It's not like the movie is all bad or anything, I actually enjoyed large parts of it, but the bad parts just ruin it. Elle Fanning is amazing as Alice, and the other child actors, while not as good as Fanning, are wonderful. I also love the first half of the film, outside of a few problems in the realism department. The early plot of the kids working on their movie while all the oddities around town are happening is a lot of fun.
The Madhouse is an ongoing look at the various mockbusters and rip-offs from The Asylum and it’s sub brand Faith Films.
Armageddon movies have an annoying habit of exclusively featuring characters that have never heard of the Christian version of the end of the world or even seen one of the many movies on the subject. I suppose they all take place in an alternate world where we don’t have people claiming dates for the rapture. It’s similar to the biggest problem religious movies have: the characters have somehow avoided hearing even the most basic of tenants of some of the most prolific religions.
Countdown: Jerusalem is from The Asylum’s Faith Films sub brand, which is just like The Asylum, but it attempts to pander to the religious. I say attempt because they rarely get even the basics of Christianity into the movie they’re attempting to bill as Christian. I’m not sure if they’re keeping it vague to appeal to all denominations of Christianity or so they don’t have to go through the trouble of checking Wikipedia.
Silver, the obligatory new character that every Sonic game has to have. Like all new Sonic characters, he is annoying. He is from THE FUTURE and is hanging out with Blaze the Cat, who is interestingly enough from THE FUTURE as well. In THE FUTURE everything is on fire and the only people left alive are Silver, Blaze, and Old Shadow Mephiles. At least I think they're the only people alive, they're the only ones ever shown. For some reason Silver wants to defeat the Balrog Iblis to save THE FUTURE. This seems like a rather pointless task as he has killed it multiple times only to have it come back, also there is no one to actually save besides themselves, so leaving it alone seems like a smarter option.
Silver's opening video claims that there are other people, but since they never show up and are never mentioned again I think he is lying. Also he wonders why in a world covered in fire, lava, monsters, and a Balrog Iblis, people have lost hope. People do, however, point to the flames as a possible reason for their sense of hopelessness and lava-covered state. Oh yeah and Silver has telekinetic powers, did I forget to mention that earlier? That's probably because it is incredibly stupid. Here, take a look at his melodrama filled opening:
At times, Sonic 06 feels like it is trying to portray Silver as both naive and badass, which doesn't work because:
He isn't badass. Not even remotely. He's just a naive moron.
That's Shadow's schtick, if you have two badass hedgehogs they would be virtually identical characters. Only their color schemes would differentiate them.
No seriously, Silver is a complete loser wuss.
His voice makes him sound 12.
You can't be naive and a badass. You have to pick one. They picked naive and then failed at the badass.
Silver concept art.
That is concept art for Silver, as you can see they decided later on to make him a wuss. Likely due to issues from the writers when they accidentally got the characters mixed up in the script and lost weeks as they desperately tried to figure out which character was which. Some of the badassery attempts remained though, and they fall really, really flat coming from Silver. Silver's actual character is a timid, psychic person who wants to save the world, and... he's white colored and has psychic powers, and... he's a loser, and that's about it.
After the opening cutscene, Silver and Blaze go beat the Balrog Iblis again. After that, Old Shadow shows up and tells them that they need to go back in time to stop the "Iblis Trigger". The trigger is the person who caused Iblis to be released. Using magical computers, Old Shadow Mephiles presses some buttons and finds out that our pal, Sonic the Hedgehog, is the "Iblis Trigger". Yes, Silver plays the exact role Knuckles has played, he's the guy who thinks Sonic is the bad guy, but really it's Robotnik. Using a couple of Chaos Emeralds and the ever popular Dues Ex Machina of "Chaos Control" they travel back in time.
Silver and friends. At least Team Silver only includes one new character.
From there we run into Amy who is also looking for Sonic. From then plot happens, there's more time travel, some meet-ups with Shadow who claims not to be Old Shadow Mephiles, some more time travel, some meet-ups with Elise, we find out that Old Shadow Mephiles is actually some spirit that's evil and lives in a stick or something, the hookups with Sonic's story, and then the final defeat of Iblis by sealing Iblis into his own soul. This doesn't work, probably because Silver is a complete pussy, so Blaze has to do it, locking her into another dimension. Things then instantly become sunshine and happiness and the day is saved leaving Silver to be all emo about the loss of Blaze.
A lovely story huh? Well while all this is going on you are treated to the awful, awful physics-based gameplay of Silver. Yes, physics based gameplay in a Sonic game. Apparently Sonic Team never realized that the most flawed parts of their games were the horrible physics and decided to make an entire third of the game devoted to it. Also, Silver is pretty slow as well. Not as slow as Tails, but still slow enough to be irritating.
Silver's abilities include picking things up in the air with his magical powers, throwing things with his magical powers, floating with his magical powers, and being an idiot who constantly fails at life.
Oh look, I made Silver cry.
These powers are used to torture you and force you to try to use the game's physics. You can pick up boxes and attempt to hit something at a distance with them, but it usually takes about 20 something boxes before you actually hit your mark. Also on one level when I died, the game reloaded me with part of the environment missing, so I couldn't go further until I committed suicide. So yay for SEGA!
The worst part of Silver's story, the part that made me throw my controller, the part that took me forty minutes, the part that caused me to quit playing the game for the fifth time or so was an awful, horrible physics puzzle that required precision. You have this ball, you can psychically push it nine times I think it was. Except when it decides that that last push counted as two pushes. Also the timer will go down by itself if you just sit there too long. You have to get this ball into a slot that is down a ramp, around a corner, past a room full of holes in the ground, and around another corner.
This is still not enough faceplams for this section.You are expected to navigate this ball through this corridor by essentially throwing it really hard in a direction that isn't always the way you want to go. It is absurdly broken and incredibly frustrating. I had this section after having already played for an hour, so I was already pretty darn sick of the game. This section though, this section is the worst part of Sonic 06. I know I've said that before and likely will agian, but this is the one that's right. It's so broken and so poorly designed that you have to think the devs were just sitting back and laughing as they designed it. Laughing dark, evil laughs of evil.
Again, observe the Let's Play guys as they get lucky after 25 minutes and solve the puzzle.
I'm not going to describe Silver's gameplay anymore, it sucks, but aside from that one horrifying area it is merely dull or slightly frustrating as opposed to the frequent mach speed segments that Sonic's story employs. Silver's story also lets you play as Amy and Blaze. Amy isn't too bad, but Blaze controls like a squirrel on crack when you try to attack anything. Press the attack button and she starts flying about wildly with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Thankfully you don't have to control her too often.
There are many more things to complain about in Silver's story, but I've already gone on long enough. Tune in in a few days for my rant about Shadow's Story, which also sucks. A lot. Also it decides to completely ignore everyone else's plot and just go be angsty by itself.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 01:00PM
