Cyberpunk 2077 Review

For the last week I've been deep in the gritty streets and neon sidewalks of a city. 

It's almost my own city, but not quite. Occasionally I'll recognize a monument or a panorama that is straight out of the view outside my window, right here. For the rest of the time, the glowing streets of Night City are a world only a few brief steps removed from the horrors of the real. 

In Cyberpunk 2077, we step into the shoes of the futuristic everyhero, V. Delving into the machinations of skyline dominating megacorporations and the brutal life of street level crime, all the while listening to the backseat driving of a time displaced rocker-turned-terrorist. It's time to burn Night City to the ground. 

V is what you choose to make of them. The character customization of Cyberpunk 2077 is both impressively trailblazing and strangely crippled at the same time. How we design our version of protagonist V allows an assortment of choices and options that would be fantastic for a standard GTA style game, but beyond allowing some sci-fi options to eyes and metallic teeth, there's little here that actually takes advantage of the Cyberpunk genre. 

Being able to alter V's genitals separate of their body type allows for the illusion of gender subversion, but then having to choose your V's voice to officially designate them as 'male or female' in the eyes of all in-game characters immediately circumvents it and returns it to basically picking your male or female Shepard.

While it absolutely can't be understated that it is insane for an AAA title released in the west to let you create a slender femininely bodied V with a huge cock, it then feels like any further effort was diverted from sticking the landing in character customization, and I can't help but feel this is one of the areas the game may have been handicapped by the famously rushed final days well documented elsewhere.

After an opening introduction unique to your chosen character origin, you're let loose in the dark streets of Night City, and the hand holding is blissfully light. An issue often found in the genre is a habit of slowly introducing game mechanics mission by mission, piling them upon one another until ten missions later nothing has really passed but a series of game mechanics you'll never use again. Cyberpunk throws you into the deep end pretty much from the get go, with access to almost everything you can do in the game from the start. Something wonderful carried over from The Witcher 3 is the fact that almost any character build is effective and a legitimate direction to take your V. 

The guns blazing approach is fast and accurate, with the game definitely being optimized for the first person shooter design. Guns are wildly varied, from the usual pistols, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles and all manner of machine guns, but then added to this is the tech side of guns, allowing you to interface with certain weapons to take more effective control, sending bullets automatically seeking for heads in your enemies. 

A bit more unusual in a first person game is the ability to run a robust melee combat build, which is also extremely fun. Far more quick and accurate than trying to use close range weapons in something like The Elder Scolls, using fists here is fast and carries a great sense of impact. The default boxing is fine, but soon you'll be able to augment your arms into Mantis blades to slice up enemies, or Gorilla fists to deliver huge blunt force blows. Your arms can even be altered into the whip-like Monowire, or fitted with a projectile launcher to change standard grenade tossing into direct RPG accuracy with your bare hand. 

Outside of weaponry, you can also take the far more Cyberpunk route of Quickhacking, a system of multiple different tweaks and abilities allowing you to take advantage during combat, quick as you'd use something like spells in a fantasy game, to do things like shutting down your opponents optical sensors or exploding the grenades in their pockets, right up to sending viral system failures into a group of enemies and watching it jump from one to another like a fatal meme. Other uses of the Quickhacking system allows for avoiding large amounts of combat situations entirely if you prefer. Using stealth tricks and turning the environment to your advantage to either circumvent enemies or destroy them without even being seen becomes a devious and playful alternative to using weaponry. While you'll occasionally encounter enemies who will Quickhack you in turn, I only ever encountered them using simple DOTs on me, and it would have been fun and more challenging to encounter enemies who use some more nefarious hacks.

All these character equipment options are supported by a complex advancement system, growing with your level, with a wide variety of buffs and boosts, making certain weapons stronger, allowing you to apply debuffs with fists or adding bleeding effects to blades, and making your Quickhacks faster or adding a multitude of effects to them. Building into these skill trees adds to your chosen abilities drastically, upgrading hacking into real battlefield controlling effects and turning melee combatants into regenerating juggernauts. 

Taking the V you have crafted, genitals and mantis blades and all, into the underbelly of Night City, the game flourishes most in the characters you meet. From your best friend Jackie, a hardened child of the street with a heart of gold, to aging rock musicians turned gangsters and taxi driving sentient AIs, Cyberpunk 2077 has a wealth of fun and unique personalities to indulge in interacting with. Some of the games best moments are hidden deep in a wealth of complex side missions, with one easily missable moment involving a convicted murderer-turned-Night city messiah sticking out to me in particular.

And then of course, we come to Johnny Silverhand. It's impossible to even really talk about Cyberpunk 2077 without talking about Johnny Silverhand.

Johnny Silverhand is a complete piece of shit. He's an egomaniacal, narcissistic rocker well past his day in the limelight who once detonated a nuke in a major metropolis just to prove a point about capitalism. Johnny is forever at your side, judging your shitty choices, talking down your self worth, and forever reminding you that in the grand scope of the Megacorporations who run Night City, you are absolutely nothing. Johnny is both angel and devil on your shoulder at the same time, dropping by to share a story of fucking groupies at some long forgotten show, or to let you know he thinks the guy you're talking to is a wannabe poser or a corporate stooge. Johnny's presence is a unique facet of Cyberpunk 2077, and one of its most enjoyable elements. It was no forced star-power misstep to cast Keanu Reeves as Silverhand, because it's clear he loves the role, and somehow through all the crude, antagonistic snark he throws at you as you journey together through Night City, Silverhand is still lovable as all hell.

Night City itself is a wonderful world to take your journey through. It's energetic and absolutely filled with stuff. The constant barrage of noise and advertisements and buildings and stores is delightfully varied, fun to observe, and interesting to explore. The street art is incredible and unique and feels real. Even late in the game I came across very distinct looking unimportant NPCs who were wearing something I hadn't yet seen in the game before. The incidental characters on the street or filling out one of the cities many nightclubs or bars always wear something wild and they do seem designed, not randomized.

