The Transmogrifier

Army of Two

2008-04-11T04:24:00.000-07:00

The Middle Ages: serfs and knights, kings and barons, hovels and castles. Trebuchets and portcullises, battering rams. Boiling hot pitch and men swinging on chandeliers with swords. The plague. Really, really bad medicine.

There were so many ways you could die horribly in the Middle Ages that people started strolling around in huge suits of armour. Or riding horses clad in more protective metal than the average sports car nowadays.

You've got to love the way the human race really enjoys shortening its own lifespan. As a race, we completely embody that scene from Indiana Jones where the guy twirls his sword for ages and Indy just shoots him.

When someone comes along and says, "Haha! I've got armour! You can't kill me with that axe now!" Someone else - perhaps with that same Indiana Jones world-weary look - promptly invents the gun.

Pimp my Armour, coming soon! Presented by Richard Holmes!

When the person in the armour staggers away, badly injured, jumps into their castle and yells, "Yeah well, I'm surrounded by thick bloody walls now! A castle - like architectural armour!"

Someone else sighs, yawns and just makes the gun bigger. Like really big. And shoots a massive hole in the castle.

Now, we've got weapons that destroy whole cities and no-one - the world over- dare twirl their sword too much.

Army of Two's whole premise - in terms of the actual action - is the idea that hundreds of years of technological progress hasn't occurred and armour still works. This means that two steroid-chugging American mercenaries (one big and butch and HARDCORE GUNPLAY, BITCH, one whiney and slight and a bit I WANNA BE A IN A BAND) dropped into the middle of an entire country of enemy troops can kill their way out of it with ease and take dozens of bullets to a metal hockey mask - at close range, no less - without curling their lip with exertion.

Real modern-day armour.

ARMY OF TWO!!!!!!'s version.

Obviously this is a fallacy on some hitherto un-reaped level of ridiculous. Real PMC's must - I assume - have a significant technological edge over insurgent forces in the Third World, be it with communications, air and artillery support, spy drones and intelligence of the real "They are the little men over there" kind.

However, I imagine the real difference is that whereas your average insurgence is rather chaotic and badly organised, the PMC's have years of combat experience and are - on a purely tactical level - better at the bangers and mash of soldiery.

The comparison - and again, this is an assumption - I imagine one could draw is that of a SWAT team or Armed Response Unit going up against a load of bank robbers.

The idea of a game where you out-strategise a far numerically superior force of insurgent rebels is an intriguing one. Perhaps something akin to GRAW only, you know, more intensely tactical like a Swat game.

Real Private Military Contractors.

Army of Two!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s version

Army of Two simply boils down all this rather interesting potential to - as mentioned - your avatars wearing huge amounts of metal clobber which is capable of taking an insane amount of punishment, including the legendary hockey masks and - my personal favourite- a codpiece with MERC etched on it, visible in the above picture. It makes for a fairly arresting image, I suppose, and that's what game marketing is all about but its very, very silly.

So is pimping a diamond studded shield to a bright gold assault rifle, adding a barrel three quarters of a mile long, and - just for good measure - sticking a shotgun front piece on it. Sadly, this is what you have to do if you want your weaponry to have any effect more permanent than a mild bruise.

Fortunately, by the time you complete the first level, you should have enough money to buy a SAW with an extended 120 round clip. And then the rest of the game is pretty easy.

The other selling point of the game is the fact that it was apparently built from the ground up for two player co-op. This is why my friend and I bought it and played it. I know nothing of the single-player experience and care not a jot. I wanted co-op. Like Gears of War's brilliant two-player mode but even more so.

Sadly, the simplest way to describe the extreme disappointment of the co-op in Army of Two is to say, should you want a two-player, split-screen, same room experience, you're still better off with getting Gears.

The trouble is largely how Army of Two forces you to play. It wants one player to build up all the Aggro, go bright red like a well-flogged penis, and get the attention of every single soldier on the level. Then, your mate is nice and opaque and can sneak around the side of the enemy.

"Flame on!"
"Shut up, man!"

The fact of the matter is, as much as my friend and I tried it, the central gameplay is not only broken - and it is, fundamentally so - but actually no more effective that taking the levels conventionally, just clearing stage by stage of enemies in as natural a way as you would.

Now, its not the case that we simply weren't good enough at the game, my friend has completed it - on the hardest difficulty - on his own and I'm not too shabby either. It worked out that, once the invisibility thing was working and the Aggro was all on me (Mr Saw), my friend (Mr Death Whisper) would sneak round the flank and open up. However, the AI immediately notices when some of its men are being wasted. They run away and open fire at the previous invisible mate and the Aggrometer at the side of the screen does a crazy swing-dance, unable to decide who deserves more attention.

The other thing is that you don't build up Aggro simply by shooting (as I had imagined), you can pour hundreds of rounds at targets but gain nothing in the way of the little red bar if you don't hit anything. You need to be accurate, which means taking time over your shots which means not killing quick enough to necessarily build up Aggro. Surely, your huge weight of fire should act as suppression (a tactic the game could have happily plagiarised from Brothers in Arms) and gain Aggro accordingly.

Also - there's this stupid game-play conceit where if you build up enough Aggro, you unlock a special Overkill mode. The Aggro-ised player gets double damage and Mr Death Whisper can run right up to the enemy and hit them in the face with the car door, or race around the rear of one of the game's extraordinarily irritating, heavily armoured (of course) MG emplacements and shoot the absolutely hell out of the gunner.

Of course, apart from a few choke-points in the game's badly designed interior levels where the power up is basically obligatory to progress - you only ever get Overkill when you've basically cleared the room anyway. Meaning one final little Muslim terrorist gets the full brunt of the ARMY OF TWO!!!

Having burnt the inconsequential witch of Main Gameplay at the stake, its time to discuss the other ways EA tries to cram the Two Player-ness down your throat.

1/ Every door needs you and your partner to press A simultaneously. Sometimes this means both pressing a button at the same time. Suggesting that Al Queda always expected to be attacked by someone playing an FPS not - conveniently for you - an ARMY OF TWO!!!! Most of the time, though, it leads to a cutscene where, together, with the strength afforded to them merely because they are AN ARMY OF TWO, Mr Big and Mr Suicide-Girls tear the doors out of the way. Variously - elevator doors, the walls of a metal cage where Mr Escort Mission has been kept for years and, best of all, the exterior hull door of an aircraft carrier.

2/ At any point, you can go over to your partner and press A to handshake or air guitar or, ludicrously, have the big guy sing, "Salem, Salem, Salem" to the theme of Rawhide. This serves no purpose. Alternatively, if you're, for whatever reason, pissed off with your partner and unable to convey this in real life - via microphone or a sneaky on-the-sofa elbow nudge or shrieked cursing-their-incompetence - you can press Right Trigger and, in the game, slap them round the head or head butt them. Its pointless and, honestly, you simply won't ever do it, unless you're pissing about and want to get your partner killed and so activate the little dance routines mid-combat.

If you do wish to use them, its better to wait until you you hear the end of combat, GOW-style gong of "Everyone's been fucked up, bro!"

You can also swap guns. You will never do this.

3/ Co-Op sniping. The sniper rifles are the most supremely useless weapons in the games. Save yourself the shitty bother of these unskippably bad bits and just nominate one guy to fire twice.

4/ Co-Op parachuting. One guy directs the chute, one guy snipes. As I've said, the sniper rifles are useless and you're generally shooting moving targets while swinging about like a huge, erect penis beneath a parachute canopy. In fact, I think this only happens two or three times in the game, as if the designers realised how awful it is. The most protracted sequence sees you jumping off a cliff using a parachute someone Mr Escort Mission has conveniently left at the edge of said cliff. After which, you clearly hang-glide for ages through endless Afghan caverns with the parachute obstinately refusing to act even a little like a real one.

"Weeeee-" "Shut up, man!"

5/ Step-Up. In which you engage in face-off break dancing with Islamic fundamentalist dance troops from across the see-through global conspiracy.

Of course not. That'd be a pathetic attempt at silliness in this well-grounded, well-structured, thinking man's action title.

At points in the game, the stairs have been shot away. A single man could not traverse such an obstacle but you ARE THE ARMY OF TWO. One man lifts the other, he pokes his head up, checks for targets, shoots the absolute putrefied shit out of them if they're there, then clambers up. He reaches down and pulls you up.

Its pointless and boring and happens with that sort of Only-In-A-Game frequency that makes you roll your eyes and pierce your foreskin with needles full of The Cancer.

The mask not only stops bullets, it apparently stops you from being deafened, too.

6/ You drive a hover boat together. In the Kill The Asians level, its really crap and the water effects are straight out of the PS2. In the Kill Fellow Americans level, its better but - wherever you are - its unremittingly dull.

7/ Back-to-Back modes that, as far as I can, try to replicate the end of Doug Liman's Mr and Mrs Smith to the point it might be an overt reference. These are shit. The sooner you can detach from it and return to the cover hiding normal action the better.

"Cheek to cheek-" "Shut up, man!"

About that, actually. Not having a button to bind you do cover is actually a really irritating hindrance. You very rarely bind when you don't want you, yes, but when you do want to, you end up ducking and running straight into the sandbag wall or whatever until the game decides what to do with you.

And that's, uh, it. When your partner dies, you can drag them about and heal them. Often, its easier just to clear the area as quick as you can and then find them. Unfortunately, this whole aspect of the game is marred by the fact that, if you do die, you then instantly jump back up and sprawl into the sitting position in which the dragging animation actually works.

"He ain't heavy, he's my-" "Shut up, man!"*

As you play Army of Two, you never really feel like the game has embraced its own hype. There's nothing you do that makes you particularly act at a team. Indeed, with the constant Kill Tallies and remarkably unfunny banter, you can feel like two guys in complete competition at times. As the friend with whom I played this mediocre-at-best title with said, "I was expecting their constant insulting of one another to come to a head or something. But nothing happens."

In fact, an end level where you fight each other - finally driven apart by Mr Eat Bauer For Breakfast's insistence to occasionally trip Mr Fallout Boy over as they enter a room (do mercenaries really do that in hostile zones?) - would have been amazing. Certainly better than the storyline of the game which is, well... there isn't one. There just isn't.

Any attempt to build on the characters at all would have been welcome. Any suggestion that being a mercenary wasn't sunshine, lollipops and blood drenched, high-paying rainbows would have been great.

Instead, the game simply flits from one hoo-aah to another, killing the usual tick list of current foreign threats. And you wear fucking armour.

Things that are this stupid are at least generally quite big. Army of Two is criminally short. I reckon that you and a committed friend will take two afternoons at most to play through this. After you do so, I doubt you'll feel an urge to play any more. The more you play, the more you find the game hateful and annoying.

This was such a good idea. A two player game with ground-up co-op, based around the morally very dark grey area of Private Military Contractors, not without a sense-of-humour... it could have been hopelessly terrific. The trouble is that without a story to speak of, you have to focus on the combat and, sadly, the combat is utterly banal and lifeless.

Also, shooting suicide bombers in the chest. A game dynamic even Uwe Boll would probably call fucking retarded.

The only really exciting bit is some FMV with a jet plane. That says a lot.

*Banter in these captions is guaranteed 120% more witty than any incongruous discussions about the Wu-Tang clan and the NFL.
----

Jachap has handies of two, right at the end of his armies.

Bully or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Shooting Small Girls in the Neck with Bottles

2008-04-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

You may remember, reader, that I traded this...

"I gave her the finger. She bled to death in twelve seconds."

For this....

"I gave him the finger. He stuck me in detention."

A better choice I have seldom made in my short life's comings and goings. If there is one single problem with Assassin's Creed, it's that it sorely lacks fun. Its full of frustration and boredom and tedious repetition.

"Oh, gee, Dude, that first view of Damascus, oh man, it made me wanna jizz." "Totally, bro."

"IN BULLY I STUFFED A KID IN A BIN!"

Here's the crux of what I'm trying to say:

IN BULLY

I STUFFED

A KID

IN A BIN

It's just pure, silly fun, from start to finish. There's no silly sci-fi, there's no layer upon layers of reality and you can't jump off very high towers. Bully may not be particularly clever, but it's a game that loves you. A game that wants you to play it and have a good time.

The loving carress of Bully is so much more appealing than Assassin Creed's insistence on slapping you around the face at every opportunity.

All those interminable, non interactive cut scenes... In Bully the cutscenes but they're skippable (always a good choice) but they're actually mildly amusing to watch if you don't skip them. The humour can be misfiring at times but even misfiring humour is better than the staid, dour discussion of Middle Eastern socio-politics every single chat in Assassin's Creed seems to become.

In Assassin's Creed, you are constantly chased by guards, muslims, Crusaders (and, perhaps the game's worst idea - tramps) in Bully you are similarly pursued by Prefects and teachers and greasers. Not every chase becomes the same irritating block-block-kill swordfight. You can outrun your pursuers. Generally, the teachers get tried and give up. Alternatively, you can outwit them quite neatly and give them the slip by doubling-back or sprinting down a short cut they can't reach.

This, again, is infinitely preferable to the belief shattering instances in Creed where you sit on a bench and everyone quietly forgets about you.

Total Film employ an entertainment graph, charting an audience's approximate reaction to a film's highs and lows. It'd be interesting to apply this to games. Certainly, in Bully, every chase nudges your enjoyment up just a little. It's a short adrenaline rush before returning you to the game proper.

In Assassin's Creed, I found all too often, the chase resulted in the termination of the level and, subsequently, all enjoyment.

In Bully, if you get caught, you can hammer Y to escape. You stomp on toes and grab a handful of scrote and flee. You have literally minutes to escape in.

If you can caught - the penalty is not death. You simply get slightly relocated - you may fail the mission a bit - or dragged to class.

This is a game that thrives on giving the player second chances to remedy their mistakes. And that punishment, going to class... well, that's actually fun too.

It should have been a case of "Fucking mini-games!" but the tasks are simple, diverting and actually a little addictive. I became something of a star pupil for a while, trying to complete them. Nicely, and in keeping with the game's very laid-back massage of the player, there's very little in the way of penalties for totally messing up.

In Biology, you dissect animals. In Geography, you have to label countries. Music is a rhythm game. They're all fun to do. If you complete them, you do get certain bonuses (back to this in a moment).

Failing missions. Another aspect of both games where we can draw a direct comparison. In Bully, I failed about three and completed them on a second or third attempt. The game really feels as if it's trying to help you, not setting out to defeat you, to stumble you and nudge you off that last rooftop before the Assassin's Bureau... into the path of forty-five enraged infidel invaders, you then hack your way through.

Another example: all games like this have their collectibles. It seems to be something that died out for a while but is now back with a vengeance. There's always laptops to discover or packages on top of the buildings to pick up. Crackdown actually made it an absolute crucial part of the gameplay (and, in my opinion, that really worked).

Most collectible based side-quests (if they really warrant the term) are walkthrough-requiring, nagging, horrible bits of padding. The flags in Assassin's Creed are useless and snucked away in little nooks you'd never actually have a reason to visit in the game properly. I genuinely believe that you have to be wired differently, as a person, to want to hunt such things out.

TRADE THIS IN FOR BULLY

In Bully, if you complete Geography, it unlocks the locations of the collectibles on your minimap, meaning you essentially have a built in guide to finding them. Like the greyed locations in Fallout 3, this is actually a huge encourage to explore and find the things. More games should do this.

In general terms, Bully's learning curve is so meanderingly slight, its really less of a curve, more of a lean. Its like one of the cool kids, foot jacked up against the wall, propped in the corner looking moody and dangerous.

In short, it's easy. For some reason, the word "easy" has negative connotations.

Easy women are riddled with disease. Easy money is to be treated suspiciously, it's how the shadowy cousin who you never see at Christmas can afford that new Jag. Easy decisions spell catastrophe. Easy games are to be feared like casual racism or the Bubonic Plague.

I think the reasoning for this is that people assume, if a game is easy, the player will simply breeze through it. If there's no challenge, surely it's boring?

You can actually apply that exact criticism to Assassin's Creed. The fact I can hold three buttons, choose a direction, and the game will happily do the rest - is boring. It's actually disappointing. If there's no challenge to climbing that tower, if scaling it is not an act of player skill, then what's the point?

I would generally think, "God, this is easy," immediately before slipping off that final rooftop. The arbitrary spikes of difficulty, secreted in the game, that feel almost exactly like running hard into a thick, unrelenting wall.

In Bully, there is too much to do and too much fun to be had. The ease in which you complete tasks feels like a triumph in the design of the levels and the design of interface.

TRADE THIS IN FOR BULLY

It's impossible to categorise Bully into a "Its a bit like X or Y, with a dash of Z." Particularly in terms of finding a game with a comparative difficulty level. It's an Open World game and we've basically all had enough of them now, but, because it features a smaller play area full of incident and character (as opposed to vast expanses of open ground full of exactly nothing) it transcends the form.

Allow me to get a little wanky for a moment. Bully was not comparable to my usual game-playing experience. My standard operating procedure, in the form of a stream of conciousness, is as follows:

"DIE DIE DIE RUN PRESS A ARGH WANKER DIE RELOAD SHIT ON ME RELOAD YOU FUCK DIE DIE DIE DUCK DUCK JUMP - Phew. Cutscene - WHAT THE FUCK NO SKIP WANNA SKIP DIE DIE DIE DIE CAN'T SHOOT BUGGER"

Bully, by comparison, was more a warm feeling as one might feel at the end of a rather spiffing summer day. It was a fun, gentle, endearing experience. It was refreshing not to obsess over the difficulty, over sudden cul-de-sacs in the game's progress where you die over and over and over again, and just enjoy the experience.

Indeed, it will always be a puzzle to me why some people obsess over difficulty so much...

"I completed it on Legendary."
"Oh, I did it on Normal."
"YOU FUCKING SUCK!"
"I have several other endeavours in my life that I prioritise above game completion!"
"YOU. FUCKING. SUCK."

This XBox Live, Gamerpoint, One UpManship has always irritated me.

Unless the difficulty settings add something to the missions (Hello, Mr TimeSplitters, Monsieur Goldeneye) or are cleverly assessed (Good morrow to you, Dr Call of Duty 4 OBE) or, in fundamental ways, utterly affect the game (Great to see you, Madame Crysis, Lord Flashpoint) - surely the game should have one single setting. The "Just Challenging Enough" setting. Anything below this is just patronising.

This difficulty setting is for players who have never held a controller before and, up until this point, thought Solitaire and Minesweeper were the only computer games that existed.

Anything above? Masochism, pure and simple.

I don't want to get stuck in a bin by a game and pissed on by all the cool kids. I want to chortle away happily, as I'm the one who deals out the punishment.

Hello there, Monsieur Crackdown and young Bully, esquire. Its an absolute pleasure.

It really, really is.

Let's have a few more games where I can, in a gameplay sense, stick people in bins.

-----

Jachap found all the rubber bands.

Ain't Got Time to Creed

2008-03-17T06:06:00.000-07:00

I like the trade-in culture of console gaming a lot. Not so long ago, as an exclusively PC boy, it was a bit alien to me. Not ET alien. Not Alien alien. Maybe something more along the lines of Mike and Angelo. A bit odd but not wholly unappealing.

Many of the electronic boutiques (capitalised and not) near me simply wouldn't take in PC games.

These days, I find myself in the blessed situation of, having bought a few pre-owned games when I first got my 360, being able to basically recycle that same £40 or so, over and over.

I bought Dead Rising and found that, without a big TV, it was basically unplayable - something I really should have gathered from Nick's review (which lurks downstairs somewhere like a feeble-minded but ultimately well-meaning goblin).

I didn't play it enough to fully understand what's happening here.

I traded in Dead Rising for GRAW2 and a great deal of enthusiasm for Valve's up-coming Left 4 Dead.

I completed Ghost Recon Advanced Warrior (is that right?) Two, in a little less time than it takes for me to say its name. Though enjoyable, I had no particular interest in playing it again. Those bits in films where the Marine Corps get together and shout, "Hoo-ahh," at one another make me squirm and GRAW2, every now and again, felt like a protracted session in the company of such men.

"Hoo-ah!... Anyone? Anyone at all? Anyone wanna hoo-ah?"

I traded it in for Bioshock and, whatever praise and criticism one could plausibly heap on that particular title, I got a resounding impression - as I played it - that I wouldn't want to give it another go. I would end up dissecting it, analysing it too much and, ultimately, ruining it.

