Avatar has been over ten years and $300m in the making and the hype for it was fairly bold, claiming that it was going to revolutionise cinema FOREVER! In truth, the visuals for this film are often very impressive but while the appearance of the film is often astonishing and does mark a watershed in effects, this is offset by the remarkably clichéd and banal story.

There have been been many rather unkind comparisons to Ferngully and many to Dances With Wolves. In fairness, aspects of both are in the film... but it borrows very heavily from the general area of film that equates the military and big corporations as BAD. The scientists are all very reasonable, seeing the unique ecology of the planet and thinking that IT and not the uber valuable unobtanium is the important thing on Pandora... and yes, they called the material they're there for unobtanium... So, they go for a LITERAL connection to the planet... because the Na'vi can literally plug into trees, animals, the big flying beasties... presumably evolution on Pandora has managed to bypass the biological equivalent of not having a laptop recognise the printer that's plugged in. It's ALL very hippy and it's the kind of tree hugging Gaia type claptrap that would have felt dated... well, back around the time of Ferngully.

It's very much set up to make it obvious that the corporation is BAD AND EVIL and the colonel is clearly spoiling for a fight from the get go, complete with his big scar and bad ass attitude. It's very clear that there's no compromise possible, the imperialist forces of capitalism are bad and evil, the noble savages can do no wrong with their hippy ways.

The events of the film are related by a handy capable ex-marine who apparently fell into it because his twin brother got shot and he's a genetic match, blah blah blah and he's there because it pays well and he needs money to get his legs fixed. So he goes to Pandora, which is apparently 5 years away... eh, whatever - this film has giant flying mountains and biological USBs and a military too stupid to know what orbital bombardment is. Anyway, John Generic is on his whole - gain trust of noble savages schtick. Obviously, initially he is working for the EVIL corporation but one he gets himself some sexy blue space babe, he's all about saving Ferngully - uh, sorry the rainforest... or whatever the hell it is he's saving.

So, we basically go through what amounts to about two hours of Pandora's Walking With Dinosaurs. Really, that's literally about it for the first two hours, John Generic just explores the world, the Na'vi and gets it on with hot Na'vi (your mileage may vary). Then the military/evil corporation get unhappy and go to war! This is an action film with very little action, basically this film pulls all the action punches until the final act. It's visually impressive but there's just no real plot here and the characters are all so forgettable. It just goes to show, you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars and never bother with a script... hmm, that sounds like the Star Wars prequels... this is better than them, certainly visually and at least the plot is coherent.

So... the first half of RTD's Doctor Who finale of finales has graced our screens... As one would expect, when a much loved character is about to be offed... it's fairly serious in tone but even that can't stop RTD from pushing in some totally inappropriate, unfunny comic relief - including flaming homosexual... As with a lot of two parters, it seems likely that come part the second, it's going to be obvious that a lot of the first part is filler.

John Simms is again wasted as an actor. He's a GOOD actor, whether it's RTD's script or the direction he received... or he's just hamming it up... it's all a bit much... of course, that said - given the visual effects used - it seems likely that most of it is down to RTD... so, it seems fair to give Simms credit for working with what he had.

If precedent is anything to go by, it seems likely that this will have an unsatisfactory resolution though...

Joss Whedon must be starting to feel like he's not wanted on TV. After the success of Buffy and then not-quite-as-successful-but-almost Angel he went on to Firefly... which was much loved but kinda dicked about and short lived. So, now Dollhouse has suffered a similar fate.

Similar, mostly in dying a death. Dollhouse made it to season 2 only by conceding to considerable budget cuts and it wasn't many episodes into season 2 before the old pattern repeated itself. It disappeared from schedules, got shuffled around and then before the half-way mark... Dollhouse was gone.

Of course, there is an inherent danger to a show by a writer known for his ability to build characters, where at the end of every episode, a reset button is hit and her character is literally deleted... that and the fact Dushku really wasn't a great choice for someone required to show a very large range. Also, Dollhouse kind of suffered from the X-Files Factor - which is to say, there is an enormous global conspiracy... but all we get to see is people sitting in the same office...

For whatever reason, Whedon fails again. Maybe he needs to try something that doesn't involve waif fu?

There is something called an idiot franchise - that is to say, a franchise which has fanboys (or girls) so loyal and unthinking that anything with the right name on it will inspire the easiest of all partings, a fool and their money. There are some obvious candidates for this... EA games and horror films. EA has been pumping out various slightly different iterations of sports games for over a decade now - to the point one starts to feel less contempt for the company and more for the fans... although, as it's EA... there's still a lot of contempt to be felt for them.

Microsoft seem fairly intent on making Halo their torch blazing idiot franchise. Now, some are going to immediately say that Halo was great etc. The first was certainly something that made the X-box a player in the console market - and let's face it, Halo is really much, much more about the multiplayer than the single player, regardless of the orders of magnitude more that was put into that in the second two games...

So, why say this is the dawn of an idiot franchise? First off, Halo Wars... ok, you might say - RTS games on consoles... those are never really going to be great. Some types of game favour a mouse and keyboard, some a controller - and hey, it had some pretty cutscenes and it wasn't actually MADE by Bungie. Sure but it was just a cash-in... and of course, now Halo: ODST has been done... Bungie have bailed, well almost. They're signing off with Halo: Reach - which they've said little about but will presumably be a Halo prequel and FPS.

Bungie can't really be blamed for what went down with Halo - Microsoft bought them and the game concept changed radically and it became the X-box's messiah, very much the Alpha and Omega. ODST was not a high note to finish on - it's a bunch of characters you don't know, doing stuff you don't care about and really, the ODST boys are pussies compared to Master Chief. The chorus of voices on this game echoes much what the developers said - it's not worth full price. It's just an expansion, pretending to be a game... But... in short order, all these sins will be forgotten.

Why? Because... THERE'S A NEW HALO GAME! Which will be the last one to have anything to do with Bungie - all Halo properties henceforth shall be dealt with by a Microsoft subsidiary. Yes. Microsoft want to milk this cow dry enough that they not only bought the intellectual property from Bungie, they're actually making a company to exploit it. A company PURELY to develop Halo titles... the power of fanboys is as awesome as their ability to let fanaticism override intellect time and again... After all, if Halo: ODST being a full priced release when the game amounted to a fairly limited add-on for Halo 3... then it's fair to say the shark has been jumped.

The Water Of Mars... Well, if you want to be an uber fan and put that into an anagram generator... Do so. Anyway, the spacing of these specials has been pretty piss poor but then, that's probably not RTD's fault. You'll probably know he wrote this script by the "OHAI I HAVE THE BROTHER WITH THE HUSBAND!" bit... but we get "YES, THE ENVIRONMENT HAS BEEN BAD DUE TO POLLUTION!" so there's an environmental message... one of the events being subtly dubbed the "Oil Apocalypse"... actually, as far as environmental messages go - that IS subtle but that's more a result of them being generally anvilicious.

So, we don't really hang around in this adventure, Doctor Who turns up on the Mars base and says hi - for reasons of plot that will become apparently later, he materialises his TARDIS for about the first time ever - not in a cupboard but on the surface of Mars... which means he's mincing across the surface in a space suit. Anyway, in short order, the Doctor realises that this is a DOOMED expedition and that it's one of those fixed points in space etc. For some reason, this is related by the Doctor flashing back to the BBC news website or something - showing the obituaries of those on the base... which is a little strange but saves exposition.

Naturally, problems arise almost immediately in the form of WATER SPEWING ZOMBIES. Who were apparently trapped under the ice or something and now a SINGLE drop of their water will infect someone faster than you can say "28 Days Later". The twist is of course, these zombies are smart and can make water... so, they're kind of fucked. In fact, the Doctor ELABORATES to them just how fucked they are. Or rather, how their fate is inevitable.

They went on - at length -before this episode came out, that it would be the scariest ever (they seem to say that a lot)... but really, it's far more action than anything. The situation is fairly hopeless... but that doesn't equal a scare factor. Just a lot of heroic self-sacrifice etc. etc. It's really just an enjoyable yarn... which probably means RTD is saving himself up for his final episodes.

A lot better than Planet of the Dead and The Next Doctor... but that's not exactly saying much, is it? Also... why were these specials SO badly spaced? There were supposed to be four in 2009 but it seems there will only be 3... as the Christmas Special is going to be a two-parter that finishes in early 2010. Still, that means there are going to be specials in TWO months. Poorly planned.

To make a comment about remakes would be to tread upon ground that is walked all too regularly, so let us generously not mention that of the new V - which is, yes... a remake of the classic 80s TV miniseries. So, anyway - the basic story can be summed up (and the show even makes the reference) as the start of Independence Day with giant ships showing up over all the major cities on Earth. The big difference being that they don't explode monuments, they're all smiles and sunshine... OR ARE THEY?!

Naturally, too good to be true! As if good natured aliens would ever stop by Earth to give us something for nothing - because naturally, the space hooker from Firefly (their leader) tells us that they're just stopping here for a weekend break but they'll give us technology and stuff to cover the inconvenience... and this is in the first five minutes, including an entirely gratuitous and unnecessary jet fighter falling out of the sky and exploding.

The show doesn't waste much time in showing us that the aliens are plotting against us. In fact, it's pretty telegraphed by the way they behave - even if the end of the first episode didn't pull any punches in that regards... which kind of kills the suspense, beyond how. Oh, wait - no. They want to infiltrate human society. They don't really say WHAT they want... but yeah, then... if they're so technologically advanced - they could have tossed an asteroid at us and wiped us out to harvest everything.

Just the usual failing.

It is - of course - tradition for horror franchises to contrive some way to return the killer and thus allow there to be additional films and thus, more money - what makes the Saw franchise a little different is that the third film ends with him being pretty unambigiously killed and the FOURTH one shows him in the process of being autopsied (and no, he's not jumping up like Michael Myers or Jason). So... it's somewhat impressive that having died in Saw III, his machinations are still afoot and as elaborate and nigh infallible as ever in Saw VI.