Seeing everyone else wearing such fantastic clothes continually hammers home how little we can customize our own protagonist though. You'll casually run into characters wearing spiked cocktail dresses, huge fur coats, translucent plastic mini skirts and all manner of outrageous sci-fi styles, but we as V don't have access to any such garments. The clothing you can buy in stores is all a little samey, mainly consisting of street wear that wouldn't look particularly out of place in a GTA game, and doesn't jump out as wildly cyberpunk in most cases. Another oversight is the inability to really alter your character. We see people on the street who have chrome flesh from head to toe, cops with glowing cybernetic eye implants, and one of the gangs is based around heavy augmentation and routinely has entire facial organs replaced with all manner of glowing red orbs or mechanical jaws. Why on Earth can't we do this too! The lack of getting to have even something as simple as a robot arm in character creation seems to miss out on half the fun of living in a Cyberpunk world.  

Night City of course isn't complete with out its nightlife. The gangs of Night City, both the style and overall concept of each one, formed a large part of the games design push pre-release and are present in just about every bit of supplemental content about the game. The sexy all-female Moxes, the monstrous heavily augmented Maelstrom, Soviet Scavengers, Japanese Yakuza themed Tyger Claws, the dubiously voodoo themed... Voodoo Boys, all of them have a distinct stylistic flair, an atmosphere that colours the city as we interact with and combat each gang.

The thing is though, we really don't. The gangs are completely secondary to the main story, and really only form a small aspect of the city as a whole, which is a mystifying design choice. 

Even a quick glance at the in game map of Night City sees it separated by area, with the symbol of the gang that primarily operates there, but they never really come up as you navigate the area. Start a fight in any area of the game, it's the same police who come after you, when it would have been much more fun for it to have been that particular areas designated gang instead. Fighting a string of identical police robots is dull compared to, for example, facing a group of Tyger Claws with katanas riding up on motorbikes or the attack of a crew of barely-dressed Moxes wielding baseball bats.

While we have some minor interactions with Maelstrom and the Voodoo Boys in the main story, it's brief. Many of the gangs, especially fringe ones like the Scavengers and 6th Street, are completely ancillary to the game as a whole, and feel like they're barely fleshed out whatsoever. 

The presence of the gangs should be a major way to make coming to each of Night City's seven boroughs feel distinct, and their absence in the story and even just casual play of the game itself is a disappointment considering the atmosphere they could have helped add to the city. 

The only real interaction we have with each different borough is the presence of the 'fixers'. These characters communicate with V through text message and video calls and generally act as your quest givers for each hub, sending you details on things to steal, people to kill or cars to buy. Each is different and has their own personality, some more than others, but generally the fixers aren't as important in the grand scheme of things as it seems they should be. 

We don't really know why V is compelled to interact with most of these fixers at all. A couple are connected to us through the story, but some simply call us up out of the blue and expect us to dutifully run off to complete a side quest for them. 

In one extremely memorable sequence, V meets a local gang leader, and takes a walk with them through the slums of their city. We watch how they interact with locals, how they talk about their corner of Night City, and listen to how they expect V to help them with their own goals. This brilliant moment gave us everything we needed to know not just about this character and the part he plays in everything, but unveiled the uniqueness of that specific part of night city. It would have been great if every fixer got such a neat introduction to the narrative as well. 

The times in the game that we take a step away from Night City and journey into the nearby Badlands are surprisingly poignant. You'll find yourself driving through endless rolling dunes of trash, discarded electronics and kitchen appliances while the city sits, gigantic on the horizon, belching smog and advertisements into the skies. The roads of the old world are there, partially buried under dirt and burned out cars, but what's there looks uncomfortably like it does in reality today. You'll pass motels and bars, old truck stops and bus stops that are relics of times gone past, but something you'd see any time you were to head even a few miles outside of the real Los Angeles. 

You'll spend a fair amount of time speeding around Night City and the surrounding area, and of course you'll do it in one of the games many vehicles. While early on you're supplied with a starter vehicle fitting the starting concept you picked for your V, you'll soon find yourself without one and in need of wheels if you'd prefer to avoid hoofing it around Night City. While the fast travel system is helpful, by the end of the game you can zip immediately pretty much anywhere you need to go, it's a big place in the meantime. 

The variety of cars and bikes you can steal on the street GTA style is what you'd expect from the genre, and the rest you can purchase from your fixers or be rewarded with if you play your cards right in certain side missions or story chapters. Another example of the game choosing quality of life over realism, any vehicle you own disappears into a nebulous off-screen garage to be summoned to your location instantly at any time, and you can leave them wherever you like without worry that they will ever be damaged or lost. However by the time you're earning enough money and respect to purchase one of the many high end futuristic sports cars or anime style superbikes, you may find the convenience of the fast travel has replaced any need to actually use them. 

The more time I spent in Night City, the more I enjoyed myself. Cyberpunk 2077 started off a little quiet for me, and it took a moment for me to get the feel for it, but when the story decides suddenly to take the plunge and grip you, you best believe it fucking does. There's moments of cinematic tension that are immensely entertaining, and some quiet scenes of unexpected tenderness that stuck with me. Johnny Silverhand knows a little about losing yourself, feeling like you don't know who you are at times, feeling lost in the world. The story is, at it's heart, a personal one, and searching for a way just to continue to be yourself is a powerful drive beyond any villainous scheme or a typical saving the world yarn.

The way V's story can end is varied depending on your choices, from quietly satisfying to deeply sad, but all endings are a spectacle to be a part of and worth seeing.  