Preferring to retain that original sense of shock and awe, I traded Bioshock in for Assassin's Creed.

There was some furore (in the purely, circle-jerk/circle-slap internet sense) over Assassin's Creed. Penny Arcade valiantly defended it despite large amounts of middling scores, claiming that reviewers, in the rushed necessity of having to review the game, missed what's fun about it. The hours you can spend hopping about the Middle East, climbing stuff and blending into crowds.

"You can't possibly understand what's it like to be an American several hundred years before the country was even discovered!"

Now, undeniably, Assassin's Creed does excel in this area. My housemate spent a whole day doing exactly that, just running about, picking fights with guards and dancing away, chirping merrily to himself. The joy of catching archers unawares with the hidden blade takes a long time to abate.

"I have terrible vertigo and the Guild just don't care."

But the game is also, undeniably, crippled in certain areas. The sci-fi framing of the entire story is a mistake so woeful it is genuinely hard to see how it ever made it into a game so technically staggering. They spent a lot of time making every rooftop in Damascus look different but they didn't realise the bit where you quit out of the fun just to go and take a nap (press X for instant REM sleep! Tap A to control snoring!) was utterly wretched?

"Garrett has cooler hair than me."

In fact, the whole story-telling technique of the game is abysmal. Bioshock was not extraordinarily subtle where this is concerned, either, but it handled itself with a certain amount of aplomb and I'm a sucker for aplomb. On top of that, it very rarely put the game on pause to tell you a story. You could listen to everything while on the move, while fighting Splicers, while getting on with something.

In Assassin's Creed, every time you wish to speak to an NPC, you have to pull up a chair and make sure you're sitting comfortably. Brilliantly, there's an option to press a button at certain points to zoom in on the un-convincing facial grimaces of the speaker, thus seamlessly combining endless, un-entertaining cutscenes with that other element of modern games that everyone loves: the quick time event. And so, the coffin is sealed on the whole sorry affair. Back to the Gamestation it is.

"I'm allergic to horses but do they care? No."

That's too rash, obviously.

What seals the coffin on Assassin's Creed is the sneering unlikeable whine of the lead character, the pathetic simplicity of the combat and the realisation you should probably have, unless you're Penny Arcade - about halfway through - that you're not really playing the game. To move Altaire around, you press and hold three buttons and choose a direction.

Unless you pick a staggeringly stupid direction, Altaire can basically go anywhere and climb anything. Its strange, at first, the way the game forces you to act like a puppeteer. Its enticingly novel. But the detachment it creates is, in the end, what killed the game, stuck it longboat and set fire to it for me.

All this stuff about player immersion and then Ubisoft go out to make a game that keeps forcing you outside of the character, outside of the primary world and - for good measure, or maybe out of spite - outside of the secondary world too.

"I didn't even wanna play It."

And all you want to do, as you sit on the fiftieth bench and listen to some guy with a beard witter on forever with none of the humour of, say, NOLF all you want to do is scream, "This isn't Brecht. This isn't fun. Technical accomplishment aside, this is the absolute epitome of mediocre and it makes me want to drive forks into the squidgy gaps between my toes."

And so, finally, a couple of days ago, I traded in Assassin's Creed for Bully.

"Hooah!"

"Guys?"

"...so alone."

------

Jachap is still not sure whether that title pun works on any level.

Books Overlooked #3

2008-01-30T05:09:00.001-08:00

Good lord, I've only done two of these before now? But I have so many OPINIONS!

Doctor Strange: The Oath
Marvel
Story: Brian K. Vaughan
Art: Marcos Martin

Doctor Strange? Isn't he just that dude they drag in whenever they need another Avenger to fill out the ranks? Yes, it is. But once upon a time, when Steve Ditko and Stan Lee came up with him, he had a backstory and themes and motivations. Nowadays he's just there for somebody to say 'why can't you sort this Skrull business out, Steven' to him, so he can reply 'oh because the ancient ones and the scrolls and such and I'm just tired, okay?'

But since he's been drafted in to do that so often, Marvel's senior editorial staff realised 'oh crap, we haven't given the bastard his own solo series in like five years', and got one of comics' greatest current writers (or 'The BKV' as he's known) to throw together a quick five-issue miniseries to give the readers some idea of what Doctor Strange is about. The result: pure gold.

The good thing about Strange not having his own series for so long is that Vaughan can throw everything cool about the character into this one project in a big wonderful slurry of magical medical drama. The pacing's excellent, the characters are well-written, and the intro involves Strange being dragged, unconscious and gut-shot, into a secret superhero doctor's surgery. The charater of Strange is brilliantly conveyed, portraying him as a conflicted servant of humanity, rather than the more typical frowning mystic role he seems to take on. Instantly gripping, and beautifully rendered by Marcos 'Why The Hell Aren't I Drawing A Protracted Run On Batman By Now I Mean For God's Sake Batgirl Year One Was Bloody Transcendent' Martin. We can only hope Vaughan and Martin team up again, because in addition to all the rest, this series stands as a testament to the absolute synergy (hnnng) of their creative talents.

Planet Hulk
Marvel
Story: Greg Pak
Art: Carlo Pagualayan, Aaron Lopresti and others

This is the story of the Hulk, and how he finally came home, as the blurb goes. While most Marvel fans were griping about the ineffectual writing, limp character development and extensive tie-ins that plagued the main event of two years ago, Civil War, the smart money was on Greg Pak's not-always-excellent, but consistently-entertaining single-title year-long epic - Planet Hulk.

The run-up to the series ran thus: after fleeing to peaceful mountainous fishing country to escape causing trouble with his big green alter-ego (who now sports a big green Hulk-beard, facial-hair-fans), Bruce Banner lives in peace until Nick Fury, Director Of SHIELD, tracks him down and enlists him to sort out a phony satellite problem, with the ultimate goal of shooting him into space. You see, Fury, along with Mister Fantastic, Iron Man and numerous others, decided that the Hulk was just too dangerous to have around, and planned to send him to a tranquil, wild planet, where he wouldn't be any hazard to sentient life. However, something goes screwy and the Hulk ends up on a very arch sci-fi planet with gladiatorial battles, elemental demigods and a downtrodden insect slave-race. The old clock on the wall tells us that it is rock o' clock.

And rock it does. The Hulk, as Strongest One There Is, flourishes Conan-like and wades through seas of imperialists, monsters and robots, making alliances and enemies with gusto as he goes. It's a real shot in the arm, and a refreshing take on an old character. Also, given the length and breadth of the story, reading it in one volume has the feel of a big proper nerdy fantasy epic, with the wonderfully anarchic twist of having a disaffected Hulk shrugging off talk of foretold destinies and prodigal saviours in favour of More Smashing.

But it's a sensitively-handled Hulk, one compellingly faced for the first time with the idea of his wild, brutal strength being something admirable. So: if you want big nasty monsters, some of the best Hulk writing ever, a wonderful stinger for the soon-to-be-collected World War Hulk and some of the most gorgeous Ladronn covers you'll ever see, pick this one up. You won't be disappointed.

The Escapists
Dark Horse
Story: Brian K Vaughan
Art: Philip Bond, Steve Rolston, Jason Shawn Alexander, Eduardo Barreto

Once upon a time, I blogged about how impressive the Escapist continuity was, and how keen I was to check out the other elements to it, namely The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and this comic book sequel-of-sorts. Well, to shorthand it, the novel's wonderfully-written, lengthy and rewarding, and very much deserves your time, but the Pulitzer Prize probably clued you into that. However, The Escapists has not as yet won a Pulitzer Prize, so I'll tell you a little about it.

The story follows Max Roth, a weedy elevator repairman from Cleveland with ambitions of writerdom. His father dies when he's a child, and he inherits The Key To The Basement. When the young Roth first ventures down there, he's faced with something he never expected - boxes and boxes of comic book ephemera, all to do with Kavalier and Clay's Escapist character. His mother dies after he takes up his job as elevator repairman, and he inherits $150,000. He immediately spends it on the unwanted, long-outdated license for the Escapist and all spinoff characters created for the franchise. He finds an artist in a girl he rescues from a stuck elevator, and a letterer in the thoughtful jock he atypically befriended during high school. The Escapists chronicles their attempts to create in an industry that gives untested talent no footholds whatsoever, and it does it brilliantly.

Now, Steve Rolston is no slouch. He delivers great layouts and expression here and his action work for Queen and Country's early volumes is also sterling. But to have him take over after an introductory chapter by Philip Bond, whose art moves me on a profound level, is a bit of a tease. But there's a reason - this chapter appeared as a kind of pilot for the main series, in the pages of The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist comic, and the rest of the main series was all Rolston.

As I say, however, Rolston never drops the ball, and the talking-head stuff and visual gizmos are brilliantly realised. He's assisted by Jason Shawn Alexander, who ghost-draws for elevator-girl Case Weaver within the pages of the comic, and Eduardo Baretto, who mimicks the depression-era action comic style with line-perfect respect. It's a really convincing blend of styles, and works just as an experiment in having several totally-different artists work together on a single story.

The Escapists fills the reader with the heady ambition of youth, just as the early chapters of Kavalier and Clay managed to do, and it does so in its own idiomatic way. It's not just a retread, it's a whole new chapter to the saga, and a moving evocation of the new generation's attempts at stardom and creative respect. It does contain a few callbacks to the novel, however, including a character dressing as the Escapist himself to publicise his cause. There aren't the usual showdowns with stern corporate types, nor, in fact, many other characters at all bar the three protagonists. It's somewhat of a stripped-down story, but by design, and it pays off.

The Escapists doesn't, in synopsis, do anything that a prose novel couldn't, but it's the execution that shows comics' potential as a literary medium, with dream sequences, broken narratives and the aforementioned art style shifts that justify the characters' determination and the form of the story itself. In other words, it's in that rare category of 'good alternative comics' - it's a book that neither leans on nor shamefully rejects comics' legacy as a disposable art form. This is yet another triumph for Vaughan that singles him out as one of comics' greatest genre-hoppers and most capable talents, and acts as the new generation's equivalent of Will Eisner's classic The Dreamer for both inspiring and evoking the pure enthusiasm of artistic endeavour. Highly recommended.

----

'Beat' Nick wonders what the hell Vaughan's doing writing Lost.

Turning Point: Fall Of Liberty (And Standards!)

2008-01-27T14:17:00.000-08:00

I've always found bad demos slightly soul destroying. I mean, I've seen people say, "Don't judge the game by the demo." In fact, some demos even come with a little publisher warning at the start saying that what you play may not necessarily represent the finished product. To which the obvious response is, "Do you know what the word demo is derived from?"

Obviously, demos do represent the final product. Game companies do not send out little playable segments of their unreleased titles as a complete show of good will. They are marketing tools. As such, they can be decidedly counter-productive.

Some aren't. I bought the original Call of Duty based purely on the demo. On playing the original Call of Duty, I realised that I'd made a grave mistake. The best level - Burnsville, I believe, is utterly perfect - was the demo.

There were actually two whole levels of Deus Ex released. That's not a demo. That's getting a fifth of the game for free.

And so on and so forth. When a demo is good it can inspire you to buy something you'd never considered, swing a decision in the favour of something you've been considering or confirm your greatest optimisms about a game.

The Xbox 360 Turning Point: Fall of Liberty demo is one of those counter-productive ones.

The Turning Point demo is, I assume, the intro level. There is a preamble explaining how the following, a Nazi invasion of mainland USA, did not actually take place. This is Sliders territory, y'all. To be honest, unless your history is really patchy, this seems to serve no real point other than a pre-emptive destruction of any suspension of disbelief.

The caption for this on Gamespy, was Washington occupied by the Nazis is a "scary sight." Is it, really? Only on the same level as Washington occupied by aliens or Genghis Khan or a fucking Cyborg Ghandi is. You want a scary sight? Look up Auschwitz.

Then it starts. Luftwaffe jets strafing buildings. Huge zeppelins looming over New York harbour. The Statue of Liberty getting blitzed. You're some anonymous construction worker and your first job is to get down off your half-constructed building.

Fortunately, the Nazis are using Convenience Bombs, which remove all but one route off the metal struts.

Naturally, you pick up a gun and take the fight to the heavily armed Nazis who are all around. At this point, I'm still not sure if they're meant to be Fallschrimjager or just the pilots of downed jets who've brought assault rifles with them.

You shoot a few of them, clamber through the wreckage of a couple more buildings and then see some fellow New Yorkers (more on this later) who are going to organise a first line of defence. You jump in the back a flatbed lorry. As you're driving away, a skyscraper behind you collapses slowly in on itself and a huge cloud of dust smothers you. That's it.

Some of the interviews with the game designers say there's an undertone of 9/11. No shit.

As a demo, its overly short and devoid of excitement or tension to the extent its just boring to play. It fades in with you standing on a girder and the jets swooping in. No introduction. No attempt to set the scene or get you into character. That jars immediately. Surely the obvious way to go would be a Half Life style trip-to-work introduction? At least then there'd be some emotional attachment to the people who start falling to their death all around you and - if not that - at least some breathing space to settle into character?

If you're going to start with a jolt, though, it had better be a good one. And it should be, on paper. Sadly, the next thing that struck me was just how dull the invasion of New York was. I mean, this should have been the opening of Bioshock x1000. There should have been NOISE. Crowds of people in the streets, screaming, running away. Cars swerving wildly through the crowds to escape. Bombs raining down, devastation all around, a physics engine tearing buildings apart and throwing them down into the streets. It should have been the fucking apocalypse. Instead... its just lame.

The major problem is that New York doesn't feel like a city at all. Its more deserted than Rapture. Maybe its been evacuated and - if that is the reason its devoid of life - hopefully that will be explained in the full game. Indeed, like the snowstorm in Max Payne, its a good excuse for having a 20th Century city less busy than the first village in Assassin's Creed. However, taking the demo on face value, the only people you see are the six fellow workers who tumble to their doom, the people smothered in dust at the end and the Nazis.

Instead of an awe-inspiring depiction of complete chaos (Call of Duty 4's credit sequence, for example) that left me giddy and reeling, it was an utter bore.

"What do you do, Daddy?" "Why, I paint the massive Swastikas, Freidrich." "On what?" "On fucking everything. Now, eat your baby."

For starters, there's absolutely no threat to you as a character until you run into the Nazis on the ground. You quickly realise that the bombs and jets aren't allowed to hurt you and so you can happily saunter to the bottom. Once at the bottom, the whole construction site disappears in some badly animated fireballs (do metal girders really explode like that?).

There isn't a great deal more I can criticise. The combat in the demo is basically limited to three or four very scripted encounters. It seemed uninspiring simple and, like all the rest, slightly dull. I don't understand the decision to include an iron sight function in any game where you have a very visible cross hair and firing from the hip is perfectly accurate. Like a lot of console shooters, there was simply no tangible weight to the weapons.

This gun sounds like some very small clogs falling down some stairs.

My problems with it go deeper than that, though. I propose that ordinary, every day folks aren't soldiers for the simple reason that they don't want to be soldiers. If we all take this assumption to be true, then, faced with an invasion of such epic proportions, why wouldn't the main character's first instinct be to leg it? And hope, desperately, that a bomb didn't fall on his face as he did so.

So what if he is the eventual saviour of the world? So what if he's 1950s Nazis version of John Connor? He should be reluctant. He should try and escape the carnage (remember, in my alternate history version of this game, there is proper carnage). Then, he should be thrown into a situation where he has to take up arms or, indeed, witness something that fills him - and you, the player - with such incandescent rage that he wants to repel the invaders with every fibre of his being.

I'm thinking Uncle Owen's farm torched by the Nazis and a secret message from the resistance movement in his unwitting possession.

In game terms, the only titles that have genuinely inspired this sense of vigilante rage are few and far between. Max Payne, perhaps, on a primal level. A deeper, more intelligent example of how to do it is Half Life 2. Enforced player impotence, suddenly, blissfully, replaced by a crowbar. These gaunt, skull-headed fascists force you - Gordon Bloody Freeman - to pick up their litter. They stop you exploring the city. They hunt you, weaponless, across rooftops. Their drones keep taking bloody pictures. You round a corner - and there are two Civil Protection Bastards beating on some innocent civilians.

You approach, crowbar raised. You want to get medieval on someone.

"I write novels! In crayon!"

Thinking back, thinking about how that small slice of gaming impotence made me feel, it'll be quite fun taking a crowbar to the G-Man.

Anyway, the point is, Half Life 2 did this. It did taking down totalitarian regimes from inside and Turning Point should have bloody learnt something from that. Again, I worry about this. Perhaps, in the real game, there's more. There might be more before the cheap fade-in beginning. And there might be more than just picking up a gun and becoming The Punisher. But why release a demo of this particular level and leave all that out?

As it stands, there's no truth to the moment where the construction worker decides he can probably take these Nazis. Again, there's been no threat before this point. It feels natural to just slip away and get a fuck-load of counselling. Yet - after a few moments - it turns out that, yes, it was a good idea to pick up a gun because the Nazis - those damn, dastardly Nazis - are killing everything.

A few words about all that, actually: what a load of fucking rubbish.

I'm used to Nazis being reduced to B-Movie, cartoon villains. I don't think there's been a World War Two game that really addresses the idea that not everyone in the Third Reich ate babies and summoned demons. Perhaps, in the distant future, whatever empire follows the current American one will subject us all to thousands of games where every single American is a totally ruthless capitalist, murdering bastard, ironically harping on about the importance of personal liberty. Or was that Bioshock?

The fact remains that if this game was set in the 1960s and the Nazis had built a giant Swastika shaped laser on the moon which you - ordinary American astronaut - had to single-handedly destroy - it would be more plausible than this rubbish. It'd be more interesting too but only because the ramifications of a Nazi space race (which they'd win) are worth exploring.

Lets examine the alternate history for a moment.

Winston Churchill dies before World War Two. The Nazis invade Britain. This is because Winston Churchill invented the Spitfire and then went on to personally lead the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Without his record-breaking 302 (with a further 200 still under debate) kills, the British air force could not secure dominance over the English channel.

Its well known that in 1940, Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland. What's classified is that he took with him two regiments of elite SS cyborgs and Winston Churchill killed them all. With a sword.

"With Churchill dead, I have no imperial ambitions whatsoever!"

Also, you know that picture of Winston Churchill with a tommy gun? That was taken five minutes after he parachuted into Berlin, shot his way into Hitler's bunker, killed everyone, even the fucking dogs, and then made it all look like suicide.

The fact that Churchill was removed from this timeline by a taxi - would it be cool if it was the the taxi that you - the character in the game - drove? Or would that just be bollocks? You decide - means that Hitler has grown a massive brain.

Churchill did this, too.

He's no longer interested in expanding a Germanic empire into the east. He can predict that, by the eighties, the Soviets will be all used up. The real enemy are the yanks. So, he launches a full land invasion of the east coast of America.

Blitzkrieg is an amazing tactic. Its not only good for small countries directly connected to your own or - potentially - small islands separated by a channel that celebrities can quite easily swim. It works across massive expanses of water, too.

"Lebensraum? HA! Haha! HA. Ha. Haha. Ha!"

What Hitler has also learnt is that military targets are just distractions. What you need to do when you invade a country is simply send some low-flying zeppelins in and shoot the fucking shit out of builders. That's the first step when it comes to invading a country.

To be fair, I think Hitler's missed a trick here. Wouldn't it be better to drop troops straight into the south of America? They could establish a whole new Reich and no-one would even notice. ZING!

Hitler has also learnt (like all good aliens) that you can take over a country much easier if you destroy all their fucking monuments. In the same way that the invasion of France in our universe began with the shattering destruction of the Eiffel Tower, in the game, the Statue of Liberty gets blown the fuck up. Fall of Liberty, see? The liberty of the people in, say, little old England being completely irrelevant.

When the Statue gets done, Roosevelt (or whoever the fuck is meant to be in charge) is probably just waiting for a secretary to bring him the Unconditional Surrender form.

I'll tell you something else that happens. Anyone who has played Red Alert 2 frowns and says, quietly, "Hang on...?"

"I vonder vot happened to you in zis vacky timeline?"
"Que?"

Giant zeppelins and huge battleships outside New York? The Statue of the Liberty getting blown up? Ridiculous 60s technology? Mainland USA being invaded? I think its probably easier to list an alternate history where this hasn't happened! LOL!

All very familiar.

And that brings me to my last point.

