Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – Movie Review

Before I review the movie, let’s talk about the book a little bit and don’t mind my fake and poor British accent.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the 6^th book in the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. Like all Harry Potter books, it had many people in excitement upon its release date four years ago, July 16, 2005. The great part about Harry Potter was the fact that it introduced an entire generation of children into reading. However, it didn’t stop there; the series gave these children a sense of vision in creativity over the course of their lives in literature.

There are countless of fan fictions, fan films, scripts, plays, and even a dictionary relating to the Harry Potter series. Rowling has literally changed the lives of many children and adults around the world and I am certainly impressed to see the power of literature at work.

Here is an example:

 

But, why am I talking about the book instead of the movie? Everybody already knows about what happens in the book, how it differs from the movie, and how great the book truly is to all Harry Potter fanatics. However, what some people didn’t know about was the mischief behind the selling of the 6^th and 7^th book. You see some people thought it would be hilarious to dress up in black clothing, get a loud speaker, a friend with a camera, and of course have the internet as their audience, to witness something pretty messed up.

This person in black ninja like clothing also inspired many people around the globe to perform the same stunt on the 7^th book release. What he did was this, got a list of important facts, went into a crowded book store, lifted his microphone, and simple said, “Attention Customers, SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE!” If you heard the spoilers on that release date, I feel your pain. <3

And now for the film review:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince continues the story of telling us a bit more about Tom Riddle, who is later known as Lord Voldemort, and his past life and how he came into Hogwarts as well as progressing to be one of the darkest wizards Dumbledore ever encountered. In order to defeat Voldemort, they needed to know the past, and the only person able to give that information was Voldemort’s favored teacher in Hogwarts, Professor Slughorn who has a profession in Potions. Dumbledore and Harry visit him at his house to get him to go back to Hogwarts to teach, at first he refused, but eventually gave in and prompted for a raise in his salary.

Surely I thought the story would strictly be about Voldemort, however branched off into another matter. As ordered by the Voldemort, Draco was selected for a special assignment, to kill Dumbledore. Draco’s mother, Narcissa Malfoy, and Bellatrix Lestrange, the first female Death Eater, went to Snape’s home. Narcissa pleaded to Snape to protect Draco from harm, and Draco was not able to kill Dumbledore, he would do it instead. Snape said he will protect Draco, but Bellatrix suggested that an unbreakable vow would insure his words were true.

So, basically, the movie had two plots working with one another, one was where Dumbledore and Harry were seeking to find the truth in the past to defeat Voldemort while the other is where Voldemort was ordering Draco to kill Dumbledore. An interesting film, I never read the book, I seem to have been miss informed about life considering I lived in the era where Harry Potter was created and never heard of it until the 3^rd movie came out. Anyway, great film, glad I watched it twice, missed a few things the first time I watched it, and the second time cleared up everything. Go watch it! Sidd Approved ^^

 

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Quick Review

Ever felt like yelling “Objection!” or “Hold it!” at your Nintendo DS? Ever wondered how the court system (loosely) works? Ever just want to play a game where you barely have to do anything? Well here you are! The Ace Attorney series is here with the first installment featuring Phoenix Wright.

Phoenix Wright is a new spiky haired attorney fresh out of law school. He’s still wet behind the ears, but his boss Mia Fey is teaching him the ropes as he defends his friend Larry Butz, Mia’s little sister Maya Fey, and even a famous actor William Powers, all of whom have been unrightfully accused of murder. As Phoenix you find out alibis, collect evidence, and most importantly, find out whose lying about what. You’ll face off against the prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, whose every action leads him closer to victory…no matter what. As Phoenix you’ll need to challenge every new twist that Edgeworth throws at you.

I really fell in love with this game after the first stage. Collecting evidence, asking suspects questions that lead into details that were hidden and challenging cross-examinations. Not only is the gameplay dead simple yet challenging, but the humor in this game is outrageous. Every character has some little quirk that makes them unique. Detective Gumshoe for instance is involved in almost every case and it a bit of a dimwit, yet has moments where his true character is revealed, but again he’s mostly just there for laughs. Each section is broken up into trials or when key information for the trial is collected and these moments can become pretty intense. You’ll start playing the “Who did it?” game throughout each trial. The music is great for making those true moments shine as long with each time someone speaks. A slam to the table, a yell, or even a funny gesture all make the dialogue box shake in some manner. A great visual effect if you ask me. Altogether, this series seems like they took an anime director and told him to recreate Law and Order. o_o

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Rating: Must play!

