Friday, August 19, 2011

Pissed Off Depardieu does a Oui Oui!

Overrated actor Gerard Depardieu, like an a-typical frenchman decided to get one over on infamous "wanker" Neil Prendeville by urinating in the aisle while on a flight to Ireland to shoot a new Asterix movie.

Obviously not a follower of the "go before you go" rule, the weak-bladdered actor apparently demanded access to the lavatory as the aircraft was preparing for take off [he had presumably never been on a plane before] but was naturally refused permission by the CityJet attendant.

Edouard Baer, his Asterix co-star who was travelling with him noticed his colleague's predicament and gave Depardieu an empty mini bottle of Evian spring water for the rotund star to use as an impromptu latrine. Sadly, basic biological and physical sciences escaped both men [as did common sense and decency] and the tiny bottle soon overflowed all over the aircraft aisle as witnessed by other passengers who spoke to the media.

One such passenger contacted a french radio station to express outrage over the incident. The woman said: "I was shocked. Does this mean that when you're an actor, you're not like everybody else, you don't have to abide by rules and regulations? He could have waited, but he didn't."

It was reported that as the stench of urine began to fill the business class cabin, Depardieu offered to clean up as the aircraft returned to the gate. CitiJet needed two hours to clean up the actor's filthy mess. The french Directorate General for Civil Aviation said: "It is extremely rare that planes are [forced] to turn around because of a passenger."

While Baer insists Depardieu was not drunk during the incident, this is seen as unlikely as it is widely reported for some years that the 62 year old actor has such a fondness for wine that he runs his own award-winning vineyard in the Medoc and boasts that he consumes as much as five bottles of wine a day like some Gallic Oliver Reed.

"I’m happy with very little on this earth," he commented wryly after a serious motorcycle crash while over the legal limit in 1999, "but I do like to have a lot in my glass."

Source: Eamo / The Journal / The Herald / Hollywood Gossip/ The Daily Mail

*Post title assisted by Darth Harrington

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Midweek Visitors?

UNETIDA was said to be on high alert in the past 24 hours following two reported sightings of possible extraterrestrial activity on two different continents.

In England, while Tom Watson MP was discussing recent developments in “Hackergate” on Channel 4 News on Wednesday, an unidentified object sped through the back of frame and over the Houses of Parliament. Channel 4 is not known for what they have termed "extraterrestrial frivolity," preferring to present themselves as hard-hitting journalists but there was no explanation offered for this:



Squadron Leader "Spitfire" Anderton, UNETIDA Air Operations Officer [UK], said that a flight he sent from RAF Northolt to investigate the area reported nothing.

Meanwhile also on Wednesday in Chongqing Municipality's Jiangbei International Airport in China, air traffic was restricted for about an hour after a UFO was spotted over the runway.

Airport officials, were of the opinion that it could be a sky lantern or a large balloon. Authorities in Chongqing however have not offered an explanation for the unusual phenomenon.

Lieutenant Colonel “Yi” Chen, UNETIDA Air Operations Officer [China], would not speculate but confirmed that his forces were monitoring the situation.

Source: Dangerous Minds / Nerdcore /IO9 / FOX News / UNETIDA

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Dark of the Moon is explosively bright!

Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third and final part of Michael Bay's magnum opus - The Transformers trilogy - is upon us.

Bay promised to correct the "errors in judgement" he had with Revenge Of The Fallen in 2009, but not only had he to do that; he also had to end his tale with such a bang that it would resonate throughout the history of cinema for years to come. He was also faced with impossible mission of exciting the predominately male audience with a sexy female lead more delectable than Megan Fox.

Well 2 outta 3 ain't bad Michael.

The problems with Revenge were indeed corrected thankfully, basically by ignoring them. Gone was the idea of The Fallen, somehow superior to Megatron. Absent were Decepticon "hatchlings" and the Autobot "twins" perceived as racist by many, were nowhere to be seen. The over-long comedy sequences with the Witwicky family were reduced to a minimum for the third movie's pretty lengthy running time. So it's basically safe to say that Bay kept his word and stuck to the core ideas he began with in the original Transformers.

