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THE ITALIAN JOB
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: SCi
Platform: PS2
Genre: Action
Rating: Everyone

The Italian Job, the film, is one of those campy, London-in-the-swinging-’60s numbers where Michael Caine plays a crude and ugly cockney guy that gets laid a lot and the notoriously effeminate Noel Coward plays a very heterosexual and tough English gangland boss. Whatever, boys. The basic premise of the film is that the English make better cars and drivers than the Italians. Actually, the premise is that the English are better than the Italians, period. It begins with the demolishing of the greatest Ferrari ever made (the Dino) and then proceeds to pit Jaguars, Rolls Royces, MGs, and even Minis against the glorious Italian tradition of finely crafted sports cars. Nothing is more European than a national car rivalry. Rockstar lets you step into Michael Caine’s shoes and race the shit out of the Italians.

You get to drive up to 14 different vehicles through London, the Alps, and Turin as you try to avoid the Italian Carabinieri in their Fiat 500s. It’s like a cross between rally racing and stunt driving. The highlight is a tear through a traffic jam in Turin where you get to drive those cute little Minis into courtyards, over roofs, through underground passages, and inside water mains. In the film, just before this massive car chase scene begins, there’s a shot of this fat English fop who stops an average Italian dude (who’s played about as sympathetically as a black-faced sambo in an early silent film) to ask directions. The guy answers in Italian and the Brit shakes his head and says, “Bloody foreigners.”

Fucking Brits. “Porco Dio” (I’m biting my hand while shooting the evil eye). Even as an Italian that hated this movie, I fucking loved being Michael Caine and tearing through the streets of my homeland. It was so good it made me hate myself.

Vito Ossobucco (Guest Reviewer)

SPIDER-MAN
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Treyarch
Platform: X-Box, GameCube, PS2, PC
Genre: Action
Rating: Everyone

Though the movie is a piece of shit, I had a blast playing this game. In the same way that JKII Outcast ruled because you could kick ass playing as a Jedi, the Spidey game hooks you up with all the classic Spider-Man powers (and a few new ones), and half the fun is just swinging around New York, shooting webbing all over the place. The game is a great stand-alone superhero game. You progress through 24 levels and you’re given extra skills based on how long you play. Your powers include everything from being able to shoot and swing with your webs to making web gloves and web domes. The combat moves would make most fighting games envious, and there’s also a new “zip lining” power, which is basically the hook-shot move from Zelda 64. The outdoor levels are where this game really shines. You can even hear by-standers make comments as you zoom past them. The graphics are crisp, fast, and have even more depth than the movie. Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe do the voice-overs for their characters and Bruce “Evil Dead” Campbell is your guide throughout the game.

The one gripe I have is that since you have all the Spidey powers, and one of those powers is the ability to stick to walls, you wind up sticking to a lot of walls unintentionally (especially when you’re playing indoor levels). It can also get a little confusing since the game requires you to play around with the camera angles, which leaves you a little disoriented after awhile.

The good far outweighs the bad, however. Treyarch has managed to capture the essence of what it is to be Spider-Man, and it’s nothing like that turd they put in movie theaters.

THX1138

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