Don't buy Turning Point: Liberty Falls. Its just so weary. Its like one of the old women I saw in the pub last night: so past it they can't remember what it was, still packing their frail, perma-tanned bodies into little black dresses so low cut the crinkled mess that constitutes their cleavage is basically flopped in their drink. They're used up. They're dried up. And their attempts to keep up with the younger versions of themselves, thronged all around and sneering, seems, at best, deranged and, at worst, like the death throes of a gangling, ugly bird.

Bare with me.

We've done this all before. Nazis/Soviets/Invading Aliens/Godzilla/King Kong, all treated in exactly the same way. Isn't being exactly the same, thematically, as a Nazi a bit insulting to a giant ape? This very year, World in Conflict on the PC, has had bombers over New York and tanks rolling through the American heartland.

They might tell you this isn't a World War Two game but it is. It just is. You're another American all-star, kicking Nazi butt. We've been doing this since Wolfenstein. We're experts at it. You've got to bother to make it good. Not just relabel a bunch of World War Two submachine guns and make all the Nazis wear Psychonaut goggles.

You, dear reader, do not need 9/11 with Swastikas. In fact, you might not necessarily find it that tasteful an idea. In fact, I find the whole idea that Nazi invasion is worse and more horrifying when it happens on American soil distasteful, actually. The fact they've literally had to make it worse - with big zeppelins and battleships the size of Wales - is just silly.

Silly, tired, boring and it looks horrendous. I know people like that and I avoid them like the plague. Take note.

------

Jachap thinks you should read Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle instead.

Gunmetal Fatigue

2008-01-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Over the last few months, Far Cry 2 has had its first snippets of information, screen shots and even a pretty solid-looking engine video released, but it seems not to have generated very much hype. Indeed, it took me a hefty amount of exposure in magazines, news sites and blog posts for me to even notice it at all. This is most likely the fault of Crysis. Big, shiny and explosive, it was developed by Crytek (the original Far Cry's development team), and seemed like a whole new beginning for the team after their departure from Ubisoft over to the industrial giant known as EA.

"Madden '08 paid for this magic robot suit, and dammit,
I'm going to use it!"

So after frankly ludicrously gorgeous footage and images surfaced, with its hyper-destructive environments and procedurally-generated volumetric clouds, Crysis seemed like the very epitome of next-gen. So when Ubisoft quietly announced that they were going to be making a Far Cry sequel in-house, the reaction was understandably muted. It all seemed pretty self-evident, really.

But as usually seems to happen, appearances were deceiving. Not many people actually bought Crysis, perhaps because it was PC-only, or perhaps because of its phenomenal system requirements. Those who did play it were entertained, but largely because they could throw trees into men's faces. Reviews and player feedback largely seemed to revolve around the fact that you were on the same damn pretty island fighting the same damn gung-ho mercenaries, only this time with a lego gun that you could make into other guns, and instead of boring genetic experiment monsters, you were fighting boring alien monsters after the game's halfway point.

Crysis came and went, and seemed to be technically impressive, but still not The Future. It was only after this point that I spotted a screenshot of Far Cry 2 in PC Gamer. It was an in-game shot of a man holding up both a compass and a map. Not a hyper-tech global-positioning map-PDA, no. A piece of raggedy yellow paper. The background was of an African desert, with some nice trees in it, some mountains in the distance and a shack somewhere in there. "Ooh," I thought. "That's cool." A map and a shack grabbed me much more than cybernetic muscles or a lego gun, just because they were different. Same old story - 'cool' beats 'technologically impressive' every time.

Further investigation led me to discover the aforementioned gameplay video from last year's E3, which contains both the map and some shacks:

Looks pretty standard for a shooter, right? Here's the house you can blow up, here's the flamethrower and - hey, hang on, you can set fire to the grass? Cool.

And it keeps dropping nice little touches like that on you. Foliage swaying and burning in the wake of explosions, and the fact that if you get shot, your hard-as-nails character has to yank the bullet out and heal himself or risk bleeding to death. These are what we really liked about Far Cry - an original setting (doing the same one again doesn't work), the spirit of the Indiana Jones adventurer, and the survivalist sensibilities of plotting assaults and lying prone in the long grass as your quarry meanders around aimlessly. Giant cyborg tree-flinging arms don't quite capture it.

But hey, that's a creative decision. I find this route more appealing, but that speaks more of my own personal tastes than of anything else. Also, yes, don't worry, I am getting to a point here.

As will this gentleman soon be! Ha ha ha!

Looking further into it, it becomes clear that this is a development team worth putting money into. They operate a development blog including occasional video entries, and unlike many dev journals, these are quite interesting, particularly as they talk about something other than bumpmapping. The Thursday December 13th entry in particular caught my eye. It talks about the reasons the team decided on the Savannah as a backdrop rather than, say, the Peruvian foothills or rural Japan. There's a real creative thought process going on here, one that inspires confidence.

But of course, the blog also covers a lot of graphical and technical points about the world within the game engine, and they really do impress. It links to this article which covers a lot of the elements that make the game so pretty, albeit in French, unfortunately for some. Despite the fact that the stuff demonstrated here and in the demo video above has been done before in other games, Ubi's team has combined them and put them in a setting where they can really shine. There are things like the super-fancy lighting engine, which seems somewhat like Satanic programming magic...

Hey, wow, the light from the sun reflects an orange glow
off the sand onto the bottom of the car, neat!

...and many more. All little technical trinkets that seem piddling and arbitrary until you put them together, turn into some kind of Neanderthal forehead-knuckler and just go

OH HOLY JESUS IT'S REAL THEY MADE A REAL
PLACE OUT OF COMPUTER MACHINES!

Far Cry 2's visual development, both in terms of the character of the landscape and the technical achievements of the graphics engine, has clearly had an admirable amount of time spent on it. So what am I getting at? An upcoming game made with a large amount of funding from a leading publisher, has very nice graphics. That's more-or-less it. But now we come somewhat closer to the aforementioned point.

LOL

Games like this and Assassin's Creed have done amazing things for creating places rather than just A Game Setting. Assassin's Creed went further by having a decent go at creating people to populate that place, people with moods and personalities, who reacted differently to different situations in a socially believable manner. The result, particularly in Creed's larger cities (Jerusalem in particular), was the sense of a truly living, breathing environment, packed with variety, in which you had VERY LITTLE IF ANYTHING TO DO. And THERE's the point.

Watch that Far Cry 2 demo again. Pretty, yes, cool, yes, but what does it hint at for the game? Largely that you go to a place with stuff in it and shoot some people. I'm a big old adventure-game-loving fag (to use the parlance of our times), so you'd expect this from me, but it really does begin to grate after you see free-roaming environments like this

and know that all you'll be doing in them is shooting some guys and taking some stuff off them, probably! They've fully realised a believable environment and have the technology to fill it with people, friendly or otherwise, but the actual meat of the gameplay seems to change only slightly from generation to generation.

Okay, yes, this is a little unfair on Far Cry 2. For one thing, nobody really knows how it's going to play yet, and for another, there have already been hints at deeper character interaction and mission structures, in the style of the well-intentioned Boiling Point. Like I say, it's a talented dev team and I'm certainly interested by what they've produced so far, but at the moment they're one in what seems like a million.

Assassin's Creed did its best through eavesdropping, pickpocketing, swordfighting and free-running to produce a streamlined and compelling vision of the 12th Century Holy Land. But despite its achievements in environment and AI, this seems much more like a real place:

Aaaaand yep, we're talking about Psychonauts again.

Whispering Rock Psychic Summer camp wasn't 50x50km and it wasn't a single streaming environment. It was broken up by loading screens and wasn't even that large as a hub, all told. But playing it, it felt massive. There was so much to do, so many people to talk to, and it changed so often, that it perfectly conveyed the impression of being alive. More than just a decent platform game in a pretty locale, it was a real experience to have in a real place, and it wins people over almost instantly for it.

While games become prettier and prettier places to be, if there's no reason for a person to invest in them, it's all in vain. This is the philosophy that I hope games like Far Cry 2, Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4 will benefit from, and give us more reasons to return to our games.

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'Beat' Nick does sometimes feel like he's repeating himself, yes.

Plucky British Winner

2008-01-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

War is a nasty business. Fraught with peril, death at every turn and, if Company of Heroes is to be believed, a fuckload of swearing. A few choice quotes from the British 2nd Army who, unlike a lot of strategy game units, don't simply reply "Sir?" "Affirmative" when clicked upon:

An infantry NCO to his squad: "Move it you fucking tossers!"

A tank commander to his crew: "Shut the fuck up! We're gettin' oooooordddurs."

A random infantryman, when gunning down the boche: "This is for my brother!"
Not as sweary, perhaps, but the little guy has a back story, for God's sake. What strategy games ladle that much character on the little toy soldiers you command?

Its brilliant stuff and enhances the immersion no end. Its also refreshing for the British in the Second World War to be portrayed as proper hard bastards, as opposed to a bunch of upper class tossers who bow down to Monty and, when a tiger tank is hidden in a hay bail not four hundred yards away, sniff, look down their long aristocratic noses and reply:

"Ai've bin told to avoid causing damage to civilian property! If I can't see the buggah, I can't blooday shoot him, carn I?"

This:

"********** ****** you *******!!!"

Not this:

"Mmmmmeeeuuurrrggghh."

But it was only today when the absolute genius of imbuing each of the tiny men with so much character was made absolutely clear to me.

Thus:

The Story of Jeffery, The Best Commando Who Ever Lived

Skirmish is really where Company of Heroes excels. Certainly, with the addition of two wholly distinct sides (the new Panzer Elite and the Brits) I can see endless longevity in the online multiplayer. That's if I ever actually get into a game.

In many ways, I think the reason I had so many problems was simply due to my computer forming some bizarre resistance movement against Relic's matchmaking system. I was continually "unable to connect to all players." After about fifteen minutes endlessly clicking join, a process complicated by my web connection dropping out multiple times and the in-built necessity, every time it did, to sign back into my relic account, I finally joined a game and, after about three minutes of real play, the entire enemy team dropped out.

I think they were just scared.

Its strange because I hadn't seen Relic's matchmaking system mentioned in any capacity, positive or negative, in a single one of the reviews I'd read. It was pretty shocking to see how horrendously clunky it was. After the on-line experience of World in Conflict (hich is streamlined to perfection where this is concerned) Opposing Fronts felt like falling back into Medieval times with Billy Connolly.

All that being said, I still find the single player experience of CoH very diverting. The sheer attention to detail is breathtaking. For example, in the third Allied mission, you are allotted a task force of Royal Commandos - those of the Red Devil bravado and maroon caps - to attack a German airfield outside of Caen.

Its a night mission and operates on the basis of CoH's rather skewed version of stealth which is basically as full of explosions as the usual levels only without some of the bigger tanks and base construction. Its a lovely homage to Command and Conquer's rock hard non-production missions.

The Night

When you land, all your troops have slightly different vocal responses and they whisper. That's pretty class. Then, a little later, the mission switches (as such missions are wont to do) to the usual combined arms assault sort of stuff. Your support arrives in the form of a Canadian regiment.

"Its quiet. Almost... too quiet." "Why do you have to say that every single night, Kleiner?"

In a lesser game, the Canadians would be no different to your usual units. Maybe they'd be a different colour and when you clicked on them, the little unit display at the bottom would say CANADIAN. That's the sort of thing I've become unconsciously used to in games.

COH is different. Despite the fact the units are basically the same, they are all Canadian. Their vocal "affirmatives" and "WE'RE GOING TO FUCKING DIE!" are all in a warbling Canadian lilt. There's even a French Canadian who gets some cracking lines.

Its sort of breathtaking that they went to all that effort for one single level, when the majority of World War II games are happy to have Americans versus Nazis and leave it at that. I can imagine lots of Canadians, sitting down to play the game, being very pleasantly surprised that their involvement (and that of the Commonwealth) has actually been acknowledged for once.

But the best occurrence in that level was a little later.

I was busy securing the foothold I'd created when a secondary objective popped up. "Destroy the fuel barrels" it said. I noted where they were positioned on the minimap and thought, "Sure, I'll do those when I come to them."

The thing was, scrolling across the battlefield, I came across a Helpful Little Hint saying "Land a Glider Here," on a patch of rutted earth behind the fuel barrels. I had the Manpower (COH's currency of choice) to spare and so launched a glider.

It came grinding in behind the objective, the nose opened and out charged my Commandos in their wonderfully, deliriously Boys Own sort of way. I charged the fuel compound, but made a mistake.

Not Jeffery, but its nice to pretend.

In my rush to take the fight to the dirty huns, I had neglected an unguarded side entrance into the compound. My assault team went for the main gates, where the concentration of enemy patrols were lying in wait.

As soon as the bullets started flying (cue: "I'M FUCKING HIT!" "THE TOSSERS ARE ALL OVER US!") I aborted Plan A and rerouted my men to the side entrance. I got them in the compound but troops from all over were converging on them.

The thing with Commandos is, they're better than the Wehrmacht's standard soldiers at the best of the times and COH is a very generous game. As this was designed as a non-production sort of level, the enemy were really just the fabled "old men and boys" World War Two pre-mission Intel always optimistically states it will be. They were the most standard of the Axis forces avaliable with barely more than bolt action rifles, so I only a couple of men in the suicidal charge on the main gates and the quick about turn round the back.

On top of that, COH had also provided some pick-up-able weaponry within the compound. In the game, you will occasionally wipe out a LMG squad, a HMG unit or some infantry with a bazooka. When you do so, this is dropped on the ground and you can pick it up and use it yourself. Each of your squads are limited to just one of these bonus pick-ups but they're worth having, as they really do increase the fire power available to you. Indeed, its basically essential for a few of your infantry units to grab some anti-tank hardware. A brace of panzershreks can be the difference between a failed offensive and Victoria Cross-winning glory.

This is exactly what it was like. Only it didn't look half as good on my PC.

This being the case, I got my Commandos to grab a discarded German LMG. Then they got stuck in. Basically, it wasn't looking great. They were pinned down in medium cover by a group of German infantry to the north and another squad that had rushed in from the east.

Fortunately, Royal Commandos (uniquely among the British) are equipped with frag grenades. I used these desperately, thinning the numbers of the enemy thronged about me.

It still wasn't looking good. My men were being killed too. COH is odd like this at times. Due to the way the firefights function, there can be a period where the two opposing sides line up and shoot at one another, bullets going everywhere, no-one getting hit, no-one even being suppressed then, all of a sudden, a flurry of deaths on both sides.

Indeed, this is exactly what happened. Suddenly, I was reduced to one man, one maroon beret-ed glider hero. His comrades cut down in a mist of red around him, he cowered behind a metal support strut.

Another quirk of COH's gameplay is that, if a unit does pick up a fallen weapon, invariably (be it a bug, a facet of the game's code, a health bonus - whatever) it is the man who is clutching the scrounged gun who is left alive.

Again, this was the case. Jeffery, my one brave soul, his unit butchered, still had the LMG and, with it, a palpable chance.

Also, he had a grenade. I liked to think that it was either his very last one, thrown to him by his dying sergeant in a last, Herculean effort or his "lucky grenade" his mates had always ribbed him for carrying, which had remained in his belt throughout Italy and North Africa. Seeing his death was just around the corner, he hurled it.

It landed among the Germans to the north, exploded, killed four. The fifth scarpered.

This only left the two Germans to the east. Jeffery promptly stepped out from cover, the debris from the grenade blast still raining down all about, and pumped a burst into one of the Germans. The other ducked out of sight.

I took my chances and instructed Jeffery to plant his demo charge. There were more Germans closing in on him, time was of the essence.

He went to work. The little progress bar blinked into existence.

The German to the east raised his rifle. This is it, I thought. Sorry Jeffery.

The German fired. He missed. The bullet must have nicked Jeffery's ear but it missed.

The progress bar increased. The other Nazis closed in. The single East German, Jeffery's nemesis, worked the bolt of his rifle - click, click - raised it. His second shot went wide.

Like I said, old men and boys. Rubbish.

Jeffery finished wiring in the demo. He turned, picked up his LMG and opened up. The East German was tumbled by the bullets.

The thing was, I couldn't risk getting Jeffery clear of the blast. I had to blow the fuel tanks now, to earn the secondary objective medal. Yes. That's right. I was the worst O/C ever, sacrificing my men for glory.

Once explosives are planted in COH, its up to your discretion when you push the plunger. A lovely little "Detonate!" icon appears.

Sorry, Jeffery. I clicked it. The explosions filled the screen. A clutch of Jerries, racing to the compound, were blown apart. The East German who Jeffery had so calmly put down was liquidised where he lay.

The fireball dissipated. The smoke cleared, revealing fire streaked, twisted wreckage.

And, standing in the centre of it all, my maroon beret hero. Jeffery, still swinging his LMG, surrounded by destruction.

My medal award notification appeared. I didn't care. I owed it to Jeffery to get him out alive. Double quick, I sent him legging it from the smouldering compound, resolving that I would keep him off the line till the end of the mission and keep the poor blighter alive.

But this was not to be.

A bit of COH scripting kicked in and Jeffery went to ground in a collection of buildings just south of the compound. He was behind enemy lines, as airborne troops are supposed to be and so was hiding until morning until the other elements of the assault force rescued him.

Not long after, I completed the mission. Fade out.

The Morning

Fade in. The next mission.

Its weird. I've got these screenshots from all sorts of places - and they're literally all of the mission I'm describing.

I have to admit, about twenty minutes in to the next part of the level - to well and truly destroy the airfield with a proper full sized, combined arms force - I'd sort of forgotten about Jeffery. Indeed, that first half of the mission involves setting up a defensive line and repulsing wave after wave of German counter-attack, so I was somewhat distracted.

Then, with the Germans repulsed, it came to the final push.

And another secondary objective appeared. "Save the Commandos." At the side of the map, suddenly stripped of fog of war, I saw a single building, surrounded by Germans. On the roof, entirely uncontrollable, still firing his LMG: Jeffery, the last of his unit. His health was dwindling.

Some Canadians on their way to save Jeffery.

I diverted my entire force. Hordes of infantry, commando and Canadian and tanks of every size flowed across the map like some river of divine retribution. They cut through the Germans assailing Jeffery with appalling ease.

Jeffery came sprinting from the building and was returned to my direct control. I sent him to the very rear of the map, well out of harm's way.

I like to imagine that Jeffery was returned to Blighty, a hero, that he survived the war and went to have great success in civilian life. I like to think he wasn't too traumatised by the slaughter of his unit due to my hapless tactics and wasn't too haunted by all the Germans he killed and was able to marry, settle down with a decent job and sire a great brigade of children.

It made me wish that COH had a more advanced, more intricate veteran system, with stats at the end that (in a Worms sort of way) commented on the performance of the men at my command, where individuals in squads could be promoted to squad leader and where, after every level, there was a list of medal citations for remarkable acts.

Still, no matter. Perhaps it doesn't all need validation by the game. Perhaps, just as a story, a myth of one man, upon whom the tide of war did not weigh but who, regardless, did his damned finest, is enough.

To Jeffery. A true Brit.

Gears of War: The Novel.

2008-01-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

We at Transmogrifer are proud to unveil for our devoted reader the following, entirely exclusive extract from The Pendulum Wars: The Battle of Aspho Fields by (as if he needs any introduction!) Steven Kent. Enjoy!

----------------

Chapter Six: Bloody Spray

10.40 Hours. Gastric Entiitus IV

"Its quiet," muttered Marcus Fenix, half to himself. "Too quiet."

"I hear that, bro," replied Carl Jaster, a hulking brute of a man who was well known in the unit for the array of explicit grotesques tattooed onto his rippling back . "Bound to be-"

"Hey, you two!" snapped the Lieutenant. "Keep your fucking spacing!"

"Asshole," muttered Fenix, shooting a look at Dom, who was just up ahead.

"What was that, trooper?" the Lieutenant, a pale young rookie straight out of COG Academy, came pacing over.

"I said," muttered Fenix. He turned to face the Lieutenant down and muttered, right into his face, "You're an asshole."

"That's it, trooper, I'm gonna-"

The shot came out of nowhere. One moment, the Lieutenant was standing there, a pale young rookie straight out of COG Academy, the next he was standing there, a pale young headless corpse, jets of crimson blood spewing from the stump of his neck.

"Holy fuck!" yelled Cawley.

The building directly ahead of them, a once beautiful temple long since crumbed to ruin, erupted with gun fire.

"Get into cover! Get into cover!" Dom yelled, shoving the new recruits behind walls, behind wrecked cars, behind the twisted wreckage of trams, behind anything.

