Video Game Assessment: Bioshock Infinite DLC: Burial at Sea Episode 1

I love Bioshock Infinite but did not like Bioshock very much. So, what happens when both games are combined together for a DLC? Well... *EXPLOSION*

BURIAL AT SEA IS WHAT HAPPENS

I've heard a bunch of stuff about this DLC. And it all seems rather overblown. People get upset over the dumbest things, something I can and will never understand. DLC comes in all different shapes and sizes. You can pay money for horse armor, story DLC, or just a bunch of enemies that you can shoot a bit. That's the nature of DLC, you never know exactly what you'll get, and many times you get something you might not expect. I don't see how people can be disappointed about a DLC, ripping it apart and hating it for no other reasons than it's DLC. And this DLC in particular, which by its nature is very much apart from its mother game. I understand that the practice of DLC and expansions is a slippery slope and something that can easily take advantage of the consumer, but if it's a fair DLC, it should be extra to the main game, something superfluous for the enjoyment of the core game, but also something that will add more to those who are willing to spend some money to buy it. And this DLC fits that definition pretty solidly.

I'm going to be a bit disjointed in my little conversation here about this DLC. I'm under the impression that most people think it is disappointing, upsetting, mediocre, or bad, and that's just plain idiotic. Okay, maybe I shouldn't be so harsh because the internet is so full of people being overblown about any and every issue, and I'm just confused by the backlash at this point. It's disheartening to me that people can't just enjoy a thing that's a good time for a while. They have to hate it just to hate it, point to it and say, "I don't want." But, I want it quite a bit and enjoyed it even more than that/

The story is simple: It takes place after the main game, some years after it more than likely. Elizabeth is offering Booker (from Rapture this time, Rapture-Booker) a chance to find his "girl," Sally, a young girl who he has taken charge of somehow for some reason. That's about it. The story is all about the two of them trying to find this girl and going to a city at the bottom of the ocean to do it.

I liked the DLC. The first episode of Burial at Sea was a superb success, blending the horror elements of Bioshock with the incredible writing and characters of Infinite. While not everything in the story made absolute sense to me, specifically the ending, the game itself was a really good time. I had fun playing it all over again, going back to Rapture and meeting back up with Elizabeth who is absolutely the headline of this game and well worth the price alone.

The combat is perfectly acceptable, but probably a bit on the difficult side with the absence of a great deal of ammo or EVE for restocking. I found myself playing with a very heavily melee game which made it that much more satisfying when I won. (I did much the same thing in the core game though. I can't get enough of the melee combat. It's satisfying.) The fights are pretty good, but nothing all that different from either of the other games. Combat is not why I'm playing the game, so I'm not sure how much more I can really say about it. It's perfectly fine, and I had fun. What more is there to say? Then again I like just about any kind of combat in games, as long as it works, I don't really care.

The music was great. Elizabeth and the new Booker are also quite good to see again. As a big spoiler I didn't quite get why Elizabeth wanted to lead Booker all the way to Sally to kill him. That didn't make much sense to me. If he were going to die anyway, why not have him die when she first met him? Why lead him along so long? Just so he can prove his ill intent by trying to grab Sally? Not sure if I buy that so much. But maybe she needed to know what kind of Booker he truly was. I'm not sure.

Seeing the Luteces again was also fun, but there is a frustration with the story the way it is. Booker is suddenly Comstock (yes, they're the same character, but they're also treated as different characters, aren't they?) and has his memories, and there is an insistence that he is a bad man and is running from something? I don't even know. It's very odd, and my answers are few and far between. The ending was the only thing that really took away from my experience and mostly because I didn't understand it or Elizabeth's motives. Is she killing all the Bookers/Comstocks? Is she searching out a very specific one who somehow found himself in another world? Again, why wait so long to kill him or grievously harm him? I don't get that. Did she not know he was Comstock until his reaction?

Man, while confusing, the lead-up to the end is very compelling, showing flashes to Booker/Comstock's former life at very inopportune times. It added some mystique and some actual creepiness to the plot. I enjoyed that quite a bit. It meant something to me, and while I don't understand it now, I assume the next part will clear some things up, but maybe not. And if it doesn't then that's fine too, just keep giving me a compelling reason to keep following the story.

