Beginning at the start, or starting at the beginning, we’ll kick things off with a heated debate around No Country for Old Men. Some of us liked it, some of us didn’t. That’s sure to get intense! Let’s watch:

Bob (me) starts out the PPR movie thread with a real barn burner

just finished No Country for Old Men

a pretty decent thriller wrapped around an increasingly absurd center of pretension. by the end of the movie I had gone from “yeah this movie is pretty awesome and intense” to “oh god I hope this fucking movie ends soon or my eyes are going to develop repetitive stress disorder from rolling around so much”

Justin then comes to the rescue and injects some much-needed conflict into the thread, which by this point is growing stale and comfortable

no offense, but you and eric are the only two i have ever heard complain about pretension in no country for old men

as a matter of fact, most of the negative reviews of the movie complain about it being too trivial with no real meaning

Bob rallies back

yes tommy lee jones tell us about your dad. I know you don’t tie into the plot in any meaningful way but please, continue discussing the dream about your father last night to tie up this story. I feel very fulfilled knowing that the last 2+ hours were an elaborate and meandering metaphor for the sense of alienation decrepit fucks like you feel as you attempt to “run email” on your “computer drive”

Justin responds in kind!

saying tommy lee jones’ character didn’t tie into the plot is kinda silly since the entire movie is about why his character retired from being a police officer. also, i thought that the dream metaphors were a good, jarring way to end the movie since there really wasn’t any other way to end the involvement of TLJ’s character. if the movie ended on Chigurh limping away, it would’ve looked too much like a cliffhanger sequel set-up (even though McCarthy never wrote a sequel)

Catching everyone by surprise, Eric now wades into the fray. He’s clean and mean

ok now that ive had a shower~

the frame story with TLJ was pretty weak and felt tacked on to the plot (like multiple things i will go into). iirc, the movie doesn’t start with him, he’s not the main character, its not like he’s relating the story to us or has that much inolvement in the action with chigurghmurgnmen and the protagonist. there’s also drawn out scenes like the one with the gas station clerk (why do we care about this character again). one could argue its meant to reaffirm the chance motif you mentioned i didnt see before, and that’d be ok if it wasnt a rather cliche bad guy routine. another character thats tacked on is the other assassin who doesn’t really add anything to the plot since he ends up getting killed in like 2 minutes.

Bob (me) takes Eric’s comments and run with them

yeah it basically seems that they were trying to tell TLJ’s story through a much more interesting story, with him as one of the tertiary characters. I don’t really buy the “it was all about him because it was all about why he retired” because regardless of what the filmmakers say it was about, it was about the one guy running away from the crazy guy. the kid who gave Chigurh his shirt may have spent that money on a motorcycle and become Evil Kinevil, that doesn’t make his part in this story any more relevant.

also the fact that they killed the main character with so little fanfare, either before or after, was where the movie really started sliding into ‘lame’ territory i m o. I have never seen a movie where killing the main character ends up being a good idea, unless it’s at (or near) the very end. it elicits a powerful emotional response from the audience, sure, but you better have something real good to finish it up with or people are going to start realizing that you just spent an hour and a half building up this character (although the amount of characterization in NCFOM is, to be generous, quite light) to be someone we liked and respect as a resourceful, cool guy, and now he’s dead and there’s really nothing to show for it. “oh heh he wasn’t the real main character even though we’ve shown him for 90% of the movie HERE’S the real main character *points to typical stock sheriff* have fun” is lazy film making

Eric has a little something to say about that though

i didnt mind him being abruptly killed at all, it’s not often seen in movies. what bothered me is that i didnt give a shit about him dying.

Bob (me) has a response to that. An extreme response

I didn’t mind him being abruptly killed, but that so little attention was given to it. the whole movie was (seemingly) building up to a showdown with him and the crazy guy and then they were just like AWW WELL HE’S DEAD NOW LET’S MOVE ALONG and I was stuck wondering why the hell I’m still watching this movie if the primary source of tension no longer exists

And so we reach the end of our first Behind the Screams look at Puppyrush movie review process. I hope you’ve enjoyed this (unusually lengthy) entry! Look forward to more, less interesting entries.

