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Episode 6.05
Writer: Angela Robinson
Director: Michael Ruscio

THE ONE WHERE Sookie’s dad possesses Lafayette and tries to drown her; the vamp camp adds to its collection and sends Pam to a shrink; Billith learns of Warlow’s presence and captures him so they can flashback together; some dull stuff with werewolves happens.

VERDICT Finally we get to see the Governor’s vamp camp in action, and it’s been worth the wait. All the scenes inside the camp are highlights of the episode, especially Pam’s couch session which is packed full of great lines (“Your insignificance to me cannot be underestimated”) delivered with scenery-chewing relish by Kristin Bauer van Straten. Oddly, while we can’t condone the camp’s methods, there is also a ghoulish interest as a viewer in finding out more about what makes vampires tick, both physically and mentally.

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Eric meanwhile, tries to play it cool by proving to his captors that he’s the most kick-ass vampirey vampire of all, and strolling through the tests. His best moment is left until the end, though. He’s arrogantly goading the Governor through a one-way mirror, when Burrell reveals to him that he’s incarcerated his own daughter in the camp. The change in Eric’s demeanour is subtle (great acting by Alexander Skarsgard) but shocking (it’s rare to see him realise he’s made such a fatal error of judgement). Then, just as he’s off-balance, Sarah and the shrink deliver the killer punch – Eric and Pam must fight each other to the death. The reveal is a great cliffhanger. Shame it isn’t actually the cliffhanger.

That honour is given to the Sookie plotline. Poor girl, her whole world has been turned upside-down by Warlow’s revelation that he only killed her parents because they were trying to kill her. There’s something of the feel of scriptwriting legerdemain here, and this particular rabbit looks like it’s only been stuffed in the hat a few episodes back. (For one thing, it seems unlikely Sookie’s dad would be quite so naive about vampires and faeries considering who his dad is; it’s not quite a plot hole, just something that can be explained by yet more retconning exposition at a later date).

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Though this myth-busting new information may feel a little contrived, you can forgive the episode because it leads to another great Lafayette seance scene, and Lafayette seance scenes are always a riot (“Now listen up, dead folk”). Then he’s possessed by Sookie’s dad who wants to do what he failed to do all those years ago – drown Sookie (we know some Eric fans who were cheering him on). So yeah, we do get a decent cliffhanger… it just feels like the two could have been swapped for more impact. There’s something a little too whimsical about a possessed Lafayette trying to drown Sookie as her skirt balloons around her to make it as jaw-dropping as the Pam vs Eric moment.

Warlow is extracted from the Sookie plot by Bill, who compels Warlow to follow him back to his secret lab (Bill being Lilith’s new form and Lilith being Warlow’s maker; it’s a great piece of “What the fu…? Oh yeah, right, that makes sense…” plotting). Here Bill extracts faerie blood from Warlow, using joint flashbacks as an anaesthetic (or so it seems). There’s a lot in this episode about father/child and/or maker/sire relationships and here we go again, as we get the Warlow origin story. The 3500BC scenes are all a bit disappointing and silly-looking to be honest, unless a little bit more nekkidness is all it takes to impress you. They make the wigtastic Vampire Diaries flashbacks looks Oscar worthy. There’s an attempt to stylise them but they just look cheap, and the story they have to tell – boy meets god, god bites boy, boy kills god – is barely any deeper or emotional on screen than that nine-word summary.

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Elsewhere, Sarah Palin… sorry, Newlin… sorry, she’s not Steve Newlin’s ex-wife, she is her own woman, provides some great entertainment. “When a woman comes to you in black lingerie, you unwrap her!” she rages at Burrell, but blimey, show some sensitivity woman; he’s just learnt his daughter has become the thing he loathes the most. Sarah decides that the lingerie shouldn’t go to waste and sets out to find a surefire shag – Jason. She finds justification in the Lord: “I truly believe God wants me to fuck you.” He’s reluctant at first but, hey, she “always seemed like a nice lady, behind the crazy and the hate,” he reasons, and so he dives between her legs.

More lip trembling moments are provided by Andy and Holly. Andy’s discovery of his slaughtered daughters is actually quite a numb, cold, functional scene, but then a discovery like that might well be. But later, when Holly begs him not to face Bill, because Bill will kill him, and he collapses in a chair, a tear rolling down his face, sobbing, “I can’t do nothing,” it’s one of the show’s increasingly rare genuinely human moments.

