Birdemic: Shock and Terror

Here's a little movie review just to add to the site's repertoire. The movie's two years old already but I feel like it had to be looked at. Widely regarded as one of the worst films ever created, 'Birdemic' is labeled as a romantic horror film that was supposedly based off British writer Daphne du Maurier's novelette 'The Birds', more famously portrayed in Alfred Hitchcock's film of the same name.

In the interest of remembering every little detail of the film I've decided to comment on it while watching, so this review will be written in 'legs'. It's an experiment I have little faith in, but let's just see what happens..

Leg 1 

Not 10 minutes in and I'm already in stitches. The production quality resembles that of a home video, although to be fair the budget for this movie was almost non-existent. Still, what stands out the most in my mind is the obvious sound editing. Whenever a character speaks you get that pleasant fuzz of background noise that stops every time they shut up. The cinematography is piss poor, often the cameraman seemed to find the background set more appealing than the actual plot so he would point the camera at it for up to a minute at a time, allowing us the joy of looking at a car park or a painting in a restaurant for lengthy periods of time. Thank you, sir. 

Let's not forget our hero of the hour though, Mr. Whateverhisfaceis. Honestly, you know how I said I was writing as I watch to help me remember everything? Well, despite that I've already forgotten this dude's name. I care that little. Anyway, we're looking at the main event for this shitfest, this guy is truly appalling in his 'acting', I am utterly unconvinced by everything he does, especially the moment where he somehow makes a 1 million dollar sale and thrusts his arms pathetically in front of him in celebration. Anyway, I'll try not to say too much just yet, we've only just started.

Leg 2

Huzzah, the first sighting of birds in this film about birds. It only took 20 minutes but we got there eventually and boy, it doesn't disappoint. The computer effects are just stunning, it almost feels as if they're looking at real birds. Totally immersive. 

I'm kidding, it's fucking awful. Oh joy, another awful transition to another scenery montage accompanied by jazzy music. To be honest the music is probably the best part of this thing so far.

Leg 3

We meet the chick's mother, the most convincing character yet, she almost puts the bored dude to shame. I've noticed that occasionally the actors freeze in place at the end of a scene, obviously waiting for the director to call cut, but due to the phenomenal editing we're left with this woman sticking her thumb up and grinning for 3 solid seconds.

Leg 4

Rod! That's his name, thank God for that.

Leg 5

Jesus Christ, the company Rod works for just earned a billion dollars. Seems legit. As expected the employees are clearly very excited about this, and I guess we're supposed to be excited too. So excited in fact that it seemed necessary to drag the employees' applause on for as long as possible. The best part is that the same scene is simply looped over and over, just in the perspective of each and every person in the room. Which means we get to hear the half-arsed 'woop' of a certain employee several times over!

Leg 6

This is beginning to look suspiciously like a PSA for saving the environment, as if it couldn't get any better. I'm going to start calling Rod 'Captain Plankface'.

Leg 7

The moment I was anticipating, Captain Plankface meets his girlfriend's equally enthralling mother. Yes.

Leg 8

Our dynamic duo visit the quietest bar in the country. Literally, there is absolutely zero sound as they approach it, must have been forgotten for this scene.

So the bar guy asks the romantic couple if he can get them anything. When Natalie says they're still looking at the menu he says 'hope you enjoy it'. Hope you enjoy the menu? That's another thing to add to the stupendous mix, glorious script-writing. Although I wouldn't be surprised if most of this was improvised.

Great, just to top it off we get to watch them dance awkwardly by themselves to some lip-syncing dude. And when I say awkward, you bloody well better believe it.

Leg 9

Ah, another pleasant montage of scenery shots. But wait! Suddenly and loudly the town is being bombarded by kamikaze CG birds. So at last they show up, only 45 minutes into the movie. That's literally half way through. These birds are a whole new level of poorly made. "What in the world" indeed, Captain Plankface.

