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Day: 2 February 2016

Review: Creed

Written by Imran Bukhari on . Posted in Film.

A majority of sports have always proven a problem when transitioning to the big screen. Filmmakers generally struggle to find the necessary additional drama in a restrictive narrative structure when just watching the sport itself live can provide as much—if not more—suspense and excitement. Try and find a decent film about football or tennis for example, and you’ll understand. The exception to this rule, however, has always been boxing. The sport has become a recurring vestibule for channelling gripping stories, whilst simultaneously placing other more important themes subtly in the background—so much so that “boxing movies” has become itself a genre. There is an enduring quality behind the visceral pleasures of witnessing the hero of the story pummelling another human being in a spirited competition; combine this with the cathartic nature of an underdog rising against the odds and you’ve got yourself a winning recipe.

There’s no argument that Raging Bull is the undisputed heavyweight champion of them all, but the formula was first perfect in 1976 with the original Rocky. Rocky went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture and made Sylvester Stallone a household name. Exactly 40 years later, and remarkably Rocky Balboa is still present in popular culture as Rocky’s story lives on with this year’s Creed. This was something that not even Stallone himself anticipated—even after recalling in 2006 that he was sure Rocky Balboa would be his last outing in 2006.

The main difference this time around, however, is that Rocky is now, smartly, only a supporting character to the main attraction—as Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son, Adonis Creed. This shift in focus mirrors Rocky’s own state of mind as he has become a sideline in his own life. Dejected and crippled both physically and mentally and no longer driven by any anger or malice, this is a very different Rocky—one who has seen all of the people he has loved move on without him. Creed tackles a universal issue not seen in any film of its kind before—loneliness. His performance is easily the finest of his career and would be highly deserving of an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in February. Fans may be disheartened to not see ‘The Italian Stallion’ in the ring himself, but Stallone finds the same fire and drive in the corner.

Director Ryan Coogler’s sophomore effort has proven to be just as compelling as his debut, Fruitvale Station. As a result, he is off to even bigger exploits directing Black Panther for Marvel. During a fight midway through proceedings, Coogler employs an angle over the shoulder angle that swoops around the younger Creed and his opponent in an unbroken 360-degree motion, allowing full immersion into every punch and weave.

In Michael B. Jordan, we have a new star. The actor has wavered in a few of his past projects, including the much derided Fantastic Four and the highly forgettable That Awkward Moment. Creed, however, is so far the finest showcasing of his talents. Much has been made of the diversity issue regarding the Oscars, and the absence of such nominations for actors like Will Smith and Idris Elba. But if anyone has any reason to be aggrieved, it is Jordan. He gives nuances to a character dealing with the weight of living in his father’s shadow and the simple search for acceptance. In fact, the greatest triumph of the film is the creation and development of the honest connection between Adonis and his new trainer. The pair form a symbiotic relationship, relying on each other to help with overcoming their own personal demons and finding the courage to fight their own battles.

Ultimately, the film finds the perfect balance between nostalgia and paving the way for a new protagonist to carry on the franchise. And there is no better example of this in the film than the duration of the iconic training montage—expertly updated for the new character whilst also retaining the essence of Rocky’s legacy. The baton has successfully been passed, so much so that when the original theme does finally bellow out in all its glory, it is as if the theme was made for Creed himself. The point is ladies and gentlemen, that Creed—for want of a better word—is good. In fact, it’s very good. It’s a total knockout.

4/5

Guardiola is a Blue

Written by Harry Newton on . Posted in Sport.

In what is possibly the least surprising news to enter the football world, Manchester City have formally announced that Pep Guardiola will be joining the club as first team manager at the start of the 2016 – 17 Premier League season. In other news, water is wet, the North is cold, and Tomáš Rosický is still playing football.

Despite how Manuel Pellegrini sees his team sitting in a pretty comfortable position in all four competitions, this will be his last season in charge of them. Manchester City interrupted a dull transfer deadline day—saving Sky Sports News from pretending anything interesting was happening—to announce the news. It described how they had managed to acquire Guardiola after having discussions which had stretched as far back to 2012.

