Rambo: The Video Game

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 Baya 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?

The Day After

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.

Extended Cuts and Director’s Cuts. Oh, My!

I was watching Stargate the other night.  Fantastic movie, you can read my review by clicking on the Reviews tab at the top of the page.  More specifically, I was watching the extended cut, which was about 9 minutes longer than the theatrical version.  It got me thinking:  Was it really necessary to have those scenes put back into the movie?  As usually happens when a question like that enters my head, I have to start thinking about all the other movies that have gotten the extended cut treatment.  They’re not always called that; sometimes it’s “Special Editions” or “Director’s Cuts.”  You also can’t forget about the “Unrated” cuts, either.  But that one is generally reserved for horror movies.  So, how does one define Director’s Cut or Special Edition.  Well, a film goes through a process called editing during post-production after filming is completed.  Editing is used to form a coherent film.  It’s like a puzzle of sorts, but during the process, certain bits and pieces of the film are deemed unnecessary or too long for a particular film.  As a result, said bits are left out of the film.  The average length of a film is about 2 hours, give or take a few minutes.  For a good long while, some of these extended “Director’s Cuts” were not meant for the public.  Usually, we got a shorter version of the film, because our attention span is typically non-existent.  I’m going to go into some detail into some of the movies that got an extended version released.

The past 40 years have seen movies getting re-edited and re-evaluated by the director, and we started getting these extended versions on home video.  Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is a prime example of a director who went back multiple times to try and get it right.  Blade Runner got 5 different releases, with The Final Cut being the last and probably best version of the bunch.  It’s usually not typical of a film studio to allow a director of a film to go back and “fix” issues with the film that he/she feels could have benefited the film more.  During the early 1990’s, we started seeing special extended cuts of movies being released.  The two big ones were James Cameron’s Aliens and Terminator 2.  Both films were made by the same director, but were published by two different companies.  Each extended version had 15 minutes of footage edited back into the film for home video release.  In Aliensone of the most interesting aspects about Ripley that was removed from the film for one reason or another, was the fact that she had a daughter.  Ripley spent 57 years in hypersleep after the events of the original Alien.  She’s informed by Burke, a company exec, that Ripley’s daughter, Amanda had died two years prior.  The reintroduction of that particular footage and information actually had an impact on some of the scenes that followed.  When Ripley and a group of marines head back to LV-426 to investigate the disappearance of the colonists, they discover a lone survivor in the form of a little girl.  During the course of the movie, Newt(the little girl)and Ripley start bonding and Ripley’s instincts as a mother come into play, and it’s really moving at times.  So, having that kind of context can actually improve a film.  Yeah, there were more action scenes and the use of robotic turrets that were really cool, but it was that deal with Ripley being a mother that made the character far more relatable.  Sometimes an underlying theme can help drive a film.

Terminator 2 had a scene that was truncated, but it was a very important aspect of the film.  The scene in question was after John Connor and the Terminator had rescued Sarah Connor from the T-1000 and were hiding out in a mechanic’s garage.  The scene was kind of a throwaway in how the Terminator learned about human behavior, but in the extended version of the film, we learn that Skynet presets the Terminator’s CPU to “read-only” when they’re sent out alone.  This scene is significant for several reasons.  One: It makes more sense for them to able to reset the switch so the Terminator can start evolving in a certain way.  Another is to allow John to showcase some of his leadership abilities.  He basically says that if his own mother won’t listen his ideas once in a while, how would you expect anyone else to?  So, afterwards, we start seeing the Terminator start learning about human behavior.  He even learns how to smile, and the bond that John and the Terminator form gets stronger.  The Terminator is still a machine at the end of the day, but because he learned about human behavior and what makes us tick, he begins to understand the value of human life.  As with AliensTerminator 2 also featured more action and more character development.  In the end, the extended versions of these films actually ended up being better than the theatrical version.  Thankfully, the theatrical versions of each film were really, really good, so the extended versions were a bonus.

There is the rare occasion where a director’s cut or extended cut will significantly alter a movie.  I’m not talking about just a few scenes here.  I’m talking entire plot points that were cut out of the theatrical release to get the run times down.  As a result, those films ended up not being as well received.  Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is a prime example.  50 minutes of footage was reintroduced several months after the film hit theaters.  There were two plot points involving Orlando Bloom’s character murdering his own brother and Eva Green’s character killing her own son because he was going to be a leper like his father.  These plots really changed the scope of the film.  It became a lot more personal and made a lot more narrative sense.  Fantastic movie, but a movie CAN hinge on how important a particular plot can be.  Alien 3 suffered from multiple problems:  The lack of an actual script, some questionable editing, and serious interference on Fox’s part.  The film that was released wasn’t that bad, but there were issues.  Some characters would show up, and then disappear without an explanation.  When the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set was released it contained two versions of each film.  The one that most people were anxious to see was the Assembly Cut for Alien 3.  Not only did the film run half-an-hour longer, it showed us a lot more of the prisoners and their environment.  Not only that, there was a scene where they attempted to capture the creature.  In the Assembly Cut, they succeeded, only to have it sabotaged by one of the survivors who went insane.  So, that answers TWO major questions.  Now, the Assembly Cut was still imperfect and wasn’t supervised by David Fincher, but he gave his approval for it, as it was closer to the film that he wanted released.  It was basically two different movies.