There ISN'T really much to seperate this film from the others... there is actually something of a narrative thread here, which is to say - this film is a BIG author filibuster about health care in the USA and the role of the insurance companies in screwing people over on their health insurance... all of which takes something of a back seat to Jigsaw basically exceeding a BATMAN level of planning, forethought and prediction.

It's not hard to see why the writers want to keep Tobin Bell around, he's pretty much the only character who has been in every film and he's a fine actor and really, the most iconic thing about the entire film series is the creepy puppet with Tobin Bell doing the Jigsaw voice - that and the twist at the end of the film.

This is pretty much what anyone who has seen a Saw film would expect, which for most means this probably won't be worth going to the cinema for.

The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica started by telling us that the Cylons had a plan... so, now sometime after the end of BSG, we have the release of "The Plan"... and it's no exaggeration to call this a glorified clip show.

We get some insight into certain events - mostly (as you'd expect) seeing what the Cylons were doing in the human fleet... Apparently their master plan didn't involve Galactica escaping - they wanted to wipe out humanity in one move... and the way they kept getting the fleet's position was because the human form Cylons that died were giving co-ordinates to the Cylon fleet.

There isn't much to write home about. For the true BSG aficionado - it will fill in some blanks... but really, what it seems to highlight most is that the plan... wasn't very good. Other than that, it really comes down to... a little background. There are no cosmic revelations to be had about the story, no awe inspiring twists... which is probably for the best. For an average BSG fan... maybe not so much - possibly for nostalgia value... but if you want to watch the show again... why not just watch the show again?

Lost has popularised flashbacks to an epic extent. The bandwagon is one that the whole TV industry has been all too keen to jump on... so, it's perhaps somewhat appropriate that Fast Forward should offer us the opposite... which is to say, a global event where near enough the entire population sees 137 seconds of their lives six months in the future.

An interesting premise for a story, yes? Well - yes... it's an interesting premise. Shame about the execution. Several episodes in and it's hard to really care about any of the characters... You really need to care about the characters in this but whether it's the writing, the direction or the actors... it's hard to like any of these characters.

And that makes it difficult to really take any interest in the show. Apathy toward characters kills any real interest in the overall plot - which amounts to how the "flash forward" happened, who did it and why... but yeah, who cares about that when most of the characters are either bland or spend their time being angry and shouting a lot. Most of these people are constantly at the level of angry Rush from Stargate Universe. It's based on a book - maybe it's better to just check that out and save yourself the time.

Onward, ever onward the seemingly indestructible Stargate series moves - with four incarnations (yes, four - though few will have heard of the abortive Stagate: Infinity and fewer still watched it) it's hard to keep things fresh. So, we have a team sent to a distant galaxy and with no way home, trapped on an Ancient vessel and... NO, this isn't Stargate: Atlantis.

The premise is similar... but really it has more in common with Voyager and that was just a rehash of Lost In Space and that was really just The Odyssey (IN SPACE!). So, no real point in trying to poke holes in it for that. Also, there are obvious differences. The people aren't on the ship by choice - the ship itself is totally fucked... in fact, thus far the episodes have revolved entirely around the basics of survival. Which is in direct contrast to Voyager and Stargate: Atlantis - where just about everything was fine after the pilot episode.

However, someone clearly felt the plight of humans on an Ancient spaceship that is falling to pieces, stranded millions of light years from home with limited resources and no idea where they are or even if they're going to survive. No, that has to be padded with tedious flashbacks and Ancient communication devices. The occasional flashback is OK but the Ancient communication devices mean everyone can just chitchat with their loved ones - Voyager waited what was it... four years before they did this? AND THAT WAS VOYAGER! Still, all these flashbacks and

Beyond that, the cast is poor. Robert Carlyle is a capable actor but here it feels like someone said "HAM IT UP!" and he has chewed his way through entire sets... but his character is the only vaguely competent character other than Eli (MIT drop out/boy wonder) and Young (the barely tolerable O'Neil/Sheppard equivalent). Eli is the only one that is really relatable - he's kind of the equivalent of Daniel Jackson in the sense that he's the ordinary guy who is kinda dead ending in the world and then come men come along and BOOM, he's in his element.

To be honest, Eli is the only person seemingly capable of coming up with ideas and Rush is the only person that understands the ship. Young spends most of his time bitching about what a bitch Rush is... despite the fact Rush (who shouts at people because they've no clue what's going on) has been right... more than anyone. Not to mention the fact Rush is the person seemingly MOST concerned with the immediate task of survival, Young hasn't been sabotaging Rush but by ignoring him, he's not really advanced their cause. It's so manifestly obvious that they're stuck where they are for the time being...

In many senses, it is as if we're going through a further iteration of the Stargate dynamic. For those who followed SG-1 and Atlantis, this may be something that will be obvious. For those less acquainted... Stargate started out as pretty much PURELY military, the air force of all things... but as the show progressed, various tentacles of the government wrapped themselves around it and this somewhat culminated in the IOA - who served the same purposes as previous senators and various other people had... to be a thorn in the side of the SGC. Atlantis somewhat progressed this idea by being a mission led by scientists with a civilian administrator who had the final word... of course, she was rubbish... but it was a logical extension.

Stargate Universe is trying to give us something in the same vein... except that thus far, beyond having a mix of military and scientists... the power structure is clear.

All in all, pretty lacklustre. Poor casting, mediocre and lazy writing - making the senator's daughter an utterly unsympathetic... And really, who cares about any of these characters? They're just bland. It needs work.

Some names when involved with a potentially interesting film, lead one's heart to sink... so, naturally any expectations for Pandorum should evaporate when one sees that Paul W.S. Anderson is producing. In fact, it may be worth remarking upon the fact that some time ago Anderson directed the somewhat obscure sci-fi horror Event Horizon. Despite the time which has passed - that film remains superior.

The premise of the film is like some manner of composite of tropes and cliches. The monsters are the offspring of those creepy beasties from The Descent and Ghosts Of Mars, most of the film involves the ever popular running around dark tunnels and everyone's favourite AMNESIA! Really, the amnesia is just there to justify the exposition and there's so little plot here, it's really not needed. Oh, wait! Flashbacks! We get a few of those too! Even though they serve no real purpose beyond padding.

So, Earth gets massively overpopulated - and the Elysium is built to go and find a conveniently discovered Earth-like planet that could sustain a human colony. What isn't revealed immediately is that the purpose of this giant ship full of people is to colonise the planet. One area where the film should gain some kudos - the ship is actually flying at sub-light speeds but don't worry plenty of time to make up for that lapse! Which really isn't too long - apparently the monsters are actually the colonists which made them EVOLVE! Or something. It's not really explained but then, it's not the kind of film that should ever try and have a clever story.

The protagonists wake up with aforementioned amnesia and find everything is broken and realise that they're in the "generic something went terribly wrong and we're fucked" scenario. The sci-fi horror clichés pile up and what little plot is given by snatches of exposition. We get a mandatory ticking clock and a twist and then it plods its way dutifully to the end.

It's hard to say anything about the film - it's just so very unremarkable. It's not bad... it's just a waste of time but hard to hold any strong feelings about it.

Regardless of how much contempt, loathing and hatred is showered upon Twilight - no one can deny that while it has been roundly critically bent over a table that it made money. And so, it came to be - vampires were the new fad!

So - someone thought it was a good idea to make a Twilight imitation with the original title, Vampire Diaries - so you know it has vampires in it! This shows première is mind crushingly banal, it makes the last season of Smallville seem like Shakespeare by comparison. For no reason, we have our main vampire character enrol in high school. He establishes he's over 100 years old! Oh, there's something about one the girls being something important or something stupid like that and while vampires here don't sparkle... they're entirely immune to sunlight, apparently. Hence their ability to stalk girls at high school.

The female protagonist is some vanilla blandness that had her parents die - presumably of boredom. What is there to say of her? Oh, she has a brother who is apparently doing the drugs - coz he's sad. It's just so hard to care about this, it's generic good looking high school drama WITH VAMPIRES. Honestly, regardless of what you had to say about Buffy - at least it had characters that weren't such cardboard cut outs. It's ironic that one of that the brother is on the drugs because the acting in this show isn't bad - it simply isn't there.

If there wasn't much to say about Defying Gravity - there's nothing to say about this. It's just so insipid and derivative. Sure, Defying Gravity stole a pre-existing concept down to the ship design but at least they tossed in mystery. This is just Twilight: The Series.

Bottom line: Try and forget that shows like this even exist - they will only diminish your will to live and increase your hatred of humanity.

Sci-fi is never easy as a genre on TV, you're instantly just by having that word in your description making a big demographic have their hand drift toward the remote control. So, in recent years shows have tried to move away from the archetypal aliens of the week and have tried to be rather more involved in terms of drama and characterisation. The most obvious and successful example being Battlestar Galactica, which was very much about the characters and their interactions.

So, it seems like Lost and BSG got drunk, fumbled around and had Defying Gravity, the newest shade of sci-fi bland. We've got a not too distant future situation and we're following the trials and tribulations of some astronauts on a trip around the solar system for MYSTERIOUS REASONS!

The first thing to notice is the irritating narration. This will come in pretty regularly - maybe they got the idea from Heroes! - and just try and make some obvious point about what has just happened. Also, it's incredibly opaque as regards the fact it's a voyage in space. Static caravans seem to be more in motion than this space vessel. Granted, in the solar system it's probably somewhat hard to convey a sense of motion as it's really only planets that you can see getting larger or smaller but that's what exterior shots are for.

Another thing to mention is - this is basically a long, drawn out BLATANT thieving of the concept behind the quite enjoyable BBC production "Voyage To The Planets" which is a two part docudrama about - you guessed it - a journey around the solar system with people landing on planets! Admittedly, it's a more pointless trip than in Defying Gravity but then Defying Gravity shamelessly stole the ship design.

