Darksiders is a wave of nostalgia. It is playing A Link to the Past (1991) on a Super Nintendo console borrowed from a friend away for summer vacation. It is the limited edition comic book with holofoil cover that never existed; in the game are the characters that do battle on these imaginary pages. Darksiders is what happens when a comic book artist has something to say about a video game’s design. The art direction of Darksiders provides a solid foundation for this original setting, where a generous layer of grunge and oversized pauldrons was applied to a formula so revered by video game culture it has become all but untouchable. This aesthetic becomes one of the strongest points of Darksiders, as it is so convincing that the flagrant plagiarism happening underneath can be overlooked. This is not mere homage; the team at Vigil Games has created a video game. The intent of the game’s design is clear from the beginning, and like the adventure it contains, does not deviate from this prescribed pathway. Darksiders has scope and it has goals, but it does not over-reach. The mechanics are inviting and do not ask for anything but the player’s attention. Darksiders demands to be played.

Darksiders has been criticized mainly for its lack of originality; it seems pointing out an obvious trait of video games in general is cause enough for dismissal. The negative commentary claims everything Darksiders has to offer has been done previously – and better – elsewhere. The most popular example being the one-button finishing moves and gratuitous vivisections of the God of War series. However, when playing Darksiders there should really be only one series of video games that comes to mind: The Legend of Zelda. And this should come as no surprise, as it was always the intent of Darksiders Creative Director and comic book artist Joe Madureira¹. Typical for the reception of such an endeavor, Darksiders was the victim of offhanded associations from people who didn’t play the game, or worse – they weren’t paying attention while they played it².

The individuals that purport to dictate taste through these indolent opinions are propagating a disease within video game culture, one that results in some offensive double-speak regarding the advancement and future of the industry. They want innovation, but they don’t want anything too different. They complain about formulas and sequels, yet express deep reverence for a character or game design as old as video games. No one can do platforming like Mario, or solve puzzles like Link in The Legend of Zelda. These memories are untouchable, and the games that inspired them incorruptible³. By adopting this philosophy, the people who play these games with veneration overflowing in their hearts are limiting themselves to the regurgitations of the same formula, made by the same people, to the hollow ringing of cash registers. And in spite of it all, there is never a shortage of criticism when the big studios keep producing these duplicates. This feedback loop is the unfortunate ecosystem of the video game industry.

For the first half of Darksiders, the plagiarism is so obvious that it becomes a running gag as to see which tool will be received in each dungeon. One dungeon had hard to reach switches, which were obvious call signs for a boomerang. Only in Darksiders it’s called a “Crossblade.” The hook shot? It’s been suitably grittied up as the “Abyssal Chain.” Despite this overt imitation, these items were still fashioned to reflect the world of Darksiders. It also calls into question the Zelda series itself: aren’t the recent installments of the series essentially a facsimile of every Zelda game ever made? What Darksiders has going for it is that it isn’t a Zelda game. The genre bullshit can be cast aside because there is no genre – Darksiders is copying a game that has been in a genre of its own since its creation. Darksiders works because it is similarly consistent in its approach. It applies a formula that is obvious from the start and sticks with it for the entirety of the game. As a result there are no surprises, and the disappointments are only from attempting to assign attributes to the game it was never meant to have.

Darksiders begins in some generic North American city in the midst of what is clearly the Apocalypse. The player receives control of War, who arrives with all the bombast expected from one of the mythical Four Horsemen: by emerging from a meteor that had just destroyed a building. Like many recent video games it uses the familiar method of getting a player interested by providing an overpowered character at the start and then thrusting them into the chaos. None of the immediate threats pose any challenge. The player is expected to learn the controls, and to see the endpoint for their avatar in action. Kill, destroy, and ravage as War is attacked by the forces of Heaven and Hell alike. However, the other three Horsemen are missing. Something is wrong. At the end of the starting area there is a fight with the archdemon Straga that there is no hope of winning. War is cast down into some kind of molten limbo, where judgement is passed by the Charred Council. They deem that War’s solo trip to Earth is the cause behind the destruction of Humanity.

From the beginning of Darksiders, the player is encroaching on someone else’s plan. After wrongful accusations about being the catalyst for Armageddon, War must make things right. And nobody wants him to do that, either. They’d rather this wayward Horseman just languish in Hell for eternity with the demons that are allegedly his allies (thus, Darksiders). This is a mission to regain War’s honor and restore balance to the Universe. There are no allies in Darksiders; every one of the allegiances that is formed has its price. Even after the Charred Council permits War to walk the Earth again, they send The Watcher along for the trip to keep War under control. The Watcher is never slow to criticize the player’s actions, yet still manages to act like Link’s fairy companion in Ocarina of Time (1998).

Darksiders is assuredly a revenge story. It will feel familiar to anyone who plays video games. Contrary to the populist sentiments directed towards Darksiders, revenge stories are not new or unique to any particular video game series. In fact, they make the best kind of motivation for the action in video games. It is easy for anyone to grasp. The player doesn’t have to think about anything other than satisfying this basic need, which often involves killing indiscriminately. Darksiders ensures there is ample opportunity for the player to do exactly that.

In stark contrast to the game’s chaotic introduction, the adventure begins at a leisurely pace as War returns to a vastly different Earth. The burnt out and blackened cityscapes are realized like a comic book that isn’t shy about using color to illustrate the desolation. I’d compare the philosophy behind the use of color to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003), where a sinister atmosphere can still be conveyed without sacrificing detail or a varied palette for the sake of general dirtiness and a main character drowning in angst. The jagged structures and exaggerated monster design show a consistency of vision employed in each of the game’s environments, and their appeal endures for the course of the game. Even the cutscenes are framed like comic book panels that are only missing the speech bubbles. It captures the spirit of comics that were more interested in showing their readers something that was “cool” to look at – whether it was gratuitous violence or neverending capes – instead of a story worth following. Anyone who read Image Comics in the 1990s will recognize that the world of Darksiders fits comfortably within that period⁴.

To name War’s sword “Chaoseater” was a dangerous gamble. It would either seem unoriginal and juvenile, or it would tap into the collective subconscious of players who grew up on comic books with similarly ridiculous heroes, evoking a singular reaction: “fucking awesome.” Not only does the name awaken the awkward pre-teen that used to beg for money from their parents to spend at the comic shop, it is pretty much the final word on confrontation in this game. It is a sword that eats chaos, the most uncontrollable thing in the Universe. Its thirst for destruction is insatiable. Chaoseater is an artifact bred from the comic book mentality: physically impossible yet invigorating to possess. There is an inertia behind this sword, and you cannot help but succumb to its pull. When you decapitate some beastly demon, you feel it. It is an unstoppable force. Like War.

Combat is straightforward and unassuming. There is usually only one button to press. Press it a few times, lock on with the Left Trigger, and suddenly War is juggling demons like Dante in Devil May Cry. There are hit counters as well, but this is just a number on the screen. Nobody’s watching.

For the most part, War’s multitude of weapon upgrades and special moves are for the player’s entertainment alone. With the exception of the end of dungeon bosses, the player could hammer the main “Attack” button for the entire game and still succeed as in Fable II (2008). Though Darksiders loses a good portion of its appeal with this approach, because Fable II had all that other stuff like property buying and getting married and avatars growing horns out of their head.

The accessible combat system creates a smoothness that resembles Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009). While swinging Chaoseater, War can be directed to his next target to build up a chain of hits. At the end of the skirmish, a group of stunned monsters are left begging to be put down. Pressing “B” will execute a finishing move that differs for each type of enemy, dialing up the theatrics but providing no other benefit. It doesn’t make it any less satisfying, though.