The time is now.

Thus begins the great Puppyrush dot Net Movie Extravaganza. Here you will find deep, insightful reviews of movies the members of Puppyrush have gone out to see and watch, sometimes actually even paying for them in real-life movie theatrical encounters! The best part is, since these are ripped directly from a thread secreted deep inside the throbbing, moist sanctum of the PPR.NET forums, everything is live, unrehearsed, ripped directly from the mouths of babes (posters) and put down here for your truthful enjoyment. Uncensored, uncut, often rambling and nonsensical, with a poor sense of grammar and lack of reviewer’s etiquette.

Also, occasionally a review generated a discussion, and you’ll be privy to that information as well! Are you as excited as you should be to peek behind the veil of Puppyrush and witness the cogs in the machine? There’s no way you are! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, for he is nothing but a miserable little pile of secrets.

Vintage: 2002

# of Episodes: 1

It must seem like a no-lose proposition to an animation studio: make an anime show based on a fighting game and take advantage of a built-in fanbase. Problem is, even the more well-known fighting games make for lousy shows, and if the franchise isn’t good to begin with, the no-lose proposition soon turns to no-win. Especially when that franchise is Samurai Showdown, oops, I mean Samurai Shodown, and double especially when you choose to make the show centered around one bland character.

The plot is this: the titular Nakoruru is found walking through the snow with a big gash on her back until she collapses and is found by two even duller characters. They take her to a village, animals start acting up, Nakorururu goes to sleep and has a nightmare, Bland Female Character 2 sings a song, bear attacks and dies, some plague woman comes by, landslide, plague woman cackles ominously.

That’s it.

That’s literally the entire show.

This means either production stopped after one episode because the studio ran out of money, or the other episodes withered away in shame.

Rating: Don’t have a rating system yet, so I think I’ll start with 2.5 out of 5 and add/subtract points arbitrarily.

2.5/5.0

+ .5 = show doesn’t look half bad

+ .5 = somehow got character designer from Mezzo Forte so characters look aight

- .5 = a Samurai Shodown show and no Earthquake?

- .5 = seriously, no Earthquake?

- .5 = plot starts a growing conflict but doesn’t finish it…

- .5 = …but the scriptwriters found time for a 2 minute song

Final Score: 1.5/5.0

1. There’s an Umbrella Corp. and they make viruses.

2. If something goes down somewhere in the world, there is a good chance Wesker did it.

3. ‘master of unlocking’

Fortunately though, that didn’t detract from the gameplay, which overall was quite good. Like every other Capcom game before it, there are several stupid design choices, but I’ll get to those in a minute.

PRESENTATION

RE5 looks and sounds fantastic. Wait, I should probably qualify ‘sounds fantastic’ with ‘as long as your teammate isn’t yelling for your help every 5 seconds’, because that happens quite often and is very irritating. As for graphics, I don’t know what Capcom did, but they really captured the look of a swamp or the look of a dusty African village. Shame that they felt the need to get away from detailed, original locales like that in order to go back to the staple of the shooter world: the flame-barrel-and-metal-pipes factory.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is top-notch, though with a few minor flaws. There’s a communal inventory system that carries across difficulties and replaces the old attaché case (good idea), but then in-game you only have 9 slots per character (bad idea). This means you have to spend a lot of time you don’t really have in combat to play musical item slots, as you need to shuffle around your armor, herbs, weapons, and ammo.

Speaking of which, you’ll want to make sure you make extra-special careful to keep all the herbs and first-aid sprays. Sheva’s apparently some first-aid spray/herb junkie who keeps jonesin’ for a fix, because as soon as you hit something like 60% she puts away the pistol she will invariably have equipped no matter how big a damn arsenal you give her and makes sure to make you wish you played co-op mode instead.

Other than the partner AI and the inventory system, the gameplay is fun and smooth. My favorite parts are the moments where you have to defend yourself against waves of enemies while in a big open area with lots of treasure and ammo because those moments made you feel like you were in a horror movie.