TITLE TATTLE You might think it’s quite risque putting the F-word into an episode title, but True Blood is far from the first US drama to do it (though unsurprisingly, it seems a trend restricted to cable channels for the moment). Nurse Jackie had “Fuck The Lemurs” and “Happy Fucking Birthday” (both 2011) while Dexter had “Surprise, Motherfucker!” in 2012 and Californication had “Everybody’s A Fucking Critic” earlier this year. As far as we know, True Blood is the first telefantasy show to get away with it.

TAKING THE REGISTER This is the first episode of season six to feature the entire credited main cast.

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE The language spoken in the Ben’s flashbacks is Arabic, which wasn’t actually in use in 3,500BC.

NAME GAME And talking of anachronisms, neither of the names Ben nor Warlow sounds particularly 3,500BC-ish. Are we ever going to know his real name and why he’s chosen Ben and Warlow as noms de plume ?

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IT’S WOSSISNAME Gideon Emery, who plays Justin, can also be currently seen as Big Bad Deucalion in Teen Wolf.

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IT’S WOSSISNAME 2 Pruitt Taylor Vince, who plays vampire shrink Finn, is probably best known for his recurring role as the laconic JJ LaRoche in The Mentalist .

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NIGHT FELL And it fell with a crash in 3500BC apparently. In one shot, Ben (or Warlow or whatever he was called back then) walks off from the village carrying a couple of urns in broad daylight. In the next, he’s at the river, filling the urns, with the village clearly visible about mile off, and it’s the middle of night !

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CUTTING ROOM FLOOR? Talking of things happening suddenly, anyone else slightly surprised by the cut from Corbett taking over Lafayette’s body to Corbett bundling a bound-up Sookie into the back of the car? How did he overpower her so easily? It looks like something may have been cut. Either that, or originally there was another scene between these two shots.

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DESPERATE REMEDIES Andy revives his daughter using vampire blood. Do we know what effect vampire blood has on faeries? Could there be consequences?

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SOMETHING TO PROVE? After Jason shags Sarah, be notes, “That was pretty damned heterosexual.” But who is he trying to impress? Sarah, because her ex is a gay vampire? Or himself, after his homosexual dream about Ben?

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LEVEL UP It’s pretty clear from the experiments shown that vampires labelled Level 3 are undergoing physical tests. Though, like Pam, we have to wonder whether studying super-speed shagging is, “All in the name of science” or just pervy?

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SECOND HAND GRILL The name of the grill where Alcide tells his dad to take a hike has such an unusual name, we knew we’d seen it somewhere before – in the 2006 Will Ferrell film Talladega Nights : The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby. But hang on. That’s exactly the same place. Shot from the same angle , with two of the same cars parked outside. It’s just been graded (ie, colour corrected) a bit differently. Is this stock footage? Or an in-joke? Or both?

BEST LINE
Ben: “You are my intended. I wandered this Earth in millennia of misery and solitude waiting for you. Dreaming only of you…”
Sookie: “Fuck you.”
Ben: “It’s our destiny to be together.”
Sookie: “Fuck destiny.”

Dave Golder

• Read our previous True Blood reviews

• True Blood season six will air in the UK later in the year on FOX

The post True Blood 6.05 “F**k The Pain Away” REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

Episode 2.10
Writer: James Griffin
Director: Charlie Haskell

THE ONE WHERE Gaia is introduced to the pantheon of Gods, Anders gets a girlfriend, Thor comes to town and Axl has a sidekick to rescue and some roast chicken to deliver.

VERDICT The Almighty Johnsons really is going from strength to strength; it has been consistently excellent all season long and this is another top notch, five star offering. We’re in serious danger of running out of superlatives here.

This week’s episode begins seconds after the end of last week’s and picks up with Gaia, Bryn and Axl on the beach. Gaia’s initial roll around in the sand laughing reaction to Axl and Bryn’s explanations suggests she don’t really believe them and comes across as a perfectly normal response to what they have to say.
That she eventually does a runner is slightly telegraphed and not unexpected at all. We’re all set for another “Find Gaia” episode and being sidestepped by Gaia actually deciding to try to find out more rather than just bug out is a pleasant bit of misdirection. Mike’s eventual conversation with Gaia is a really moving and heart-warming explanation; Gaia’s eventual acceptance is so well played by both actors and her later scenes with the wider cast are also high points in the episode. It’s interesting to see some of the different characters take on being a god, and their feelings about what they are and what it means to them.

