Once Upon a Time: “Lady of the Lake” Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

This week's episode of Once Upon a Time brought us Lancelot (played by Sinqua Walls), mean parents, and all the feelings. Cora is back and evil as ever, the knight of the Round Table turns against his king and saves Snow White from an infertility curse, and there was an ogre. In other words, it was sort of all over the place.

Even though it jumped around, the focus was on Snow and Emma bonding. Snow is the protector now, not a meek schoolteacher and it’s an interesting change in dynamic that Emma doesn’t know how to handle. At least she didn’t until Snow saved her from an ogre. Putting Emma in a place where her knowledge and skills aren’t helpful is a great way to make her appreciate her mom and all she’s done for her daughter.

Emma had better get used to it too because she had to destroy the last known portal back to Storybrooke to keep Cora from crossing over. If you weren’t positive that she’s evil, she killed Lancelot and has been pretending to be him for a while. Speaking of mean parents, Charming’s sort of father - King George (Alan Dale) - tried to make Snow sterile and has also showed back up in the real world. And you thought your holiday dinners were awkward.

One other note about fairytale world - It’s hard not to note that they’ve made Aurora completely unlikable. She’s mean and whiny and hasn’t learned a thing from Mulan so far. There’s room for her to grow, and hopefully Snow will be a good influence on her. Fingers crossed for an epic training montage in a future episode.

The episode unfortunately displayed a couple of the less awesome factors about Season 1. For one thing, a couple of moments were just lazy. Lancelot didn’t thoroughly search that lake bed; how did he know there was just one shell with water? Most people wouldn’t have been turning all the sand upside down. Back in Storybrooke, why didn’t Charming either dig through Regina’s vault to search for magic or destroy everything instead of just making sure no one else finds it?

It was also jam-packed. The death of Charming's mother should have hit harder, but the story was moving along so fast that the full impact didn't have time to develop. Sure, they fit a lot of significant plot points into 42 minutes, but every piece felt rushed. These might be little things to focus on, but they don’t make sense and therefore stick out.

Then there was the ogre. Monsters and big bads are scarier when they aren’t seen, and that is especially true when the CGI isn’t amazing. I was nervous about the ogre until it ran into the clearing; then I just laughed. On the upside, Snow White got to show off her ability to shoot a bow (nice form too – better than Hawkeye!) and impressed the hell out of Emma.

In happier news, Jefferson was back again. Henry nudged him to find his daughter Grace, and their reunion was the very definition of happiness. Sebastian Stan plays the heck out of the Mad Hatter and always leaves an impression regardless of the length of his scenes. Stan needs to show up more, before his Captain America: The Winter Soldier duties pull him away. There were also some great one-liners like Emma comparing a cooked chimera to a turducken. Order one for Thanksgiving now – they’ll be all the rage!

Amy Ratcliffe is a writer for IGN TV. You can follow her on on Twitter at @Amy_Geek and IGN at alratcliffe .

Source : ign[dot]com

End of Watch Review

The police drama End of Watch is the hardest, most honest buddy cop movie you'll ever see. It’s grounded in the everyday relationships of and the very real feelings between cops. It is a film about family; we rely on the police and they in turn rely on each other.

As the story unfolds, we ride along with two beat cops in South Central L.A., Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena). They are good cops doing a difficult job. They spend their shifts looking for drugs, guns, and money. They deal with gangs daily, encountering the absolute worst the job has to offer. As Zavala points out, they see more action in a given month than lots of cops do in their entire career. They are forced to make hard decisions regularly, and while their choices may sometimes be questionable we still know they are good men.

The plot revolves around escalating gang tension and a rising Mexican cartel in South Central. This is a character study, though, as filmmaker David Ayer (writer of Training Day) aims to get the story of L.A. cops “right.” He does this by following distinct episodes in these officers’ lives, both in the line of fire and during quieter moments on the job. The story moves in deliberate beats: action, reprieve, action, reprieve. The stakes here are life and death, but these heroes are seen as more than just a Shield. While their work may inform how they see themselves, they are truly defined by their relationships, most significantly to one another.

The cops deal with scumbags and gangsters in the action scenes, but it’s the quieter times with them in their patrol car that are the most fun to watch. These characters are utterly engrossing and their relationship is the film’s core driving force. Gyllenhaal and Pena give fantastic, wholly authentic performances, and the naturalness of their friendship is a joy to behold. Supporting players, notably Anna Kendrick as Officer Taylor's girlfriend Janet, play just as real. There is an intimacy and chemistry between this cast that shines throughout the entire film.