The way in which Pellegrini has conducted himself in his reign as manager of Manchester City has been nothing short of commendable. Despite constant questioning about the worst kept secret in football history, the Chilean has been calm and collected. When instated as manager, Pellegrini was described as a “holistic” choice by City, and as his reign is nearing to an end, it is clear that this is a fair statement. The Chilean will continue to manage the first team for the rest of the season and will leave the club with a Premier League trophy and a Capital One Cup from his first season in charge—and possibly, one to four more trophies will be won this season.

Guardiola will also continue managing Bayern Munich until the end of the season. This opens up an interesting prospect if both teams continue to progress in the UEFA Champions League, as the two could potentially meet in the next stage. Despite how Pellegrini has behaved with the utmost respect for the club, his players and even Guardiola himself—that would be a match he would love to win. Pellegrini has previously insisted in interviews that he would welcome Guardiola to the club in the future and believed that he would one day manage Manchester City.

Guardiola’s record speaks for itself as to why he is being touted by the blues. With only 19 league losses in his managerial career, and officially Barcelona’s most successful manager in terms of trophies, it dwarves many other records. The 45-year-old will join City on the 1st July 2016 on a three year deal.

How long has Manuel Pellegrini been aware of City’s communications with Guardiola is uncertain, although he was keen to defend the club in his press conference on Monday. “The club are not doing anything behind me. I knew this one month ago but I don’t think it’s good to have rumour or speculation about these things” he said in their defense. He then goes on to say how the players were informed on the same day as the press. The decision to tell the press was made two weeks ago between Pellegrini and the club. In the official statement from the Premier League big boys, they also stated that Pellegrini is “fully supportive of the decision to make this communication, [and] is entirely focused on achieving his targets.”

Pellegrini has been a rare phenomenon in the Premier League, as a manager at a big club who likes to keep himself to himself, and a man who does not make any rash statements about any other club or manager. Despite Alan Pardew graphically insulting the Chilean last season, Pellegrini rose above this and never turned to insult Pardew himself. Never one for controversy, he will definitely be missed from the Premier League, and it would be surprising if he didn’t feature in the league again in the future.

A question that may be asked, however, is how will the players react? Although every footballer loves to win trophies, surely the news that their manager is already a dead man walking will affect their future performances—whether this will be negatively or positively is an uncertainty. Weeks will tell whether this has any effect at all; it may spur the team on to go and win a trophy for the man that has shown faith in them for this long, or it may even demotivate the team playing for a man with no future at the club.

Ignoring this season for a moment, this is certainly fantastic news for Manchester City and the Premier League for next year! Guardiola is a proven winner and will no doubt rise to the targets set before him, and will not give in to any pressure that will definitely be present. With City currently finding themselves with quite an aged starting eleven, the Guardiola era is likely to begin with a massive change to the squad to bring in players more suited to his style of play. City’s starting eleven at weekend against Aston Villa, in the FA Cup, consisted of six players aged 30 or over: Willy Caballero, Pablo Zabaleta, Bacary Sagna, Gaël Clichy, Fernandinho, and Jesús Navas. These players are regular starters for City, and big omissions such as Yaya Touré and David Silva are also over 30. As Touré was sold by Guardiola to City during his reign as Barcelona FC’s manager, it is most likely that this will spell the end to the controversial Ivorian’s Manchester City career.

Manchester City have always been a big football club, but 2008 saw them shift into a global brand that could bring in all sorts of names from around the world. 2016 has the potential to spark the next step in this evolution for Manchester City—as of now, they have the hottest property out there at a time where Guardiola can mold any team he so wishes. Exciting times are certainly ahead for them.

Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc – Retro Review

Written by Josh Goldie on . Posted in Games.