Meanwhile at the pub: after Anders and Helen got to know each other in the toilet stall in the last episode they are properly introduced this week. There’s a mix of alarm bells and apathy from Ty about the prophecy concerning any relationship the two have. Olaf’s cryptic “Apples” advice is as amusing and useless as ever. Anders and Helen do come across as perfect for each other; they do make a good looking couple. Ty even comments about how nice Anders is being to her and Helen does seem to fit with the rest of the Gods pretty well. But with all the doom hanging over them we wonder how comfy they’ll get and just how long they’ll have until disaster comes calling.

Thor’s arrival is as memorable as we hoped, he’s the kind of character that you could soon get tired of, but used sparingly like this he’s an absolutely fantastic addition. The through line of antagonism between Bryn and Thor about how many giants Thor’s killed and the hammer-wielding God’s constant suspicion of all things relating to giants in general – and to Bryn in particular – is a constant comedy highlight of the episode.

The resolution to the Eggther-kidnapping-Zeb plot is as mad cap as only this show can do with a Norse God stand-off which soon descends into hilarious mayhem. Zeb gets his moment to shine as he talks a desperate Eggther down. It’s nice to see Zeb getting to do more than just be the comedy sidekick now and then. Eggther is also worthy of note, Oliver Driver brings far more to the role than the simple “heavy of the week” the character could have been. (More on this below)

After being discarded as useless by Anders last week the branch from Yggdrasil is back in the spotlight as Michele steals it. We know something happened to her when she healed Axl two episodes back and here she’s obviously interested in finding out more. That she uses the branch to heal Mike’s injured back with ease means she seems to know how to control the branch by episode’s end and we wonder what else she might coax the branch to do.

Gaia’s rant at Axl at the end of this week’s episode is completely understandable; she’s had her whole world turned upside down and her destiny is laid out before her whether she likes it or not. We expected this plot to be carried through to this week and once again this show hits us with a perfect curve ball by having Gaia kidnapped right under Axl’s nose. It looks like the whole Gaia thing is going to get a lot more complicated than we thought. Last week there was a bit of fear that having Gaia be The Frigg would be too easy, but it seems this show isn’t going to make it half as straightforward as we feared.

The episode is full of great ensemble scenes with everyone on hand to discuss the situation. There’s lots of great bickering and Anders manages to piss everyone off; he seems to have come back from his quest in a very antagonistic mood; we wonder if his new romance will lighten him up or make things worse. It’s still nice to see the brothers fighting and arguing a little more, things have been very polite between them of late and Anders is certainly a welcome voice of dissent in proceedings.

Overall this is another fantastic episode, full of drama and action; from moments of quiet emotion to laugh out loud comedy, the show has it all. There are very few other series on TV at the moment that are as consistently good as this. This show deserves to be far more well-known and seen by far more people. Anyone reading this should pimp it out to their friends and family. Tell ’em we sent you.

BEST GOD Derrick (Thor) – The Almighty Johnsons’ bat’s-arse crazy, goat-farming version of Thor. Any episode he’s in he’s the best thing about it by far. He’s no Chris Hemsworth but we’ll have this guy in our corner any day.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, KIWI-STYLE This episode originally aired in New Zealand the week after The Avengers film started showing in cinemas. The trailer for the episode used “Avengers Assemble, Kiwi-Style” as a tagline and highlighted the Thor connection.

FRIGGWATCH It’s all about The Frigg this week. Friggtastic!

MISSING GOD No Loki again this week, but there was so much going he wasn’t really missed. Sorry Loki.

COMEDY DUO This week’s episode is full of great characters playing off against each other in amusing ways. As mentioned above Bryn and Thor’s giant-killer bickering was a source of much comedy, but the prize has to go to Zeb and Eggther. The montage of kidnapper and kidnappee slowly warming to each other is priceless and the parting promise to “Friend” each other on Facebook is the perfect end to this little relationship.

FORCED PERSPECTIVE Eggther the giant actor Oliver Driver might be 6’6” but the show isn’t above nicking a few forced perspective tricks from that other well know New Zealand fantasy Lord Of The Rings and using them to great size enhancing effect.

BEST LINE
Eggther: “And don’t forget; come alone.” [ hangs up phone ]

Zeb: “I thought you wanted him to bring Gaia as well.”