While it has been covered at great length elsewhere, it's impossible to fully look back at Cyberpunk 2077 as a whole without addressing the issue of bugs. As with bugs and glitches in all games, YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. I personally was very lucky, and in my 70+ hours exploring every inch of Night City on a PS4 Pro system, I encountered only a handful of minor bugs, all solved by a quick restart to a recent autosave, and a few instances of crashing. The game would sometimes take its time fully loading in a new area, with textures and character details popping in over a few seconds, and occasionally I'd run into strange graphical quirks like an individual clearly smoking their gun instead of a cigarette. Patches in the first week since release seem to have begun to iron out issues, and already the game does seem overall more stable. Nothing still found in game is truly game breaking, and if you don't mind a few odd or sometimes hilarious graphical quirks here and there, you'll likely find nothing that bad among the bugs to still be found in Cyberpunk 2077. 

I enjoyed my time in Night City. The story itself rounds out to a solid 25 hours, and the side missions and world around it flesh out another 30. I'd love to see the world grow and expand, and some of those missing aspects filled out in the future. I've got the feeling I've not quite burned enough of the city to the ground just yet. 

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I played Cyberpunk 2077 on a PS4 Pro. 

Review: The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

I have spent so much time so deep in a gritty fantasy world these last few weeks that I never knew if I’d find my way out again. The world of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is so huge, and so complex, that it’s almost daunting at first. There’s so much to explore and such a huge world to get lost in you don’t know where to start. You just have to ride off on your trusty horse, Roach, and immerse yourself.

I spent more time in this world than I have in a game for a long time, a truly scary amount of time in fact, but now that it’s over, and the Wild Hunt has been defeated, I find myself thinking I wish it hadn’t ended already.

The more you play The Wild Hunt, the more exciting it becomes. The story starts with our hero Geralt of Rivia tracking his lost love Yennefer of Vengerburg across a broken no man’s land between two clashing empires. You ride through green plains, chasing giant soaring Griffins and hunting down bandits, and get to know the plight of the common man on the street whose life is shattered by the war, in ways both simple and huge. From mothers weeping over sons lost in the endless battles just over the horizon, to merchants getting rich from selling the belongings of the dead, everyone has an agenda here. It’ll be hard to go back to playing other RPGs after this, when the simplest quest has so much thought behind it. A quick example from the games very start: a Dwarven blacksmith in a rural hamlet has been forced to make weapons for the enemy Nilfgaardian invaders camped nearby. He had no choice in the matter, but one of the local human population used it as an excuse to commit a race hate act against the Dwarf, and burn his smithy down for being a traitor to his country. You find the arsonist, he’s just a hateful drunk who lost his family in the war. Does he deserve to hang for the crime if you turn him in? Will he commit more acts of aggression against undeserving people if you let him go? Regardless, if the Dwarf is assisted by Nilfgaard in repairing the damage done, the locals will hate him anyway. 

The sort of depth found in this little side quest is all through the game, with complex stories and lives touched upon in every little facet. Those who’re familiar with the previous Witcher games know to expect to confront issues with your own choices, issues like war, politics, sex and racism alongside the expected quota of slavering monsters to dispatch with your swords.

This is the final story in the world of the Witcher, and it has a lot to live up to. Seven books and three award winning games worth of characters and storylines have come to a head here, with a lot to do, and no time is wasted. From adventuring among the hills of Kaer Morhen with Vesemir and the other Witchers of the School of the Wolf, political intrigue with old enemy Sigismund Dijkstra, and guerrilla warfare alongside Vernon Roche, you’ll meet almost every character you remember, or forgot entirely, from previous incarnations of the source material. This can, of course, be overwhelming for some gamers, with a bit of a cutthroat attitude to lore present, and not much explanation given to times when the audience, especially English speakers who still haven’t had three of the books in the series translated yet, may have no idea who some of these characters are. This is noticeably present with the game's dominant story thread, the pursuit of Geralt’s ward Ciri. The complex relationship between Geralt and Ciri, and indeed Ciri and the majority of characters in the game, can be difficult to follow for those no well versed in the source material.

Not that the story is difficult to enjoy without this knowledge, of course. When characters are greeted as old friends or hated enemies by Geralt, it’s easy to take in stride and go along with it, as the subtext of dialogue is sharp and well written, without the need for distracting exposition or details. Indeed, it’s probably a lot better to simply wonder what a characters past might be than have a novels worth of prior plot-line shoved at you in awkward expositional dialogue. 

All the favorite characters have returned, with Geralt himself remaining exactly as Dandelion continues to describe him: Gruff, violent, yet possessed of a heart and humor like none other. Favorites proudly return, like the king of take-no-shit Dwarven one liners, Zoltan Chivay, and the endlessly patriotic Vernon Roche. Another enjoyable facet is that even amongst all the returning characters we know and love, the minor new characters are standout too. Like the inexplicably likable Nilfgaardian General Morvran Voorhis who’s just friendly as hell in a story that seems to be going on without him.  

The character I felt that, regardless of prior knowledge, we all needed to know more about, and indeed, should have seen more of in the game, was the emperor of Nilfgaard himself. To give him his full title, Emhyr var Emreis, the White Flame Dancing on the Graves of His Enemies, is the enigmatic despot behind the events of the second game. Where the average fantasy story would cast Emhyr as the clear villain, Geralt’s complex history with Emhyr places him in a unique position within the grey area of morality.

Masterfully voiced by Charles Dance, Emhyr is a brilliant character, equally supremely confidant and tortured, demanding of subservience yet righteously just. Each time Geralt met with Emhyr at his grand palace (after being washed and shaven and taught to bow properly in His Eminence’s presence), I enjoyed the scene, and wanted to see more of him and Geralt’s interesting interactions.

The same attention to character really can’t be said for the stories main antagonists however. The titular Wild Hunt, a foreboding army of semi-mythical Elven warriors, aren’t present enough to really seem significant. A huge part of the games run time is lived in fear of them, either running from them, chasing them, or searching high and low for information about them, but when we actually get to meet them, they aren’t all that impressive. There are some moments, like seeing what a Wild Hunt General does when he has a lot of drinks and an entourage of eager Succubi, but the majority of the Hunt, indeed even the arch villain Eredin himself, are absent in screen time as well as real personality.