Bullets spilled over them like hot mercury. Cawley was hit, blood sprayed and he tumbled over onto his back. Blood sprayed.

"Get into cover!" Dom yelled. It was the only thing they could do. The only hope they had. To duck behind whatever obstacle was closest.

The rookies, nameless and masked and unimportant, were getting gunned down like cattle. If the Locust kept their fire up, the unit would be reduced to just four or five of the old salts in no time at all.

"Shit," muttered Fenix.

Carl was returning fire, firing blind over the top of the low wall he was crouched behind.

The rookie next to him took a hit.

"Keep in cover, you stupid bastards!" Dom yelled.

The sergeant was out in the open. He'd been hit. Blood was sprayed across the ground around him, lurid crimson on black.

"FRAG!" yelled Hamilton. The explosion tore apart one of the rookies, spraying blood all around.

"Shit," muttered Fenix.

"Bitch!" screamed Jaster.

"I gotta get the sarge," muttered Fenix.

"I'll cover you! Just get into cover, fast as you can!" yelled Jaster.

"I'm going."

"Go! Go!" Jaster reared up. The slightest glance ahead revealed the situation. Some of the Locust had broken cover, they were moving down towards the pinned unit. Jaster opened up. "Eat this, bitch!"

The first Locust was shredded by the gun fire. Blood sprayed.

"They're coming!" Jaster called. The veins in his neck pulsed. "Make your shots count!"

"I'm out!" cried one of the rookies.

"Rapid reload, you fuck! Don't they teach you anything in the fucking Academy?" snarled Lawrence. He shook his head in disbelief.

"FRAG!" yelled Hamilton.

The grenade arced over them, bounced, spewing black smoke. It exploded harmlessly, sending up a cloud of churned gravel.

Fenix jumped from cover to cover, slowly getting nearer to the sergeant.

"I'm coming, sarge!"

"No!" the sergeant yelled. "Don't! Stay in cover! Its suicide Fenix!"

"Shut up, you asshole," muttered Fenix. "I need some cover fire here!"

"More Locust! Coming in from the right!" yelled the rookie.

"Got 'em!" snarled Lawrence. He stood, aimed and opened up. The Locust tumbled, blood misting around them in bright, red sprays.

"Aren't I getting through to you ass holes?" muttered Fenix. "COVER FIRE!"

"Coming up!" shouted Dom, good old reliable Dom. He stepped over of cover and opened up, roaring. The veins in his neck pulsed.

Fenix discarded his weapon, leapt towards the sergeant.

"FRAG!" yelled Hamilton.

The explosion went off beside Fenix. He felt shrapnel tear his side. "Aww, bitch," he muttered.

"You fucks!" yelled Jaster. He reached for his own brace of grenades, scrounged from a shadowy corner in the last building they had been in. He hurled the grenades, up, overarm, at the Locust.

The flurry of explosions tore the Locust apart, but still more were spawning all around, crawling from their reeking, smoking holes.

"We gotta seal them up!" the rookie shouted.

"Jeez," snarled Lawrenson. "This kid's bright!"

Fenix staggered on, blood spraying from his gashed leg. "I got you, you old son of a bitch," he muttered, picking the sergeant up.

"Get into cover!" Dom yelled.

"I'm going," muttered Fenix. "I'm going."

He staggered towards the next low wall.

"Fenix you fuck!" gasped the sergeant. "You'll get a medal for this."

"Medals!" muttered Fenix.

And then he heard that same old cry of, "FRAG!"

"Aww, shi-"

But Fenix's laconic mutter never finished. The explosion blew him over, sent the sarge sliding away across the asphalt.

"Fenix! No!" Jaster stepped forward. A flurry of bullets tore his chest open. Blood sprayed everywhere. He collapsed onto his knees and keeled forward.

"I can't feel my FUCKING LEGS!" Fenix muttered.

"The locust-" the rookie stammered. "They're falling back!"

"Fenix must have scared the shit out of 'em," snarled Lawrence, reaching for a celebratory cigar.

Dom rushed to Fenix's side. "Medic!" he yelled. "Medic!"

"You asshole," muttered Fenix, blood spraying from his wounds, his mouth, from everywhere. "We haven't got any fucking medics."

"Shit," hissed Dom. "We have to revive him." He pulled out his defib pack, laid it across the gnarled chest plate of Fenix's battle armour.

"Will that work?" gasped the rookie.

"Sure. Better if we get him out of his kit, though," snarled Lawrence. "All this," he pounded his chest, "a bit impractical at times like this."

"Dom-" Fenix couldn't manage more than a weak mutter. "I can... I can only... see... a huge... its a huge red circle, Dom!"

Dom stared down at him and yelled, "What?"

"Red circle... growing larger... oh, Jesus!"

"No, Fenix! No!"

"Hit the fucking button, you asshole!" Lawrence snarled. "Hit the button!"

"I'm trying! Its not... its not working!"

"Oh no. They told us about this at the Academy," whispered the rookie, fighting back the tears. "In certain types of warzone, the defibs... they don't..."

And the red closed in on Fenix and he felt nothing more. The last thing he heard was Dom screaming, "We've got to get him back to the check point!"

Contract by Simon Spurrier

2008-01-01T05:44:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, a novel comes along that hooks me so completely, that draws me into its world so utterly, that invests me so much, I sit down and don't get up until I've read it all the way through. Admittedly this only ever happens with thrillers of a certain length but, still, its a rare and wonderful thing.

Contract by Simon Spurrier grabbed me on the first page and dragged me to the very end in one glorious sitting. I didn't struggle.

In terms of plot, all I'm willing to say is that its the story of Michael Point, a hitman, whose hits start coming back to life.

Its one of those modern crime novels, written in first person, ladling out the smart wit and pop culture references with ceaseless swish. It seems entirely aware of itself as such and goes beyond the occasional wry wink at the reader to happily embrace its self conciousness. The first few chapters come across as little more than a lot of macho bluster, boasting, flaunting.

Michael Point is not an ex-SAS hard man from a Chris Ryan novel. He is not a reasonably likeable conservative with lots of guns and morals from a Tom Clancy. He's English, middle-class and well-educated and he just kills people for a living.

I'd read the whole indifferent generation Y hitman thing before in A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away by Christopher Brookmyre and, after a while, although it was entertaining and well written - and, at points, very funny - I was beginning to wonder where it could possibly go.
It had taken this idea I was familiar with and seemed happy to casually apply it to Fight Club's structure and style, which is fine but not exactly outstanding.

And then... Michael Point's well ordered life begins to break apart. The beauty of it is, the writing itself fragments. You see that, in many ways, Point is acting a part. He is trying to be this cool, suave young man who makes a living shooting people with bullets full of heroin. He is trying to be Tyler Durden but, steadily, the façade bursts apart at the seams.

To say that Michael is an unreliable narrator is to miss the, ah, point somewhat. He is presenting himself as he wants you to see him. He is trying to seduce you with how wonderfully clever he is. I don't believe he categorically misleads the reader - though, it would probably require a second reading to judge - but facts are coloured with his arrogance, his hitman face.

The incredible thing is, from what I gather, Spurrier, in writing Contract, has attempted to make his hitman protagonist as true to life as possible. Michael Point and the murders he commits are supposed to be plausibly, factually based. The level of research, in certain places, verges on the morbid - and the extreme realism beautifully contrasts with the fantastic elements of the plot. That word contrasts is important. I did not write complements because, in many ways, the real and the fantastic do not mesh comfortably.

Point, upon killing a man who then promptly comes back to life (and is then killed again), immediately follows through with his post-kill ritual. He goes to a club and picks up a suitable young woman and has sex with her. The club comes across as particularly surreal in the ocntext of such a fantastic occurrence.

This was the point that I began to wonder if Point was really seeing what he described. Were his hits really coming back to life?

Another part of Point's ritual is to go and meet with an old friend to talk about nothing, about banalities. She is really the only contact he has with a "real person." Occasionally, there are chapters taken from this character's diary and they cast Point in a different light. They dissect his presentational self, attempt to get the core within. They show that Point actually talks in this ridiculous, cyclic splurge of extended metaphor.

By the end of Contract, we have made our own judgements of Michael Point and, for once, it is a judgement not guided by the author. There are ambiguities that the reader is required to work out for themselves.

So, go. Decide.

Bioshock

2007-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

In the little, dark corner of the internet that I inhabit there's been something of a back lash against Bioshock. And now there's been a back lash against the back lash, penned by Keiron Gillen. Find it here.

Ironically, it appears that the binary choice presented within the game is being echoed somewhat by the real world reaction. Save or Harvest? Well, really, that's entirely up to you. I mean, there are a few games which the whole world thinks are brilliant that I personally struggle with. Take the latest Zelda title. I was slightly overwhelmed with it once the painful tutorial/village sequence was over but after a while it became, for me, an insanely protracted exercise in frustration.

Literally millions of people disagree.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has - this very day - posted an article about the Making of Hostile Waters. There's another classic game that I couldn't stand.

Oh, also any stealth game. Ever.

As such, if people dislike Bioshock then, well, fine.

But is it really a deserving victim of so much hate? For me, the setting makes up for any number of shortcomings found elsewhere in the game. Its just so complete, so gripping in and of itself. The design is just awe-inspiring. Every room has its own little tableau of horror. Every corner reveals more of the city.

In games, I want to be transported away from the humdrum. I want to go and explore somewhere exciting. The trouble is, as time wears on, huge fantasy worlds crawling with vicious elves and friendly orcs and huge sci-fi universes where the aliens all look like really fuck-ugly people don't touch me at all. I've seen it. Prettiness isn't the issue. Cram in all the fully destructible terrain you like, the setting has to say something, it has to make me feel something.

For me, Bioshock is not the story of Jack. As Jack, the player is never anything more than cipher (and, post-twist, perhaps the fact that this does not change is a failing of the narrative) through which the story can sing its swan song. This is the story of Rapture and the city itself is the character for which we are made to care. Indeed, you may massacre as many Little Sisters as you wish but you have no choice when it comes to saving the city from destruction.

And it is a story steeped in sadness.

There is nothing worse than ambitious human endeavor failing absolutely. Just ask Peter Molyneaux. And Rapture, at the time of your arrival, has failed, completely and absolutely. Every room, slowly filling with water, every bloody, hunched corpse: this city has gone seriously wrong.

I've read the criticism that, in Bioshock, there is not enough evidence that Rapture ever worked. There are hardly any diaries (if any) dating before the civil war period. I'm not sure I agree. The extreme art deco opulence of some of the locations speaks volumes to me. Though the hard evidence isn't there, its not hard to imagine the few years of complete luxury that preceded the war.

Its there in every room, beauty hideously marred.

Of course we trust Atlas implicitly. He is the last shard of that normality we see behind the blood stains and structural damage. He is the last real person left in this ruined, dying city. He is a ordinary man, seeking to look after his family, in a place that has entirely gone to hell.

But more of him later.

This wrecked city is still populated, of course, but, for me, the Splicers are not simple monsters. They are a fragment of Rapture's schizophrenic personality. They're people who believed in Andrew Ryan's dream and followed it and paid the price. In seeking to heighten their humanity, they destroyed it. Perhaps the idea is not particularly clever, in and of itself, yet its very hard for me to fault the execution, the way in which each Splicer still clings to some remnant of their past life. Their babbled chatter is eerie because of its alarming proximity to sanity. Its effect doubled by the contrast of the inane things they discuss and their psychotic violence.

I killed them in great numbers, of course, but I never really felt triumphant about it. It was just a sad reality of survival.

Whatever you think about the moral conundrum at the heart of the game, I would say that the simple fact of the matter is the relationship between Little Sister and Big Daddy is an absolutely arresting, captivating aspect of the game. Those Big Daddies who have lost their precious charge, alone and bewildered, pounding on the walls... its sad, dammit.

It may be utterly ridiculous that this was the method that worked best, this coupling of huge mutant in diving suit with tiny indestructible child, for collecting Adam... but as an image, its dark and twisted and powerful and brilliant.

Andrew Ryan himself is a godlike presence that stalks you for much of the game. As the king of these people made monstrous, I went through the game assuming he was the biggest monster of them all; a deranged, mutated lunatic, dribbling and babbling and raging in his lonely tower. When I confronted him, I saw the reality was not that simple.

He is a man. A simple failure who wishes to die on his own terms. I killed him and, again, I felt no triumph. It was pitiful.

Let's talk about the twist. Its Brecht all over. It pushes you outside the game and makes you examine it externally. That's why, even though I'd thought Atlas would probably betray me all the way through (games always do that), its immaculate execution still shocked me.

But, internally, within Rapture itself, the twist doesn't effect enough. What it does do, it doesn't do as well as, maybe, it should. I found it particularly bizarre that Atlas was more interesting, more engaging and certainly more believable as Atlas than as Fontaine. His ridiculously gruff New Yoik accent broke the spell Ryan's murder had created and, after that, the magic never returned for me.

In the end, Fontaine was a B-Movie monster and that seemed incongruous, if predictable. Rapture, though, just about survived the denouement with its dignity intact.

Bioshock may not be perfect. It may not be System Shock 2. It may have its short comings but the city's story has lingered with me since I completed the game.

Rapture is still lodged in my mind. My journey through it has stayed with me. The stand-out and mottos are burnt into my memory.

And for that, I can forgive almost anything.

------

This is not really a review. Nor should it be seen as a fanboy rant. I know there are plenty of things which don't work in Bioshock but I didn't want to pick their bones. I didn't want to defend its failings.

I just wanted to strip some of that away and examine what I liked about it, how the game spoke to me and - if you buy it - how it might speak to you. I love stories. And I think the story of Rapture is a pretty damn good one. The debate about certainly aspects of Bioshock seems to deliberately side-step the fact that some things it does very, very well.

In terms of coherently reviewing the game, here is the best thing I've seen written on the subject. I really wish I'd written that. Combine it with Zero Punctuation's take and you have a fairly complete critical encapsulation of everything I thought about the actual game.

Not for you.

2007-10-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

Not for a roadie.

Ah, yes. If I can jump off half as many dead things as that in the final game, I'll be happy.

I also enclose the following not only to show the natural progression of Tim Schafer's love of metal, but also because it's extremely cool:

----

'Beat' Nick wonders if this is the legacy of too much for too few that he sees.

Better to be Schafer than Sorry

2007-10-15T04:11:00.000-07:00

If you like videogames but you don't like Tim Schafer's output, you're part of the problem. There, I said it. Alright, these days you don't get a lot of people revisiting old adventure games (please do, they're very good), but even so, to have a game as accessible, beautiful and enjoyable as Psychonauts show up and tank in the charts is just wretched.

Satire: the large fellow represents Games That Sell,
the smaller fellows represent Games That Are Good.
Now laugh: ha ha ha ha ha.

Back in the day, Schafer worked on games like Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, before turning project leader and developing Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and (arguably the ultimate offering in the genre) Grim Fandango.

"Robert Frost."

The genius of Psychonauts (which garnered, deservingly, Eurogamer's Game of the Year award for 2005) was that it coupled all the personality and story of a classic-era adventure game with action gameplay and set the whole thing in a totally organic, interactive world. Now, in the spirit of his mandate to always make the exact polar opposite of his previous game, Schafer's announced his next project: a game set in an alternate heavy metal past, infused from the ground up with rock iconography, starring Jack Black as this world's saviour - a roadie from the present day. The game is called, and don't y'all be missing that umlaut, Brütal Legend.

Oh man.

That's the cover of what seems to be this month's Gameiormer, offering the world's first ever preview of the game. Of course, if you want all the info in-depth, you'll have to buy the magazine! There are, of course, scans going around at the moment, but naturally I wouldn't ever hope to encourage the reading thereof by clicking here click here now. In the meantime, I'll try to keep the details to a minimum.

However, I can share that the game seems roughly to be an Action RTS RPG. Of sorts. Terms such as these are usually the hallmark of games with facile smatterings from each genre disguising a largely uninspiring experience. However, in this case, there are grounds for trust. Tim Schafer and his team are just good enough to pull off the surreal blend of Golden Axe, Dynasty Warriors, Shogun: Total War and Guitar Hero that Brütal Legend appears to be.

Although so far it looks like it'll be limited to an Xbox 360/PS3 release (leaving Schafer's established PC audience behind, sadly), this one should be going to the top of your developments-to-watch list right now. Who wants to rock? I wanna rock. Duh du-du-du-duh, duh-du-du-du-duh, duh. And so on.

----

'Beat' Nick usually prefers jazz, mind you.

Gaming Miscellany #2

2007-10-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

I know Nick posted about the Banhunt debate in the past but, after some lengthy internet discussion about this, I want to condense my own thoughts about it into something approaching a a complete summation.

Manhunt Axed? Haha. Ha. Ha

The Story So Far!

The original Manhunt was released (developed by Rockstar, published by Take Two) in November 2003. The protagonist was a Death Row inmate called James Earl Cash. His execution is faked and he is brought to Carcer City, where a mysterious figure known only as The Director sets him up as the star of his snuff films. As the star, Cash basically kills everything in his path in brutal, unpleasant ways.

In 2004, the game was linked to the murder of Stefan Pakeerah by his friend Warren Leblanc. Giselle Pakeerah, the victim's mother, claimed that Leblanc had been 'obsessed' with the game after the former pleaded guilty in court.

During the subsequent media circus, the game was removed from sale by some vendors, such as the UK and international branches of GAME and Dixons, leading to "significantly increased" demand both from retailers and on Internet auction sites. The police denied any such link between the game and the murder, citing drug-related robbery as the motive. The presiding judge also placed sole responsibility with Leblanc in his summing up after sentencing him to life.

The release of Manhunt 2 was scheduled for October this year.

Manhunt 2 saw a significant departure from the premise of the first game. As Daniel Lamb, a researcher turned guinea pig for "The Pickman Project" you have been sent to the Dixmore Asylum for the Criminally Insane. During a freakish lightning storm, the security system shuts down (how inexplicable!) and you attempt your escape. I assume such an escape will involve lots and lots of violent killing.

"Didn't get into Army of Two either, eh?"

Oh, and the second player character, is a psychotic fellow inmate who seems to be trained as a government agent, making him extra-proficient at all sorts of wild and wacky murder.

Yet, when this Fun-for-all-the-Family videogame was submitted to the BBFC for classification in June it was rejected, making it illegal to sell Manhunt 2 anywhere in the UK. So banning it, essentially. Its the first videogame to be banned in the UK since Carmeggedon in 1997.

Rockstar made cuts and changes to the game and resubmitted it, only for it to be banned once again. It seems unlikely that, among all the changes, they simply changed the colour of the blood. Here's what David Cooke, director of the BBFC had to say:

"We recognise that the distributor has made changes to the game, but we do not consider that these go far enough to address our concerns about the original version.

"The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient.

"There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the 'execution kills', but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature."

Beyond this point, Rockstar and Take 2 have a right to appeal the BBFC's decision and it seems likely they will fight it every step of the way.

And, you know what, I think it could be better for gaming if the game stays banned.

"What madness!" You cry. "Haven't you read any Orwell? Next there'll ban any violent thoughts! How can you possibly agree with the THOUGHT POLICE?!"

Well....

Practically every game I own simulates killing in some way. Killing demons, killing Nazis, killing criminals, killing children infested with parasites, killing prostitutes, killing aliens, killing dozens of civilians who just happened to stray in front of my wildly careering car. I chortle as I smash in someone's head with a bus shelter or smack them upside the head with a lamp post. I laugh wildly as rag doll physics sends blood and bodies spraying all over the shop. God! What fun!

Rockstar's Editing Process

Everything about Manhunt 2 seems to be a rather horribly logical extreme of the dirty, gritty, blood-soaked, kill-a-thon style of games on the market. Its the distilled essence of a million other games, compressed down into one blood-soaked slice of gaming pulp.

This isn't one game they're banning. Its practically every game I own.

And maybe they're right. Maybe I shouldn't enjoy killing things so much. Maybe I shouldn't spend so, so much of my time doing it. Maybe any of us who think they're right and that maybe Manhunt 2 is not the best ever idea for a game should seriously examine everything else we spend our time on.

I mean, in American History X, I thought Ed Norton curb-stomping a black criminal was one of the most sickening things I'd seen in a film. Now, in Gears of War, I do it ten times a day. What does that say about me?