The flourishes of combat in Darksiders are meant to fill in the gaps of the overarching adventure. The Zelda series has always been about adventure through exploration, and combat was an obstruction on the path towards the ultimate goal. Darksiders has a more developed combat system in comparison: it allows the player to relish the details. It is satisfying without being punishing, and there are enough combinations and special attacks that keep it consistently engaging. It allows experimentation because it allows preparation. It is not about reflexes.

As a result, combat is slow relative to other third-person action games, and easy to get a grip on without ever feeling overwhelmed by the adversaries that are presented. Darksiders revels in the little things: the basic, but satisfying finishing moves, watching War’s horse Ruin erupt in flame out of the ground beneath his feet, running through a desert on horseback while being chased by a giant worm – these displays are all unmistakably inspired by those two-page spreads of a favorite comic book hero performing some inhuman feat.

Too weak to take on Heaven and Hell’s armies, War must develop his powers. This is achieved primarily through wandering around and killing things. With each kill, an assortment of souls are dropped: regular souls (for currency), Life, and Wrath (mana). War will gain passive and active powers by completing quests and dungeons or by purchasing them from Vulgrim, the demonic vendor that always seems to be in the right place at the right time. This should all sound very, very familiar.

With the arrangement and distribution of War’s catalogue of abilities, Darksiders also makes a point of ensuring that increases in power are granted to the player in controlled bursts. There is also an excellent tedious-repetition-to-reward ratio. With this constantly in the mind of the player, there is never a time where total mastery over the game’s challenge structure is felt. The player must still work for their rewards.

Chaos Form, which is an ability introduced about half way through the game, allows War to change into a fiery demon, providing a brief period of invincibility and higher damage output. The only way to recharge this power is to build up Rage through attacking more enemies. The game provides no ability to increase the size of the Rage meter, and the slower recharge rate ensures that the ability is used sparingly. There are also areas where heavy weapons are available on a per-encounter basis: a high-powered plasma rifle dropped by heavily armoured Angels, or an exploding spear gun dropped by Demons. These weapons are meant to deal with large crowds quickly with their fast rate of fire and damage output. However, both weapons severely limit mobility, and are further examples of power being suppressed in this game. This cautious release of offensive weapons and abilities provides a great contrast with Prototype (2009), which gives away too much, too fast to the player so that the system of challenges beings to break down almost immediately⁵.

The Mask of Shadows is an item given to War during the buildup to the final battle with The Destroyer. Its function is to show objects in the Shadow world that would otherwise be invisible in the Real world. Its sole purpose is to find pieces of the Armageddon Blade, the only weapon that can be used against the Destroyer.The Mask of Shadows could have been the equivalent of the Magic Mirror in A Link to the Past. Had this item been given to War earlier, it could have effectively doubled the size of the game world in Darksiders: opportunities for more puzzles, more treasure hunting, more mobs to fight. However, this becomes a question of balance with the main story. How would this expanded world have been worked into War’s quest? Instead of a game world that could unravel into repetitive quests and unnecessary backtracking, the exploration is kept restrained and manageable. The final goal always remains visible so that the player remains focused.

As enjoyable as the weapons available in the game are, there are two key weak points in War’s arsenal: the Tremor Gauntlet and Ruin, War’s horse. The Tremor Gauntlet is actually an upgrade of War’s existing gauntlet, which already allows War to run along ledges as in Prince of Persia (2008)⁶. The gauntlet alone was fine, as eventually no jumping puzzle in Darksiders felt complete without a few sections of cliff or ledges to scale. The mistake lies in making the Tremor Gauntlet a weapon – it was one weapon too many. Chaoseater is undeniably the best weapon in the game, and perfectly suited for the primary attack. The Scythe can be purchased as an alternate attack, though its use is mainly for crowd control and fast distance attacks. The Tremor Gauntlet is completely ineffective in combat; the other two weapons completely outclass it for every combat situation. The Tremor Gauntlet is granted because it is the only item that can break passages blocked by ice, and in that regard is no more useful than the Crossblade or Abyssal Chain in combat. Instead of making the Tremor Gauntlet a levelable weapon alongside Chaoseater and the Scythe, why not spend the effort developing more attacks for Chaoseater? A resourceful player is able to max out the Chaoseater’s abilities fairly easily. In this case, it would have been more beneficial to add more powers to War’s two main weapons, instead of trying to come up with completely new ones for the Tremor Gauntlet that will go unused.

Not surprisingly, the biggest mistake made was relegating Ruin to a “power” that is obtained about half way through the game. The numerous Zelda comparisons in the video game press weren’t without their references to Epona, but the relationship between War and Ruin is one established purely on functionality. And it’s a frustrating one, because Ruin is on the fucking box. Starting Darksiders you’d almost expect to be reunited with such a beast early on in the game – it’s preposterous that a Horseman of the Apocalypse has to earn his horse. This is explained through the story, however, as Ruin was captured and broken by the Demon hordes in your hundred-year absence. When the reunion finally does happen, it is glorious: On horseback, War’s attacks are much more devastating as large, gory swaths are through demon mobs. For a brief moment you feel like the Apocalypse ride again. But these moments are painfully fleeting. Instead, there are just a few select areas where Ruin can be used as transportation, or as a solution to an invisible bridge puzzle.

While most of War’s weapons and powers have obvious analogues in the Zelda series, they nevertheless feel like they belong in the world of Darksiders. Yes, there are puzzle contrivances, but what kind of Zelda imitator would this be without them? Following through with this line of thinking will result in some very disturbing questions: just what is a Horseman of the Apocalypse doing all this stuff for, anyway? Jumping around and pushing blocks? Hunting for Keys? Swimming? Reasoning with angels and demons? There is but one task for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse: to act as harbingers of the Final Judgement. Except that this is a video game. Asking serious questions about such a manufactured fantasy setting makes about as much sense as trying to reconstruct Todd McFarlane’s backstory for Spawn. There comes a time where you have to let go and allow this outlandish video game to run its course. And in Darksiders this is during the encounter with the Jailer, a sub-boss of the first dungeon. A bulbous, throbbing monster with glowing pustules that would make fine targets for the recently obtained Crossblade. It is exactly here that the player sees the limits of this video game’s ambitions. With a game this honest and forthcoming about its intentions, it is hard to fault Darksiders for reinforcing the limits that have been set for it. The best part of familiarity is how it can be so inviting.

To call the world of Darksiders “open” would be grossly inaccurate, but still an unfortunate byproduct of modern video game marketing. Any game released in recent years must proclaim its openness and freedom for serious consideration by the masses, because that’s what video games should aspire to be. In truth, Darksiders is open like the Zelda games are open. That is, there is a hub world with fixed limits that contains a mix of open areas and dungeons interspersed in the Apocalyptic wastage, and with the acquisition of equipment or powers access is gained to previously blocked and hidden areas. Darksiders encourages exploration once War starts to gain back his equipment and abilities, but this exploration is far from being formless. The player was placed on a path at the beginning of the game and they must follow it in that order if they hope to accomplish anything.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a modern video game without some form of fast travel, despite the world being set within obvious limits. Instead of providing Ruin from the start, the game introduces Serpent Holes to travel between areas. These aren’t simply waypoints, though, as control of War is still maintained as he travels through an ethereal realm to get to the opposite end, representing the destination in the physical world.

