Released: April 14, 2015

Plaftorms: PS4, XBox One, PC(Steam)

Developer: NetherRealm Studios

Publisher: Warner Bros. Games

Price Tag: $59.99

Rated: M for Mature

WARNING: I will be describing certain fatalities in detail, so be warned: These fatalities are graphic and extremely violent.

Before I really get into this review of the latest iteration in the Mortal Kombat video game franchise, I would like to say that I’m a massive fan of Mortal Kombat.  I’ve been playing the game since it first showed up in arcades in 1992.  Before Mortal Kombat showed up, video games had been considered mostly kids’ toys.  It was something they did after their homework was done.  Violence in those games was really cartoonish and not realistic.  Then Mortal Kombat comes along and everybody loses their shit.  This was the same time Street Fighter II was released, but MK(Mortal Kombat) was different in that it featured digitized actors on a 2d fighting plane.  It was certainly different.  It handled pretty well with some interesting characters including a thunder god, a Bruce Lee-inspired character, and some ninjas.  But the one thing that really separated MK from the pack, and was really criticized for, was its display of ultra-violence.  By ultra-violence, I mean fatalities.  These are techniques in which you perform a sequence of button presses that would kill your opponent in particularly gruesome fashion.  The most notorious of the bunch was Sub-Zero’s spine-rip fatality in which he ripped off the person’s head with the spine attached.  Parents and politicians alike were outraged that somebody could make such a violent game.  As a result, the ESRB(Entertainment Software Ratings Board) was established.  Over the years, the game has gotten multiple sequels, movies, TV and Youtube series(I reviewed Mortal Kombat Legacy).  It is one of the largest and most popular fighting game franchises in the world to date.  With the release of Mortal Kombat X, there are a number of issues and controversies plaguing the game at the time of release, particular for the PC version, which I am currently reviewing.  But before I delve into those issues, I’m going to go over the game itself and what it entails.

Mortal Kombat X is the latest and quite possibly the goriest entry into a franchise that goes back over 20 years.  The previous entry, simply titled Mortal Kombat, which I will refer to as MK9, came out in 2011 and was essentially a kind of a reboot for the franchise after the fairly controversial release of the crossover game, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe.  I didn’t think that was a particularly bad game.  Unfortunately, the folks over DC didn’t want to see their characters get eviscerated by Scorpion or Raiden, so they forced the producers to scale back on the brutality and blood of the fatalities.  For those of us were fans of the ultra-violent finishing moves, this came as a shock.  Mechanically, the game was fantastic, it played like a Mortal Kombat, minus the fatalities.  MK9 did a 180 and gave us not only a graphically improved game, but it also returned to us the brutality that the series is known for.  It garnered great reviews and was a solid fighter in its own right.  MKX is also a very solid fighter and a blast to play.  The mechanics are very solid with combos being fairly easy to pull off.  The game features a selection of over 20 characters at the time of this writing, including series regulars like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Jax, Reptile, Raiden, Kung Lao, and the four-armed Goro.  New to the series includes the sons and daughters of some of the characters, including Cassie Cage, Jacqui Briggs, Takeda, and Kung Jin.  Other new characters include, D’Vorah, an insect-inspired character; Ferra and Torr, which is a kind of a two-for-one, Kotal Kahn, the new Emperor of Outworld and Erron Black, a gunslinger from Earth Realm.  Each character has three different variations, effectively giving the game a total of over 30 characters.  Each character comes with his or her own set of special moves.  Scorpion has his iconic spear that you can use to grab the opponent and bring him closer to you so can so some pretty severe damage.  Sub-Zero has his famous ice ball which freezes people in their place allowing you to deliver some major punishment.  Each variation of each character comes with its own set of moves and combos, making this one of the deepest entries into the franchise.  It’s absolutely amazing how much detail went into making each character and variation unique.  The combos are easy to pull off.  It is surprisingly satisfying when you can juggle these guys and just lay waste to them.