The standout villains of the piece are without a doubt the secondary ones, the trio of sisters known as the Ladies. Three brilliantly creepy figures straight out of an old European fairytail. Either stunning naked young women one moment, or shockingly disgusting malformed crones the next, these three are by far the game’s most striking and memorable antagonists. They are introduced in an incredibly eerie scene talking to Geralt through a sinister weaving depicting their playful fairer selves, and yet the voices do not match the lovely faces we’re seeing by any stretch of the imagination. Each one has such brilliant, grotesque personality, I would have been happy to see the crones as the dominant villains all their own. 

The more I played the Witcher 3, the more I wanted to. It gets bigger as you go, with the world expanding from one rural hamlet to moving freely between an open countryside, with villages, cities, and swamplands to explore on foot or horseback, to mountainous Nordic islands that you can transverse by sailboat. As you explore in your search for Ciri, you’ll find yourself picking up Witcher contracts along the way, hunting down monsters for pay. Be it following the steps that led to a gruesome murder of a young woman, and summoning her angry spirit to lay her to rest, or following the bloody remains of a ruined miners camp to a Troll’s cookpot, many of these contracts are wildly different in style and scope. Some have great red herring twists, and some can be solved by simple dialogue alone (or by careful application of a bit of coin here and there).

There’s a string of new mini games to test yourself at, like fist-fighting or horse-racing, and an extensive card game, along with a seriously infectious card collecting aspect to it that swiftly becomes a serious habit. I can’t tell you how many times I ran into a new character, be told they were a powerful druid or a storied warrior, and immediately asked myself ‘But will they play gwent with me?!’

The whole game style has evolved significantly on from the Witcher 2, to be a little more RPG than action, almost a blending of the styles of the first and second games. Character development is more in depth, with many paths to take along the way, and far too many to reach out into in a single run. By the time you reach the endgame, you’ll only have enough attribute points to explore one of the five possible branches, and probably only half of it at most, so your Geralt may be wildly different from your friends. Geralt’s signs have been retooled significantly, making each one of major use in their own way, and some so good that an entire character can be built around use of one sign and its various abilities. Each sign now has multiple uses and upgrades to branch into, leading for a bit more variety in your spell-casting than in previous games.

Combat itself is also a whole new beat from the last game, with AI being a bit sharper, and a lot less vulnerable to hacking and slashing like a madman. Enemies dodge and weave, and counterattack, and you’ve got to be quick on your feet to dodge swipes and claws from monsters, and similarly quick to block and parry melee attacks from human opponents. The game is merciless on the harder difficulty settings, and it’s good to see a lot of rewarding ways to explore approaching combat than just pounding ability points into sword mastery.

Throughout your journey to find Ciri, you also get the chance to live through fragments of her own adventure trough her eyes, letting you play as Ciri in these scenes. These are a fantastic change from the gameplay as Geralt, as each character plays quite differently. Geralt is strong, efficient and methodical, whereas Ciri is impulsive wild, and incredibly powerful, and the game-play works as such, with Ciri moving at great speeds, teleporting around the battlefield in flashes of green light. It takes a moment getting used to at first, but soon you’ll love the chances you get to play as Ciri. CDProjekt Red have promised a wide assortment of downloadable support to the Witcher, and any such content featuring more time to play as Ciri would be incredibly welcome.

Any game this huge is not without its flaws, and the Witchers are all fairly merciful in the long run. I’d have loved more interaction with Eredin. For the final villain of a story this huge, he just wasn’t complex, and curiously enough, in a series that prides itself so much on breaking fantasy clichés, Eredin was very much the stock ‘dark lord’ archetype and not much more. 
Some curious issues seem to pop up in what I can only assume comes from the censorship of the game for the North American market. It doesn’t change the game at all, but certainly impacts scenes in an awkward way. Don’t have a character be told to strip naked, comment on the act of stripping naked, and then act as if they’re naked in the scene, when they are actually wearing underwear through the whole scene. It’s just weird, and makes you feel as if you’re playing an edited version.  

Some graphical bugs seem present too, but these end up simply being hilarious more than anything else. Occasionally the AI will bug out during a cut scene, and a character or object will turn up where it clearly isn't supposed to. In one choice example I encountered, during a heartfelt exchange between Geralt and Ciri, Morvran Voorhis wandered into the background where he stood there photobombing the drama for a while, before wandering off again to god knows where. It was great, but nevertheless ruined the moment somewhat. 

Upon finishing the Witcher 3, I realized I'd spent a long time lost in that world. I'd hunted down dozens of monsters, helped Elves and Dwarves and Halflings and a man named Dudu, I'd foiled political plots and battled dimension traveling Elves on a frozen pirate ship, and slept with as many sorceresses as I could. I would have tried to sleep with Dandelion too if they'd let me. I've played all three games, two of them several times over, I have lovingly read Sapkowski's original novels, and I even met a very beloved friend on the Witcher forum years ago. After I'd done all that, I still want more, and that's the best thing I can say about the world of the Witcher. I just don't want it to be over already.

Movie Review: Age of Ultron

When I was 7, my dad gave me a pile of his old comics from when he was a kid. I had Captain Britain, The Defenders, and Dan Dare amongst many others, and I had a lot of favorites. The character that leapt off the page at me though, the character that stuck with me ever since; was the philosophical, maniacal robotic arch nemesis of the Avengers, Ultron.

You can imagine how excited I was when Ultron was revealed as the antagonist in the sequel to Marvel’s immensely successful The Avengers. When his actor was revealed as James Spader, with his gravelly southern voice, I was at first skeptical. I was expecting the announcement to be of an actor with a famously recognizable voice, like Malcolm McDowell.

The moment I saw that first trailer, all my fears were put to rest. Spader’s commanding drawl is so perfectly condescending, intellectually superior, even bored sounding, it fit the character wonderfully.

From that moment on, going into this one, I was excited.

I was not disappointed.

