Warge

While most of the elements of the book are there, this remake is an affront to the classic litterature, the original movie and even the TV movie - it doesn't cover the training which was a big part of the book, but it does take up a lot of time regarding the peace negotiation, something that was totally absent, and I think that is the worst part: this movie tries to be something it shouldn't be, namely a story about the soldiers on the ground. It does it's best to add to the mud and the blood, and from that point of view it succeeds, but all of that should be of secondary importance to how the soldiers felt about the war and how their fates were.

I would like to go so far as to say this movie is more "loosely inspired" by the book than showing it, and with just a few tweaks to the script it could have been a separate story, wll worth being told, but now it's neither here nor there.

Pompeii is probably the one city of the ancient Roman era we know the most about thanks to the fact that the eruption froze the city in time - we know what people talked about, what they worked with, what their concerns were.

And yet, the one movie about the destruction of Pompeii unfortunately focuses more on a gladiator than any one else in the city. And that is so unfortunate, since with Spartacus, Gladiator and a few other features, it seems Hollywood has locked itself up with a gladiator that refuses to let them out. So instead of a movie about the actual retired Syrian marine (for example) who worked as a bronze maker and his day to day, we get another hack n' slash. it's lazy, but even worse it's plain cowardice, that Hollywood couldn't make this movie more about the actual people of Pompeii.

So it was a disappointment from a script perspective, but the historical accuracy also left a lot to be desired, and the CGI was... abysmal. I'm not one who really notices matte paintings that much in movies, but here it was painfully obvious, and all the damn time.

So all in all, what I thought would be a disaster movie set in history, just turned out to be something that should not have been made.

Watch Gladiator, Rome or Spartacus instead. It's not about an exploding mountain, but their production values are way higher.

First of all, one big minus was a release glitch that made the episode both impossible to download install and play, and a lot of people had their saves ruined. It took quite some time before Telltale Games got their act together and fixed this, and overall, this soiled an otherwise spotless reputation, and an in other regards excellent game.

The episode is in itself a good and entertaining piece, but so far actually the weakest. The surprises are there as they should, and it is another emotional investment, but - in this episode, the game becomes a little more action oriented than previous episodes.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but shooting zombies by the dozen is nothing new - frankly, I would have preferred to keep the zombies as scares instead of enemies to kill.

Characters come and go, and more so in this episode, and I think that's another low-point - TTG seems to not take care of characters properly in this episode, and that is a crying shame, especially since the characters we meet always has a personality that makes one care about them one way or another.

It is however a little unfair perhaps to judge the entire franchise after four episodes - instead, it would be better to look at all the episodes together, and look at the game how it is when all the pieces are there.