The problem with the Serpent Holes is that they are necessary. In Diablo II, where waypoints are almost like progress save points, they are there as a safety net should the player die and want to retrieve their corpse in a reasonable amount of time. If the player chose to, they could fight their way from the base camp out to the corpse and collect experience points on the way – it was entirely up to the player. In Darksiders, because the monsters and wandering enemies are sparse it’s simply not that rewarding to run between the game’s main areas like that. Yes, the monsters all respawn randomly – and there are certainly some areas that provide excellent “grinding” locations to harvest souls – but because these are relatively isolated, just wandering around to try and have fun with the combat system tends to be harder than it should.

Indeed, Darksiders genuinely creates a feeling of wanderlust. In that sense, Darksiders is more like the recent portable Castlevania titles in the way its effortless blend of combat and exploration always yields some trivial reward: experience to upgrade weapon damage, money (souls), Life shards or Wrath shards to upgrade the associated gauges. Exploration will also reveal artifacts that can be traded to Vulgrim for souls. There just isn’t enough of this meandering. In Metroid or Castlevania, once a new ability is gained there is an immediate desire to try it out and to see what is newly accessible. The game’s designers have done their best to establish that careful balance between the linear progression of the main quest, and modest exploration. As much as the Darksiders world demands to be expanded, the limits only serve to maintain perspective for the ultimate objective. Any openness perceived inside the game world is never overwhelming; this is an adventure where the end was always intended to be in sight.

The game’s difficulty begins to increase when you are first presented with “challenge rooms”, which are areas that are blocked off until you defeat everything in them. This should be familiar to players of the Zelda series, Devil May Cry, God of War and the recent Bayonetta. These challenges start on the approach to the Twilight Cathedral, the first dungeon. The previously lazy and loose combat suddenly becomes important to think about, though the only skill required is an attention span. The monster patterns are recognizable. Attacks are blockable. There is War’s growing repertoire of powers that only get stronger. These are areas that have been constructed to provide legitimate challenge and encourage active participation in combat. It is Zelda if Shigeru Miyamoto was a mean-spirited bastard. The difficulty is not punishing, but it is nonetheless present in the tasks it lays in front of the player. It is a warning that this will be no light-hearted affair.

Nevertheless, criticism has been directed at the unassuming level of difficulty in Darksiders, but these assertions are hastily made. Part of the reason the difficulty of Darksiders is dismissed is that it can be inconsistent. The Twilight Cathedral⁷ is the most enjoyable dungeon in the game for its carefully distributed challenges, monster encounters, and final fight with Tiamat, the end boss. It is also the hardest, as the final encounter with Tiamat sets the bar so high the remaining bosses – even the Destroyer himself – are pushovers by comparison because of the special abilities and weapons that have been collected to that point. Even though the guiding hand of the designers is present through the game’s proceedings, constantly establishing limits, the balance of difficulty is not transparent. These easily perceptible missteps cast doubt on the entire affair for any player that’s looking for a reason to dislike the game.

Entering the first dungeon clearly illustrates the intentions for the rest of the game, even though it doesn’t always follow through on this promise. The Twilight Cathedral is where most of my deaths in the entire game occurred. The use of the Crossblade in the first part of the fight with Tiamat assures many frustrating false starts before the pattern is learned and controls are mastered. The second part of the fight requires use of dodge and timing War’s stronger attacks with Chaoseater while he is weakened. And since it is early on in the game, War’s health bar is no buffer against the onslaught. Victory in this battle is one of those rare feelings you get with a video game; it doesn’t make you want to put down the controller, even with the ridiculous punishment that was just experienced. It makes you want to take on the rest of this post-Apocalyptic wasteland, and the armies of Heaven and Hell that struggle for control of it. Even though the remaining dungeons don’t match up to this first encounter, they still feel substantial and satisfying. They are exactly as long as they need to be, and are a fair balance between puzzles and combat.

Every boss fight seems to end with a video showing some exaggerated killing blow from War, like ripping the wings off of a dragon or gutting a sandworm like a fish. These theatrics should be familiar to players of Devil May Cry and God of War. While satisfying to watch (typical complaints about lack of interactivity at these points aside, of course), this disconnect is even more pronounced in Darksiders, because the combat is already streamlined in comparison to these two games. Despite their dramatic nature, the actions shown in these cutscenes always had nothing to do with the activities War had to perform moments earlier to weaken the boss. To require a player to execute some relatively menial task when an especially extravagant move lies in wait just to be shown in a closing video is a little insulting. Darksiders should have a little more faith in the Player. A game like Devil May Cry 4 gets away with this because the attack patterns are not prescribed based on the weapons that happen to be featured in a particular dungeon. The rest of Devil May Cry 4 is mostly a movie anyway – placed back-to-back, the cutscenes would make one of the greatest action films of all time. Darksiders allows uninterrupted control during its boss fights, and then suddenly rips it away at the end, leaving a massive void between the player and their investment in the game’s action during these pivotal moments. After Tiamat, bosses are mere puzzles to be solved – just like Zelda.

Any goodwill generated for the game up until the last dungeon is almost completely lost, however, as the player is subjected to the self-awareness of the designers. The Black Throne is what happens when a development team thinks their game is too short. It is a dungeon divided into three parts, representing three bonds that imprison Azrael, an Angel that has decided to help War find the true cause of the Apocalypse. This dungeon is a crippling change of pace, as it includes an overabundance of puzzles involving the Voidwalker. The Voidwalker is a portal gun obtained in this dungeon that can only be used on designated portal tiles. The locations of these tiles are found throughout the dungeon, but the accompanying puzzles are nowhere near the complexity of the game that obviously influenced this mechanic. And while the puzzles are not hard to solve, limitations on camera movement and viewing angle make these sequences unnecessarily challenging. These puzzles are broken up by fighting the same boss three times, and a particularly tough challenge room where the player is suddenly faced with managing health versus ridiculous escalations in enemy toughness. It is painful design trope used to stall out the end of the game, and disrupts the balance in encounters that had been carefully maintained until then.

After conquering the Black Throne and obtaining the Mask of Shadows, War must search out the hidden shards of the Armageddon Blade. Like Zelda and Metroid, the player is required to backtrack through the entire game world looking for things that were always there, just inaccessible. And while this sequence could easily have bordered on tedious backtracking⁸ and brought more attention to a world that has been carefully constructed to limit excessive exploration, instead it gets right to the point. The locations of these shards are obvious, and if the player has paid attention during the brief bouts of exploration prior to this mission, they should already know where they are. This part of the game is also an opportunity to collect the remainder of the Abyssal Armour set with War’s full compliment of abilities. It is the montage before the final battle; these were preparations for the climactic confrontation with the Destroyer. And the fight is on horseback, as it should be.

Upon victory, Darksiders is fully primed for a sequel in an expected, but nonetheless exciting reveal. It does not feel cheap or gratuitous. Instead, it instills a feeling of hopefulness. Darksiders is not a perfect game – as it has been mentioned here the shortcomings are obvious to anyone who is looking for them. Nevertheless, Darksiders succeeds in adapting a venerated formula to introduce a new world to anyone who is willing to take the time to play inside of it. It ensures the Player is invested in its lore, as adolescent as it may be, so that they are committed to playing a sequel. The ending is Joe Madureira and Vigil Games saying: “See you next month.”

Examining Darksiders strictly from a mechanical perspective would reveal a design that is copying a familiar formula while referencing recent successes in the third-person action genre to make itself relevant for modern audiences. It is uncanny in its implementation of The Legend of Zelda formula, and yet it is incredibly satisfying to be able to play what amounts to a missing Zelda game without the actual Zelda aesthetic, characters, and well-worn concepts. Darksiders does not pander to an aging audience like Ghostbusters: The Video Game⁹. Darksiders is preserving old designs, not copying them. Novels and film borrow liberally from each other all the time. If done right, no one argues the lack of inventiveness in these media or its modernization of archetypal themes and stories to reach new audiences. So why must video games be held to an impossible standard of originality, just because they are relatively new to these forms of creative expression? And with video game enthusiasts clumsily trying to compare video games to these cultural mainstays for indications of their worth, one would think that Darksiders is easily forgiven its brazen plagiarism. Equating quality with originality is a dangerous assertion to make about video games.

