GAME
THE GUNSTRINGER
Review by That Guy
I love Kinect. I only have 2 Kinect games but they're both really awesome. This one is awesomer than the other one.
The Gunstringer is your typical undead cowboy marionette out for revenge on his former posse comprising of voodoo priestesses, samurai cowboys, oil barons, busty brothel owners and inflatable wavy tube men (yes, you read that last bit right). Silliness, slapstick, laugh out loud comedy, mindless violence and a homage to Clint Eastwood/John Wayne-esque spaghetti westerns ensue.
I'll start with the biggest reason you should get this game. The narrator. I have no idea who you are but good lord, funniest narration EVER. Tongue firmly planted in cheek, the faceless narrator guides you through the campaign, constantly making ponderous statements in the most deadpan of voices (“Six targets, six bullets---the way God and nature intended”), it adds a comedic sheen to your murderous exploits as you march through the wild west, killing just about everything in sight. No really, there are more explosions in this game than all the Call of Duty games and all the Transformers movies...combined.
The controls are simple. As our skeletal zombified hero automatically sprints through landscapes littered with cardboard cutouts resembling everything from cacti and snakes to oil tanks and crocodiles, you just have to worry about shooting and dodging bullets and other obstacles while picking up magical Mexican food. Kinda like the stars in Mario. Your left hand controls the puppet's strings and your right hand shoots (this can be reversed if you're southpaw). It's ridiculously easy and really smooth. Shout “pew pew pew” when gunning people down.
They got real actors and filled a theatre to watch your exploits down the vengeance trail. Occasionally during cutscenes, the camera moves to them and their facial expressions and just adds to the fun factor of the game. At one point, this guy from the audience does a triple take and stops with an incredulous wide-eyed expression.
The only real complaint about this game is how short it is. It'll be over in 6 -7 hours, although the bonus materials and the free DLC, 'The Wavy Tube Man Chronicles' (yes, again, you read that right) will make you come back for one more run through. Or four. There are some parts in this game which are just insanely cool. Read through the achievement list too for some lulz. This is genuinely a game worth acquiring the Kinect for.
PRESENTATION: 9.5/10
SOUND: 8.5/10
GAMEPLAY: 7.5/10
LASTING IMPACT: 8.10
OVERALL: 8.5/10
ALBUM REVIEW
The 2nd Law - Muse
By Sarah Nafisa Shahid
When Matt Bellamy says that Muse is always looking to break 'new grounds and find new sounds to play with' in their new albums, it's bound to get you thinking about what they might surprise you with. And as other contemporary artists have ended up with disappointing records after trying to experiment (Coldplay's free fall with Mylo Xyloto, Radiohead's King of Limbs compared with their Ok Computer), you wonder if Muse will be an addition to the list.
Their much anticipated sixth album, The 2nd Law, came out on October 2nd 2012, with The Killers and Mumford and Sons' new albums having been released only in preceding weeks.
The 13 track album starts off with powerful guitar sounds in “Supremacy” and next a 58second 'Prelude' follows depicting Bellamy's piano skills and the influence of classical music. 'Madness' has a little pop-ish touch to it for the usual fans but the classic Muse jazzy electronic sound returns back in “Panic Station”.
The 2012 London Olympics had already made “Survival” pretty popular but it pales in comparison next to “Follow Me”, which starts off with mesmerising falsettos and vibratos from Bellamy and suddenly explodes into a dubstep laden track and leaves your internals jumbled. Yes, dubstep. Now all those who cringed at the sound of that, think again. This is Muse. And they tried to make dubstep kind of cool.
“Explorers” and “Save Me” are the relatively softer songs in the album. “Save Me” has a slightly dreamy edge to it, adhering to Matt Bellamy's promise of finally writing about relationships, after refraining from doing so ever since Muse's debut album, Showbiz. They actually expect you to forget about songs like “Unintended” and “Starlight”.
The title track is in two parts: “Unsustainable” and “Isolated System”; and they live up to the statement of breaking new grounds and experimenting with new sounds. Dubstep influence is seen again in Unsustainable while Isolated System has a little M83-ish feel to it; “Isolated System” also tops as the best track in the album in my view.
Muse's sixth album has actually managed to incorporate new music styles like dubstep and electonica into their domain and yet maintain their symphony-rock theme. Above all, Muse did not disappoint. This is an album worth listening to.