Previously I reviewed the game Rayman 2: the Great Escape on the Nintendo 64. It was Ubisoft’s first attempt at taking their platforming hero Rayman into the third dimension. Like other games in the series before it, the transition was not incredibly smooth, though the game still turned out enjoyable for the most part. Now a year later, I had the opportunity to play the games sequel, Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc for the Nintendo GameCube. This title is very similar in style and idea to the previous game, so I thought it would be a fun idea to look at the two games and compare them in order to judge whether Rayman 3 was a good successor or not. I will be referring back to my Rayman 2 review—so I urge you to give it a proper read before or after reading this article.

We will start with the story. In the previous game, Ubisoft attempted to dive more into the lore of the franchise and give a grand tale where Rayman had to save the whole world. The story was fitting as the series had gotten much larger in its jump to 3D and the game reflected that. So it comes as rather baffling that the storyline for Rayman 3 is non-existent. There is a story, don’t get me wrong—but because it was so low key, so inconsequential and so poor that it came across as an excuse to get Rayman to these locations rather than trying to detail out the world of the game. He may as well have been rescuing a princess or something. The story is this: the Lums from the previous game (fairies which give Rayman health and power) have turned evil and begin hunting the denizens of Rayman’s world. But Globox accidentally swallows their leader and so the two travel around in search for a looking a doctor who to remove the villain from Globox’s belly. That’s the premise that takes up all but the last tenth of the game.

The game has not changed much in its most basic controls from Rayman 2. All of Rayman’s abilities like climbing and gliding return here and you receive them all right from the get-go. These aspects have been tweaked however, and it is all for the better. Platforming no longer feels like a game of risk and everything is actually responsive. I never ran into problems like I did with the previous game. The cages return in this game and by collecting eight you are rewarded with Rayman’s health increasing. Some of these are optional while others mandatory. Combat is more common in this game and thankfully the battle system has been greatly improved, too. There are not many enemy types, but each one has some kind of unique way in order to defeat them which is nice.

Photo: Ubisoft Entertainment S.A.

Rayman 2 was filled with gimmicks in every level and Rayman 3 tones this down slightly. The rocket levels return from the previous game and are slightly easier to control this time around. Other than that, you get grinding levels in between chapters which I can only describe as ‘psychedelic’ in design but are fun nonetheless. The final gimmick is also the biggest focus of this game and that is the power-ups. Rayman can find 5 power-ups in this game that is frequently required to solve puzzles and move from area to area. These range from just increasing Rayman’s strength and copter abilities to giving him a rocket arm, grappling hooks and a punches that cause tornadoes on impact. These power ups appear everywhere and thankfully they are implemented seamlessly without fault. Using them is very simple and very easy to grasp and they make good editions to the game.

Unfortunatly that was the last positive thing I had to say about this game. Although the power-ups are great, it comes at the detraction that the game begins to feel very same-y. The level progression is more linear here than it was in the previous games which are emphasised by the removal of a map screen and the side levels. Each level is connected through the previously mentioned side areas and is split into segments. Each segment ends with a point of no return which means if you are exploring and accidentally end up on the games designated path, then the only way to return is to restart the whole level. This can be really frustrating at times and whilst this was present in Rayman 2, it was so uncommon that I couldn’t really complain. But now it happens all the time. Add this with the lack of new gameplay elements happening and you’ll find that the game truly becomes a bore to play at times.

Finally, we have the sound design which I only have one proper thing to say. The voice acting in this game is awful. Rayman 2 had a bit of English voice acting, but it was fine and underrepresented. Here, Rayman and Globox especially would not shut up and they have some really annoying voices. The dialogue is not funny and the quality of it dates the game hard. I found myself just lowering the volume outside of story important cutscenes and listening to my own stuff so I did not have to hear them talk anymore.

Photo: Ubisoft entertainment S.A.

This next paragraph contains spoilers. I will be talking about the last boss much like I did in the Rayman 2 review and if you would rather wait and see it for yourself then just skip to the end paragraph. Otherwise keep reading.

