NHL 2K9

(2K Sports; 2008)

Graphics

The Wii is definitely capable of better graphics than this. The ice and arenas look quite nice, and the animation and flow of the game is not all that bad, but the player models look terrible. None of the players’ faces look right—even generic faces are muddy and unclear—and their bodies look low quality and messy. The jerseys are pretty messy, too.

One odd thing I noticed is that the crowd graphics/animations are kind of… off. When they’re in the distance, they don’t look too bad, because it looks like people in the audience are doing different things. But up close, the audience members are really grainy and pixelly. Interestingly, they all seem to be facing the camera at all times! During a break in the action, the camera was showing the ice from behind the net, and the people between the net and the camera were sitting facing the camera—away from the ice! Not just turning around looking at the camera… I mean legs, chairs and all! Sloppy coding?

Some of the stat menus are very cramped and the numbers are quite small, even on my big TV. I can’t imagine playing this on a 25″ CRT television—it would just be impossible to read the charts.

Note that I am playing on a 32″ Sharp Aquos with component cables.

Graphics: 4/10

Sound

Normally, the endlessly repeating soundtrack and commentary in a game like this can be very annoying. For what it’s worth, the soundtrack is appropriate to the game. The fact that I haven’t played too much yet may contribute to the fact that I don’t find the music gratingly annoying, but at least it’s not annoying right out of the gate.

The commentary is generally pretty sharp and appropriate to the game. I haven’t had too much of a problem with it yet. There is a play-by-play guy, a colour commentator, and an on-ice commentator who occasionally offers insight into a game’s progress by reporting on interviews (which we don’t hear) with the coaches.

You also have a lot of flexibility in adjusting the volume levels of the arena announcer, goal horn, crowd, commentary, etc.

Sound: 8/10

Controls

The new Wii controls are obviously going to be pretty important to the success of this game. I’ll say right away that they’re hit or miss, so I’ll break it down that way.

The Good:

Precision passing and chain passing using the Wii pointer are not as complicated or hard to execute as they look on paper. The pointer doesn’t really distract from the action, and it’s pretty smart about which player you intend to point at.

The shooting control waggle for wrist shots and slap shots is also well done. Sometimes, if you don’t waggle correctly, it won’t register as a shot attempt, but this is just an issue of getting used to how to use the controls.

The Bad:

Menu navigation is not very intuitive. Sometimes you use the analog stick to cycle through options, and sometimes you use the control pad, and it’s not immediately obvious which to use where. It takes some getting used to, and it becomes easier after a while, but it could have been done better.

Body checks are performed by shaking the nunchuk. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work quite as well as the remote-shaking shooting controls. It’s not exactly bad, but it definitely feels imprecise.

The Ugly:

Fighting is also performed with motion controls. The player tilts the nunchuk to maintain balance and punches with the Wii remote. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t work at all. What makes it even worse is that big goofy “instructions” appear in the screen in the form of cartoonish graphical representations of the nunchuk and remote moving around. It’s pretty brutal. Fighting can be turned off, but that’s no fun.

Controls: 6.5/10

Features

The game’s most interesting feature is its roster management system. This also happens to be the feature to which the player has the most access right from the get-go, so that’s what I’m going to talk about here. There is a fully-featured character and team creation system as well as a character editor that allows players to adjust the stats of their favourite NHL stars. Think Sidney Crosby is overrated? You can scale him back.

Sounds good so far, right? Unfortunately, while this system should have gone all the way and allowed players complete control over the creation and management of their rosters, the system is crippled by a couple of limitations.

The first is the limit on the number of players each team can have. Joe Sakic starts the game as a free agent, but I couldn’t assign him to the Colorado Avalanche because they have too many players already! If I want to solve this, I have to dump one of their other players to the minors or free agency.

The second limitation is the salary cap. While the presence of the salary cap in the game is a definite bonus, the player has no control over the salaries of players! Chris Chelios starts the game as a free agent. When I assigned him to the Detroit Red Wings, his salary was arbitrarily assigned based on his stats, to the tune of $1.15m. In real life, Chelios signed a one-year deal with the Wings for $750k! Not only can this screw a player over in terms of cap space, but it can also mean that tweaking the rosters so they reflect their real-life counterparts can put teams over the salary cap, which means you either have to make more adjustments or play with the cap disabled. When adjusting rosters in a fully-featured editor like this, the player should have full control—and that includes control over salaries.