I think its all too easy to decide that any censorship is bad and simply, endlessly reiterate that argument until the end of time. I think that's what a lot of gamers do - pigeon holing anyone who has problems with violent games as just another Daily Mail reading cretin and dismissing them. Look for any discussion of this issue on the internet, amongst people who love gaming, and all you'll see is, "FUCK THE DAILY MAIL READING FAGGOTS!" or whatever.

"I read the Guardian!"

Yet, personally, I can perfectly understand why someone outside gaming could have a real issue with the fact millions of people now grow up playing games that make warfare and killing glamorous. So what if its virtual? If murder is abhorrent, surely going around virtually murdering people and deriving enjoyment from that is, if not equally abhorrent, not exactly wonderful for the (for want of a better word) soul?

My point about American History X is, in that film, Ed Norton's character stamping the burglar's head into the curb is the low point of his descent into the white supremacist subculture. The rest of the film is about him trying to get away from that act and all that it represents. It is not in the film to get everyone to cringe or, worse, clap their hands together with enjoyment.

Largely, games don't do this. They don't have a single act of violence in the second act to which you have been working inevitably towards and from which you then have to recover. They take films and, in the main, strip away the characters and story and moral debate. They distill it down to that cringing, terrible moment and then assign a button to it and get you to do it 100 times.

You don't kill one person and agonise over it. You kill two hundred people, reload, and kill a hundred more. It has no repercussion, moral, intellectual or emotional, for the player. Its just solely entertainment.

And though I do not believe that gaming turns us all into violent killing machines, I do believe there is a significant difference between watching and doing. I think the feeling I get when I pull off a head-shot in TF2 is very tangibly different to watching someone cap someone else in, say, a Michael Bay action picture.

And that's the other distinction. Films about death and killing and war come in a variety of tones. Yet, in games that deal with such subjects, everything is ramped up to a Michael Bay pace and approach. Its all about stylish kills, skill shots and M-M-M-M-Monster Kills. Omaha Beach is turned into a roller coaster. Dropping a nuke is made into a thrilling, last-second-of-the-game spectacle.

Put it this way, at times, it feels like people within the industry define Mature Content in games as, basically, more blood, more swearing and maybe some unrealistic boob-age*.

The closest you could be getting to the cover art for quite some time.

Despite the fact I play violent games (and enjoy them) I do feel the occasional moral, pacifistic pang at some games. I'd like it if people within the industry actually had a sensible debate about this, rather than just slag off the BBFC - which is the instant (and extremely tedious) knee-jerk reaction.

Surely we all have a responsibility to pro-actively help the situation by improving the image of the games industry?

An image that, if we're honest, is doing none of us any favours.

Surely major game companies like Rockstar have that responsibility too, rather than just designing and releasing (or trying to, anyway) a game which is just going to kick this endlessly cyclic debate into motion once again?

The trouble is I think even committed gamers have a limit. They have a line drawn in the sand, somewhere, where they'd deem the content of a game as unacceptable.

Imagine a paedophile game, for example. Do people honestly think that this should be released and that its theoretical commercial failure would be validation for the industry? And if people do think that such a game would be too much or too far, if they do have that line drawn in the sand, why argue with a decision made by a Board put into place to protect the average consumer?

Whatever our opinions can't we form them into a coherent debate and voice them in a serious, mannered way rather than just turning caps lock on and berating everything who doesn't like violent games as a Daily Mail-reading, alarmist Nazi?

*Of course, sometimes, instead, there's Bioshock.

-----------

Jachap would never have bought it anyway.

Losing Control

2007-10-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

Control, for those who haven't already heard its phenomenal critical reception, is the story of Ian Curtis, frontman of the band Joy Division. Curtis killed himself at the age of 23, and the band then went on to become New Order, making music in a very different vein. For the first half of the film, I was questioning it pretty deeply. When a film is that highly praised, it's either genuinely unquestionably good, or is incredibly pretentious and panders to the art crowd. Control upsets this equilibrium by being extremely cerebral and minimalist, while also managing to convey a great deal of emotion and plot, and hence borrow heavily from both columns.

Macclesfield - home of tall tower blocks, old people
and sad kids.

In terms of scene length, it squares neatly up to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but still each moment manages to stay pregnant with emotional significance. It's tempting to be controversial and say that it's a very simply-made film with the benefit of a powerful story and a strong cast, but that's not really true. It is, however, the kind of film whose technical brilliance and directorial nuance get lost in the actual watching of it. This is largely due to the audience's feelings towards Curtis himself, but more on that later. For now, it is just important to note that the praise is justified, and Control is an extremely well-made film. The scenes are set with confident authenticity and a real sense of drama, and each frame of the film looks like an NME publicty shot. This one, specifically:

It's even re-staged in the film, folks!

But moving on - Curtis' portrayal in the film is brilliantly dispassionate. It would be entirely possible to succumb to showing him as a true poet, a Byronesque genius who wanted too much, loved too fiercely and died for his efforts. However, director Anton Corbijn takes the far braver route of portraying him as a mess. Why does he cheat on the wife he loves so much? Why does he allow his fame to occupy his life so totally? Why does he kill himself, ultimately? Because he can't cope with where his life has led him. He falls in love with two women in two severely different intensities, he's terrified of his worsening epilepsy, and he's creatively frustrated. He switches wildly from poetically verbose to utterly speechless. It's this dichotomy that plagues the viewer and makes it so hard to sympathise with him. It's not until the final quarter of the film that the viewer really sees what the film is trying to say about Ian Curtis, and when this realisation dawns, the emotional impact is palpable.

You see what happened in that last paragraph? I stopped talking about the film and started talking about Ian Curtis. That's exactly what happened to me in the cinema, too, and this is what marks Control out as an exceptional film for me. I was so taken in by the complex minimalism of the film's character development that I couldn't step outside it to analyse it. There's no question that it's a good film - instead, the you find yourself asking if Curtis was a good man. This is exacerbated by the fact that it's adapted from his widow's autobiographical account of their relationship, which puts a certain skew on the film. But as I say, by the time the credits roll, there is no question where the audience's sympathies are supposed to lie - that is, more or less, everywhere.

Duffel tear us apart, again.

The story deals, as I've said already, with duality. There's the Curtis who stalks around in skinny black jeans, disgusted at the limitation of living in Macclesfield, and there's the Curtis who gazes with warm elation into his wife's eyes and says 'let's have a baby'. Both of these are brought to life perfectly by relative unknown Sam Riley, whose young face shifts constantly from confused schoolboy to brooding rock-and-roll ne'er-do-well, sometimes within a matter of seconds. Samantha Morton also does typically sterling work as Debbie, his wife, taking on her usual calibre of role as the girl who gets left behind, but ensuring by sheer screen presence that the audience never forgets her.

This photograph is not taken from Control. There
are no photographs of Samantha Morton in Control.
She is An Underappreciated Actress.

All-in-all, this is an incredibly moving portrayal of one of pop's most troubled souls, which tells a story that by now has become almost generic, but still manages to surprise and affect, with humanity to spare for everyone involved. If you've never heard of Ian Curtis, it doesn't matter. If you're a huge Joy Division fan, this film captures the moody spirit of their music perfectly. Kudos all around. Just don't expect an easy viewing experience.

----

'Beat' Nick went all serious for this one.

Sketch Showcases Saved by Serafinowicz

2007-10-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched The Peter Serafinowicz Show at 9:30pm on BBC2. There were many funny moments. This was almost certainly the funniest amongst them:

You laughed, didn't you? At least snickered a bit. Admit it. In that video, you saw the man himself delivering not only an extremely convincing impression, but keeping an absolutely perfect sense of comedy timing and also doing the best maniacal laughter you've ever heard. What's more, it's a slightly outdated pop culture reference, but you don't really need to have any former knowledge of it to appreciate the sketch. Aside from that, there was also flawless editing, brilliant support from another actor (note her masterful response to the gun being revealed) and the noticeably euphoric lack of a laugh track.

Now, imagine that but stretched over the course of an entire episode of a sketch show.

Yes, it was the first episode, so the cream of the crop will have been picked for it especially, but it's still the most promising first episode of a sketch show to emerge since The Mitchell and Webb Look. The supporting actors were brilliant without exception, the direction communicated the gags perfectly, and Serafinowicz himself is a constant joy. And let's talk about that in more detail.

Fans of Serafinowicz's early BBC collaboration with friend Robert Popper will find his success here to be no surprise. The show, Look Around You, was an exquisitely-rendered parody of 70s science programmes for schools, and never let the concept get in the way of the constant flow of gags. Witness this, for example:

Ha, ha. Classic. Not only did Look Around You escape its ten-minute remit to attain a full second series of half-hour episodes, it also amassed an impressive array of comedy guest starts, including director Edgar Wright's only two extended acting appearances: here and here. Serafinowicz also wrote the electronic music for the show under the pseudonym 'Gelg'.

Since then, Serafinowicz has continued to star in small roles in the funniest joints in town, but failed to land the kind of starring role he deserved. This finally came in the form of a skit released on the internet featuring a fictional entertainment network called O! Hollywood News. In it, every character but the announcer was played by Serafinowicz himself, uncannily impersonating such stars as Al Pacino, Paul McCartney and, most eerily accurately, Alan Alda. It got a fair bit of attention, which gave him the pull to finally push for his own Big Deal, finally revealed as The Peter Serafinowicz Show.

In this new project, collaborating, unlikelily, with indie humour cartoonist Michael Kupperman, Serafinowicz has crafted a beautifully demented slice of sketch wonderment that should be seen by all. If only to see how roundly he beats the tar out of other, lazier sketch writers that have proven so successful of late. Even the inter-sketch bumpers, showing Serafinowicz in a white suit cavorting mindlessly before a giant neon sign bearing his own name, are funny. And it took far too long for that name to find its way up to that marquee.

Maybe they had trouble spelling it.

Anyway. Be part of the solution! Watch The Peter Serafinowicz Show!

----

'Beat' Nick does properly love Peter Serafinowicz, yes.

Gaming Miscellany #1

2007-10-04T01:57:00.000-07:00

September was a good month. A very good month. I got an XBox 360 Elite. The world, in a larger sense, is not a better place for this. However, my own personal little corner of the world sort of exploded with joy like a smashed pinata. Then I bought Bioshock. If there's a game which needs a whole blog, all to itself, it is Bioshock. Suffice to say (though it really doesn't) that, alongside the searing joy of, say, Crackdown, Bioshock delivers something additional. Yes, its damn good fun but there's something else. There is something so awe inspiring-ly splendid about the game that makes me, a player who would normally rush through any game, pause and explore every single room, every single detail. I want to savour it all.

The Daddy. In, oh, so many ways.

I think GTA3 is better than any of the following games for one single reason. Despite tailing off a little when the bridge is repaired and you're given access to the second and third island, that first island, with Chinatown and the Mafia is filled with detail. Not only is it worth exploring but due to the fact that its a manageable size and you simply spend so long there, its the only time (perhaps ever, in a game) that I've actually bothered to learn my way around without the mini-map.

Whereas most shooters are like chocolate bars, something that you can consume in a few satisfying (but short lived) bites, Bioshock is more like, say, a packet of After Eights. What a dodgy fucking analogy that is. Still, lets all persevere, shall we?

Why like After Eights?

Because its a game delivered you to in well wrapped slices. Part of a larger whole, yes, but nonetheless individual. Each slice is worth savouring. There is something of that GTA3 effect, in that there's a packed depth to small places. There are things to be seen, in every desk, on every wall.

And the art design makes everything a pure joy to look at. More of this later.

Anyway, September was good. I had Bioshock and I was going to get World in Conflict and then Valve said, "Hey, preorder the orange box for this ludicrously small price and you can play the full game of TF2 a couple of weeks early. The full game, people."

T-Shirt, anyone?

I was feverish.

If there's another game that requires a blog all to itself its TF2. However, Rock, Paper, Shotgun is doing such an excellent job of this already there very little need for me to jump on the bandwagon.

I'll say this, though. TF2 loves you. A game with nine possible classes, all with different skills, speeds, rates of damage and healths, could have been the single most bewildering thing that I had the misfortune of stumbling into and being killed by (lots).

Before they changed the direction of the game completely, adopting a sort of ultra-violent Incredibles look, it may well have been horribly difficult to get into. The fact is, the art direction they took enabled them to make things amazingly intuitive, not to mention laugh-out-loud hilarious at certain points.

The medic has a massive Healing Gun.
The spy wears a mask over his balaclava to tell his team what he is disguised as.
The kill-cam that snaps to your assailant both makes for some classic shots (an enemy Heavy, on fire but still laughing at the top of his voice is my favourite from my personal collection: Killed Too Much) and shows you why you shouldn't have danced out into the open without support, brandishing a needle gun.
The red base is actually red. You hardly ever get disorientated because the game is announcing to you, constantly, in a loud and persistent voice, exactly where you are.

And its all tied together by how it looks. You couldn't, for example, have bright red barn buildings in a normal military combat game. They need to be grey and gritty. That's the law.

In many ways, its the video game equivalent of something like The Simpsons. You can be flicking channels, taking in half-a-second glimpses of all kinds of Buying/Selling Junk shows, Buying/Selling Houses shows, Celebrities Doing Something shows and even other cartoons and you'll still be able to spot and differentiate The Simpsons from everything else.

TF2 doesn't have yellow people but, compared to the endless corridor-bad men-Ak47 shooters, its an amazing blast of fresh air.

Which brings me to the crux of what I'm saying. No, not that September was the best month ever but that, in certain cases, that whole argument about graphics versus gameplay is rendered completely null and void.

After months of dejected frustration at my Wii, a console that bellows, gameplay over graphics (or, indeed, any type of technical power) pretty damn loud, I'm finding myself enjoying two of the most beautiful, distinctive games ever made on two completely different platforms.

Yes, Bioshock and TF2 are beautiful but this is not just scenic finery. Their graphics work. Be it enhancing the atmosphere of a magnificent underwater world that is slowly crumbling or letting you identify any of the nine classes at a distance and allowing you to inherently understand their purpose and weaponry in a single glance the gameplay of both games is completely enhanced and complemented by the graphics.

They are not two separate, (or, indeed, separable) components.

And, frankly, hoorah and hooray for that.

-----

Jachap is often complemented by his graphics.

Skins

2007-10-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Get a fucking job, the lot of you.

My housemates watched the first series on E4. Now they're watching it again on Channel 4. Even as someone who found the hyper-comedy-drama reality of Shameless and Teachers (two very obvious precursors) quite enjoyable, Teachers especially, I loathe Skins.

For a start (and this is foreplay, trust me), I can't work out if it takes itself entirely seriously or not. Sometimes, I think its purely ironic, as if the whole thing is an extended fantasy sequence of what a certain type of person thinks being a modern teenager is like.

At other times, I think the People What Are Responsible expect me to seriously believe (and invest) in a character who screams, "I want to, like, rip her fucking tits off!"

Most of the time, I think it could even be a successful production exercise in being both, catering to both the people who think its all-out ludicrous, tongue-in-cheek silliness and the people who just, well, don't.

"Hey, its ironic if you want it to be! If not - This Is What Your Life Is Actually Like."

And maybe my life was just really, really boring compared to the oh-so-gut-wrenchingly-trendy writers of this show. I mean, I never had three days of digestive problems brought on by swallowing a load of recreational drugs in time for a school trip abroad. I never took viagra and pissed myself in the face the morning after. My mother never left me to my own devises long enough for the house to turn into a squat (FYI: three days). And so on and so forth.

It all seems like complete and utter farce to me. Even at a push, even if I suspend my disbelief for long enough to accept some of the situations the characters get into, I can't help but feel its all completely played for laughs and, if it isn't, the quality of some of the acting very quickly drags it down into the Quagmire of Unintentional Humour.

Perhaps this is because I am Extremely Dull And Boring and perhaps this website will erupt with thousands upon thousands of people telling me exactly how Dull and Boring I am with the use of maths, Newtonian law, anecdotes of just how munted they got one time and large visual aids.

The point here is not necessarily the content in and of itself. Massive teenage parties, binge drinking, drug use, sex - all this happens in real life... but look at the way its shot, look at the edits on certain punchlines... look how everything (everything) is pushed to an absurd extreme. I mean, take for example the psychology teacher and Chris gettin' it aaaawn in Russia. They're standing, facing one another for a moment and then the irresistable urge for sex overcomes them and they tear at one another's clothes and plunge onto the bed and RRRAAAAARRRGH*.

Its just so subtle. I'm sure many people missed what was going on, entirely.

Or they did until someone hears the sex noise (of course!) and, investigating the noises, walks in on them thrusting away at one another (double of course!). Its Carry on Teenagin'.

I should hold my horses, obviously.

Because comedy-drama has a right to be both comedic and dramatic. Just because I, from my vaulted, sneering high-horse, can't feel empathy for the characters of Skins does not mean no one else is able.

Look at how sensitively the extremely original anorexic depressive was treated, for example: being sent to a country estate where a group of Victorian exhibit lunatics prance about singing, waving colourful flags and one disturbed chap is no longer allowed to keep rabbits because he kept firing them into the air strapped to rockets. How astonishingly brave of this programme to tackle such an issue... no, can't do it. Everything about Cassie is played for cheap laughs and the visit to the estate caters precisely to the sort of person who uses the word "retard" about people with epilepsy.

All right then, I'll try again. I'm sure some people watch Skins for that one unarguable reason anyone watches complete and utter tosh: escapism. For that right to frolic in someone's lurid fantasy of being a teenager, in the same way that Doctor Who fans frolic in someone's lurid fantasy of being a time and space travelling intergalactic trouble shooter or fans of Die Hard frolic in someone's lurid fantasy of being Motherfuckin' Bruce Willis. With a gun.

The Escapism Clause lets you off.

Even so...

Wouldn't anyone rather be boring if having a life so packed steaming full of youthful hijinks such as international drug smuggling and the constant, gruelling quest for sex means you have to be, for instance, this chap:

MASSIVE TWAT**

Or this girl:

TWAT

Who, despite her range of designer gear, professional mother and crisp, upper class accent (that makes everytime she says, "Oh, faark orrf," utterly hilarious) is referred to as a chav.

Or perhaps, erm, her:

ALSO AN ANNOYING TWAT

Or any of the other two dimensional nitwits who populate this TV show (don't even get me started on what the blurb calls the "tap-dancing gay enigma" of the group). None of them are remotely likeable except for Sid. To be honest, if the entire thing was just a sitcom following Sid's misadventures in a posse of twats (and, at times, that is exactly what it seems to be) I'd enjoy it a lot more.

Then again, I wanted Heroes to be just about Hiro, somewhat negating the ensemble nature of the show and probably cutting it to a quarter of the length, but at least the whole thing wouldn't be so utterly po-faced.

I can hardly bear to watch Skins. Not only are the individual characters annoying but the script they are plunged through is a giddy whirl of juvenile banality, devoid of any substance and completely, achingly shallow. The contrived, inconsistently paced plot, what there is of it, seems at times just an excuse for showing young girls in their bras at any remotely plausible opportunity.

It all just reminds of a low-budget (and fairly abysmal) series that aired early on Channel Five at weekends called Harry and Cosh. If Channel Five had made a post-watershed version... it would have been Skins.

And, laden on this, this whole air of superiority that says, "Byker fucking Grove never did this, did it? This is REAL. Anyone who doesn't like it is simply in denial about what their children do at the weekends."

Oh, grow up.

*Their lust is satiated in a moment of sudden, animal passion

**Basically, a synonym for any committed hedonism.

--------
Jachap is forty-five. And reads the Daily Mail.

The Forlorn Ultimatum

2007-09-22T02:11:00.000-07:00

"I'm so lonely."

Look, here's the thing (hello, by the way) : I desperately want Paul Greengrass to stop making films.

As some way to intellectually legitimise this statement, I include below part of a review Roger Ebert wrote about Aliens:

"The movie is so intense that it creates a problem for me as a reviewer: Do I praise its craftsmanship, or do I tell you it left me feeling wrung out and unhappy? It has been a week since I saw it, so the emotions have faded a little, leaving with me an appreciation of the movie's technical qualities. But when I walked out of the theater, there were knots in my stomach from the film's roller-coaster ride of violence. This is not the kind of movie where it means anything to say you 'enjoyed' it."

And, then, later:

"I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure 'Aliens' is what we mean by entertainment."

Now, I like Roger Ebert. I find this reviews refreshingly honest and I do not, quite frankly, give a damn about his opinions on computer games.