Notes for the bloggers

Alright, let me throw done some guidelines for the bloggers of Respawn Point.

First off. If you’re posting on this blog and you’re not using Microsoft Live Writer…go download it. It’s probably the best tool for blogging and it makes adding images a breeze.

Pictures for your post must be at least 400px in width. Height should have a base (200, 300, 400, etc.) and any movie posters or game posters of the sort should be 600px at least (with the exceptions of like..DS games which is 400px by 400px).

If you feel that all you need is text wrapping around your image then that’s fine as well, but I would make the image at least 200px.

Moving on. Seeing as how most of us have been rating our respective subjects with high ratings ranging form 5/5, 10/10 and others, I feel that we need to just simplify our ratings to a yay or nah.
For example: The Transformers post that was just posted minutes ago by Sidd could have been given a “Must See!”

Any problems leave a comment and if you just don’t feel like doing any of this then I’ll just continue editing them as I have. x_x Just please don’t be afraid to blog…I really appreciate your inputs. Thanks and happy blogging.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen – Movie Review

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) is an action pack CGI/live action film that continues the story about the raging war between the Autobots and the Decepticons, but takes us back into an earlier time in history where an ancient race of transforming robots landed on Earth. These ancient robotic beings travel to the far reaches of space in hope drain energy from stars and convert them into a resource material called Energon in order to power the AllSpark (seen as the cube in the previous movie). In this ancient era, the Dynasty of the Primes are the ones in power of the weapon they called the Sun Harvester which they use to drain the stars in the universe.

The Dynasty agreed they will only take the stars of uninhabited solar systems, basically stars with planets that have no living organisms; however one of the members in the Dynasty came to Earth and wanted to drain the sun while there was still life on the planet and was later named and known as “The Fallen”. For his own views and hatred toward the planet Earth and its inhabitants, began to construct the Sun Harvester, but was stopped by the Primes. In order to save Earth from The Fallen, the Dynasty of the Primes sacrificed themselves and hidden away the Matrix of Leadership, the key that powers the Sun Harvester machine.

And so, many generations later, The Fallen returns to Earth to finish what he started in order to gain Energon and build up his army.

Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LaBeouf, who in the previous film becomes involved in a war between the Autobots and the Decepticons, has grown up and was heading to college. In order to maintain his relationship with Mikaela Banes, played by Megan Fox, they would have to have to communicate through webcam chat over the internet (which is amazingly popular trend to do when couples, friends, or relatives are far apart from each other).

Before he went off to college, he noticed that he still had a piece of the AllSpark and when he touched and looked at it, the AllSpark fragment reacted and gave Sam some sort of symbolic map to where the Matrix of Leadership is located. The fragment became too hot for Sam to hold onto and fell to the floor burning its way to the kitchen where it reacted to metal and made everyday electronic kitchen machines into transformers and caused a heck of a mess.

So skipping ahead a bit, Sam travels to college. They show us the typical university college life which I still have to witness for myself if this is what really goes on (x.x), with typical weird roommates, hot college guys and girls, parties, and of course class lectures with 100-200 students in an auditorium. This is the scene that cracked me up the most. A teacher walks in eating an apple and talks about physics. He takes a bite, drops the apple, and kicks it to a hot young lady at the front row who says thank you and the teacher replies “Finish it for me”. The way the angles in those shots played reminded me of an adult film-like setting, so I nearly bursted out laughing, covering my mouth as hard as I can while the audience in the theatre room was quiet as hell. The woman next to me gave me a dirty look (They eventually walked out in the middle of the movie x.x).

Anyway, during class, Sam had a weird occurrence of reading the entire class text book in 5 seconds and going nuts claiming that the teacher was wrong. With a freak-out during class, he walks out and wonders what is going on with him and what the symbols he is seeing mean.

Now without spoiling a bunch of things for the movie, I will stop here about the story telling, the film is amazingly awesome, a great movie to watch that has LOTS of action and transforming ^^. There are many scenes that will leave you laughing pretty hard and really get you into the movie that you won’t even have time to eat your snack because you don’t want to miss ANYTHING!

10/10 Great Job at creating this movie!

Oh I forgot one thing…the CGI on Megan Fox is amazing, it’s too real to be real!

Prototype – Game Review

Have you ever played a game and felt like, “Wow this game would make a perfect fucking movie!” or “The story is just what I want in my games!”, and then had to get subjected to a faulty reality? Well that’s how I felt when I played Prototype.