Did he manage to end his tale with a bang? Aye, he sure did. Dark of the Moon was most certainly the loudest, most explosion-ey movie Bay has ever done and took full advantage of being able to blow half of a $195m budget on pyrotechnics [reserving the other half for CGI]. The addition of the third dimension was a bold move for a man who admitted severe difficulty with the format in the way he films. Nevertheless, he produced stunning three dimensional imagery that complimented what would be the greatest on screen battles of the series.

While Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving and others all returned to portray the characters they had in the previous two movies, Megan Fox's unfortunate reference to Bay as "Hitler" during an interview angered producer Steven Spielberg who had Bay remove her from the project. Bay replaced Fox with British underwear model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley [I'm sorry but am I the only person who thinks she got punched in the upper lip by someone?] in the part of Sam's new girlfriend Carly [a nod to Carly Witwicky, Spike's wife in the G1 series]. It is being said by all who have witnessed her performance that Huntington-Whiteley's acting talents make Megan Fox seem like Katharine Hepburn by comparison. It would have been alright for her to just sit there and pout or run and scream as necessary for the scene but they made the mistake of giving her lines of dialog, and also the most unconvincing speech I've heard in an age. Not since Kate Bosworth's abysmal performance in Superman Returns have I actually been so annoyed at the emptiness of a performance by a leading lady.

Aside from that, Ehren Kruger's screenplay brought a cohesiveness to the action that seemed to escape Orci and Kurtzman in the previous installments. Dark of the Moon seems to posess a slightly more engaging plot, what with the idea of the space race of the 1960's being a response to The Ark's crash and the purpose of the Apollo program being a mission to discover what landed there. There is even an appearance by Buzz Aldrin portraying himself to confirm what it was that he found up there all those years ago [and driving the conspiracy nuts - those that believe the moon landing was real at least - demented for decades to come]. The movie does take a slightly tedious turn during the first hour where we are re-introduced to Sam whose life has taken a turn for the worse economically and he's unemployed [Bay's commentary on the dire job crisis?] but he's still scored high in the romance department [if you're into totally brain-dead bimbos] and his lighthearted adventures soon turn deadly.

The McGuffin of the piece is not the All-Spark or the Matrix of Leadership this time but another significant piece of Transformers technology plucked from over 25 years of Transformers lore - The Space Bridge, which would allow the Decepticons to unleash their overwhelming army directly from Cybertron to the Earth in seconds. The bridge can only be controlled however by Sentinel Prime [Leonard Nimoy] the former leader of the Autobots who has been discovered and brought back to life, so thankfully the Space Bridge technology is in good hands.

The weak-bladdered brigade who whine at the likes of Gladiator and The Dark Knight will no doubt do the same at Dark Of The Moon for being too long. They don't understand that when something of this quality is produced, you may need more time to present it adequately. That said, a 15 minute shaving off Sam's job hunting sequence probably wouldn't have been too lamented if it went missing [so long as it didn't remove John Malkovich's crazy cameo].


Final Verdict: The finale to Bay and LaBeouf's run in the series is an explosive climax to one of the most successful trilogies of all time. Dark of the Moon corrects the flaws of it's predecessor but because of it's own issues, it can't touch the original, the entirely flawless progenitor that is Transformers - which was the best movie of it's decade. Takings of over $1Bn dollars and becoming currently the 5th highest grossing film of all time in only six weeks have secured the future of this franchise for another outing, and it will be interesting to see who will take the tale of the cinematic Robots in Disguise to their next level.

Colonel Creedon Verdict: *****

Read my original Transformers review [Exempt] from July 07 and my Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen review [*****] from July 2009.

Monday, August 15, 2011

The FALCON takes another dive

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's [DARPA] second test of the $320m FALCON program launched at 07:45 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Thursday. It's mission ended much as it's first one did in April 2010 - with the loss of the unmanned Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2).

According a statement, DARPA said that everything was going to plan up until the glide phase of the flight. When it reached it's sub-orbital altitude, HTV-2 jettisoned from its protective cover atop the Minotaur IV rocket, then nose-dived back toward Earth, leveled out and began to glide above the Pacific at 20 times the speed of sound, or Mach 20.