With Darksiders, Vigil Games has taken something familiar from the collective consciousness of video games and created more than an homage: they have made a video game that is entirely captivating on its own to play. It is easy to submit to the unique aesthetic and cohesive presentation of the game world, its vibrant characters, the satisfying swordplay, and modest exploration. It ensures the player remains inside the game, while keeping the occasionally awkward storytelling out of the way. Darksiders is not always easy, but the game is never antagonistic. The guiding hand of the designers is always present, ensuring the player is rewarded suitably for the adversities they encounter. It is an adventure that has been carefully manufactured, its restraint in scope allowing players to fully experience the setting with mechanics that are already comfortable. Darksiders is a video game that understands its place, and does not attempt to rise above its station as genuine imitator. Darksiders lays out its aspirations in full view at the beginning of the game, so that disappointment only comes from assigning attributes the game was never meant to have. Darksiders is a celebration of its uniquely realized setting, and it is up to the player to put aside any pretenses saved for obvious exploitations of video game history. And when they do, they will not play an homage. They will play a video game.

Prototype is excess. It is what happens when game designers grow up with American comic books post-comics code and the type of Japanese animation that is more interested in overblown displays of power than telling a story. It is a game with rules that are designed to be broken at every turn. The player is rewarded for brazen and barbaric tactics. In Prototype, there are too many abilities and limitless power, yet no loyalty to an ideal. Like X-Men‘s Dark Phoenix, Alex Mercer is granted godlike status with no one to stand in his way. The game revels in bloodshed and in selfish pursuits that amount to little more than breadcrumbs on the trail of some government conspiracy. Prototype is advertised as a “superhero” video game. But Alex Mercer is no hero. He isn’t even an anti-hero. He is a plague on humanity. And at the end of it all, after everything he has wreaked upon the city of New York, this descriptor proves to be the most accurate.

After a few hours of play, Prototype will come across as a patchwork of unfinished concepts. On the one hand, it offers up such a varied selection of powers and skills that it will suit any playing style, and in theory adds levels of complexity to completing the tasks that are presented to the player. Yet on the other, Prototype provides two completely overpowered vehicles that will get any job done a lot faster, without the strategic use of Alex’s talents. This is a game that needs rules put in place. While I wanted to figure out other ways to approach Prototype‘s challenges, the winning strategy was to cause enough havoc to summon a strike team, and then steal their vehicles. Aside from some fairly engaging boss battles where vehicles were not options, the challenge in Prototype is the player’s own restraint.

Prototype suffers the fate of similarly themed films that are released in the theatres at the same time. The Playstation 3 exclusive InFamous covers the familiar “regular person becomes super-powered entity” theme as well, and the games were often compared to each other in the video game media circuit. This comparison was unfair, because aside from that one superficial quality they are completely different games. The most important difference being that InFamous approaches the situation with a morality angle – about as complicated as the one in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast – but still, it’s something to shape the behavior of most players.

The most logical comparison to Prototype is actually UbiSoft’s Assassin’s Creed. They are free-roaming games set inside the walls of a city, with optional objectives scattered about that can be completed in between the story-driven missions. The movement options are equally flexible, yet more amplified in Prototype – but then you’re supposed to be a superhuman. Subterfuge also plays a large role, in that your identity must be kept secret under most circumstances and to infiltrate some objectives. Of course, once you’re spotted you may as well prepare to kill everything in sight in Prototype. In Assassin’s Creed, especially near the end of the game, this kind of carelessness results in a quick death, as you are pursued by what seems like the entire city.

Prototype suffers as a concept because it is an old game. The appearance I can live with; despite the bland textures, monotonous architecture and aging graphics engine it’s not completely horrible to look at. Where Prototype shows its age is the underlying design. It could have worked five years ago when the “open world” trend was still being explored in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III‘s success. However this is 2009, and people have come to expect certain things from their “sandbox” games. Prototype smacks of a developer that is still playing catch-up to the design philosophy that lets players create their own experiences. Instead, they hope that all the stuff they included in the game – the variety of powers, the gratuitous violence, the numerous missions – will distract from the design of a developer that is still experimenting with the concept instead of refining it based on the games that have preceded it.

Yet there is something strangely fascinating about Prototype‘s ability to exaggerate everything. Whether it’s jumping 30 feet into the air from a standstill and landing in a crater, running from sidewalks up the sides of the world’s tallest buildings, or bringing down helicopters with a giant tendril, Radical Entertainment are constantly referencing the superhero as interpreted by an adolescent male. He’s full of angst, he has limitless power, and he is here to fuck shit up. The driver behind the whole story – discovering who was responsible for Alex’s condition – constantly asserts his hatred of authoritative figures and the selfish desires to find out what happened, no matter what the cost in human lives. Even Alex’s appearance – a fashionable leather racing jacket with hoodie that’s always up over his head – just externalizes the immaturity of the character¹.

In any game with an “open world”², the narrative will always suffer. So the game includes missions that must be completed to further the plot, unlock new areas or powers, or because the developers think this is A Good Idea. What Prototype does well is make these story based missions as clean and concise as any of the side missions, where parts of the “Web of Intrigue” are revealed through short movies. The Web of Intrigue consists of memories absorbed from the many civilian and military characters inhabiting the city. The similarities to the Weapon X project were startling – right down to the grainy footage that was used effectively in the X-Men films to depict pieces of Wolverine’s past. Some of the side missions require you to obtain these memories, while others can be gathered from people you find wandering the streets. None of them are truly disposable, as they all provide a small piece to support the story being told by the main mission. The fact that they are incomplete and so short allows them to be found at any time without sacrificing the narrative. However, the story consistently appears to be penned by an angst-addled teenager, making some of the events that transpire a little tough to accept without rolling your eyes. Alex’s need for information is one of the central themes in Prototype, but you’d never know it with the game’s unwavering focus on the violence that must always transpire.

Despite the game’s perceived openness, the actual execution of these side missions is immersion breaking. For example, if you are tasked with killing a certain number of soldiers within a given time limit, they will descend on your location once you get to the mission area. However, whether you succeed or fail in this mission, the military will suddenly disperse and it will be as if nothing ever happened. There is no high alert; the military aren’t even aware of your presence unless you break your disguise.

Where this system really breaks down is how the rewards are structured for completing the missions. Even though I enjoyed running around New York causing mayhem with no repercussions during the side missions, the experience points received don’t come close to the rewards for completing the story missions. So unless you just want practice with Alex’s various powers or are a completionist and want to obtain all parts of the Web of Intrigue, halfway through the game when Alex is loaded out with most of his special abilities there is no reason to pursue them any longer. It’s not like you’re saving people and there is some intangible reward for completing a mission because it was the right thing to do.³

Though I have to give Radical some credit, because they tried their hardest to keep the story out of the way of the player’s experimentation with the game’s environment and Alex’s powers. Because there are so many things that Alex can do, it’s as if they expect players to occupy themselves through mass killing and exaggerated acrobatics from the tops of skyscrapers. This can be broken up by few timed missions where you have to race across the city, or glide from the tops of the building to hit a target. These non-destructive missions can be pretty fun. But their marginal nature ensures the player knows that’s not what this game is about.