There's really not a lot to say about this show - it has bland, generic flashbacks which were old news by the end of season one of Lost and the big reveal was just so lacklustre and not even a big reveal, so there is inevitably to be more magical mystery - if the show makes it that far, which seems far from certain. So - a dull, lacklustre show with forgettable characters with a premise clearly lifted from elsewhere and with populist elements dolloped on.

Bottom line: Don't bother - dull, bland and derivative. The televisual equivalent of beige.

So, again it's time to comment on how DC has a whopping one live action film franchise (albeit one that is probably the best critically received) while Marvel has a half-dozen projects in the works... but of course, DC is producing animated features and the latest is Green Lantern: First Flight.

So, Hal Jordan is just in a flight simulator when a Green Lantern ring takes him to a dying Green Lantern and before you know it, he's all Green Lantern'd up and... well, y'know... and this is in the first five minutes. No need to take the origin story slow, eh? Of course, it's somewhat difficult to give a great deal of depth to a Green Lantern origin - it's pretty much "here's your ring, good luck with that."

And we get him head off to Oa and all of a sudden, Hal is doing the Green Lantern thing with Sinestro. For those that are unaware of Sinestro's backstory - it's fair to say that his role as bad guy is telegraphed and that it's all but impossible to miss the fact he's cast as the traitor type character for whom the phrase "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" was surely coined. He's openly contemptuous of the Masters and shows very little in the way of restraint. He and Hal are running a very literal good cop/bad cop routine.

We pretty much bounce from this scene to another - bigger action scene... and then, it's just exposition about Sinestro's end game, framing up Hal and then setting up the big fight at the end... As usual, we're in a very short turn around. About seventy minutes... so, really - there's very little time between events for anything approaching character development or serious plot, which seems silly as we got a decent amount of that in Wonder Woman but here, it feels a lot more flat. In fact, Sinestro is the only character that really feels fleshed out.

There are - of course - plenty of the Green Lantern roster for those that know their stuff from the comic or cartoons but hardly any of them really get any time. To the point Killawog is probably the only one that anyone will remember. Even Hal feels a little flat. Oh, yes - he's the square jawed good guy who pretty much walks in and kicks ass with his power ring (despite a total lack of training) but Sinestro just feels like he has more depth but that's possibly a function of the fact he gets a comparable amount of screen time to Hal and he has motives and so on, Hal is kind of just along for the ride.

All in all, it's ok. It's fun... there's some pretty cool action in there but it's just not Wonder Woman but not amazing or anything. Too shallow and the action really doesn't compare to Wonder Woman... or the plot... or the characters.

District 9 has been one of the most highly anticipated films of 2009 - and that can be said without adding the qualifier of sci-fi. The basic premise being aliens pull up over Johannesburg but... due to the nature of their society, they don't really have any leadership. So they sit around on their ship for three months before people cut it open.

We then jump forward a couple of decades and the ship is still sitting there and District 9 is a big shanty town for the million or so "prawns" that were inside the ship. People seem pretty blasé about the aliens, in fact - even actively hostile, with resentment and a demand for segregation. Needless to say, while none of the characters in the film ever MENTION Apartheid - the parallels are blatant and utterly undisguised.

If you can live with that, then this is an interesting film. Enjoyable, action packed and certainly one of the smartest films of the year thus far. There are a few plot holes and the change in the style (the film starts in a documentary style and then for reasons that are fairly obvious, it becomes more conventional) can be a little jarring... but certainly an all around entertaining film that looks AMAZING for the comparatively modest budget of $30m. Honestly, the fact that the aliens in this film are almost entirely CGI is easy to forget and films with bigger budgets have done far less convincing work, with far more money.

There is an urban myth... of a video tape - that if you watch, you die. Street Fighter: Legend Of Chun Li won't kill you (probably) but it will make you WANT to die.

The first problem is Kristin Kreuk as the eponymous character. Her acting was barely acceptable by TV standards, so expecting her to carry even a low budget film was never a good idea. Secondly, you may be surprised to find out that Kreuk is half-Chinese - because she really doesn't look it. In fact, she never looks the part and really - they could have said she was Cammy for all the difference it makes.

So, Kreuk is basically daughter to a wealthy business man - but turns out daddy goes and get taken hostage by the EVIL M. BISON! M. Bison is Irish by the way... and blonde and apparently his "evil" involved some petty thieving before transiting into property development. Yes - the megalomaniac who wanders around going "OF COURSE!" with a giant red cape and cap and general martial arts stuff is gone. Now, some might say - that's due to a demand for realism? Actually, no. Chun Li tosses fireballs around and manages to drop about thirty floors without missing a beat - after a very Les Yay fight with one of Bison's henchwomen, which also involved her hurricane kick. Yes, she was upside down, rotating with her legs akimbo a few feet above the ground for several seconds. Is no one AMAZED by that? No.

So, basically the film goes from one idiotic scene to another. It's all just so WTF. After Chun Li's dear dad gets kidnapped she goes on the whole "find the guy who did it" thing. This involves some guy who used to be in M. Bison's EVIL property developer gang. Damn them! So he teaches Kreuk how to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and FIREBALLS. Also, fighting blindfold. Presumably they didn't put in bullet time because they didn't have the money, so we have a bizarre scene with Kreuk catching stuff tossed at bells.

There's a bunch of stuff to try and make you give a damn about how all these people are being evicted from their homes and given the fact Chun Li seems to have pretty much forgotten about her father by this point, that seems sensible. So, we get the inevitable bit where Chun Li's master sacrifices himself and we get some more time wasting and then Chun Li has the paint by numbers fight with the designated M. Bison - the END. THANK FUCK.

This film is pretty much a crime against humanity. If you're not intoxicated in some manner when you watch this, you might be driven insane by it, such is the awfulness. Kreuk does not look the part, she does not act the part and really, most of the martial arts of note are the hilarious fly by wire stuff, nothing else is anything more than the choreographed equivalent of beige. The plot is practically non-existent and one has to ask WHY? Hell, Street Fighter the FILM did a better job of Chun Li's backstory and M. Bison was... M. Bison - NOT A BLONDE IRISH PROPERTY DEVELOPER. That would be like making Emperor Palpatine a flamboyant encyclopaedia salesman... although, we'll have to wait for future "improvements" to Star Wars to see if Lucas goes for that.

Bottom line: STAY AWAY! Far, far away

In 1990, back when gaming was played exclusively on screens the size of postcards in darkened rooms, a game was released and - yes, you guessed it... that game was The Secret Of Monkey Island... probably launching one of the most critically acclaimed and well known adventure game franchises of all time. With quirky humour, amusing characters and no fear of sending itself up... it's not surprising that it embedded itself into a certain section of the collective gaming conscience.

So, 19 years on and three sequels later we come to the first chapter of a new Monkey Island tale... appropriately called Tales Of Monkey Island: Launch Of The Screaming Narwhal. Probably the first thing any Monkey Island veteran will notice is that most of the original voice cast returns, most importantly Guybrush is back as if he never left.

All rather surprising, as the adventure genre has all but died out due to the stifling monoculture of FPS games... and MMOs. Regardless of trends in gaming, here we have a spiffy new adventure game. Long story short - it's funny, has a good level of difficulty... Guybrush is the MIGHTY PIRATE and so on... not really more than a weekend of play if you're casual.

Wholesome pirate fun.

When Heroes appeared a few years back it was met with universal adoration from critics and audiences alike. It made the initial hype of Lost seem luke warm by comparison. A story of ordinary people with extraordinary powers - mostly just trying to live their lives and yet all being drawn together by fate. Most people would agree that it was probably one of the most easily compelling pieces of TV for many years. In short - it was a well conceived and well executed, developed its characters and built up and up and up to a

The show - like many others - was somewhat inconvenienced by the Writers Strike but regardless, ploughed on. Naturally, when your entire first season is generally considered a televisual masterpiece -that's going to be a hard act to follow. Especially as almost all the storylines brought up were resolved - aside from a few people who may or may not have been alive or dead.

In many ways, this created an almost immediate problem for the show. There was no inherent direction for it to go. While the destruction of New York is far from the top of the scale of epic, the ending didn't really create any particular reason for the characters to stay together. This led to one of the biggest differences between season one and season two. With season one, we hit the ground running. We know there are all these people with special abilities and continue to build momentum with their interwoven tales. Season two was, by contrast - ponderous. As events pick up four months after the climax of season one - we find that, indeed - many of the characters have moved on and so we spend a considerable amount of time establishing this. Also, it's worth noting that a season slated for twenty four episodes became one that was eleven episodes... you'd think that would mean it was MORE intense.

It was lacklustre and introduced some characters that... just went nowhere... and a lot of story lines... that went nowhere. We had a whole character arc with Hiro that seems to have had pretty much no effect. We had Peter go through a character arc... that seems to have had pretty much no effect (beyond depowering him). Ditto Sylar. Ditto Claire. Ditto EVERYONE.

Season 3 was just a BIG mess though. Oh, we had plenty going on! It was just that we traded the sort of... real people dealing with powers angle for SUPERHERO SOAP OPERA! Now, that's not bad per se but we had so many "Oh, I wasn't really dead." And so on type stuff... and "I'm your father... no, not really." And so on. It's a soap opera in the truest American sense of the word.

The ante is upped in season 3, in that THE WORLD IS AT STAKE! Also, we go all X-men - because apparently everyone with powers must be contained... The Company was SO much more interesting than generic government goons taking people down. Yet, here we are in that scenario. It all feels so contrived. People feel as if they're being pushed around like bets on a roulette table, not drawn in by the string of destiny.

Obviously, when your first act is so full of win... it's hard to follow it up - BSG didn't have smooth sailing but almost managed. Lost utterly failed... but Heroes... just went to pieces.

Prototype is at it's heart - nothing more than a mish mash of different tried and tested gameplay and story elements. The free roaming owes a lot to GTA, the gameplay and powers are a lot like what you'll get in Devil May Cry and its ilk and the story is pretty much Resident Evil. While not having an original idea in its pretty little head and not being overly pretty... the game is still great.