This boss sucks. I did not think they could make a boss worse than the one in Rayman 2, but they somehow managed. The problem I had with the final boss in Rayman 2 was the controls of the rocket but here it is the monotony of it all. The final boss is a gauntlet, having three forms that are designed to utilize all of Rayman’s power-ups and it sucks so badly. The first part is hard to dodge his never-ending onslaught of attacks while you run around desperately trying to grab the right power-up and then attack him while also jumping up and down to avoid his attacks. It is a pain. But it is the only hard part of the boss as the rest is just dragged out instead. Next he turns giant and you are put into a mock 2D section. The problem here is that to get the power-ups needed, you have to run all the way to one side of the level and then run all the way back. Three times. All while dodging again. The third part involves using the propeller power to scale a bunch of platforms that are falling and it is just poorly designed. You fall way too easily and some platforms are just unreachable. Of course, ending off this nightmare is another rocket section. Though easier to control, it is still not great and just takes forever to do enough damage. Only after that do you win. And did I mention that you have to do it all without dying? If you do die then may the divine help you because you start all the way back to two rooms before the first part of the boss fight. I hated this and it amazes me that Ubisoft could be so bad at designing this. It just tarnishes the whole experience.

Overall, I have to admit I was disappointed with this game. While the gameplay was a lot more polished than Rayman 2 and the gimmicks were a lot more controlled and refined; the whole experience just feels like a step backwards. Everything else is worse—from the story, to the pacing, to the sound, and in the end I only felt compelled to beat this game just so I could write this review. That is not the sign of a good game and it’s a shame that this was the last original 3D Rayman title before the Rabbids took over for all those years. But if the series was continuing in this way, then maybe that Rabbid takeover was not really a bad thing after all.

Rayman 2: The Great Escape – Retro Review

Written by Josh Goldie on . Posted in Games.

Ubisoft has recently been taking Rayman back to his platforming roots with Rayman: Origins and Rayman Legends. These games are 2D platformers much like the original Mario games and, much like Mario, Rayman also took a step into the 3D realm on the Nintendo 64. Rayman 2: The Great Escape was not Ubisoft’s first attempt at a 3D game but you can tell that they were really trying to experiment in this title. Sometimes these experiments pay off and sometimes they fail miserably.

In this game, the evil robot-pirate Admiral Razorbeard is imprisoning all of the inhabitants of the world. This includes Rayman who starts off this game in prison with his powers stripped from him. It is not until Rayman’s friend Globox gets captured that Rayman has a chance to escape. Why? Because Globox has brought with him a silver Lum from the fairy Ly which gives Rayman just a bit of his power back. It is in Rayman 2 that Ubisoft decided to dive deeper into the lore of the Rayman world, and many of the characters found in this game will reappear in later Rayman games.

Now, Rayman 2 is a 3D platformer and because of this it has many tropes that you expect from 3D platformers at this time. The core gameplay of Rayman 2 has you running through each level in a mostly linear fashion while collecting golden lums and rescuing freedom fighters from cages. Lums are a necessity to unlock the later levels, but the caged people are just there as collectibles (except for a few that must be got).

Getting all of the lums and breaking all of the cages gives you a bonus mini-game at the end of each level that can get Rayman more life or a power-up. These bonus levels are the worst thing in this game; they have you rapidly tapping A+B on the controllers consecutively in order to race a pirate to the end of the level and it is impossible. Add to the fact that every one of these levels is the same and you have the most unlovable mini-game I have ever played. It made me not want to care about collecting everything—a real first for me.

Photo: Ubisoft entertainment S.A.

Rayman 2 as a platformer works really well at times and then other times it really doesn’t. Rayman can climb, hover, jump and punch enemies which will all come in handy throughout the adventure; but just once or twice did I find myself messing up because of something out of my control. Occasionally Rayman will not grab a wall or ledge and fall straight to his death; you must be precise. Jumping too can be a pain because if you are not moving fast enough Rayman will not jump far at all. You notice this in the racing stages as you run and jump a lot, while combat is fine, though very uncommon. In Rayman 2 every enemy feels like a sub-boss and requires a lot of punching and dodging. The camera and misjudging jumps are occasional problems in this game although this is nothing uncommon for a 3D platformer.