Features: 7/10

Minor Issues

Other than what I’ve already mentioned above, there are a couple of lingering little issues. The first is that the in-game presentation of stats and interesting factoids is a little bit weak. The game doesn’t trace interesting storylines, and doesn’t even make it immediately apparent who got the assists on a goal. The player has to look in a menu for that information.

I’ve also run into a strange little problem with the auto-save function. After playing a game and exiting back to the season’s home menu, the game will attempt to auto-save (if you have that option enabled). But I keep getting a message saying the game is unable to save to my Wii system memory. The odd thing is that I have 350+ blocks free on my internal memory, and if I try to save manually I face no problems whatsoever. I don’t know what the problem is, but it’s not a major one.

For the record, the save data for my game, which includes my player profile, custom rosters, and my ongoing season save data, is 47 blocks. It’s not too bad, but if you run your Wii on empty, make sure you free up some space before playing.

Conclusions

All in all, this certainly isn’t the best hockey game I’ve ever played. It has a lot going for it, but it seems that every positive feature of the game is shot in the foot by some annoying problem. If you just want to play a quick arcade-style game of hockey, the skating, passing, and shooting controls should be fun, but they’re held back by wonky faceoff, fighting, stick-handling, and checking controls. If you want an in-depth hockey / management simulator, you definitely have a lot of freedom over what you can do with players and rosters, but you may find yourself having to find creative ways around the game’s arbitrary limitations, and you’re going to have a hard time getting everything exactly how you want it.

In the end, this seems like the kind of game that makes a player hopeful for a promising sequel. Unfortunately, pretty much every sports game works that way, and sequels seldom fix all of the problems from previous games (while usually introducing new ones of their own).

The bottom line is that this is the only NHL and NHLPA licensed game for the Wii, so if you want to play an NHL game and you only have a Wii, then this is what you get.

Final Score: 6/10

The Dark Knight

Warner Bros.; 2008

The Dark Knight is the sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s “reboot” to the DC Comics hero’s film franchise. I enjoyed the previous film well enough and had been excited about seeing the sequel ever since I heard that Heath Ledger would be playing the Joker. I saw it just over a week ago in IMAX and I was not disappointed.

The film is far darker than Batman Begins (which attempted to bring some much needed grit to the series, itself) and also far better. Begins lost points, for me, because of its focus on the mostly nameless Gotham mobsters, a crappy villain, a crappy villain ex machina, and Katie Holmes. The Dark Knight benefits from Holmes’s replacement, a boost in the importance of Gary Oldman’s Gordon character, a sublime villain, and, well… extra points for the sublime villain part. As good as it is, The Dark Knight loses some points of its own, especially with regards to the new clean Gotham. I thought the first movie did an excellent job of creating a dark, dirty city, so it was a bit of a disappointment to see that setting transformed into a clean and bright Chicago for the sequel.

Heath Ledger is awesome. His Joker is awesome. He pretty much makes the movie. Almost any scene he is in is excellent purely because of his involvement. This is a credit not only to Heath but to Nolan, who wrote and directed him. The Joker’s schemes and pranks are awesome, too, from the opening bank heist to his assaults on Batman’s psyche to the final climactic showdown. Aaron Eckhart makes a great Harvey Dent, even if he is a bit too squeaky clean. I felt that his transformation into Two-Face was a bit rushed and not entirely convincing, but it did provide a nice frame of reference for Batman’s ambiguous moral situation. Michael Kane and Morgan Freeman are back in their supporting roles and they’re both as excellent as one would expect. Christian Bale is fine as Batman, but I would have liked to see a bit more of the public face of Bruce Wayne (because he’s hilarious).

The movie is long, long, long, and some of the scenes seemed like they could have been trimmed down a little bit. I’m thinking particularly of some of the motorcycle / Batpod sequences (of which, it seemed, there were many). The whole Hong Kong scene seemed like little more than an excuse to showcase some of Batman’s gadgets (the toys that made Jack Nicholson’s Joker so jealous), but I still thought it was pretty cool. Still, the film doesn’t feel as long as it is, and the pacing is good enough that it doesn’t drag at any point.

This review is pretty much spoiler-free, but I can’t guarantee the same will be true of the comments, so continue at your own discretion. That said, more in-depth and spoiler-filled discussion of the film is welcome in the comments.

