before the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I never reviewed because I'm inexcusably lazy, but a handful of factors have brought us back to this point. Probably the stupidest is that I'm not all that proud of my older posts, as I've alluded to many, many times, I wasn't a particularly good, or even decent writer then, and it shows because they read like the work of a high schooler. The more pressing reason however is that Shadow of the Tomb Raider hit shelves just the other week, and I've been binging Tomb Raider ever since, having beat Rise of the Tomb Raider in the week, Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Saturday, and fired up Tomb Raider Definitive Edition and blasted through that in the same day. So let's return to chapter one of what could be one of my favourite video game trilogies as of late, Tomb Raider.

Unlike the movie it inspired, Tomb Raider doesn't have any sort of prologue to set the scene, the game instead throws Lara in at the deep end with the Endurance being torn in half and Lara being dragged away by an unseen assailant. What happens next sets the tone rather aptly; with the dark, claustrophobic environment of the cave, the hellish, oppressive nature of the island with the strung-up bodies and Lara tied up on the ceiling, and the violence and brutality as Lara falls and is impaled on a metal spike. Are you not a fan of graphic imagery, Tomb Raider probably isn't for you, are you a feminist with a stick up their arse about muh representation and muh violence against wahmen, Tomb Raider definitely isn't for you, because Lara Croft is put through some seriously grim shit over the course of the game's campaign, stuff that would make even someone as desensitised as me wince. And that's just the shit she survives, some of the death animations look like they were the work of John Kramer.

This is necessary at first as Lara doesn't start out as a tomb raiding, baddie killing hero, rather she's quite the opposite; she's whiney, scared and completely useless. Lara doesn't land on Yamatai with a small army's worth of firepower and the inner strength to use it, it's the island that forces that out of her, making the horrors she endures necessary for her growth and for her growing on the player, as her transition from frightened, defenceless girl to the most dangerous thing on the island feels earned rather than forced. This sense of earning turns Lara into a genuinely likable character as she starts making decisions and said decisions start having real consequences. But to get there the game goes into some downright uncomfortable territory, which is something I alluded to in my review of the movie; the game deserves its 18 rating, not just in its violence, but in the graphic and disturbing nature of some of its scenes; the metal spike, an attempted rape and the incident with the flaming arrow to name a few. These horrors don't exist simply to be horrific, they're there to build Lara's internal armour, to turn her into a survivor. The horror does start to become a bit much though, sure, scenes like Lara's first kill are disturbing, but by the umpteenth river of dead bodies or mass grave, it does lose its impact. But the horror works when it needs to, and Lara becomes more genuine and compelling as a result.

Tomb Raider nails its lead hero then, which is good, because it falters with its line-up of side characters; let's start with Mathias, the Solarii's insane and zealous leader, who's motivations are compelling enough but are squandered by him simply not being at good a character, his motivation to get off the island and obsession with Himiko are the bedrock for a good villain, but he's not in the game much, and when he is, he's just villainous for the sake of villainy, wasting that potential. Then there's Lara's friends; Roth stands out among them through his love for Lara and through Lara seeing him as a father figure, his role in Lara's ark is crucial, and the game does a good job with that, making his eventual sacrifice an impactful moment in the story. Meanwhile the rest of the crew is mostly one note and uninspired; you have Sam, who is basically a glorified McGuffin, Jonah, the gentle giant who gets better in the sequels, and they're the names I remember. A quick trip to the Tomb Raider wiki later and we have Grim, the rugged Scottish bastard, Reyes, the confrontational black woman, Alex, the nerd forever trapped in the friendzone with a girl way out of his league, and Whitman, the slimy, incompetent obstruction. All of them fit a mould and none of them break it, and their role in the story is disappointingly passive, even Jonah, who becomes Lara's sidekick in the sequels doesn't really do anything here.

The sequels shrinking their supporting line-up and focusing more on Jonah and the people Lara meets on her adventures was a smart move, but going back to the first game, it shows just how smart a move it was, because even when they started dying, usually horrifically and tragically, I didn't have much reason to care. But you could easily overlook how weak Lara's friends are because the story isn't about them, it's about Lara, and they get Lara so right that it falls into the background, like them, incidentally. The story Tomb Raider tells is also gripping and has a fantastic sense of escalation; starting small with a focus on Lara and her learning to survive on Yamatai, before swelling in scope as Lara starts to understand the mystery of the island and becomes aware of the apocalyptic threat living on it. I'm not going to go into the details, because why would I spoil that shit, but Tomb Raider's story is very well told and blends its dark and disturbing reality with the magical in a surprisingly effective way. The line between truth and myth becomes a core aspect of the series' storytelling, and it's very well established in this game, as creepy as that truth is once Lara learns it, again, no spoilers, but the concepts at play in this game's magical aspects have a habit of playing on the mind, it's unnerving.

