sci-fi
Adam Sweeting
If JJ Abrams's first shot at reinventing the Star Trek franchise in 2009 was a memorable coup de cinéma, blending a plausible back story with a fresh cast imbued with the spirit of the TV originals, this follow-up is more about consolidation. There's bags of vertiginous interstellar action, retina-scorching 3D effects and earth-in-peril terror, though by the time you totter from the multiplex 130 minutes older, you may be asking yourself where the big payoff went.Still, to Abrams's credit, his cast is terrific and he wrings more genuine actorly mileage out of them than you might reasonably Read more ...
Simon Munk
An invincible army of cybercommandos, neon-pink pulsing colour schemes and the throbbing sounds of a Morodor-style baseline – Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is every bit the dumb Eighties action game on the surface, but underneath it might actually be one of the most interesting approaches to mainstream gaming in a while.Blood Dragon is "downloadable content" – an extra expansion pack served up after the main event (the game of the year, Far Cry 3). The phrase is normally a dire enough idea it should send gamers scurrying in the opposite direction.Most downloadable content packs are hastily- Read more ...
Simon Munk
It has to have been the trailer, there's really no other explanation. Before the original Dead Island came out, there was a trailer. And not just a trailer, but the trailer – probably the most finely-crafted, greatest piece of teaser content ever created for film, TV or games. It's the only possible reason why Dead Island sold as well as it did... and unfortunately, there isn't a similarly brilliant trailer for its sequel, Riptide.The original trailer (see it here) used some beautifully heart-tugging music and a time-running-backwards schtick to pick apart a holidaying family's descent into Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Director Joseph Kosinski's second film feels dispiritingly like his first, the bastion of excitement and originality that is TRON: Legacy. That film was an empty shell which at least managed not to be catastrophically irritating. Oblivion stars Tom Cruise, proving yet again that his ego is in inverse proportion to his physical stature. He plays "one of our best" in a soulless film which has the gall to place tangible cultural pursuits on a pedestal whilst clonking you round the head with sterile CGI.The year is 2077 and, yes, Tom Cruise is still an action-man. His Jack Harper bounds about Read more ...
Simon Munk
The bassline starts, "1979" flashes up on screen and, over a scratchy recording, the voice intones "Walking down the street, I get punched; you're walking down the street, you get punched".PunksNotDead's not going to hold your attention for more than a few minutes, but in those few minutes, this hyperkinetic, luridly day-glo explosion of punk attitude and violence encapsulates everything that's great about the indie games scene – it's the ideas, stupid (and they're free).PunksNotDead sees your stickman ambling along a street filled with fluoro-pink people, cars and lampposts, except some of Read more ...
Simon Munk
We're at a moment of change in games – new consoles, new ideas, new ways of playing. And what better game to usher out one era and in a new one than BioShock Infinite?This first-person shooter is still wedded to the core mechanics of traditional big-budget console gaming, but layered on top of a core of classic run-and-gun is a series of innovations in terms of character, script, gameplay and scope of theme that point to exciting potential future directions for the next generation of games.The result is both hugely satisfying to play from a hind-brain, hand-eye coordination point-of-view, but Read more ...
Simon Munk
Crysis 3 arrives as the current generation of console hardware is being shuffled over to make way for the next – normally a very fertile time for games. Usually, the best games come out late in a home console's lifespan – when developers have learnt how to make the most of the hardware and tools they have, when creators can concentrate on just making good games and good art.Apparently not this time. This year will see the launch of the next wave of home consoles, but the current PS3 and Xbox 360 generation seem content to go out with a whimper rather than a bang. Independently-developed Read more ...
Helen K Parker
There has been some serious philosophising going on in the Konami offices, about whether it is morally acceptable to graphically slice up human beings into bite-sized chunks with katana swords in slow motion. Their answer to this question was impressive: you can if you turn them all into half-human cyborgs. Blood, guts and electrical wiring makes all the difference. It’s a pity then that they didn’t spend a bit more time putting some meat on this new addition to the Metal Gear canon’s bones.Without going too much into the plot (incidentally neither does the game), this story is all about Read more ...
Simon Munk
The gnashing teeth emerging from a slathering black mouth ‑ HR Giger and Ridley Scott's Alien design remains one of the most horrific creations of cinema: an iconic image of vagina dentata body horror and a genetically modified unstoppable bogeyman for a modern age. The film was no one-off, however.James Cameron's Aliens sequel successfully replaced the horror tropes with incredibly tense and visceral action, while more recently Prometheus added epic scale. Even in games, Aliens Vs. Predator (in 2000) delivered a brilliant sense of enclosed fear. Given the series' heritage and mixture of Read more ...
Helen K Parker
Poor, poor Isaac Clarke. Life has been tough for the unluckiest space engineer in the history of space engineering; not only has his girlfriend dumped him and got herself lost trying to track down the origin of the markers, but the insane cult of Unitology is attempting to blow him to smithereens. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the last of the Earthgov forces has dragged him at gunpoint to follow in his ex’s footsteps to a mysterious snowball planet called Tau Voltanis.It’s just another day at the office for our greying protagonist in this brilliant, but nevertheless flawed third instalment of Read more ...
emma.simmonds
“It’s always the quiet places where the mad shit happens,” observes Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) in Northern Irish director Jon Wright’s creature feature. And, credit where it’s due, the mirthfully monikered Grabbers presents us with some classically mad shit. Set on the fictional Erin Island - a fishing village off the coast of Ireland - Grabbers is Wright’s second feature after 2009’s Tormented.After a prologue involving the fatal molestation of fisherman by an unseen sea monster, we’re introduced to Garda Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle). He’s rebounding off rock bottom, drunk and Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
If 2012 is to have a cinematic legacy, it may just be remembered as the year big-screen time travel came of age. While Rian Johnson’s pulpy noir Looper explored the moral and spiritual implications of a world in which decade-hopping has become the norm, first-time director Colin Trevorrow hones in on the concept’s core emotion. Our universal longing to go back, to recover, to alter the past, is both what makes time travel such an enduringly popular trope, and what sustains Trevorrow’s particular offbeat, quietly joyous take.Darius (Aubrey Plaza) is a disillusioned college grad living out much Read more ...