rapt0r_claw-1
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Warpath: Jurassic Park has to be one of the most innovative beat-ups ever. Instead of the usual martial arts or magic, fireballs and flashes of light for every punch, you have realistic dinosaurs feuding in a plausibly vicious manner. The novelty of fighting as dinosaurs gives Warpath an edge over, say, Tekken or the newer Dragonball Z fighters, that feature humans.
The graphics are incredible considering the age and platform. I didn't think the PSOne could manage the look this game features. The realism is fine, except for the scale. No matter how tremendous the dinosaur, no human (or sheep, or dog, or goat, or cow... you can eat practically anything) ever looks that small. I mean, an adult male Homo sapiens is bigger than a tyrannosaur's head, let alone its tooth! Instead of being intimidating, the exaggeration of their size instead seems ridiculous. Speaking of dinosaurs, there are tons of them that the movies never featured, including an extremely inaccurate (but VERY ferocious) reconstruction of Spinosaurus, a good Suchomimus and Albertosaurus. Many unlockable dinosaurs I only got to see by waiting for a demo to start up. It just takes too much time to unlock the majority of dinosaurs. Seriously, you need to finish one for unlockable no. 1, twice for no. 2, thrice for no. 3, and so on! There are something like 8 or 9 new dinosaurs to unlock, and the game doesn't allow you to save your progress. How can you play for 12 or 13 hours just to unlock a tremendously cool dinosaur, and have no energy left to play with it? That's just indecent!
If you never watch a demo and don't see all the cool dinosaurs that can be unlocked (they can be unlocked, at least by untiring robots), which means you don't know about them and will be perfectly happy to play with your default roster. The bloody, violent fights are replayable and fun, until you've played for three or four weeks, get bored, and only revisit it every now and then. I was disappointed upon finding that there is NO Create-A-Dino mode. It would be a pretty good idea to include such a feature if they decide to make a Warpath 2, or something for PS2 or other next-gen platforms. For today's gamers, who may not be totally happy no matter how many polygons developers throw at them, Warpath is probably doomed to gathering dust in an old, battered CD case.
The graphics are incredible considering the age and platform. I didn't think the PSOne could manage the look this game features. The realism is fine, except for the scale. No matter how tremendous the dinosaur, no human (or sheep, or dog, or goat, or cow... you can eat practically anything) ever looks that small. I mean, an adult male Homo sapiens is bigger than a tyrannosaur's head, let alone its tooth! Instead of being intimidating, the exaggeration of their size instead seems ridiculous. Speaking of dinosaurs, there are tons of them that the movies never featured, including an extremely inaccurate (but VERY ferocious) reconstruction of Spinosaurus, a good Suchomimus and Albertosaurus. Many unlockable dinosaurs I only got to see by waiting for a demo to start up. It just takes too much time to unlock the majority of dinosaurs. Seriously, you need to finish one for unlockable no. 1, twice for no. 2, thrice for no. 3, and so on! There are something like 8 or 9 new dinosaurs to unlock, and the game doesn't allow you to save your progress. How can you play for 12 or 13 hours just to unlock a tremendously cool dinosaur, and have no energy left to play with it? That's just indecent!
If you never watch a demo and don't see all the cool dinosaurs that can be unlocked (they can be unlocked, at least by untiring robots), which means you don't know about them and will be perfectly happy to play with your default roster. The bloody, violent fights are replayable and fun, until you've played for three or four weeks, get bored, and only revisit it every now and then. I was disappointed upon finding that there is NO Create-A-Dino mode. It would be a pretty good idea to include such a feature if they decide to make a Warpath 2, or something for PS2 or other next-gen platforms. For today's gamers, who may not be totally happy no matter how many polygons developers throw at them, Warpath is probably doomed to gathering dust in an old, battered CD case.
Sadly, Disney Feature Animation closes down after "Home on the Range." I'm waiting for Disney's last cartoon on DVD, but the subject of this review is "Brother Bear." This is the second last traditional Disney animated feature.
"Brother Bear" is a good story of love, sin, understanding, forgiveness and brotherhood, as the title suggests. It's set in Alaska in the time of the Inuit and the mammoth. Sitka, Denahi and Kenai are brothers (eldest first). After Sitka is killed by a bear, Kenai sets out to kill the bear, whilst Denahi doesn't blame the bear. Kenai kills the "monster," but Sitka, now a powerful spirit, turns Kenai into a bear to take the other's place and atone for his wrongdoing. Denahi thinks the bear has killed his other brother as well, and vows to track down Kenai and kill him. It is different from most other stories. The message is clear, the story straightforward, not muddled by subplots and separate story lines. The film tells a story that is just a fable. Fortunately, that's all it needs to be.
