It’s the first ever event Eggplante attended (even before this site was in existence, actually!), and we’re about to heading into our third week on the Canadian Music Week circuit! We’ve been graced by performances from Lights, The Midway State, The Artist Life, Stereos, and seen countless more stars. Hedley, Karl Wolf, Girlicious, and Daughtry have all made appearances in the past, and 2011 isn’t looking to be very different. And what a sweet thing that is.

The lineup for the festival itself, where tons upon tons of bands show up to perform, and even more fans show up to watch, has been announced, and the list is nothing short of woah. 800 artists, 55 venues (yep, FIFTY-FIVE), all taking place over five nights of Canadian Music greatness. And of course, it wouldn’t be CMW without the fact that you can see whatever you want by just buying a single wristband! Pretty incredible – this is the only place on the planet that you can get this much live music content for a single price. Go Canada.

Some of the big names you can find at the festival are Down With Webster at Massey Hall (we’ll be at that show!), Melissa Etheridge & Serena Ryder, and Good Charlotte at The Phoenix, just to name three out of, you know… eight hundred.

The Indies have also been announced, where we’ve seen Canadian music greats win awards, and we’re starting to usher in new bands this year with names like Hollerado, Shad, Bombay Bicycle Club, and Janelle Monae. Hannah Georgas & Desperate Union will also be making an appearance to round out the night, in addition to other names that will no doubt be checking out the stage from the green room. You know, the one we’ve reported from every year.

We’re still waiting on details about FanFest this year, and of course the CRMA nominees include some huge names like Hedley, Michael Buble, and the Bieber, but the Song of the Year award is what I’m personally really waiting for. Hedley’s “Perfect”, Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet”, Fefe Dobson’s “Ghost”, Down With Webster’s “Your Man”, and the Young Artists for Haiti version of “Wavin’ Flag” were all songs I listened to repeatedly throughout 2010, and while they each deserve recognition for their songs, only one can take it home. You can count on Eggplante to report on the entire week’s events, including a more focused approach to the festival shows themselves, including reporting from Massey Hall, The Phoenix Concert Theatre, and of course the Royal York Hotel to get those interviews I know you’re all after!

See you in March when it all goes down!

Stereos were the Summer Girl hitmakers of 2009, and they returned in 2010 with their latest album, Uncontrollable. A bit more dance, a bit less refined (but in the best way possible), this album still has that DNA of any hit Stereos song. In our playlist, we’ve got the original Stereos album back to back, and they flow between each other nicely, but somehow evolve fluidly into heavier, darker songs as it goes along.

Pat, the frontman of the band, continues to take up most of the writing duties, and he does a great job. Lyrics mean something, which you could argue you’ll find in any other album, but these ones have been well thought out and make more semblance of sense than most albums I’ve listened to. Some tracks are mixed with buddy and manager Mark Spicoluk, who has worked with artists like Avril Lavigne and Sum 41. The sounds are entirely Stereos, but the roots run deep to other Canadian artists.

Collaborations on the album are good, although nothing like the Jhevon Paris partnership they had going on last year. The first and sixth tracks have Collette Carr and Reema Major singing on them, respectively. Collette has an oddly Ke$ha-like quality, and Reema Major is a direct rip off of Nicki Minaj. They add to the album quite a bit – without them, the songs would be far worse off.

Now, with all the good always comes some bad. Even given all the positives above, I just can’t help but feel that the album is, well, unfinished. Just by quantity, ten songs seems a bit thin (the industry standard is getting closer to 13 nowadays), and by quality, there is an eerily unpolished quality about the album. I might be a bit easier on this album than I should be because I am actually a Stereos fan, but in all honesty, the album does feel just a hair of a beat off here and there. Elements don’t always work together, even though they do a good job of trying to bring together some techno, hip hop, and punk sounds. Maybe it’s just too much, and Stereos is trying too hard to remake the jambalaya they made the first time around. This one just has too many flavours that muddle together a bit too much.

Value here? Well, their debut album had a cool Deluxe Edition which included 25 (yes, twenty-five) tracks for something like twenty bucks. That was comprised of 13 tracks on the disc, and a new track every month for a year. That’s a pretty great deal, and the first time I had seen that done. Great way to service the fans, keep the creativity going, and get some new stuff out there. The first bunch of songs were actually brand new songs, while the last bunch tended to be more remixes of the first. Either way you slice it, twenty bucks for twenty-five songs. Good deal.

This time around, you’re paying the standard twelve or thirteen dollars for a ten track album, and there’s no option to upgrade to a similar deal like last year.