At the beginning of Prototype, the player is given a bit of background before being placed into what resembles The End of Days. Buildings throb with corruption, smoke fills the air, bodies and rubble line the streets. Around you, the people left standing shamble around like zombies and the remaining military garrison level entire city blocks to stem the tide of a viral outbreak. Alex has every ability in the game at this point, and you are given no other objective except to defend yourself in the chaos. Claws come out, and slaughter ensues in a shower of blood and severed limbs. Earthquakes erupt at your feet as you pound the ground with oversized fists. This is a glimpse of the future, as the remainder of the game will be told as a flashback. It’s another take on the Metroid or Castlevania approach where a fully equipped avatar is given to the player right away to hold their attention and instill a singular purpose: become this character.

At every turn, Prototype wants to convey this limitless power through Alex. He can smash tanks with his mutating fists and leap from building to building without even having to fly. And yet Radical Entertainment felt the need to give Alex such a prodigious list of abilities, that some even cancel each other out. Why would you worry about levelling your bare fistfighting skills, when you have the Hammerfist that can level people and vehicles alike? You can glide, but once you’ve maxed out the jumping and Air Dash abilities there’s really no need for gliding to quickly get across the rooftops of the city.

Aside from vague references to Alex’s condition being the reason for his powers, there isn’t any explanation given as to why he is able to do these things. How does Alex’s condition fit into gliding, the whipfist, or his ability to conjure spikes from the ground? It seems that the expectation of the designers is that you’ll want to play with this character simply because there are so many things that he can do.

Then there is the disturbing ability for Alex to absorb any human – whether infected or not – into his body. The “Consume” power adds health to Alex and gives him the appearance of what he absorbed, and the entire City’s population becomes a bottomless well of health regeneration. As if killing people indiscriminately wasn’t enough, innocent bystanders are a resource to be abused by the player in their pursuit of more death and destruction.

Prototype exhibits a total lack of regard for human life in almost all aspects of play. However, the most fascinating aspects of the game were the stealth and subterfuge elements that were inserted as if to counter the constant aggression from the player towards the game. Since Alex is a wanted man, it is essential that his powers aren’t used in the open, civilians aren’t killed in view of the military or the military be engaged directly. Disguises are easily obtained by Consuming any NPC in the game. A lot can be accomplished in disguise: whether it’s infiltrating a military outpost, hijacking a tank, or just trying to blend into a crowd after being noticed. Gaining the “Patsy” ability later on is ingenious: instead of just keeping your identity secret, you can actively call out civilians or soldiers as “The Enemy” for a quick distraction. As you can imagine it doesn’t end well for them.

The implementation of the Disguise system is impressive; you can disappear almost instantaneously as long as you can find a covered location to hide and change your appearance. In fact, evasion itself becomes a game once a strike team is alerted to your location. When Alex is fully equipped, running away from a strike team over skyscrapers, diving into alleyways and grabbing civilians to change your appearance can be extremely gratifying, and resembles the many escape sequences from Assassin’s Creed. And yet the game doesn’t really encourage this resolution because you are rewarded more experience points for killing the strike team rather than avoiding them. It’s this straightforward approach to conflict that begins Prototype‘s collapse under its unusual need to constantly parade every method of destruction imaginable in front of the player.

With all the planning that went into Alex’s multitude of abilities, Radical still felt the need to include controllable vehicles in the form of tanks and helicopters. This was a grievous miscalculation on the part of the designers, as it undercuts one of the game’s key themes: providing ultimate power through Alex himself. Vehicles detach players from this philosophy as they impart the easiest way to complete any mission. Start killing people to attract the attention of the military who will summon a Strike Team, steal their vehicles, and total annihilation of the opposition isn’t far behind. Near the end of the game when the missions become tougher as most of the city is infected and your identity is harder to disguise, it becomes second nature to run to the nearest tank and start plowing through the crowd. Prototype is no longer a superhero game; it is Grand Theft Auto with tanks.

Even the story missions don’t pressure you to use your powers. While some may force you to purchase an ability to proceed, you don’t actually need it; it’s just a way for the designers to help unskilled players make the mission more manageable. It’s not like there is a roadblock preventing you from physically proceeding, like in a Metroid or Castlevania adventure. There are no rules in how to advance Alex’s abilities; the open character development system allows players to purchase any of the abilities as they become available through the course of the game. But because there are so many, and they are all but overridden by vehicles, what is the incentive for players to spend any time developing the ideal character build? Aside from additional health points and the vehicle piloting skills, there’s really no need to focus any attention on the other skills except to get past the story missions that require them as prerequisites. Alex can do some amazing things, and the idea of perfecting combinations and devastator attacks is certainly appealing. But when there is a skeleton key for every single objective in the game, the player’s experience is short circuited by making the easy route so accessible.

Radical Entertainment wanted to convey power; they wanted to show Alex as an elemental instrument of destruction. Regardless of the loose connections to a story that reveals his origins, he has no allegiance to a cause. He will kill and maim and destroy until he finds what he is looking for. About halfway through Prototype, I started to question the game’s motives and messages. Between all of the carnage and explosions and chaos, is there a message? Or is Prototype exactly what it seems: a playground of death and destruction, even worse than the criminal fantasies of the Grand Theft Auto series?

When I’m running through the streets of New York, I can kill whoever I want, whether for sport or to Consume them for health. I might attract the attention of the military; perhaps even cause them to chase after me. But if a strike team arrives, there is no risk of me being captured. There are two outcomes: either I die fighting, or I kill the entire strike team leaving countless victims behind (innocent and military alike) and receive an experience point award for this result. It’s not like being chased by escalating police forces in Grand Theft Auto; in those games, there is more of a chance of me dying. The only real solution to avoid the wrath of police pursuit is escape. In Prototype, I am granted the powers to overcome an entire army. There is no risk of failure, only inconvenience.

Prototype gives no constraints to the player, and no moral compass to let the player know where they stand in the game world. There are no penalties for killing innocents or the military aside from attracting attention; instead, you are rewarded for killing people indiscriminately with health or experience points. Alex’s motives are selfish, and everything in his way is expendable in the search for the reasons behind his condition. It’s a teenage power fantasy horribly unbalanced in favor of the player, where great power comes with no responsibility. Prototype is a game desperate for limits and rules; we have already advanced past the playground stage in open world games. Prototype only serves as another example to illustrate how much the lauded “freedom” aspect of sandbox games are taking on negative connotations.

Upon inspection, Alex Mercer has no personality, either. He is rage, he is angst, he is a plague personified. He is actually one of the most reprehensible characters I’ve ever played in a video game. Nevertheless, Prototype tries its hardest to ground him in humanity by including a sister that is the catalyst for most of the main missions, even one that requires him to save her. Except Alex is all but invincible; there is no danger in any of his pursuits. How can we possibly sympathize with this character! It’s an aborted attempt at adding depth to his personality, because in every single act before and after these interludes with his sister he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds.

The story takes an unexpected – and completely inconsistent – turn near the end of the game, where the target you were after isn’t your target anymore, and there is a lot of exposition where you are supposed to nod your head profoundly, learning the real reason for Alex’s condition. Alex is a virus that has taken human form, and is responsible for the infection of New York City. Then he has to fight an arbitrary boss character. What was gained in the aftermath? Peace of mind? Alex wasn’t even human; none of this should matter to him. It feels like a disingenuous closure to justify what has happened over the course of the game. The ending seems so completely disassociated with the proceedings that it’s almost as if Radical thought they had to come up with an ending just so people would stop playing, because at the end of the game Alex is practically a god, and could easily consume, terrorize and destroy the city until it is dust.