Tomb Raider's gameplay is considerably different to the games that came before it; taking a far more involved and cinematic approach to its combat and puzzle solving, as opposed to the good old adventuring of a game like Legend or Underworld. In fact, as someone who grew up playing Tomb Raider Anniversary on his PSP, this doesn't feel like Tomb Raider at all, or at least it didn't in 2013, the comparison has been made many times, a few times by me even, but it feels a lot like Uncharted, which is only a bad thing if you dislike Uncharted, and fortunately, I'm not in that boat. Its combat has removed the acrobatics of the older games and replaced them with cover objects which are necessary because even in the later stages of the game after a good amount of levelling up, Lara's still about as resistant to gunfire as a sheet of tin foil. This has its obvious downsides, even playing on normal difficulty I would sometimes drop dead from enemy gunfire after popping out of cover for a second, literally a second, which feels cheap, especially when it happens repeatedly. The gunplay on offer is decent however, especially when you get enough salvage and start unlocking some of the available weapon upgrades, getting things like special ammo types and alt fire modes, as well as the usual increased damage, reload speed, etc.

But the best weapon in the game by far is the bow, since this game came out around the time that every shooter on the market needed to have a bow. The bow also allows for a bit of sneaking, but only a bit as the stealth system is very rudimentary, not as intricate and in depth as a stealth game like Splinter Cell or even something like Far Cry. For example, there is no indication of your visibility, just an "Enemy Spotted!" followed by a hail of bullets. But while you light up like a road flare once spotted, you can sneak up on a pair of enemies standing right next to each other and stealth kill one of them without the other even noticing, the game is inconsistent like that, with half of the game's enemies apparently having hawk eyes and the other half apparently being blind, it makes the stealth feel broken at times. The game also can't seem to make up its mind about how distraction works, try to distract an enemy or group of enemies and they can respond in up to three ways; ignore it, fall for it, or instantly know where you are and attack, so while it's nice that the option is there, it usually ends in a gunfight simply because shooting the shit out of them in a battle of attrition is almost always the more palatable option.

In addition to having the bow, Tomb Raider also hopped on the wagon of incorporating basic RPG elements, with killing enemies and finding secrets netting you experience that you can spend on skills to improve your character. The skills are nothing special; the usual stuff like more health, better looting, greater weapon proficiency etc. Probably the most useful skills in the game are a chain of skills that let you counter attack melee enemies, a set of skills that make Lara practically unstoppable at close range as she can instantly kill anyone that takes a swing at her. Skills that let you reuse arrows and loot more ammo from enemies seem useful at first, but ammo is in such abundance for the entire game that it's never really an issue, and the same is true of salvage, though the better upgrades on offer are usually crazy expensive, so that one's more useful. Some of the most rewarding things you can do in the game include the hidden tombs scattered around Yamatai, tiny self-contained puzzles that yield rewards of experience and salvage upon being solved. These little puzzles are a lot of fun to do as they break up the game's nonstop pace and let you solve them in your own time, and most of them are deviously engineered, making solving them very gratifying.

These tombs are a nice addition as puzzle solving clearly wasn't the focus of this game's development, though some puzzles in the game aren't optional; navigating the game's massive levels and progressing at certain points in the story do require a bit of problem solving to pass. But the puzzles are no harder than any of the tombs and navigating simply becomes a matter of recognising features of the environment for Lara to climb up or shoot rope arrows at. Both tasks are also made ridiculously easy by the game's survival instincts which turn the world black and white and turn interactive objects and surfaces an obnoxious yellow, though you could simply not use it. An issue I had on a handful of occasions with the climbing was moments of inconsistency; Lara not grabbing a ledge for instance or jumping left or right when she's supposed to go up, an issue that happened a few too many times for me to think it's just user error, though it entirely could have been, there's no way of knowing, either way it's infrequent enough that it doesn't ruin the game. Those massive levels are also crammed full of stuff; the optional tombs and challenges as well as hidden documents left behind by the islands previous residents, all of which voice acted of course. The levels are also dotted with camp fires that Lara can use to purchase skills and weapon upgrades as well as fast travel to over camp fires, an almost pointless feature if you ask me.

