What i'm watching this week: DVDs

Public Enemies (2009)

johnny depp plays john dillinger the robinhood like bank robber who was a menace to the FBI who perused him & a hero to the public. the film is based on a true story set in the 1930's it follows the one-man crime wave that was dillinger & melvin pervis (christian bale) the FBI agent tasked to take him down. directed by michael mann "heat" its a nonstop sharp piece of cinema that proves mann has not lost his touch when it comes to thrilling action. i really enjoyed the film & its definitely set to become a classic among fans of true cinema.


Bruno (2009)

the man who brought you borat is back this time as the uber stylish king of fashion bruno. hailing from austria bruno tells the story of a flamboyant tv presenter who moves to L.A. after being fired from his job, what follows is a serious dose of comedy which at times borders on insane. at one point in the film he travels to the middle east & is lucky to escape alive, its these sketches that make bruno a hilarious & outrageous film that is not to be missed. i loved it in the cinema but did feel it was a little short, luckily the dvd features lots of deleted scenes & full commentary revealing how cohen & director larry charles pulled it off.

Terminator Salvation (2009)

the third terminator film was a complete letdown for me so when i heard about a 4th one in the works my immediate thought was it too would be a failure but i was pleasantly surprised. life as we know it is on the edge of extinction with the resistance fighting a daily battle against the machines to preserve the very life of humanity itself. christian bale (the dark knight/american psycho) plays john conner the man destined to save mankind from annihilation, while sam worthington plays marcus wright an ex deathrow prisoner awakens in a world completely unknown to him. the film is more gritty & raw than previous terminator installments but it works really well ensuring you are never too far away from the action.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - NEWS

Call of Duty proves UK’s best ever seller

Video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 1.23m copies in the first 24 hours it was on sale, making it the best-selling ever in Britain.

The £47m worth of sales were twice that of Grand Theft Auto IV, which sold 631,000 copies the first day it was available last year.

Meanwhile, Microsoft yesterday confirmed that it had blocked some of its 20 million Xbox Live users, who installed hardware to play pirated games, from using its online gaming service.

Labour MPs clash over Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game

Two Labour MPs locked horns today over the imminent release of a widely anticipated violent video game. Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, said Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 contained such "scenes of brutality" that its makers had placed warnings within the game itself. He urged the government to ensure such games were not played by children – but Tom Watson, the former digital engagement minister, said it would be better for MPs to support the UK's video gaming industry.

The new Call of Duty game – which reportedly allows players to plot terror attacks against civilians – is expected to break sales records when it goes on sale at midnight tonight.

Vaz told the Daily Mail he was "absolutely shocked" by the level of violence in the game. During Commons question time, he said toMPs: "It contains such scenes of brutality that even the manufacturers have put in warnings within the game telling people how they can skip particular scenes." He asked what steps ministers were taking to ensure that violent games did not fall into the hands of children and young people. "It's not about censorship, it's about protecting our children," he added. Siôn Simon, the junior culture minister, said the clearest recommendation of the Byron review – which last year looked into the risks faced by children from inappropriate video games – was that content suitable for adults should be labelled and sold as such.

"The game you refer to is a certificate 18 game," he said. "It should not be sold to children and the government's job is to make sure that adults ... can get what adults should be able to and children are not in danger of being subjected to adult content." Watson said he had seen the game, and it "wasn't pleasant, though no worse than many films and books". He told MPs: "It carries a content warning, it is an 18 plus game. It would be better for members of this house to support the many thousands of games designers and coders and the many millions of games users, rather than collaborating with the Daily Mail to create moral panic over the use of video games." Simon said it was important to support Britain's "very large and important" video games industry and said the UK had a "national competitive advantage" in the field.

Watson today set up a Facebook group called Gamers' Voice with the aim of discussing how game-players could "find their voice in newspapers and government". He wrote on the group's web page: "Are you sick of UK newspapers and (my fellow) politicians beating up on gaming? So am I. The truth is, UK gamers need their own pressure group. I want to help you start one up."