Alex Mercer is a - sigh - amensiac who wakes up after being dead. He has to piece together his life and work out what's going on with the infection of Manhattan by a virus and yadda yadda yadda. It's not very original but who cares? YOU GET TO TOSS TANKS AROUND. Literally. You can pick up tanks, cars, helicopters.

The story really isn't very much to write home about - government conspiracy, supersoldiers resulting in zombies and that kind of thing. That's irrelevant - although, as a gameplay dynamic you can run around the city and "absorb" people to uncover the backstory of the game. This absorption can also be used to gain and improve skills and infiltrate enemy bases. It's actually a pretty nifty dynamic. Although, the AI in the game is so AWFUL that you can get away with just dropping 100m from a rooftop dressed as a soldier in front of another soldier and he'll high five you instead of shooting you in the FACE.

Not that point blank machine gun fire would do much becuase it's worth noticing even at the start of the game - you're RIDICULOUSLY powerful. Insanely super powerful and that is why this game rocks. On normal difficulty you are as a GOD. Once you kick in your power ups, you can shrug off artillery shells - small arms fire does noticing. You can heal by chowing down on unsuspecting people in most situations. Really only a pack of Hunters will poses a threat. You can hijack tanks and helicopters, fly (kinda), use the weapons of the soldiers and use a variety of abilities - whip, claws, GIANT SWORD ARM and enhanced strength. Plenty of moves to use.

Beyond the usual storyline missions there are GTAesque challenges that... don't really do much, they're just there for extra playtime. Running along the roof, absorbing people and good old fashioned murder. Not to mention you can just go and break into military bases or tear apart the hives.

The game is to be played purely for fun. There is no deep meaning. The game tries to inject some sense of an epic storyline with the "Web of intrigue" backstory mechanic but that's not really that important. Not are the mini-games - this game is about running around and smashing stuff in a number of awesome ways. It doesn't matter that the plot is a big cliche or that the voice acting is Resident Evil level... it's all just a bit of a laugh.

Terminator is one of the few franchises that managed to accomplish that ever elusive superior sequel, while The Terminator was and is held in high regard, the slightly less gritty and depressing and rather more upbeat and explody Terminator 2: Judgement Day is probably one of the most beloved and popular films in the science fiction or action genre. Naturally, such popular franchises seldom stay on the shelf forever and a few years back we had the rather less well received Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines... which was kind of a rehash of 2 and really seemed like a gratuitous set up for today's topic, Terminator: Salvation.

The "problem" Terminator 2 had was... Judgement Day was averted - that's kind of why they gave Arnie a molten metal bath. So, while Terminator 2 espoused free will and a maleable future... 3 went "Oh, yeah - sorry guys, the war is inevitable, sucks, right?" thus making the events of the film fairly pointless but nicely setting up the events of Salvation, a jolly post-apocalypse fight against giant killer robots. Ok, people sized killer robots... well, some of them are giant - which is awesome.

In fact, one of the best things about the film is that we aren't limited to the iconic shiny skeletons, walking around with plasma weapons. We've got mecha terminators, motorcycle terminators and even kind of little snake ones. It would have been pretty easy for the designers to be lazy and just stick with the established staples, so it's good to see that they didn't skimp on this aspect.

More interesting than the design is the fact the focus of the story is rather less on John Connor. He's got a good amount of screen time but Kyle Reese has a decent amount and a new character Marcus gobbles up plenty of it... in fact, it's really more his story. Which is something of a surprising choice. Really, the logical angle of attack is Kyle Reese and John Connor with their somewhat bizarre relationship...

So, the story? How about the story? Ok - we start out with Marcus on death row. Then we jump to the future, Christian Bale is shooting robots and being awesome... sadly, no one else quite passes the "must be this awesome to live" test and they all die. Yup, there's an inspiring saviour of humanity - managing to preside over the death of everyone in his squad.

Anyway, Marcus and a young Kyle Reese meet up and Kyle doesn't think there's much suspicious about a muddy guy, wandering around the post-apocalyptic wasteland, oblivious of the fact humanity got its ass beat by Skynet and now there are killing death robots, looking to kill any meatbags they see.

Inexplicably, Kyle Reese is a high priority target... but that means Skynet would know the future. So... why would it keep the deathcamps and not just murder everyone if it knows that future stuff? Anyway... we go through some nice actions scenes. Marcus finds his way to John Connor - turns out Marcus is actually a machine... and there is some signal that stops Skynet. The big plan is to use this signal to stop Skynet - even though it's a really obvious trap... guess they should have had admiral Akbar with them.

So, Marcus was designed to go to the Skynet HQ all along - who'd have thought! But he's actually got his free will. This doesn't stop Skynet from going all SHODAN and going through exposition on its plan. Long story short, the battle is won but the war is not yet over - and John Connor gets Marcus's heart... making him mostly just a McGuffin.

JJ Abrams pretty much said from the get go, he never really liked Star Trek as a child... which probably - somewhat perversely - made him a rather good choice for the inevitable reboot of the franchise. Why inevitable? Because Star Trek is just about the longest running sci-fi franchise, with one of the most rabid fanbases...

Which has been the problem in recent years. The TNG films especially were perceived as lengthy episode, aimed at the fanbase - rather than the actual general public. Which isn't a particularly good way to make money. Hence, Hollywood's current golden boy being given the keys to the broken franchise.

There isn't a great deal to say about the film, as it happens. It's solid and enjoyable but... it's forgettable. It skirts close to being little more than a big dumb action film but... it avoids that - not due to the idiotic story - because of the solid casting. Bones and Spock are dead on... Kirk is passable... the other characters are as transitory as they are in the series. So, it's not quite built around the pretty (if rather too frequently prone to lens flare and shaky cam) action scenes entirely. Which isn't to say Nero isn't a two dimensional non-character... because, he is. Even IF you were to read the comic that precedes the film for his background his motivation still equates to BEING INSANE.

Thin story - good characters, good action... decent film. There isn't much to say about it. It's just kinda... And that sums it up. Not QUITE big dumb action but really - not far off. Better than Lost... but so is slamming your genitals in the door.

So, Transformers Animated has returned for a third season. While it's probably not something that could strictly be called a retooling things definitely seem to have changed direction to some extent. Following the revelation that Sari is part machine, she basically becomes - through a series of events - an autobot/human teenager. Her role is notably dialled down and the show has a far greater focus on the robots and a more consistent focus on the conflict between the autobots and decipticons, particularly in regard to Cybertron.

It's a good direction for the show to move. Clearly, this is never going to be the G1 show and it's never really TRIED to be... and it's rather too late in the day for that now. The changes do represent a marginalising of the less interesting aspects... and a general improvement. Still not great... it's not in the same league as Spectacular Spiderman or Wolverine & The X-men... but it's better than it used to be.

Ah, Wolverine - a word that sets a million fanboy hearts racing. Fanboys are shit and need to die.

Of course, the fact Hugh Jackman is Wolverine means... well, girls melt for him. Guys think he's awesome. Fanboys... are like lawyers. Not really human. Not worth the consideration of being human.

This film apparently needed ten minutes extra... it really didn't. It needed a STORY. Wolverine's story is one of the most tediously over covered parts of Marvel continuity these days. Given the fact his origins are SECRET... anyone that touched a comic book probably knows the Weapon X story by heart.

Sadly, even the recent animated Hulk vs. Wolverine managed to do a better job at the Weapon X story... and everything except Wolverine popping his claws back in the mid 19th century is skipped over. Granted, 150 years would be a fair bit to cover but there you go. After we get to Vietnam, gross insubordination leads to the an execution for Sabertooth and Wolverine - who are half brothers, by the way. So, we get to them joining the Weapon X project. Wolverine gets a bit bored of murdering people - he has apparently fought in a good portion of all major conflicts in the 19th and 20th centuries... so, makes sense he might get bored of seeing his brother go crazy.

There's no real point getting to know his team mates because they're one dimensional and their screen time is easily counted in seconds. Get used to that. There are a whole gamut of mutant cameos that are short even by cameo standards. Even characters that are significant to the plot - like Gambit... who actually is essentially there PURELY as a plot device to move Logan from A to B - don't get a great deal of screen time. It's really all about Wolverine... like all the X-men films, really. Anyway, he hooks up with Silverfox and is a happy lumberjack - for... no reason but predictably... walking away from a secret black ops group doesn't work out too well and Sabretooth is murdering former team mates - but who REALLY cares. There's no investment in these characters... so, Sabretooth kills Silverfox and Wolverine goes to Weapon X to get adamantium so he can murder Sabretooth.

Then he goes to fight Sabretooth - fights Sabretooth... Then Weapon XI turns up. Yeah, not a real character from the comics... and he has a half dozen powers - oh and he's supposed to be Deadpool... even though Deadpool just has a healing factor... and the fight was fairly anticlimatic.

Then, naturally - Wolverine's memories get wiped by a magical plot device bullet. Silverfox dies... again - oh and Emma Frost is her sister... and another swathe of meaningless mutants... including Cyclops... for no real reason. They do nothing more than run out of the base after Wolverine frees them. So, Gambit comes back to pick up Wolverine - and Wolverine goes off to forget everything and wander around until the X-men film...

It's the problem all prequels suffer from... you always know where things are going to be come the end... so, we knew that Logan was going to end up having his memory wiped... ah well... That's really the least of the problems. The characters really just seem to orbit Jackman, pushing him in the direction he needs to go. The story is pretty weak and it's hard to give a damn about anyone other than Wolverine and maybe Sabretooth because no one is really around long enough to do more than show their abilities. Wolverine's claws look terrible throughout - it's very obviously they're CGI... Really, just a chronically weak story, pretty average fight scenes and just a slew of not very compelling cameos that amounted to little make this a pretty luke warm film. Fanboys might get hung up on some of the details... but really, they're not worth paying attention to compared to a number of rather more glaring inadequacies.

DC has... a huge monopoly on characters that have become ingrained upon the collective cultural memory of the West. It goes without saying that Batman is probably only really in competition with Superman for the most ubiquitous... although, these days Batman is probably firmly on top in terms of popularity - not least due to the uber popular Chris Nolan Batman films.