Then there's the game epic sequences, you know the kind; when you have to run for your life as the world literally falls apart around you, as the ground heaves and the walls crumble and shit's exploding for no real reason. There as several of these set pieces throughout the game, including the plane scene that ended up being adapted into the film but is significantly better in the game, unsurprisingly. These moments aren't as special as they really should be however because of this game's competition; Uncharted's been doing these epic set pieces long before Tomb Raider adopted them, and while the games are very different in tone, its these sequences that feel the most like Uncharted. Don't get me wrong, it's cool when Lara's tumbling uncontrollably down a muddy slope as the flaming wreckage of a crashed plane tails dangerously close behind, these sequences are very epic and exciting, a misunderstanding here would be that just because Uncharted did it first means it's not good here which isn't the case. The comparison has merit for sure, but that doesn't negate or delegitimise this game's positive attributes, nor does it consider that while they're similar from a gameplay standpoint, their respective tones couldn't be more different; one is an adventure about killing baddies and hunting treasure with a wise cracking action hero, the other is a story of survival, self-discovery and sacrifice.

What these sequences, and the whole game for that matter have on their side is presentation which is top notch across the board; the Island's maps are stunning, character models and animations look good, music, sound and voice acting is all on point, and little things like the game's stellar particle effects, little things that you wouldn't otherwise notice, really add a sense of grit to the world of the game, one that draws you in and makes you immersed, the game is beautiful, even at its ugliest, which is both the biggest strength of the rerelease and my personal biggest issue with it. My biggest issue with the presentation is that I prefer the way Lara looks in the original release, it's probably the smallest thing I've ever taken issue with in anything ever, I imagine most people probably wouldn't even notice, but it honestly is my biggest issue with the game's presentation and with the rerelease. But going back to what matters, probably the most important thing that Tomb Raider and Uncharted have in common is their epicness; both games feel less like games and more like summer blockbusters, which really casts a shadow on the recent Tomb Raider movie as despite literally being a movie, the game it was based on feels more cinematic and epic, and obviously, as good as Alicia Vikander is as Lara Croft, it'll never beat the game, the game just does it better, does it all better.

There are no heroes here, only survivors
Tomb Raider's transformation from adventure-platformer to epic, intense, frightening blockbuster turned out far better than it had any right to, and the result, ignoring the sequels for a second, is my favourite in the series without a doubt. The game's puzzle solving and combat are a lot of fun and it's a beauty to behold from a visual, audio and design standpoint, but what stands out to me the most is its excellent storytelling and unforgettable hero, Lara's journey in this game is its strongest aspect, she's weak and scared and has to become the hero, has to find it within herself, and its gripping. It never stops moving, but still balances the breakneck action with quieter moments of character growth, discovery and the occasional brain teaser. My biggest issues include its weak side characters, the odd cheap death or ignored button press, and minor things like tweaks made to the definitive Edition's presentation, but I can overlook them for everything the game gets right. Tomb Raider is part one in one of my favourite video game trilogies to date, and it starts it off with a beautiful bang, I couldn't recommend it enough and it's definitely worth playing.

DOOM video game review

Here's what you need to know; All hell has broken loose, literally, as the UAC's Argent facility on Mars is left in ruins by a Demonic invasion, with all the facility's personnel either dead or zombified, only one thing now stands in the way of the horde, a being older and more feared than even the Demons themselves, the Doom Slayer, who has been released from his eternal prison to finish the job and unleash death and carnage upon the Demon horde once more.
Who's up for a story; way back in the early days of this blog, back when it was filled with even more spelling errors and sloppy writing, I wrote about the Doom E3 demo, and it was bad, as you'd expect. The demo however was amazing, and I was very right to be excited to get my hands on Doom, just as I'm now very excited to get my hands on Doom Eternal. But my love of Doom goes back a long way, back to my early high school years when I would play the original Doom from 1993 on the school computers, I would also play Doom 3 on the original Xbox after I got one, and then I'd play it some more when it was released on the Xbox 360. I could talk a load of platitudes and foot notes about the significance of Doom to the gaming industry, but I figured that expressing my personal history with it would be more authentic, because since I was about thirteen, I've loved the Doom series, and I've wanted a fourth instalment. Fast forward to 2016, and that Forth instalment arrived, Doom, a game that promised to recapture the awesome not just of Doom, but of a kind of video game that, in 2016, had long since died, with the mission of giving what the shooter genre had become the middle finger at every chance it got and mercilessly kicking the Call of Duty Kids' arses. And with the sequel probably about two years away still, I sat myself down and went for a second round on Doom, and now I feel like an idiot for not playing it in two years because I want to play it forever. Also, I'll only be talking about the campaign here, because I haven't even touched the multiplayer and haven't played enough snapmap to really form a solid opinion on it, but that's fine with me because the campaign's all I need, cough cough Trash Ops.