Eggther: [ phoning Axl back ] “Ja. When I said come alone, I meant with the girl, obviously.”
Axl: [ on phone* ] “Obviously. And your chicken as well.”
Eggther: “Ja, that too.” [ hangs up again ]
Axl: “I think if it turns into a battle of wits we’ll be okay.”

Steven Ellis @Steven Ellis

The Almighty Johnsons airs Mondays at 10pm on SyFy

• Read our other The Almighty Johnsons season 2 reviews

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Written and Drawn by Martin Flink
Published by Accent UK
£3.95

http://www.accentukcomics.com/man_of_glass.html

That being said, there’s real authority to his art. Simple lines combining to drive home the physicality of the characters to touching effect. The boxer is a wall, not of unlikely Olympian muscle, but strength, size. He’s a bear of a man at the height of his powers and the fact Flink refuses to give him a superhero six-pack only makes him seem stronger. He’s a real physical presence on every page, but Flink takes care to show his tender side too. He’s a charming husband, a loving father and a goofball to boot and the scenes between him and his wife are charming, reminiscent of a less immediately tragic version of Jeff Lemire’s stunning Lost Dogs . He’s an expressive, likable, flawed hero and Flink’s script, despite containing less than 200 words of dialogue, shows you every emotion he feels, from elation to grief. It’s not an easy read at times, because the art is so open and so expressive but it never failed to hold your attention.

Where Flink takes great pains to show the boxer as vital and moving, constantly circling, constantly looking for an opening, the old man is a point of stillness. Old but not frail, he’s the calm eye of the storm to the boxer’s frenetic chase around the ring of his life. The old man spends most of the book sitting on the bench we first meet him on, but Flink’s careful draftsmanship and eye for nuance means we pay attention to every panel the old man features in. The nine-panel grid helps Flink close in on both characters, but whilst he uses it to show the boxer progressing through his life, he focuses on the moment with the old man. Every head turn, every gesture tells the old man’s story and as it comes to an end, and you realise what’s going on. It’s these panels that make the story, and break your heart.

The Man Of Glass is a small, gentle story about what happens to us, planned and otherwise. It’s a quick read, but it’s also a perfectly balanced one. You’ll read it once but Flink’s deft art and lightness of touch will ensure you’re thinking about it long after you’ve finished the book. A small, poignant gem.

Alasdair Stuart

The post BLOG The Man Of Glass REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

A first-person fighting game controlled, naturally, via the Kinect motion sensor, Dragon Ball Z for Kinect takes you on an abridged tour of DBZ history, focusing on the major one-on-battles of the series. Players punch, kick, block, and shoot fiery ki blasts as mainstay characters like Goku and Vegeta, while facing iconic Dragon Ball Z foes such as Frieza, Cell, and Majin Buu. The title also sports a score attack mode, allowing you to replay campaign battles as any of several unlockable characters and character variants; a boon for superfans, as this lets you control some B-side brawlers such as Raditz, Captain Ginyu, a Saibaman, and Nappa, aka “Mr. Over Nine-Thousand.”

Unfortunately, despite the clear attention to lore, and the inclusion of so much of the Dragon Ball Z rogue’s gallery, the real foe in Dragon Ball Z for Kinect is the same enemy which often plagues Kinect titles: responsiveness. An issue in any fighting game, the problems of timing maneuvers and reacting to threats are especially noticeable with the Kinect motion sensor.

Basic punches and kicks are generally detected, but try anything more complicated and you run the risk of dropping the pugilistic beat. Dodges–executed by leaning left, right, forwards or backwards–invariably work just long enough to lull you into a false sense of confidence. Powerful finishing moves–flashy fun in early stages, but fully necessary for victory by the second half of the game–are even more of a gamble, often requiring the subtlest of motions in order to be distinguished from your regular martial arts repertoire. (Blessedly, you spend much of the campaign as Goku, whose iconic “Kamehameha” telegraphs nicely.) Even a barrage of ki blasts–the basic form of attack when an opponent is at far range–is derailed by the slightest eccentricity in form.

Obviously, in any Kinect-based game, missed signals are a problem. But in a fighting game, and one that relies so heavily on chaining moves and unbroken combos, it’s especially troubling. For example, a charged up power attack at close range lets you break an opponent’s block and execute a chain of attacks–the key being that usually one of your four possible moves is unavailable, and that if your opponent guesses which move you execute next, they’ll break the chain. This mechanic makes scoring a full combo challenging, but not impossible. However, add in even some infrequent missed motions, and a completed combo attack becomes a rare sight indeed.