It seems like everybody is down on the world of Infinite, something I neither understand or agree with. This is the best game I've played in years and the DLC is also very good for a follow-up to that. It's simple and probably a little slow, but I loved playing it and feel the desire to go back and play the main game and the DLC all over again. So, it was a success to me.

B-Movie Appraisal: Dementia 13 (The Haunted and the Hunted) (1963)

Francis Coppola? Francis FORD Coppola? Seriously, you did The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, but started out with this? I admire that. I also think it makes a ton of sense (since I dislike most of your movies), but I really do respect that. I think all great filmmakers should start with sci-fi or horror movies. They're simple to make, but incredibly difficult to make well. They hone skills that can be valuable in much more complex movies, are good for up-and-coming filmmakers to chip their teeth on, and will never be critical darlings so most will have free reign or a good amount of control on their project. These are all positives and one of the reason why so many GREAT directors started with horror or sci-fi movies.

Anyway, Dementia 13 was written and directed by Francis Coppola, his third movie directed and first real "actual" movie. I guess his first two "movies" were skin flicks or nudie flicks or whatever, but I've never seen them nor heard of them before I read about them existing for this review. It goes to show how far somebody can go to become one of the best known directors of all time. It also goes to show that he had some talent directing even in his early days. Because yes, this movie had definite talent behind it, even if it isn't the best flick there ever was.

I guess I should start out saying that this is an early 1960s movie, and, as such, is largely not very scary at all. Mostly it comes off as a rip-off (of a sort) of Psycho, which was made just a few short years before. Since Roger Corman produced this flick, I would have to say that it was definitely meant to cash in on this new-found and, at the time, newly popular genre of movie. That being said, as a cash-in, it still is a fairly solid slasher-lite B-movie with a bunch of hiccups that work against the feel of the movie but serve the obviously limited budget and production costs... and most notably the censorship that this movie also very obviously had to work around. Let it be known that while it was on its way out the Hayes Code was still strictly in effect. And yet the movie works around those codes very decently, creating a disjointed movie, sure, but an enjoyably disjointed movie. One of the biggest hiccups is the actual flow of the story and plot. The editing is odd, barely showing a coherent plot throughout, with a greater focus on jumping around in the narrative and showing more psychological elements of the characters. At least I think that was what was going on. The film's stiff attitude towards progression in the story is the biggest issue that holds it back from being either memorable or "good" in any modern sense of that word.

I know that this movie probably very mixed in both thoughts and feelings about it. To me it was a highly mediocre film with some good moments, especially considering when it was made. The fact that characters, fleshed-out and interesting characters, die both early and often is enough to convey that the movie is interesting and also a Psycho rip-off. I have to point that out because it is so obvious. (Also because it is historical record.) I don't have all that much to say about this film either. While it is well-directed, with every shot looking nice and leading up to something, the disjointed nature of the jumps of scenes and the character movements left me feeling very confused at times and, honestly, a little bored as well. That's never a good thing with a horror film. And it's especially bad for a film that seems to have a great deal of somewhat ridiculous filler already.

The plot of the film is simple: three brothers come back to their ancestral castle-home to reenact the funeral of their little sister who died years ago. Their mother insists upon it and refuses to let anybody else but herself and her three sons come to the ceremony. Things go awry early when one of the brothers (John) decides to go boating with his wife Louise. They are having a heated conversation about his mother's will, mocks his wife, then promptly has a heart-attack and dies. Louise disposes of the body and acts like nothing happened but John being called back home on business. As the movie progresses, Louise is intent on gaining the mother's fortune, trying to trick her into believing her daughter's spirit still roams the halls of the castle. She is found out and killed. Then a grubby little man-hunter finds her body and is killed as well. Louise was at the center of most of the first half of the movie, but her death, reminiscent of Janet Leigh's death is Psycho begins the disjointed narrative issues.