Leg 10

Greatest part so far. Our heroic couple stumbled upon 2 other random people and become instant best friends. Next thing you know, they're fighting off completely harmless CG eagles with coat hangers. I mean, they're not really fighting them off. In reality they're swatting at the air. I would say 'Imagine how dumb they'd look without those birds', but to be honest they look stupid anyway. I just realised these 'eagles' are making seagull noises. Holy shit, all of a sudden these people are armed to the teeth with military grade weaponry.

Leg 11

Funny how nobody else on the roads seem to give a shit about all this. I even spotted a cyclist going along his merry way. In fact, come to think of it, the birds pose very little threat most of the time. What happened to the burning buildings and the suicide bombers?

Leg 12

Oh, suddenly it's safe to go for a picnic? Are you serious? 

Leg 13

Yep, definitely a PSA for global warming. Did you know that global warming causes viral diseases? No? Now you do, thanks to the friendly doctor who was standing on a bridge shouting at dead birds. He is literally spouting facts about the effects of burning fossil fuels. "It's the humans who are dangerous monsters, not the birds". Oh shut the fuck up.

Leg 14

Just so happens this disposable character was killed by the only bird for miles. That's not a spoiler by the way, emphasis on the 'disposable'. I don't even remember their name or what their purpose was.

Leg 15

The birds have developed the ability to piss acid at people, causing them to become terrible at acting. Hah, I'm kidding, they were already awful.

Leg 16

Wuh oh, in just a few minutes we've seen 2 new contenders for least animated character. Watch out Captain Plankface, the gas station guy who can't speak English properly and the monotone cowboy are even more hopeless than you!

Leg 17

A stealthy eagle saves the day. Like most people who have just had their throat sliced, monotone cowboy stumbles over to the nearest grassy slope to save him from having to fall onto the dirty, hard ground. Despite having paid $100 for gas our couple were quick to leave it behind after winning it back from Cowboy Boring.

Leg 18

Appropriate to the theme, we are met with a hippy who lives in a CG treehouse. He's here to give us another lesson on "damn global warming", but alas, a mountain lion brings our adventure with him to an abrupt end. But mountain lion sound effects and animated killer birds are the least of the party's worries, suddenly CG fire erupts around them, causing them to pretend there is a thick smoke choking their lungs.

Leg 19

Reminiscent of the fantastic 'Cannibal Holocaust' film, happy music is played as the party comes across the mutilated bodies of their friends. Thus confirming that, despite them being featured prominently in the first half of the movie, they were in fact destined to be minor, disposable characters.

Leg 20

Captain Plankface finds a fishing rod and stove conveniently lying in the back of his dead comrade's van. Things are starting to look up, especially with the apparent lack of deadly CG eagles. Oh no! What's that in the background? Not to worry, it's just a real bird and probably should have been edited out. 

These people look WAY too happy for a group that has recently suffered immeasurable losses. Phew, here come the eagles to cock everything up again. Fortunately they seem to have lost the ability to explode upon impact.

Leg 21

And without any explanation whatsoever, the birds piss off just as quickly as they showed up. Did I say quickly? I was referring to the decision to leave, which was abrupt. The actual process of them flying into the distance took a fucking lifetime. In fact, it was long enough to allow for the stock background music to loop several times and for the entire credits sequence to roll.

Ugh, so many plot holes. Not that they were holes worth filling. I mean, what became of Captain Plankface's solar power company endeavor? Why did Natalie completely forget about her fat, boring, retired mother? Who the fuck was that kid in the car trunk? Where was the military or any form of defense for this entire ordeal? Why am I even asking these questions??? Sneaky film, actually getting me to care.

This movie was on par with The Room, and as such was one of those 'so bad, it's good' kinda things. Having said that, I don't think I could ever watch it again. I'm not sure what else to say, you simply have to see it to believe it. Oh, and Mr Nguyen? Next time you want to raise awareness about global warming, make a 5 minute short. Before I forget, it turns out a sequel has been made, believe it or not. Thankfully it stars the same characters (those left alive anyway) so expect a masterpiece.

