Hello and welcome to another edition of The Doctor's Prognosis! I am your humble host, Dr. C-LOS!

Recently started playing Final Fantasy XII (finally!) after buying it on day one. Geez I don't think I need to buy any games for some time with my backlog. But I really want Street Fighter IV and one of those MaCatz Fight Sticks. What to do?

Anyway, finished Marvel: Ultimate Alliance so I got a review for that. But I got a few other things I wanted to talk about as well so let's get to it. And not all game related either...

Gran Torino Review

Ok so many of you may have heard about this film. It focuses on a bigot that somehow develops a close relationship with a young boy of Hmong culture. I thought it was good but I do have one complaint... And this is probably the biggest complaint you will hear about this film: the acting, for the most part, is atrocious.

Almost every person in this film comes off as never being in a film before. I swear that I got better performances out of my brother and his girlfriend for my student film than Clint Eastwood did out of his actors. In fact, I think every bad actor in almost any bad student film I have seen has been on par or better than Gran Torino. Well maybe not Clint Eastwood himself.:P

Also, many might be put off by what appears to be a very racist main character. Almost every line Clint's character spouts is derogatory in some way.

But despite the bad acting, racist remarks, and a story that is a little familiar, it must be saying something about Clint Eastwood that I was entertained greatly by this film. Somehow, I ended up laughing a lot and caring about some of the characters. By the end of the film, Clint's character didn't even seem racist anymore.

So despite its flaws, Gran Torino is an entertaining film with great character development. Big thumbs up.

Resident Evil 5 Demo Impressions

This is the talk of the town right now and I should admit that I wasn't very excited to try it out. But I did want to see how good the game was going to be so I downloaded it the day it was out and I was enjoying what I got to try.

I should point out that the demo was pretty short but sweet. You get to choose out of two scenarios and can play by yourself or with a partner (online or offline). I played by myself and I found the controls to be just fine. Pretty much the same as RE4 but now you can trade items with a partner. I took my partner's machine gun letting her fend for herself with just her pistol.:lol:

The action was pretty hectic being bombarded by enemies from all sides. But I never found myself running out of ammo. Especially since all you needed to do was shoot them in the face and press the X button to give them a good hook or straight punch. My partner even did a good job making sure I was healed.

Each scenario plays a little differently and even had its own big baddy to take care of. One has a large hooded guy with a big heavy axe and the other a scary chainsaw maniac with a one-hit kill attack. I learned about the instant kill attack the hard way. :(

Also, the first scenario is more about survival in a large open area. A great area to play back to back with a buddy. The second area was more about seperating but helping each other out. You get to try out a sniper rifle and pick off enemies attacking Sheva from across buildings. So hopefully the final game tries to keep it varied like this throughout.

So far, Resident Evil 5 looks a lot like Resident Evil 4 with amazing graphics and co-op play. This is kind of a double-edged sword as they haven't really improved much but the addition of co-op could make this a great game to play with a friend.

My prognosis: Resident Evil 5 probably won't be groundbreaking stuff like Resident Evil 4 was, but it will be a great addition to your library if you're looking for a fun action game to play with a friend. I will probably skip it at release though because I have little extra spending money lately. Maybe next year.

What's that? I could have saved money for the game switching to Geico? Noooooooo! :cry:

This guy just found that out too.

I feel for you buddy. We're in the same boat. But it doesn't mean you got to keep following me. :P

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Review

Finally finished this game and I really enjoyed it.

For the most part, I feel that the game has a great difficulty curve in the main story. Since this game has RPG elements, the enemies get stronger as you advance in the game and so do you! So you could overpower your characters if you want to by using the simulator missions. It's a great way to practice and learn what abilities you want to use and how you want to customize your characters.

And there are a lot of characters to utilize in this game. You can distribute points on abilities when you level up but thankfully you can redistribute those points if you decide you don't like how you spent them. It can be overbearing for some if you just want to get in there and beat people up so you can set point distribution to automatic.

However, it is important to note that not every character is meant to be used to just run in and start punching. That's a great way to kill off Doctor Strange, who has a lot of great magical abilities. And I really liked that about this game.

There is a lot of depth to each character. Each character has at least 3 outfits (most have 4) to use that all add different stats depeding on how you want to customize them. And they each have several abilities to use that range from boosting your team's defense to destroying any enemies within range.

Unfortunately, some characters are more powerful than others. For some reason, I could not keep Elektra alive. But Hulk never had any problem laying the smack down. He was super strong and had a boosting ability that made him bigger, stronger, and faster. Hulk was a killing machine and it didn't hurt that he regenerated health.

Some of the best characters have to be unlocked and that's also where some of the best challenges in the game come. To unlock Silver Surfer, who can heal your entire team, you have to get at least a bronze rating on every simulator mission in the game. But you have to find each simulator disc in the game first. And some can only be found once. So if you miss it you have to start all over.

And sim missions are more challenging than the main story because the sim mission enemies level up with your characters. And most sim missions are solo missions where you can only play as one character so that you can unlock that character's 4th outfit. So you need to upgrade every character's outfits and abilities if you want to survive and unlock Silver Surfer. Some will definitely be harder than others though. It took me one try for The Thing's mission while it took a couple for Elektra's mission. And good luck trying to get Gold ratings on all the missions.:|

One thing I did not like was the system for gear/eqipment. Defeating bosses or finding treasure coffers would often net you gear to equip on your heroes so that they get boosts to defense or abilities and such. Most of the time, I felt like they didnt really add much. I think they helped for some of the solo sim missions with the added defense or damage. But usually I found it best helped if I just spent the money on boosting my characters' outfits and abilities.

Another thing was the graphics were a bit uneven. The game looks like a PS2 game in HD which isn't too bad. But the framerate was inconsistent. And some of the cutscenes looked worse than the gameplay graphics. Basically like PS2 graphics used for a cutscene. But some of the other cutscenes looked amazing. The opening one looked awesome as did the one with Galactus.

Regardless of the negatives, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a lot of fun and had a great story that served to get you all over the Marvel Universe. The gameplay is fun playing alone or with a friend. I definitely recommend it to any Marvel fan or anyone looking for a fun action game to play alone or with friends. You can find it on the cheap now too. I give it an 8.5 out of 10.

NEW Batman: Arkham Asylum Trailer

You must be living under a rock if you haven't seen this yet. But it's good enough to visit again (in HD). :)

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All I can say is, "WOW!" The animation looked great as the fighting looked fluid. I cannot wait to see more on this game. As a huge Batman fan, I really like what I have read and seen so far. I love that Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy are in it. I just wish other voice actors from the old animated series would reprise their roles. But my biggest hope is that the game is good.

Well they now have a release window as Summer 2009 so I guess we will find out somewhere between the beginning of June and the end of August. I hope they release a demo beforehand too.

Cosplayer of the Blog

This girl is apparently a character named Dizzy. Though I know not where from. Nor do I care.

:shock: Good God woman! She's not nude but... I mean... she might as well be! Want to see more?

Gee I wonder why there are so many guys around her? :P

Ok now for the ladies. I now realize that you don't like the bad boys. You like men with jobs!

Yeah! Captain of his own ship he is! Can't snub your nose at that can you? Nor to any pilot for that matter.

Why he could take you up to romantic getaways in the sky. Dreamy huh?

And if you like a bad boy with a paying job then how about this?

A bounty hunter! I think! Well he is a man in uniform and that's sexy right? Right?

Anyway, thanks again for making another appointment with The Doctor's Prognosis!

For I am the doctor changing blogs everywhere for the better. Change we can believe in!

See you next time! :D