With every step forward into Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, it feels more like the spirit of the comics. From the very beginning, we see the Avengers working together as a coordinated team battling their old enemies Hydra. It’s fluid, and fun and incredibly put together visually. Each member seems to have been developed since the last film, both in the way they function within the team, interacting with their fellow members, and how they act on a personal basis. We see a little more of everyone here, more personal scenes, more fight scenes, more everything.

Most of all, this is a character based movie. It’s wall to wall action, sure, but everyone has their moment of drama, and the dialogue is well written for pretty much every personality involved. It isn’t just Iron Man starring the Avengers anymore, every character has screen time on and off the field of combat. 

Not an easy feat, considering they are juggling five popular main characters, and some major satellite characters too. While Downey Jr’s Stark is still the funniest character in the film, with comebacks and dialogue so sharp and well delivered it almost seems improvised, there’s also great moments from the supporting cast, Don Cheadle’s War Machine standing out in his scenes by far. Conspicuously absent amongst the ensemble are fan favorites (and eternal girlbait) Agent Coulson and Loki, however.

There’s great scenes of casual interplay between the Avengers. The snappy dialogue in hectic combat is even better in casual situations, with great scenes of macho competition, honest flirtation, and scientific ambition. It’s difficult not to love each of the Avengers, with even the less focal ones getting great scenes here.

No time is wasted on early exposition, or introducing characters we already know. The setup is here and ready from point one, and it doesn’t take long for the main plot to kick in after the brilliant opening scene. During a celebratory party in the Avenger’s tower, the first form of the titular villain shows himself. 

At first I was taken aback by the frank quirkiness of Ultron’s dialogue. There’s no technobabble or stereotypical ‘robot character’ dialogue, he’s very human. He’s cocky, even funny. I realized that the character, a product of alien technology mixed with Tony Stark’s automated Iron Army program, has taken on some of Stark’s personality traits, and shares his cynical, comical side. It works. Ultron is an enjoyable villain to watch, he talks like Stark, with his constant megalomania and superiority turned up to eleven. His first scene, analyzing the simple flaws in the existence of the world as we see it, is just brilliant.

By instantaneous access to all the worlds information, Ultron goes from birth to master plan in a matter of minutes, so it all kicks off pretty soon from there on, with a globetrotting series of events pursuing Ultron across the world. The story is kinetic, never staying in one place for long. The Avengers are dragged through a series of trials, facing more new enemies in the Maximoff twins, not named as such here but better known to comic fans as Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. These two are more enjoyable than I expected, having never been a fan of either before. With some acceptable neutral Slavic accents, they form the basis of Ultron’s cadre of main antagonists. Quicksilver snatching arrows out of the air with his super speed and Scarlet Witch bending the minds of our heroes to show them their worst fears. With a team of heroes as powerful as the Avengers, turning them against one another has long been the classic way to deliver a challenge.

Quicksilver’s inclusion will inevitably be compared to the characters recent appearance in X-Men: Days of Future past, and I have to say, regardless of some fun visual gags, he isn’t half as exciting here. In DOFP, we saw incredible use of the characters super speed in a variety of ways, Age of Ultron’s Quicksilver is just not up to that standard, although he is well performed and enjoyable to watch.

The twin’s inevitable heel/face turn is one of the movies short order points, in my opinion, a little brief, and they are awfully quick to ally with a character that was revealed in a prior monologue to be the source of a lifetime of constant fear and oppression for the two. Also, without the twins as sidekicks, Ultron is the lone antagonist for most of the films runtime, and as great a villain as he is, there’s something video-gamey about the Avengers battling an endless supply of identical robot drones. These large scale battle scenes, all inclusive of almost every character, are a visual masterpiece, certainly, but they don’t have the urgency or intensity necessary in a lot of the situations. We know any member of the Avengers will defeat a hundred of these enemies in a scene like this, so there’s no genuine threat there. The real joy in the films battle scenes come from other sources, like the brilliant punch up between a pissed off Hulk and the long awaited Iron Man Hulk-Buster armour. This one is fantastic. Hulk is his absolute finest here, made genuinely scary by showing us that he isn’t just the strongest thing on the battlefield, but that he’s fast too. Iron Man attempting to stop the rampaging green menace whilst simultaneously trying to protect the undefended city and the populace around them is just great, and will be the main event of the film for many viewers.

The Hulk has a lot of character development here, and along with Black Widow and Hawkeye, forms the Avengers that we see a much more intimate side of. An emerging romance and personal secrets  are introduced that we hadn’t previously seen, and it serves to remind there’s a lot more going on here than just saving the world. 

Speaking of which, the exact peril the world is in, isn’t as clear as it perhaps could have been. Exactly what Ultron’s plan was I felt wasn’t all that obvious until the films finale. It feels at times like the storyline is moving to a time limit we aren’t really seeing. It doesn’t make it any less fun, but the real feeling of tension generated by threat through the second act just wasn’t there.

The film’s final act introduces a major hero in the form of one of the comic’s most mysterious, enigmatic characters. If you’ve made it this far without knowing who that is, I don’t want to spoil it for you. I’ll say he’s played beautifully, with just the right edge of childlike wonder and enlightened gravity that the character needs, by a brilliant British actor who has long deserved a role so big. One perfectly played moment in his first scene had the whole audience cheering, and you’ll know it when you see it.

Age of Ultron may not be the epic entry in the MCU it could have been. It serves to develop characters and move the whole story forward rather than end anything or bring it all together, but it’s sharply written, well put together, and has some truly enjoyable performances by characters both old and new. There’s so much going on in the MCU, with developments in this film leading to at least 4 separate future films, and it’s hard not to want to get involved in all of them. It’s just like reading the comics, you can’t read only one, there's too much fun to be had by diving right into the whole world.

Comic Review: Rage of Ultron

Marvel thought they were clever with last year’s wildly disappointing bait and switch event Age of Ultron, a time travel story that featured almost none of the titular character, but will likely go on to disappoint plenty new comic fans seeking to get in on the new movie of the same name.