Having no central character left the narrative begins to follow four different characters: the two remaining brothers, Richard and Billy, the family doctor, Dr. Caleb, and Kane, the engaged of Richard. Watching them all try to figure it all out is a confusing mess. The focus is on Richard being the killer for most of the second half of the movie, even though Billy seems to be having flashbacks of the day his sister died, which psychologically implicate him. There are subplots with a grave at the bottom of a pond and a wax dummy of Kathleen that both serve as clues or weird pieces of evidence, but neither really is all that important.

Dr. Caleb figures it out, places Kathleen's dummy out in the open, lures Billy who attempts to kill Kane who wants to touch the dummy really badly for some reason. Billy is then shot dead by Dr. Caleb the hero of the story, and that's that. I mean, simple enough, I guess... or really odd, confusing, and overly complex at times.

I did like how the killer could have been either of the two brothers even if it was fairly obvious who it was from fairly early on. Of course it would be the troubled brother, without anybody in his life, who obvious has some psychological issues who would be the one to be the murderer. Obviously. Still, there were moments when I thought it would all be a huge misdirection, and the silhouetted killer was obviously in shadow to show that it maybe could have been either of them. I liked how that worked even with the obvious nature of how it all turned out. There was tension there, maybe not the greatest tension, but tension nonetheless.

I had issues with the idea that there really isn't a main character, just a collection of side ones. While Dr. Caleb kind of comes off as the main character towards the end of the film, he doesn't even appear in the first half at all. It was difficult to connect with the characters as well. None of them were people. They all very much came off as characters in a play, which was disheartening.

It's not a bad movie, not a good one either though. And yet, I'm not certain whose product I'm seeing on screen. Did Corman cut the production to his specifications? Or did Coppola have basically full control? The movie, while a mess, is both well shot, and very odd in the way it cuts to different (and sometimes inexplicable) scenes at the drop of a hat. The focus on characters and their faces is interesting, but also clearly ripped off of Psycho. I think the movie is ultimately an interesting mess of a movie.

But still I have a few questions. Why is it called Dementia 13? Does the title mean something I don't understand? I don't think I see dementia at all in the film. Nor the number 13. So... yeah, the title is incredibly flawed. Okay, and here's the biggest and most important question at all: why do the brothers not have Irish accents? It takes place in Ireland. They were supposedly raised there unless I missed something important. So, why did they all talk like Americans? It was incredibly distracting. They had the castle and had lived there as young children, it seems, but no accent. Man, that was a problem for me. I just couldn't look past it, specifically because other character have very strong accents. Wow.

So, I have a middling opinion about this movie. Check it out if you like old horror movies. If you don't just forget about it and try something else. I can't really recommend it as anything more than an interesting look at an early slasher movie, and not a particularly good or interesting one at that.

Movie Appraisal: Splinter (2008)

Well, this sure was a movie. Why did I want to see this again?

For whatever reason I had bought this movie, clearly intending to enjoy the hell out of it. For reasons unknown I didn't watch it until now and have completely forgot the reason I wanted to watch it in the first place. Not that it's a bad movie at all, it isn't, but it's also certainly not the kind of movie I usually enjoy.

It's another movie with few scares, little true fear shown, and much more about characters, zany snarky lines, and gore effects. And yes, the gore effects are good. No, the CGI is not. And oh man, is that Ax from the Animorphs TV show as an adult?

Ax

ADULT

Man. He's exactly what I expected him to be. He looks almost literally exactly the same. He has almost the same face on and everything. That's freaking uncanny. Wow. I like the film for him alone. Him as an actor. Not him as a character. Because his character, Seth, is a dumb person. PhD in Biology, my ass.

Anyway, while this was a fun film to watch, it was incredibly frustrating. As you may or may not know, I am a biology man. I did biology in school, specifically microbiology. So, it's kind of my thing. This movie either does not understand biology or has a character who has forgotten everything about being a biologist. I mean, seriously. Wow. This kind of incompetence is inexcusable.

