AI Art, generated in Flux. Hunter. Of what is up to your imagination.
Tag: Action Hero
A Thousand Words: Big Fight
Big Fight: Big Trouble in the Atlantic Ocean
On one hand, the 1992 arcade brawler Big Fight can be viewed as nothing but a mechanically bland copycat of Final Fight and the like. While this is true, it’s also very hard to deny that the game is also a very weird and bizarre eccentric game with a premise that could have been written by Jon Land, graphics that fit said style perfectly, and translation terrible even by the standards of the day that weirdly adds to the charm.
See, the entire game takes place on a cruise ship/battleship/supervillain base called the “SKELETON CREW”. There are three protagonists with designs that aren’t anything to write home about the standard fast/strong/balanced differences. The normal enemies likewise are standard fare… but then come the bosses. They not only include a sumo-kabuki and an ancient Egyptian mummy-wizard, but the big twist is that after each defeat, everyone except the final boss becomes a playable character.
Every one has the same dialogue, repeated here verbatim: “[boss]: ‘Now I came to my sense. Can you take me into partnership? [character who beat the boss]: Sure.”
It’s not explained if they were mind controlled or whatever, but yeah. The sprites and backgrounds are not ‘good’ in terms of pure detail, but they’re bright and do exactly what they need to do. The ship has a variety of zoos, gardens, gyms, and the like to rival Spaceball One.
Is this a good game to actually play? No better than other ones of its time. Is it fun to look at? Oh yeah.
A Thousand Words: Double Dragon 3
Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone
Double Dragon basically made the brawler what it was. Unfortunately, its position at the height of beat em ups was very short lived. By the third game, an externally developed one called “The Rosetta Stone” that replaces the postapocalyptic streets with a world tour, it had been left behind by the likes of Final Fight. Really far behind.
If Final Fight has fluid controls that only seem slightly worse or clunky now than they did over thirty years ago, this feels like someone at the time who played both would have noticed it. The characters just move like they’re pieces on grooved slots (maybe it was even programmed like that). On top of it, being able to buy power ups with real quarters made this one of the first games with microtransactions.
So yeah, there’s a reason why Double Dragon fell out of favor. It didn’t make good games, and this was definitely not a good game.
Review: Midnight Ops
Midnight Ops
Midnight Ops is the latest Duncan Hunter book by Mark Hewitt . It is also not just the worst in the series but the worst “thriller” novel that I’ve read. Ever. At least as of this post. And I do not mean this lightly. Having read literally hundreds of these books, I’ve reached the point.
So the Amazon blurb mentions a defecting F-22 that flew to North Korea as the MacGuffin. Well you will be “glad” to hear that it takes two thirds of the book to even reach that point at all. And then it goes back to what it was previously doing. What was it doing?
Political rants. I’d say it’s like reading the Facebook page of your boomer uncle from rural Oklahoma, but that would be an insult to boomer uncles from rural Oklahoma. If you trained an AI model on nothing but conspiracy talk radio transcripts and then let it rip for five hundred pages, you’d have this book. But I’m still pretty sure the AI could do better.
The worst part is that I used to like this series! It had the same ridiculously right-wing politics and unstoppable Mary Sue, but could be fun in a Mack Maloney manner. This isn’t. The actual ‘action’ is the same repetitive easy victories that feels like an afterthought. It’s easy to tell the real emotion is in the rants.
So yes, I’ve found the new worst (thriller) novel ever. Welp.
Review: High Disaster
The Penetrator 22: High Disaster
The name High Disaster is fitting for the 22nd (!) Penetrator novel. By now co-author Chet Cunningham had clearly gotten sick of the series. That was the first problem, though someone as prolific as him could have just powered through a contract potboiler. The second and worse problem is that the ‘kill the mobster’ plot had played out and the ‘kill the terrorist’ plot had not yet become big.