The plan was for the Falcon to speed westward for about 30 minutes before plunging into the ocean near Kwajalein Atoll, about 4,000 miles from Vandenberg. But about 20 minutes into the mission, DARPA tweeted: "Range assets have lost telemetry." [they lost contact with the aircraft]. The arrowhead shaped craft is reported to have sank itself into the Pacific as a precautionary measure.

Major Chris Schulz, U.S.A.F., DARPA’s program manager said “We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It’s vexing; I’m confident there is a solution. We have to find it.”

Sustaining hypersonic flight has been an extremely difficult task for aeronautical engineers over the years. While supersonic means that an object is traveling faster than the speed of sound, or Mach 1, "hypersonic" refers to an aircraft going five times that speed or more. Thursday's flight still managed to return 139 seconds of aerodynamic data at a velocity between 17 and 22 times the speed of sound.

“We’ll learn. We’ll try again. That’s what it takes,” said DARPA Director Regina Dugan.

UNETIDA's Director of Research and Development Dr. "Quantum" Pataal was also at Vandenberg on Thursday. He denied the flight was a failure and suggested that if HTV-2 was not recovered then it was conceivable that it had broken the dimensional barrier and we should be weary of what an alternative universe Earth would return in response.

Sources: The LA Times /BBC/ Fox News

Friday, August 12, 2011

38 Tragically Lost but now Avenged

On Saturday August 6th in Tangi Vallery, Wardak province, Afghanistan, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed with the loss of all on board. 30 U.S. service members along with 7 Afghan commandos and an interpreter who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, died as a result of the crash - the greatest single loss for U.S. forces in the war.

A local resident in Tangi, told AP Television News that the helo was shot down by an RPG fired from a nearby knoll as it was preparing to land to deploy the men on board to support military personnel already on the ground. “As soon as it was hit, it started burning,” he said. The helo broke apart and crashed in large sections.

SecDef Panetta said in a statement that day: "I am deeply saddened by the loss of many outstanding Americans in uniform and of their Afghan counterparts earlier today in Afghanistan. Their courage was exemplary, as was their determination to make this a safer world for their countries and for their fellow citizens. We will stay the course to complete that mission, for which they and all who have served and lost their lives in Afghanistan have made the ultimate sacrifice. They and their families are in my thoughts, in my prayers and in my heart."

After deliberation [due to many of the SEALs being members of NAVSPECWARDEVGRU], the Pentagon yesterday elected to release the names of the sailors, soldiers and airmen who perished:

Lt. Cmdr. (SEAL) Jonas B. Kelsall, USN
Master Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Louis J. Langlais, USN
Senior Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Thomas A. Ratzlaff, USN
Senior Chief Petty Officer (Expeditionary Warfare Specialist/Freefall Parachutist) Kraig M. Vickers, USN
Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Brian R. Bill, USN
Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) John W. Faas, USN
Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Kevin A. Houston, USN
Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Matthew D. Mason, USN
Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Stephen M. Mills, USN
Chief Petty Officer (Expeditionary Warfare Specialist/Freefall Parachutist/Diver) Nicholas H. Null, USN
Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Robert J. Reeves, USN
Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Heath M. Robinson, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (SEAL) Darrik C. Benson, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (SEAL/Parachutist) Christopher G. Campbell, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (Expeditionary Warfare Specialist/Freefall Parachutist) Jared W. Day, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (Expeditionary Warfare Specialist) John Douangdara, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (Expeditionary Warfare Specialist) Michael J. Strange, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (SEAL/Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist) Jon T. Tumilson, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (SEAL) Aaron C. Vaughn, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (SEAL) Jason R. Workman, USN
Petty Officer 1st Class (SEAL) Jesse D. Pittman, USN
Petty Officer 2nd Class (SEAL) Nicholas P. Spehar, USN

Chief Warrant Officer David R. Carter, U.S. Army
Chief Warrant Officer Bryan J. Nichols, U.S. Army
Sgt. Patrick D. Hamburger, U.S. Army
Sgt. Alexander J. Bennett, U.S. Army
Spc. Spencer C. Duncan, U.S. Army

Staff Sgt. Andrew W. Harvell, U.S.A.F.
Tech. Sgt. John W. Brown, U.S.A.F.
Tech. Sgt. Daniel L. Zerbe, U.S.A.F.