The tourist is one of those movies that starts out making you think “okay, what is going on here?” and then explains it with the revelations that occur between the characters throughout the film. Except that there were no revelations here, no reveals, and nothing that let me abandon that feeling. I felt like I was always waiting for the movie to start, but not because there wasn’t any action (because believe me, there was action!), but rather because there were little assumptions made at the beginning of the film that didn’t ever really get explained!

The movie picked up in action slowly, and unravelled itself, but I still walked away from it thinking that there just wasn’t much substance. To this day, I am not sure how I feel about the flick. It makes sense as a comedy-drama-thriller film, but I’m not sure it really excels in either of the categories. So rather than give you a synopsis of the film, I’ll tell you about the actors.

Angelina Jolie isn’t hot. She’s beautiful. And this movie proves it. In every scene, Jolie was put together, wearing something silky that ran the entire length of her body, which you’d think would get old after a while. Nope. Hot as ever from the first minute to the last.

Johnny Depp, on the other hand, always seemed to be in a bit of a state of disarray, but that was the character he was playing, and it serves him well that he got a Golden Globe nomination for the role (as did Angelina, by the way). His acting was as good as I’d ever seen it, and while I’m not a fan of Depp’s other movies, his role had me laughing and playing along with the idiocy of his character the entire time.

Oh, and Paul Bettany plays a cop. Review over.

I love the James Bond franchise. From the guns to the gadgets, and the airplanes to the Aston Martins, James Bond is synonymous with luxury, clean-cut bad-assery. And this game is no different. Except for the clean cut part.

See, the game has beautiful opening cinematics that would make any game made in the last year blush. The mouths on characters don’t quite match their speech, but I’ve yet to find a game that really does, so it’s kind of a non-issue. The polish on the game is pretty great, and while it isn’t the longest game I’ve ever played, it does have some of my favourite moments in video games. Ever. Read on to see why.

First up, the driving is ridiculously amazing. Maybe it’s being behind the wheel of a DBS, or perhaps the fact that it just feels like you’re going 180 kph without a 3D-TV. It does make sense that the driving is great, considering that the game is developed by Bizarre Creations, the creators of the Project Gotham Racing Series. And there are tons of these racing scenes – boats, hovercraft, and of course, Aston Martins. The game actually ends in a car chase across the glorious nation of Greece, where you can see the stunning vistas of the Acropolis and the Rio Antirrio bridge.

And that’s where my problem lies. Even going at 180kph, it would take an hour of driving to see those two locations, because they’re nearly 200 kilometres apart in real life! Now, that wouldn’t bother any normal person, but you see the name at the top of this page? Yeah, I’m Greek, and that detail bugs me.

Thrilling moments are what Bond is known for, and there are some really original ones in Blood Stone. The most thrilling of the game is in a fast-paced escape of a tunnel boring machine. Very thrilling, incredible detailing on the machine, it was probably the best part of the game. And it only lasted twenty seconds.

There is a reason for that though, and that is the developers wanting to move onto other gameplay mechanics. There is a ton of variety in Blood Stone; you always feel like you’re doing something new, whether it’s releasing exhaust valves or destroying planes, controlling cranes or free running across rooftops, there is a ton of gameplay packed onto this disc, and it should be enjoyed by everyone. The fast paced nature of it means that you’re going through the game pretty quickly, and they didn’t really pack enough missions onto the disc (the game is over in about five or six hours) to make this an absolute buy. With that said, rent it, because you’ll get a decent fill of James Bond with Blood Stone… at least until the next movie rolls around in a couple of years.

When I started playing Blood Stone, within the first half hour or so, I had the same feeling when I played Quantum of Solace: “Alright, let’s get through this so I can be done with it.” Not the best experience you can possibly have with a video game, but nonetheless, it did deliver some pretty incredible action moments. Either way, any game that makes you want to see the end credits just to say you finished it isn’t really doing the audience any favours.

Blood Stone is that disappointment you find when watching the latest movie in your favourite series. Ostensibly, it sucks, but you love it because it’s your favourite series. That may only be true for myself as I’m such a Bond fan, and truth be told, you could rebrand this game with any other characters and it would still make sense, but the fact is that this isn’t any other franchise. This is James Bond.

by John Kalanderopoulos, Gaming Reviews
December 1, 2010

Oh look at this, a music game. At least this one doesn’t have a bunch of copycats. You know, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Band Hero, You Rock Guitar, et cetera, et cetera, all fighting with each other for space on your accessory shelf? Yeah, it gets annoying – because they’re all guitar based games! Well here is the second iteration of something thankfully unique in the music game-genre. Enter DJ Hero 2.