It was undoubtedly time for a story that went back to the basics of one of the best villains Marvel has ever created.

The Avengers, Earth’s mightiest (and most profitable) superhero team, only have one true arch-nemesis, and Ultron is a character that deserves great stories, not cash in crossovers. Marvel’s OGN print, a run of one-shot hardback format graphic novels, have just released the story that Age of Ultron should have been. 

A dark and futuristic action packed story, filled with the brooding intensity of the father-son struggle that makes Ultron so interesting, Rage of Ultron chronicles the events following a grand defeat of the titular villain in a climactic battle. After nearly leveling New York in the battle, the Avengers think they’ve seen the last of the cybernetic terror when he is rocketed into space trapped in a broken Quinjet.  Hank Pym, Ultron’s creator and father, has become self-loathing and depressed over his relationship with his son. He desperately wishes to find love and worth in that which he has created, but in Ultron he finds only anger and hate. In his distress, he finds himself driven to create a weapon that can nullify cybernetic brainwaves, snuffing out Artificial Intelligence in a genocidal instant. This in turn forces the whole team to consider the worth of artificial life as true, or disposable. The Vision, Ultron’s own creation and therefore Pym’s grandson, is distraught that Pym can take android life so casually, and tension rises between these two founding members. It brings into question the concept of just how powerful Pym is when dealing with artificial life. He can create it, and just as easily he has the power to snuff it out, and seems prepared to do so.

Far off on the moon of Titan, serial misogynist and satellite Avengers member Starfox is drinking with a horde of beauties when a Quinjet crashes into the surface of the moon, and begins burrowing towards the world’s hyper advanced technological core. In minutes, Titan’s finest are overcome by Ultron’s power, sending Starfox hurtling across the solar system to Earth In search of help. 

Still amidst the repercussions of their argument, the Avengers are threatened with the arrival of the most powerful incarnation of the robotic villain ever seen, an entire planet repurposed and possessed to suit his apocalyptic intentions. Planet Ultron looms down over Earth, ready to begin the systematic conversion of all life in the universe to become one with Ultron. 

As huge as the scale of the story is, Rage of Ultron is chiefly a character driven story. It explores the fascinating relationship between father and son that exists between Pym and Ultron, and the conflicting love and resentment the two bear one another. The tenuous relationship that both share with The Vision is touched upon, as Vision is forced to compare himself to both Pym and Ultron and find he can truly identify with neither.

Although a short story, it has some truly brilliant moments, and is more worth your time than the ten issue adventures of a time travelling Wolverine that Age of Ultron turned out to be. Pym’s descent into hatred is believable, and Ultron’s voice is as brilliantly malevolent and utterly condescending as ever. The reveal of planet Ultron is a damn fine panel, and the use of the new Avengers team over the classic we’re growing tired of is a nice touch. We see the hard headed female Thor throwing her weight around at the discussion table, and Captain America’s new identity as Sam Wilson, previously the Falcon, giving the orders as the incumbent leader of the team. In the tradition of Ultron only being able to be defeated by characters he’s never encountered before (with the notable exception of Scarlet Witch, whose power is by definition improbable), an interesting development occurs when Ultron is faced with an entirely new power, but I won’t spoil that surprise.

The finale is maybe less grand than it could have been, and we’re left with some glaring unanswered questions regarding the resolution, but the ending is emotional. It isn’t a triumph of good over evil, it’s about an entity who was born of anger and hate attempting to understand itself. Right from the beginning, as Pym reminds Ultron that regardless of all the atrocities Ultron has committed, that he still loves his son, is pretty powerful stuff.

Whether you’re looking to remind yourself who the real daddy is when it comes to Avengers villains, or if you’re wanting to get acquainted with him for the first time in anticipation of the film, Rage of Ultron is the book to pick up. Just try not to read all his dialogue in James Spader’s voice.

Movie Review: Dracula Untold

'Untold' the title threatens.

Now there's been a lot told about Dracula over the decades, probably more than any other fictional character, to tell the truth. So that's a pretty big claim as far as subtitles go. At least it isn't Dracula 'Revelations'.

But as far as things go, it's not a far off claim. This is a story of a human Vlad Tepes, a family man, a soldier, and a hero to his people. A story set in the time before he was Dracula.

Untold. It definitely isn't anything Stoker wrote, and not remotely historically accurate, but it does live up to the title.

Like any movie with the 'Legendary' tag. Dracula Untold starts us off with glorious vistas and amazing costumes. It looks great from the first moment. A young, still human Vlad, prince of Transylvania, is scouting with his band of merry assholes through the forests, searching for the traces of Turkish soldiers, encroaching on the peace agreed between the two countries. Vlad is handsome, sharp, dashing, and intelligent, and essentially makes a lot of the other characters irrelevant by a few paces in.. The rest of his D&D party are there to bounce of his comments and give him occasional 'my lords' but not a one of them has a strong character behind them. They are all a little Jon Snow in nature, and entirely interchangeable. They're named, but you'll forget them soon enough, like I did, so for the remainder we'll call Vlad's crew Phil, Grant and Peggy.

Vlad senses something is off when he is led to the helmet of a turkish solier, mysteriously left in the Transylvanian rivers falling from a great mountain. Vlad knows what's up, and sends Phil, Grant and Peggy back to Castle Dracula while he goes to investigate the shadowy caves atop the mountain.

Deep in a bat filled cave high in the rocks above, Vlad and some unlucky redshirts are attacked by an inhuman entity, fast and strong, and only Vlad's speed and skill leave him to escape, noticing the terrible power of the beast he fought.

It's interesting to see an origin given to Dracula himself, as usually writers use Dracula as the no-questions asked first Vampire. An origin story is hard to do with a character so seminal, and I think they do a good job in that respect. He's your usual Ned Stark type, brooding and thoughtful, but he cares about his people, and his family.