In addition to the obvious classic tower setup, we have a story mode which is essentially an interactive movie with some QTE events.  QTE’s are Quick Time Events.  You have to push certain buttons at a certain time to avoid getting damaged and to progress the story.  It’s not a mechanic that I particularly care for, because it can take you out of the story.  I’m not going to delve into the story of the franchise, because there really isn’t a whole lot there, and that’s not why we play these games in the first place.  But it is nice to see NetherRealms put that in.  It’s surprisingly well-done, but woefully short.  I completed the story mode in about 3.5 to 4 hours.  The previous game gave me twice that.  Normally, I would complain about it, but it was surprisingly engaging and visually pleasing.  In this entry we have the offspring of some of the main characters, so that adds kind of a family element to the story, which is surprising and it works.  The motion capture for the story mode is incredible.  This game is awesome to look at.  It’s a good-looking game.  The backgrounds for the fights aren’t static like they were in some previous games, but feel organic and very much alive.  They are also pretty interactive, because you can use certain objects to pummel your opponent with.  The X-Ray moves, which were introduced in MK9, are basically pre-animated combos that feature graphic depictions of bones break and organs being brutalized.  It’s gut-wrenching, yet very awesome at the same time.  Now this brings me to the fatalities which is the most iconic technique that the franchise is known for.  These moves are BRUTAL.  For example, one of Scorpion’s fatalities involve him using a fireball going through an opponent leaving the heart attached by a few strands of flesh.  Gruesome, yes?  He’s not done yet.  After that, he takes one of his swords and slices his opponent’s face off.  It’s extremely detailed and very graphic.  Unfortunately, that brings me one of the biggest issues facing the game.  The game itself runs at a silky smooth 60 frames per second, but when you pull off an X-Ray move or a fatality, it jumps to 30 frames per second.  That is a severely noticeable drop, and unnecessary thing to do.  It takes you out of the game when you see such a violent shift.  I guess somebody thought it was a stylistic choice.  Well, it didn’t work.

Outside of the single-player story mode and traditional tower modes, we have an online section of the game which you can use to play with other people around the world.  I’m not a multiplayer kind of guy, so I kind of skipped over the whole online thing, but there are people out there who really enjoy that.  So, I couldn’t honestly tell you about the multiplayer component.  One of the more interesting online components is in the Living Towers mode.  This is very interesting, because one of the towers is updated on an hourly basis with different challenges according to what NetherRealms has in store.  Another changes on a daily basis, while the third changes on a weekly basis.  That allows for a great deal of variety, and is a welcome addition.  These towers are often challenging but can be rewarding at the same time.  When you first start up the game, you are asked to join a particular faction, whether its the White Lotus, Special Forces, Lin Kuei, Brotherhood of Darkness, and the Black Dragon.  Each faction has its own unique perks.  For example, each faction has its own set of fatalities that you can use, and there is a meta-war going on between the factions that you can actively be a part of.  You don’t even have to play against another person.  Everything you do as part of that faction goes towards the overall score for the faction.  It’s wild.  There are also a different set of finishing moves called brutalities that require you to meet certain criteria in order to execute them.  This truly adds to the replayability of the game.  There are also mainstays of previous games including a Test-Your-Might mode in which you have to smash certain objects by button-mashing essentially.  You get rewarded with gold coins.  If you fail, you get treated to a fatality.  It’s darkly humorous.  It’s gory, but it is funny at the same time.  You get gold coins for everything that you do in the game, including combos and fatalities and beating stuff.  Those coins can be used in the game’s Krypt mode, which lets you explore cemeteries, caves and temples.  You can unlock skins, fatalities, brutalities, concept art, music and some new Easy Fatality tokens and Skip Fight tokens.  The Easy Fatality thing is a major issue which I will discuss towards the end of the review.  It’s controversial, to say the least.

