Over my years of having an opinion on things, people have always said roughly the same thing "Rift, you surprisingly well-hung genius, if you think you're so smart when it comes to movies, games, books etc. why don't you write reviews?" For a very simple reason - I've never really felt the need. And yet, here I am reviewing one of the biggest movies of the year, which just about everyone and their dog will see. Why? Because I feel the urgent need to tell you, the denizens of the internet, not to. Just....don't. If I were to go into details now why you shouldn't, then you wouldn't have to read the rest of this, and I'd have to go and do something constructive for a change.

The story revolves once again about everyones "favourite" dorky high-school kid Sam Witwicky (once again played by Hollywood's new favourite one-trick pony Shia LaBeouf), but now he's going to college, which puts strain on his parents, his relationship with his girlfriend Mikaela (the increasingly plastic Megan Fox). Add onto that the fact that he comes into contact with a shard of the now destroyed Allspark from the last movie (which happened to be in his jacket for 2 freaking years - I know he's supposed to be a typical teenager, but that's a stretch even for clinically-disorganised old me) he now is seeing symbols that the Decepticons want to.......oh forget it, no-one who wants to see this movie is really going to care about the story, even if it was worth caring about in the first place.

This wouldn't be so bad if the characters were worth taking an interest in. Again, forget about it. For a movie called "Transformers" there isn't really that much emphasis on the robots themselves. Most of the time is spent with Shia and Megan on screen playing out some pathetic high-school romantic comedy with some disposable government and military filler characters whose main job is to either spout crap expostitional dialogue, look manly or a bit of each. Okay, surely the big robots can make up for the excessive human element, right? Let's see..........nope. With the exception of the ever-deceptive Starscream and newcomer Jetfire (an ancient Decepticon turned Autobot who transforms into an SR-71 Blackbird), the automated cast is shockingly neglected - the enormous Devastator is reduced to digging a big hole and being the butt of a pathetic testicle joke, Ratchet and Ironhide (who survived the last movie) gets at most 3 lines between them, and the list goes on. Even worse, those who do get some serious airtime are hopeless, especially the awful "comic-relief" characters of Mudflap and Skids. Words really can't describe how painful they are to listen to. Put simply, the crew spent too much time digging through the list of old Transformers to give the new look and not enough time making them worth more than a cursory glance. It's what I like to refer to as the X-Men 3 effect.

It's about now that the millions of devoted fans of the previous Transformers will tell me that all that is excused by the action. This should be where the movie shines - after all, it isn't that great in the other departments. But no, it doesn't. You'd think a Michael Bay movie could at least get robot fighting right, however it lacks even that basic quality. It doesn't help that the overly intricate Transformer designs, while looking quite good in still shots, are hopeless for fight scenes. One example has Optimus Prime fighting 3 Decepticons in a forest. What you wind up with is a gun-metal grey Megatron and a gun-metal grey Starscream and a gun-metal grey....tank thing fighting a mostly gun-metal grey Optimus, with only a vague hint of blue and red to tell you which pile of scrap metal and gears you're supposed to be rooting for.

It gets worse. One reviewer described the action sequences as like watching the cameraman shooting the scene after his 50th Red Bull during sunset with extra lens flare and a mournfully billowing US flag in the foreground. He turned out to be right on so many levels. Picking Autobot from Decepticon was hard enough before the cameraman developed Parkinson's and started pointing the camera at the sun at every opportunity. Not that you could see them even then, since this is a Michael Bay moie, so not only does everything have to explode, but long, lingering shots of every kind of US military hardware take precedence over the robots the bloody movie is named after. For future movies, Michael, try spending less time dry-humping the back of an M1 Abrahms and more time making sure people can see what the hells going on.

So we've got bad story, iffy characters and action sequences that would be alright if you could see them. You'd think that adds up to an almost average movie. But it's easily worse than the sum of it's parts, simply because this movie oozes contempt for it's intended audience, which supposedly includes me. You've got crap human characters to make the story "relatable", when the bipedal automatons would have been perfectly capable of doing it themselves (hell, Wall-E managed to do better with robots that don't even resemble humans that barely uttered a word). You've got writing and humour which aims to please the easily satisfied [insert vague genre here] Movie crowd. You've got action sequences that try to tell me that big explosions and excess screen clutter equals intense and exciting as opposed to the Mongolian Clusterf**k it is. In short, this movie tried to be condescending with me, trying to coax me to lowering my standards so that I can think the $11 I spent to see it was worth the money and that I'd do it again when the inevitable sequel comes out. See, that's the sad thing - no matter what I say, this movie will still make enough money for Paramount to successfully invade and occupy Ireland.

Overall - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is poor even by the fairly low standards of American summer movies. Avoid if you can, unless you intend to play the "take a shot whenever you feel dumber for watching this movie" drinking game.

Allow me to paint a picture here (not literally, otherwise we'd be here all day for an crudely drawn image of a laser shooting shark).

The game is Shadow of the Colossus.