Doom 3 saw a change in the series when it hit the scene in 2004, one that almost certainly came about because of the climate in which it was developed and released, coming not far behind shooters like Halo and Half Life, and horrors like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It opted to ditch the loose storytelling and huge, chaotic and open battle arenas of Doom and Doom 2 in favour of a much greater focus on storytelling, a tighter and more compelling narrative, and slower, more atmospheric and claustrophobic combat. This transition into horror made Doom 3 a vastly different game to its predecessors and made the direction the series would go from there much more interesting, because Doom 4 never came, instead remaining in development for years before being scrapped entirely and turned into the Doom we now have. Doom saw a return of the old Doom's approach to matters like storytelling and combat, which is to say that the story here is light, very light.

The game's characters are minimal and simplistic, there are no cutscenes, and while the game does sometimes force you to stand still and listen to Samuel Hayden as he tells you what's going on, it's rare and it never outstays its welcome. Storytelling very clearly took a back seat to gameplay in the game's development, but it never felt like an afterthought thanks to the game's long, long catalogue of data logs, which provide hours of reading material for those willing to sniff them all out and go through them. This works massively in the game's favour, as it gives you the choice to either ignore the story all together and get on the ripping and tearing or browse the logs for backstory and information on pretty much everything; characters, locations, weapons, demons and relics. Beneath the surface of this story light shooter is a very rich and very well thought out world that's right there, waiting for anyone willing to take the time and look. I also love the spin this game puts on the character of Doomguy by basically turning him into a superhero; an ancient warrior driven purely by rage and bloodlust, gifted with magic armour and superhuman strength and speed. Despite him never saying a word, the game's exploration into his history through data logs and the Slayer's Testament is gripping and badass, and essentially turns him into the ultimate power fantasy, a man who literally cannot be stopped.

This becomes important in the gameplay, because fundamentally, Doom has one task, a task far harder to pull off than it sounds, Doom's job is to make you, the player, feel like the biggest badass in existence. This is quite the task, especially now because a character must have weaknesses in order to be compelling or interesting, and we now have all kind of social norms that you can't depict a character breaking lest you wish to taste the wrath of Twitter. But the Doom Slayer doesn't give shit about that, the game doesn't care about stupid concepts like toxic masculinity or male power fantasy, The Doom Slayer exists to empower the player, to make you feel like a god, and every aspect of him, from his backstory to his abilities to the physical copy's alternative box art serves that goal. You are the Doom Slayer, the most fearing creature in the universe, and you are unstoppable.

Not that the game needs any of this to make you feel awesome because all it really needs is its responsive, intense arena combat, but the more the merrier, and it even goes further than the gameplay and story, it also includes the music. Doom's soundtrack composed by Mick Gordan is a work of genius, and I didn't even like metal, until Doom, but never has a soundtrack better fitted a game; it's a loud, intense, energetic, pulse pounding assault on the senses, already a perfect match for the gameplay, but it gets even better because the music is dynamic. It can and will respond to the player's actions in gameplay, cause a big enough explosion or go in for a glory kill and the music will notice, switching up its choruses, verses and build-ups on the fly as you play, this makes every action you do exhilarating; the glory kills never get old, even as you do the same animation for the hundredth time because each and every one becomes a dopamine rush thanks to the soundtrack, think when a movie or game trailer has music that's in sync with the visuals, and then times that by about a million and make it last ten hours, also make sure you have a good supply of kleenex because it'll get messy.

Mick Gordan's metal soundtrack perfectly accompanies the visuals and design of the game, since Doom is basically what would happen if you turned a metal album cover into a game. Doom will take you to hell and back, literally, through the labs and halls of the UAC facility to the barren Martian landscape, down to the deepest pits of hell and everywhere in between. And along this journey you will be encountering some nasty bastards, from the flimsy and abundant Imps to the disgusting Mancubus and all the way up to the imposing and heavy hitting Barons of Hell. It's all suitably hellish in its presentation. The UAC facility is dark and ominous like Doom 3, with a very neglected utilitarian feel to it, yet its arenas are huge, open areas that allow for a lot of movement and climbing unlike Doom 3. Hell is a similar story; it still looks very hellish with plenty of satanic imagery and architecture, blood and human bones strewn about the floors and walls and complete ignorance of the laws of physics, but again its areas allow for a lot of movement in combat and its presentation on the whole is less dark and creepy than Doom 3, though the Hell levels still have an atmosphere unique to them that you don't feel on Mars.