Walk Hard

Columbia; 2007

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is one of those comedies that all seem the same as each other. You know the ones. This particular film is a little bit different, though, simply because it is a parody of a specific film (2005’s Johnny Cash biopic / docudrama / whatever Walk the Line). That doesn’t make it any more memorable, though. It came out of Judd Apatow (the Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman, Superbad, Talladega Nights guy), and it’s a lot like all of those movies.

John C. Reilly is actually pretty good, but the script is just kind of OK and relies on a lot of the same old cheap sexual innuendo and over-the-top physical comedy (Reilly is one of Will Ferrell’s minions, after all). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it’s still occasionally funny, but it’s not all that original. The impressions are intentionally terrible, especially the Beatles: Jack Black as Paul McCartney (?), Paul Rudd as John Lennon (??), Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr (???), and the “I’m a Mac” dude as George Harrison (?!?!?). On the plus side, Reilly is actually a pretty good singer, and the original songs aren’t all that bad (for comedy movie songs).

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this movie, quite frankly, because it’s not all that memorable. I know there are a lot of people out there who like it a whole lot, and that’s fine. Folks are bound to really enjoy at least one film among the many in this pseudo-series. I imagine Apatow and Ferrell’s clique get involved with so many movies that are really just the same movie precisely so that they can hit as large an audience as they can.

Sex and the City

HBO / New Line Cinema; 2008

Yes, that’s right. Sex and the City. It comes as no surprise that fans of the original HBO TV series generally love this movie. Folks who aren’t fans also love it just fine, but many people see it as distinctly non-movielike. The film is long, rambling, basically conflict-free, and leans heavily on already established characters. So far, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. Now I’m going to do things backwards and start with my conclusion. I’m a fan of the series. I thought the movie was alright. It wasn’t a great film, but it wasn’t the disastrous mess of fanservice and nostalgia (though both were present in copious measure) that many thought it would be. My gripes are mostly with the film’s gloomy atmosphere and with some quirks of characterization.

First, the film is indeed nostalgic, and I think that’s part of what it’s shooting for. But too much of the nostalgia seems like the sad kind that dwells on missing better days rather than the warm fuzzy kind that invokes happy memories. Even the opening monologue and montage meant to introduce “new” viewers to the series backstory is delivered in a tone that says “our best days are behind us.” Thematically, as well, much of the film deals with loss, moving on, and leaving essential parts of ourselves behind. To me, it all seemed a little too heavy.

Second, the characters suffer from this same gloom, and it makes them feel quite different. Samantha is bogged down in a long-term relationship that prevents her from engaging in the wild sexual antics that defined her through the series. The worst part about this is that her partner has transformed into an entirely absent and unsympathetic character. He is basically emptied of the emotional value he gained throughout the show’s final season, which makes it hard to identify with Samantha’s struggle. Carrie is such a sad sack through so much of the film that the viewer wonders what ever happened to her usual childishness (one characteristic that usually made her endearing enough for the viewer forgive her many faults). Is this what happens when four years pass without us watching? Did she finally “grow up” in her late thirties? Even Mr. Big is not unaffected. While he was always a relatively mysterious figure in the show, they’ve attempted to flesh him out in the movie. We see him express his feelings, we see him get upset, we see him behind his wall. In short, he has become a regular old romantic comedy male. Except that he’s filthy rich… but don’t get me started on this show’s financial politics.

OK, so it looks like I only have bad things to say. None of these criticisms is particularly damning, and a lot of how viewers can interpret them hinges on whether they’ve watched (and enjoyed) the TV series. It is, after all, a nice return to the characters and the relationships of the show. But it seems to dwell on its own “fact of being past” (if I can be permitted to twist that idea out of my brain), and this just strikes me as sad.

Live at Leeds

The Who; 1970
Deluxe Edition 2001

What can be said about this album that hasn’t already been said? Not only is The Who’s first official live album widely regarded as one of the best live albums of all time (the best by some), but it also deserves consideration as one of the best rock albums period. A critical and commercial success, Live at Leeds captures The Who at the height of their ear-shattering powers—Tommy was their previous studio effort, and Who’s Next was to follow. Can anyone name a better album-per-year trio of classics? Rubber Soul – Revolver – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, I hear you say? Exactly. Suitably legendary.