ONLINE

The online modes (the ones besides co-op mode) are both decent, though I’ve only played several hours of Versus mode. Mercenaries mode has you and another person fighting off waves of Majini trying to rack up combos and hit timers. It is a lot more fast-paced and frantic than the normal Resident Evil 5 gameplay, and Bob and I had a blast trying out different character combinations and trying desperately to raise our score to A-rank. I should mention that once you hit A-rank, you unlock another Mercenaries mode character with a different weapon loadout and another stage if you hit B-rank, making multiple tries necessary in order to unlock everything.

Versus mode is alright, though there are a few slightly annoying bits. Even though the spawn time is quick and individual deaths do not matter much, it sucks in any online game to be chain-stunned over and over without any chance to counter, and if another person gets a shock grenade launcher that is precisely what will happen. Also, more maps would be appreciated, as between the game, Mercenaries mode, and Versus mode, it’s likely you’ll get sick of playing through the same village square or the same temple again.
Overall, I enjoyed Resident Evil 5 very much, even though it’s not without its flaws. As long as you play co-op though, these flaws won’t detract much from your enjoyment.

I’m sure we’ll have some impressions once we get some time played in it. More than one player per lobby? Color me STOKED.

Edit: It has come to my attention that there are no multiple person lobbies. Just the tournament shit. Which is totally random. That’s two months of anticipation for nothing. Thanks Capcom, thanks. I am literally wowed.

Yet all of those games are awesome. I’m not sure how Capcom turns out games that have glaring problems but are still highly enjoyable. That was a pretty mediocre segue into Resident Evil 5, but I’ll forgive myself because I’m great in lots of other ways. Sort of like Resident Evil 5! Goddamn I’m talented.

The presentation is great. Absolutely fantastic. I mean, I’m not playing on a high-definition set or anything, which some would argue invalidates my opinion almost completely. Those people are elitist assholes. The graphics are very nice, the music is…well, it’s there, and it does its job I suppose. Voice acting is pretty good in a Resident Evil sort of way. I really enjoy the menus, which have a Metroid Prime vibe to them, and that rules. I’d comment on the sound effects, but the built-in speakers on my old, standard definition set are pretty bass-free. That’s one area I don’t feel qualified to judge either way. From what I can make out, guns sound like guns and dudes running at me screaming and waving dynamite sound like dudes running at me screaming and waving dynamite.

I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the controls, and I don’t really understand why. It’s almost the exact same thing as RE4, depending on your control scheme, and who needs strafing anyway? Strafing is for pussies. If you’re not slicing enemy projectiles with your knife like you’re in the Matrix or something then cash in your chips Junior.

There are two major problems I have with RE5. I have a feeling they’re the kind of things that would only bother someone on the higher difficulties, if they were noticed at all on Amateur or Normal. I don’t really know since I’ve only played through the game on Veteran and Professional. I’ve also only played the campaign with Eric, because I’ve heard stories about Sheva’s AI and I don’t want none of that son, not even a taste. Regardless, let’s assume that her AI is a large negative, since not everyone has a friend who will play with them. I suppose that means I have three major problems with RE5. The second is the cut scenes. The game doesn’t – doesn’t – pause the action while a cut scene is playing. You can’t be hurt while you’re in a cut scene, but that doesn’t mean the fucking nanosecond it’s over you won’t be hit with a chainsaw, or a bigass tentacle, or a stick of dynamite or WHATEVER. It’s awful, and when you die in one hit it makes many segments absolute nightmares. Particularly bosses with cut scenes. Nothing like trying to fend off hordes of tentacle goo monsters then BAM cut scene, guess what, when this is over they will be surrouding you and you will die.

The third is, frankly, the worst offender. The quick time events. The good ol’ Q T E. A lot of people hate QTEs, always have and always will. Personally I never had a problem with ‘em. They could be annoying when overused, but kept tension up during otherwise noninteractive scenes and playing a simplified Simon Says to shove your swords into a minotaur’s throat felt pretty nice. That’s before I played RE5.