The game isn’t perfect, I can tell you that.  I had pre-ordered the game so I could get Goro as a playable character.  However, because I pre-ordered the game on Steam, which is a software platform for games that you can buy and download digitally, MKX was broken on release.  I’m not kidding.  Valve, the guys behind Steam, decided to try a new method of delivering games to their customers by essentially allowing them to play the game while it’s downloading.  It’s not necessarily a bad idea if executed properly.  Blizzard’s been doing it for years with Starcraft II and World of Warcraft.  They have it down to a science.  Valve has no idea what the hell they’re doing.  The game downloads in DLC packs.  DLC is Downloadable Content.  See, DLC is used to add stuff to a game that wasn’t in the initial release.  The problem with the PC release is that when the game pre-loaded, we got 3 gigs at the start, but the rest of the game didn’t start downloading until a couple of hours later.  When it did, and we were  allowed to start the game, it was broken.  Horrendously broken.  The only modes available were training and single fight.  The bulk of the game was NOT available at the time it was released.  So, most of the people, including myself got screwed at the beginning because Valve failed to test their new method properly.  A lot of people weren’t even able to start the game.  I didn’t get to play the game properly until around 5 PM that day, when they finally fixed the game.  Now, they fixed it relatively quickly, as it could taken about a week or so for most companies to get their shit fixed.  The damage had already been done.  Tons of people took to Steam and delivered either sarcastic reviews or just plain ripped on the developers and Steam for a such a botched release.  This is easily the single worst release for a Mortal Kombat game I’ve ever seen.  See, PC users don’t usually get a lot of fighting games.  That’s generally a console thing, so we have to take what we can get.  Another glaring omission is the lack of stage specific fatalities, where you can use the background as a way of murdering your opponent.  It’s been a staple of previous games, so the lack of it here is puzzling.

There’s another issue that isn’t just restricted to Mortal Kombat X, but it’s one that truly needs to be addressed.  I mentioned earlier that in the Krypt you can get tokens that will make performing fatalities easier.  For PS4 and XBox One users, there is DLC that you can purchase that will give you a certain number of Easy Fatality tokens.  For 99 cents, you get 5 tokens.  For 5 bucks, you get 30 tokens.  A lot people have issues with that because, when you use those tokens, they’re gone, until either you find more in the Krypt or you pay more.  That’s called a microtransaction and it really has no place in a triple-A title.  Another one is where you can pay 20 bucks and unlock EVERYTHING in the Krypt.  In the previous title, the DLC was limited to new characters which were NOT included on the disc.  The DLC for this game is ridiculous.  For DLC characters, we are getting Tanya from Mortal Kombat 4, we’re getting the Predator from the movies, Jason Voorhees and Tremor.  The characters I don’t have a problem paying for because some of them I really want.  But the skins, the tokens and the unlock I DO have a problem with.  It’s a blatant cash-grab.  That’s what it is.  This is not necessarily a developer issue, but it is definitely a publisher issue.  They get away with it because the consumers are willingly paying for it.  For a game like Mortal Kombat, though, I’m starting to see people lash out at these business practices.  Look, I have no problem with DLC as long as it’s substantially worth it.  All new characters?  Definitely worth it.  Skins?  Not so much.  This kind of business practice isn’t limited to Mortal Kombat X, but the game definitely highlights a major problem within the gaming industry.  The publishers aren’t the only ones at fault here.  You also have to blame the consumers for allowing it happen.  There is no single entity to blame for this fiasco.  I’m as much at fault for buying into this stuff as anybody, so I’m not a special snowflake.  I understand that the publishers are in it to make money, but nickel-and-diming the consumer isn’t really the most ethical way to go about.  Make no mistake, these publishers are nickle-and-diming us with these microtransactions and useless DLC.  The PC launch I can blame squarely on Valve, though.  That was a mess and it didn’t need to happen.