Rear Adm. Sean Pybus, head of Naval Special Warfare Command, said in a statement Thursday that his command suffered a tremendous loss and that it “will honor their service and sacrifice, and embrace their families as our own, in this time of immeasurable grief."

On Tuesday, it was reported that CENTCOM assigned Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Colt, the 101st Airborne Division’s deputy commander, to conduct an investigation into the cause of the crash as is customary. One person whose account he will never have however is that of one Mullah Mohibullah. The ISAF and U.S. Forces Afghanistan commander Gen. John Allen, USMC, told reporters during a video conference at the Pentagon on Wednesday that Air Force F-16s and an AC-130H, as well as Army AH-64 Apache helicopters conducted an air strike against Mohibullah and another insurgent who were determined to have been those that fired the shot that brought down the Chinook. Coalition troops on the ground reported Mohibullah a confirmed kill along with several others.

Sources: Military Times / FOX News / BBC News

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

London's Burning

Crap TV show, but a suitable headline for commentary on the London rioting. Although it's not just London now is it? It spread to Birmingham yesterday and the Scousers of Liverpool got in on the act late last night. Tonight #manchesterriots is the trending hashtag on Twitter. Nottingham, Bristol, Kent and Leeds have also been affected.

The flashpoint was the fatal shooting of an alleged criminal Mark Duggan. Duggan is reported to have resisted arrest and once he was plugged, a .380 converted starter pistol was found in his possession. So just like that Brazilian dude who should have stopped when ordered to do so by Metro police back in '05 - it's likely that despite not firing, Duggan's termination was a righteous kill.

Duggan's family, deluded into believing him to be some sort of saint, decided to hold a protest outside the police station in Tottenham, London. It was not long before the protest became ugly [surprise, surprise] and before long turned into a full scale riot, now in it's 4th night.

But Duggan isn't the reason for the London riots and the copycat riots across the UK right now, no the strange thing is that while most riots are in the name of a cause - these have literally none; other than to loot electrical goods and sportswear, and to cause wanton destruction and terror by destroying homes and businesses.

British Prime Minister David Cameron returned home prematurely from his vacation to condemn the worst violence some of these areas have ever seen. "People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets and to make them safe for the law-abiding" he pledged.

Some have stressed that the police have not done enough and are not heavy handed enough to deter the rioters/looters. There were many calls today from the British public to call in the Army. Sadly these people are of the belief that this would be a solution to the problem and have obviously forgotten and/or are ignorant of the last time the British Army was used to pacify civilian unrest across the water in a little territory called Northern Ireland.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have no moral problem with a British soldier riddling a 13 year old boy with 5.56 NATO on the streets of London - provided he was of course engaged in anti-social behaviour [David Cameron today: "If you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishment"]. The problem is the inevitable misfires, misidentification, misunderstanding and the unfortunate possibility that an innocent person in such a built up and urban area as the ones being affected will also meet the end of a bullet. In Afghanistan such an error is a statistic, but here in the civilised world it's a tragedy and should not be facilitated.

For the same reason my solution of bombing the affected areas like I wanted to do in france in 2005 would also not work here but it's not like I've gone soft in my old-age or anything - no. I believe in the death penalty for certain offences such as terrorism and what we are witnessing in the UK right now judging from the looks of those innocent victims and witnesses to the violence, mark my words - is terrorism.

Source:BBC News / Sky News
Photo Source: The Telegraph

Friday, August 05, 2011

Senate confirms new US Military Leadership

The United States Senate cleared a staggering backlog of routine military officer promotions and confirmed pending presidential nominations for some top officers this week.


Chief among these was the confirmation of General Martin E. Dempsey [right] as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is now confirmed to replace retiring Admiral Mike Mullen in September as the US Military's top dog.