Ayer presents much of the movie in the rawest manner possible and from the points of view of the officers and gang members via shaky cam. We watch through dashboard and surveillance cameras as the action and quieter scenes reveal themselves. It’s not entirely a “found footage” film, but there is an immediacy and freedom in the scenes where this technique is employed. Unfortunately, some of these deeply emotional, camcorder-shot scenes jarringly cut to glossier, more traditionally filmed ones, causing stylistic inconsistencies that hurt the movie. It’s only thanks to the strength of the characters and the cast that the viewer isn’t totally pulled out of the film by these sudden stylistic shifts.

The movie’s insular story may take place over the course of a few months, but it still has a “one crazy day in the life” quality to it. The cops pay lip service to the fact that most of the calls they go on are simple domestic disputes or other mundane police work, but in fact every single action scene depicts insanely tense, life or death situations. You have to remind yourself of the passage of time between events otherwise the story’s believability will suffer.

This is a film propelled by the strength of its characters and how they relate to each other and their world. You can't help but care for them because the movie is so full of heart. End of Watch makes an impact, stressing the important need to recognize that there are real people out there who risk their personal safety for all of us each and every day.

Source : ign[dot]com

Malicious Review

While playing Malicious – the PlayStation Network exclusive action game from Japanese developer Alvion – my feelings ebbed and flowed. I didn’t like it at first, only to ease into the experience after a bit more play time. But by the time I reached the last boss, I gave up, confused and frustrated. This array of conflicting feelings sums up Malicious wonderfully, because it provides gamers with something seemingly likeable, but ultimately bogged down by sloppy gameplay and design that lacks any sort of rhyme, reason, or even basic explanation.

Malicious revolves around your character, the Spirit Vessel, as it sets out to fight five different bosses in order to gain access to the big honcho at the end of the game. That’s right, there are no stages to work your way through, just boss fights. In Mega Man-esque fashion, you can undertake these boss battles in any order you desire, and you’ll receive weapons and other special powers and abilities from defeating each boss. Newly acquired weapons and powers can, in turn, be used on your remaining opponents to make things more manageable.

For a $10 downloadable game that’s bite-sized and focused, Malicious seems like a pretty good offering. It's undoubtedly short – skilled players can crank through to the last boss in only a couple of hours -- but its brevity doesn’t amount to much of a problem. Rather, Malicious suffers from some serious flaws regarding its gameplay, camera, and story that overshadow its pretty graphics and unique approach. And even though it can be purchased on the cheap, a slew of superior games much more worthy of your time populate the PlayStation Network at an equal price-point.

The third-person combat of Malicious will pit you against endless streams of various lesser enemies that accompany each boss, but make no mistake: the boss is the target. The ancillary enemies only exist to build up chains and feed your character aura to make you more powerful, as well as to distract you from the task at hand. The aura you build up can also be used to heal and sustain yourself, which is important considering each boss battle is timed to last a maximum of 30 minutes. You’ll need to prepare yourself for the long haul during each battle in Malicious... unless you're skilled enough to take out the game's various bosses rapidly.

But when you take into account Malicious’s borderline-broken camera, one that constantly gets stuck, moves around randomly and acts completely wonky at virtually every moment you dare lock-on to an enemy, the fun from combat is largely removed. For such a fast-paced game predicated on consequences (you have a limited amount of lives to get through all of the bosses and face having to beat the rest of the game with one life if you mess up), players should expect combat – and especially a camera – that function much better.

Making matters worse, the developers seemed to have used the streamlined focus of Malicious as an excuse to skip-out on the exposition necessary for players to understand both the story and the game’s mechanics. Answers are there if you look for them, but that’s the point: you shouldn’t have to search around for information on what’s going on or how to play. You shouldn’t be thrust into an experience as if you know what you’re supposed to do without any sort of tutorial. You shouldn’t have to read nearly 40 pages of in-game text spread across four chapters to understand a game’s story. Such a tactic isn’t only sloppy and ill-conceived, but comes off as a cut corner.

There are some positives worth focusing on, however. Malicious packs slightly-dated, but pretty graphics. Character and enemy designs underwhelm, but its vivid color palate pops. Likewise, its soundtrack is limited but pleasant. Even the premise behind the game – a Shadow of the Colossus-like singular focus on boss battles shrouded in deep mysticism – is something I can get into. It’s just poorly executed.

Should you choose to spend some time with Malicious, you’ll find more options apart from a mere handful of boss battles and some equippable weapons. Free Play Mode will unlock when you defeat the five bosses, and further unlockables, like Time Attack and Score Attack modes, and even an online leaderboard are there for you to acquire, too. I just couldn’t bring myself to try to sort out the nonsensical last boss battle and get most of these extra perks, and I guess that’s the point. Playing the game at various times over two days broke my will to see it through.

Source : ign[dot]com