At the end of the day, Mortal Kombat X is a very solid and competent fighting game.  It’s loaded with content and visually spectacular.  It has a number of interesting modes and the faction thing is a very cool idea.  It’s very playable and for people familiar with Mortal Kombat, it’s easy to get into.  For people who are new to the series I would recommend going with an earlier title so you can actually develop a feel for the system and how the games work.  Honestly, though, you can’t really go wrong with MKX.  It’s a really good game, but a lot of factors keep it from making it a great game.  If you love the franchise, the game is a no-brainer, provided you don’t fall for the microtransaction BS.  NetherRealms Studios delivered another solid game, but Warner Bros. is starting to behave a lot like EA Games and I really wish they wouldn’t.  Personally, I would still recommend Mortal Kombat X despite some of the issues and controversies because it’s just that damn good.  It’s not perfect, no game truly is, but I feel the positive aspects of the game outweigh the negatives.  So what is my score for Mortal Kombat X?  A video game is a vastly different beast than a movie and I can’t treat them the same way.  A movie plays out the same way for everyone, so it’s easier to give a proper score.  People have different experiences playing a game, and don’t play it the same way, unless it’s Rambo: The Video Game.  But you shouldn’t be playing that turd anyway.  That’s my outlook on Mortal Kombat X, so if you disagree with me, feel free to leave a comment or question.

Released: November 2014

Director: Christopher Nolan

Run Time: 169 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Cast:
Matthew McConaughey: Cooper
John Lithgow: Donald
Anne Hathaway: Brand
Michael Caine: Professor Brand
Wes Bentley: Doyle
David: Gyasi: Romilly
Matt Damon: Mann
Jessica Chastain: Murph
Topher Grace: Getty
Casey Affleck: Tom

I have a question I would to put to you all:  If the world as you knew it was coming to an end, and the only way to save mankind was to to find another planet to live on, would you do it?  The catch?  You would have to leave behind everything you have ever known and loved with the possibility of never coming back.  I want you to think about that question for a little bit.  I’ll address that a little later.  When 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in 1968, it changed the way we look at science fiction and how we saw our future in space.  It was slow, but deliberate.  It visually striking and dealt with the science of space travel fairly realistically.  This movie came out before we landed on the moon, so it was incredibly intriguing.  It was criticized for being too slow, but that was a deliberate choice on Stanley Kubrick’s part.  The film’s use of music, combined with the aesthetics of outer space made for a compelling space opera of sorts.  It’s not an action movie, so some people were turned away.  But the film we got was incredibly smart, beautiful and hypnotic.  It was the first film I reviewed for this website, and I consider 2001 to be one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made.  So, it seems interesting that my generation’s 2001 comes in the form of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.

Opening in a future after overpopulation and ecological disasters have reduced mankind’s workforce to farmers, including former NASA pilot, Cooper.  Faced with the possibility of not having food for the season, humanity seems to be on the brink of total annihilation.  After discovering coordinates in the form of binary codes, Cooper and his daughter, Murph find the location of a hidden NASA outpost.  This group of scientists have devised a plan to find another planet to inhabit as Earth appears to be dying.  As it happens, they have discovered a wormhole near the planet Saturn that appears to be a gateway to another galaxy.  Cooper just happens to be the best pilot that NASA had so they recruit him to pilot the ship that will explore the vast reaches of space in the hopes of finding a new home.  Torn between leaving his family behind and trying to save mankind, Cooper reluctantly agrees to pilot the craft.  Remember the question I asked earlier, about sacrificing everything to save humanity?  That question lies at the heart of Interstellar and makes for a compelling and human story.  While I enjoyed most of Christopher Nolan’s prior films, none of them have actually connected with me on an emotional level.  Interstellar does.  At the heart of the story is a man trying to do the right thing for his family, and that means leaving them behind for a greater good.

Christopher Nolan has always managed to get good performances from his actors in his other movies, but not like this.  The acting in this film is superb, and it really connects with you on an emotional level.  Matthew McConaughey anchors the film as Cooper.  We can tell that he really loves his family and is emotionally torn between being there for them and leaving the Earth to find a new planet, so they can have a future.  John Lithgow plays Donald, Coopers father-in-law and his voice of reason.  Michael Caine plays Professor Brand, the man who came up with the science and the plan to save humanity.  While he seems to be a regular in Nolan’s movies, Caine is in top form here.  Anne Hathaway plays his daughter who volunteers to be a part of the mission.  While she comes across as a bit stand-offish at first, you begin to see how she reacts to everything and it takes an emotional toll on her as well.  All the actors bring their A-game and as a result we have some of the greatest performances of 2014.  Getting the audience to truly connect with characters is fairly new ground for Christopher Nolan, but he has a talent for really making these people human.  So when they are faced with real dangers, we fear for them.  The best movies often have actors in roles that you can relate to because they seem so real, and the actors make it real.