Veteran was bad enough. Then I played Professional, holy hell. Did you know the command prompt is affected by game difficulty? On Professional the QTEs would usually last less time than the time it took for you to be hit. Substantially less. On many, many occasions I’d see RT+LT flash across the screen then disappear; early on I hoped I had avoided it, or someone had interrupted the animation, but quickly I began to announce my DYING status as soon as the buttons disappeared. I won’t go into a rant about using two button QTEs almost exclusively, or about how you really shouldn’t use buttons for QTEs that a person is almost guaranteed to be pressing at any given moment in your game. I could, oh my God how I could, but I won’t.

There’s a chunky amount of bonus content to keep you busy after the main game is over. Assuming you beat it at least once on Veteran, and then go back on Professional, that’s already two playthroughs. Mercenaries unlocks once you beat the game on any difficulty, and Mercenaries owns. Online co-op Mercenaries owns extra hard and was quite fun. It also seems a lot more forgiving (even with the reduced point scaling for two people), as it’s much easier to keep your combos lasting for a very, very long time. Mix in grabbing all the BSAA emblems, grabbing all the jewels, and other things that give you both achievements and in-game content (which is a fantastic system), and you have quite a chunk of gameplay here. Then there’s the recently released Versus mode, which is another post. Just take my advice: if you’re planning to play Versus, try to save your bonus points.

I really like Resident Evil 5, and I think most fans of RE4 will too. The game’s not very scary aside from the lickers, but RE4 wasn’t scary either; it was simply awesome. Which RE5 does its best to mimic, and for the most part succeeds. Plus everything is better with a friend, right?

Right.

The weekend before last, a lot of my good buddies gathered at my house to play some videogames.  It’s nothing out of the ordinary and I don’t mind it most of the time since I don’t have to go out of my way to drive to their houses (which usually takes at least half an hour).  The main game of the night was Street Fighter 4 with a little bit of four player Phantasy Star Portable and some Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.  I particpated in all of the multiplayer games except for TvC.  I have never played TvC and hold no interest in playing it as long as I don’t own a Wii that can read region 2 dvds and games.  Nothing really exciting happens in PSP and unfortunately, it’ll probably stay that way forever.  In Street Fighter 4, my Abel loses to most people.  It’s one thing to play against friends who only play fighters casually.  You can usually go in there and exploit every mistakes they make and breathe a sigh of relief every time they miss their opportunity to go for a killing blow.  It’s another thing when you’re playing against people who understand the concept of minimizing their risks, the art of zoning and how to take advantage of every opportunity that opens up.  My frustration about this game is that unless I can perform complex moves, links and combos consistently, I won’t be able to access the real game where better tactics and mind games will dominate the matches.  Instead, I get killed by a fireball because my EX anti-air throw came out instead of my ultra.  I did manage win one match against a really good Ryu, so at least I know that I’m getting better.  But even with all the losing, it was still fun and that’s all I care about.

Once we done with Street Fighter 4 and the majority of my friends left my house, I decided to play a little bit of Quake Live.  Quake Live is pretty much Quake 3 Arena except you play it on your web browser of choice.  There are some small notable changes to the game in order to make it more balanced (railgun no longer does 100 damage and has been toned down to 80 damage) but overall, the fundamental gameplay remains the same.  It’s a no-holds-barred first person shooter where the winner is determined by the amount of kills he/she gets.  I know that sounds like a “no shit, sherlock” kind of statement but believe it or not, there’s a lot of first persons shooters out nowadays that don’t have the same ”kill the most dudes” objective like Quake Live does.  The game itself is very fast paced and aside from the shotgun, there are no random shots at all.  The game is still currently in beta, so obviously there’s going to be few bumps here and there.  As far I know, there are no significant technical bugs or issues that I have a problem with.