The animation isn't all that gorgeous, yet remains high quality. The bears are realistically depicted, all the animals are their true forms but for the caricature of their funniest features and habits. The forest, which is CG, is beautiful. The color and the realism of it is magnificent. But again, some of the computer effects don't work. The film was clearly trying to aim for something like the DreamWorks half-and-half pictures, with hand-drawn characters acting in photo-realistic environments and effects (i.e. "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" and "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas"). The water in "Brother Bear," in its early stages, looks nearly as bad as that in "The Jungle Book 2." It's flat, with a bit of shine, unlike the fast-flowing, moving torrents of other films. It just looks lame. Don't get me wrong, this is a minor mishap. The Cg layout looks fantastic.
Phil Collins did the score for this! What a surprise! NOT! The soundtrack for "Tarzan" was inspirational: the soundtrack for "Brother Bear" is varying and lackluster. The opening Tina Turner number is decent at best. Collins' songs, which form the bulk of the music in the film, have stupid lyrics, although his great voice saves it from being totally painful. The best song by far was sung by a Bolivian women's chorus, written by Colins. The lyrics for this song were better than the other songs', not bothering to include idiotic rhymes since the English words are never heard. The words were translated into Inuit. When at last the grand performance is over, you whisper: "Wow."
The characters are funny and not at all one-dimensional. Of the brotherhood, Sitka, who plays such a pivotal role, is the weakest. His character is no deeper than enough to make it clear he is brave, wise and self-sacrificing. Everyone's dream big brother to beat up the bad guys. Denahi and Kenai are have much more to them. They, of course, are the typical siblings that incessantly antagonize each other, their battles being a good source of comic relief. "Brother Bear" may have fallen flat on its face without the two distinctly Canadian moose brothers (notice the number of brothers in the film) that are by far the funniest of Disney's recent creations. They get cramps from eating grass and need to do yoga before starting, and spar to practice for the rutting season. Kenai reluctantly allows a young bear cub separated from his mother. This cub is Koda. Correction: The moose are the funniest SIDEKICKS from Disney in recent times. Koda is a lead player. He's funny, exceedingly better equipped to survive than his older chum, and most importantly: extremely cute.
So, does "Brother Bear" live up to the classics of old? Honestly, no, it doesn't. On the other hand, it doesn't exactly make it impossible for them to show their faces in public again. All in all, Disney hasn't ended a creative vacuum. But if you think about it, would Walt have approved? No. He wouldn't have. But what matters isn't how "Brother Bear" compares to other Disney films, but how much you enjoy it in a single viewing. Admittedly, it's funnier than any of than many older films. "Brother Bear" rating: 8/10
"Brother Bear" is a good story of love, sin, understanding, forgiveness and brotherhood, as the title suggests. It's set in Alaska in the time of the Inuit and the mammoth. Sitka, Denahi and Kenai are brothers (eldest first). After Sitka is killed by a bear, Kenai sets out to kill the bear, whilst Denahi doesn't blame the bear. Kenai kills the "monster," but Sitka, now a powerful spirit, turns Kenai into a bear to take the other's place and atone for his wrongdoing. Denahi thinks the bear has killed his other brother as well, and vows to track down Kenai and kill him. It is different from most other stories. The message is clear, the story straightforward, not muddled by subplots and separate story lines. The film tells a story that is just a fable. Fortunately, that's all it needs to be.
The animation isn't all that gorgeous, yet remains high quality. The bears are realistically depicted, all the animals are their true forms but for the caricature of their funniest features and habits. The forest, which is CG, is beautiful. The color and the realism of it is magnificent. But again, some of the computer effects don't work. The film was clearly trying to aim for something like the DreamWorks half-and-half pictures, with hand-drawn characters acting in photo-realistic environments and effects (i.e. "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" and "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas"). The water in "Brother Bear," in its early stages, looks nearly as bad as that in "The Jungle Book 2." It's flat, with a bit of shine, unlike the fast-flowing, moving torrents of other films. It just looks lame. Don't get me wrong, this is a minor mishap. The Cg layout looks fantastic.
Phil Collins did the score for this! What a surprise! NOT! The soundtrack for "Tarzan" was inspirational: the soundtrack for "Brother Bear" is varying and lackluster. The opening Tina Turner number is decent at best. Collins' songs, which form the bulk of the music in the film, have stupid lyrics, although his great voice saves it from being totally painful. The best song by far was sung by a Bolivian women's chorus, written by Colins. The lyrics for this song were better than the other songs', not bothering to include idiotic rhymes since the English words are never heard. The words were translated into Inuit. When at last the grand performance is over, you whisper: "Wow."