MUST-LISTEN TRACKS:
1 THE 2ND LAW: UNSUSTAINABLE AND THE 2ND LAW:
ISOLATED SYSTEM
2 FOLLOW ME 3 EXPLORERS 4 SAVE ME
5 ANIMALS
SPORTS
RS HOW-TO: PICK A FANTASY FOOTBALL TEAM
By The Kopite
So it's mid-way through the Barclays Premier League season and there's a 50% chance already that your team's out of the running for the title. The other 50% of people are sitting pretty at the top gushing about Robin Van Persie's goals and Wayne Rooney's perfect hair (so United fans stop reading right now. Don't make all of us feel bad). So now that your life has lost all meaning for the next seven months, there's not much to do for you now except sit around waiting for the next season to be 'The Season' for your team. Needless to say it won't be. So what can you do now? Do you pull an Arsene Wenger and start saying 'fourth place is a trophy'? Or do you follow in Guardiola's footsteps and just leave the carnage behind and walk away? No, the best thing for you to do is focus all your energy on the one thing where your team has a chance of winning: the Fantasy Premier League.
If you don't have a fantasy football team, well, let's just say it pretty much cements your place in the bottom rungs of society. What sane person doesn't want to obsess over how many yellow cards Shawcross will get throughout the season or whether Michu will ever stop scoring for your friend's team? More importantly, who among us hasn't wished and prayed with a passion that the team we support will fail miserably just so that we can score a few more points in the league? Just me? Here are some tips to keep your fantasy team gunning for the prize money come the end of the season or at least competing to keep your last shred of dignity. Or not.
CHEATING: FPL is life. And in life you take shortcuts. Don't go with what you might think will be a good team. Your reasoning skills aren't exactly the best. Always be on the lookout for the players that other, smarter people, have drafted in. If they buy Gervinho, you buy Gervinho.
If they sell off David Silva and play Jordan Henderson instead, you follow suit. If they strike gold, so do you. If it backfires, it's still bad for both parties. It's a win-win.
Substitutes: Definitely the most annoying thing to happen since Nicki Minaj came into this world. It greatly reduces your ability to spend big on your first XI. But it's probably best if you don't fill it with reserves scraped from the bottom dredges of the league. Feel free to put in the odd Wigan reserve defender but the bench should have at least two players who might see the light of day on the field sometime during the season. This is important if you have the likes of Suarez and Bale in the team who will inevitably be banned every three months.
Wildcard: Guard your wildcard with your life. You just have one shot left at it now and that's if you haven't used it already. Do not use it under any circumstance. Remember the phrase 'form is temporary, class is permanent'? Yeah, that's why you should stick with the classy players you picked. This is not relevant if you're not one of the idiots who picked United defenders, or any QPR player. Then you should definitely use it.
Now that you're armed with expert advice, you can go on to conquer your make-believe enemies in a make-believe league. So, why did we wait so long to give you our valued opinions? Because we don't actually want any of you to do well. And it's probably too late for you now. We sign off with the most fundamental rule of picking players: never pick them just because they are pretty. Don't pick the ugly ones either. That should narrow it down for you.
(The article is based on the official Barclays Fantasy Premier League site: http://fantasy.premierleague.com).
Disclaimer: This writer is currently last in every single league he's competing in. We wouldn't listen to any “expert” advice he has to give.
MOVIE REVIEW
RS RATING: 8/10
RUBY SPARKS
By Orin
It isn't every day that a movie moves you so much that you immediately think about writing a review so that thousands of others can get a hold of it. In days like these, when sequels rule the movie world and CGI reigns over storytelling, movies like those are a rare treat. Although I still stand strongly on my view that 2012 left a lot to be desired in terms of movies, even though The Hobbit and Lincoln happened; after watching Ruby Sparks though, I might have to change my opinion a little.
The movie starts with Paul Dano portraying Calvin Weir-Fields, a talented young writer with a massive writer's block, who believes that he is slowly going insane. He keeps mostly to himself and his shy dog Scottie, generally loathing any interaction with people who love to dub him as a 'genius'. In an effort to overcome his writer's block, Calvin starts writing whatever he sees in his dreams. And in his dreams, a girl keeps reappearing. Calvin begins writing more and more, as if to learn more about that mysterious girl, until one day he realizes that the girl is real. Ruby, played by Zoe Kazan, as Calvin calls her, is everything he ever dreamt of in a girl, but he struggles to keep a distance between his overactive imagination and the perplexity of real life.
Ruby Sparks is 500 days of Summer meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and biased as could be, personally this reviewer enjoyed it more than those two. It could be the quality of the acting (top notch work from Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan and the supporting cast), or the story (masterfully written by Kazan too) or the directors, who are the same people who gave us gems like Little Miss Sunshine. Overall, Ruby Sparks is thoroughly enjoyable in every aspect. Romance movies are dime a dozen, and maybe that's why it is so tough to stand out, but Ruby Sparks aspires to do just that, and it pretty much succeeds in all aspects.