An extended cut can’t really save a bad movie, though.  Highlander 2 is probably the best example I can think of, where no matter how much effort you put into trying to fix the movie, the damage has already been done.  In Highlander 2, the explanation for Immortals was that they were aliens from the planet Zeist.  While the original film didn’t get the theatrical attention it deserved in the states, Highlander actually ended up being a cult classic, and one of the best action-adventure movies of the 80’s.  Here’s the problem, Highlander 2 was flawed way before it was released to theaters.  It went way over-budget, there were issues with special effects and some really flawed writing.  Russell Mulcahy recognized this fact and was allowed to go back and attempt to fix it.  This is one of those movies that got multiple releases on home video.  One of the more recent releases of the film, actually revamped many of the visual effects and gave the shield a blue hue instead of that red eye-sore.  They also cut out the whole Zeist angle, but the remnants of that were still left in the film.  They also got rid of some unnecessary action footage.  While the latest version of the film is a lot tighter in terms of editing and is still a lot of fun, it can’t hide the fact that Highlander 2 was a mess to begin with.  No amount of tampering is going to fix that.

Now, we come to UNRATED!  I’m rather bemused by these ones.  Sometimes a movie has to get a certain rating so it can go to theaters, which means that sometimes the material in a particular film can be too violent or too…..sexy.  This label is generally reserved for horror movies, because they are often gory and super-violent.  A horror film is sometimes edited for content to be sure, but there are cases where the amount of stuff they cut out is laughable and doesn’t really make a difference in the final product.  When you have movie that has UNRATED CUT or KILLER CUT in the title, I have to call absolute bullshit on.  The difference between the “UNRATED CUT” and the theatrical can be very minimal, and it strikes me as a complete waste of everybody’s time.  Sometimes the unrated cut has alternate footage, maybe a different or some additional violent footage or sex scenes.  Some of them can be pretty noticeable without making the film longer.

Now, do certain movies really need an extended version?  Not really.  I mentioned above that I had watched Stargate the other night, the extended version.  Why does that exist?  The film opens differently, yeah, but it’s a basically a longer version of the flashback in a later scene when they discuss Ra.  All the extra stuff in the extended of this movie serves no actual purpose.  In fact, it slows the film down.  Same deal with Independence Day, the extended version ran 8 minutes longer, yet it really didn’t need to.  Now, I’m sure they have a reason for putting those versions out there, but honestly, its’ superfluous at the end of the day.  When Peter Jackson released The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, he also gave us extended versions of those movies.  While the extended versions really weren’t necessary, it was actually really great to see more of Middle-Earth, and some of the stuff that was shown made sense.  But you didn’t really need them to get what was going on.  Those were worth buying.  The Hobbit?  I saw the extended edition of the first movie and it was weak.  It was seriously weak.  There was nothing substantial in those extra scenes.  I haven’t the extended version of the second movie, but I’m not entirely sure I’m going to.

Now we come to it at last.  The elephant in the room: Star Wars.  When the original Star Wars film came out in 1977 it was groundbreaking and record-breaking.  But somewhere along the way, George Lucas felt that the versions of the films that he released were…incomplete.  I understand that the technology at the time was limited for what he really wanted to do, but you know what?  He broke new ground in terms of visual effects and how to make movies.  He pioneered techniques that are still used by filmmakers today.  He didn’t seem to think that the visual effects in his movies weren’t good enough, so when CGI got to the point where it could be viable enough, George Lucas re-released the Original Trilogy back in 1997 with new special effects and additional footage including a new ending for Return of the Jedi.  Let’s just say that not everybody was happy with the results.  The CGI was….not that great, some of the additional scenes were unnecessary.  The first movie got most of the “enhancements.”  Honestly the only enhancement for the original movie that I actually approve of was the assault on the Death Star.  That was great.  But yeah, the scene with Jabba was pretty bad.  The Sarlacc in the third film gets a CGI beak and it was just not overly threatening.  I prefer the hole in the ground.  And that ending was….not surprisingly terrible.  Empire Strikes Back is the only one in the trilogy that actually reaped the benefits of the extra stuff.  For the most part, it was untouched.  We got a new approach to Cloud City, we got to see Vader leave the planet.  We also got to hear Luke scream when he was falling down the central shaft.  The initial DVD release didn’t actually make things a whole lot better.  Some of the CG got touched up, but(and most fans will tell you this)HAN SHOOTS FIRST!!!  Well, the second DVD release, we got the original pre-Special Edition trilogy on DVD as well, which was great.  But Lucas couldn’t leave well enough alone.  He just kept tinkering with his trilogy until the Blu-Ray was released.  That was also a mixed bag.  Thankfully, George Lucas sold off Star Wars, and his company to Disney.

So what are my final thoughts on extended editions?  As with all things, I take it on a case by case basis.  I look at what each edition has to offer and I judge accordingly.  Some extended editions are fantastic, yet others can’t save a bad movie.  Some are pointless while others add just a few things.  A good movie will stand on its own without the need for an extended cut.  Quentin Tarantino has not done anything like that with his movies, because the movies that are released are the versions that he intended for us to see.  At the end of the day, these are just movies, and this has been my observation on this particular topic, but I thought it was an interesting topic.  Any thoughts?  Preferably not spam.