As Vlad returns to castle Dracula, we get to meet the rest of the family, the doe eyed wife he loves above all things, and his spry little son. And just as we are introduced to the life of proud rulership Vlad has, the inevitable stake is thrown into the works. A group of sinister Turks bring an ultimatem to Vlad during a feast celebrating peace. Vlad must surrender a thousand boys to the armies of the Turkish Emperor Mehmed II.

Feeling betrayed by his old brother in arms, Vlad rides to meet Mehmed and parlay for the future of his people. Now Mehmed is your standard Thulsa Doom villain. An unquestioning military leader, he's bad, he's commanding. Apart from the vaguely alluded to past fighting alongside Vlad, we never really find much more about him. When you have a character as strong and dramatic by turns as Vlad in the lead, Mehmed seems a somewhat empty antagonist by comparison.

Naturally Mehmed is unmoved by the pleas of his brother, and Vlad returns to Transylvania in disgrace, and knows he must either give up a thousand boys, or condemn his people to war and extermination.

I had a touch of trouble swallowing this plot point, really. Vlad knows that the boys in the Turkish army are treated well, and grow up talented warriors. Vlad himself proudly was one of those surrendered as a child. He knows this, and he knows surrendering those boys will continue the peace with the Turks that his people love him for establishing. He also knows that he does not have any chance of defeating the Turks in open warfare, and still Vlad goes out, brutally does away with the Turks sent to claim the boys, and starts a whole new war. Nice one Vlad.

With the armies of Mehmed approaching to tear Transylvania apart, Vlad goes to the only power he knows that can strike fear into the hearts of men, and once more ascends the mountain to meet with the dark monster that lives above.

In the darkness of the caves above, Vlad finds himself confronting the Vampire that has been killing Turkish soldiers, and has apparently been living trapped in the darkness of the caves for centuries.

The elder Vampire is a kitschy part to play, rife with monster cliches, but luckily Charles Dance is a damn fine actor, and actually is the film's highlight performance here.

He's frightening, savage, temperamental, and commanding. He hisses a story of darkness and fear to Vlad, and offers him the power to defeat the Turks if he only drinks of the blood provided.

Vlad is warned of the terrible price for such power: If he partakes of human blood at any time in the next 72 hours, the change will be permanent, and he shall forever take the elder vampire's place in the dark.

Here's where things get going, naturally.

Waking up in the rivers washing down the mountain, the newly invigorated Vlad finds himself filled with the powers of the night. He is strong, fast, and can EXPLODE INTO BATS at will. It's great fun to watch. He takes an uncharacteristic delight in it all at first, blasting through the trees of the forest as he returns to defend Castle Dracula, from the Turkish assault, already fully underway.

Now Vlad is a complete badass, now that he has his powers.

A Turkish army one thousand strong charges into battle against him, and he goes out to meet them alone. (After donning a longer coat first, naturally) As his army watch on, Vlad completely obliterates the entire force in moments without a scratch. It's a brilliant fight. The powered up Vlad just tearing into his enemies with fist and blade and bats. One guy obliterating an entire army, it's like Dynasty Warriors. It's wild. It also makes it very clear to us that he is so powerful, nothing the Turkish army can possibly do can stand in his way. Here's another plot hiccup that I personally couldn't get over. With this power at his disposal, why doesn't Vlad take it to his enemies immediately?

There is nothing to stop him flying to tear apart the Turkish forces at their heart, give Mehmed a gigantic Vampire wedgie of darkness and ending the war right then. Instead, after Phil, Grant and the rest of the Transylvanian army hilariously trundle up after the fight is finished, Vlad commands them not to question his new powers, and to evacuate Castle Dracula for a monastery in the mountains instead.

With the powers that Vlad has, of course they need a shortcoming of some sort, a weakness, and we are only presented with two of the classic vampire weaknesses here. Neither of them elements present in Stoker's work, I might add. A vulnerability to sunlight, and a sensitivity to pure silver.

The passage of day into night as the rest of the film goes on becomes a little difficult to follow, I find. Some days seem to pass in minutes, other nights seem to pass in one battle scene. The three days of Vlad's trials resisting human blood pass in a flurry, and it's easy to get a spot lost how much time has passed since his original bargain took place. Vlad is holed up in his tent while his family and the rest of his army head up to the monastery, and is absent when they are set upon by a small Turkish skirmish unit.

His Vampire senses tingling, Vlad bursts from his tent the moment sunlight fails, to rush to aid his family. As a Turkish soldier takes down Phil in brutal combat, Vlad emerges just in time to rescue his wife and son in turn, and aid his people in making it finally to the monastery. Vlad's bat form is unstoppably powerful, he surges over opponents like a wave of death, and no one can really defend against it at all. The only reason Vlad didn't arrive in time to save Phil was because he was dicking around with theatrics elsewhere in the battle. If his bat form can pick up a Turkish soldier and toss him across a battlefield, why can't he fly by and safely whisk his family away from danger in the blink of an eye?

Arriving at the monastery, Vlad holes his people up to await the inevitable assault from the main Turkish forces. Amongst the monks that were previously his dear friends, Vlad encounters the first opposition amongst his own men. It's good to see an element of this addressed, because until this scene, his newfound powers haven't really been questioned by anyone. When his oldest friend amongst the holy men notices his vulnerability to sunlight, he confronts Vlad in a tense moment and asks that Vlad allow himself to be destroyed for the good of his soul. Not the best time for it, really, but a holy man is a holy man through and through. This escalates quickly into an out of the blue insurrection, with all Vlad's followers attempting to burn him alive. Almost as soon as this starts it's over, with Vlad promising his people that they are safe, and that he will stop Mehmet. It's a little fast a push towards that being resolved, it seems all these people are awfully quickly swayed one way or another, but it gets things moving.

Soon enough, the final battle approaches, there is something of a subplot with Mehmet convincing his entire army to wear blindfolds for the entire march so they don't fear Vlad, but it really wasn't relevant in the end. It makes the entire enemy army look ridiculous, as if they're just going to take the blindfolds off as soon as the battle starts, what was the point? These aren't superstitious militia we're dealing with, these are highly trained soldiers of the world's finest army. They aren't going to scare easily.