The premise is simple. There's a biology experiment gone awry. A spiky mold fungus of some sort or another has gotten loose and is infecting animals. Enter Seth (Paulo Costanzo (Ax)) and his girlfriend Polly. They are a nice normal couple who fails at camping in the woods and succeed at getting their car hijacked and getting kidnapped by a strange couple: Lacey, who is addicted to some drug or another, and supercopetent Dennis (Shea Whigham). Well, eventually their shared kidnap car runs into a spiny beast on the road, setting up the whole idea of the "splinter" as seen in the title. Dennis gets the splinter in his finger while moving the tire away from the car.

The splinters and the creatures seem to be some kind of mold or fungus of some sort. They take over the biological elements of a body and can live completely independently of a brain. While this is wholly in the realm of science fiction, it's kind of an interesting idea. Technically a mold could infect something and use nerves, temperature sensors, and biological elements of the "body" or "limb" to reanimate it. You would expect a brain to be the focus of an attack (and with mind-altering parasites this is ALWAYS the case in real life), but these can and do reanimate limbs, fingers, and pieces of the body.

Okay, scientifically suspect, but I'm interested.

Continue.

Anyway, eventually they get to a gas station where the rest of the movie takes place. Lacey and a cop who comes to "help" them get killed by the murderous mold. The other three hold up in the gas station's convenience store and are completely ineffective at doing anything for most of the rest of the movie.

It's here that I should mention that mold has a few things that can easily dispose of it, which would probably exist in a convenience store. One is bleach. The other is fire, which they use at the end of the movie to kill the mold zombies. The problem is, why didn't Mr. PhD in biology Andalite Bandit figure this out? I know it from the biology I've seen, which should be quite a bit less than a PhD student. Mold doesn't like fire. Well, most things don't like fire. Why didn't they make a torch, or douse the creatures in flames and watch them burn? Why did he have to go to a complicated plot of having his body temperature lowered nearly ten degrees when all they had to do was burn things until they no longer moved? It just seems so needlessly complex and idiotic. I would have gotten in there, seen that the things were mold or fungus based, looked at the lighters, matches, kerosene and GAS STATION, and went, "Let's burn these fuckers."

I was screaming that most of the movie. It was a bit annoying that they didn't figure it out until almost the end.

Well, those are my complaints about the biological elements of the plot. Besides that I actually had a good time watching it. While it is basically a zombie film, it handles the situation differently enough that it stays fresh and interesting, being reminiscent of Pontypool in that respect. The movie also somewhat reminds me of The Last of Us, that new-ish video game by NaughtyDog that I'll be reviewing shortly. Both have "zombies" based off of molds or fungi, even though both are incredibly different in the way that they behave. I like how the spines work here, basically as syringes to inject into hosts. It makes sense to work that way.

One other thing I should mention is part of the movie reminded me of The Evil Dead movies, specifically when Dennis' hand/arm starts going haywire and needs to be chopped off. I liked that scene a great deal, and it was the only piece of the movie that actually made me uncomfortable in a good way. While incredibly gory and completely expected, it worked very well from a viewer's standpoint.

I do have one other complaint before I get into performances. I did not like the directing of this movie at all. I understand that there was probably a conscious effort by the director to hide the budget (or lack thereof) by any means necessary, but shaking the camera every which way and clearly not showing important details like WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN EVERY ACTION SCENE is a pretty big problem. I did not like that one bit. So, Toby Wilkins, the director of this movie, shame on you for using such terrible shots in this fine movie. I would recommend this movie if it weren't for that.

The acting is pretty solid though, and does a lot for this movie that other elements simply cannot do. While there is very little tension in the film, and even fewer scares, the characters are interesting to watch, and each of the main three actors' performances are really fun and full of energy. Shea Whigham and Jill Wagner are both very good in their roles, with Paulo Costanzo being more of a silly buttmonkey, but he is Ax, so... no surprise there, I guess.

Anyway, I won't recommend this movie even though I liked it just fine. I think it's a solid film, but I have no idea who it would be made for. Gore fans would think nothing of it. Horror fans wouldn't be scared. And normal people would avoid it. Maybe biologists would enjoy it? Maybe that's the demographic it's trying to appeal to. Well, if that's true then I hope every biologist goes out and watches this movie. I recommend it to biologists and only to biologists.