Speaking of expecting, I'm not sure where this site is heading at the moment, but if nothing really happens any time soon I'll just keep posting random stuff from time to time. Freegal is pretty busy at the moment, as I should be too, hoho. But in the future I hope that we can post reviews that we work on as a team, because I expect the quality would be far superior to that of what I've been doing recently. Anyway, toodles.

-Jimmy

Just Cause 2

Okay, clearly this page needs an opinion; there's nothing more sad than an opinion page that has nothing but introduction posts on it and no actual opinions. So, despite my ridiculously busy schedule I'm going to take the honours of christening this little site with a game review. Enjoy!

I should start by saying that, because this is entirely an opinion, I have done little to no research prior to writing and base everything I write on my own gameplay experience. 

Just Cause 2 is a fairly massive third-person sandbox action-adventure sequel to Just Cause released in 2010. Once again it follows Rico Rodriguez, a mercenary hailing from some part of Central America, although given his apparent love for the USA I get the impression he's either Puerto Rican or was adopted. Anyway, this time the agency he works for (cleverly titled 'The Agency'), which may or may not be referring to the CIA, has sent him to Panau, a fictional series of islands in South-East Asia which is referred to in the game as a city and at other times a country, so I really have no idea what it is. It seems as though Panau is a weird hybrid of all the cultures in South-East Asia; the place names, majority of the characters, and some of the language is clearly Malay, however (and excuse my lack of linguistic knowledge) the text on the signs appears to be Thai, or at least something that resembles it. I also noticed characters speaking in Tagalog, so there you go.

The first thing that comes into my mind when thinking about Just Cause 2 is the sheer size of the game, and I'm not just talking about the game world. At time of writing I am less than 50% of the way through the game, despite having finished the story and all the missions you do for the 3 gangs that reside in Panau. This is because other than the main story line you can collect materials to use in upgrades, destroy various government properties, collect stuff that the gangs want for no particular reason, and partake in time trials scattered all over the map. To progress with the story you must create chaos throughout Panau, you do this by, surprise surprise, destroying things. As someone who enjoys exploring sandbox worlds, I quickly found myself causing chaos wherever I went and soon discovered that before I had even started the third mission in the story I had created enough chaos to unlock every mission up until the end, so whenever I finished a story mission my ally would congratulate me on the success of the mission, tell me to go and create chaos to trigger the next mission, and then immediately tell me to haul ass to the next location. Fortunately the bad guys are in no hurry whatsoever and you can take all the time you want to start the next mission in the story.

The second thing is the characters. Each one is ridiculously stereotypical. You've got the American ally who makes it his mission to constantly remind us that he's a full-blooded 'Murican who despises commies and loves barbecuing full pigs. Then you've got the Indian-Malay who uses Malaysian slang whenever he can, especially when it doesn't belong. You come across a Russian who refers to his 'Mother Russia' incessantly and happens to be able to summon tanks at his will. And let's not forget the NPCs that populate the world, all speaking in incredibly exaggerated accents, shouting 'cibai' as you knock them down in your car. All that was missing was the triskaidekaphobia.  A lot of games have the problem where the player character is a bland, emotionless piece of concrete who is made to look even more boring by the range of other characters. Fortunately Just Cause 2 doesn't make this mistake. Rico is just interesting enough to keep you from falling asleep and even manages to spout a couple of one liners that are genuinely funny, usually in the 'so bad it's good' way.

Going back to the setting, a problem I've had with other large game worlds is the repetitiveness of the scenery. For instance, Far Cry 2 was a game set in Africa that essentially had three environments: desert, jungle and water (and calling water an environment is a push), this got monotonous rather quickly and free roaming was never particularly enjoyable, helped by the fact that every human character in the country was out to kill you. There were times during Just Cause 2 where I would be swinging across the land and would find myself thinking about things that were going on in my life like work, relationships, my future.. Things that even made me question why I was wasting my time on a game. Having said that, some of the environments are very pleasant to look at, and there are various interesting things to discover as you explore. 