And those finishing moves? On top of the fact that many require barely perceptible motions, they’re powered by an energy bar which, in turn, can only be filled (slowly) via another tricky move. Specifically: the classic Dragon Ball Z “charging up while twitching and having a conflicted internal monologue” stance. This uncomfortable squat must be held, perfectly and continuously, to charge your energy bar; the smallest deviations result in the move continuously restarting, netting you negligible power and leaving you open to any number of attacks.

To be fair, Dragon Ball Z for Kinect does capture the sheer intensity of a Super Saiyan fight. This is a game that, played long enough, will leave you sore and sweaty, yet surprisingly proud of yourself for having lasted as long as you did. Fights drag on, and fittingly so considering the source material. But when your inability to put a foe to bed is due not to particularly cunning tactics on their part, but a lack of precise control in a game that asks for precision, it becomes hard to tell the difference between a battle that’s epic and one that’s tedious.

Dragon Ball Z for Kinect is more a curiosity than a game, and even then one specifically aimed at DBZ fans. The one-two punch of nostalgia and novelty is appealing for a while, but thanks in large part to shoddy motion controls, later rounds will leave you waiting for a haymaker that just never comes.

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Episode: 1.04
Writer: Anne Cofell Saunders
Director: Felix Alcala

THE ONE WHERE Miles decides to pack it all in and the gang are set upon by angry dogs.

VERDICT No sooner have our gang got back together in search for Danny than it’s run! Mad dog attack! Do they have rabies or some other horrible disease picked up from the decaying urban sprawl? No, apparently not.

Another good episode, but not enough teeth to make it a great one. The strength of the show is in the characters and there’s barely a mention of how to turn the lights back on this week, instead turning to Miles’ revelation, Maggie’s flashback and a man who lives in an derelict funfair with his dogs.

Billy Burke is charming as Miles Matheson and a great swash-buckler, selling the sword fighting and action scenes well, but I’ll need to be convinced by his darker side. The reveal of his evil reputation accrued as founder of the republic militia doesn’t quite come across in his performance. There’s a slight inkling of something at the end of this episode, but it’s more to do with him saying nothing and looking moody. Hopefully it’s a side that will be developed as the show goes on.

This week’s flashbacks come from Maggie, Rachel (who I suspect we’re going to see more of) and Charlie, who feels the need to remember she had a mother but again serves little purpose to current events, feeling like an emotional signpost for the attention deficient.

It’s tragic to see Maggie’s predicament, and a nicely-layered performance from Lise Phillips. A crusty old expositional fisherman tells her it’s unlikely she’ll get home to her kids, long distance boat travel being now nigh on impossible. The militias have long since stripped ships for raw materials for their armies, which sounds a bit short-sighted and Lord Of The Flies to make sense.

By focusing more on the emotional ramifications for the characters, we’re led away from thinking too much about the science of the blackout. Electricity still exists as we’ve seen with the pendant carried by Aaron, but is it still possible to create electricity? Why haven’t we seen other attempts at making electricity? People wrapping copper wires round tin foil, or wearing thick knitted jumpers and rubbing balloons on their chests vigorously to generate static for a bit of fun now there’s no telly?

Even at four episodes the writers are willing to pull the rug on characters only just established which is a brave move; I just wish they’d chosen a different character to the one they did this week.

Good news that Revolution has been pick up for a full season, so Danny might have to wait a bit longer to get saved, which serves him right for being a total idiot in a cellar. Hopefully we’ll see a UK broadcast very soon.

UNFORTUNATE VICTIM OF THE WEEK Why Maggie, why! Such a needless waste of a good character. Please say we’ll see you again in flashbacks?

ELECTRIVIA Elton John and Captain Beefheart both sang songs called “Electricity”; Phil Oakey sang about Electric Dreams.

A Van der Graff Generator is a machine which generates electrostatic charge and is also the name of a progressive rock band. They didn’t sing a song called “Electricity.” Unless they did and Elton John cover version at some concert or other.

BEST LINE(S):
Miles Matheson: “My Name is Miles Matheson.”
Militia Soldier: “You’re joking?”
Miles Matheson: “No… And all the stories are true.”

John Cooper JohnCooper_uk

UK airing information: None As Yet.

