The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Movie / 2012)

This is an interesting idea of a movie. I think years from now, after all three Hobbit movies are released, is the only time we will be able to really tell if Peter Jackson made the right choice of extending the Hobbit, a 300 page fast read, into three separate three hour movies. As it stand right now, The Hobbit comes across as a lovely adventure movie, possibly stretched a little too thin.

Pop Journal: Halo 4

Halo 4 (Game / 2012)

Halo 4 is a game that happens after Halo 3. To be perfectly honest I have very little recollection of what happened in the original trilogy so this kind of felt the same as before, which isn't to say it felt bad because it felt really good. I did play this game on co-op so maybe I need to play by myself to see if I pick up on the story a little more, but as it stands is a decent vehicle for the stellar game play at work.

343 is the new studio taking over the franchise from Bungie and it's really heavy handed that they want you to know they aren't evil people who are going to destroy the game. I feel the best way that they could say that would be to make a really great game, not by saying "Thanks for trusting us..." because we did not choose you to do this.

All of that aside this is Halo. There are some new enemies with some new weapons, but 343 did little to change up the formula of the previous 4 games. There were some great ideas like having more armor abilities, but they are still a one and done thing. To be honest I played this and then immediately moved onto Borderlands 2 and this Halo 4 feels shallow compared to that. There will be a Halo 5 someday, I hope that the designers take some more chances and shake things up a bit, cause I could always play Halo 4 again, or 3... or 2 (it all seems the same).

Pop Journal: Dishonored

Dishonored (Game / 2012)

Dishonored was a treat to play. A derivative take on Assassins Creed putting you in the shoes of the Queens disgraced bodyguard out for revenge this game gives you level after level to explore and find your own path to live or let die. The story and graphics are really not the tops, but the game play more than makes up for any shortcomings there. There is an issue with the matter of choice in the game, but it's nothing that any other game relying heavily on player choice has faced.

This game is presented in a form much like Call of Duty, you are put in a level with a goal and once you accomplish everything the level has to offer you are done with it and the game takes you to a hub to go to the next level. I respect what new developers have to go through in game design, but this game was begging to be in a fully realized open world. It feels a lot like Bioshock, but even in that game you could revisit levels. In fact a lot of this game screams Bioshock but since that is one of my favorite games of all time I really didn't mind and enjoyed the journey.

The game relies heavily on choice and it's here it falters a little. Every level ends with a listing of what you did and did not do including how many people you killed and how much chaos you cause. At first I thought the game would only track my major choices in letting targets live or die, only to find out I killed one guard too many and made the level chaotic. Really there is little difference between the good and bad endings, it felt unorganic to the game to have a list after each level saying you didn't do enough. I felt the same way in LA Noire with a game mechanic that would tell you when you asked a wrong question, it made me want to reset to get the "good" ending.

Either way with the choices it was a really great first attempt, and much like last years Dead Island I can't wait to see what this studio does with this new IP next.