Sabtu, 29 Oktober 2011

Rule of Rose ~ A girl trapped in a weird fantasy

Before I begin my review, let me caution you that this review contains spoilers, so read at your own risk. ;-)

Rule of Rose is a 2006 survival horror video game for PlayStation 2 and was made by the company Punchline. In the game, we take control a young teenage girl named Jennifer who was somewhat trapped in a place where it was ruled by young underage girls known as the Red Crayon Aristocrats, with the backdrop of 1930 England. The video game was banned in several countries for child violence and sexuality.

The story began as Jennifer was given a story book by a small boy on a bus in the middle of the night. When the boy suddenly took off, Jennifer followed her and came across a creepy orphanage with a lot of mysteries. Her journey in the orphanage was cut short though as she was captured and transported to an airship. And on this airship the torture began. Jennifer was captured by the Red Crayon Aristocrats who ruled the airship and in order to survive, Jennifer had to obey all their rules. She was asked to do several tasks, all of them involving finding certain items to progress. With an airship filled with strange creatures, the tasks were not easy to complete. Lucky for Jennifer, she was accompanied by Brown, a dog that she rescued on the ship.


 The plot story is definitely one of the best aspect of Rule of Rose. Although at times we end up clueless and running around not exactly sure what to do, but as the story progress, we got more and more curious to find out where will this all end. It teases us with a bit of information here and there without fully revealed the whole agenda and that what's keep the gamers going. Although I do feel that the story can be a bit confusing and hard to follow. Personally I have to search online to fully understand it, and I encourage other players to search online too if you finished the game but not truly get what was going on with the story because you will appreciate it more when you understand what's the story about.


The gameplay, however, is not as good as the plot. The character is too weak and players can get frustrated while controlling especially during fighting enemies. Although it is believable but it gets truly annoying when fighting bosses that needed to be hit multiple times to be knocked off but can easily get us sprawling on the ground with just one swipe. That was kind of unfair. The gameplay is very repetitive too, all you got to do to progress the game is find items upon items upon items. This contribute to the game's low replay value.

The visuals for the game are beautiful, and it almost reminded me of Silent Hill video games. The characters are well rendered and the settings are creepy, dark and desolate. I also like the writing of the game menu that looks like it was written with chalks on a blackboard. The voice acting are rather good too although at times it can be a bit off.

The music of the game is another great aspect of Rule of Rose beside the plot. It is well arranged and hauntingly beautiful. Not to mention memorable. It creates a sense of loneliness that suited the game very well. In fact it was so great that I could almost hear it playing in my head even after days not playing the game. It sounded good and perfect for the game with its settings and story.

Overall, the plot and music are definitely the best part of Rule of Rose. With flawed gameplay however, you might feel frustrated playing it. But there is no doubt in my mind that this game is one of a kind, a rare game that you don't usually get in the market. Thank you Rule of Rose for a great story telling.

Images from Wikipedia and IGN.

Minggu, 16 Oktober 2011

KARA ~ Step sounds so good!



Okay, so I know Kara is not really a household name in many parts of the world. People usually heard Wonder Girls, Girls' Generation but not Kara when it comes to Korean girl groups. But they are quite big in South Korea and they are very succesful in Japan too.

Consists of 5 members; Gyuri, Seung-yeon, Nicole, Goo Hara (which reminded me a lot of J-pop sensation Namie Amuro) and Jiyoung, I first came to know them with their song 'Honey' with soft and girly concept. But when they came out with 'Wanna' with more mature looks that I started to really like them. Then 'Mister', 'Lupin' and 'Jumping' came out, securing their place as one of the top girl group in South Korea.


But now with 'Step', I'm totally in love with them. The song 'Step' was made by the people behind the song 'Mister', so it's hardly anyone surprise that the song became so popular. It sound really good, a dance tune that will surely make you want to stand up and dance.

You can click here to see the awesome video to 'Step' at YouTube. Happy viewing!

Sabtu, 15 Oktober 2011

Silent Hill: Downpour official gameplay



I can't believe I missed this. It's a video of gameplay of Silent Hill: Downpour. It's quite an old video, because at the end they stated that the release date for the game was October 2011. Obviously that is not true, they already changed the release date to March 2012.

If you haven't seen the gameplay already, click the link below to directly take you to the video. It also got commentary from the Producer and Senior Associate Producer about the upcoming game. They didn't show much,but at least you could see how the game would look like, a bit of the combat system and also a chase scene. Looks pretty cool to me.