It also helps that the visuals in Interstellar are well…..stellar.  This movie is a visual treat and you have to see it in high definition to really get the scope of what’s on screen.  The ship’s entry into the wormhole is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen.  It’s absolutely nuts.  When they emerge from the wormhole they try to land on a planet that’s covered in water.  Because it so close to a black hole, it has a huge effect on the tidal waves.  These things are MASSIVE.  It’s incredibly intense to see them try and get away.  There’s an ice planet that they visit that is stunning.  Iceland seems to be a very popular country to film movies like Interstellar and Oblivion.  Iceland offers a very bleak, desolate and yet extraordinarily beautiful landscape.  Even when the ship is passing by Saturn, you really get the feeling of being there in the ship when they pass by the rings.  It sends chills up your spine.  The visuals in the film are among the best I’ve ever seen.  The robots are also pretty cool.  Like 2001, Nolan wanted to make this movie as real as possible, so he hired theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to help out.  They’re dealing with a lot of unknowns when dealing astro-phsyics and quantum mechanics so some of that may be confusing for some people.  Some of that definitely went over my head, but it lends a little more authenticity and reality to what’s happening on the screen.

While the film definitely has intense moments, it’s by and large a drama set in outer space.  It just happens to work very well.  I made comparisons to 2001, but it’s really hard not to.  The film has a lot of detail in it, like 2001.  But some of the sequences don’t necessarily work that well.  I’m not going to spoil it, but towards the end of the movie, things get a little too weird.  Add on top of that, Nolan also indulges in one of the biggest cliches I’ve ever seen in a sci-fi movie: stranded survivor that isn’t who or what he appears to be.  I’ll say no more on that, other than it is a nail-biting scene.  It’s just not wholly original.  While the film is nearly 3 hours long, I didn’t really notice as it kept my attention.  But there are scenes that could have been trimmed a little bit.

The music by Hans Zimmer doesn’t disappoint.  It has very Phillip Glass-feel to it which makes it very hypnotic and intense.  It’s definitely not the usual shtick that Zimmer conjures up for his movies.  The music is absolutely unique and really adds to the emotion of the goings-on.  I’ve really become a huge fan of Hans Zimmer of the past decade because his music is usually grand and epic, but the music in Interstellar is different.  But that’s a good thing.  We don’t really want the same kind of stuff over and over.  While the film isn’t perfect, it still stands heads and shoulders above a lot of other movies that were released last year.  Interstellar is one of those movies that you have to see to believe.  It’s extraordinary in its scope and the performances by the actors outshine most of the movies in 2014.

I wrote this because NASA actually has a mission planned that will put men on Mars in the next 30 or so years.  It’s also a one-way trip, so the people who are volunteering for it will have to give up everything they have ever known for this venture.  I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I have the kind of courage that is required for such a massive undertaking.  But it’s an undertaking that needs to happen.  The tagline of Interstellar is “Man was born here, but it was not meant to die here.”  Space exploration is the last great frontier that we have yet to truly breach, and the potential for humanity to grow beyond its cradle is something that should inspire everyone.  I’ve always believe that our future as a species is not on Earth.  It can only sustain us for so long, so it’s only natural that we need to explore and expand into other parts of our solar system and the rest of the galaxy.  There is so much out there, that the odds of finding a planet much like our own is relatively high.  Maybe that’s just the optimist in me, but I think that space exploration should bring us together so we CAN have a future.  Interstellar gives a potential glimpse into such a future.  This movie is highly recommended.  I’m giving a 10/10.  This one is not to be missed.

