Demon days

Revert to Saved recently had Hellboy week, so you might already have an inkling that I’m a fan of Mike Mignola’s blue-collar demon. However, the first Hellboy film didn’t entirely deliver. Although it retained something of the spirit of the original comic, it lacked its humour and fascination with folklore, instead concentrating on Lovecraftian nutcases and an inevitably burdensome origins arc.

Hellboy 2 is an entirely different beast, and although the story has veered far away from the comics, the movie feels much more like Hellboy. It’s funny as hell (pun possibly intended), has buckets of visual flair and imagination, and ticks all the boxes on the emotions checklist, providing a balanced, engaging movie with plenty of heart.

The folklore angle also comes to the fore. The plot centres around elf prince Nuada (a surprisingly buff ex-Bros Luke Goss) declaring war on humanity and aiming to use the mythical Golden Army to reclaim the world for the legions of underworld creatures that mankind has forgotten. But, like with Mignola’s comics, there’s more to this than a bunch of brainless scraps between strange-looking beasties—this is intelligent craziness.

First, it’s hard to egg on Hellboy and company as they battle to contain the various foes Nuada unleashes on humanity—after all, the humans in Hellboy’s world are often greedy and soulless, and Nuada’s desperately trying to save his kind before they fade away forever. And while Hellboy is ultimately the ‘hero’ of the flick, his role becomes increasingly questionable: he fights for humans who’ll never accept him, killing his ‘own kind’, who perhaps need his help more.

But it’s also telling that the most ‘human’ scenes in the movie happen with so-called monsters. Hellboy and fish-man Abe Sapien share one particularly memorable scene, drunkenly trying to understand the opposite sex. German mystic Johann Krauss—a disembodied ectoplasmic spirit—slowly realises that he’s lost his own humanity and needs to regain it. And even Nuada, despite his penchant for death and destruction, has sorrow etched across his face when his kind are harmed.

If there’s a negative aspect to The Golden Army, it’s that it sometimes feels like a series of set-pieces, strung together with a few slightly flimsy plot threads. However, the movie looks fantastic (not least the stunning clockwork Golden Army, and the troll market, which by comparison makes the Mos Eisley Cantina scene in Star Wars look humdrum), and it has more heart, humanity and imagination than any other movie I’ve seen this year, let alone other comic-book adaptations.

An angry Abe Sapien says how many stars he’d have given The Golden Army.

It pongs. You won’t want to break it out at a party. Etc.

“It may seem familiar, but it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before!” boasts Taito about Arkanoid DS. However, this isn’t entirely true—I’ve seen plenty of half-baked Breakout games over the years.

The fact remains that Arkanoid was never that good in the first place. Stripped of its shiny graphics, it was just another in a long line of bat-and-ball games, albeit one with a few power-ups and some nice level design. Converted to home systems, it was soon bettered by a slew of contemporaries, including Krakout and Traz, with only the most devout of Arkanoid followers continuing to fly its flag.

Arkanoid DS, however, manages to stamp on even on the rose-tinted glasses of those deluded souls. Vapid layouts combine with graphics that would embarrass a Commodore 64 to make a game that appears more dated than the mid-1980s arcade original. And if you’re waiting for me to say “but at least the gameplay remains intact”, you’re going to be disappointed: of all the Breakout-oriented games I’ve played, this is one of the worst. It’s too easy, far too dull, and you tend to get stuck for ages on the ‘last brick’, something hardly helped by the play area stretching across both DS screens and yet also being extremely narrow.

If Arkanoid DS was a homebrew effort, I wouldn’t be so scornful, but this is a commercial product. And when you compare it against Space Invaders Extreme, you see just how far Arkanoid DS is from being an exciting and essential update.

Arkanoid DS is out now, if you’re interested (read: if you’re a masochist). The Japanese version also comes with a little detachable DS paddle, but the game’s still rubbish.

This is one of the best levels in Arkanoid DS. Seriously.

Look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes

Judge Anderson is an anomaly in the world of Judge Dredd. Moral, emotional, occasionally zany, and resolutely human, she offers a social conscience that sits in stark contrast to the head-cracking grimness of the monolithic Dredd.

As befitting a sometimes screwball character, what we have here is an oddball collection. Instead of Rebellion’s usual chronological fare with major characters, Shamballa offers a kind of ‘best of’, compiling stories illustrated by definitive Anderson artist Arthur Ranson (whose artwork also graced the excellent Button Man).

Although initially a foil for Judge Dredd, unnerving the square-jawed one with her flippant manner, Anderson moved in an overtly serious direction under Alan Grant, exploring the difficult subjects of child abuse and religion. The bulk of the ‘think of the children’ arcs are missing in this book, which instead largely concentrates on Anderson’s gradual understanding surrounding religion and faith—powerful ideas that the Judges seek to quash in the Godless world of Mega City One.