It's the bird colossus, Avion. You're holding on for dear life, crawling desperately across the wing of a bird roughly the size of a 747, which is flapping like mad and barrel rolling in an attempt to throw you off. You finally get to the glowing glyph on the tip of the wing, but you can't hold on much longer. Do you hold on for dear life, or do you take the chance that you can last long enough to deliver the killing strike? You go with the latter, raise your sword and plunge it into his wing, inky blood pouring out of the wound, just as you run out of grip and start to plummet towards the earth. Suddenly the world slows, and you see the bird fall to the earth. Finally, you took him down, but the mix of emotions you're feeling right now make you unsure of how to react - do you rejoice at your triumph, mourn the death of a magnificent creature whose only crime was merely existing (he wouldn't have attacked you if you hadn't ridden into his domain and shot an arrow at him), do you....

BING!!

Obtained Trophy - Killer Of Giants (Kill 5 Colossi)

Thank you very much, I can see I killed him. Hello crappy incentives, goodbye overwhelming immersion.

People have wondered why I am against a SotC remake. Partly it's because I want Team Ico to do what they do best, ie make unbelievably good original games, but also because if it were to be remade on the PS3, it would have to have Trophies. Which would create the above scenario, and completely ruin the game. For those who have yet to play it, SotC is the undisputed master of immersion and purity of game design (some people will disagree with me, but unless they say Ico, which I haven't played, they are wrong.). The average GTA nut would have hated it because there was nothing to do except explore and kill 16 enemies. But by sticking to just that, they created a game world which sucked you in and occasionally threatened asphyxiation. Tacking on sidequests would have distracted it from it's purpose, adding a Trophy/Achievement system would have ruined it.

Which leads me onto my point. I don't hate Trophies. They can make a short game slightly less short, and even become fun little extra challenges (I still haven't managed to Beat Zico, but that doesn't stop me trying). For multiplayer games, racers and arcade games, it's not too bad. But what about the corner of the gaming market that craves a gripping story and atmosphere, areas like the survival horror and adventure genres? Don't even bother. If the average gamer is anything like me, well, for starters it would be an unwritten law that purchasing a Syphon Filter game is a prerequisite for ownership of a PSP, but we freaks would also pass over these new games, because that feeling of immersion we crave would be lost because game was insulted that we had the audacity to kill five enemies without taking any damage and decided to take its revenge by pulling us out of our little world with the subtlety of neon pink airhorn.

Let's use Dead Space as an example. Sure, it was derivative and not exactly scary, but it did manage to keep the player immersed. They even went so far as to make the HUD a part of the character. So when you first boarded the Ishimura, you felt like you were really a part of the game. It might have even managed to become scary, with groups of Necromorphs coming at you from all angles as you ran low on ammunition, but then.....

BING!!

Obtained Trophy - Doesn't matter which one, it's still pulled you back into the far more horrid real world.

This is actually the biggest concern I have about Heavy Rain. It's looking fantastic so far, and if Quantic Dream can make the game reach the ambitious goals its set for itself, then it could not only be something truly great, but it may change how we think about story and interactivity in gaming. But all that goes down the drain the moment the game decides you to pat you on the head for hiding in the closet rather than pulling a knife. The sad truth is that it'll probably happen, with Trophies being mandatory.

Sure, there may be an option to turn off notifications (I think), but if we have to have them, how about a better option than just showing them right when you're getting into it? Why not make it work like the awards in Metal Gear Solid 4, in that you only see them after you finish the game? It may not appeal to the Trophy/Achievement whores out there, but frankly, if you're playing games like this just for an useless ranking, then as far as I'm concerned you're a lost cause, because now you are essentially playing for a high score. Immersion, intrigue, character development, they now mean nothing to you, as long as your Gamerscore keeps building up. Which means that now we have a corner of the gaming world which has regressed back to the arcade days of showing off your high scores to mates. Not that bad a concept in itself, but not the kind of mentality that has a place in a story driven game.

The truth is the best games I've played don't feel the need to reward me, the player, because just experiencing them is reward enough. Helping a humble wolf become a revered deity by restoring the world to its natural beauty, unearthing a conspiracy to ship innocent people off the planet to become an energy source for a parasitic alien species, terrorising a city of talking lungfish and plenty more would probably have lost a lot of their impact if the game felt the need to give me a condescending "aren't you a good boy?" in between sections where it ties me to a table with heavy duty chains, cracks the whip and......sorry, I seem to have lost my train of thought.

OH LOOK, A DISTRACTION!!!

*runs*

Don't expect anything big, witty or even particularly special from this blog. The name says it all: I'm off. As in leaving. Not permanently, mind you. I'm going on holiday for 2-3 weeks in WA. Why? Well, that's for me to know and you not to find out. I could be on a business trip, I could be assassinating Turbo. Who knows? Not me, that's for sure. Either way, I'll be back about mid-January, so don't every panic too much.

I'll see you guys when I get back, don't have a party and destroy the place while I'm gone. Or you'll get such a beating.......