I've heard people say, "Oh I'm never trusting another one of his reviews," just because he's a slightly old guy who doesn't see the artistic value of video games. Hey, that perfectly describes my Dad and I still respect my Dad's opinions on, say, rugby, whatever he may think of games. This summer, in my leave of absence, my Dad did enjoy the Wii, though. So, perhaps, one way to Ebert's heart is getting him to sit down with Nintendo's latest.

This is all by-the-by (what does that even mean?), though. What Ebert is saying is directly relevant, a decade later, to The Bourne Ultimatum. You need proof the man is an almost genius at his trade, there it is.

The reason its relevant is that The Bourne films, since the Doug Liman directed Identity, aim to achieve that same wrung-out effect James Cameron brought to the Alien franchise back in the days of Yore (and shoulder pads).

I think Identity is a brilliant film despite the fact that, whatever people say, its just as implausible as any Bond.

For starters, no-one has ever adequately explained to me why Bourne has the account number of a bank he regularly uses in a laser pen fitted into his hip. I know its the catalyst of the plot and a brilliant image with which to start a film but... why did someone go to all that effort? He's been hardwired with a photographic memory, after all. Did someone at Treadstone guess the whole amnesia thing could happen, years earlier?

Surely, if he was to be killed or captured, it would be a huge security liability?

Bourne chase-walking through a crowd

Yet, in shooting it how he shoots it and crafting action sequences the way he does, Liman is able to drape the whole situation in a noticeable credibility. Its all in the details, after all. Chased through an American embassy by the heavily armed marine garrison, Bourne pauses for a moment and wrenches a map of the interior off the wall.

Its nothing and, yet, its everything. Apparently, Liman's team took hours to come up with moments like this. Simple but supremely clever, showing the tactical genius and under-fire coolness of Bourne's character.

In the end of that first film, he seems to come to terms with himself and his past and decide on a new future for himself and that woman out of Run Lola Run. Treadstone is shut down. Le fin.

Of course, given that the source material is a trilogy of Robert Ludlum books and that gives the film makers at least three titles for shiny summer blockbusters, there were always going to be sequels, despite the fact that, narratively speaking, Bourne's story was done.

Liman passed directorial duties to Paul Greengrass. And Paul Greengrass decided that what the film needed, what the established Bourne formula needed, was a severe shake-up.

Not in the way you might think. In a lot of ways, Greengrass has just adhered to the template established in the first film. Numerous continental locations, Bourne on the run, numerous shadowy government assassins (none as awesome as Clive Owen's hideously underused Professor), a fight with a ridiculous household object, a finale car chase. Bourne limping off at the end. Because a limp and a bit of a jam-sandwich blood here and there = realism. "You never see Bond limp, goddammit!"

Bourne chase-walking through a crowd again.

No, this was not a shake-up in terms of plot or characters but in terms of every single fucking shot.

For some reason, we are now supposed to believe that a documentary crew of the fearless, unflappable Saving Private Ryan ilk are following Bourne (and everyone else around) and, for some bloody reason, they can't keep the camera straight. Even when two characters face one another and discuss killing people over breakfast, the camera flutters about like a hyperactive two year old is in control.

I've watched a couple of documentaries. Quite often, in Channel Four's run of The Man With the Exploding Face-style films, the camera was still for more than a minute at a time. Honestly.

In Supremacy, I was sitting too close to the screen and the shaky shaky shakes affecting every sequence were so bad, I came out with a headache and a touch of motion sickness. In all seriousness, I felt terrible after watching the film. The car chase at the end, apparently one of the best ever, was completely incomprehensible.

Yet, dutifully, having seen the world and its wife rave about Ultimatum, I went along. I sat at the back and tried to concentrate as much as possible.

Now, it seemed to me that, particularly at the beginning of the film, the shaky-doc stylings had been a little toned down. I could pick up which character was which and what they were doing and (even!) where they were.

Yet, by the end, I was wrung-out and unhappy just like Ebert in 1986. Not from tension and the stress of watching Bourne fluke from one horrible walk-chase-through-a-crowd to another walk-chase-through-a-different-nationality-of-crowd but from the sheer un-resting shakiness of the cinematography.

"Oh God! Not again!"

I have other faults with the film. The hideous underuse of another great British actor (this time Paddy Considine) for one. The character arc for Bourne, for another. I found him immensely preferable before, thanks. On top of that, the CIA's dogged pursuit of Bourne was understandable in the first film, where he had failed an Op and gone seemingly rogue. Now, it seems a little arbitrary.

The Good Spy Woman says, "Hey, lets bring him in for interrogation!"

The Bad Spy Man says, "NO! KILL PUSSYCAT KILL!"

Why kill off Brian Cox just to bring him back in all but name? And why is Julia Stiles the only damn CIA agent in the whole of the western hemisphere?

The hints at a pre-amnesiac romance between Stiles' character (never did get her name, sorry) and Bourne are just silly, considering Stiles' somewhat emotionless response to Bourne's execution orders she prints off in Identity.

Also, in one of the greatest, most brutal fist-fights the movies have ever produced, why does the other guy fighting Bourne have to spoil it all by doing a fucking kung fu flip?

Again, though, these criticisms are irrelevant.

Towards the end of his Aliens review, Ebert states: "Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft."

This is the difference. The filmmaking in the Bourne films crafted in Greengrass' trademark way is not superb. I came out exhausted, yes, but for all the wrong reasons, my eyes were throbbing and I felt dizzy. What greater reason is there to be critical of a film than if it actually makes you feel physically rotten?

Watchmen takes San Diggy

2007-07-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

...and the news isn't all good.

From Newsarama: Zack Snyder seems to have confused our expectations and lightened our hearts with the news that he's casting pretty much an entire cast of unknowns for his Watchmen movie. Most of the casting moves seem pretty self-explanatory and satisfactory, but one must wonder if the curse of rubbish female casting in superhero movies isn't at work here. After all - Sally Juspeczyk wasn't a blonde. Nor blue-eyed.

Sure, you can stick a wig on her and contacts in her eyes, but it's one of those moments that you just wonder... why? That's clearly a Germanic/Nordic-looking actress, being cast to play somebody whose unpopular Polish Jewishness is a part of the plot. Hopefully it's because she's a fucking brilliant actress, but I guess that remains to be seen. We can but hope.

However, quibbling over appearances aside, there's more bad news. Apparently Zack Snyder didn't manage to rope in that $150 million budget he was hoping for. The same Newsarama article tells us that Watchmen will use 'many of the filming techniques he used for his adaptation of 300'. Unless that means 'using a camera', I'm not thrilled. What happened to promises that this would be more like Taxi Driver than Dick Tracy?

My faith has been somewhat shaken. You're a decent director, Snyder. Do the greatest source material in history justice, otherwise the whiny, nasal fanboy backlash will be your inevitable fate.

----

'Beat' Nick is not above getting nasal and whiny.

Why Hard?

2007-07-21T03:41:00.000-07:00

Beat Nick thinks 4.0 sucks. I do too. But I didn't, initially.

There's something about the movie which leaves you with a healthy macho glow as you leave. An aura of awesome that takes a while to dissipate. To be honest, this is mainly because of Willis.

Of course, the reason action movies are so popular is because of this glow. Whereas romantic comedies are designed to tug at the heart strings, action movies tug at something that is, perhaps, a little deeper, something deeply ingrained, the primal instinct of man to be Motherfucking Manly. Basically, a good action movie has to appeal to that deep-down hidden part of us that still wants to hit pretty women over the head with a stick and drag them home.

The problem with Die Hard 4.0 or Live Free and Die Hard or Desperate Attempt By Bruce Willis to have a Successful Movie (whatever you want to call it) is that the glow does not linger for very long at all.

Willis: Clinging on for Dear Life. Metaphor?

In fact, it barely survives the cold walk back from the cinema.

The reason the glow doesn't last is because despite the arm-pumping old-school action achievements of the film, despite the spectacle of it all, despite the fact that, unencumbered by the legacy of the franchise, this would be an okay film, it fails as a Die Hard.

And that sucks.

You see, this is Die Hard number 4. Whatever references they shoe-horn in to the original, that defining action movie of an age, this is more of a sequel to the third film than to the first. And its a sequel that, rather than going back and looking at that first film to see what works, takes into account every other action movie that's gone in between and tries to build on them.

What we need, Len Wiseman is saying, is bigger and better. We need Bruce Willis to kill a helicopter with a car.

No, Len Wiseman. No. This is some of the stuff you need (and, incidentally, some of the stuff that made the first film so damn good) :

1/ Unity of Place

John McClane runs down a corridor and sees some pictures from Playboy. We smirk as, despite everything, despite the terrorists in hot pursuit, he glances distractedly at the pictures.

A little bit later, he is coming down the same corridor. There is a look of recognition on his face. "Girls," he says as he brushes the pictures.

You see, Nakatomi Plaza is an enigma to John McClane at the beginning of this film. Then, as the film progresses, he learns his way around and uses this knowledge against Hans Gruber's squad of eurotrash henchmen. And we, as the audience, learn with him. This is why, when he returns to the model room and glances at a blood stain on the floor, we know this was the site of Takagi's execution.

This is a film not set in a skyscraper. Its set in 3 floors and the roof of a skyscraper. Unity of place. There's a level of tension inherent in the fact that McClane only has so many places to go, so many hiding places and redoubts. He's only got so many options.

Die Hard 4.0, by comparison, is constructed like a video game. There is the level in the Hacker's Apartment, the level in the Underpass, the level in the gas station with the kung-fu Hacker woman boss, the Parkour ice-level boss... and so on. If McClane can go anywhere, if he's not trapped or confined or limited, what has he really got to fear?

2/ John McClane is vulnerable

"Glass? Who gives a shit about glass?"

Yes, its an action film. Yes, we know the guy from Moonlighting is probably not going to die. I mean, just look at the title.

And yet...

On a purely physical level, I can't name another action film which creates such a wince-inducing scene than the feet-glass/glass-feet sequence in Die Hard. Sure, the moment where McClane is actually tugging shards out of his feet is painful but his realisation, when pinned down and in trouble, that he has to run across all that fucking glass is somehow worse.

He's desperate. He's in a tight spot. He gets done in pretty badly but he makes it. By the skin of his teeth he makes it. The sequence encapsulates the whole point of the film.

In Die Hard 4.0, by comparison, the only thing that differentiates McClane from Superman is the lack of a cape.

3/Character Arcs

McClane is emotionally vulnerable, too. There is even *gasp* something of a character arc, simplistic though it may be, where he eventually comes to the conclusion he's been a bit of an ass hole and tells Sergeant Powell, if he dies, tell his wife he's sorry.

Yes, simplistic, but its extremely well acted by Willis. And its another layer to the character.

Holly has an arc, too. You could say its the kiss at the end, the re-acceptance of McClane in the back of that limo. But its not. Its the, "My God," when she sees her husband, staggering towards her, covered in shit and blood and sweat.

Its not subtle. But, suddenly, maybe for the first time, she sees a microcosm of what it means for him to be a policeman. He goes through all this crap to protect other people. Of course she kisses him. I would have fucking kissed him.

Then, of course, there's Sergeant Powell. With a well-timed orchestral swell, he learns to kill again. Glorious. Watching Die Hard again, I noticed how, after shooting Karl, Powell turns his attention to Argyle's limo and McClane has to nudge him and say, "He's with me." After drawing his gun for the first time in however many years, Powell would have capped anyone. I love it.

As for Argyle, even he gets his moment of redemption, thumping that twat of a hacker.

So its not particularly deep or especially clever. But compare it to 4.0. Every single character is a one-note cypher. There is no real development. Bruce Willis just wheels out his hardened quipping Superman routine, Justin Long is, well, Justin Long, McClane's daughter is a pretty feisty heroine in the two minutes screen time she gets and an ill advised Kevin Smith is just Kevin Smith.

4/ A Decent Baddie

I can't stress this enough. Hans Gruber is a fucking awesome bad guy. For one, he actually seems to have a genuine relationship with is henchmen, epitomised by this exchange with Karl:

"Asian Dawn?"
"I read it in Time Magazine."

Moreover, he's one of the only action film villains I can remember who doesn't shoot any of his own men. And he never overly monologues.

The allusion to westerns in Die Hard is pronounced. Gruber is a real adversary to McClane, a dark mirror of his own professionalism and ingenuity. But McClane is just that fraction of a second quicker on the draw.

As for 4.0's bad guy... erm, what was his name again?

5/ Comedy

The comedy in Die Hard is pitch black. Agent Johnson and Special Agent Johnson (assholes the both of them) get blown up in the biggest pyrotechnic display of the film.

The Deputy Police Chief remarks: We're going to need some more FBI guys.

Hans Gruber falls off a roof.

The Deputy Police Chief remarks: I hope that isn't a hostage.

And so on and so forth.

If you're of a certain mindset, even the callous wounding of the SWAT team that attacks the Plaza is a little amusing. I mean, Gruber could have had them killed but he chooses not to. McClane aside, he's that much in control.

Even the perpetual irony of the Christmas setting is a master stroke. At one point or another, it seems everyone hums a Christmas song to themselves.

What has 4.0 got?

Well, "Enough of this kung fu, shit," is good but that's about your lot. Justin Long and Kevin Smith gurning at one another while McClane stands there being Completely Computer Illiterate is just a little flat.

6/ Suspension of Disbelief

A good film sustains a potent suspension of disbelief. Early on, a universe is established which is, throughout, adhered to and maintained. Yes, McClane jumps off a building strapped to a fire hose in Die Hard. But it seems plausible. Its his only choice, after all.

And, as he leaps, McClane says, "Oh John. How the fuck did you get into this shit?"

In 4.0, the best action sequence is the attack on Justin Long's apartment. That exhibited some of John McClane's flair for desperately improvised violence and even had some of the claustrophobia and tension of the close-quarters gun battles in the first.

Then, later, McClane surfs a pilot-less jet, bellowing the sort of noises that seem to indicate, deep down, he thinks he can tame it like a bucking horse.

7/ Die Hard is not for kids

This was the major controversy about the film, of course. And, as my thoughts on Back to the Future's liberal use of the word "shit" may indicate, I do fall into the, "Please let him say the F word" camp.

To be honest, though, I didn't notice it quite so much when I saw the film. I wasn't sitting there wondering why McClane didn't swear anymore. I was too busy wondering how the Asian woman could survive being hit by a truck at full speed.

However, going back, watching the first film... Willis (when he's fighting Karl) has this desperate comedy lilt in his voice which makes, "You motherfucker, I'm gonna kill you! I'm gonna fuckin' cook you, and I'm gonna fuckin' eat you!" sheer poetry.

But with no swearing and no blood and nothing that even approaches the concept of someone getting butt-fucked on national TV... its hard to remember its a Die Hard movie at all.

I mean, the original even has drug abuse and a flash of boobies. And just where the hell was any of that in 4.0?

So, if they really are going to make a fifth one and I really hope (in the same way I hope an act of God puts an end to Indy 4) they don't, here's a message to Willis, Wiseman et al.

Take this under advisement, jerkweeds.

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Jachap is back, baby.

Man Watch #3

2007-07-10T03:29:00.000-07:00

Abra-retraction! It seems that reports that Jason Patric was to be playing physics' big brother Doctor Manhattan were exaggerated! Current suspect for the job:

"Eyyyyyyy!"

That's right, Burton/Crowe/Abrams fans! CHUD is reporting that purveyor of large moustaches, small beards (see above) and Amy Gardner Out Of The West Wing, Billy Crudup, is set to waggle the blue space willy. Which pleases us greatly. (But not like that.)

In all honesty, though, given the nature of the personalities cast (including a lot of relative unknowns, which is of course to be applauded), our reactions to these casting moves so far have been 'oh, okay, we'll see' more than anything else. As such, it's great to see somebody cast who we can really get excited about. Crudup's a talented actor, not too big a name, and one of a privileged few to have made an English dub of a Miyazaki film bearable. Hopefully these rumours will bear fruit - for our money, Crudup's a canny move, and an actor of a calibre that the project deserves.

The CHUD link above also reveals that Director Zack Snyder's going to be speaking at San Diego this year about the project, so hopefully we'll begin to see some confirmed casting very soon indeed.

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'Beat' Nick promises this isn't going to turn into a Watchmen movie blog. No, really.

Die Hard 4.0

2007-07-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

Sucks.

"Oops."

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"Beat Nick" is sad now.

Obsessive Watchmen Fanboyism #2

2007-06-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

While we can't pretend to deliver up-to-date news and rumours in the manner of such excellent websites as Superhero Hype, we still feel somewhat compelled to deliver the Watchmen news as it comes to us, so significant is this film project in our minds.

There have been a couple of rumourous tidbits circulating, such as Patrick Wilson being confirmed as the final Dan Dreiberg (the second Nite Owl), and Thomas Jane being considered for the part of Eddie Blake (the Comedian), but there are two major items that really deserve attention:

1) Keanu Reeves has dropped out. While this blogger wasn't entirely convinced that his casting was a bad move, it was still somewhat of a confusing choice. Anyway - since apparently Warner was unable to meet his salary demands, Reeves will no longer be modelling his floaty blue space-willy to the general moviegoing public. Whose willy will be doing its best to fill Jon Ostermann's sizeable... uh, shoes?

"One thing I never could stand about living on Mars - all the damned vampires!"

Jason Patric, star of Lost Boys and Speed 2, among, apparently, some better films, is rumoured to be Reeves' replacement. Don't get me wrong, 'how are the maggots, Michael' will always raise an affectionate smile around these parts, but then again, the last thing this film needs is a link, however obscure, to Joel Schumacher. Nobody needs that.

2. Rorschach might well have been cast. According to Paddy Considine's representation, this man will be telling us about dead dogs and burst stomachs in a gravelly monotone sometime in the near future:

"Give me back my face!"

Former teen heartthrob and Patrick Wilson co-star in Little Children Jackie Earle Haley may well, it seems, be filling the most deviously difficult-to-cast comic book roles in history. Not having seen his films, I can't really comment, but from what has been kicked up since his announcement, I say: hey, slap a ginger wig on him and I'm happy!

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'Beat' Nick is aware of how thoroughly outdated his news is.

Duke Nukem Whenever

2007-06-24T13:35:00.000-07:00

The 'upcoming' latest installment in the Duke Nukem franchise is, at this point, so far past the point of being merely 'delayed' that the joke I used up there, yes, just up there, stopped being original almost a decade ago. It then languished in obsolescence until it became ironic for a time, before once more becoming tedious and fading to a faint whisper in the memories of jaded gamers everywhere.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

3D Realms have recently released two miniscule, insignificant screenshots of what is apparently a game still, after all these years, in active development, which throws the old 'Duke Nukem Sometime/Never/Whatever' quip into some kind of super-advanced post-sarcasm bordering on looping around and becoming totally genuine.

These are the screenshots:

And there you have it, folks. Five years of radio silence and this is what we get. An electric... tentacle... tree... thing, and a Duke with a neck so intensely lit that it looks like a vagina. Yippee.

Of course, in all fairness, these are just small leaked samples of an unfinished game engine, so it's not fair to judge the finished game on them. But that's just the point. After this long, I don't care. I don't care what the screenshots look like. I just want a finished game that I CAN judge. I'm tempted to give up again straight away. Assume nothing will ever come of the project and forget this ever happened. But... I like Duke Nukem. I never even played the first 3D iteration, but the original side-scroller was the first game I ever played, and the underrated 2D revival, The Manhattan Project was great fun.

Hail to the stopgap king, baby.

I want to play Duke Nukem Forever. Just for a bit. Just to see if it's any good. That's all I've ever asked for. I want the balls-to-the-wall, brainless-yet-thoroughly-inventive slice of ridiculous action nonsense that we were promised so very, very long ago. And I'm not alone. I'm sure there are many others in the same boat, nursing this faint ember of a longing long past. We've sat through the mild disappointment of Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey. Of the old guard, only Duke remains unreleased, still flush with the promise of unstoppable alien carnage. That is, if it ever comes out.

3D Realms have saddled themselves with this inescapable build-up. At this point, to avoid being slammed three feet into the ground by the games journalists of the world, Duke Forever is going to have to be good. Like, really good. I'm talking Half-Life 2 levels of atmosphere with Crackdown levels of fun. A tall order, but that's what 3D Realms have let themselves in for.

So, 3D Realms, consider this fair warning: you can't possibly delay this game so long that we'll just forget how long it took you to release it. If it sucks, it sucks after five/ten/fifteen years of refinement. Remember Daikatana, guys? Remember what happened to John Romero?