In order not to become stale, Rayman 2 throws new things at you in almost every level, whether they are puzzles to solve or an item to ride. An example of a good mechanic is the bouncing fruit that appeared in the first game. Here, it functions much in the same way: To cross surfaces that would otherwise kill you and to reach higher ground. Another example of a gimmick that works is, surprisingly, the underwater sections. One level has you following a whale and having to swim through his rings in order to get oxygen. This mechanic works fairly well and they manage to add to it without causing frustration.

So what doesn’t work? The rocket sections. Throughout the game you have sections where you ride on a missile with legs. You are given very little control except the ability to speed up and sometimes jump off. Most of these sections are fine but I did find the game bugging out once or twice due to the games physics. However, when they added flying to the mix it became horrible. You have very little control over a rocket that will always accelerate and blows up on the slightest touch.

Warning: There will be spoilers until the end of this paragraph so skip this if you do not want to know. I did not expect every idea that Ubisoft has to work in this game but this one in particular is horribly frustrating for one big reason. This is how you fight the final boss. The final boss is already hard enough in this game but you are given very little room to manoeuvre, you can only attack on certain points, and you will die in one hit. This rocket riding section just did not work and so the fact you have to do it while fighting the final boss is infuriating.

Overall I did enjoy my time with Rayman 2. It has a lot of character and is fairly enjoyable. It tries to change up each level so that the player is never bored and this does work for the most part. However when it does not work it really causes this game to suffer. Ubisoft were obviously very ambitious with this game and must refer to it as a success, as it has been ported multiple times. I played the Nintendo 64 version of this game, the original version, and since then this game has been ported to all the other competition and was also remade on both DS and 3DS. It is an OK game but I strongly feel Rayman should stick to the 2D realm as shown in Rayman Legends.

Winter Dressing

Written by Sarah Kilcourse on . Posted in Fashion & Beauty.

January and February are generally the heavy hitters of winter. It is now that the temperature can be sub-zero, as cold winds fill the air and clouds turn the rain into snow. While in our houses, we can turn up the heating and wrap up in blankets, unfortunately at some point we have to venture outside into the cold.

Personally, the most important areas for warmth are hands, feet and head. If I can keep these toasty, chances are the rest of me will be just fine. I can’t deny that I am continually cold and do take cold weather dressing to the extreme—thermals are a necessity from November to March, but it’s fine, you would never know. Or so I hope.

Back to hands, feet and head. Boots are the answer to cold feet; be it ankle, riding or over-the-knee, all are equally stylish and give you the chance to vary your look throughout the chill of winter. Just because it’s two degrees outside doesn’t mean I want to spend the next month in one outfit. The current trend for chunky soles creates an extra distance between your feet and the ground, another way to keep feet warm. Boots can be an expensive purchase but keep an eye out for extra student discount offers available at this time of year. Retailers know that we get our loans in January and are trying to tempt you to spend with 20 per cent off, make the most of it.

I’m not the biggest fan of hats, what with the effect they can have on your hair, but they really do keep you toasty. In the likely event of rain/sleet/snow/hail, hats can even be your hair saviours, providing a layer of protection from the invading moisture in the air.

We can look forward to the upcoming fashion weeks providing some serious winter style inspiration; already at the men’s fashion weeks we have been given some master classes in winter dressing. The main look street styler’s have been sporting to combat the cold is the jacket/coat combo. A fantastically modern throwback to old school overcoats, the new version is less ‘Crombie and suit’, more ‘leather jacket with duster coat on top’.

The layered element of winter dressing is a good way to combat the ensuing chill after being caught in a shower, no matter what type of precipitation; its always comforting to know you can remove a layer and still stay warm. Throw on all the knitwear you have over jeans, skirts, dresses, jumpsuits—you name it, the more layers the better. With every piece removed, a new outfit is created.