Within this book’s pages are Anderson’s two best tales. Shamballa chronicles Anderson leading a team of scientists beneath the Himalayas to try and stop cataclysmic supernatural events that are threatening the existence of the world. And Satan pitches Anderson against an evil, ancient being that at least thinks it’s the devil. However, because this collection cherry-picks Anderson’s adventures, it’s incomplete.

With a character like Judge Dredd, this might be less of a problem. But in this book, events are regularly witnessed out of context, and dialogue refers to things that you’ve not seen. A good example is lead story Shamballa: much of the emotional impact of the events resonates from the suicide of Anderson’s close friend Judge Corey. However, with the Corey story yet to see reprint, newcomers and lapsed readers will likely miss the significance of chunks of this book.

Despite its flaws, Shamballa nonetheless cements itself a place amongst the best Dreddworld books in Rebellion’s line. It’s just a pity so much of the story is missing.

Judge Anderson: Shamballa is available now for £15.99. For more information about 2000 AD graphic novels, check out the 2000 AD Books website.

He’s got a whole world in his hands

As someone who’s been pining for a DS version of Civilization for a couple of years, I wonder whether the realisation of such a product could ever have been anything other than a disappointment. Unfortunately, after a few weeks’ play, ‘disappointment’ pretty much sums up my opinion regarding the DS port of the latest game in the famous turn-based strategy series.

To be fair to Firaxis and Sid Meier, it’s actually the DS itself that causes some of the problems with this game, and the Civilization core remains largely intact. You get to take a civilization from prehistory to modern times, building and moving units, researching technology, and aiming to become the greatest in the world via various means (domination, economics, technology, or by building the UN). However, with Civ basically being a strategy title, it’s problematic when that aspect of the game is hampered.

First and foremost, the DS screen is too small to provide you with a decent overview of the world. Although the team wisely ditched the 3D graphics from the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, opting instead for an iconic approach similar to the original Civilization, the map still feels cramped, and moving around it is a chore. This problem could have been alleviated somewhat by providing the option to allow the map to appear—at least optionally—on both screens; unfortunately, one screen is mostly reserved for pointless battle animations.

Elsewhere, the streamlining of the original concept to hammer it into consoles rather than PCs and Macs has neutered it. Although the game is faster, it’s become more of an overt race than a game of chess. Instead of investing in technology and thinking of long-term plans, a war-obsessed AI largely forces games into tending towards moving units, protracted wars and conquest. The technology tree is very basic, and random events are frequent and absurdly powerful. It’s not uncommon to end up with tanks in 200 AD, especially if you stumble across Atlantis, which always spews forth a number of technological advances.

It’s not all bad news—the game is quite fun, and gives you a quick Civ-style fix for when you’re away from your PC. However, rather than being captivating in a ‘total addiction’ sense, this game instead feels ‘annoyingly’ compelling in the same way as Puzzle Quest: you can’t put the game down, but in your heart of hearts you know it’s actually a somewhat tedious slog that could have been a lot better.

Civilization Revolution is already out in the US, and comes to Europe towards the end of August.

Sadly, Civilization Revolution doesn’t have a whale unit—it’s just a resource icon.

Dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner

I like to go into films blind. That way, I’m more likely to have an experience that will surprise and enthral. With The Dark Knight, this wasn’t possible. Not only was the Joker’s presence all but guaranteed during the ending to Batman Begins, but Heath Ledger’s death has elevated his performance in many people’s minds to the status of some kind of acting god. The net result is that the hype machine has been on overdrive, with pretty much everyone calling this the Best Comic Film Ever.

I disagree. That’s not to say it isn’t good, nor that it’s not worth watching. However, I sat there only mildly entertained by the plot and slightly disturbed by the brutality (in excess of most comic-book movies, and certainly over-the-top for a 12A film, but you’ll have seen a lot worse elsewhere). What lifts the film above merely average is some impressive stunt-work, one or two decent twists, and Ledger’s engaging Joker, who seems to be channelling a little Jack Nicholson and quite a lot of Michael Keaton throughout.

What almost drags the film down again is, well, almost everything else. Like Batman Begins, this movie is somehow hollow and lacks soul. And seemingly content to cherry-pick the best bits from various Batman comics (Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, etc.), thereby offering an almost Batman-by-committee result, the film lacks focus. Perhaps it tries to tie too many threads together, but the result is convoluted and feels rushed, despite its extended viewing time.

The onus is largely on the escalation of warfare between Gotham’s most famous vigilante and the enemies around him—in other words, if it wasn’t for Batman, these super-villains wouldn’t exist. This has been an ongoing theme in Batman for some years now, although I’m pretty sure we didn’t need the Joker rather clumsily spelling this point out to Batman at one point during the movie.

And so although we get a standout (if not Oscar-worthy) performance from Ledger, some crunching battles, a few great scenes (notably a fast-paced bank heist that’s at once wicked and funny, but also almost anything Two Face does during his limited screen time) and a film that hammers home the ‘dark’ in ‘Dark Knight’ (repeatedly), we also have a somewhat self-important and gloomy production that’s at least a half-hour too long.

Once again, the Joker lost during the first round of Celebrity Poker Showdown.