"I had to sell off my hair! My glorious, glorious hair!"

Is that what you want?

It's been a while, I know. There were falsehoods spread about release dates. Things were said. Feelings were hurt. But let's call the whole thing off. We'll start from the ground up - deliver us a satisfying, sustained videogame experience that lives up to this trailer, and we'll forgive and forget.

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'Beat' Nick has, at this point, had PLENTY of time to play with himself.

Manhunt Reaches Grisly End

2007-06-22T06:32:00.001-07:00

Britain in the 21st Century. Paedophile witch-hunts, a citizenry slavishly following Big Brother and, of course, game-banning. Hello!

Or so you'd expect this blog post to run. After all, we're gamers here, and in the aftermath of first the effective banning of Manhunt 2, and then Take Two's decision to shelve the game entirely, you'd think that the Transmogrifier would become a veritable hive of righteous indignation. Normally, I would explode in rage at something so archaic as a videogame being banned, but this case is somewhat different to most, for the following reasons:

1.) This wasn't the work of some attention-grabbing sensationalist knob like Keith Vaz or Jack Thompson. Had they or their like been the cause of Manhunt 2's demise, I'd be furious. You can't sell out entertainment to the puritan extreme, otherwise one offending article gets banned, and then another, until we're nannying ourselves to death and watching endless reruns of Eastenders. After that, it's only a matter of time until our brains leap out of our ears to escape the horror.

2.) This was a decision made independently by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). Although the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) is the usual ratings medium of the videogame industry in the UK, companies producing more violent or sexualised content (such as Rockstar themselves) often put their games forward to the BBFC because a) they're normally to be less squeamish about explicit content and b) their ratings look cooler on game boxes.

Wha? 'M'? What the hell's that pansy-ass shit?

Ooh YEAH! 18-rated, bitches! FUCK you!

3.) Manhunt 2 probably had it coming. Controversial, I know, but so's the game. It's designed to be, in fact. Its predecessor, Manhunt (duh) was developed to be shocking, grotesque, and horribly close to the realism bone. You could slice open throats with shards of glass and suffocate people with shopping bags, and were compelled to do so by your unseen malefactor, urging you to go for the vicious kill-shot. It was gruesome, truly, but by design. Its sequel follows the same basic remit, but with a greater focus on plot, and, at least on one of its planned systems, the extra-grim touch of Wii remote interactivity. What does that mean?

SHBZZZZZSKLORRTCH plip plip

Players (or, as they're known to all government officials, 'small children') will be directing the lathe, the shiv or the Asda carrier bag with the movement of their own hands. This is the PR equivalent of painting a big comedy target on your arse, particularly for a company so often hounded by simpletons convinced that their games are designed to teach kids to shoot policemen. This game was almost predestined to be banned.

In the final analysis, this is a game that went through all the normal channels for a videogame, and was determined unsuitable for public consumption by an independent body designed to make that decision. Fair's fair, that's the system we're working with. Of course, it's never really a victory for a liberal society (which is, of course, the ideal) when expressive entertainment is stifled. It's also never pleasant for gamers whenever their pastime of choice becomes the scapegoat of the week for a flailing media hell-bent on terrifying their public on a daily basis.

This happens a great deal. Websites like Gamepolitics are updated daily with new tales of supposedly game-inspired murders and crime sprees, legal action taken by bereaved parents against publishers, and professional fuddy-duddy Jack Thompson comparing the release of the Playstation 2 to Pearl Harbor.

"You fucking Japaneses!"

It's JT who really offends here: he's the guy gamers love to hate. But the crux of his argument (or at least, what he falls back on when his racist babblings get out of hand) is perfectly solid: children shouldn't be exposed to images of extreme violence or sex. He's saying it should be illegal to sell 18/M-rated games to kids. And of course, on this side of the pond, it already is. Such a system in the US would undoubtedly be admirable. Games are a medium containing a great deal of explicit content, and it is essential that parents be aware of the kind of material that their kids are taking in.

However, ambulance-chasers like Thompson stagger their own causes by showing absolutely no regard for the people whose entertainment they're trying to moderate, and making unfair, misinformed assumptions about them. Jack Thompson's abundant, gorgeously misinformed tirades paint gamers singularly as either wide-eyed pre-teen innocents, or reclusive 30-year-old rapists that spend their afternoons humming dementedly to themselves and polishing their rifle collections.

"Ah done learnt it from Tapper."

It's this attitude which so often poisons adult discussions of videogame content. The fact is, the material available in games is no worse than in films or on TV. It just depends what you decide to watch, or play. Just like films, videogames are a varied tapestry, in no way limited by the form their stories take, only by their content. Games have their Manhunts and their Gears of Wars, and films have their video nasties. However, it must be noted that the industry is somewhat at fault here - looking at the charts, it almost seems like gaming is a medium made up, almost exclusively, of video nasties.

Almost all large publishers seem to be leading with first-person shooters or extra-gory beat-'em-ups at the moment. Rockstar is the company that finds itself accused of this most often, and it contains some of the greatest development talent working today. Violence sells, for sure, but the extent of its abundance seems inexcusable. The popularity of more relaxed games, like real-time strategies or point-and-click adventures is undoubtedly on the wane, with the latter being almost entirely extinct.

HE'S NEVER COMING BACK

People want action, and the simplest form to deliver this in is the Bruckheimer/Woo/Carpenter thrill-fest. The fact is that as a consumer base, we pay far too much money and attention to the lazy action cash-ins. The games which deserve our applause and our hard-earned cash are those which deliver action and visceral excitement to the gamer without resorting to extreme violence, and without sacrificing their intelligence. And which don't rely on media shitstorms for publicity.

Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life 2 and Crackdown all feature violent content, but within a context, and should be accepted as valid narratives, as such. The Manhunt games have made a point, even in their advertising, of portraying the notion of violence as pornography (in a manner that could be argued as satirical, but still), and featuring this as the central point of the game, so it is perhaps here that they fall down. These games have their place in the medium, certainly, but not as the most widely-advertised and talked-about offerings thereof.

The thing that burns the most about the whole situation, though, is that the people outside the industry really couldn't give the slightest shit about the games that get it right, with very few exceptions. Dreamfall got a grant from the Norwegian Ministry of the Arts, and... well, that's about it. To anyone with the power to give such boosts to developers, it's all just stupid trash, so why pay it any attention except to stamp it down where provoked?

George Bush doesn't care about exotically polychromatic people!

Tim Schafer's utterly beautiful Psychonauts languished in mainstream obscurity, with poor sales figures and an anaemic ad campaign, despite being the best kid-friendly game (arguably just the best game) released in the last... ever. Probably. The few companies who try to put out story-based titles, eschewing extreme interactive violence as far as possible, do so understanding that it means they're killing their chances of success in exchange for their art.

So there you have it. The industry state of play. We've screwed it up a bit, and it's our fault, but not exclusively. Manhunt 2 probably shouldn't have been banned in this day and age, but I for one won't mourn its loss particularly. I suppose the only real unified message of this post is: buy better games, and don't read the tabloids. There. Profound, no?

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'Beat' Nick likes it when the solution is this easy.

Jachap's Least Wanted Games #1

2007-06-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

The problem with shared accommodation is the sharing.

Particularly regarding the internet. One of my housemates organises ours. Well, his mum organises it. And his mum has decided to cut off our/my connection with the Information Superhighway (does anyone call it that anymore?) tomorrow. So this might be my last blog for a while.

Still, Nick will be around, writing stuff that actually gets read by the people mentioned in it. Seriously, Pratchett must be shunning me deliberately.

"Put some bloody effort in and dress like Rincewind next time you want a book signed, you twat."

Anyway, as a final hurrah for a month or so, I thought I'd clog the internet with some more of my opinions. Thus...

Jachap's Least Wanted Games
(Because, as my old Media Studies teacher used to say, Men Love Lists)

CRYSIS

Maybe its because after Medal of Honour: Allied Assault, a game I wanted for months and actually completed in a single day, I have a violent allergic reaction to hype which involves gouging at my own eyes with a spatula but I honestly don't think I have ever been less interested in a game.

My reason for loathing the mention of Crysis is because its [pretty much] a sequel to Far Cry. Another thrilling addition to this growing sub-genre of shooting games in tropical settings.

"Its not wartorn Normandy... Game of the Year!"

Far Cry was another devastating disappointment in terms of my personal gaming experiences. It was nice and diverting to begin with but as soon as the monsters turned up, it was utterly intolerable rubbish. In fact, even before the ill advised sci-fi slapped you right in the face, every time it channeled you inside, the quality of the game dipped considerably.

There is a running joke in PC Gamer where they use a game entitled Generic Shooter 3 to illustrate how the magazine's scoring method works.

In my mind, Generic Shooter 3 would inevitably include the following elements:

1/ Badly implemented stealth
2/ A stupidly macho main character "That was left handed!"
3/ A zoom ability of limited worth in lieu of genuine iron-sights
4/ A level where all your weapons are taken away
5/ An uninspiring story in which one of the periphery characters suddenly turns traitor at the last moment - TWIST!
6/ A fight against a helicopter
7/ The Essential Weapons Load Out of All Games: Pistol, Bigger Pistol, SMG... etc. This is so ingrained that the number 8 on my keyboard now directly corresponds with "rocket launcher" in my head.
8/ Explosive barrels
9/ Enemies who shout out stupid quips in the heat of battle. Like, "I'm going to shoot you IN THE FACE!"
10/ A fuckload of crates

Far Cry ticks a lot of those boxes. Its Generic Shooter 3: Life's a Beach And Then You Die Hard.

And, from what I've seen of Crysis... its almost exactly the same, only this time, they've got a whole load of PC-breaking technology! To make the leaves prettier!

"Take that, tree!"

Games journalists are always harking on about gameplay over graphics and yet, in everything I've read about Crysis, 80% of the space has been given over to what boils down to, "IT LOOKS GREAT!"

The best bits are the paragraphs given over to: "Its got depth-of-field!"

To my mind, there has never been a graphics feature more worthless than depth of bloody field. If its realistically implemented you don't even notice it. I mean, I don't walk down the street glancing at passing cars thinking, "Wow. Got some good depth-of-field going on today, slick."

In terms of the actual story, you're the stereotypical mute special forces soldier, investigating some alien crash site which the Koreans are looking at too.

"I love X-Files!"

And by investigating, I mean blowing the shit out of everything and killing everybody. Then, halfway through, the aliens lack of depth of field drives them mad and they start killing everybody and so you kill them.

Structurally, is this not identical to Far Cry?

Oh wait, I forgot. You have special powers.

And by special powers I mean you can decide to run really fast, jump really high or punch really hard. But not all at the same time. In the industry they call this Player Choice. It means, given any situation, the player can approach the challenges presented to them any way they choose.

If you want to rush in and jump over everything, you can.
If you want to rush in and hit people really hard, you can.
If you want to rush in really, really fast, you can.

Or, and this is where it gets really exciting, you can change your gun. That's right. In the future, the army will decide that what they want is to make the use, handling and operation of weapons much more complicated. Instead of using an SMG or a shotgun or a sniper rifle, you'll have one gun and just change all the bits to correspond which what you want it to do.

You'll also have to fill in a short questionnaire on the ethics of warfare before pulling the trigger.

So instead of rushing in and fucking everyone up with your superpowers (which stem from your amazing combat wet suit, breaking the popular gaming convention of Special Soldier Serum to explain away why everyone in spec ops has laser vision) you can hang back, fiddle around with your gun for a bit and pick everyone off from the distance in exactly the same way as if you had a sniper rifle.

But its the same gun!

The possibilities are indeed endless.

Sadly, the only picture that illustrates this significant facet of the gameplay which my half-hearted google image searches have turned up is this tiny screenshot:

Still, at least this shows off the depth of field. I mean, just look at it. That helicopter is well blurred. Awesome.

METAL GEAR SOLID 4

War. War never changes. Bloody Hellboy said that. Well, Solid Snake, disagrees. Within ten seconds of the Remastered Trailer for MGS4, he says war has changed.

Yes, indeed. For a start, there are now robot cows in Lycra trousers everywhere.

"Moo!"

Robot walkers with very manly legs and very manly toes.

That's not all that's changed. Oh no. This chap:

The eyeliner was ill advised.

is now like this:

OLD!

That's right. Its Metal Gear Solid: Space Cowboy.

I have watched three trailers for this game and, Essentially, the general gist of them seems to be: "Snake is well old, bro." You'd think that they could have illustrated this with a nice minute and a half trailer, perhaps with a couple of jokes at his expense to begin with, then a nice montage of him being one bad-ass OAP to show he's got it.

That would have been good.

But, of course, this is MGS. Hideo Kojima is incapable of saying something deftly in a few powerful moments which he could say in 45 minutes of exposition heavy codec conversations.

Un many ways, the information is not even that relevant.

I'm going to hazard a guess that, under all that skin-tight combat suit regalia, Snake is still pretty buff. He won't handle any differently. In fact, he'll probably be even more hardcore than he was before.

It certainly seems unlikely that he'll have to pause for little breaks every now and again to rest his aching knees, use a zimmerframe to walk, piss into a bag and have to stop the mission at 4 every day to watch Deal or No Deal.

Its bad of me to dismiss this game out of hand before ever playing it but, you know, that trailer tells me everything I need to know.

It tells me that Kojima still has no idea of how to tell a story properly and he's still shoe horning ridiculous amounts of pretentious seriousness into an action title with a character called Big Boss. I mean, for God's sake...

On top of that, to play this, I'd have to get a PS3.

HALO 3

I want to make something clear at this point. This blog post is not some stupid attempt to bait every fanboy in the entire world. It is not me listing games I think are going to be bad. I am merely putting forward some titles that, well, I hear about probably more than anything else. There's this whole aura around Crysis (I'm a PC gamer, so its the one on my radar more than the others) which games sometimes get, this ridiculous messianic halo of hype.

More Depth-of-Bloody-Field

I'm fed up to the back teeth by it. I think a lot of committed gamers are. I certainly hope so. There is only so many times you can hear pre-release bollocks like, "groundbreaking AI" before wanting to chisel someone's teeth off.

When was the last time AI in a game was really ground breaking?

I think my absolute break off point was Half Life 2. The promises about AI that was made there... the previews that said, if you boarded up a door, the amazing Combine would be able to find a window and clamber in. That stalkers could analyse their surroundings and react on the fly.

It was all utter nonsense, as far as I can tell.

As Nick has said in an earlier post, that stuff about Starcraft, "As you can see, Starcraft still does big battles..." is typical producer-speak hogwash. Big battles? Rome: Total War does big battles, mate. Yours are just piffling.

Its all worn me down a bit. I find, with a lot of games, I simply cannot summon any excitement whatsoever. I'm completely apathetic.

I will not buy MGS4 or Crysis. I don't want them. They don't interest me.

Still, I know I'm not completely over my love for games, because TF2 makes me giddy at the knees.

Oh man. I spend hours a day wondering what class I'll choose first.

I won't buy Halo 3 either.

Now, Halo was a respectable game. Best console shooter since Goldeneye, I'd say. Purely because consoles have shit shooting games.

Uh-oh. Here come the fanboys.

Seriously, though. I'm a PC gamer with an ailing PC. Let me have this one sacred bastion of pride. We do the FPS genre pretty well. Its not my fault that games companies think all you have to do to make a FPS good on a console is port it over from the PC with some control changes. Ironically, this sub-par treatment is reversed in the case of Halo.

Halo felt like the designers really had the console in mind. Its ideal for the XBox.

The second one, though, a lot of people agree... not so good. Now, though, the third one. A chance to refresh and revive the series. I've read that a couple of times.

It saddens me when a series needs reviving by the third installment. Really, it does.

But my reason for not wanting this game is more deeply rooted than a simple fear the production team can't deliver, based on their previous efforts.

Because, even if they do deliver, I won't be interested. I cannot actually stand Halo. The multiplayer, against experienced XBoxers was the single most frustrating gaming experience of my life.

Well, the second most. The single most frustrating gaming experience was playing my friend on the original Unreal Tournament, on Facing Worlds, with no idea what to do. He got a sniper rifle, sat on the top of the opposing tower, and killed me about 300 times in two hours. Oh, and there's also playing my housemate at Mario Strikers... anyway. It was damn frustrating.

Frustrating.

Also... the game... I don't know. There's something about Halo and Halo 2 and it may very well be something to do with the controller to end all controllers on the XBox but... it didn't feel intuitive to me.

Not in a religious, "Mouse and keyboard for life!" sort of way, there was just something detached and sterile about the experience. The weapons felt light weight. When I used the butt of the gun to hit people it didn't seem like there was any real impact.

I know, obviously, there was no real impact but some games are good at faking it. I remember Call of Duty had an awesome feel to thwacking of the enemy across the skull. You could even lash them in the face with the grenades.

Halo and its sequel, by contrast, felt neutered or hollow. Hollow 2. Heh.

Maybe I'm going mad but Halo felt to me, and will always feel, like FPS-lite. There's no weight to it.

Also, Master Chief is a bloody stupid name.

"Get him, boys!"

---------

Jachap is a gamer. Honest.

Don't turn your back, don't look away...

2007-06-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

...and don't blink.

Dear Russell T Davies,

Your work in resurrecting Doctor Who as a bankable TV franchise has been invaluable (your work in inventing Torchwood considerably less so, but still). Some excellent things have been done with that programme - some wonderfully moving, intellectually stimulating and compelling stories have been told in that wonderful 45 minutes that you wrested from the evil, encroaching hands of reality television. None of them by you, though.

Well, okay, that's too cruel. You've entertained me, certainly. Never above a certain level, but you've got a good sense of a silly, fun monster plot. However, man cannot live on fascist rhino-people alone. That's a scientific fact whichever way you look at it. The fact of the matter is that however fortunate ratings-wise your Who has been, it could be much better. Not just in specific episode cases, but in terms of overall tone. Too much time is spent on making the Doctor a hip, fanciable fellow and making the assistant fall overtly in love with them. Too much effort is expended making the show accessible to the poor wretches who aren't looking for science fiction in Doctor Who, and instead happened to turn on at the wrong time for Eastenders.

Of course, one doesn't want Doctor Who to be Star Trek. That would be rubbish. Doctor Who works because of its humanity. It's all about seeing the wonderful world of the Doctor through the eyes of the assistant, and about the emotional realities of the horrors, tragedies and wonders of travelling in space and time. So where do farting aliens fit into that remit?

"Hey guys! Heh heh, guys, check it out!" BRRRAATTT.

It's the emotions evoked in the viewers that matter, and much of the time, none are evoked at all. The plots that supposedly guide the overall arc of the series have been, thus far, totally tedious. Your programme also suffers, in its worst moments, from the curse of speaking down not just to children, but the entire audience. In your scripts in particular, the assumption seems to be that if the episode does not involve sexual innuendo, a clunky CGI monster or a sonic screwdriver, nobody's going to have the attention span to follow it.

"Ewh, duuude, did you see that wicked-sick Who last night?! He unlocked a door with a glowing vibrator!"

Bollocks.

There are good stories, as I've said. So far in this series, there have been several. The Shakespeare Code, despite occasionally assuming an unsettlingly minimal amount of literary knowledge in the audience, was very enjoyable. Paul Cornell's two-parter, Human Nature and The Family of Blood, on the other hand, was truly fantastic. It was full of compelling pathos, excellent character writing and genuinely impressive use of a sci-fi programme. While not perhaps invoking fear, exactly, it was nonetheless exciting, with its eponymous Family of villains being resolutely creepy, and its sequence of revelations compellingly surprising. The biggest surprise, however, is that it wasn't written by Steven Moffat. Blink, tonight's episode, was. And despite Cornell's achievement, it made his episodes seem almost lacking.

"Beaten?! In a week?!"

As I say, the two-parter was the best of the series at that point, and it really deserved to hold onto its crown for a little longer, but even so, Blink's ascendancy wasn't an immense surprise. Moffat has proved himself the ideal all-around Who writer (Whriter?). With this episode, Moffat has tackled the crucial task of writing a good Doctor Who villain hands-down. In previous series, he mastered the historical Who epic (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter, first series) and then delivered a delightfully off-the-wall 'fun' episode which still managed to be packed to the seams with ideas, and well and truly broke my heart (The Girl in the Fireplace, second series). Steven Moffat is unquestionably the best writer working on this series, as he proved in tonight's seat-edging, teeth-clenching, nail-biting episode. Why on Earth does he only get two episodes of a series, at best?