The album begins in style, with the thunderous high-speed bass and drum opening to the rocker “Heaven and Hell” (penned by Thunderfingers himself, bassist John Entwistle), and it’s clear that the band isn’t going to pull any punches. They rock harder than Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple ever did (and with more conviction, to boot). Musically, the whole album is spectacular. Each member is really on top of his game. Entwistle’s fingers are all over the bass, usually simultaneously. Pete Townshend is his usual sloppy self, but it’s truly inspired. Keith Moon shows why he still hasn’t been topped in terms of raw musical drumming skill. Roger Daltrey gets behind the beat a couple of times on disc two, and he sometimes sounds tired, but it detracts nothing from his vocals.

The set list is about the best you could ask from The Who of 1970. The concert staple rock & roll covers are all there (“Young Man Blues”, “Summertime Blues”, and “Shakin’ All Over”), as are the cutesy chart hits (“I Can’t Explain”, “Substitute”, “Happy Jack”, and “I’m a Boy”). Any concession to studio arrangement is abandoned, though, as the singles are performed with the same driving energy as the rest of the rockers. Speaking of energy, every member of the band gets in on the witty banter between songs. Normally I don’t care for lengthy interruptions between rock numbers, but pretty much everything that comes out of Moon’s mouth (sometimes even in the middle of songs!) is hilarious. And it truly is witty. The set is rounded out with one of the best (of many) versions of the mini-opera “A Quick One, While He’s Away”, an extended “Magic Bus”, and a long and weaving fifteen-plus minute version of “My Generation” that serves as a kind of encore medley finale. And of course, disc two consists of an uninterrupted Tommy set (minus a few songs, like “Underture”, “Sensation”, and “Welcome”, unfortunately).

It’s great to hear Tommy live, and some of the songs benefit a great deal from the band’s concert enthusiasm. Notably, “Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker)” and “Smash the Mirror” are given a far more aggressive treatment than their album versions, and Daltrey and Townshend deliver “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with a kind of sincerity that doesn’t come through quite as well on the original. The only song that doesn’t work as well as it did on the album (which is a real shame, because it’s one of my favourite studio tracks) is a sloppy and lifeless “Sally Simpson”. Besides this blip in an otherwise excellent performance, there is still a problem with the way in which Tommy was integrated into the concert on this deluxe edition. Due to technological restraints (i.e. the length of the audio CD), Tommy has been removed from its original place in the set list and transplanted onto disc two. This means that the songs that originally closed the album—”Summertime Blues” to “Magic Bus”—now close disc one. This wouldn’t normally be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the band revives several musical themes from Tommy in the middle of their “My Generation” medley. Instead of acting as a formal return to the themes of the show’s centre-piece, they just sound arbitrary. Still, the presentation (the remastering job and the skilled editing around the transplant) is of such a quality that the altered song order is only really a minor inconvenience for die-hard fans.

I cannot recommend this album strongly enough. It is the definitive document of what The Who were all about in their prime. If you ever find yourself wondering what the big deal about The Who was—and why they were considered such wild rock icons—look no further than Live at Leeds.

Toki Tori

Two Tribes; 2008

Initial impression: this game is cute. I love the music and the graphics. They’re very cute and appropriate… lush but not distracting. I’ve only been playing on and off, which suits this game amazingly well, and I just made it to the Creepy Castle (the second game world) last night.

Game play is very easy to get the hang of. I’ve been playing with the Wii remote, and sometimes precision directions are a bit sketchy (I haven’t tried the other control schemes yet to see how well they work), but I know that’s just because I’m sitting at a weird angle and being lazy about my aim. The controls are actually amazingly easy and intuitive. Point, click, occasional shake. After a level or two, you don’t have to think about the controls anymore, which allows you to focus on thinking about the puzzles.

The level design is interesting, and I could definitely see how a second player drawing on the screen would be helpful. I’ve had to redo a couple of levels a few times just to make the mistakes and see where I’m supposed to go. I also did the first “hard” level (unlocked when I made it to the Creepy Castle), and it was indeed a little bit trickier. As the game progresses, I can see the level design becoming very sneaky. If a particular stage is too tricky for you, you can use your “wild card” and skip to the next level. You can only use this wild card once, though, and if you want to get it back you have to beat your skipped level legitimately. It’s a good system that allows a little flexibility for gamers who just can’t get their heads around a particular puzzle, but I can definitely still see people getting stuck.

Apparently it has 70 levels (the regular set and the unlockable hard levels), and I think I’ve cleared 17 of them. It’s perfect as a pick-up-and-play kind of game, because it keeps track of your progress through every level, so you can stop and then start where you left off at will. I’m really enjoying it, and I suspect it’ll last me quite a long time at this pace.