Die Another Day

So, this is where the filmmakers went too far and turned James Bond from an outlandish action hero into the star of something monumentally stupid. Die Another Day has a few decent moments, but in general it's just insane. Even more of an unbelievable science fiction movie than Moonraker, practically every ten minutes it tops its own ridiculousness. It actually starts out not too bad. I'm not sure why Bond and his bodies had to surf to their mission start point instead of a more simple method, but they steal a helicopter and a briefcase of diamonds, hoping to interrupt an arms deal by a corrupt North Korean Colonel. After a betrayal and an action sequence featuring a bunch of hovercrafts (probably the film at its most reasonable), Bond gets captured and tortured for over a year before being traded for one of the Colonel's henchmen. Later in a hospital on a boat in Hong Kong, things take a turn for the worse. Bond has been restricted by MI-6, but he decides to escape his enclosed room by willing himself into cardiac arrest. That's right. He just thinks about his time in Korea and his heart stops. He then wakes up, takes out the doctors, and swims to shore.

What follows is a parade of overly double entendre-heavy one-liners and technologies each more ridiculous than the last. People changing their identities with gene therapy, because plastic surgery is too old fashioned! Cars that turn invisible! Virtual reality training simulations that also apparently support erotic fantasies! A satellite that can channel the sun's energy and cut a swath of destruction across the earth! Also, why is Iceland an icy wonderland in this movie? I mean yeah, there are glacial areas there. But they couldn't sustain a frozen palace. When you include the sequence where Bond appears to kitesurf off the edge of the world, you get the feeling the screenwriters meant to place that act in the North Pole and got confused. When you add the general low level of acting (do people actually like Halle Berry?) and how nobody can seem to have a fucking conversation without throwing eight dick jokes out there, and it's a disappointing way to celebrate forty years of Bond. The scenes with John Cleese as the new Q are generally entertaining, but the film can hardly go five minutes without something dumb happening. The best thing you can say about the movie is that it's at least not boring.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Die Another Day" by Madonna
Foreign locations: Korea, Hong Kong, Havana, Iceland
Bond, James Bond: 53:55
Martini shaken, not stirred: 50:05, 1:11:00
Ladies seduced: 2
Chases: 2
Kills: 16 real, plus explosion victims, 7 virtual
Non-lethal takedowns: 11

Original continuity James Bond stat totals
Bond, James Bond: 22
Martini shaken, not stirred: 16
Ladies seduced: 53
Chases: 46
Kills: More than 219
Non-lethal takedowns: 176

Grand Theft Auto III

In anticipation of Grand Theft Auto IV, which I should be getting my hands on soon, I'll talk a bit about the Playstation 2 trilogy that made me love the series.

Around the Christmas of 2001, there was a bit of a rivalry brewing between the PS2 and the new Xbox. Both systems had a high-profile game coming out. The PS2 had Metal Gear Solid 2, and the Xbox had Halo. But a lesser known game came out of nowhere to far more commercial success than either, a 3D sequel to a kitschy top-down driving series. It was GTA3, and it was a lot of fun. I remember playing it for the first time and being amazed by what I could do. It was the first true open-world game of its kind. The freedom was incredible. Going anywhere in the city, getting into fights with the different gangs, uncovering street races or secret jumps, listening to the hilarious talk radio station.

Of course, what we ended up doing a lot was just causing mayhem, recklessly plowing through pedestrian traffic with a semi truck and getting as many cop cars as you could to chase you. It was a revelation when we realized the best way to rack up stars on your wanted level was to attack people on foot instead of just running them over. And of courses, you could pick up prostitutes to heal you in exchange for money, and if you so chose, kill them afterward to get it back. Money was never an issue in the game, it was just a darkly humorous way to beat the system. Unfortunately, this single aspect of a huge, often quite intelligent game was focused on by media watchdogs and overzealous parents. They warped it, trying to make the game out to be training kids to be brutal killers, with the mistreatment of women in the forefront. Never mind that the series has never once instructed you to harm a prostitute, or any other person who could be considered an innocent bystander. It just allows it, letting you make yourself into any character you wanted. The game also allows you to use an ambulance to deliver people to a hospital and rewards you for doing it well, but I guess that doesn't sell newspapers as well.

Beyond the sandbox mayhem, the game also started the series' trend towards interesting storylines set up by very professionally handled cutscenes. The main character never spoke, but you still felt sympathy for him when he was betrayed and wanted to help him set things right. Working your way up the ladder, interacting with all the different movers and shakers in the criminal underworld, and having a hand in the direction the city takes was a hell of a lot of fun. Everybody latches on to the primitive technology and unsatisfactory weapon targeting now, but it wasn't that big of a deal back then, when you had so much choice in how you took care of things. Other games let you decide between picking off foes from a distance or getting in their face and making them explode, but few let you set up a barrier beforehand and block off their escape route. It started the trend of making the last couple of missions in the game a little too difficult, when you're faced with tons of guys with automatic weapons and the bad targeting really rears its ugly head, but finally getting it done is all the more satisfying. There were too many technical flaws, but when you just consider the scope of it and what it did for gaming as a whole, Grand Theft Auto III was a masterpiece.

Yakuza

Yakuza isn't an amazing, huge game. It's a solid, somewhat quirky one. But we need those too. It's a strange mix of beat-em-up and RPGs. What I might like most about it is its charm, not from a content sense, since it's a crime story filled with violence and sometimes gratuitous swearing, but just a gameplay sense. The button-mashing combat, the leveling up, the text boxes, the loading between fighting and normal play, the little shops full of items; they're all almost nostalgic in this modern world of minimalist interfaces and streamlined menus. It's a throwback to the old days.

It's a pretty enjoyable throwback too, most of the time. Besides the storyline, there are dozens of sidequests and other activities everywhere in the little area of Tokyo they lit you run around in, and you can ignore the main game for long stretched if you don't feel like dealing with it. The combat has some interesting wrinkles to it, especially if you seek out training to learn some new moves. It's usually pretty straightforward, but there are lots of items sprinkled about and techniques that are useful in various situations. It starts getting pretty frustrating near the end, when you start getting attacked by a certain type of enemy that tends to dodge everything and hit you with ridiculous spinning kicks and you get ganged up on, all culminating with an annoying boss who actually has bodyguards that revive themselves shortly after being beaten. But as long as you don't do what I did once and accidentally get into an unwinnable (almost no health against 4 guys with knives, one of whom can't be forced to drop his) fight that forced me to quit and lose an hour's progress, it shouldn't be too bad.

The story itself is pretty interesting. I wish they included the original voice track, because as fun as it is to hear Michael Madsen and Mark Hamill try to play Japanese characters, I was annoyed by the common overacting and inconsistent pronunciation. But it's still a good mob story, with plenty of twists, mysteries, and likable characters. The gameplay throughout is a constant repeat of running to the next fight besides a diversion or too, but wanting to know what was up kept me going. It got a little silly at the end, with some clichés, pointless extending of the climax, and a nearly interminable ending, but overall it encapsulated a pretty fun game well.