So what about the most important element of a game. The gameplay. Well, it's good. That's the short answer. Why is it good? Because it's original. The grappling hook plays a central role in the gameplay. Just Cause is by no means the only game series that uses grappling hooks, but this one does it better than those silly games. Most prominently it is used to get you around, it can be used to scale structures, get you to a piece of ground faster than walking and, in conjunction with the parachute, offers a method of transport faster than most of the vehicles in Panau. Other than movement, it is used as a weapon: you can use it to pull enemies towards you, pull them off structures to their doom, attach them to vehicles so you can drag them along behind you, hang them from things leaving them helpless, or simply pummel them to death with. The game makes it obvious that it wants you to use the grappling hook often, but there are also various firearms available to you. You can carry three weapons at a time, two secondaries and a primary. The secondaries can be duel wielded if you feel the need to be a badass.

Gameplay consists of shooting things, blowing things up, collecting things, escorting or protecting people, hacking or disarming things, driving or piloting things and discovering new locations, of which there are very, very many. Each location can be 'completed' by destroying all government objects which vary from propaganda trailers, water towers, statues of the dictator, radio towers, cranes etc. as well as collecting all the items in the vicinity. The items you collect include weapon parts, vehicle parts, armor and money. The parts, in case you hadn't guessed, are used to upgrade weapons and vehicles that The Agency can provide you with for a fee, which is what you use the money for. The armor provides upgrades to your health. There are absolutely loads of these items scattered around the world, too many to find all of given the size of Panau, but that doesn't matter, at least it didn't for me playing on 'normal' difficulty, because I realised the only weapon I really needed was the ultra-powerful machine gun with incredible range and firepower. Fully upgrading this with weapon parts and collecting enough armor to boost my health ridiculously, I became an indestructible force that no longer cared for the petty enemies that stood in my way. Earlier on in the game the enemies provided me with sufficient challenge that occasionally had me needing to escape quickly by means of grapple hook and parachute, however after I defeated the 'final boss' with my insane weaponry the game quickly took a turn for the easy..

Throughout the game you are expected to assault some of the many military bases in Panau. I found the most effective way of doing this was to sneak in, disable any anti-air weaponry with explosives, then run away - only to return with a helicopter to mow down structures and enemies. This could also be applied with tanks. So in the end, I used all of my collected vehicle parts to upgrade the chopper and the tank because they were all I really needed to get around quickly and destroy things with. I was barely into the game when I realised you get money from just about anything and quickly became the richest mercenary in history, with enough to buy helicopters to spare. I found myself buying expensive, military grade vehicles just to fly them short distances and smash them into things. Despite this, by the time I had finished the main missions I was so powerful I no longer had any need for simple machines, for I could quite easily walk into any situation with a machine gun in hand (no kidding, Rico can literally hold the machine gun with one hand) and blast away anything in my path. There was one point when I was walking around a base searching for crates to collect and suddenly two helicopters and several boats showed up. Normally this would have terrified me and I would have grapple hooked my way out of there without a second thought, but at this point they posed no threat. It was a hilarious scene to see Rico jogging calmly around as machine guns and rockets sprayed the ground around him. After collecting all the items I simply pulled out my over-powered world destroyer and made short work of all the vehicles and enemies in the camp, followed by Rico cheerfully announcing "that was fun!". I almost felt sorry for all the poor bastards, they were fighting a war that was already over. It was very reminiscent of a certain mission where you had to fight your way through 100 year old Japanese men who thought they were still part of World War 2.

All in all, I enjoyed the game. The story was very short, but there are enough side missions to keep the game going. Getting 100% seems like it could get very dull very quickly, but you're not forced to do it so it's not fair to complain. Characters were a bit annoying at times but, along with the setting, being based on South-East Asian culture, it was very refreshing considering the settings for most mainstream games. The one thing that wasn't refreshing was the plot - people fighting over oil again, woop-de-doo. Now, if I ever reach 100% will I play it again? No. Never. That's not to say it isn't fun, it's just not the kind of game that any normal human being could get around to going through a second time, not even on a higher difficulty, and that's coming from someone who craves achievements. 

Sorry for the rushed opinion, I probably missed a few things and the structure isn't great, but we needed to start somewhere, expect better in the future!

- Jimmy