There’s a dangerous enemy masquerading as good taste. That’s hype. Manufactured to make you believe that what you like is actually good, but really it’s just you going along w/ the consensus. Often times a movie or videogame is really good but can’t hope to match the hype it generates. Other times the hype masks the flaws in that movie or game. There are 3 great examples recently i want to mention. The film ‘No Country for Old Men’ and the games ‘Assassins Creed’ and ‘Halo3′.
Let’s start with ‘No Country for Old Men’. The film is beautifully shot. The characters were cool and well rounded. In fact i really enjoyed the movie up until the end. The problem with this movie was there was no payoff whatsoever. They rob you of closure. Especially after developing the characters for the entire movie. I think a few more narrations by Tommy Lee Jones’ character could have made this a brilliant film. Just a bit more guidance for the viewer would have gone a long way. So it sounds like i thought the film was at least ok, why do i put it in this category? Because it won best film, and every critic has loved it. Hell it’s got a tomato rating of like 92% fresh. The sheer amount of people lauding the brilliance of this film is incredible, and whenever a person dissents they are called stupid. Perhaps i was expecting too much based on the critical reception of the movie and i was let down, but i hold by my opinion that it is overrated.
Assassins Creed… where to start. The graphics are incredible, the free-running controls are brilliant, the fighting is decent. The rest of the game? SUCKS. How can the game suck when so much of it is based on free-running and combat and i said those were at least decent? Because you do the same damn thing every single time. Scale some high points, pick-pocket, interrogate, and assassinate. You even enter the city the same exact way every single freaking time. You couldn’t mix it up at all ubisoft? How about letting me scale a wall to get into the city? Or go through the sewers or something. My feeling is that they spent so much time getting it to look and play well that they forgot completely about creating missions and pacing. Jade Raymond is still hot tho :-p.
Halo 3. I actually waited in line at midnight for this game and i regret it to this day. The co-op campaign on legendary difficulty was a lot of fun. The theater was cool and i had a lot of fun dropping tanks on my friends in forge. Everything else? Been there, done that. What gets me most about this game though, is Bungie. They’re so smug about the game, afterall they know it’s going to sell 4 million units without any problem. The story was cool and all but holy shit was it melodramatic. As for multiplayer… rainbow 6 and Call of duty 4 both had far superior multiplayer.
So there you have it. 3 products that went wrong due to hype.
Posted on March 18th, 2008 by phaedrus
Filed under: movies, videogames
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