To the Front Line: Fury Movie Review

Not for the faint hearted, Fury is full on with blood, death and gore from the opening credits. Starring Brad Pitt, it tells the story of a group of ordinary soldiers on the front line in Germany in April 1945, just months before the end of the Second World War. 

The movie opens with Staff Sergeant Don Collier (Pitt) having to come to terms with his ill-equipped and ill-prepared replacement assistant driver and gunner after his original crew member is killed in battle. The replacement is Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist who has never even been inside a tank before. 

The film is much a story about Norman becoming the soldier he’s expected to be and the rest of the crew coming to accept him in some of the most terrifying and difficult environments anyone could ever face. I felt the movie tried hard with this but it did struggle. There is a lot of raw emotion and great acting, especially from Pitt and Lerman. Pitt is exceptional as the Sergeant on the verge of breaking down but struggling to keep it together for his crew. 

However, the character development is a little paltry despite some good performances and is easily overshadowed by the war itself. The fight scenes are gripping viewing, brutal, relentless and bloody; a believable testament to the realities of war. The sets are also very impressive. Purely judging this as a war film, Fury is a great two hour flick. 

It gets 8/10.

Blast Them All to Hell: World of Tanks Review

Pick up your weapons and rations because this week we’re heading to the battlefield to take a look at free-to-play video game, World of Tanks. 

This war game is available on the Xbox 360, the PC and through iOS. As you can probably hazard from the title, this game is based on the military doom bringers. 

World of Tanks is an online multiplayer where players are split into teams and must defeat all of their opponents to win. There are a few different types of game but generally you win by doing the above. 

The more you play, the more experience points and silver you earn which can be spent on upgrading your fleet of tanks to better ones or by improving their armour and guns. There are some upgrades you can only buy with real cash but given this is a free game no player can really turn their nose up at it. You can play perfectly happily though without ever having to spend a penny. 

Game play wise the controls are straight forward. You use your joysticks to move and turn the vehicle and the right trigger (on the Xbox 360 controller) to fire. Moving the tanks forward is easy enough but moving backwards and turning in reverse can be difficult. It is also worth remembering that how fast you can move, how well armoured and how much damage you cause all depend on which tank you are driving and what upgrades it carries. 

The game can be very frustrating to begin with as you will get blown up a lot, but once you start acquiring better death machines and become more tactful in how you play, it does become a lot more fun. 

Upgrading the tanks can be confusing to those who know little about the vehicles (like myself) as they are modelled off their real world counterparts and it is hard to decide at times what to upgrade to and what to avoid all together. Just because some tanks are higher level than the ones you may have does not necessarily mean they are any good. If you are going to upgrade your tanks, I would take advice from more seasoned players or do your research online.