And yet I played this game until completion. I was gripped by its unrelenting need for attention as another building crumbles, or another frightened mob of civilians is mowed down by a tank under my control. I stared in awe as Alex leapt across the city, yanking helicopters from the sky and destroying them with a flying kick off the roof of a skyscraper. Prototype is purest spectacle. I was able to tolerate it, even accept it for its duration, because it speaks to some power fantasy inside all of us, where we daydream about the ability to produce some hidden talent for exacting fatal revenge when slighted. Prototype taps into this primordial dark side, and for a while I liked it. But like Dark Phoenix, I wondered how long I could sustain giving in to these urges while sacrificing my humanity as everything around me turned to death.

Prototype is instant gratification if you enjoy violent video games, but it is severely lacking in focus. It is confused, just like the adolescent personality it often reflects. There is no message, except that being a bad person can be fun, rewarding and perfectly acceptable. As an exercise in inventive displays of power, Prototype had the potential to demonstrate a system that makes constructive use of Alex Mercer’s powers. Instead it overloads the player with features, to thinly disguse the lack of meaning and senseless destruction behind their activities. Prototype is a video game desperate for limits. As it stands, it is adolescent fantasy taken to new heights of excess, where infinite power is given with no moral guidance. And with the freedom imparted to do anything, it seems like an awful waste without motives to stand for something, instead of nothing.

On the surface, X-Men Origins: Wolverine seems like a single player verison of Raven Software’s own X-Men Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance, that focuses more on the immediate thrill of the action instead of stat boosting and party management. Most importantly, they have learned from past transgressions X2: Wolverine’s Revenge and X-Men: The Official Game ¹, which were pathetic responses to fans who have been waiting for a proper X-Men action game since the 16-bit era.

In Raven’s previous action RPGs, Wolverine was just another character that had a few powerful melee attacks and a regenerating health bar. As a member of a party, the personality and feel of the character were lost among the others in the game through the party’s inherent interchangeability. Not to say that his witty remarks and added durability weren’t welcome in any party; rather, it was the overall game’s design that limited the character depth to present the mechanical essentials of each character so they would do exactly what you would expect of them.

With Origins, I get the feeling that Raven wanted to show Wolverine fans they haven’t forgotten about their favorite character. They have attempted to create an unflinching portrayal of Wolverine that is all at once bestial, ruthless and completely without fear. They wanted to give him moves that were previously only seen on two page spreads in the comics. That’s probably why they included the sequence where you leap into the air and stab a helicopter.

With each slice and thrust, with each severed body part and spray of blood, Raven is trying to tell us something: Wolverine is a vicious animal. He is a meat grinder, an unstoppable force that will level the opposition into bloody chunks. You will see heads being lopped off. You will see enemies skewered on adamantium claws.

But is it satisfying? It is not.

Ninja Gaiden II is one of the most violent and bloody video games created by man². Even though you are using a sword, there is an affinity shared with the action on-screen. It subscribes to an ancient warrior philosophy: that the sword must be the extension of the body. The sound of a single steel blade blocking an attack, the visual feedback as sword meets flesh, the absurdity of blood spraying in every direction, the resultant thud of detached body parts – these are the expected outcomes of such activity. And they are exacted with such precision and ruthlessness that you can’t help but be drawn into the game.

And yet Wolverine, whose “swords” are in fact part of his body, yields nothing remotely similar. He could be punching the characters on screen for all I can tell. Considering how integral these weapons are to each attack, to the character’s very being, one would expect the level of emotional investment for each kill would increase exponentially beyond the use of a 30-inch piece of tempered steel. But this is not the case.

There are no mobs; instead, enemies are carefully placed around the level for you to use the environment (i.e. spikes sticking out of the ground), make Wolverine spin around in circles, or provides a launch pad for you to use the Lunge attack. One of my favorite additions to the genre, the Lunge attack is much more visually rewarding than jumping, an act that seems unnecessary in comparison. However, the Lunge simply reiterates the problem with this game: there is always distance between the Player and his objectives. There is time to think and decide about how to attack. There are combinations of claw attacks that can be used, and there are special powers that can be levelled up. Kind of like Raven’s other games.

But there was never a time where I was confronted with a horde of enemies, or felt I was in danger at any time. There was no risk or opportunity for this character who is famous for dealing with overwhelming odds, to excel. There is blocking, but there are no counter-attacks. The decapitations seem random and there is no equivalent to Ryu’s Obliteration Technique. Combat is procedural in Origins: go over here, attack, enemy takes some damage. Repeat. There is no fanfare. There is no real visual payoff.

Even in the demo, I can see how this approach to combat will fail in the long term. I know that it will be drawn out just to develop the missing chapters that the movie only refecences in passing. But despite these feelings (which are correct), I still want more. I want to be Wolverine because he is perfectly suited to such an endeavor. I want to repeat the connection I felt at Ninja Gaiden II‘s most primal moments, where blade meets flesh and bone to produce buckets of blood. Origins seems to skirt the edges of what it means to have Wolverine’s claws to mete out his fierce vengeance, but the game never fully commits to this ideal.

The introductory film at the beginning of the game shows a Wolverine in a tattered X-Men uniform: attacking everything in sight, claws dripping with blood, spittle dribbling from his bottom lip. He was an animal that took pleasure in the act of killing. This is the Wolverine I grew up reading about. However, X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. It disheartens the player that has envisioned the displays of savagery that were reserved for the pages of comic books.

So I find myself incredibly angry at this game. And not the same as I was with Wanted: Weapons of Fate³ – that was the result of a development team that completely mishandled a fairly new property. This is Wolverine, people. A character that has evolved over a period of years through comic books, cartoons, video games and movies. We know him and we know what to expect from him. So why did Raven feel the need to hold back?

Despite the association with the terribly received film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine could have been an excellent action game standing on its own alongside landmarks like Ninja Gaiden II. But because Raven’s restraint is clearly exhibited in the game’s core mechanics, there is no way it can ever fully emerge as a study of Wolverine’s darkest characteristic: his killer instinct.

Let’s recap. After a great debut with the action-heavy Blade (1998), the series became mired in trying to develop some alternate telling of the vampire myth and completely ruining the backstory developed across several Marvel “Midnight Sons” titles in the early 1990s. I’m pretty sure Blade: Trinity (2004) was universally reviled by both comic book fans and moviegoers alike.

Daredevil (2003) was probably the worst comic movie I’ve seen out of this recent batch, and it amazed me that Elektra – easily the most uninteresting comic book character adapted on screen – somehow managed to get her own movie. I’ve got nothing against Daredevil the character. In essence, he is almost exactly like Batman in the sense that he is self-trained and doesn’t really have any “super powers”. He is also a character with a deep inner conflict – something that wasn’t even hinted at on the screen in favour of portraying some lame love story. With the “romance” between Jean Grey and Logan and the manufactured love triangle of Rogue, Iceman and Shadowcat in The Last Stand, the X-Men series is drifting far too close to this territory.

Hulk (2003) was an overemotional mess, and clearly the result of what happens when you put a sentimental director behind a character hell-bent on breaking things. How hard can it be to please audiences with explosions and wholesale destruction? Every summer blockbuster with less polished scripts can manage to do it. Ang Lee complicated the issue and ruined it for fans and moviegoers expecting action – not a story of a man’s resentment of his father. Or gamma-irradiated poodles.

There isn’t much I can say about Hellboy (2004) that I haven’t already. It is probably the only comic book movie that knows it’s a comic book movie. Relative to everything that was released before or since, the approach seems brilliantly simple.