Read our other Revolution reviews

The post Revolution 1.04 The Plague Dogs REVIEW appeared first on Game News.

Lacking sympathy from her husband she embarks on a joyless affair with his associate (Richard Harris, uncomfortably cast).

Fans of Antonioni will appreciate his radical use of colour (he had whole sections of the landscape resprayed to fit his requirements), his long contemplative takes and his relentless gaze at urban alienation.

Non-fans may find it all a bit slow and pretentious.

The post Red Desert review appeared first on Game News.

The Rhythm Thief in question is Phantom R, a high class, gentlemanly thief who’s pilfering the art world of Paris. When R isn’t evading the constables, his alter ego Raphael is researching a centuries-old conspiracy that leads back to the mysterious disappearance of his father and an equally enigmatic orphan girl named Marie. We were quickly invested in the rich mystery of the plot, thanks in no small part to the title’s gorgeous rendering of Paris, France. In both the gameplay and impressive anime cutscenes, The City of Light looks spectacular.

If you think the plot sounds like it’s from the same mold as Layton, the game’s structure is even closer. You walk around the open world of Gay Paree finding people in need of help or clues that lead to the apparent resurrection of Napoléon Bonaparte. The key difference between Layton and Rhythm Thief is that you progress through the city not by completing increasingly dense logic puzzles, but by solving problems via the art of dance. Unlike the brain-bending conundrums of Layton, Thief challenges an entirely different set of skills as you do your best to keep the beat in melodic minigame.

The great variety of minigames at your disposal in Rhythm Thief is the portable title’s strongest asset. Sometimes you’re dancing, other times you’re throwing steaks to your dog, and occasionally you’re fighting your way out of the hidden catacombs of Paris. That level of diversity applies to how the minigames take advantage of many 3DS features, too. Inputs fluctuate between tilting the system, tapping the touch screen, or using the face buttons. The amusing unpredictability of what you’ll be asked to do next keeps you on your toes.

There are dozens of different songs to play along with, the challenge escalating with each chapter of the story. Players that can’t keep a beat shouldn’t worry too much, as the bar for completing a song is pretty low and you can spend in-game currency before every song on items to make things easier. However, even when we knew that we could get away with less, we often were so engaged that we pushed ourselves to get at least an A on the standard difficulty, whether the first time around or when we chose to replay from the menu.

The songs themselves are enjoyable when you’re experiencing them but mostly forgettable other than a few standouts. We loved select tunes like the Rhythm Thief theme and Moon Princess, but many others left our ears as fast as they entered them. Of course, occasionally Rhythm Thief really surprised us with a taste of that old Sega magic, as our crusty hearts were warmed by stages that gave tribute to Samba de Amigo and Space Channel 5. It was endearing to see Rhythm Thief recognize its musical Sega heritage with flourishes of fan service.

Outside of a mostly unmemorable soundtrack, our only real complaint about Rhythm Thief is its overreliance on fetch quests. The campaign is long enough without them, but about once per chapter, we hit the speed bump that forced us to transport an item from one side of Paris to the other. We enjoyed running around the city in search of hidden items and other extras, but the overreliance on fetch quests to bulk up playtime felt more and more contrived with each instance.

One can complain that Rhythm Thief and the Emperor’s Treasure isn’t all that new, but it often takes the portable puzzle-adventure genre to new heights via an abundance of addictive minigames. The cute aesthetics and animation that borrows heavily from the films of Studio Ghibli are a great way to convey a collection of musical diversions that can be played in big chunks or on a leisurely bus ride. If you’re looking for that type of portable entertainment – or are a Sega fan that misses the developer’s heyday – you’ll want to visit Rhythm Thief’s Paris ASAP.

The post Rhythm Thief and the Emperors Treasure review appeared first on Game News.

At its most distilled essence, Rockstar’s fabled series is a giant shooting gallery. You move from spot to spot in a rather confined experience, all while largely doing the same activity. But once you pile on the layers of depth –its hallucinatory visuals, exciting locales, gruesome executions, and the ugly consequences of addiction – you’ve got the makings of a phenomenal action title. Even out of the hands of original dev team Remedy and writer Sam Lake, Max Payne 3 updates everything for a new age, and resultantly, it’s a must-play game.