Released: February 2014

Developer: Teyon

Publisher: Reef Entertainment

Platform/s: PC, XBOX 360, PlayStation 3

Price: $39

I usually use this website to post about movies and such.  But periodically, I will talk about my other favorite past-time, video games.  I’m a big-time gamer.  I’m not particularly that great at video games, but I love the hell out of them….mostly.  People often complain about movies based on video games and how crappy they are, and for the most part, they’re correct.  With some obvious exceptions such as Mortal Kombat, most movies based on games just plain suck.  That also goes the other way.  Games based on movies are generally not very good.  Again, there are exceptions, such as Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, a good number of Star Wars games, Alien Isolation, and Ghostbusters.  Most of the crap that’s shoveled out the door are nothing but blatant cash-grabs.  That leads me to what is quite possibly the most inexplicable release of 2014: Rambo: The Video Game.  I had heard that someone was going to be making a game based on one of the most popular movie characters of the 1980’s, but Rambo?  They’re about 8 years late if they wanted to release the game during a point when John J. Rambo was making a comeback.  I don’t know what the hell they were thinking, but Rambo: The Video Game is a bit of a catastrophe, no strike that.  It’s a bit of an abomination.  In this day and age of first-person shooters, action RPG’s and third person spectacle fighters, why would you even consider releasing an on-rails shooter based on old license?

For those who don’t know what an on-rails shooter is, it’s a game that automatically moves you from point to point where you point and shoot the enemy.  This kind of game is usually pretty popular in arcades and maybe on the consoles that have a light-gun accessory.  So, yes, Rambo: The Video Game is an on-rails shooter featuring John J. Rambo.  The trailer I posted above is deceptive.  It shows the game as an intense first-person shooter.  It’s not.  The game follows the character of John J. Rambo through the first three films: First Blood, First Blood Part II, and Rambo III.  The first level in the game takes place in Vietnam during 1971 when Rambo was being held in a P.O.W. camp.  The next level follows his exploits in Hope, Washington as he’s attempted to be run out of town by an intolerant Sheriff Teasle.  After escaping custody, the following level has him running through the forest, trying to evade the police.  Next, Rambo is rampaging through the town going after the Evil Sheriff.  Speaking of which, do you recall the scene in First Blood where Rambo murders a town full of police officers?  No?  That’s okay, I don’t either.  I also don’t recall the film portraying Rambo as a complete psycho.  While the following films definitely had him become a one-man wrecking machine, the original film had the character as a very sympathetic guy who was trying to make his way through town, and the town’s sheriff decided he wasn’t going to be part of it and pissed off the wrong guy.  See, John J. Rambo was Special Forces.  So, Teasle had no idea what he was getting himself into.  The game?  It dumps all of that out the window in favor of a shooting gallery.  One that you can’t really move in, because it moves for you.  There’s a lot to dislike about this game, and I use “dislike” conservatively.

For one, the game looks like ass.  The engine that they use is like something from early-PlayStation 2 era.  The character models are an absolute joke, but its Rambo himself that looks the worst.  He looks like something that came out of a sausage factory, with links for arms and a face that resembles a constipated bulldog.  It looks NOTHING like Stallone.  It’s all compounded by the fact that that the developers at Teyon had the audacity to rip actual sound clips from the movies.  I’m not kidding, there are clips where it is absolutely clear that it’s Sylvester Stallone and Richard Crenna.  Crenna would be spinning in his grave to find out that his voice had been ripped from the movies that he did and put into a game that was poorly thought out and put together.  The game is loaded with QTEs.  What is a QTE?  For those who don’t know or don’t play video games, QTE stands for Quick Time Event.  Basically, it involves a series of button presses to get your character to move or react to a situation.  There are a lot of games out there that utilize this technique.  Some good, some bad.  Rambo is not one of the good ones.  There are stealth sections where you push a button and he moves to the next section.  It’s beyond sloppy.  There are levels where the music will constantly repeat itself.  The music is ALSO ripped from the movies.  Because this is a on-rails shooter, the game throws waves and waves of enemies at you.  Sometimes you end up standing right out in the open.  There is a mini-game when you reload your gun, where if you time it perfectly, you somehow end up with more ammo than you did before…..it’s MAGICAL!!  This game is a complete and utter wreck.  I don’t know how the hell Teyon and Reef Entertainment ended up getting the license to make a game, but they really butchered it.  Is there anything good about the game?  Uh….some of the explosions are…..somewhat okay.  It’s unintentionally hilarious.  I find myself laughing every time the game puts Rambo’s face on the screen.  It’s both hilarious and frightening.  Don’t believe me?  Watch the trailer.  Oh, and the game is really, really short, so the pain doesn’t last very long.  I’m not kidding.  It took me 2.5 to 3 hours to complete.  And this is for 40 bucks?  Who the hell are they kidding?  That’s a f**king rip-off.  It’s a good thing I only paid 6 bucks for the damn thing on Amazon.  If Rambo: The Video Game had been released during the early years of the PS2’s life cycle and cost about 10 bucks, then yeah, I would go for it….MAYBE.  6 bucks is still way to generous for what you get here.  For 40 bucks, you could actually get all 4 movies on Blu-Ray and the experience would last longer and be more entertaining.