Naturally, that was preceded by the Timmverse Batman: The Animated Series and the Justice League cartoon. Which are generally considered by fans and critics to be awesome. Even the somewhat weaker Gotham Knights is still pretty solid.

And then came THE BATMAN. Unashamedly aimed at the 5 year olds and mentally retarded. Mostly the mentally. Whatever the Timmverse was... was so quickly forgotten in this shameful embarrassment of that abortive nonsense. That well... uh.

Anyway, THE BATMAN finished. It was natural for fans to be apprehensive about Batman: The Brave And The Bold... It was pretty much proclaiming to be campy... but as it happens... it's pretty good. It's using some of DC's less known villains - but deliberately so... Blue Beetle is there, the Green Arrow and Batman have a rivalry. Not nearly as campy as one might think.

Batman is still kinda broody not the campy 60s Batman... or the pointless The Batman character... It was easy to see this as a futile venture but it has proven itself... It's rather enjoyable.

Red Dwarf was - once upon an early 90s - a popular sci-fi comedy TV show. Also a book. The TV show was a "cult classic" which translates into normal English as "something a few people liked rabidly". Despite that, the following grew and it became engraved in the collective consciousness of the nation. Then Craig Charles had an unfortunate run in with the law and things stalled for several years, before the generally panned seasons 7 & 8 - which seemed to substitute good writing for a bigger budget and totally changed the status quo by replacing Kochanski (played by a different actress) and then putting the crew on a fully populated Red Dwarf.

Season (or series) 9 starts with the status quo fully returned. Red Dwarf is once again populated by the four characters that became synonymous with the show. Of course, it's not too long before we get a stereotypical Russian science officer hologram appearing for... no reason. She does some exposition on how the sea monster in their water tank is their ticket home. There really isn't anything that funny here... the characters feel flat and beyond some bad taste gross out humour... there isn't a lot going on.

That's pretty much the entire first episode... pretty meh. The next episode sends our characters to Earth... but in the most horribly contrived barely fanfic level of writing. The characters find this is an Earth where Red Dwarf is actually... a TV show. Yes, you've waited for all these years for an episode that is essentially a giant 4th wall breaking fanfic. This involves the crew meeting a lot of people who talk to them about their show and even a reference to the TV CHANNEL the show is being screened on. They really couldn't slap it around your face anymore if they tried. They even get in a car version of Starbug - and they call it, get this - CARBUG! Yes, you'd best be wearing a corset or your sides may split. Anyway, for some reason they decide that they need to find the actor that plays Lister to find out how many episodes they have left. It would almost be a relief for a little slash fic type action to alleviate the dire writing. None of the cast even seem to give a fuck, they're all just phoning it in. Who can blame them?

The third episode starts with them pulling into Coronation Street - for those either too middle class or not living in Britain, that's the setting and name of the most popular soap in the UK, which Craig Charles starred in... so, more 4th wall fun - doing... not very much for a while and then ending up walking into the pub to find the actor Craig Charles... who then gives the exposition required for the story to continue by sending them to meet the show's creator. So, this has actually become self-insertion fanfic.

Grant Naylor explains to them... a whole bunch of rubbish, including the bleedin' obvious - that there have been REPEATED Blade Runner references (for no other reason that... because), right down to Cat leaving little origami figures everywhere - which actually has a reason but a very stupid one. There's a bit where it seems as if Naylor is in control, then he gets shot... then Lister uses the typewriter and essentially becomes God... then it turns out this is actually ALL JUST A DREAM.

No, that is not a joke. It was all a hallucination induced by a despair squid - so, yes. Not only did this read like a bad self-insertion fanfic set in an idiotic 4th wall breaking alternate reality with a pointless Blade Runner homage jammed in, it ALSO turns out to be ONLY A DREAM - and a rehashed concept that was done a hundred times better the first time around.

To summarise - it would have been better if they'd called it a day a long time ago. Series 7 & 8 were pretty creatively bankrupt but compared to Back To Earth, they are positively high art. Just about as bad as it could realistically have been without including George Lucas and Jarjar Binks.

As is obvious to any cinema goer - Marvels march of films continues... they're pretty much booked up until the Avengers film and they've just got a whole lot of stuff going on in terms of live action, animated features, animated series and the like - even if the Iron Man: Armoured Adventures looks like the most horrific piece of trash ever conceived... since The Batman.

Where is DC and its slew of - much better known and more recognisable - superheroes? Naturally, the world gets excited when there's a new Chris Nolan Batman film about to come out... Superman was met with general indifference and the sequel is going to need to give the titular Man of Steel something more than a fucking mountain of kryptonite to fight.

DC has however made a few forays into the animated features - the previous outting was the pretty damned awesome Justice League: New Frontier, which is definitely worth checking out and now, we've got Wonder Woman. While the live action film sits in purgatory, quietly waiting to be made... we have this to tide us over.

Wonder Woman is often pushed in with Batman and Superman to form DC's "big three"... but really, that's more of a publicity stunt than anything. Despite having been around since the Golden Age... she's not really on a par with either of those characters... so, it's nice to see her get a film to make her own...

And this is QUITE a film. The JLU cartoon had more than its fair share of crowning moments of awesome in terms of fights... but just the opening battle sequence of this film easily puts those to shame in terms of animation and awesome. As with most of these features, it's about 70 minutes... so, the story is pretty simple. We get the backstory of the Amazons and Wonder Woman and the long and short of it is, Wonder Woman has to go into the world of men to take back stray jet pilot Steve Trevor and also stop an evil unleashed that threatens to etc. etc.

It really isn't going to win any awards for the complex weave of stories... it's very simple but there's not a lot of time to tell a complicated story and the simple one works. Naturally, we get Wonder Woman starting out to be a bit "MEN ARE EVIL!" but of course, she relents a bit on that one by the end. The romance angle is there - Trevor is a bit of a goof to start with but he's a decent character and does a good job of cutting WW some slack... because a lot of people might have been tempted to call her a bitch.

Something a little surprising about the whole thing - although, the DCAU tends to be rather more relaxed about such things in straight-to-DVD releases - is that there are quite a few deaths... and beheadings. The beheadings are - in fairness - only done in silouette but there are people being stabbed and having their spines broken... nothing that would get close to warranting the term gore... but it's nice to see battle scenes where those without powers can actually die.

So... in summary, a good yarn with some absolutely wonderful action and battle scenes. The final battle especially, I suspect - will be a crowd pleaser... and there's even a nice little tease at the very end... that many fans of WW and probably the DCAU will smile at. For DCAU and WW fans, a must... and for general superhero fans too. If you finished the recent Hulk Vs. and felt it was too action light? Give this a try. Wonder Woman tosses and gets tossed through more buildings than her insurance can realistically cover. All good wholesome fun with a simple but steady and pretty well paced story. Enjoyable to the point where it's worth hoping that there is more to come.

All comments about Watchmen - the film - will invariably be preceded by "based on the greatest graphic novel of all time." And... it's fair to say that that Alan Moore's piece will take quite something to be supplanted for that honour... Much of Moore's success with it is because he weaves a story of incredible complexity and density, using the medium to the fullest extent possibly. Which is why many people were worried about the film. Adaptations are a tricky business at the best of times and Watchmen was very specifically written to be a comic, not merely a story TOLD in a comic... SPOILERS AHEAD!

That said, Watchmen (the film) does a FAIRLY good job. Rorschach sounds rather too much like Christian Bale's Batman... but the wonderful effects of his mask make that a forgiveable offence... and the film uses a lot of the dialogue and iconography from the comic pretty much verbatim. The entire intro monologue is pretty much directly in line with the book.

The issue of course becomes one of time. There are just a lot of elements that had to be dropped for this film to be of an acceptable length. That's a given of the change of medium. They do however manage to cover the backstory of each character rather well... but the ENDING... the ending is where it all falls apart.

Moore spent considerable amounts of time hinting at some plot beyond the mere mask killings and that while Rorschach might rabidly obsess about it - the reader especially has plenty of incite to the fact that there is something more afoot and that it's not going to be pretty... of course, what this turns out to be is the fact that Adrian Veidt - former superhero - has come up with a plan to SAVE the world from nuclear armaggedon. Which involves manufacturing a threat of alien invasion by teleporting in (thanks to Dr. Manhattan tech) a giant alien which explodes (because teleporters work about as reliably as they do in Star Trek) and also, psychically imprinting images of cosmic horror on the survivors... basically, to make humans do what they do best, unite in fear of something different to them! It's also explained that The Comedian stumbles upon the island where all this is going on and that this is what breaks his spirit...

Some fans of the graphic novel got very upset about the squid... as some fanboys will. Really, what it was... was no big deal. It just had to be a threat to unite the world against an external threat by introducing the outside context problem. Hence pulling humanity BACK from the brink of destruction - albeit it at the cost of millions of lives.

Now... the ending in the FILM... They kind of ignore the advanced tech that Dr. Manhattan made possible and have "free energy" as a recent development... which Veidt uses as a means to simulate an attack by Dr. Manhattan - essentially to the same end as the alien attack. Except... this doesn't really make any sense, although - he never actually says "I'm Off To MARS!" in this... it's fairly clear that everyone knows he has fucked off... so, why would he come back just to sucker punch New York? It might seem trivial but it's FURTHER exacerbated by the fact Nite Owl sees Dr. Manhattan waste Rorschach, does a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"... and then goes to bitch slap Veidt and declares the terrible perversion of humanity this constitutes.

Which might be somewhat acceptable if it wasn't for the fact about 30 seconds earlier, he was saying "Yeah, I'm down with keeping this secret." Part of the CRUX of the film is the moral greyness of the actions of Veidt and the obvious similiarities to the Tale Of The Black Freighter. He is a man GUIDED in his own eyes by right at every turn and yet, in the end - he has become a murderer but feels entirely justified. This pretty much slaps us in the face - almost as much as with Dr. Manhattan's genitals - and says "THIS IS BAD!"