The Demon designs are also very cool, which each design being visually distinct and reflective of the Demon's abilities, and most of them are a huge amount of fun to fight. Imps are speedy little gremlins who either charge and claw at you or throw fireballs from a distance, they also like to Spiderman their way up walls and ledges, but they are weak and the Doom Slayer makes short work of them at close range, which they make up for using numbers and accompanying bigger, more dangerous Demons. This is discernible from their clever design, with them being small and lanky with creepy little grins on their faces, they're cannon fodder, not a challenge but an annoyance, and that is presented though both the Imp's attacks and its design. This aspect of the game's design carries over to most of them; the Mancubus is a fat fuck with huge guns, reflecting its slow movement and ability to deal massive damage, the Hell Knights are huge, ripped Demons with powerful looking arms and legs, reflecting its high mobility and powerful melee attack, and this also applies to the Barons of Hell, which are like Hell Knights but bigger, and very visually distinct from them with their fiery red skin and huge horns. Demons like the Summoner and Lost Soul are more annoying however with the former's constant teleporting and the latter's kamikaze attack, but the majority of the game's Demons are wonderfully designed and a lot of fun to kill.

So the Demons are very well designed, but does the game give you fun toys to dispatch them with, yes it does. With the exception of the pistol, none of Doom's guns feel weak or useless, every gun has heavy, powerful sound effects and causes blood to spurt everywhere on impact. Initially all the guns are familiar in their function; the Combat Shotgun and Super Shotgun cause all kinds of chaos at close range, while the Machine Gun and Chaingun are better suited to medium and long range, the Plasma Rifle can bring the pain with a high rate of fire and the rocket launcher makes things go boom. Where things get spicy however is in the mods, because why not turn your shotgun into a grenade launcher or give your plasma rifle the ability to send out a devastating close-range heat blast. Every weapon has two available mods which you obtain by violently assaulting field drones scattered around the levels and swapping between mods is done with the push of a button. Every weapon and mod is also upgradable, and you upgrade them with tokens you are awarded based on your performance in combat, finding secrets and completing level specific challenges. Though you can only upgrade with the tokens so far before having to complete a challenge in order to max out the weapon, but these challenges don't take the piss, it's stuff like kill two enemies with one heat blast twenty times, or get twenty direct hits with the shotgun grenade, things that happen on their own as you rip and tear, keeping the mods simple and easy, so as to not bog down and over complicate the gameplay.

It actually makes me feel a bit dumb now when I look back on my Doom Eternal gameplay post, a lot of the weapon mods from that demo are similar to mods in this game like the shotgun's full auto mod and this game's shotgun's burst fire mod, or the machine gun's scope attachment, it would seem my memory of this Doom was less clear than I'd thought. The Doom Slayer's magic armour is also upgradable with tokens that are hidden around the levels, and your max health, armour and ammo can all be permanently upgraded using Argent Cells, slowly and surely making you even more unstoppable as you play. Then there's the Runes, which give the Doom Slayer perks to, for example, have unlimited ammo if he has over one hundred armour, or causes Demons to drop armour when Glory Killed, very useful perks for sure, though unlike the weapon and armour upgrades, the game makes you work for them, you must complete very demanding time trials in order to obtain them, stuff like blow up thirty barrels before the time expires, starting with six seconds on the clock and two extra seconds per barrel. This makes them stand out amongst the rest of the game's progression systems simply because of how specific and demanding they are, almost always coming down to trial and error, and leaving no wiggle room whatsoever, removing your ability to experiment and make mistakes, and in a game where literally everything else the campaign offers is fun, they're the weakest link. The game does also have some less frustrating distractions in the form of the many little Doomguys hidden around the levels, which unlock character and weapon models that can be accessed from the game's menu when found, and these little guys are adorable, I want one, in real life, I want one.

Doom isn't your typical first-person shooter, I mean this in the sense that if you're a Call of Duty player who's going into Doom thinking that it's just a shooter and you'll kick arse, you won't, Doom will be doing the arse kicking, and you'd better adapt. I said in my post about the Doom Eternal gameplay reveal and Astrid Johnson's ridiculous article about it that this Doom was the antithesis of the modern FPS genre. I can now go into detail and explain that. I said in that post that games have undeniably been getting easier; your average noob could probably set the difficulty to easy and blast through a Call of Duty or Halo game in three hours or less, and like I said in my post about Trash Ops 4, recent Call of Duty games have been trying to phase out any sort of skill gap in gameplay by rewarding the skilled players and the noobs in equal measure, which fails to disincentive and thus perpetuates mediocrity; why bother gitting gud when you and that guy who's going 40/0 on kills will both be getting participation ribbons. Yet when it comes to noobs, Doom's campaign doesn't give a fuck, it throws you in at the deep end from the first mission all the way up to the final boss, and it will force you to git gud because if you don't, it'll destroy you.