The characters are funny and not at all one-dimensional. Of the brotherhood, Sitka, who plays such a pivotal role, is the weakest. His character is no deeper than enough to make it clear he is brave, wise and self-sacrificing. Everyone's dream big brother to beat up the bad guys. Denahi and Kenai are have much more to them. They, of course, are the typical siblings that incessantly antagonize each other, their battles being a good source of comic relief. "Brother Bear" may have fallen flat on its face without the two distinctly Canadian moose brothers (notice the number of brothers in the film) that are by far the funniest of Disney's recent creations. They get cramps from eating grass and need to do yoga before starting, and spar to practice for the rutting season. Kenai reluctantly allows a young bear cub separated from his mother. This cub is Koda. Correction: The moose are the funniest SIDEKICKS from Disney in recent times. Koda is a lead player. He's funny, exceedingly better equipped to survive than his older chum, and most importantly: extremely cute.
So, does "Brother Bear" live up to the classics of old? Honestly, no, it doesn't. On the other hand, it doesn't exactly make it impossible for them to show their faces in public again. All in all, Disney hasn't ended a creative vacuum. But if you think about it, would Walt have approved? No. He wouldn't have. But what matters isn't how "Brother Bear" compares to other Disney films, but how much you enjoy it in a single viewing. Admittedly, it's funnier than any of than many older films. "Brother Bear" rating: 8/10
It seems Crichton book-to-screen adaptations have gone downhill since "Sphere," and although "Timeline" continues the trend, it remains a highly watchable story about time travel and fourteenth century Europe. Unlike the usual "time machine" of most other films, "Timeline"'s contraption is instead a fax machine that destroys objects and reunites them at a different point. This contraption reminiscent of a 50s Duck Dodgers cartoon, messes up big time and opens a "wormhole" to 1357 Castlegard, France. An archeologist who studies Castlegard goes back in time and is lost. A group of his students and son time travel to 1357 to recover him.
One major flaw in the screenplay is the doing away with of the parallel universes idea that Crichton exploited. The theory goes that the past, present and future are all occurring at the same time, each infitesimal span of time is its own little universe, except universes can't contact each other. Other times are floating all around us. This has been revealed through molecular studies. With a quantum computer of impossible size, you fax objects and people to other times. This is exactly what Robert Doniger and ITC have accomplished. This complex theory has been entirely done away with, leaving only the insignificant wormhole to fourteenth century France.
Even such heinous distortion of source material isn't enough to kill the film. One of its strengths is the manner in which events from the book are brought to screen: the gore level is upped, the precision of a beheading maximized, the death of a character made all the more cool and fun to watch. Yes. That's one of the better things about the picture. Morbidity. Back to story. There is an undue amount of distortion of the story for no apparent reason whatsoever. Why do you have to make Chris the professor's son? Worse, why keep mentioning their kinship AGAIN and AGAIN. We KNOW Chris is the professor's son! You said it ten times before!
"Timeline" is the kind of film that doesn't stumble in altogether too many places to kill it, yet it never manages to fly instead of a steady walk. "Jurassic Park" may have had as many flaws as "Timeline," but when "Jurassic Park" doesn't stumble, it soars. "Timeline" rating: 7/10
One major flaw in the screenplay is the doing away with of the parallel universes idea that Crichton exploited. The theory goes that the past, present and future are all occurring at the same time, each infitesimal span of time is its own little universe, except universes can't contact each other. Other times are floating all around us. This has been revealed through molecular studies. With a quantum computer of impossible size, you fax objects and people to other times. This is exactly what Robert Doniger and ITC have accomplished. This complex theory has been entirely done away with, leaving only the insignificant wormhole to fourteenth century France.
Even such heinous distortion of source material isn't enough to kill the film. One of its strengths is the manner in which events from the book are brought to screen: the gore level is upped, the precision of a beheading maximized, the death of a character made all the more cool and fun to watch. Yes. That's one of the better things about the picture. Morbidity. Back to story. There is an undue amount of distortion of the story for no apparent reason whatsoever. Why do you have to make Chris the professor's son? Worse, why keep mentioning their kinship AGAIN and AGAIN. We KNOW Chris is the professor's son! You said it ten times before!
"Timeline" is the kind of film that doesn't stumble in altogether too many places to kill it, yet it never manages to fly instead of a steady walk. "Jurassic Park" may have had as many flaws as "Timeline," but when "Jurassic Park" doesn't stumble, it soars. "Timeline" rating: 7/10