The matchmaking system on the other hand is absolutely terrible.  It’s Warcraft 3 matchmaking all over again except it’s three times worse.  When Warcraft 3 was first released, there was a lot of time where you’d be matched up with somebody who is significantly skilled enough to destroy you in a matter of 5-8 minutes.  And the worst part of the system?  WC3 didn’t even hide it from you.  Before you enter the actual game, you can just look at your opponent’s name on the loading screen for one second and you will know if you actually stand a chance.  A level 7 player versus a level 28 player isn’t exactly a fair matchup.  Quake Live is like that where you can play a couple of games and depending on how you play, you’ll be placed in the appropriate tiers that matches your playstyle.  You have a choice of servers and depending on what type of people are playing in there, the server will automatically adjust the server tier.  Unfortunately, every server has at least one or two people with 10 years of Quake 3 experience under their belt and the rest will just be above average.  It took me a good 5 or so games for me to adjust but it’s still frustrating.  And that’s just Free for All mode.  Team Deathmatch is even worse with one side always dominating the other side.  And you can forget about dueling mode unless you’re really really good.  Dueling is pretty much an exclusive mode reserved for only the toughest elitist and if you go in unprepared, don’t be surprised if you end the match with negative frags.

Despite the matchmaking system, Quake 3 Arena was a very solid game when it came out over ten years ago and remains that way today.  I remember when I was still in high school, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament came out at the same time.  There was a lot of debate on which game was better.  Being the Quake fanboy that I am, I really wanted to believe that Quake 3 was better than Unreal Tournament but UT just had a lot more variety and fun weapons.  Believe me, it was very hard to ignore.  On the surface, Unreal Tournament seemed like it was the better game.  UT had more interesting weapons and each of them had an alternate fire.  Q3A only had generic FPS weapons with no alternate fire.  UT had more modes to play with like CTF, Assault, Domination, Last Man Standing, Team Deathmatch.  Q3A only had Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and a CTF with only 4 maps to play on.  The graphics looked slightly better on UT than Q3A.  The only thing Q3A had going for it was that it had more variety in its models.  It’s pretty obvious which game was better and every gaming website except Gamespy agreed that UT was the better game.  Ten years later, nobody is playing UT anymore but Q3A still has a very active competitive scene.  Like I said, on the surface, UT is the better game but when you finally go deep into it, Q3A wins no contest.  It’s the same reason why people still play Starcraft and stopped playing Dawn of War.  Like it or not, Starcraft is a much much better game than the Dawn of War series will ever aspire to be.  I love Dawn of War but it will never be able to stand the test of time like Starcraft does.  It’s because the design of the game focused on balancing these two points: Depth and Balance.

I’m not going to go into depth and balance since you can read up a better explanation than what I would have given on David Sirlin’s blog.  Now, I’m not saying UT isn’t deep enough.  I’m just saying that Q3A did it better.  The weapons in UT were really great but what made Q3A’s weapons better was that they were all pretty well balanced.  As long as you’re in the right position and have the skills to use them, there is always a chance for you to take down your opponent with any weapon other than the gauntlet.  Even better, being able to juggle and use each weapons at the right time in the right situation will allow you to dominate.  In UT, it felt like there was always that one weapon that slightly beats out every other weapon.  Kind of like a tier list people put up for fighters.  There’s nothing wrong with this in my opinion since it’s pretty normal for first person shooters to do this but like I said, Q3A did it better.  The design and layouts of the maps in Q3A were a lot better than the ones you’ll find in UT.  I can count a large amount of memorable maps that I had fun playing on in Q3A while I can only name one map from UT that stands out to me (Morpheus).  Also, it probably didn’t help that UT was running off of an improved Unreal engine, which meant that a lot of people with nVidia cards would need a special patch in order to run it (Glide heh).

Of course, if you have a stupid enough and large enough fanbase, I suppose it really doesn’t matter if the game is terrible (i.e. Super Smash Brother series).  I don’t think I’ll even bother commenting on that.  That’s pretty much about it.  By the way, it took me a couple of weeks to write this article up and I think because of that, I’m pretty much done with writing articles that contain more than 800 words.  My articles tend to fall apart the more words I type anyways.  It’s sort of like playing Jenga except replace the blocks with words.

What it feels like a lot of other developers do is try to make all of their characters meet a certain standard of viability. So if Character A absolutely stomps the floor with Character B, they’ll make some attempt to even the scales. Sometimes they’ll nerf A, and sometimes they’ll buff B. During this process it’s possible to introduces a bug, an infinite, anything unintentional really, that throws that character out of sync with the rest of the cast. I would imagine these things often happen. You can theorycraft as much as you wish, but when you actually go in and make the changes anything can happen. Eventually this back-and-forth game reaches a semblance of equilibrium and you ship it. Or you run out of time during development and your game is unbalanced as hell; such is life.