Doom is projectile based arena combat; it's running around at very high speeds, dodging enemy attacks and thinking on your feet. Doom has no sprint, because the Doom Slayer's default walking speed is sprint, there are no iron sights like Call of Duty or Halo 5 and weapons don't need to be reloaded, and you don't just regenerate health when hurt, you need to heal up or a Demon will come along and rip you apart, literally. The game is very fast paced because standing still for longer than a few seconds will get you killed, enemy attacks are vicious, but are almost always avoidable, meaning that even in areas where I died multiple times, I was never pissed off because the game never felt unfair, I didn't die because the game was cheap, I died because I failed to minimise my damage taken or because I misjudged the demonic threat, and I would subsequently change my strategy for the next attempt, and it only made that moment when I beat a particularly challenging arena all the more gratifying. And this game will challenge you, even its easy mode is hard if you don't know what you're doing, but its heavy reliance on player skill and attack dodging also makes even its hardest modes accessible provided you're up to the task, which speaks volumes to the amount of polish this game has. And once you've beat the game, you can replay all the missions with all your end game gear, making replaying the missions and hunting down the remaining secrets and challenges feel like less of a chore.

The game also throws in powerups that you can pick up in some areas, which give you invulnerability or super-duper speed for a short time which is useful in the more chaotic arenas, though quad damage and berserk are easily the most useful, because one quadruples your damage output and the other lets you insta-kill every enemy you touch for as long as the powerup lasts. Which brings us to the Glory Kills, which look on the surface like a gimmick but are useful in combat. When an enemy is low on health, you can go in for an intensely gruesome finishing move; snapping their necks, crushing their heads, ripping off various body parts and then killing the demons with their own body parts, which is perverse yet immensely satisfying. And for the glory kill, you are rewarded a dopamine hit by the soundtrack as well as little health and ammo drops to top you up, making them very useful to keep the bullets flying.

This also involves the chainsaw, which you can use to insta-kill demons, provided you have enough fuel to kill the demon in question, which then explodes into a fountain of ammo drops, making the chainsaw not just very gory and fun to use, but a strategic move. Though you don't get ammo drops for the chainsaw or BFG9000 which, like the chainsaw, has limited ammo but is incredibly powerful, able to kill every demon in the room in a single shot. The game's projectile based arena combat still holds very true in the game's boss fights of which there are three, each one naturally harder than the last as you take on the behemoth Cyberdemon and the scuttling bastard Spider Mastermind, who are both incredibly ugly, it's kind of strange that the only new boss, the Hell Guard, is comparatively tame in appearance, but each boss, like all the normal enemies, has learnable attack patterns and dodgeable attacks, making learning how to beat and then subsequently beating them very enjoyable, and finishing them off with a glory kill is amazing, and like every other glory kill in the game, it's earned, and what is more badass than taking a BFG9000, shoving it down a building sized Demon's throat and blowing their body apart with it.

Rip and Tear Until it is Done
Doom is, in many ways, a giant middle finger to what gaming and gaming culture has become over the years; it's hard, unforgiving, unapologetic, and badass at practically everything it does. Doom somehow pulls off simultaneously being a genuinely hard game and making the player feel like an unstoppable god, its arena combat is fast, frantic and addictively enjoyable and the challenge never comes at the expense of the fun because the game never cheats, even the most insurmountable task is perfectly doable provided you're manly enough. The game's hero is a physical embodiment of rage and power and being in his shoes is enough to put hair on even the most meekly of chests, and turns entering a room full of demons from a moment of fear to a moment of sadistic anticipation, so much ripping and tearing to be done. The game is also beautifully designed and has very certainly the most effective and well incorporated soundtrack I've ever heard in a game. Going in for the last secrets with all the end game gear is also a lot of fun, but it's a shame that the Runes have a habit of taking the piss. But in the end, when you're standing victorious over the mangled corpse of the final boss, having violently dispatched thousands of demons, there's only one thing you're left wanting; more. Doom is one of the most exhilarating games I've played in years, and it's absolutely a must play.

The Predator movie review

Here's what you need to know; even in his dangerous and surprise filled life as an Army Ranger, Quinn McKenna has never encountered a foe like this one as a mission is interrupted by a run in with a Predator. But the Predator isn't the only thing out for blood, as McKenna finds himself in the sights of merciless Government agents and a beast even the Predator stands little chance against, another Predator.

At least it wasn't twenty years between sequels like last time, assuming I or anyone was ever really interested in a Predator 4. That's a bit of a sweeping statement, just as I'm really pumped for the thirty-fifth Godzilla film, I'm sure someone out there was really looking forward to the fourth instalment in this classic franchise, written and directed by Shane Black, whose previous directorial efforts included a buddy cop comedy and a Marvel movie, which really should have been a red flag for the people now complaining that the film is too comedic. What this does for the film is something we'll get to, but as we'll also get to, this film's problems run a little deeper than a few out of place gags.