So most men’s adventure novels in that period simply ended, with the oil crises not exactly helping things either. Yet the Penetrator kept going like a large caliber tank shell penetrating through a BMD-1. You ended up with things like High Disaster, where the threat/villain is (without spoiling anything) not exactly overwhelming, and the big gimmick is…. wildfires. In the American West. Which is kind of like rain and floods in Southeast Asia.
To appreciate the highs of a genre, you need to see the lows. And that is the only reason I’d recommend this book.
A Thousand Words: Hitman Absolution
Hitman Absolution
The Hitman series of stealth video games involves super-clone assassin Agent 47 hitting various men (and women). The games are centered around disguises. 47 can be a master of disguise despite being a bald near-albino with a barcode tattoo on his head who’s tall enough to be a viable basketball player. It’s just video game logic. Anyway, Hitman Absolution is regarded as one of the worst in the series, albeit in a way that spawned the absolute best let’s play series I’ve ever watched:
There’s far more focus on story in this game, which would be interesting if it was good, but it isn’t. So let me explain just one series of events:
- 47 goes to “South Dakota” (the Danish IO Interactive devs do not know what South Dakota is and have apparently mistaken it with Texas). He’s there to pursue a genetically modified girl/hitwoman-to-be who’s been kidnapped.
- 47 on the streets of the South Dakota town kills several anachronistic greasers who are the friends of the man who kidnapped her. The connection is incredibly tenuous.
- 47 counter-kidnaps the kidnapper and kills him.
- 47 goes through an amazingly precarious entrance in an Uncharted/Splinter Cell hybrid that’s nothing like previous Hitman games. He goes this way to get to a supervillain lair.
- 47 kills three mad scientists in the supervillain lair, only one of which has the most tangential connection to the kidnapped girl.
- 47 leaves the lair and kills the giant hulking man who doubles as a luchador MMA fighter. While up to the player, he potentially disguises as the man’s opponent, beats him in a semi-fair cage fight to death, and then like every true master of disguise, takes off his mask in front of a large crowd.
- 47 stays at a hotel and fights off a group of hitwomen dressed as latex fetish nuns.
- Finally, in an actually sensible plot plan, 47 finds the girl is in the hands of the sheriff and goes to the courthouse/prison/whatever to find her. In this part of the mission you can disguise yourself as a judge and beat people with a gavel.
- This cannot last for master assassin 47 is (out of player control) surprised and captured by a creepy ineffectual sheriff. Instead of killing them the antagonists leave him tied to a chair like every good supervillain.
- 47 then escapes (SPOILER ALERT) and battles/sneaks through a wave of stormtroopers sent by the assassin agency. He pursues the sheriff, who has been wounded by said stormtroopers, to a church and finishes him off.
- Finally 47 leaves “South Dakota” for the final showdown. And thus ends the arc. Somewhere Jon Land is going “uh, I think that’s too absurd”.
All this is punctuated by some of the worst cinematography ever, long after most games had figured out the basics. This gets to the point where one of the lets players reasonably called a cutscene in it the worst ever. What makes this strange is that publisher Square Enix basically invented the use of cinema in games. Or at least perfected it.
As for the actual game, it is a strange combination of cargo culted stealth movement through levels, occasional platforming, and a simplified, often made too easy version of the Hitman formula. It’s not unplayable or broken, but if you want Hitman, either the earlier Blood Money or the later remakes are vastly superior.
Review: Earth Fire
Earth Fire
The ninth Survivalist book and end of the de facto first arc is Earth Fire. It takes the “western Fist of the North Star” theme to its climax as John Rourke prepares his shelter for the firestorm engulfing the world and moves to stop the main Soviet antagonist from using the other suspended animation shelter in Cheyenne Mountain.
I’ve mentioned many times that this was an ideal stopping point for the series. Take this perfectly fine arc and the beginning of Book 10 where Rourke wakes up after the timeskip and sees the Eden Project spaceship lifeboat return and you have an excellent self-contained narrative. As it stood, the series kind of meandered on, becoming first a pet sci-fi setting and then hurriedly sputtering out after 1991.