As with any music game, the play doesn’t vary too much once you get started. Up the difficulty and you add another element or note to play (in this case, the complexity just goes through the roof), and you continue to challenge yourself and test your skill. And since this is the second iteration of the game, I can say they made it significantly harder this time around. But for those newbies that haven’t the original DJ Hero, the tutorial the game starts you off with is pretty great. Even if you’ve played other music games, this isn’t exactly the standard guitar controller, so they do a good job of explaining every little detail of the game.

You might think that a tutorial would be unnecessary, given that this thing only has three buttons to start with. Actually, having five (or even six) buttons would’ve been alright. But the way the game gets more complex is through the return of its fader and effects knob. Some very interesting dynamics, especially when coupled with the fact that you’re supposed to move your hand up and down on the turntable as if scratching. Good luck with that. At least they’ve made it so that existing users can reuse the same turntable controller they had from the first game, although that does also mean that Activision hasn’t innovated on the controller at all, so believe it or not, gameplay is essentially the same. (Shocker, right?)

Now of course, these games always come down to one thing: music. If you know the music, this game makes you want to sing, bob your head, and get into it. It really makes you think you can be a DJ (on Easy, anyways). And any game that makes you feel like you can be the character you’re playing is pretty phenomenal stuff. With that said, I didn’t know most of the music. Sure, I recognized some Rihanna, Eminem, and Iyaz, but there were some songs in there that just didn’t appeal to me because I had no idea what the hell they were. And they were mixed with even more obscure songs. Not my thing.

At the end of the day, DJ Hero is fun if you know the songs, and like the mashups. The mixes are done really well, and while I’d like there to be the ability to play through with a bunch more different mixes (for example, being able to pick and choose which tracks get dropped on top of which), I can’t complain considering the usual music games are all exactly the same song over and over again. And how many times can you really play Dani California?

DJ Hero is worth a rent, if you’ve got the original controller. Otherwise, you’re SOL (that’s shit-out-of-luck, by the way), and you’ll just have to buy it. Read up on the set list and see what you like, and if there’s enough there, then buy it. It’s a good game and worth taking a look at.

This game has been a long time coming. Eagerly anticipated for many many months, Fable III promised to finally fix a lot of the problems with the first two games, while elevating the storytelling to new heights. Lucky for you, you’ve probably read about that in other reviews. Here is my take on a game that doesn’t include making good on past broken promises because I’m probably the first person on the planet to play this game without having played the first three. This review has taken so long because I’ve been busy enthralling myself in the epicness that is Fable III. Alright, epic might be an overstatement, but the game has some pretty great qualities. Read on to find out what I loved and what was a complete blasphemy to the RPG genre.

Let’s go chronologically here. The first thing you see when you crack open Fable III are the phenomenal cinematics. The game opens with a very clever animation (there’s a chicken!), fantastic design ambitions, and sets a pretty stunning stage. There’s no way these characters are playable. And sadly, I’m right – they’re not. Therein lies my first problem with Fable III: the fantastic cinematics at the beginning is one of the only times you ever see such beautiful polygons anywhere in the entire game. I will say that water rendered in-game looks pretty phenomenal and are the only part ripped out of the opening cinematics almost verbatim. With that said, the game still looks pretty great, although not Xbox 360 great. Then again, it’s worlds above Xbox great, so in the graphics department, maybe the game ain’t too bad.

Combat in the game is a sour point and sadly, there are no redeeming qualities here. I do like the fact that it’s ridiculously easy, but I feel like I’m cheating.The same enemies come at your over and over again, in the same pattern, requiring the same button smashing technique to shoo them away. Every battle ends with a bigger version of the same enemy and a slow-mo takedown. Nothing creative here, and certainly nothing we haven’t seen done before. In the 80s. So long as you have enough potions, you’ll never die, which may sound good, but it doesn’t really give you the threat you would need to actually put some effort into it.

The bad continues when we get to talk about polish. The game is ridiculously unfinished. Choppy movements, mouths disjointed to character speech, object detection issues, camera problems, irregular movement, it’s got every problem in this department. Ever seen a shovel go right through a dog? Play Fable III.

There are a lot of clever hidden jokes in Fable III that redeem its qualities, and although it may seem like I’m harping on the bad points, the game is really superb. The storyline is its crown jewel, and it evolves naturally, even if it has some boring quests that have you running to and fro across the map. There are interesting story moments that make the game truly unique; playing a Lute for spectators (and the game calls this Lute Hero, by the way – I told you they had a lot of clever hidden jokes), performing in plays, saving children from evil barons, and the list goes on.