The Predator doesn't bog down its opening minutes with any kind of exposition, as we are literally dropped into it as the Predator falls to Earth, and people start dying not long after as McKenna and his squad come across the ship's escape pod and McKenna narrowly escapes its hinge headed occupant. So far, so good, we've had some cool alien shit and some gruesome death, how can this go south, easily, you through in an autistic kid. McKenna's son Rory adds practically nothing to this film that isn't mandated by its convoluted plot; he's a lonely autistic kid who's bullied at school and struggles with home life but he's really smart, he's exactly the kind of character you'd think he is and he does everything you think he'd do, even if that thing is so stupid that you'd never dream of the film stooping that low, like, for instance, this Autistic middle schooler accidentally activating Predator tech, learning how it works and even learning how to read and translate the Predator language. How the film establishes his autism is at least fairly affective, if a bit exaggerated, but the issue I have isn't that, it's how the film goes on to portray Autism.

 I'm not some sappy snowflake who's here to whine about racial insensitivity like a humourless cunt, so I'll keep this short for now, but the film openly infers that Autism has the potential to be the next step in human evolution, which is absurd to anyone who is or has experience with Autism; like Rory in this very film, people with Autism are smart but socially impaired, they have issues with communication and expression and have a harder time handling more stressful situations, I know this because I've lived this. To suggest that this condition that makes a person less equipped and therefore less efficient in social interaction and development is somehow the next step for humanity is absurd, which would be silly enough on its own, but then the film very unwisely deploys Chekov's gun and makes this inference a crucial aspect of the film's final act by tying it into the Predator's mission on Earth, which is another issue entirely and one I don't care about spoiling. The film isn't afraid to go near serious stuff and make some spicy jokes about them, and not even Autism escapes that; I particularly found Nettles' remark about Rory being retarded hilarious, but it's not that that insults me, it's in fact when the film tries to play it sincerely that it becomes hard for someone who actually knows what it's like to call bullshit.

Fortunately his dad's a bit easier to get behind, when he's not swallowing potentially dangerous alien technology that is, but like a lot of the characters in the film, there's very little in the way of development or surprises; he's a gruff, highly trained soldier who gets shit done, and while he fails miserably at being a decent dad, he's do anything to keep his son out of danger, like Rory, he is and does exactly what you think he'd be and do. But despite being played by the villain from Logan, he's a surprisingly likable guy, no doubt because of his positive archetypal traits and spicy banter. The same applies to his ragtag gaggle of comrades; Nebraska, Coyle, Nettles, Lynch and Baxley, whose names I got from IMDb because I didn't remember a single one of them. Like McKenna, these guys aren't much of a surprise, but they were a decent enough collection of supporting characters, two of them shared a subplot about having PTSD that was a little on the sweet side, and the lot of them bring the chuckles with their endless banter, that being said, I still had to IMDb their names, which is never a good thing.

I also had to look up Casey Bracket's name who, in a shocking twist, isn't the romantic interest of the film. Like the soldiers she joins in their mission to stop the Predator, there's not really a lot to her, frankly, I spent the entire film wondering how this Biologist is so good with a rifle, given that she isn't a soldier and the film never establishes or even implies prior firearms training. But there she is in the finale of the film, shooting a machine gun alongside the trained soldiers with the same proficiency, likely the result of the convoluted plot mandating that she's good with guns, it's weird, but at least she's useful I guess. Which just leaves us with the final name I looked up; Traeger, the dickbag Government guy on McKenna's tail, who's probably the most surprising character in the film purely because I didn't expect him to be such a slimy dickbag. The head of the agency tracking down and studying the Predator, he's also out to tie up loose ends, which of course means killing McKenna and his friends, hey, that rhymed. He also has funny moments, and moments of blinding stupidity, perhaps more so than anyone else, and the film goes out of its way at times to make him look extra slimy, but like the good guys, there's no real reason to invest in him besides the banter. It really is like the film uses banter to mask that its characters are boring, that it uses comedy as a substitute for giving the audience anything to really care about, which makes the film funny, yes, but at the cost of me having to look up everyone's names because they weren't memorable.

The comedy also gives The Predator issues with tone. The comedy is funny, but it comes at the expense of any worthwhile emotional depth and kills any sense of suspense, which makes this Predator film not feel like a Predator film. In the finale of the film when everyone has to take up arms against the Predator, it should be nail biting but it's not, partly because there's no real sense of danger for all the jokes, and because the Predator in this film is indestructible, and the film giving the two main parties of this fight this much plot armour makes the fight itself painfully predictable and completely lacking in tension or stakes. The deaths are gory but there's no real impact from them because of the film's muddled tone and the lack of audience investment, so even when McKenna's friends start getting picked off and the film wants you to feel it, you just don't.

