Battleship

When this movie first came out, I skipped it, and as it turns out, I was right to do so. Last night, I found it on demand and watched it just in case it turned out to be good. No such luck. It had way too much background for the main character, and not one character in it was more than a simple, overused stock character. For example, there was the respected military guy who gets killed, his loser brother who became a man by joining the military, his girlfriend who was also the daughter of a strict military officer, etc. There was a lot of useless filler before the aliens came (A LOT), and there was also some after. The aliens themselves had some kind of cool stuff, like armor that reminded me of UNSC Spartans with transforming hand gadgets. Oh and that's the other thing. This was by far the worst Hasbro movie I've ever seen. Some people don't approve of movies based on cartoons, the earliest of which was based on a series of action figures, but I actually like the Bay Transformers trilogy. At least Transformers has an actual plot and a fairly complex story. Battleship is a board game where two groups of ships are inexplicably fighting, and the players have no background information on who's ships they are, why they're battling, what happened before this, what will happen after, why don't they have any way of aiming their guns besides random guessing, and various other conundrums. Maybe the fact that the game has no plot line is why the movie overcompensated with way too much background on the characters. Way more than anyone would ever want. There were some cool action scenes, but many of them were ruined by predictable and stale dialogue or obvious flaws in the writing. There were some references to the original game, like the aliens' bombs looking like the little plastic pegs, or the fact that the crew of the ship basically plays the game in real life. Most of the cast of this movie were pretty bad, including Rhianna. I'm not a fan of her to begin with, and I think she has no place in movies considering the aparent extent of her acting abilities. The only good actor was Liam Neeson, who has no place in movies like this. He belongs in good movies. I think it would've been cool if they cut out most of the filler at the beginning, brought the aliens in way sooner, then most of the way through the battle, Liam Neeson's daughter is Taken from him, then he grows awesome facial hair and fights aliens using martial arts, aided by the League of Shadows. That would be a cool movie. Especially if Bane befriends his daughter like in Dark Knight Rises, but becomes an ally of the League. I actually would love to see that made. And the daughter could turn out to be Talia. So it would be Ras al Ghul, Talia al Ghul, Bane, and the League of Shadows all fighting aliens. The characters that were actually in the movie can go die for all I care. Final Verdict: This movie gets 1 plastic peg!

I Can't Believe it's Not Bungie! (Halo 4)

This game is awesome! When I first heard that the series would be continued by a different studio, I was worried they would ruin it. As I heard more about it and saw more trailers for it, that fear gradually subsided, and now it's completely gone. As you can probably guess from the title, Halo 4 feels just like previous Halo games. My only real complaints are that the mele button is the same as it was in Halo: Reach instead of the other games, and the fact that the plasma rifle has been replaced by a slightly less exciting version of itself called the storm rifle. But those are really small things. The game starts off with fighting just the Covenant, which is good, since if it started out with the Prometheans (the new enemy), it would just feel too different. Many of the weapons are still the same, like the assault rifle, the battle rifle, the plasma pistol, the fuel rod gun, etc. Some weapons have been removed, but now there's a third weapon set introduced when you start fighting the Prometheans, so that's fine. There's an actual sprint now that's not an armor ability, which reminds me that they've brought back armor abilities. So far, I've only seen active camo and I'm pretty sure a new one that lets you carry an energy shield wherever you go. The new enemies make the gameplay fresh, yet still very reminiscent of Bungie's games. The multiplayer is also pretty cool. Where maps are concerned, it's similar to past games, but instead of the standard zombie mode, it has Flood mode, which I think is pretty cool, since Flood creatures have never been playable before. I'm pretty sure the Flood won't return in the campaign though, but I won't really miss them that much since they're in the multiplayer. I mostly play team slayer though, and now it has some awesome new vehicles like Mantises, which are like AT-STs, plus some cool new guns. One thing I don't think I've emphasized enough yet is how awesome the campaign is. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a new and interesting story, of which Cortana is a big part. If you like Halo, buy this game ASAP! And if they keep making them like this, 343 can make as many Halo games as they want. Final Verdict: This game gets 4.5 Spartan helmets!