So here’s the low down. You the player get to control Alex Mercer, our protagonist (or anti-hero as you’ll quickly learn), who has been stricken by the story tellers ultimate resource, amnesia. Alex awakens to the sight of two doctors ready to open his presumably dead corpse in a morgue located in the basement of the genetic engineering company GENTEK.  After a clumsy escape by the reawakened Mercer, he quickly finds that his body isn’t truly his own. A virus that was released in Penn Station had infected his body, giving Mercer the ability to leap tall buildings, run faster then cars, strength that rivals the strongest tanks and the ability to shapeshift into any human he consumes. This virus, later called Blacklight, is now infecting all of New York City, and it’s up to Mercer to both find his origins and to stop anyone who gets in his way.

Alex Mercer is the true bad ass of all anti-heroes. Think if Spawn was remade today and Mercer would still kick his ass! Standing between the military forces trying to control the infected and the infection that’s trying to spread, Mercer fights for whatever force will give him more answers. There are levels in which you’ll disguise as a soldier and control tanks, helicopters, or just carry a gun and will need to kill the infected targets, while other situations will call for Mercer to sneak into a military base, destroy a certain weapon, or just kill a group of military forces alongside some infected. It helps that Mercer has all of New York City as his playground. Abilities like his air dash and glide make traveling over buildings a breeze, and his previously mentioned speed and jumping abilities help to get Mercer out of any situation. There is just something special about being able to run up the side of a building only to leap miles into the air and fly off into a new direction. It’s probably one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. But of course that’s not all! For whatever reason, the infection has given Mercer the ability to parkour like a master! What is parkour? Parkour is a discipline with the aim of moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible using principally the abilities of the human body. (Thanks wikipedia o_o) So you have a few taxis in your way? Well Mercer will just smoothly skip over those like they’re nothing! It really makes getting around much easier as well as making enemy encounters a lot more maneuverable.

So what goes on in the actual gameplay? Well like any sandbox game, you get choices. Do you want to go straight through the main story and beat the game right away? Or do you want to play one of the many mini-games scattered throughout NYC and earn Evolution Points to beef up your character? EP is gained through mostly anything that you could think of. Killing a soldier, consuming a civilian, blowing up a building, completing a mission, blah blah blah. All these points begin to add up and can be used in the upgrade tab to give Mercer new abilities. Been looking at the hook shot arm? Well just need a few more EP! Want that new dive bomb technique to take down anyone in your way? Almost enough! You’ll quickly see that you really need to earn that EP, as the cost of most moves begin to skyrocket in the later parts of the game. The mini-games often revolve around kill so many enemies in such such amount of time, or reach all these checkpoints in this amount of time and are rated by bronze, silver, and gold. Gold of course giving the most EP out. What about the main story though? Well…I want to get into a little bit of why I sorta don’t like it…

Alright, so Mercer doesn’t know who he is, but he can find people that do…right? Yep! That’s just about the general point of the game. You see scattered throughout the game are civilians that are part of the Web of Intrigue. These people are highlighted when spotted by a red head symbol, and when they are consumed a short (highly detailed) cut scene is shown revealing some part of how these people are involved with Alex Mercer or the infection. This is great and all, and I love how it mixes gameplay with real life photos, but it also takes away from the main story telling. I really like when developers take a chance on things like this, but not when it takes away from the main storyline. Every time I went for a new mission I felt like it was just some minor character like Dana A. Mercer (Alex’s younger sister) or Dr. Bradley Raglan telling me what new task I have to complete and then off I go to kill hundreds of people just to do it again when I have to start the next mission. The only real change was the few boss battles that occurred throughout the game (I believe it was three), and those often just involved finding a pattern in which you could defeat the boss without getting completely frustrated. Seriously though, what’s up with the character’s AI? They just find ways to completely piss off the characters. It’s either they won’t stop cheaply hitting you (I’m talking to you four legged infected hunter things!) or that they react in the oddest ways and point you out in a crowd. I found times where tanks would blast me with their cannons even through I was still disgused and wasn’t spotted at all. Also on the combat note, why is it that I can’t defend myself at all? Mercer gets two upgrades throughout the game, a defensive shield that only comes up when he’s running, and a full body armor that makes him literally unable to navigate around anything but halves the damage of most attacks. Why can’t Mercer just throw up his arms and defend himself? At most you get the ability to duck to the side. Yeah that doesn’t work very well when the guy attacking you affects the entire area around you. Also what’s with the weak ass special powers? Sure the claws are great, the hammer arms are bulky and slow but powerful, and the hookshot is great for long distance…but the muscle arms are completely worthless and the blade that is showcased everywhere (look at the game’s cover!) isn’t given to the player until the end. Weren’t we suppose to be given hundreds of powers or something?