Silent Hill: Downpour gameplay

Selasa, 11 Oktober 2011

Final Destination film series ~ Best Awards

I love the Final Destination (FD) movie series, and I had watched all 5 of them, although not all at the movie theaters.

To (somewhat) celebrate the success of the series, here are the awards I came out with for the movies. It's just for fun, and also for my own entertainment. LOL. Hope you enjoy this (fake) award show! :-)
BTW, this post include spoilers for all FD movies in the series.Just some precaution for those who didn't watch the movies yet.

And here are the winners for FD Best Awards!!!


Best Opening Disaster Sequence

Final Destination 2 - Highway Car Crash



Very well orchestrated and pretty damn scary / nasty too. You got heavy logs rolling, cars smashing and people screaming. In real life, car accidents would happen in a blink of an eye and before you know it, people got hurt. But in this movie, the accidents seem to keep going on and on and on. Its scary to watch but at the same time have all the entertainment value that it need to be one of the best opening disaster scene in the series.

Best Ending Disaster Sequence

Final Destination 3 - Train Derailed

I love the ending to this movie. It's kind of ambiguous and you could not tell whether they make out the train alive or not...although I doubt they did. It all started out innocent enough when suddenly the 3 remaining 'survivors' met in a subway train, then all hell break loose. It's cool that the filmmaker toyed with the audience about the fate of the survivors so that we kind of hoping that they did make it out alive. At least I was hoping for that. But like I said, I had my doubts....

Best Lead Character

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Wendy Christensen (Final Destination 3)



This award is for to the main character who first received the premonition. I was torn between Devon Sawa (from FD1) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Although Devon Sawa was more believable and portray an emotional character which I love, I still have to pick Mary Elizabeth Winstead because...I guess I just love her character more. She's an incredible actress and an even more great scream queen of this generation.


Best SupportingCharacter

Ali Larter as Clear Rivers (Final Destination 1 & 2)



This award refer to all the other characters other than the main character who received the vision. Some of the best characters in my opinion include Olivia Castle (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) from FD5 and Kat Jennings (Keegan Connor Tracy) from FD2. But Clear Rivers is no doubt my favourite character from all the entire film series thus far. She's very quiet and somewhat timid in the 1st movie but turned to become more of a brave and gutsy character in the 2nd movie. I love her character more when she was timid and a little reserved but the fact that she had survived the horrific ordeal in the 1st movie and returned in 2nd makes me love her character even more. She's a fighter! I was also delighted when the character's name was briefly featured in the 4th movie.


Best Looking Couple

Bobby Campo & Shantel VanSanten as Nick O'Bannon & Lori Milligan (The Final Destination @ FD4)



Well, a lot of people might disagree with me but I honestly believe they are the best looking main couple in the movie series. They complement each other and have great chemistry on screen.

Best Individual Death Scene

Hanged in bathtub - Tod Waggner (portrayed by Chad Donella, Final Destination)



This award is very, I mean VERY, difficult to pick. I have numerous scary death scenes to choose from and I found that the death scene for Tod Waggner from the 1st movie is by far my favourite from all the movies. What separate this scene from all the other gory scenes is that it featured a slow and painful death compared to a lot of other death scenes which are quick and gory (crushed by a glass pane, crushed by two iron weights, ran over by a vehicle, smashed by a stray wrench, etc.). It was so hard watching the scene as you could almost feel that you were suffocating too. It's scary, tragic, sad and excruciatingly painful to watch. Personally, this is by far the scariest of them all.

Most Suspense Death Scene

Gymnastic practice went wrong - Candice Hooper (portrayed by Ellen Wroe, Final Destination 5)


Okay, so this awesome death scene didn't won the Best Individual Death Scene Award, but it is certainly the most suspenseful of all. The characters, of course, didn't fully aware of what was going on around them but the audience were left clutching to their seats as we wait for the 'death' to occur. Will she be crushed by the giant fan falling from the ceiling? Or will she step on a nail and fall off? Electrocuted??? What? What will happen to her?!?! The laser eye surgery was another cool death scene from FD5 but this one definitely deserves the award.





Best Overall Story

Final Destination


It's the movie that starts it all. Clever plot, amazing group of casts, dark and creepy atmosphere in the film and horrifying death scenes, need I say more?


And with that last award, we shall end our show here. I hope you enjoy this small show that I prepared and please support the FD movie series as I personally think it is a great franchise. For those who haven't watch the movies, better watch them now. Happy viewing!

Images from Yahoo! Movies, Wikipedia and screen caps from YouTube.