The story is one you’ve heard – you become the king of a land where you’ve made promises and have to fulfill them. A story of good or evil. It makes sense, and the story is actually quite robust. It isn’t a game where every decision supposedly matters, it’s a game where every decision matters. Period.

Based on what I’ve heard of Fable and Fable II, Peter Molyneux’s latest iteration makes good on a lot of promises, but still forgets to polish the game. Either way, it is worth noting that the game more than makes up for it in cinematic quality, unique story moments, and an overall feeling of accomplishment. Fable III is worth playing. Albion needs you.

by John Kalanderopoulos, Gaming Reviews
November 15, 2010

I have been enjoying first-person shooter games since I can remember playing on my computer.  I remember watching my father beat Wolfenstein 3D, I remember picking up Doom, and then moving on to Star Wars: Dark Forces.  There is something about experiencing events from a first-person view that really engages me.  I have been privileged to remember playing Quake, MechWarrior, GoldenEye 64, Rainbow Six, Medal of Honor, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Deus Ex, Halo, Far Cry, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and the list can go on and on.  Up to that point I had heard about the Call of Duty franchise but was truly blown away by Modern Warfare.  Until then (for the most part) first-person shooters had either been based in World War II and you were killing Nazis, or was based in the future and you were killing aliens.  Call of Duty took the franchise into the foreseeable future, tossing any political correctness aside, and brought the player into the modern theatre of war.

When I heard about Call of Duty: Black Ops I was definitely excited, but also hesitant.  I loved the first Modern Warfare but thought that Modern Warfare 2 was a little bit lack luster and felt like a reiteration of the first one.  It really didn’t give me anything new.  I also heard that the developer of Black Ops was not Infinity Ward as it had been with the previous Modern Warfare games, but rather Treyarch.  They’ve previously developed Call of Duty: World at War, another game that really didn’t rank high for me.  So while I did start playing with excitement, I also didn’t have high expectations, despite the anticipation amongst the video game community.

The only game I have ever played online was the first Modern Warfare.  I do not like online play because I find it too often repetitious and so when I review a game I pretty much just look at it from a single player campaign perspective.  So not only does the story have be top notch, but has to be long enough for me to justify purchasing a game.  This game has to have one of the best story lines for a Call of Duty game, if not for any realistic first person shooter that I have experienced.  The game starts you off being strapped to a chair, your hands bloodied, and you talking to some shadowy figure.  Through this interrogation, the story is told through flashbacks of your career as a black ops soldier.  You revisit past operations in Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam to name a few.  My one gripe with the game at large is that it seems more that you’re watching a spy movie rather than playing a game.  The action is too often interrupted by cut scenes, and while it makes for a very fast story line, it very much detracts from the game play itself by removing you from the experience.

The actions taken by the player are what you would expect from any Call of Duty game, or really any first-person shooter: lots of explosions, enemies spawning by the hundreds, and a good variety of weaponry.  While the game tries to provide a lot of variety of things to do, like driving vehicles or operating different turrets, these moments are very short and I would have liked it if they were drawn out more so I could appreciate each one.  But the game play is most definitely very linear and doesn’t really give you a chance to enjoy the environments presented.  Visual and audio in this game is terrific, from the character renders, to the backdrops, to the score.  This game really does have all the finer touches on it though also presents a problem, as I had a lot of lagging moments and it seemed to take forever to load, but other than that it was more than enjoyable.  One little tidbit I liked was every time a level loaded was to see the title in the bottom corner become blackened as it would in a classified black operations file.

Can you imagine how Call of Duty started as a small World War II game on the PC back in 2003 that tried to rival Medal of Honor?  Now it has become one of the most commercially and critically successful franchises that the video game industry knows.  Call of Duty: Black Ops is no different and has exceeded my expectations.  The story telling does excel in this installment and though I was worried that it would be sacrificed in lieu of spending more time on the multiplayer portion of the game, I am satisfied to say that my fears were for naught.  While this game does have some minor glitches, and the load times can just seem to drag on, this is definitely worth it in the end, not just for the game play but for what the series has accomplished with their unique narrative.

by John Kalanderopoulos, Gaming Reviews
November 13, 2010

Before I begin this review, I have to preface it by saying that I am a huge Star Wars fan.  Not only have I built a Darth Vader costume (aside from the helmet), I have tried to construct my own lightsaber before giving up and just getting one of the Force FX ones.  Now given that the prequel trilogy has taken away some of the mystique, darkness, and power of the series, it still remains an epic saga.