Max Payne 3 finds our hero in Sao Paolo, albeit older, heavier, and scarred from the events of the prior games. He’s working security detail for Rodrigo Branco, a wealthy Brazilian banker whose trophy wife, Fabiana, has been abducted by a notorious street gang, Comando Sombra. The Branco family, from hard-partying Marcelo to local politician Victor, are well-off and offer Max plenty of exposure to the city’s elite. And its bottles of brown liquor.

Max isn’t quite the hard-boiled cop or the star-crossed and conflicted hero of the prior two games; instead, he has grown into a self-medicating mercenary. Whereas painkillers were used as a healing device in the prior games, Max not only uses them as in-game healing, but constantly comments about his dependency on pills. On many occasions, you’ll see him in cutscenes with booze in hand, or waking up with a hangover. As every single attempt to rescue Fabiana fails, Max and his partner Raul Passos find themselves getting more desperate, and find out just how deep the motives behind this abduction get. Based on your familiarity with law enforcement, poverty, and blatant civil and human rights violations in large South American cities (or viewings of movies like Brazilian action blockbuster Elite Squad), some of this may not be so shocking. But it’s still well-told.

Along the way, you’ll shoot your way through a variety of colorful and beautifully designed locales – each following the game’s formula of big slow-motion setpieces and opportunities for big action movie-driven moments – from a nightclub shootout that evokes Tom Cruise’s stand-off in Collateral (gray suit included) to a bloody escape from a soccer stadium to the same level of massive moments that drove John Woo’s finest Heroic Bloodshed genre. It’s a fascinating contrast to Remedy’s visually darker, grittier East Coast corridors (and yet, those moments aren’t as far removed as you’d expect). Again, at its core, Max Payne 3 is a glorified shooting gallery. But what a gorgeously laid out gallery it is. The game’s charming and driving achievement is the concept that no matter how similar the gameplay is from moment to moment and beat to beat, the world is so gripping that you can’t help but to feel engrossed.

Aside from the colorful and exciting backdrops, the gunplay has taken on a different style in Max Payne 3. Bullet Time and Shootdodge still allow you to deal death in slow motion, but Max can now stay on the ground and shoot from prone positions. You have the option of three shooting styles that let you choose between traditional free-aiming, semi-assisted target, and full-on assisted targeting, all of which complement the difficulty curve. With the introduction of heavily cover-based gameplay, Max Payne 3 beautifully weds the unique elements that defined the classics with a contemporary feel. Also, in later stages, the difficulty ratchets up as dissolvable cover starts to pop up, and you’ll see flimsy shanty walls and barriers become more susceptible to gunfire.

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During the course of this memoir of the life of a jobbing freelance director, he looks back at all six stories. A lot of knowledge is assumed, and many of the anecdotes recounted will be familiar to the target audience; after all, Briant has contributed to DVD commentaries on most of these stories. Perhaps more intriguing for fans are his recollections of life as a production assistant on “lost” Patrick Troughton tales “Fury From The Deep” and “Power Of The Daleks”, for which he wrangled sinister foam, and wiggled cardboard-cutout Daleks with a length of string.

Technicalities like this are favoured over behind-the-scenes gossip. The stars of the series are barely mentioned (we’re told Jon Pertwee is “truly professional”, and that’s about it). Briant’s discussion of Who ends by page 104, and his work on the first series of Blake’s 7 gets pretty short shrift (just five pages). Thereafter, it’s non-genre telly all the way. There are amusing snapshots of a pre-Health And Safety BBC (Briant seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time risking life and limb by hanging out of helicopters!), and the director’s scornful asides about how TV is made today (with layer upon layer of inexperienced, straight-out-of-university producers forever sticking their oar in, apparently…) are entertainingly curmudgeonly.

Since Briant’s a keen sailor, you should also prepare yourselves for some yachting yarns. Given that he’s circumnavigated the globe and had Somali pirates shoving AK47s in his face, it’d be churlish to complain, though – they’re stories that warrant the telling, even if Doctor Who fans aren’t the ideal audience. A solid, unsensational read, best suited to aficionados of ‘70s TV in general.

Ian Berriman twitter.com/ianberriman

Read our review of a book about the Official Doctor Who Fan Club .
Read our feature about how the Doctor Who DVD commentaries are recorded.
Read our Doctor Who DVD reviews .

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With great power comes great banter in writer/director Joss Whedon’s blockbuster multiplier, which isn’t the best superhero movie ever – but might well be the funniest.