The Senate also confirmed General Raymond T. Odierno to replace Dempsey as Chief of Staff of the Army. Odierno oversaw the disestablishment of US Joint Forces Command at a ceremony yesterday in Suffolk, Va. shuttering a 6000-strong command on the advice of former SecDef Robert Gates to save millions of dollars.

Admiral Jonathan Greenert was confirmed as the next Chief of Naval Operations to replace retiring Admiral Gary Roughead in September and Air Force General William Fraser III as Commander, U.S. Transportation Command.

The most urgent appointment was that of Admiral James A. "Sandy" Winnefeld Jr., who not 48 hours after his Senate confirmation, was sworn in as the 9th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday. This followed the vacation of the post by General James E. "Hoss" Cartwright [left] who had his retirement ceremony at the 8th & I, Marine Barracks in Washington D.C. on Wednesday after almost 40 years of service.

Admiral Winnefeld was replaced as Commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD by the first Army officer to hold the position, General Charles Jacoby who also received confirmation [and a fourth star] on Tuesday.

Other appointments were not so urgent but were also confirmed before the Senate recessed until after the Labour Day weekend in September. They included confirmations made after approval for UNETIDA appointments were granted by the UN Security Council in July. U.S. Air Force Colonel “Rockets” Thompson, was confirmed as Missile Defence Commander [Northern] replacing Brigadier General “Ballista” Jackson who will now retire in November. U.S Marine Colonel "Whopper" Creedon was confirmed as Director of Intelligence and will assume duties in December. Creedon will be replaced by U.S. Navy Captain “Barnacle” Strakovski as Director of Special Operations.

The 2500+ confirmations were approved by voice vote and without discussion. They put in place one of the single-largest changes in decades in U.S. military leadership that began with Leon Panetta's appointment as Secretary of Defence on July 1.

Monday, August 01, 2011

Forever was too long a wait

I’m not going to be one of those reviewers who feel they have some sense of entitlement to “the best game ever” in Duke Nukem Forever. This was a wholly unrealistic expectation to have for a game that took 14 years to develop. Due to it changing entire design teams, developers and even engines over the years, the project had to reset and start from scratch on several occasions each with a new level of perseverance and patience. It's predecessor 1996's Duke Nukem 3D was released at a time when games were changing and for the better, Quake began using full polygonal assets and that came out in the same year as Duke 3D, it was the way of the future.

While graphically inferior in every respect, Duke was popular because it did everything differently to Quake. Duke travelled to deserts, cities, alien hives, went underwater and into space, not just dark Gothic dungeons. When playing Duke you had a sense of adventure and of course there was a wealth of interaction with the environment that was arguably never surpassed. It was fun, both in design and execution. It’s safe to say that games evolved to be more like the idea of Duke only with the technology employed by Quake.

There have been hundreds of First Person Shooters [FPS] since then and many of them have surpassed, their progenitors on every way. Halo, Half Life, Crysis, Counter Strike, Thief, Battlefield and Jedi Knight all brought different aspects to the table in terms of story, multiplayer, variety and action and most have more than one entry in their franchise to add to their success. To expect a Duke sequel to be superior not only to itself, but to the other games that have established their ideas over the intervening decade and a half would only lead to a bitter disappointment. So to preserve the sense of nostalgia and love I had for Duke 3D, I went into Duke Nukem Forever with an open mind, lowered expectations and suppressed suppositions. I said I would do my best to regard the game as a simple sequel to something that has gone before and not a reflection of every great idea that has been spawned in FPSs since 1996. Then and only then could my review be as unbiased as possible.

The first thing I want to say is that the game makes a point at each and every turn [many hilarious] how it’s not like other shooters. An EDF soldier offers Duke “power armour” and points to a representation of Master Chief’s armour from Halo, to which Duke responds: “Power armour is for pussies!” However I think he should have taken it because in Duke Forever, Duke has no armour! Every hit he takes damages his “ego” which is like a shield that recharges once it’s not being hit. This is also something that is held over from modern shooters in which you can take a few hits in succession before you succumb to death. Again this is fine in those shooters but here you’re Duke Nukem and as such, he should be able to take far more punishment than he does. I’m not saying he should just stand out in the open and magically absorb every bullet and grenade like on some impromptu "God Mode", but the system in place is so weak that you may not even have time to take down a single target before you have to duck for cover to regenerate – and you may also not be able to take down the enemies quickly enough anyway because you’re not carrying the most effective weapon for that foe because you can only carry two!