Capcom releases a game, let’s say Street Fighter 4, in arcades, and gets a ton of feedback. They release an update for the game; update the roster, move properties, all that jazz. A real meaty patch. Finally if you’re, say, a Vega player, or an El Fuerte player, or maybe even a C. Viper player, you can hope. You can pray that Capcom has recognized the comically pathetic status of these characters and has made a few tweaks that will improve them. You’re not looking for top-tier powerhouses, you just anticipate your opponents watching El Fuerte run around like a psychopath during battle and laughing in fear.

Then Capcom asks to borrow your shirt and shits in it. Just shits all up in it. Balls it up, uses a clean scrap of sleeve to wipe their collective asshole and then hands it back to you. “Here’s your patch you retardedly hopeful motherfucker,” they say to you. They got sick of your positive outlook, your optimistic forum posts. When they saw your smug, ugly-ass face after you won against a Ryu one guy literally snapped his pencil in half.

This is because there are some characters the design team likes, and some it hates. And guess what? They hate your character. Hate your character. Not just because you play him/her/it, but that definitely helps because guess what they also hate you.

The point I am laboriously arriving at is that Capcom does not try to make its characters equal because Capcom does not want its characters to be equal. As a fighting game fan, one who never really got into other Capcom fighters, it seems very strange. Look, for example, at the tier lists for the past three Guilty Gear XX iterations. You may notice a surprisingly high degree of fluctuation between versions, even of characters no one thought redeemable (hello Zappa how are you doing down there). Do you know what this tells me? This tells me Arc Systems is trying.

Now look at the tier lists for Street Fighter 4′s lifecycle so far. A few people move up, a few people move down, but almost all remain in their designated tier zones. Finding a glass ceiling in fighting games is depressing, honestly. If you played a shitty character before (excluding Viper; I have a feeling her being that low was a real mistake), that character is still shitty. They had almost a year to change it, and they didn’t. There’s no way that’s an oversight.

Take my personal example. I really like Cammy. Cammy in SF4 is shit. I wouldn’t mind too much if A) there was hope that Capcom will elevate her in the future, or B) there were other characters I wanted to play. Unfortunately, the chances Capcom will improve her seem remarkably slim; none of her moves are safe, her command inputs have been re-complicated to Super Turbo levels (while others, like Sagat’s Tiger Knee, have been simplified), and the properties of those moves have been tuned way, way down. It took me a while to admit, but there are way too many problems to ignore; this was a blatant act of setting a character at the bottom of the barrel. Which is what Capcom does, and I suppose I can’t get too mad at it. What I can get mad at is the character designs. They’re shit, let’s not dance around it. Let us all just say it straight out, it’s bracing. They are shit. Chun-Li, Crimson Viper, Abel, Rufus, Seth – Seth! The guy looks like a gray Gumby extra – I could go on, but the truth is the old characters look worse than they ever have. The new characters just look bad. And bland, my God do some of them look bland. El Fuerte is a small wrestler with a Luche Libre mask on; I’d have thought we’d seen the cliche enough in the past that someone would add something to make him stand out. Oh, they did, a frying pan in his intro. Guess the team wanted to leave work early that day. In the end, none of these characters make me want to play them. At best I’m indifferent, and I really don’t want to be the ten-thousandth Ken or Ryu player.

I usually don’t pay much attention to tier lists, since I’ll never reach the level of competition where they come into play too heavily. I’ve always played Dizzy in GGXX, and she’s never been very good, but I really like the character and I like her playstyle. But when I’ve been playing a game for a week and I’m noticing crippling problems with a character (Hooligan Throw, in addition to requiring an EX bar to be worth anything, can’t grab ducking characters? Really?) something is seriously amiss. Well balanced? Maybe, but don’t tell Vega or he might suicide.

He’s been having problems at home.