The group so far has more than 900 members. (including myself)

GameStop Defends Breaking Street Date For Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Gaming industry insiders weren't the only ones picking up early copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" over the weekend. Reports out of the New York City area and elsewhere indicated that scattered retailers decided to ignore the game's official November 10th street and start selling it early. Among them were one of the biggest names in video games sales, GameStop, and although Activision claims not to have signed off on the decision, an official GameStop statement owns up to the move.

"This past weekend, GameStop made the decision to break street date and sell reserved copies of 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2' in select markets where other retailers had broken street date," GameStop's vice president for corporate communications Chris Olivera told Kotaku. "Our decision followed many conversations with Activision and was an effort to protect our customer base."

Olivera didn't directly assert that Activision approved of GameStop's decision, his choice of words definitely implies that Activision was made of aware of his company's choice. It's unclear if Activision would take any recourse against retailers in violation of the "MW2" street date, but Infinity Ward has drawn a hard line on the subject.

"ANY store selling #MW2 early is in violation of street date," Infinity Ward's community manager Robert Bowling said on Twitter Sunday. "There are no 'special permissions.' That said, we won't punish players for it."

Activision echoed that sentiment in their own statement, stating "Activision has not given any retailer permission to sell 'Modern Warfare 2' prior to the Nov. 10 street date."

The good news is that if your an average gamer on the street, you don't need to feel like a criminal if you bought a legitimate retail copy of the game -- even if you do have to wait another day to activate it for PC. Whether or not there is any fallout between Activision and retailers, however, will be an entirely separate question.

Uncharted 2: among thieves – game review (PS3)

I never played the first uncharted game so I didn’t know what to expect from uncharted 2, I knew it got incredibly high ratings on nearly every single games site & magazine so really that was enough for me to buy it. The plot is all over the place but it never got too overwhelming that I got lost & wondered what was going on. Luckily though the games locations are more than enough to accompany the vast plot & story outlines.. So what’s it all about? You take the role of drake a kind of Indiana Jones explorer who has a fondness for finding not only treasure but trouble. The first thing I noticed was that drake was easily the most likable video games character I have seen, at times I felt sorry for him ..then at other times I felt like he was a real hero. The plot revolves around drake stopping a war criminal from taking possession of a precious jewel that is said to be worth hundreds of millions.. But there is more to the treasure than meets the eyes. Drakes character movements are near on perfect & though there was maybe one or two times he missed a ledge only to leap off a mountain into the abyss he really was a joy to play with. When I first heard about the game my immediate thought was “on no not another indy game with way too many puzzles & no action”.. but wow was I wrong.

Its an action packed thrill ride providing hours of play where at one minute you could be in the middle of an intense fire fight through the streets of an invaded city & the next high up in the Tibetan mountains hanging from a monastery. The level design is incredible & the best I have seen on any games console to date, textures jump off the screen & it drips with atmosphere. At one point in the game I was in the middle of a storm with lighting crashing & rain pouring down all around me.. I would have stopped to really admire the scene but unfortunately there was a platoon of heavily armed mercenaries trying their best to kill me. There were moments too where I was hanging from a cliff or beam of a Turkish palace where I did stop to have a look & every time my reaction was the same “wow”. the sound too is stunning & beautifully composed to suit every aspect of both play & atmosphere, even the sound of water trickling is crisp & clear while a the sound of a desert eagle being fired off is not too deafening but still provides enough bang to make you think it’s the real thing. Did I mention its cinematic? If the story & cut-scenes were a movie it would stand-up to almost any Hollywood blockbuster on the market.

There really are not enough nice things I can say about this game, every little detail is perfect from the combat to the climbing. The levels are so impressive that you will find yourself stopping to look at your surroundings & take in the spectacular visuals. I have still yet to play the multiplayer modes but I’m already going through the game again for another play through this time I’m using many of the tweaks I unlocked/bought such as character skins/weapons. The fact that once I had finished it I started again 5mins later really speaks for how good the game actually is, I have been hearing good things about the multiplayer too but at the time of writing this I was only a few hours away from the release of call of duty 6 so I have still yet to try it out. If you do have a ps3 then you really should buy this game it wont disappoint & its worth every penny - uncharted 2: among thieves gets a well deserved 10/10.