That's right - FPSs grounded in some level of reality like the spate of modern military shooters allow the player to carry one or two weapons like a rifle and/or sub machine gun and a sidearm. You may get a few grenades and perhaps a knife if you’re lucky. Of course in these games you can aim for your enemy’s head and he’ll go down in one shot just as you’d expect. Duke Nukem is different however, nothing is grounded in reality and therefore this kind of restriction is meaningless. Duke’s enemies are tough aliens, and similar in strength to those that have appeared in Duke3D. You may need to unload half a machine gun clip into one to drop it and some can even withstand an RPG or two to the face. However even though the enemies won’t drop with one or two shots, the developers have decided to saddle Duke with the same realistic restrictions that the modern shooters employ. Duke is supposed to be the strongest and toughest man in the world, he should be able to carry a pistol, shotgun, machine gun, railgun, a laser rifle, an RPG launcher, Shrink Ray, Freeze Thrower and The Devastator all around on his back with full ammo for each without even breaking a sweat. But no, now Duke can now only carry two weapons in addition to 4 mines and 4 pipebombs at a time!!! This is bullshit!! Duke shouldn’t have to choose what weapons he carry about with him at a given moment! He shouldn’t have to think tactically – he’s Duke Nukem! - he should be able to just blow shit up at will, not scrounge around on the floor for a shotgun when he’s out of ammo for his RPG. This is not fun, it’s frustrating.

It's not all bad. The level of world interaction is extremely impressive. Duke 3D was famous for being able to “activate” and interact with almost everything. Duke could just walk up to anything that wasn’t a wall and if you pressed the spacebar 90% of the time something would happen. Vending machines would dispense products, toilets would flush and he could even proposition strippers to show him their breasts in return for money while suggesting “Shake it Baby!” Those demanding that same interactivity won’t be disappointed, in fact you are encouraged to explore the world [when not being shot at] and in many of the cases where Duke first interacts with an object such as bar bells he gets a boost to his ego permitting him to be able to withstand more damage in combat. Especially rewarding are some mini-games which crop up, these include pool, poker, slot machines and a very well coded air hockey table. Success at these games will win you more ego.

The world the developers have created is actually quite fascinating. It’s as if all America has become “Dukeified”. There is a system of government, a military, a police force and an executive branch led by the president who doesn’t really like Duke, probably because he is more popular than the President. General Graves, the EDF commander pretty much lets Duke go off on his own missions without interference and with any and all resources he sees fit. Duke himself lives in one of the tallest buildings in “the city” in a lavish multi level apartment that is above “The museum of Duke” which contains statues and paintings [all of Duke] as well as many of his artifacts from his past accomplishments like the Cycloid Emperor’s eye he used to kick the field goal with at the end of Duke 3D. Duke also has his own casino, strip club and fast food franchise that you’ll encounter as the game progresses. Everyone on the planet knows who Duke is, every girl wants to screw him, every man thinks he’s awesome and every kid wants his autograph.

This game is far more a trip down memory lane than a competent shooter but it's all sadly perhaps a little too late. The crass toilet humour which was admittedly hilarious to see in a video game when one was in their early 20's is sadly no longer appealing to those now in their mid-30's. As one reviewer pointed out - a significant portion of the guys who were legally old enough to play the original at launch are now are worried about exposing their children to the kind of degenerate humour and blatant degradation of women on display here - and I can see his point. You see Duke may not have evolved, but his audience has.

Final Verdict: Not worth the wait to be honest. 2 or 3 years too old graphically, 10 years to late with everything else. Some very well designed set pieces stocked with nostalgically familiar weapons and enemies can't save this average shooter from vanishing up it's own arse. Buy it on budget if you really must.

Colonel Creedon Rating: 45%