Avengers Assemble is a power-play that’s unprecedented in Hollywood history: launching three different $100m franchises (four if you count the 2008 reboot) to construct one super-mega-franchise. And it has to be said, handing it to a 47-year-old fanboy whose single previous feature film ( Serenity ) couldn’t even scrape back its budget at the worldwide box office was a massive dice-roll.

Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) on the big screen together was always going to be a massive kick.

But could any screen be big enough for all them? Would Avengers Assemble look like four bodybuilders in an elevator? The suit, the smash, the hammer, the shield… Like X-Men: The Last Stand , Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man 2 , there was a real danger of heroverload.

Sure enough, it takes Whedon a while to assemble his Avengers, as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Phil Coulson (Gregg Clark) recruit the superheroes to save Earth after Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s power-mad brother, returns to enslave mankind with an all-powerful cosmic cube.

“What does he want me to do, swallow it?” asks Ruffalo’s Dr. Bruce Banner. And from there, the zingers keep coming.

With X-Men and X2 , Bryan Singer showed how you could disguise a compelling ensemble drama as a superhero actioner. This is exactly Whedon’s speciality – as well as creating cult TV phenomenon Buffy , he worked on the scripts for X-Men and Toy Story – and his screenplay drags together a group of characters with pretty much zero interest in each other.

How? By locking big egos in small rooms and letting the funnies fly. Lifting the movie’s pace every time he steps on screen in the first half, RDJ’s Tony Stark catalyses the Avengers with machine-gun wit.

He gives both barrels to Thor, whether it’s his cape (“Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?”), his kingly lingo (“Shakespeare In The Park”) or the fact he hasn’t had a haircut since his own movie came out (“No hard feelings, Point Break”).

Arguably the least interesting and most poorly dressed of the Avengers, Cap duly suffers in his first brawl with Loki and finds his 1940s brain drubbed like a speed-ball by the sarcastic Stark.

But affectionately, Whedon plays to his characters’ weaknesses as well as their strengths as his comic-book heroes bounce off each other. And we do mean that literally.

Despite being mere mortals, Jeremy Renner’s laser-sighted archer Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson’s gymnastic spy Black Widow find key roles in the story. (And, just so you know, the coolest cameo in the movie doesn’t belong to Stan Lee.)

Despite Scar-Jo’s seam-straining catsuit and S.H.I.E.L.D. eye-candy Maria Hill ( How I Met Your Mother ’s Cobie Smulders, a Wonder Woman contender), there’s no sex factor in this superhero sausage-fest.

Instead, maybe the most interesting frisson sparks between fellow brainiacs Tony Stark and Dr. Banner. Third time’s the charm: Mark Ruffalo’s hand-rubbing performance as Bruce feels definitive and Whedon, in a few short scenes, captures a far more dangerous relationship between Banner and “the other guy” (as he dubs his alter ego) than we’ve seen in two previous big-screen Hulks.

One of the problems was that Mr Hyde never really looked like Dr Jekyll. But with Ruffalo’s features used to construct the CG monster’s face, a much more humanised Hulk emerges as the movie’s unlikely stand-out. Once the green giant bursts free, he grabs hold of the movie and yanks it out of Downey Jr.’s hands. The best moments and the biggest laughs belong to Hulk’s smash-happy personality – and only one of them is blown by the trailer.

Unlike Banner, bigness doesn’t come naturally for Whedon. So it’s no surprise that much of Avengers Assemble involves people talking in rooms. He hired Irish cinematographer Seamus McGarvey ( We Need To Talk About Kevin , Atonement , High Fidelity ) for that, but he’s also surrounded himself with a crew of slam-bang assistant directors who’ve worked on everything from The Bourne Ultimatum to Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained .

Behind the camera, Whedon’s dream-team help him put his money (more than $200m of it) where his mouth is: after an airship siege high in the clouds, the movie surges towards an exciting, epic extended finale of city-smashing carnage that stretches for a Transformers level of mass destruction.

As Loki’s army pours in from another dimension, one showboating unbroken action shot swoops through the battle to track each Avenger kicking ass against gigantic flying robo-fish and alien warriors riding space chariots.

Perhaps inevitably, there’s never quite enough real drama or danger for our effectively invincible protagonists. But this 142-minute romp between gods, monsters, men and supermen packs so much crowd-pleasing colour and humour that it’s impossible not to walk out grinning.

Just don’t walk out too soon. As if we need to tell you, a few tantalising post-credits seconds reveal a guest star who’s ready for the sequel(s)…

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