What I would have liked to have seen is an option that reveals Mercer’s entire ability and gives the player control of at least 50 abilities that could be mixed and matched so that each Alex Mercer didn’t just feel like a clone to everyone. If I want two long blades on each arm, BAM! That’s what I get (with a limit of course as to how much can be added.) What about if I wanted to launch out multiple tentacles in a wide range? Great! But it’ll cost you energy or something. I’d just like to see this kind of option in the next Prototype…and with EA you know that’s going to come sooner or later. I don’t want to end on a bad note, I just wanted to exclaim my distaste for certain decisions in thie game. Battle can be hectic but tamed with some experience. You get the story you want even if it’s not completely how I would have liked it. Your powers are enough to show your a badass, but never makes Mercer feel like he’s yours. Is Prototype a great game? Definitely.

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Rating: 4/5

Pros: Amazing detail to NYC. Parkour is stylish. Alex Mercer is such a fun character. Great story hiding in the brains of every civilian.

Cons: Often too hectic battles. Main campaign never feels like it’s really telling the story. Enemy AI is frustrating. Cutscenes are amazingly detailed…but in game graphics not so much.

The Legendary Starfy – Game Review

Nintendo has done it again with yet another simple (yet addictive) game. I first heard of The Legendary Starfy at my job. I'm known for walking up to random kids with a DS asking for game recommendations, but this time the kid wouldn't even look at me and he his mother said "Don't bother, he just took it out of the package". There and then I knew it was a must-have game.

The game begins with it’s main character Starfy, the Prince of Pufftop, taking a nap (I love it already) when suddenly…BOOM! What would you do if a space bunny suddenly crashes through your roof waking you up from your peaceful slumber and being followed by three not welcoming creatures? Choose to help him!! Of course! Even though he has no recollection of who he is or where he is from. Who knows, maybe it’ll lead to a great adventure, it always seems to. I side with his friend, a cool clam named Moe, who tries to tell him it’s a waste of time to try to save some random bunny who just destroyed the castle. Once again, OF COURSE Starfy isn’t going to listen…if he did then we wouldn’t be graced with the wonderful adventure of a game! Starfy has his ways of traveling. He can walk on land, swim underwater, or launch out of the water for a high flying jump. He also spins in defense against enemies or to blow up bubbles for the treasures inside. By defeating bosses he finds pieces of a crystal that somehow helps his space bunny friend regain his memory. The crystals also unlock the space bunny’s ability to transform Starfy into other creatures to help battle bosses- I have yet to reach any transformation but will update with them as soon as I do.

Most of the game is played underwater, which makes sense if you’re familiar with the story, which you probably aren’t since Nintendo chose to keep this franchise in every country but ours since its 2002 debut…which is disappointing. During those previous games he “accidently” falls into the ocean below his castle in the sky (so cliché) and makes friends with all the underwater creatures who help him find his way home (aw so cute!). I really think the franchise would’ve done great in North America from the start, but the game is already being spread through summer camps and playgrounds as the next top game.

The game should be popular with all ages and gamers alike. Its platform is much like Kirby with a floating, bouncy feel. I like it better since I never really felt attached to the Kirby franchise. Maybe it’s because my brother would use Kirby to beat the crap out of me in Super Smash Bros when he “wasn’t even trying”. Anyways, the game is getting a lot of attention due to its familiar style and loveable characters who are always do-gooders. The game is very much like Super Mario Bros for the DS with its side-scrolling world and the map with dots representing the worlds and lines that are made to connect them once they’ve been completed. This game also has hidden treasures like clothes and 3-d figures which makes collectors happy with those features. There are also hidden levels to be discovered, leaving this game with endless possibilities and no let down with the amount of game-time.

My favorite feature is probably the link-up function. During any given moment a fellow game player can link-up with your DS and help you defeat a boss to get through a level. Not to forget the mini-games.

I really have no complaints about the game. Okay, maybe one…why not take advantage of the touch screen more? But really…no need for it. As it follows the Kirby and Mario games- it doesn’t need touch screen, the game play and the lovely characters and places in the game make up for the almost completely ignored function.

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I give it a 5/5 and look forward to completing it myself!

Next up: The Sims 3 (Jeff would be proud LOL)

Check back for a new addition to the Blog…Book Reviews!