The Punisher (2004) was not necessary. It felt like Marvel was greedily branching out too much, too fast – riding the comic book wave as it were. Once again the character’s obvious reason for being is lost in a screenwriter’s attempts at reworking the Punisher mythos. This isn’t a stand-alone novel. The work has already been done developing the universe and the character over hundreds of issues of comics. Why do comic book adaptations insist on distancing themselves from the source material?

Constantine (2005) was forgettable, inoffensive fare: neither terrible nor especially thought provoking, it could have easily passed as any other action film aiming to capitalize on occult themes. It was nice to see another one of DC’s comics make their way onto film instead of Superman and Batman, but the producers made too many mistakes for it to be considered a good comic book movie. Keanu Reeves was simply the wrong choice for the titular character – while he may have pulled off the whole disaffected/sarcastic/devil-may-care (literally) personality, he was too clean. He may have “seen things”, but it wasn’t reflected in his appearance. Rachel Weisz and Keanu Reeves on the whole were too pretty and seemed out of place on the gritty streets of Los Angeles shown in the film. Though the biggest mistake was the liberty taken with the character of John Constantine – the line between anti-hero and the morally ambiguous self-serving low life from the comics was clearly drawn, and completely undercuts the nature of the character. Instead, we get the usual tale of a selfish man redeemed by self-sacrifice.

I’d consider Sin City (2005) on the same level as Spider Man and X-Men in terms of cultural events, but as a comic book movie it felt gratuitous and unsophisticated, despite its origins as a comic book specifically aimed at mature readers. It most definitely conveys the same feel as Miller’s minimalist art, but as much as the script tries to tie everything together the whole production was as if a bunch of fanboys had come together to play with their favorite property. I couldn’t get over the absurd amounts of makeup the actors had to wear, because while readers of Miller’s comics might understand the exaggerated features it probably looked more comical to the average person. And to this day I still do not understand why Quentin Tarantino was given so much attention as “Guest Director”. Yes, Rodriguez and Tarantino are pals – but get out of film school, guys. You’re professionals.

Last year’s Fantastic Four came across as a “me too” team movie in the wake of the X-Men, executed with far less taste. I mean The Thing wore a foam rubber suit, and Jessica Alba still cannot act to save her life (except when she’s invisible?). I only wish I could say the movie intended to be this tongue in cheek. Instead it soils the legacy of one of Marvel’s most lovable superhero teams.

When I heard Ghost Rider was going to star Nicolas Cage I cried. Not because he is one of the worst actors in Hollywood today, but because I knew this movie would never do the character justice. I remember drawing flaming skulls and winding chains in my math notebooks back in 8th grade after the character made his return in 1990. I caught the trailer for this latest comic adaptation before X-Men: The Last Stand. I can tell they fucked around with the continuity of the series. Johnny Blaze is the main character of the film, but his appearance is modeled after the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider that I grew up with. I also noticed that a “Western” Ghost Rider makes an appearance – no doubt to tell us that these powers have been inherited by more than one person. Even though the Ghost Rider lineage began with Johnny Blaze the stunt motorcyclist, and the “Western” Ghost Rider was simply another unrelated Marvel series. But I’ll leave that to the experts behind what I’m sure is a well-researched script.

So what is to become of the comic book movie?

This summer’s Superman Returns, like Batman Begins, is aiming to restore the franchise to its former self by essentially overwriting what happened during their increasingly nonsensical and idiotic sequels. One can only hope.

What continues to astound me is how the medium has been treated in its transfer to film. While it’s nice to see them being taken seriously as money making ventures, there comes a point where the film’s ties to the original format are permanently broken by inserting too many characters, plot contrivances or intellectually stunted lessons in morality. They’re comic books. They thrive on exposing us to fantastic things that could never be realized without multi-billion dollar budgets. The stories are already there, archived for use in any screenplay. And yet somehow the visual medium of film, including the enormous leaps and bounds the world of special effects has made, cannot seem to capture the feel of these things.

If we can expect a sequel after the funeral pyre that was X-Men: The Last Stand, it can be considered a turning point for the series. Similar to what happened to Batman with Batman Forever, the previous two films by the same director had successfully established a universe (despite its liberties with the comic books), created characters out of familiar icons and weaved an adequate storyline that can be enjoyed by comic purists and casual moviegoers alike. With the third installment, we have a new director who clearly wanted to make his mark on the series and added his own “creative vision” to the franchise. The work had already been done for him up to this point, and yet coming on to a project of such popularity and magnitude would probably feel overwhelming for someone still trying to make a name for themselves. Joel Schumacher at least had a track record before picking up the Batman franchise with Batman Forever. He selected two popular actors at the time to play the villains (to this day I have no idea why each Batman film requires two villains – at least Batman Begins handled this tactfully) threw a few cans of neon paint at Tim Burton’s world of perpetual darkness and called it a day. Three Batman actors and two directors later, the series seems to be back on track after the serious, grounded-in-reality Batman Begins.

Assuming the X-Men can continue their momentum after the latest installment, can we presume the same treatment of the series?

The reasons are obvious for directorial duties changing hands – Singer took the offer to work on Superman Returns (ironically, it was originally Brett Ratner’s project). The change in the tone and pacing of the film from its predecessors is immediately noticeable. Ratner does the origin of Jean Grey and introduces a completely new character in the first 10 minutes of the film in scenes that are completely unrelated. These two characters, who we are led to believe are important through these flashbacks, are only touched upon in the movie that follows. While Jean Grey is a key figure in the story, the reasons behind her apparent madness are never fully explored. She merely became another one of Magneto’s hired hands, despite her ability to annihilate the entire universe. I kept waiting for her to spread her flaming wings and actually destroy something, but instead we were treated to the killing of Professor X in an anticlimactic scene that only results in the destruction of her childhood home. In a story arc that is widely accepted as a classic, and absolutely brimming with material, the Dark Phoenix Saga was largely ignored in favour of explaining Jean’s newfound powers as some kind of psychological problem.

Angel was one of the original members of the X-Men team, and yet he was relegated to the role of pouty benefactor to his father’s estate. His father being the man who invented a “cure” for the mutant gene and the premise behind the conflict for the film. Angel was infuriatingly underused, because with such an obvious mutation he could have significantly benefited the mutant cause given his position in society. It would have dovetailed nicely with Beast’s post in the U.S. Government as liaison for Mutant Affairs. Instead, we are given an eye-rolling scene at the end where Angel swoops down to save his father, who in only a few scenes earlier had insisted he be injected with the so-called cure.

To this end, the series has come full circle: in first chapter Magneto finds a way to turn everyone into mutants; in The Last Stand an antidote has been created to make all mutants “normal”. Rogue was used as a catalyst for Magneto’s assault on Ellis Island; I found it strange that her inner conflict to take the cure was not at the forefront of this installment in the series. Up to this point the relationship between Rogue and Iceman was certainly strained – and yet we have a drawn out scene where Iceman takes Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat ice skating? The priorities are all wrong.

Character development was never really a strong point of the first two films, and introducing so many new mutant characters in this chapter simply exacerbated this shortcoming. The romance between Wolverine and Jean Grey felt forced. Pyro was limited to snivelling sidekick, and Juggernaut is not intimidating at all in his lycra pants and bondage costume. What’s worse are this character’s attempts at comic relief that defuse every scene. Surely someone told Vinnie Jones he wasn’t on the set of another Guy Ritchie film!

I wasn’t particularly impressed with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, either. Considering the power and profile of the mutants to join the ranks within the comic books, the mutants that joined Magneto’s cause in the film seemed too much of a ragtag bunch to ever be deemed threatening. I also noticed that the “evil” mutants were mostly of ethnic decent. Even Magneto – a survivor of the Holocaust – was sure to play up his heritage. It just felt cheap, as if Magneto had no other reason to fight against the mutant oppression. It made the subsequent stand off between six X-Men and Magneto’s mob of Brotherhood mutants that visibly outnumber them seem all the more absurd.