In the first game you play as Galen Marek, a boy that Darth Vader finds on Kashyyyk (the Wookie home world) after killing his Jedi father.  Darth Vader then takes you on as a secret apprentice and you become Lord Starkiller, an assassin sent to find and kill all remaining Jedi in the galaxy who have survived Order 66 (The Great Jedi Purge).  Vader then tries to use you to infiltrate the developing Rebellion that is occurring but in the process you learn about the Light side of the force and actually become a willing member of the Rebellion, ultimately leading to a final confrontation with Darth Vader and your death.

The Force Unleashed II takes place about 6 months after the first game left off on Kamino where Vader has been attempting to clone Starkiller.  You wake up with Vader looming over your body but the memories of the original Starkiller still haunt you and you immediately break out of the facility on Kamino and go looking for your allies from the previous game.

I played through the first game 2 or 3 times (including the downloadable content) and aside from some detection issues with the force powers, I loved every moment of it.  What was really capturing was the storyline and how they not only described the formation of the Rebellion but how they linked Episodes III and IV together.  I found that this game fell short from even comparing with the first.  Other than an appearance of Yoda on Dagobah, and Darth Vader hiring Boba Fett, I found there was little real tie in to the Star Wars universe as compared with the first.  Another frustrating point (and this is true about most if not all Star Wars games) is the ability of random troopers to have force-resistant shields, or even to be wielding lighsabers.  I don’t remember that from any of the movies.

The audio matches up with any Star Wars game as being a large, orchestral score but the visuals are where this game really shines though.  The graphics are truly amazing and I really didn’t appreciate how good they were until I was running around on Kamino in the rain and I could see the steam coming off of my lightsabers from the water hitting the blades.  That being said, I did find that the levels seemed to repeat themselves and that I was going through the same hallway, or taking the same road moment after moment.  I would have liked to see some variety in the level design.

The game still has the same detection issues as the first, and I find that the camera did not move fast enough.  But these are minor gripes in the end.  The real flaw with this game is the repetitive actions by the player.  Was there a reason we couldn’t pilot a ship or vehicle considering that Star Wars is truly about space battles?  After the first hour, I found myself killing the same Stormtroopers with the same force powers over and over again.  I actually got bored and I really just wanted to get to the end to see how the story played out.

Sequels, in video games more than any other genre, are supposed to be grander, finer tuned, and more fun than their predecessor.  Think about games like Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed, or Call of Duty where the sequel just gets bigger, more intense, and more fun that the ones before.  This game falls short on all those expectations.  While I find the ideas in the Force Unleashed intriguing, I find much of the story telling flawed.  You, as Starkiller’s clone (not even the original), have so much power that you can actually rival Darth Vader?  This is one game whose lack of faith I find disturbing.

by John Kalanderopoulos, Gaming Reviews
November 13, 2010

Welcome to the Caribbean, where you are now in charge of a small island and its populace.  Anyone familiar with the Tropico franchise will have no trouble understanding this game at all, because it is all too similar to its previous iterations.  The game begins as any other standard real-time strategy one would, with a tutorial describing the setting and explaining how to play.  You are now “El Presidente”, a dictator in a small banana republic and it is your job to see to this island’s prosperity.  There is nothing about this game that is politically correct.

The basic idea is simple enough: build up your island, enact policies to keep your people happy, and conduct business for the betterment of your little patch of dirt.  That being said, I found that in terms of game play, you are required to have quite a bit of patience.  The game tutorial tells the player right off the bat that they need to be patient in order to see the results of any changes that they make.  I will say that the game has added a few significant changes from the original that did make me enjoy the game more.  Apart from different constructs like roads and nuclear testing, the player can customize their avatar within the game, and actually construct a statue of themselves on their island.  And while customization is commonplace nowadays, it is still a nice touch that I appreciated.

Much of this is akin to the original Tropico that came out in 2001 and it seems very little has changed.  The graphics are poor at best considering this is a PC (it has also come out for the Xbox 360) game in 2010 and the audio track feels like it’s on a loop with the same midi-quality music playing in the background.  Not to mention the voice of your “advisor” becomes annoying after a while (think Navi in Ocarina of Time, every time she said “listen”).

I can’t say that I really enjoyed this game.  It might be the game play style, it may be the subject matter, but all in all I did not really have any fun.  I really enjoy real-time strategy games, but I miss the games where you can build a wall around your town, gather resources, create an army, and march against your enemy.  I enjoy micromanaging but it seems that more and more games are pulling away from that.