National Treasure: Book of Secrets

By Sandor Hugert

This movie was really just one of those typical sequels where Disney saw that the first National Treasure was a hit, so they really just redid the first one with a new treasure and hoped for the same success.  The movie itself really wasn’t bad, but Disney also made the mistake of making the sequel so much like the original that there really weren’t any cool new ideas in the movie so it was just boring overall.  The storyline was cool since you did get to see the treasure and overall it kept the movie interesting as they were searching for all the clues.  Nicolas Cage still did a great job as the main character.  There were some cool scenes in the movie though which made it better, but really Disney just redid everything that worked in the first movie and then made a sequel.  The ending basically gives away that there will be another sequel so hopefully that will actually have some new ideas in it.

Score:  6 out of 10 

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games

By Sandor Hugert

 

Nobody was really expecting much from this game, but it turned out to be one of the more enjoyable games of 2007.  Somehow this game managed to be better than many Wii games.  You actually have to do totally different motions for each event.  There are many characters that you can play with from all the Mario and Sonic games.  There are lots of events that you can compete in, and as you start to gain gold medals for your events then you actually unlock many other cool events.  There is even online play in the game, but the Wii’s online play is a little weird, as you can’t really play with just someone random because you have to know their whole friend’s code and everything.  Overall, this was a fun game and all, but that’s really all it has going for it just the fun aspect of the game.

 

Score:  6  out of 10

Assassin’s Creed

By Sandor Hugert

 

This was one of the most anticipated games of 2007, and it was also the most disappointing game of the year.  This is the most repetitive game ever made in the whole history of video games.  The missions are all the same exact thing.  There are basically three types of missions that you just do over and over with the difficulty of the game rising up a little.  The graphics are nice to look at, but it doesn’t compare to some of the better-looking games lately such as Uncharted Drake’s Fortune and Call of Duty 4.  There really isn’t that many cool killing moves, but instead if just block and counter attack then you’re just about set to beat the entire boring game.  The story line tries to be all serious and make sense, but it fails in both aspects.  The big twist of the game is revealed to you in the first few minutes of the game, which is one of the dumbest moves made in the story lines of any video game.  The ending sets up the story for the sequel, which is very unnecessary after failing to make one of the most anticipated games in the year good at all.  The guys at UBI Soft should just go back to working on Tom Clancy games and their Prince of Persia franchise.  If they’re going to make the sequel to Assassin’s Creed, then they better fix up all the problems in the first game.  This game was definitely the biggest disappointment of 2007.  At most this game is only worth a rent.

 

Score:  4 out of 10   

 

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

By Sandor Hugert

 

This game was really the main competition for Halo 3 in 2007 as it was highly anticipated for all consoles.  You have to start out by saying that this game has some of the best graphics seen in any video game.  It is certainly up there with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune in the graphics department.  As we all know though, graphics don’t make any game perfect.  There really isn’t anything horrible with this game except the fact that the campaign mode is incredibly short.  You can basically beat the game in about four hours.  I’m not asking for like a 30-hour game from a first person shooter such as Call of Duty 4, but four hours is really just too short.  A first person shooter really needs to be about 10-hours long.  This year in the first person shooter department, The Orange Box really got the length of their games down as each game in that box was around 7 to 10 hours long.  Other than the length of the game, there really isn’t anything wrong with it.  The story line was really intense and the online is also intense.  The online part of the time tends to get a little boring after playing it for like two hours, but it’s still pretty fun.  Overall, this game was good, but not great as it could have been longer and online could have been a little more enjoyable.  Hopefully, we’ll get the official really good Call of Duty game with Call of Duty 5 next year.

 

Score:  7 out of 10

I Am Legend

By Sandor Hugert

This was one of the most anticipated movies of 2007.  It had a very interesting story line to it as Will Smith plays the last person on Earth.  Somehow the movie just didn’t turn out to be as interesting as it could have been.  It was actually boring at times as he was just walking around with his dog, and just trying to find entertainment somehow.  The zombies in the movie looked unrealistic which by today’s standards in movies should not happen.  The story line of the movie should have been very interesting, but instead they didn’t even really explain everything that entire well.  The action scenes were cool, but there was barely any in the entire movie.  The ending of the movie was pretty disappointing, but I won’t talk about that here so I don’t ruin the movie for you.  I will say that the movie’s ending just could have been a lot better.  Overall, this was an okay movie at best, but it seems that there were leaving room for a possible sequel which they are thinking about making due to the box office success that I Am Legend had.

Score:  6 out of 10