Does It Play On a Mac? – Nightmare Creatures

In this episode I look at the 3rd person action-horror game “Nightmare Creatures”, set in gothic London in the 1800’s. Can the MacBook Pro and Crossover Games handle the horror?

Does It Play On a Mac? – Blood

For this installment, I am attempting the 1997 horror-FPS from Monolith, “Blood”.

Push

Someone REALLY wanted to make “Heroes: The Movie”. I went into the theater expecting that from the trailers in the first place. It’s a world where people with powers don’t wear capes or costumes and have ambiguous nicknames like “movers” (telekinetics), “watchers” (can see the future), “pushers” (can implant thoughts in your mind), and “sniffers” (can track someone by touching or smelling an object the person has touched). It’s a very gritty world with a secret government agency attempting to turn these people into war weapons. In other words, not much surprise in the way of the plot or the characters, from Chris Evans’s reluctant hero to Dakota Fanning’s smart-alec kid with mission for reluctant hero to Djimon Hounsou’s evil agent who must foil plans of smart-alec kid and reluctant hero.

OK, so most stories have to have some familiar elements to get the audience in on the ride, and there was an interesting story element about how to get the jump on a watcher, but it felt like there were some decisions made about the movie in post-production, most notably a few obvious voice dubs that wrapped the story up instead of extending it to a possible sequel which was more likely the original intention. This tended to water down the movie’s impact as a whole. Nothing in the movie was really bad, but nothing was really good either. There was no ‘push’ to it.

Having said that, I wasn’t bored watching the movie, but I would wait for a rental or buy when you can see this at home with friends. It’s defenitely better than the movies SciFi Channel airs. This is something you can watch when they re-run “Dungeons and Dragons 2″ and pretend they got a hold of a decent movie, for once.

Taken

Saw this in the theater. Liam Neeson plays a retired field agent who launches a one-man war to get his kidnapped daughter back. There was really nothing surprising about this film. The plot was very much by the numbers. I could see where this film was going to go every step of the way. The action scenes were filmed in a way I’ve grown to hate with what seems to be very unecessary shaking of the camera in order to add more intensity to the pieces, but it ultimately leaves me confused and unable to follow what’s going on.

Having said all that, I can still say I enjoyed the film. Neeson was enjoyable and sympathetic in his role as the lone agent trying to making up for his absentee past as a father. While Maggie Grace is a little too old to play a 17-year old, she pulls the role off quite well. Although the story is very generic I never really found myself bored with the film and was able to enjoy the ride as the filmmakers presented it.

Defenitely a good rental. Maybe a matinee.

Does It Play On a Mac? – Carmageddon II

In what should be an ongoing series, I look at how various Windows games do or do not run on the Mac. I don’t plan to take too long for any one game, and I will not be using Bootcamp, Windows, or a separate partition if I can help it. The whole idea is to see if these games can be run with as little hassle as possible. For this one I’m using the 1998 racer Carmageddon II.