For some people, this will not be a big issue for others it will be. It doesn't really mesh with the overall story. It's kind of hammered in and a number of compromises - beyond those required to compensate for the different mediums - are made in terms of continuity for no other reason than... uh...

The ending aside... For those that pay attention, Zack Snyder (the director) gives you a little hint of his previous film - 300 - by having The Comedian's flat be... 300! Don't worry, if you miss that little tipoff... you'll probably manage to work it out from the repeated and gratuitous use of the slomo/speedup action cuts the made seems to have a raging hardon for - and also the overly long, rather awkward sex scenes. If you don't mind the stylistic slomo of the action scenes, they're fun... although, there are a few more added in but that makes sense - this IS a long film... and the book is not particularly action packed. So, it's an understandable compromise.

Much like the dropping of the Tales of The Black Freighter comic and the newstand owner and not really having the detective involved in The Comedian's murder do much outside the first five minutes. Or reducing Rorschach's running around and beating people up... or his backstory... You could have made Lord of the Rings in its entirety seem short if you'd wanted to FULLY explore the backstory of every character in the same depth as the graphic novel.

It's really... just OK. About as good an adaptation as one could really expect. Nowhere near the same level as the graphic novel... and certainly not the kind of film you want to see if you're expecting a brainless superhero action film... but... just... OK.

So... Easter Special of Doctor Who - PLANET OF THE DEAD!

It's an RTD episode - there's another writer as well but the script reads like the usual RTD-level fanfic, so the other seems irrelevant. The episode starts out with the former Bionic Woman doing a gem heist - hilariously, she wears a mask to conceal her identity... which she removes after all of three seconds, to thereby render its wearing utterly pointless.

Things of course, get off to a start when she boards a bus to escape the fuzz - and THE DOCTOR gets on. As usual, he starts talking like an escaped mental patient to endear himself to our lady thief. The police give chase when they manage to work out she is on the bus but luckily for her a rip in the fabric of space and time appears in the tunnel and the next thing you know it, our double decker bus is under alien skies... in the middle of a desert. It's actually a pretty passable intro. Not too long to get into the action - not quite the Christmas Special and it's nigh instant segue but fairly acceptable.

Naturally, a double decker bus disappearing in the middle of an enclosed tunnel warrants the attention of UNIT - it was them or Torchwood... and who would you want? As something of a deviation from the norm, back on the bus the Bionic Aristocrat Thief Lady appoints herself leader. The Doctor talks about the wormhole - prompting the bus driver to run into it and burn up. Guess you should have mentioned that bit before saying "oh, there's the way home!" So, unlike your Stargate type of wormhole, this one apparently disintegrates people who aren't surrounded by metal. Unfortunately, the bus is stuck in the sand.

We have the mandatory introduction of the other people on the bus... but really, beyond the Lady Thief, the characterisation is so shallow and the role played by the characters themselves so tangential, that they might as well just be faceless drones. Also, there's a HORRIBLY embarrassing stereotypical black woman WITH MYSTIC POWAHS! She magically works out that turning up on an alien world might be BAD. It's really quite cringe worthy - clearly RTD was trying to make up for Martha Jones.

Amusingly, the Mary Sue factor of the Doctor - which RTD is always keen to ramp up... and we learn that the sonic screw driver can apparently instantly make a phone call Earth (although - why they didn't just use the same rationale as they do in Stargate isn't really obvious) from the other side of the universe and polarise glasses - is somewhat paralleled by Lady Thief and her magic back of holding. One could be forgiven for thinking that at any moment she might pull a full length ladder out of it.

Anyway, as this is really all about the Doctor and Lady Thief, they decide to tell the auxiliary characters to stay near the bus and to not do anything interesting while they're gone - that is, after they have a wonderfully awful moment where UNIT staff gush over the Doctor (he can tell when you're saluting on the phone!). It's sickeningly saccharine and grade A Mary Sue material - because making the Doctor the LAST Timelord didn't up that enough, y'know?

So, the aliens show up! But they're nice aliens! That's actually a nice touch. As they are ugly fly headed aliens. Anyway DA DOCTOR finds out a bunch of metal coated flying stingrays - STINGRAY DADADADA! - have descended upon this planet and reduced everything to sand. There's a pointless scene where MORE - actually justified stuff - comes out the magic bag. Then a Mission Impossible moment. Then sadly, the aliens go and die. Pointlessly. This is of course after we discern the REASON this planet has been reduced to sand. Flying metal stingrays. OF DEATH. Yup, they generate a wormhole by... flying around a planet. Many times... didn't Superman do that? Oh wait, that was to do something stupid... like turn back time... this is a LOT more reasonable. Actually, in RTD land - this makes PERFEC sense. If you think that's a mispelling - no, it's irony.

The Doctor goes and does a big OH! I AM SAVING YOU - thing. He makes the bus... a HOVER BUS. There is pointless bit where a UNIT gusher doesn't want to condemn the Doctor to being trapped. Naturally, this is all false tension... because we KNOW the Doctor will get home. Or he could use the sonic screwdriver to make sand into a time badger. Y'know to burrow into the past... or... something?

The gushy scientist played by a more irritating than usual - and he's non-tolerable at the best of times - Lee Evans (for some reason a Welsh person? Did they secretly want Torchwood here? The Welsh really are rubbish... but RTD seems to have some manner of paraphilia for them) decides to grow a pair when he's instructed to close the wormhole to prevent the STINGRAYS, STINGRAYS (dadadada!) coming through the wormhole. This makes sense as apparently the wormhole is 10 miles wide... but then... it isn't about 30 seconds later when the bus flies through, as do a few STINGRAY - all in the exact same place.

Predictably, the Doctor et al (really, only one person died?) make it through. The wormhole is closed, aliens are defeated. Further - cringeworthy - gushing over the Doctor happens. He then tells the Lady Thief how he thinks she needs to be judged and how she can't be a companion - because, stealing his TARDIS and her saving people and him being moral when it fucking suits him - so she needs to get arrested. She gets put in the back of a car... but then the Doctor uses his sonic deus ex to let her out.

And the horrible evil law enforcer inevetually bangs on the bus as she flies away.

Eh... it has some pretty effects and it doesn't have the horribly clunking Christmas Special plot... but it's still an RTD episode and since Who started again there have been decent episodes and RTD episodes. No WONDER RTD doesn't want to listen to the fans. If they're older than 10 they know he sucks... unless they're retards. Which a lot of them are.

In summary, RTD is rubbish - like him at your peril.

Into The Wild Green Yonder is – apparently – the last Futurama… and let’s not mince words, it’s kind of dull.

Bender’s Big Score was pretty good but really, none of the Futurama films have surpassed what should have been the opening gambit in a masterful strategy of increasing awesomeness. Oh, this isn’t as aimless as the Beast With A Billion Backs or as much of a wasted concept as Bender’s game… but it’s still relatively high on the meh scale for what is supposedly a swan song.

Of course, Matt Groening presumably has such astronomical amounts of cash from the Simpsons he stopped caring over a decade ago. So presumably, after Futurama tanked – it was pride that made him go back to it… or something. He clearly wasn’t that interested in the show though because there is little pride in this final outing.

It has the kind of unashamed left wing messages you’d expected of him but that’s it.. not really worth watching. It’s ninety minutes of not very funny stuff. Futurama has always suffered from the issue of action/drama vs. comedy. Here there is such a lack of comedy it’s pointless.

Don’t bother, unless you desperately seek some minor sense of resolution.

So, as if Demons wasn’t enough for you to contend with – the BBC has also managed to turn the pilot of “Being Human” into a full blown series. It’s the simple tale of three supernatural beings – a new werewolf, an old vampire and a ghost – living in a house together.

One of the obvious irritations of the show is something that seems to be increasingly popular – Vampires waltzing around in daylight. At least they aren’t sparkling but it’s just rather tedious to have their weaknesses eroded… At least in Blade, the guy had some SPF50 on to stand in the sun. Here, they don’t seem bothered at all… and they suffer from “Buffy syndrome”. Which is to say, that they bite some and have maybe a mouthful of blood… then the person dies. Granted biting into the jugular is going to lead to you dying pretty quickly by bleeding out but as with Buffy, it’s rather ridiculous that it seems to be INSTADEATH!

Anyway, the basic dynamic is – the girl ghost hangs around the house, while the guys go to hospital. For some reason, our old vampire chap is “off the wagon” and so doesn’t need to get his teaspoon of blood via murder. It’s not really explained how he manages to survive/be immortal WITHOUT blood. He just does.

The werewolf guy has the angst shtick. Which is a bit of a change from the broody vampire – not that he doesn’t have issues but it’s fair to say, the werewolf issue trumps that. How is it trumped? Because he gets to moan about how once a month he become a ravening beast. Yeah, they seem to like the monster root… because, the people are shown to be the exceptions to the rule. Anyway, he likes to be a whiney little bitch about his problem a lot.

And finally ghost girl… yeah, it’s fair to say that most of these characters are pretty much summed up by their monster characteristic because even after a few episodes they’re pretty flat. She’s got the beyond cliché UNFINISHED BUSINESS… and only other supernatural beings can see her. She pines for her fiancé who is now hooked up with someone else.

Somewhere in the background, there’s an evil vampire plot but don’t get too excited. Things are moving along slowly... so, it's likely the run will end before anything much happens. About all you can say for it is... it's a relatively novel concept as far as things go. Shame about the execution.

Ang Lee's "Hulk" having been atoned for with the rather better received The Incredible Hulk, Marvel has released "Hulk vs.", which is specifically Hulk vs. Wolverine - a fight that fanboys seem to get all kinds of worked up about - and Hulk vs. Thor.

They're totally unrelated, both forty minutes long and pretty much excuse plots for big fights. Which is pretty much what anyone looking into these is going to want.

Hulk vs. Thor is almost painful in its excuse plot. We start out with some exposition from Loki about how Odin does some magical sleep thing once a year and during that time, Asgard is vulnerable and Thor and his pals have to protect him. Loki figures this is a good time for him to send the Hulk in to wipe the floor with Thor - all pretty non-sequiter.

