Resident Evil 6 has some, uh, unique approaches to multiplayer. What other games stand out for their new and different approaches to multiplayer? Also, don’t miss Tom Chick’s exclusive review of FIFA Soccer 13 and Jason McMaster’s return to the olden days of 2.5D gaming.
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Bait is everything wrong with modern horror movies. It doesn’t know how dumb it is, the cast is terrible, and the CG is soulless.
The premise is, in fact, not supposed to be a joke. A tsunami floods a supermarket. Then a shark swims into the supermarket, trapping some survivors on top of shelves and in a submerged car in the parking garage. In a way, it reminded me of Tremors, which I’ve just rewatched. In both movies, people are trapped while something unlikely swims around beneath them (Bait and Tremors both have the besieged survivors attempting a fishing trap for the monster). Unlike Tremors, which was mostly a comedy, Bait has no idea that it’s dumb. Except for a few scenes of unfunny comic relief, Bait takes itself entirely seriously. If Bait doesn’t let me laugh with it, I will instead laugh at it.
The cast of Bait isn’t so much a cast as an intended demographic. Lead actor Xavier Samuel, who was perfectly cast as a lobotomy victim in another Australian horror movie called The Loved One, is certainly pretty and pretty vacant. He is exactly the wrong actor to establish the backstory and to carry the emotional weight. Yes, Bait thinks it has emotional weight. Don’t ask. At some point in the last twenty years, horror movies were overrun by dumb good-looking teenagers. Tremors, released in 1990, has no teenagers. In fact, its supposed college student was played by a 30-year-old actress.
But everyone in Bait is forgettable and disposable, even when they’re played by good actors like Julian McMahon (one of the leads in Nip/Tuck and the villain in the Fantastic Four movie) and Dan Wyllie (hilarious and memorable as the family lawyer in Animal Kingdom). Tremors is mostly carried by Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon goofing around. But I’d forgotten how adorable it is watching cute little Reba McEntire shoot guns, especially the way she screws up her face like she’s never fired a gun before. Or maybe she’s just trying to look grim. Whatever the case, it’s adorable. And you can’t beat a line like, “You didn’t get penetration even with the elephant gun!” I can listen to Reba McIntyre pretend to talk about guns all day. But I couldn’t wait for the models/actors in Bait to get eaten so they’d stop talking. Not that they do. Too many modern horror movies are too unwilling to kill many of their victims.
The CG in Bait is entirely divorced from the filming. The underwater scenes have no sense for how much room is actually in the flooded supermarket. Instead, it’s just random footage of a CG shark in deep water. Consider that image up there of the shark breaching to eat one of its victims. How is it supposed to leap that far out of water that shallow? Bait doesn’t care. And even though Tremors looks cheap, it comes from a whole different era when you could almost see the love that went into practical effects. Tremors almost literally uses sock puppets for its monster. I find it tremendously endearing to imagine some guy sticking his hand up into a latex tentacle puppet. I don’t find it so endearing to imagine the employees at a contracted visual effects studio at their keyboards.
Bait is available for video on demand, including Amazon Instant View.
Tonight’s Presidential candidate debate will be the first of three. The focus of this one, broadcast from Denver, will be domestic policy. Are the closing of Guantanamo and outsourcing jobs technically domestic issues? Listen to find out! Next week is the VP debate that no one cares about, followed by two more Presidential debates. A catch-all town hall format debate is on the 16th and a foreign policy debate is on the 22nd. You can watch or hear them pretty much wherever you want — television, radio, or the online stream of your choice — but Xbox Live is hoping to entice you by pestering you with questions while you watch.
Throughout the debate, the Xbox LIVE community (Xbox LIVE gold membership required) will be able to weigh in with their opinions by responding to real-time poll questions about the candidate’s performances, their responses to questions and views on issues. Participants will be able to view poll results of the Xbox LIVE audience throughout the evening…. Xbox users can access and participate in this interactive television experience directly through the Xbox LIVE dashboard.
Some of the polling questions were submitted via Twitter by random joes like me. I sent in “Whose Bad Lip Reading Video is funniner, Barack’s or Mitt’s?” Which is a trick question, really, since Obama has only one Bad Lip Reading video, but Romney has two. Why do you think that is?
But wait, if that sort of intelligent commentary isn’t incentive enough, there’s more!
As a bonus, Xbox LIVE users who watch three of the four debates will be awarded with a Halo 4 Warrior Armor avatar.
The debate begins tonight at 6pm Pacific.