Vlad takes to the top of his highest tower, wearing his best long black coat, and takes in the size of the approaching army of a hundred thousand. Drawing on his power to command the creatures of the night, Vlad summons a colossal horde of bats to do his bidding. This was probably the most fun scene in the entire film, it's great fun. Commanding his squeaking, flapping army with movements of his hand, he drives the bats into the approaching hordes like a battering ram (Hehe, geddit?) and then, ordering them all up into the sky, bringing them down again to desolate the Turks like the meteor scene in Armageddon. It's awesome, it's like one of the crazier disciplines in Vampire: The Masquerade brought to life. However fundamental physics make it all a little silly when you think about it. These bats he's controlling thunder into the enemy, throwing armoured soldiers into the air like rag dolls. Regardless of how many he's controlling, they are still just tiny bats. In the end, the result of such an assault would feel less like a meteor and more like a million ping pong balls falling on your head.

After the initial bat assault, Vlad takes to the field, and the full battle commences, but his physical prowess is let down by his battle planning, and a unit of Turks gets into the monastery to assault the defenseless people of Transylvania. Vlad's son is taken by the Turkish commander, and his wife is left hanging precariously from the highest tower. With all Vlad's speed, he can't quite get there in time, leading to an excruciatingly melodramatic falling scene, set to music, in slow motion, as she falls to her doom. By the time Vlad's done chatting with her remarkably unharmed but close to death body after that fall, the Turkish army has got away, and the monastery is left in ruins. If all this sounds like a weirdly paced and tumbly assortment of events, it's because it really was. Why did Mehmet himself even need to be there? Why leave only taking one captive? No booty? Did the Turkish soldiers even get to rest? You marched them the whole way here blindfolded and now you're marching them all the way back to Turkey after a battle? You asshole Mehmet!

Vlad does the only thing he can over the body of his beloved wife. He takes her blood, gaining the full power of the Vampire, and condemns himself to the darkness. Returning to walk among the fallen in the monastery, Vlad sees people are shattered and defeated, and his son and heir to the throne of Transylvania taken by the Turks. He knows he must go after them. In a quite great moment, he goes to Grant, who lies dying, and asks “Do you want revenge?”

The eyes of many of the fallen and broken look up to him, realizing what he offers. It is a good scene.

Mehmet's main camp watches as a storm approaches, lightening crashes, and the darkness surges in. The newly changed Grant and Peggy lead a group of vampires down on the Turkish army, slaughtering them wholesale, while Vlad make the final assault on Mehmet. In the silver coated finery of Mehmet's tent, where Vlads son is held captive, the final confrontation takes place.

Of course Mehmet has a silver sword. We've gone the whole movie with no one being able to remotely stand against Vlad in combat, there had to be some threat, but it feels somewhat forced, when we know he can explode into unstoppable bats at will, or just bring the tent down around him. But fight honorably Vlad does, somehow Mehmet seems the superior combatant, knocking Vlad around plenty. The presence of silver is a sort of excuse to this odd encounter, but Vlad wore a silver ring around his neck the whole film and still tore apart armies without trouble. That it would weaken him so much to as to lose most of the battle against an ordinary man didn't make much sense.

Vlad defeats Mehmet, drawing strength from his son, and returns outside to face his new brethren. Peggy suggests killing the boy, their last link to humanity, and Vlad is torn between his new existence and his old. The boy is saved by the inexplicable appearance of our hero monk from the monastery, who arrives to take the boy to safety, while the sun burns down from above and exterminates the vampires. The vampires that are standing around rows and rows of tents that are historically proven to keep out sunlight. That was a head scratcher.

Vlad himself lets out a cry of defiance as the sun comes down on him, and he falls, left in the dust of the destroyed Turkish camp. It would have been a fair ending, with the young son being crowned king of Transylvania, to carry on the peace into the next generation.

But no, we know Dracula can't end here. It must go on.

Dragged from the battlefield by a mysterious follower (He was around earlier, the only one in the whole movie who tries on a Transylvanian accent, we'll call him Dirty Den) who pulls the body of Vlad from the sunlight and into a tent, to force his blood down the throat of the vampire, and return him from the dead. 

Fast forward six hundred odd years. Yes it's one of those endings.

A modern day Vlad walks amongst the streets of a glistening city, when he comes across a woman who looks the spitting image of his lost wife. He introduces himself, sounding just like he did in the 1400's, and she says her name is Mina. Ah, so here we have come around at last to the Dracula we know. They walk off together, the threads of fate seemingly intertwining them again. All the while the elder vampire watches on (God DAMN does Charles Dance look sharp in a suit) 

There are a few mystifying turns about Dracula Untold. The exact mythology behind the 'curse' Vlad is under doesn't really make sense. The elder vampire states he's been trapped in the cave for years, until he found someone to take his place. There seemed to be no reason he couldn't leave whenever he wanted, and Vlad certainly wasn't compelled to take his place when he drank human blood. That didn't make much sense. It seems Vlad never really used his powers as well as he could, and everyone that dies manages to do it dramatically in Vlad's arms. That all said, it does a good job of not slipping into the melodrama you would expect. I could have done without a lot of the scenes involving Vlad and his wife, they just seemed to drag on, but not because she was bad, just because their relationship was very dull compared to the rest of the action.

It's also fun to play spot the Game of Thrones residue amongst the cast, with Paul Kaye and Art Parkinson both playing the exact same character they do in the HBO show (This will go triple if they bring back Tywin Lannister as a vampire in season 5)

As far as historical action/drama supernatural movies go, Dracula Untold is up there with other big, fun, stupid films like Underworld and Pathfinder. They have their place, and there are certainly worse choices for a bit of Dracula entertainment in the month of Halloween. At least you won't have to sit through hearing Keanu Reeve's English accent again.