If you’re getting into video games for the first time and this is the first you pick up, I wouldn’t be surprised if you dropped gaming like a bad habit.  Now, I write this over a year after the game has come out, so other critics have eviscerated this game already.  YouTubers like Angry Joe and TotalBuiscuit have already done an amazing job tearing this “game” to pieces.  You’re better off watching the movies.  If you’re the slightest bit curious, don’t pay full price.  I’m not advocating piracy, so I’m suggesting you either buy the game used or find it online for as little as possible, so the developer doesn’t that much money if any.  One other thing:  This game randomly crashes for no reason.  Hey, that could be drinking game:  You take a drink every time the game crashes!  Although, it would be a short game, because Rambo’s a short game.  In all seriousness, rail shooters have their place, but Rambo was just poorly thought out.  StudioCanal who holds the rights to the films, sold the video game and publishing rights to Reef.  I’m thinking that StudioCanal should have reconsidered.  I’m repeating myself, but this is not a good game.  It’s not even a good rail shooter.  The House of the Dead series is better.  I recommend hitting this thing with a freaking hammer.  My final score:

Graphics: 1/10.  Rambo! The Sausage Man!!
Gameplay: 3/10.  Point And click.  I’d rather play Minesweeper.
Sound: 2/10.  Audio ripped directly from the movies.  It’s not even done very well, either.
Unintentional Hilarity: 20/10.  It’s a comedy!
Overall: 4/10.  Crapfest 2014.

Did I mention that this is a bad game?

Movie Trailer

Released: November 1983

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Unrated

Cast:
Jason Robards: Dr. Russell Oakes
JoBeth Williams: Nancy Bauer
Steve Guttenberg: Stephen Klein
John Collum: Jim Dahlberg
John Lithgow: Joe Huxley
Bibi Besch: Eve Dahlberg

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

A quote from a Hindu holy book, these words entered the mind of Dr. Julius Oppenheimer in 1945 during the Manhattan Project and the creation of the first atomic bomb.  The people behind this project knew that the world would never be the same.  After a successful test of the bomb in New Mexico, President Eisenhower gave the go-ahead to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.  When Japan refused to surrender, we dropped another one, this time on Nagasaki.  People knew that the explosions were going to be massive, but they didn’t realize the extent of the damage that an atomic could have.  The size of the explosion wiped out both cities and killed hundreds of thousands of people.  But there was a side effect of the weapon that was not accounted for: Nuclear fallout.  Nobody survived the bomb within the blast radius, but the amount of radiation from the explosion was unexpected, and its effect on people was horrific.  A Cold War began in 1947 when the Soviet Union started developing their own nuclear weapons.  It was a massive game of chicken to see who blink first and fire the first shot.  In 1962, Moscow placed nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter the United States harassment of the country.  This was the closest we came to a full-on nuclear war.  It became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  There have been numerous films about the possibility of nuclear war.  It’s a topic that’s been used as a backdrop for multiple science fiction movies including Logan’s Run and Terminator.  But until 1983’s The Day After, there really hasn’t been a movie that actually depicted the aftermath and the horror of a nuclear war.