Loki gets Enchantress to work some magic mojo on Banner, separating Banner and the Hulk and then doing some mind control on him (because that ALWAYS goes so well). Loki goes to town in control of Hulk and wipes the floor with a bunch of guards and minor characters who were chatting at the start. Naturally, Thor comes along to lay the smackdown but Loki manages to do a pretty good job of thrashing him.

A lot of this fight is almost beautiful but it's not that impressive as a fight. Inevitably, Loki dicks around too much and the spell is broken. At this point, Enchantress goes "Oh... wait - so, the plan was to KILL Thor... well, I wasn't in for that!" And Loki offs Banner. The Hulk just about beats Thor to death but then Enchantress comes and kisses it better (literally) and for some reason, the Hulk decides to go back and beat the hell out of the city some more.

Thor has some words with Loki but then Enchantress tells us that with Banner dead, she can't return the Hulk to Midgard. At this point, Loki realises - and Thor choking him might help. Irritatingly enough, we are teased with occasional shots of the cannon fodder defence of Odin - which looks pretty awesome but we KEEP missing the good stuff, it seems. Well, what would you rather see - an idyllic after-life for Banner, or the fighty fighty?

Naturally, this being a story with mythology - all you need to do is pop to Hell or its equivalent and ask the relevant deity for your soul back. Banner angsts for a while but chickens out, it turns to Loki to finally convince Hella to take the Hulk. Which naturally saves the day. Of course, then they have the Hulk running around the Hell-equivalent and for some reason this necessitates another fight and then Hella sends him home. Loki gets his comeuppance, Odin wakes up up and we find pretty much everyone survived getting stamped on.

The pacing is pretty uneven, we're slow to start off and constantly, CONSTANTLY avoiding the big fights. We get one decent sized Hulk/Thor fight and one pretty short one at the end. The story really is an embarrassment. It was all so arbitrary. Fun but there's so much "that's it?" feeling. Far too much cutting away from the action and filler for something that is cutting to the credits at close to forty minutes.

All-in-all, it's decent but the pretty animation can't rescue a story that struggles to be mediocre. It's almost as if they'd decided to a double feature and just plucked Thor out of thin air because... well, he's another well known Marvel heavy hitter. It's something of a shame they didn't go for something a little more interesting... Thor is pretty much solidly getting his ass handed to him by the Hulk. So, any notion that this would be more of a match of equals is flawed. Something that pitted Hulk against maybe Juggernaut might have been more fun... and wouldn't have required the terrible excuse story.

Hulk vs. Wolverine is rather more interesting and isn't so painfully contrived. The name is a big misnomer though. The conflict here is really more about Wolverine vs. his former compatriots from Weapon X - Lady Death Strike, Deadpool, Sabertooth and Omega Red.

Wolverine starts out not sure what's going on, before we cut to four hours earlier. Wolverine does his badass thing - including JUMPING OUT A HELICOPTER WITH NO PARACHUTE... and kind of sliding down a mountain. Yeah, he runs around being cool before he tracks down Banner. This being Wolverine... he antagonises Banner but naturally, doesn't off him and ends up getting punted across the forest.

Cue fanboy pleasing fight. Healing factor and adamantium aside - Wolverine would pretty much be paste after the thrashing he takes... but THE POWER OF FANBOYS COMPELS HIM. Round two is just getting underway when Weapon X turn up and tranq the hell out of both of them.

Cue another flashback - this time to Wolverine getting abducted by Weapon X goons and getting his adamantium... and a bit of training and escaping. In which Wolverine kills about a dozen people. It's pretty awesome. Deadpool is also great - in fact, he's a terrible scene stealer.

Deathstrike wants to off Wolverine... but escape ensues and eventually he frees Banner. They do a bit of escaping and fighting - then Wolverine stabs Banner so he'll Hulk out. This results in some awesomeness from most everyone. Even a little more Hulk vs. Wolverine - gasp! Then... we have the mandatory explodey base... but... why the tease of Wolverine & Hulk at the end? It's a fantastic finishing shot but leaves the question unresolved and the Hulk vs. Wolverine quotient very low.

Hulk vs. Wolverine isn't quite as pretty as Hulk vs. Thor but it is really in a different ballpark as far as the story goes. Now, it's fair to say that you'd have to have been hiding under a rock not to have a basic grasp of Wolverine's back story insofar as Weapon X goes but the retelling is cool and gives the characters a reason to be there rather than "the plot demands it".

It's a little ironic that this is shipping dubbed "Hulk Vs." because it does feel a lot like he's really just cameoing despite being the titular character... he does the HULK SMASH, fairly competently but it really feels as if he's never given time to shine... Not just that but anyone hoping these would be actual Hulk stories, will be sadly disappointed. Thor allows for Banner to be a whiney little bitch a bit but really, it's all very trite and the kind of pathos that defines the character is pretty absent.

Bottom line: worth it if you've been gagging to see Wolverine just run around and MURDER A LOT OF PEOPLE, like a bad ass - without the child friendly parameters of the recent cartoon. Worth it if you just want some pretty cool fights... Definitely worth it for people who are Deadpool fans... if Wolverine hogs the screen time from the Hulk, Deadpool steals the scenes from Wolverine... But, if you're looking for something you can get your teeth into? Not for you, not really. The stories are insubstantial and in the case of Wolverine, the kind of stuff even a level one fanboy could summarise without thinking... Really, just there for the bigger fans or those who like the big fights. Those buying it because they love the Hulk - will be a little disappointed.

If there's one things that British shows should know not to do - it's try and imitate American shows.

Why? Money, mostly. American shows have more of it -a lot more, overwhelmingly vast oceans compared to tiddly little paddling pools, really. That isn't to say it's impossible for British shows to match the US in this department... Doctor Who probably proves that there's the ability, if seldom the inclination... and really, even Doctor Who can't regularly compare to even a lightweight like the later seasons of SG-1. Outside of period dramas, it's just hard to compete in terms of on-screen wow.

Despite these obvious disadvantages, ITV felt compelled to give us "Demons". The Buffy wannabe that's the better part of a decade too late and far, far behind the curve.

The parallels are there - teenager (although, this time a boy) finds he has a destiny fighting the forces of the supernatural and here's his team to help him fight it with ask kicking and quips. He's apparently a descendent of Van Helsing... they might as well just have said he was the new Slayer. Of course, as noted above - this is like Buffy but not as good.

In fact, in essentially every aspect of its nature it fails to compare favourably to even the later, boring and wangsty Buffy seasons. Budget and writing are very much lacking here... and if you don't have one, you really have to compensate with bags of the other... Sadly, here we lack much in the way of plot, dialogue, action and a lot of the time even the acting is poor... Gene Hunt doing an American accent... why? Like much of the show, there is only "why?"

Thus far there have been five episodes in which the characters struggle to move beyond broad stereotypes of the kind of characters these shows contain. There just isn't the amount of stuff you'd fit into a Buffy episode - where you'd have time for laughs, drama and the mandatory ass kicking. In its defence, Demons doesn't even TRY for the comedy side of thing... but then, that just places the show somewhere in the middle of the road. It's not REALLY got all that much action in it, the drama is pretty thin, the effects aren't anything to write home about and it's not really going to have you laughing - except at the idiotic characters.

It's perhaps not overly awful - in the way that Bonekickers managed to be... but then, at the same time... you could ENJOY Bonekickers because it was such an overwhelming unspeakable abomination, that one had to ask if it was just an elaborate prank... so, memorable in the "so bad it's good". Demons will probably not linger so long in the memory. Barely worth the waste of 40 minutes...

If you've not heard of Resident Evil - a franchise more prolific than the fictional viruses it is focused on - the chances are you've been hiding under a rock, while frozen in ice at the edge of space and your TV has been on the blink. If that's the case, the basic story is - evil corporation wants to make perfect weapon via use of mutagenic virus (mostly the T-virus but there are several other flavours but mostly the T-virus and the G-virus). Unfortunately, one of the side-effects of the virus is that it turns people into zombies... of course, given that the MAIN series of games is soon to be in its fifth instalment - things have become a little more complicated than that... but, that's the gist.

In contrast to the fifth instalment of the game, Resident Evil: Degeneration hasn't been overly publicised and is in fact wholly CGI... and seemingly canonical - unlike the live action films... This actually includes characters from the games and ties up some loose ends from the games. It certainly isn't going to win any points for story telling or voice acting and it definitely isn't the prettiest CGI you've seen - Advent Children puts it to shame - but you're not here for a whole lot of story... you're here for zombie killing.

The story starts off with Claire in an airport, incidentally meeting a cookie cutter sleazebag politician. People aren't too happy about all manner of biological research being done on their back door - what with various zombie related incidents and all. So there are a number of protests. We start out with a fake out - a guy pretending to be a zombie lumbering toward the sleazebag politician. Which is followed five seconds later by a REAL zombie - it starts chowing down on the nearest available person and all hell breaks loose.

Hell breaking loose involves a 747 CRASHING INTO THE TERMINAL - and exploding AND then zombies jumping out of it to shamble toward Claire and her little kiddy and the sleazebag politician... Yeah, you had a feeling they might all manage to survive this far, didn't you?

Anyway, they manage to make a momentary escape but - naturally - a building full of zombies isn't the easiest place to get out of and the whole place is locked down because this isn't a Romero film and hence, the military aren't inept/chaotic evil. Although, that's somewhat overshadowed by the fact they send in Leon - who is a bad ass - and give him the generic bad asses who KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ZOMBIES.

How many times does this happen? You'll have an expert or some situation where one person/group are shown to know the score... and tell people "Do X". So, it's inevitable that they will then either not do X or do the exact opposite of it. You have to ask WHY they bother to use experts sometimes... Leon's squad is pretty keen to follow this trope because there is a lot of trying to help zombies, shooting zombies anywhere BUT the head... amazement that they can survive a few clips of ammo and this is DESPITE being TOLD. Needless to say, Leon repeatedly saves their sorry asses.

