CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Video Game Review: Boring ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ Feels Like Afterthought
CHICAGO – It’s almost as if someone got halfway through post-production on “Battle: Los Angeles,” the awful alien attack movie currently playing in theaters, and it suddenly dawned on them that they hadn’t hired anyone to create the video game tie-in. How else to explain this unusually brief, repetitive, and boring downloadable game, one that will be forgotten as soon as you get over the feeling you’ve been ripped off? It’s not a horrible choice for your PSN credits but only because it’s not memorable to be considered truly awful.
Video Game Rating: 2.5/5.0 |
I can say one positive thing about “Battle: Los Angeles” the video game — at least it’s loyal to the film. I play a lot of video game tie-ins that barely have anything to do with the actual movie. It feels like a lot of video game developers tasked with making tie-ins begin the process before they even see a script. Or, just as often, a film isn’t easily translated to the video game world and so the developers go another way. Of course, as I said in my film review, “Battle: Los Angeles” feels like a bad video game at times, so it’s perfectly translatable to the form, although most video games feature better writing than this action blockbuster.
Battle Los Angeles
Photo credit: Konami
“Battle: Los Angeles” is as straightforward a first-person shooter as you’re going to play in 2011. You are a soldier. There are aliens in front of you. Shoot them. Move forward. Shoot some more. Move again. Maybe shoot a big alien ship. Move again. Man a turret with unlimited ammo. Move again. End of game. That’s honestly about it and even casual FPS players can probably finish it in about an hour. The game hits the major plot points of the film including the creature jumping out of the pool, the freeway battle, and the gas station attack with animated cut scenes in between. Honestly, it breaks down the movie to its essentials by removing all of the cheesy dialogue and just offering recreations of the action scenes.
Battle Los Angeles Photo credit: Konami |
The game has only three weapons (plus grenades) and they’re plentifully restocked all over Los Angeles. It relies on the basic foundation of the FPS — clear the area, move on. The game is basically just a series of such encounters. Walk around a corner, pick off 7-8 aliens, move on to the next corner. You can’t proceed until all of the aliens are dead and your picture goes black-and-white if you’re close to death yourself. Often it’s difficult to tell where you’re being shot from and enemy AI is almost non-existent. It’s more like a shooting gallery game, especially the turret sections, in which aliens literally pop up in the same place and move back and forth not unlike a shooting gallery.
With little variety, you’re likely to get bored playing “Battle: Los Angeles,” even with its brief running time. I generally bristle at the people who complain about the cost of DLC. The same people that will gladly drop $30 on a trip to a movie theater with parking and food will go message board crazy if they have to spend $10 online for something they could potentially play forever. There are many titles that are well-worth $10 or even $20 that are waiting for you on PSN or XBLA.
Having said that, $10 is too much for “Battle: Los Angeles.” It’s not even an hour and the replayability factor is almost non-existent. You’ll bust your way through it, have a reasonably entertaining time shooting aliens if you’re a fan of FPS games, and be done with it. It doesn’t contain anything memorable enough to make you want to play it again and it’s probably only a matter of time before you delete it for space. Should you expect something memorable for $10 in 2011? I think so. With so many great DLC games like “Limbo,” “Joe Danger,” “Marvel Pinball,” or even “Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light,” the standard for the form has been raised. In 2008, a lackluster tie-in like “Battle: Los Angeles” might have been “good enough.” Not any more.
By BRIAN TALLERICO |