Earlier in the film there's also a showdown between McKenna and company and a pair of big arse alien dogs, and again there's no suspense in the sequence, moreover there's stupidity as one character simply walks up to one of them and shoots it in the head it a bolt gun. Where he got a bolt gun I don't know, why he just walked up to this supposedly dangerous alien while everyone else was shooting at it I don't know, how the bolt gun managed to debilitate it when bullets did literally nothing I don't know. This sequence as well as the finale make so little sense while you're watching them that it's hard to tell what's going on, not because of shaky cam or anything like that, but because these sequences are so spontaneous, so riddled with stupidity, and weirdly, so poorly cut together, that they end up nearly incomprehensible. I'm a bit more of a stickler for editing and cinematography than most, but even my normie friends noticed how bad some of the editing was in this film; jarring camera zooms, crappy slow mo, bad transitions between scenes or even between shots, the action is a bit of a headache to watch, which is downright unacceptable. But it is all these niggles, the wonky editing, the laundry list of plot contrivances and the slithers of utter stupidity that drag this film down to mediocrity, but even ignoring the plot contrivances, how a film this sloppily put together came from the director of The Nice Guys I will never know.

Spoilers

But those contrivances though. Well there are the ones I've already blathered about; Rory and the film's portrayal of Autism, the poor character development, the biologist turned weapons expert, the RV that's apparently the mystery box from Call of Duty Zombies, etc, but then there's what they did to the Predator. Apparently, the Predators don't just hunt the galaxy's most dangerous animals for sport, they now also assimilate said animals' most dangerous traits through genetic manipulation to perfect themselves. This sounded like an excuse to have a common threat when I first heard it, but the humans and the Predator never team up in this film, so what purpose did it serve exactly. I'll tell you what, and I will be spoiling the film's finale here, you've been warned, but remember how Autism is supposedly the next step in human evolution, yeah, the Predators now want to assimilate Autism, what the Christ is wrong with this film. As I said earlier, Autism makes people smarter, but it causes trouble with social interaction and expression, so for a Predator, a creature supposedly out to make itself more efficient and deadlier than it already is, wanting to assimilate a trait that makes you less efficient is downright retarded. And it's not like Rory does anything that the Predator can't already do; the Predator can pilot a space ship, it can translate alien languages and use another species' technology, so exactly what trait does it want from Rory that it doesn't already have, an aversion to loud noises? This mission of assimilation and perfection is retconning at its finest, and it's Autistic brain fart makes it downright insulting, especially after I paid more attention on my second viewing, yes, I saw it twice, and specifically picked up that the Predator calls Rory a "warrior," Rory, the autistic school kid, warrior, I give up, I give up.

And to top it all off, the film's final scene has a stinger for Predator 5, because of course it does. In the stinger we are treated to a new suit of Predator armour designed for humans, one that builds itself around the wearer from nanoparts and has about five auto targeting shoulder cannons on each shoulder, mounted to giant railgun looking things. I honestly can't conceive of the mind of someone who'd think up anything like this, it's the kind of thing a six year old would dream up; a super duper mega predator with nineteen million guns and a jetpack, but this film did already have a genetic super Predator that wanted to become an Aspie and his retarded space dog so I really don't know at this point. I might as well rattle off the remaining points of interest and wrap this up; the film's visual effects are great, the CG is top notch and the practical effects are refreshing and brilliant, the film's use of the original Predator's soundtrack was a nice touch, but it contributes to the film's already confused tone. As bad as the story is, as flat as the heroes are, at least the comedy is good most of the time, the banter is gold at times and the situational humour also hits more often than not, but it further confuses this film's identity and actively contributes to the entire film's absence of tension, as well as being used as a crutch for its sloppy characters. It's lipstick on a pig, it doesn't fix the problems, just dolls them up.

Do I get a cookie now

How The Predator turned out like this is a mystery people much smarter than me will have to solve instead, because it's beyond me. The film has good visual effects and funny comedy, yet even with the banter my list of issues just gets longer and longer. The film's editing is bizarrely poor, making the action a chore to watch, and it can't really seem to tell what kind of film it is, it being a Predator film that's devoid of suspense. But The Predator's greatest sins come from its nonsensical story, forgettable heroes and villains, retconning of the worst kind, an ending stinger that's laughable, and worst of all, its handling of autism, which might have actually hurt my feelings were I not so stunned by how headache inducingly stupid it is. I'm not losing sleep over this because I'm not a cry baby, but I am genuinely stunned that The Predator took this path, tried to become a philosophical debate on mental illness while literally weaponizing said illness. This has taken over my thinking about The Predator now so I'm wrapping up. The Predator is an underwhelming follow up to the original film in every way, it's a sloppy, ridiculous, insulting mess and were it not for the banter, I'd honestly rather watch Pacific Rim: Uprising, I wouldn't recommend this film.