The two groups meet up and escape - the senator does a fantastic self-saving bit that really deserves an award... mostly because he DIDN'T get chowed down upon... generally when these guys go "Fuck ya!" and make their own dash for safety, they're dead sooner than you can say lowlife. Naturally, one of the idiot SWAT-substitute team gets bitten and does the "LEAVE ME BEHIND!" and everyone else gets out in time for tea.

At which point Claire discovers that WilPharma was actually making a vaccine for the T-virus - and she'd been protesting against them! Bitch. They actually have some trucks full of the stuff but wouldn't you know it - they get blown up... and this is all part of a bio-terror plot to expose the truth behind Raccoon city. While it's fair to say that this IS probably a good way to scare the authorities into doing that - you'd think people familiar with what happened would want to make sure they prevented a recurrence?

Regardless, we get about the only "character building" in the story - where we found out the SRT girl is in fact the sister of Curtis, the crazy bio-terrorist... who is rather peeved that the government has covered up Raccoon City because his family died there. It's worth saying that true to most Capcom stuff - the dialogue here is absolutely dire. Whether that's the result of translation coupled with the half-hearted voice acting remains to be seen but it's regularly so awful you'll be laughing at the "drama"... but it's all about the zombies. Actually, the airport is really the last of them.

We have our heroine go to WilPharma. The researcher chap chit-chats with her and after a call from the Senator spills his guts about the G-virus being there and how they wanted to develop a vaccine and so on. Then he goes "Oh... I need to go fix the server." In the most awfully stilted piece of dialogue the entire film has to offer - which is saying something. 7 seconds later he's telling her there's a bomb about to go off and she sees Curtis running through the building... so much for security.

And cue giant explosion. The level of damage is fairly inconsistent but... no one is perfect. Naturally, Leon and SRT girl head over after the phone line cuts out... because this high security research facility has revolving doors. SRT girl finds her brother - who for some idiotic reason thinks injecting the G-virus into himself is a good idea. He has enough time to talk to her a bit before a couple of dozen soldiers appear - watch in shock as he grows a giant eyeball on his shoulder and one of his hands becomes enormous. Seriously, when that starts happening - you start shooting the bastard.

As one might expect - giant mutated things take more than a little automatic fire to slow down, so he plays possum and then pretty much wipes the floor with the troops. Luckily, Leon turns up and manages to get a walkway to drop on the bastard. The building is then about to ignite itself... oh dear and Curtis ISN'T REALLY DEAD! Yes, you're shocked by the revelation... just how is a GIANT EYE so invulnerable? Powers! The powers of a giant mutant zombie eye.

So, the entire facility is apparently built over your standard infinite drop to the CENTRE OF THE EARTH! Not even a little exaggeration. Naturally, as the base has magical means of detecting the virus - it starts "jettisoning" parts of the base... INTO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH. It must have been some planning application to get that. Naturally, you can guess - evil is killed and all named characters manage to live to see the light of day.

And if you don't see the twist at the end - you're as smart as a zombie.

All-in-all - not an unreasonable effort. Not thrilling and it sags a lot between the two main action sequences... because, this is really just two action sequences stuck together. For Resident Evil fans, a must... zombie fans will find there rather less to get their teeth into here. It's fun enough but rather lacking in substance and zombie killing.

The Fallout series is... one even veteran gamers might consider old. The first game saw an outing back when the number of pixels use to define an entire character would literally not come close to what is in a modern characters little finger. That said, games back then made up for in gameplay what they lacked in graphics - the good ones, anyway.

The premise of the series is a fairly common - if far more elaborately articulated - post-apocalyptic world. The world went the way of nuclear war and everything approaching civilisation as you and I know it, went the way of the dinosaur. Certain people struggled on, in the irradiated world. Various others - lived secluded in big ol' underground bunkers - known as vaults. The first game draws its protagonist from vault 13. Fallout 3 gives us the Lonely Wanderer from Vault 101.

Your father is Liam Neeson - but that shouldn't come as a surprise... This is a Bethesda game! And they're using the Oblivion engine (that being The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion)... And, some jolly good voice actors. In fairness, he doesn't have that much more to say than Patrick Stewart did in the aforementioned... but it's nice that they put the effort in.

So, a Fallout game - naturally, circumstances precipitate your departure from the cosy vault into the rather less hospitable wastelands, this time in the Capital Wastelands... formerly Washington D.C. The post-apocalyptic feel is wonderful, from the ramshackle development of Megaton to the rather more respectable Rivet City... you're never really treated to the kind of visual diversity that you had in The Elder Scrolls but then, this is set in a world approximating our own. So, you don't get distinct designs just for the sake of it - there are differences... but they're just less striking because few of the settlements are really towns, per se.

As with TES games, you're given free reign over what you do. Which means - you can pretty much go off and explore and forget the main quest and explore the wilderness, do sidequests or just mince around to your hearts content. In fairness, the rather limited nature of the main quest - and realistically, the only thing that would stop you from doing it in an afternoon might be the fact you'd need to play for a bit to get the levels and weapons to win through - means that if you want to feel you've got your money's worth... it's probably best you do that anyway.

One of the issues with Mass Effect was... unlike previous Bioware games, you didn't just bump into sidequests in the course of following the main quest - KOTOR is a prime example... but then, it's just to be generally venerated anyway. Now, some might say that in both cases, it's more about freedom. KOTOR was limited to about a half-dozen planets which weren't huge. Mass Effect had literally dozens (excluding the sizeable mission planets) and Fallout 3 has just one big ol' map that you could spend ages combing over but then, that's something of a problem.

After a certain point you have to ask - is it really WORTH it? There are a fair number of weapon types... but one hunting rifle is much the same as another. There is about one "unique" weapon for each type of weapon which will look the same but boast slightly better clip sizes or damage... it won't set your world on fire.

Weapons leads us nicely into combat... This is (sadly) fairly straight forward TES style combat. Which is to say, if you've got ranged attacks - start shooting and if you've got melee... close to bludgeoning distance. It has ALWAYS been the weakest element of TES games but Fallout 3 manages to mitigate it with the staple of the previous two games VATS.

VATS essentially emulates turn-based combat. You have an allocation of action points - different weapons require different more or less - which you can use to target specific body parts of your enemies. These vary depending upon a number of things - your weapon, proficiency with it, its condition and so on. For those that don't care for the not-very-good FPS combat the game offers, this is a very valid alternative... To reference Mass Effect again though, this doesn't offer you fun firefights... because, it's entirely possible to just run out into the open and sit there for a few seconds, in Mass Effect all but the most heavily armoured will die outside of cover. Fallout 3 makes it easy for enemies (and the player) to run at one another. So, there's no real disadvantage to being a melee character. It makes things rather less interesting and realistic.

What is somewhat more interesting is that VATS or no, damage is area specific. Headshots do more damage, you can shoot weapons out of people's hands... impede mobility by shooting their legs. In fact, the game accomodates gory decapitations (because for some reason, a headshot results in a decapitation - mostly) or limbs falling off... or in the case of the "bloody mess" perk. A person being dismembered upon death... that would probably have been more helpful in Dead Space. You're also treated to random slomo shots - everything to the decapiation to a bullets view of the hit. Some people might get bored of it but it's got a variety of different possibilities, so it's not exactly the same thing every time - plus, the laser and plasma weapons have their own special death animations.

Shooting things isn't the only course of action though - at least in quests, during your travels you'll encounter giant critters, Raiders and Super Mutants who communicate exclusive via the medium of stabbings and shootings - many of your tasks will offer you the chance to talk problems out... for good or ill. Naturally, the options available to you are somewhat affected by your stats and demeanour... because Fallout 3 has a karma system.

It's the typical one - where ALL deeds (good and evil) are e-mailed to the entire world. Everything from detonating a nuke in a town to giving water to a beggar or stealing a fork. Something of a standard device but then, if you lose karma for doing bad things when no one is looking... why bother trying to conceal your misdeeds? Obviously, if you go around selling people into slavery and just wantonly killing... that makes sense but it's a common enough game dynamic and not really anything but a niggle.

Fallout 3's problem is that it's never really that... engaging. Yes, it does somewhat tap into the mythos of the Fallout universe but only in the sense of atmosphere. The main quest is of minimal interest and difficulty and of course, once it's done - game over. That's not so surprising though - the level cap for the game is a whopping 20, attributes are capped at 10 and skills at 100 and with even minimal effort, you can max out the stats for your play style long before then.

Most quest rewards are pretty boring and really are only worth doing for the XP. There is the occasional fancy gun or special ability but these tend to be the exceptions. Not quite to the Morrowind level of "Thanks for saving the town... have a paperweight and a punch in the face." non-reward... but sometimes it can feel like it... and the fact that if you REALLY want to explore the game world, you have to just march around and occasionally find camps and such like. There IS the fast travel option but that's only to locations you've visited... and a lot of places you'll have to bump into. It's not MMO grind... it's just a bit boring, wandering through the wastes. There aren't even a half-dozen major settlements... the game considers a "settlement" to be about 3 people. The nature of the wasteland means you're not going to be bumping into big cities... but Fallout 1 & 2 had far more in the way of meaningful settlements and here, they're just... kind of empty and not very interesting.

It's fun for a few hours but games costing what they do these days - not really worth the price of admission. Sure it's pretty and has body parts flying in all directions but we're at a stage where eye candy isn't something to get excited about and ditto flying body parts. It suffers from the flaws of The Elder Scrolls in terms of gameplay but it doesn't really counter with the rich environment and backstory. There are SOME fun quests and it does an excellent job of translating the Fallout world into a gritty first person experience but... wandering around broken cities and ruins is almost certain to make you think of Half Life 2 and Gears of War. It's just... not a lot of anything. It isn't bad, it just lacks anything with which to wow all but the most casual of casual gamers. About all that can be said is that VATS is something of a salve for the very awkward mishmash that TES games call combat.