As the film opens, we see several Air Force officers talking amongst themselves about the state of things in Europe with Russia coming across as fairly aggressive.  The film cuts to Dr. Russell Oakes as he’s heading towards a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri when he starts hearing reports of Russian troops invading West Germany and the United States amping up for a full military conflict using nuclear weapons.  For a TV movie, the story isn’t half-bad.  It’s shown from multiple perspectives, including a family that’s hiding in the cellar as well as a soldier who takes off when the bombs start to fall.  It’s also very interesting, because we don’t see the war taking place, but we hear it from the radio and TVs as the characters do.  It’s effective, because that’s how we got our information at the time.  True, today we have the Internet, but we still rely on radio and TVs for information.  So, by hearing about the events going on in Europe we get to feel the desperation and fear of what could be coming next.  Because of the way the news is dispersed and that we don’t actually see the fighting, The Day After avoids taking sides.  This is 1983, we’re still in the Cold War at this point and tensions are still high.  The Day After is more of a cautionary tale and a warning about nuclear war and how catastrophic it could be.

The film gained a level of controversy because of how it portrayed the aftermath of a full-scale nuclear strike.  The attack itself is spectacular, but disturbing because not only do we have the big mushroom clouds, we see destruction on a massive scale, and we get to see people get vaporized by the blasts.  Combining special effects with actual declassified footage from nuclear tests, we see the destruction of a major US city.  The visual effects were spectacular for 1983.  In fact, The Day After won several awards including two Prime Time Emmies.  One of the main reasons why it was controversial was because the film was fairly graphic.  It’s a movie about the aftermath, so it stands to reason that you need to show what happens to people during nuclear fallout, and the make-up effects are fantastic and gruesome at the same time.  This was a movie made for TV, and it was not a pleasant experience to watch.  Over the course of the film, we get to see the effects that radiation has on people and animals, it’s not pleasant.  It wasn’t meant to be.  This was director Nicholas Meyer’s first foray into TV and his last.  Why?  He had issues with the studio who wanted to edit his movie all to hell and he wanted to keep certain things in that were very relevant.    Yeah, the film had issues during production, but the results speak for themselves.  Nearly 100 million Americans saw it when it was released.

For the most part, the acting is fantastic, with Jason Robards taking the lead as Dr. Russell Oakes.  He’s fantastic as a doctor who actually cares about his patients, but is willing to make sacrifices to save those that he can after the bombs fall.  The film utilized mostly unknowns at the time with the exception of Jason Robards.  Some of the unknowns were Steven Guttenberg and John Lithgow.  It’s fantastic seeing Guttenberg in a film that isn’t Police Academy for which he is known for.  If there’s a gripe that I have with the acting, is that Denise Dahlberg is extremely irritating.  The music is what you would expect for a TV movie during 1983, somewhat inappropriate, but not completely over-the-top.  The sound is fantastic, especially during the attack.  That’s one of the Emmies that The Day After won.

The Day After came out during a time when people were still freaked out about the possibility that Russia could launch a full nuclear strike against the United States, and vice versa.  This was before the Soviet Union collapsed so it was very scary idea.  People were afraid of something like this happening ever since we created the atomic bomb, and thankfully, nobody pushed the big red button.  I guess they didn’t want to find out what would happen.  The idea of a third World War was, and quite frankly, still is a real possibility.  But I don’t think nuclear weapons are going to be used, not to the degree that The Day After has shown, and nobody is certain if the damage will be as catastrophic.  The damage would be enormous, make no mistake about it.  But I think The Day After is an important film that realistically depicts how people would react to an event like that.  I haven’t seen a movie quite like this.  It’s bleak, it’s depressing but it does send an important message about the dangers of nuclear warfare.  The Day After is basically a feature-length Public Service Announcement with fantastic special effects.  I’m giving this one a 9/10.  It’s not for kids, really, but I think everybody should watch it at least once.