Magneto’s displacement of the Golden Gate Bridge was probably the best scene in the movie – if only because it was such a brazen act of mutant chest-thumping when he could have just as easily stolen a boat. Still, with this dramatic entrance (complete with an instantaneous change from daylight to darkness), there seemed to be an unconcerted effort to attack the lab at Alcatraz. If the cure was such a crime to mutants, how could Magneto simply stand by and watch his obviously unprepared army be cut down ruthlessly? Surely the entire site was covered in manipulatable metal! Though I suppose it was more effective to watch Magneto and Pyro launch flaming cars at the X-Men and the U.S. Army (who I’m sure were extra careful not to shoot any of the “good” mutants in the face of such adversity).

The short length of the film further exaggerated its many problems. It was as if Ratner was afraid of boring the audience with explanations. The film felt like it was a series of action setpieces loosely strung together on the premise that a cure for the mutant gene would be reason enough for the actors on screen to be fighting. After two strong entries audiences have come to expect more from the series. After killing off a total of three characters, it was clear Ratner and screenwriters Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg wanted to leave their mark, but copped out at the last minute with Magneto’s little chess trick and Professor X “waking up” after the credits (I knew that body without a mind would serve a purpose). This basically tells us that the cure may not be one at all, and the battle that just took place was of no consequence.

X-Men: The Last Stand was disappointing not because it was a bad film. Ignoring the plot points, if the same approach was taken for the first film in the series I doubt it would have received the same acclaim and even reached the point of two sequels. Rather, I was disappointed that what started off as a deftly orchestrated take on one of Marvel’s longest running and most popular series was essentially squandered on a director playing with mutant action figures. There is no substance to this spectacle; it only confirms the suspicions that there will be another sequel, with the events of its precursor reduced to mere inconveniences for the cast of characters.

While I was never much of a fan of his comic, I always respected McFarlane for approaching his property carefully. While Lucasfilm would stop at nothing to plaster Star Wars on any item under the sun (and essentially creating the action figure industry as we know it), McFarlane took complete creative control over his empire, making sure that branding of his hero was consistent across all media. The dark and often violent Spawn cartoon and the mediocre movie that essentially captured McFarlane’s immature mentality was all under his direction and at least maintained his anti-hero’s manufactured image.

However the action figures were where he really caught on to something amazing. Until McFarlane Toys, high quality action figures were almost unheard of; instead, you’d have to purchase a limited run 12″ statuette for the same level of detail. McFarlane took this idea and mass produced figures that could easily be added to any kid’s collection – as long as their parents didn’t mind buying a toy drenched in blood or draped with human skulls – while still appealing to the serious collector, who wouldn’t be ashamed of displaying them alongside conventional models or maquettes.

Maybe I’m giving the guy too much credit, but I see McFarlane’s line of toys as a real watermark for quality and attention to detail, while still making them moderately posable. And he’s since branched out into Sports action figures, movie-inspired figures and er…“original” concepts mostly following the same theme, but still of outstanding quality.

I’ve been out of the action figure game for some time now, and on a whim I decided to check out my local discount chain to see what was on the shelves for Christmas. I half expected to see empty racks in the action figures section, but when I came across some select members of Spawn Series 26: The Art of Spawn, I grabbed a couple that caught my eye knowing that I’d probably be paying twice the price at a hobby store or comic shop. The two figures up for discussion are Issue #7 and Issue #8.

Issue #8, which remains imprisoned in plastic, appears to have no points of articulation and resembles an immovable hunk of plastic. Which is fine, I suppose, considering the pose. However Issue #7, whom I removed, is most disappointing in its inarticulateness. I have a fascination with Spawn wielding really large weapons, and the Issue #7 figure only has rotatable forearms, which are basically useless. His posture is cast in stone, eliminating any ability to reposition his aim. His left hand is closed in a grip, making it impossible to fit the handle of the second weapon in without wrestling with the thankfully flexible plastic. And even the cape, which was molded to wrap around the lower half of his body, doesn’t sit right on the ground, exposing his feet. It just looks weird. For a successful integrateion of posability and a completely over-the-top arsenal, see Spawn IV.

Not that I ever played with Spawn toys (cough), but the fact that I could re-pose them when the mood suited me was reassuring. And because no action figure is perfectly balanced – especially ones with this many attachments – the ability to adjust limb joints to get them to just stand was essential. Maybe the Art of Spawn series is meant to approach model quality, but for a mass market toy it’s serverely limiting.

If you just look at them though, they truly are a sight to behold. Issue #7 perfectly captures the version of Spawn displayed on the cover. You really have to respect a toy manufacturer who is meticulous enough to recreate veins, musculature and real chains. I wouldn’t call this my return to collecting Spawn action figures, but it seems that in the last few years McFarlane’s ambitions for the series have changed in favour of the premium action figure collector.

half imagined

• Spider Man 2: What more can I say? I was more than happy with Raimi’s directing on the original, creating a believable yet fantastic story about a young man learning to live with his new found superpowers. Seeing Doctor Octopus realized in live action gave me goosebumps; my cynical side expected to see half-assed attempts at CG. This is one I don’t want to miss.
• Van Helsing: I know this isn’t based on a comic, but I believe that it possesses a bit of “geek cred” based on the main actor and the subject matter. I watched it intently, awaiting the shining moment that would make me want to run out into the streets to see this movie. But alas, it never came. Big budget summer blockbuster? You bet. Captivating story? Hardly. With all the cameos in this film, I’d sooner compare it to The Monster Squad than a suspenseful action movie. Luckily Mr. Jackman has no reason to worry about being typecast, as he’s had an extremely diverse career. Which is probably why we’ll see a Wolverine solo picture before we see X3.
• Hellboy: Ron Perlman is one of those actors that always tends to do a fine job in a supporting role. This time he’s been cast as the lead in this oddball sci-fi/fantasy comic book adaptation. Since no one outside the sphere of comic book fans will be familiar with the material, this film will more than likely surprise the typical audience. For this reason I think it will do well. The trailer is intriguing without resorting to the characteristic choppy editing of most big budget action movies.
• The Punisher: Someone please tell Marvel to settle down. With three new properties hitting the screen in as many years, it will be easy for things to get out of control. And in the case of The Punisher, I believe they have. I found it disturbing that I was able to predict that the ominous voice in the background would utter the phrase: “They thought they had murdered him. But they were wrong – dead wrong” before its end. How John Travolta made it into this one I’ll never know, and I think that Dolph Lundgren’s original will be better almost by default.

By some masochistic principle I viewed the trailer for Kevin Smith’s latest, Jersey Girl. Please, if seeing Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in the same frame causes you to lapse into a Gigli-like coma, avoid this one. I’m extremely disappointed at Smith’s obvious choice to go the safe, sentimental route. What, doing the ultimate fan service wasn’t good enough for you?

I heard Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was a very tasteful and reverent addition to the Terminator saga. The previous two films that gave us a very jarring look at a possible future ruled by machines many years before The Matrix was an accomplishment indeed. However while watching it this weekend I couldn’t help but ask about the necessity of a third installment. Judgement Day was prevented in T2, so why not leave it at that? The T-X had some suprising tricks up her sleeve, but even the chase scenes were rehashed. Claire Danes did not belong in this film, and it is clear that something was missing from the beginning. The ending is wide open for a sequel, so if you don’t mind seeing Arnold go through the motions one more time, the multiplex is waiting for you.

I make a list to throw it away