In fact, later arcs would render this much less important via retcons. Here the Soviet Politburo is shot down as they attempt to reach Cheyenne Mountain because they don’t have a viable shelter of their own. Later on it turns out that the Soviets indeed had an underground city after all! And the Argentines, and the Icelanders, and pretty much everyone! How about that!
Still, this is a fine piece of ridiculous 80s excessive men’s adventure, and can be appreciated for what it is. The later sourness doesn’t make this any less sweet.
A Thousand Words: Half Past Dead
Half Past Dead
2002’s Half Past Dead was Steven Seagal’s final effort in mainstream cinema before he collapsed entirely into sus no-budget cheapies. Both a rip-off of the earlier and far better The Rock in the exact same setting (Alcatraz) and the general “Die Hard in a ______” trend that was several years out of date, it did not exactly breathe new life into his career.
A story of supervillains storming Alcatraz (see what I said about that other movie), the film is notable for two things besides just having a washed-up Seagal in it. The first is how desperately they tried to go for the “Edgy Extreme” trend of the late 90s and early 2000s, dragging in rappers and garish overcut camera angles to try (unsuccessfully) to put lipstick on the pig. The second is that this is one of the first appearances of the ubquituous Steven Seagal Stunt Double, used for as much as they could get away with. The “Stunt Double” would reach new heights in Seagal’s later films where it would be used not just for any mild exertion, but for things like walking peacefully.
Amazingly, one of the few highlights is “49er 6”, the femme fatale villain played by a 40 year old soap opera actress (Nia Peeples). She apparently relished doing her own stunts, and that is a far cry from Seagal the Double-Man.
As a time capsule/MST3K-style so bad its good, you could do worse than this movie. But I wouldn’t put it anywhere near the top of the cheap thriller pyramid.
Review: The Occupation
The Occupation: A John Warren Novel
My Amazon recommended reading list is filled with all kinds of postapocalyptic wilderness guerilla commando survival books. And none are portrayed as pulpy as Jerry Ahern’s Survivalist. While I generally had little interest in such novels, it got to the point where I figured I might as well try one out. So I chose WJ Lundy’s The Occupation.
Starting with a boilerplate Evil Woke Corporate Dystopia (complete with Evil Foreign UN Peacekeepers to round out the League of Evil), it of course ends up with rural guerilla resistance. And in what I suspect is a common theme even though I’ve only read a little of the genre, it’s very heavy on the tactical maneuver minutia. Like it’s mercifully restrained in detailing the various models of guns involved, but in terms of execution it’s rather different. Which isn’t the worst thing.
And neither is this book. It could be better, but in terms of 51% entertainment, you could certainly do a lot worse.
Review: The Last of the Dog Team
The Last of the Dog Team
William W. Johnstone said that of all his many, many writings, The Last of the Dog Team was his proudest work. This is yet more proof that his ability to judge what made a “good” book was lacking. As if the dozens and dozens of terrible slop on paper wasn’t enough evidence.
Anyway, The Last of the Dog Team is about Terry Kovak, a poor boy turned supercommando. Or rather, it’s mostly about his, uh, “love life”. See, he has the magic power of making women want him desperately. If he really was a secret agent, he’d be perfect for Romeo Gambits. The plot, such as it is, is of a violent lunatic (ie, Kovak) killing people in his hometown, in Southeast Asia, and in Africa before returning to a reluctant retirement and then dying of natural causes.
The prose is bad and erratic even by Johnstone’s standards, veering between Exclamation Points!, long syrupy purple prose, and lines like “He felt drained-which he was. He felt sick”. And yet the key factor is its pretentiousness. It’s clear that Johnstone wanted to write some sweeping epic saga of a man’s life yet had simply no idea how to do so without throwing in another sex or killing scene. This sort of overreach (much of the Ashes series is a redneck convinced he’s Larry Bond) is something WWJ had and many other bottom-feeder thrillers (including the later “William W. Johnstone’s” did not.
Since this was an early book of his, I could forgive Johnstone if he got better. He didn’t.
Fuldapocalypse Fiction 