It's not as though his talent is debatable. His episodes do what the other writers' episodes do; except the plots are better, the characters develop more believably, and the funny lines are funnier. He's on a perpetual roll, it seems, whether he's writing entirely new material, or working from a previously published short story from years ago (as in the case of Blink). His plots are so intricate and plausible that the viewer's mind is working out causal significances long after the episode is over. His stuff does what all truly exceptional genre fiction does - achieves a sense of real literary maturity and even profundity just by being really, really good. He even first wrote Captain Jack, back when Jack was an exuberant spacefaring con-man rather than a brooding, Cardiff-locked twonk.

So why the hell isn't he writing the entire series?

"I don't get it either!"

Okay, perhaps a bit of a tall order. But why isn't he lead writer? Is it just because you want to do it? Come on, Russell. You've had your go, and you did alright. Well, not bad, anyway. Why not even script editor? It's not as though Helen Raynor (writer of pansy-Dalek-'em-up Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks) is doing an irreplaceably phenomenal job, is it? Don't get me wrong, at times, you're a very good writer, but you could really, really benefit from somebody else editing you. You might have got the public's attention, but Moffat gets you your BAFTAs and your respect. Reward him. What, is Jekyll occupying his time so utterly that he can't take on the dream job of being head writer on Who? No? So what's your excuse?

Come on, Russ. You've found an excellent Doctor and, at last, an excellent assistant. Make the most of it.

Yours sincerely,
Nick Kindred

----

'Beat' Nick did, in fact, enjoy tonight's episode of Doctor Who.

Fallout? Boy!

2007-06-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to love the Fallout games. I've tried the original and the sequel, and both instantly charmed me with their writing and the phenomenal atmosphere of their setting, and repelled me with the utter trudging misery of their gameplay. I'm sure that for the RPG-initiated, it's a perfect experience. Many people seem to claim this, in fact. Someday I hope to come back to Fallout and enjoy it as much as I ought to. However, for the moment, I am sad. I enjoyed Fallout Tactics a bit more, as there was more of a sense of direct involvement with the action, and the 'action points' system was made somewhat more bearable.

Don't worry, only five more turns before you have enough action points to move again.

BUT! A little while before the long awaited Oblivion was released, the developers, Bethesda Software, announced some exciting news - Interplay had sold off the rights to Fallout... TO THEM! Ahh, perhaps soon a nightmarish apocalypse world populated by diverse, fascinating characters would be ours - without having to point-and-click through hours of tedious random encounters! Perhaps instead, you could shoot the rat in the face yourself!

However, at the time, all Bethesda had to their name was Morrowind, a game beloved by many, but which I had found a rather detached and grinding experience, not having quite brought the RPG genre to real-time play even as convincingly as Deus Ex did several years previously! Still, the previews for Oblivion looked promising, and the screenshots were devastatingly gorgeous, so I allowed myself to be hopeful.

Urble.

Now, as an older, and eminently more Xbox-360-possessing man, I still have not played much of Oblivion. Expecting the most immersive fantasy gaming experience ever delivered, I was somewhat let down by the first twenty minutes of rat-bashing gameplay, and haven't yet returned to it. Where was the sense of interaction with the world? I still felt like a conveyer-belt avatar, shoved arbitrarily between checkpoints by cardboard cutout personages concerned far too much with their Ultimate Destiny. And with you stealing their stuff. GOD.

But then again, that's based on twenty minutes of tutorial dungeon. Probably ought to give that another go. Just as an aside, the game I was hoping Oblivion would be appears to be coming our way in the form of Bioshock. Keep an eye on that'un.

So yeah. The evidence of mine own eyes wasn't filling me with the greatest of hope, so why is it that on seeing the recently-released teaser trailer...

...I was still reduced to a giggling fool? Perhaps I'm just a sucker for pre-rendered CGI trailers. It's quite possible. But perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps it was the beautifully-rendered post-nuclear landscape revealed therein? Perhaps it was the classic Fallout device of optimistic 50s crooning accompanying images of horrific desolation? Perhaps it was the suggestion floating around that the graphics depicted here are representative of what the developers expect the final game to look like? Perhaps it was th- Christ in Heaven, was that Ron Perlman? The mighty Ron Perlman, back once again to resume his role as narrator?

"Yepfsh."

I'm havin' that.

----

'Beat' Nick sometimes gazes forlornly on a sky empty of ICBMs.

Books Overlooked #2

2007-06-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

Hello to all the wild and crazy guys out there. Today, three more graphic novels that you might otherwise have left on the shelf.

The Boys
Vol 1: The Name of the Game
Dynamite Entertainment
Story: Garth Ennis
Art: Darick Robertson

I'd like to start this review, and in fact this column, by saying that I believe Garth Ennis to be one of the best writers in the comics medium today. Some dismiss him as a purveyor of black humour and gory action and nothing else, and this is nonsense. Few writers have as profound a mastery of dialogue, plot or character than Ennis, and the extreme content he's recognised for is just one element to the comics he writes. Albeit an oft-repeated element.

The Boys is perhaps not the best example to bring up to prove this point, as it's one where Ennis is pushing heavily on profanity, rather than profundity. It's this remit that got the series kicked out of DC's recently-acquired Wildstorm imprint and picked up, eventually, by Dynamite. The cancellation wasn't particularly surprising - the series is filled with sex, violence and swearing, as well as taking huge potshots at the traditional superhero genre which still makes up most of DC's output. This is complimented well by Darick Robertson (of Transmetropolitan fame)'s grimy, characterful artwork, which really lends a great deal of personality to the characters and their grim deeds. However, this is not to say that The Boys is all about the shock value.

The Boys is about the eponymous CIA splinter group (at the start of the book, languishing in retirement) headed up by the vicious-sod-with-a-heart-of-flinty-gold, Butcher. The group's mandate is to monitor and police the activity of superheroes throughout the world. And superheroes like rough sex, drugs and sodomising each other just as much as any other breed of celebrity. With hilarious consequences. In typical Ennis style, the plot never lingers too long on a certain point, and retains an entertaining and compelling pace. The characters, although they might seem somewhat 2-dimensional at first, bear familiarity, and will almost certainly become more well-rounded as the series progresses.

Here, however, I'm talking about some of the supporting characters. The real star of this trade, Wee Hughie (based physically on Simon Pegg, who provides the book's introduction) is at times grumbly and miserable, at times upbeat and enthusiastic, and at times full of indignant rage. In other words - a fully-rounded human being, who proves instantly sympathetic. The Name of the Game is the story of his introduction into the ranks of the Boys, and it is certainly well worth your money. Providing you're not easily shocked. And have a sense of humour.

The Other Side
DC/Vertigo
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Cameron Stewart

When the issues of The Other Side were coming out, I wasn't particularly interested. I'd never heard of Jason Aaron at the time (his other current comics project is Scalped, also for Vertigo), and expected it to be just another Vietnam war story. Which, of course, it is. However, having read it in collected form, it is one of the few such works to convincingly tell the story of the whole war - summing up the discontentment at home, the horrors of jungle combat and the confused morality behind the engagement - through one soldier's story.

Well, actually - two soldiers' stories.

The Other Side tells the story of Pvt. William Everette, an Alabamian conscript fighting on the American side, and Vo Dai, a young ex-farmer from North Vietnam, who volunteers for service with the South Vietnamese Viet Cong. The two men are from entirely different backgrounds, have entirely different attitudes towards the conflict, and are fighting on opposite sides. This book, however, is about how similar they are.

Vo Dai is convinced that by fighting back the Americans, he is taking on a noble responsibility to his people - one formerly taken up by his Grandfather, who previously fought to liberate the country from the French, and whose memory Vo Dai fights to honour. He is selfless, single-minded and ruthlessly dedicated to his cause, in a manner which his compatriots often fail to be. Everette, on the other hand, is self-pitying, miserable and frightened. He didn't choose to go to war, he doesn't want to kill anybody, and he just wants to go home. Both men are haunted by the ghosts of their forebears, both in different ways.

Jason Aaron (cousin of famed war veteran Gustav Hasford)'s writing is crisp and involving, and he keeps the reader hooked on the sequence of horrific, shocking and grim events that makes up The Other Side. He portrays both central characters convincingly, in a manner that neither writes off Everette as a coward, nor Vo Dai as a blinkered zealot, as the two men's lives rage on towards their inevitable convergence. The extra articles in the back testify to the amount of research that Aaron and artist Cameron Stewart did in trying to paint a convincing picture of the conflict, despite neither man having served. This shows throughout the work, particularly in Stewart's case. I'd enjoyed his work on Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian, but I can't say I'd ever really been a fan. Here, however, he outdoes himself, with a diverse emotive, and occasionally grotesque cast of characters. Both writer and artist here do their utmost, and succeed, in creating a realistic and damning portrayal of the war, and one that highlights the tragedy in the lives lost therein. Excellent work.

303
Avatar Press
Story: Garth Ennis
Art: Jacen Burrows

This is the real left-field recommendation this time around, and one that I intend to speak at length about. This is more Ennis, in a deeply different vein. The first thing you might notice about this comic is that it is published by Avatar, and as such should be rubbish. Perhaps that's an unfair generalisation, but when a company's flagship title is Lady Death, what are you going to do? 303 is another trade in which I showed absolutely no interest in at first. Despite being Ennis, it was an Avatar comic, with uninspiring art and a generic-sounding super-soldier plot.

However, this man convinced me to give it a go, telling me 'it's really not what you think'. Once you get about halfway through this book, your expectations will have been shaken. By the final page: utterly and totally confounded. By its finale, 303 succeeds where so many comics (and indeed so many films or TV shows) fail, by being quite genuinely shocking. Please, do yourself a favour and seek this book out before looking up any more information about it, it is certainly a cumulative experience, and a powerful one, at that.

303 is, at the beginning, about a Russian special forces squad trying to beat their British counterparts to a crash site in the Afghanistan desert. They don't know what's there that means they have to shoot the shit out of theoretically allied soldiers, and for the most part, they don't care - except for the one ancient Russian commando who's thus far lived his life attempting to emulate his father, who fought in the Battle of Stalingrad. Thus far, he's never found any pursuit that has done this ambition justice. It's this notion of the lapsed honour in warfare that preoccupies the character, and the early part of 303.

Later on, 303 changes location to parts of the US, and goes on to deal with themes like the abuse of illegal immigrant labour and America's handling of (and attitudes towards) the War on Terror. These themes are handled in a less than cut-and-dried manner, and leave a general feeling of both helplessness and motivation in the mind of the reader. Despite continuing to cover the story of the nameless Russian commando, Ennis augments the plot with a cast of compelling supporting characters, all of whom have their story to tell in this comic book coverage of the death of the American dream.

Earlier I called 303's art uninspiring, and I might have spoken too soon. Jacen Burrows is certainly a competent artist, and he shows the ability to evoke horror and sympathy here. His art may not be exactly flashy, but he has a great sense of action to his drawings. It's the layout in his panels and the brutality of the violence which lends to 303 so well. But still... there's a certain disappointment to the manner in which 303 is delivered. Not even necessarily Burrows' work at all, in fact. The disappointment is that this series came out with all the appearance of your average hyper-violent Avatar shlock, when in fact it deserves far more thought and attention. It should have been a Vertigo title, released with a more flash inker for Burrows' line and a less gaudy colour job, with solicitation ads heralding it as the most controversial comic series of all time. However, in all honesty, given the contents of this comic, I don't imagine Vertigo could have published it.

Garth Ennis is about to make me break one of my own personal rules. Whenever any reviewers of entertainment media use this word, it seems spurious. A word tossed about by journalists to make themselves seem more in tune with modern culture than anyone else. Still and all, it is the only word I can think of to accurately sum up 303: this book is important. I say that with all conviction. However much the BBC's Culture Show goes on about silly toss like a comic book adaptation of the 9/11 report, it's comics like 303 that are really relevant. Ennis doesn't imply absolute right and wrong, he just gives you the facts, and leaves it unspoken how deeply, fundamentally broken things are. Other media that have taken on similar speculative fiction (television in particular, in recent memory) have been widely dismissed as sensationalist and/or timid, and reportedly rightly so.

303 strikes a perfect balance. It manages at once to be gripping, profound, beautiful and horrible. It is extremely graphic, and contains continuous use of explicit language and violence. It is certainly not going to be to everyone's tastes. Nevertheless, it is a book you should read.

I'll say that again:

YOU SHOULD READ 303.

So go on then. No, I'm serious. Get to it.

----

'Beat' Nick is finished with being preachy. For now.

Shop 'Til You Drop

2007-05-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

There is only one problem with Dead Rising - that it only gave Resident Evil 4 about a year to hold onto its title of best zombie game ever.

"Sucks to be that guy I am!"

Yes, Leon. Yes it does. I'm so sorry.

Dead Rising's roaming cadavers fill the screen at more-or-less every moment of play. The game's exceptional engine allows extremely detailed textures in close-up shots (cutscenes display, astonishingly, facial blemishes and pores), as well as hundreds of onscreen opponents without a moment's stuttering or slowdown, with the exception of one nonetheless impressive set-piece near the end of the game. So, then, to sum up, this is a game full to bursting with hundreds upon thousands of zombies. The best kind of zombies. Shuffling, angry, confused reanimated corpses with no passion other than for delicious human flesh.

Splendid.

Well, there's a little more to it. The plot, for example, is surprisingly strong. It checks all the boxes for a zombie movie: the knowledge that any major personage might die arbitrarily at any point; the uncanny sight of a zombified former accomplice; a thinly-veiled satirical message behind the visceral horror. What's more, the large number of search-and-rescue missions give you access to a hundred little survival stories, which make pursuing the extra tasks that much more rewarding, and give a real sense of a persistent world outside of your direct experience.

If you can see it, there are zombies there.

This direct experience is that of Frank West, wartime photojournalist and all-around ugly guy. He hires a chopper to get him into the small town of Willamette, which has been inexplicably sealed off by the military, with no explanation given. I'll just ruin that mystery, that bit of the game, for you - it's because of zombies.

SPOILERS!

So yeah. After a brief yet entertaining helicopter flyover of the rest of the town, you're dropped off at the mall, and from that point on, have 72 hours to explore the mall, rough up cadavers, rescue survivors and solve the mystery behind the plague before the chartered chopper comes back to get you. It sounds fun. And it is. But also - and here's where the game really shows ingenuity - it can be, at first, extremely stressful.

It could be the omnipresent walking dead, or the tension between your core group of uninfected pals, but most likely it's the fact that you're on the clock the whole time, you only have a couple of hours to complete most secondary objectives, and there's only one save slot. As such, a game that could just have been about shoving teddy bear masks on a crowd of zombies, slicing them in half with a samurai sword and taking a picture, becomes about time management.

Yes. Time management. Trying to meet deadlines, keep people safe, and make use of the hours of daylight can be daunting at first. Starting the game for the first time, you're weak, lost and lacking in extreme kung fu action skills like these:

WA-TAH!

In other words, a buffet with legs. Edible legs, that might well serve as a portion of the aforementioned buffet. However, before long you're surfing on zombie crowds, sniffing out hidden items and beating down psychopathic boss characters like you were the king. The King of the Mall. And that's when the time management factor becomes so compelling - you're under so much pressure to get things done that the game environment and its diverse mechanics don't have time to become dull. Due to ill-timed saves, I was forced to restart the game twice, and I still felt entertained at every turn - thanks, in part, to the fact that you retain your stats and skills on restarting, making the early segments of the game something of an easy ride on a second pass. There's just so much to do in this game. In different orders, in different ways, and with different amusing clothes on.

Of course, the game has its faults. Some elements of the gameplay - for example, being forced to escape kidnap if you slip up around some surprise visitors halfway through the game - seem somewhat arbitrary and irritating, but they serve their purpose, and there's always the option of reloading. Also, without grabbing the more powerful weapons early on in the game, fights with still-living enemies, or 'psychopaths', can seem somewhat unfairly difficult. Also, from what I hear, if you don't have a big TV, don't bother - you won't be able to read the text, and will just end up following anonymous arrows around to nondescript plot points. There's no option to enlarge the text on a lower-res TV, and in a high-budget game like this, that's a pretty poor show. Still, so much attention has been lavished on the rest of the game that it's hard to hold a technical fault against it. Especially if you have got an HDTV. Like me. Ahem.

The plot's even surprisingly good. The explanation for the plague, while as full of improbable babble (improbababble) as other zombie fiction (satellite radiation/hell being full of dead people/rage monkeys), rings somewhat true and checks the usual zombie movie box of serving some kind of satirical point. The characters' relationships work pretty well, with some chilling and even quite moving set-pieces. And what's more, you've gotta love Frank. Frank's an ugly, self-serving paparazzi twit.

"I'm a steamroller, baby!"

And as such, he's the kind of unconventional protagonist we don't see enough of in games. He's also a great example of successful character development over the course of a game's plot arc, but I won't give anything else away. Play it yourself.

Buy Dead Rising, and you'll be treated to some of the best open-plan environments, the best voice acting (in a Capcom game, at least, dubious praise though that is), and of course, the best zombies on offer in gaming today. If you've got a 360 (and a big telly, of course), this one's a no brainer. Join the undead fun today!

----

'Beat' Nick murrrguuurgh muh BRAINS.

Holy Moly News!

2007-05-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

You should really check out this video.

Anything Peter Molyneux generally says is pretty amusing but this is like someone decided to film an episode of The Office at Lionhead Studios.

Watch it!

Watched it, now? Good.

The reason this video is even out is that Peter Molyneux is a Big Name in Games and he believes Games can do Big Things. And he tries to do them. The man has an OBE for doing it, for goodness' sake.

I don't really remember what happened to Fable. At one point, everyone seemed to be frothing at the mouth for it. Then it just sort of slipped off the radar. Certainly that's how it seemed to me. It came out and it was all right but the earth didn't shatter. The earth didn't even move.

And yet, Peter Molyneux is still a Big Name in Games. Maybe not a respected name... but a Big One nonetheless. And this is the sequel to Fable he's talking about. Could it actually deliver this time?

Well who knows. I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed, though. Peter is still talking utter tripe.

Doesn't he realise that this has been done before a great deal of times. I mean, what about the animals in Harvest Moon?

Doesn't he realise is that he himself has pretty much done this before?

"You forgotten about me, Petey?"

Sure, you could directly control the creatures, if you wanted, but... wasn't the whole point that they were fashioned in your image because of their devotion to you? And if you let them run rampant, they could?

This dog thing seems to be the rehashing of an old idea. This time, though, he's taking away significant player control.

Awesome?

Well, lets examine his claims for a moment. When Peter takes his dog out for a walk, he says it just goes off and does its own thing. What, Peter? It goes, hangs around with all the bad dogs and starts smoking cigars behind the kennels? It plays chess with the cat from across the road? It opens its own Kosher meat business?

For one - the amount a dog can do on its own, aside from run around and get hit by traffic, is pretty limited.

For two - I don't think Peter walks out of his house and shouts, "Go, my canine friend! Be free!"
I imagine he has a leash and a series of vocal commands for his dog. Vocal commands: the real life dog buttons.

On top of that -and what is much, much worse about this pretentious bit of rubbish - the whole, "There's no dog button!" section strikes me as a little detached from the whole sequence of talking heads about love.

Lionhead's answer to "How should we engender emotional reactions from game players?" seems to be, "By having a cwute fwuffy puppy doggy that wuvs you vewy vewy much."

That's like a child saying to a parent, "What does love mean, daddy?" Just to have daddy throw them a slightly worn out teddy bear. In a way, its right. Yet, in another, more practical way, its woefully inadequate preparation for the big wide world.

What about the hard times you battle through because of love? What about the arguments and the disagreements and the compromises of two people completely at odds despite love? Indeed, what about the love of a person?

This is the best example they could give of how they're putting LOVE in the game for all of us losers who can only ever hope to experience such an emotion in virtual reality?

A fwuffy woofer, completely devoted to you?

Its a bit underwhelming.

Look at Alyx in Half Life 2 for another example of how a game's developer is trying to involve the player emotionally. She's the best thing about the game and she's still being improved upon now in the Episodic content. Valve aren't trying to make you love her, they're just trying to give you a proper companion. Not some big breasted woman who slyly winks at you when you behead dragons and says, "What a massive chopper you've got, Protagonist!" or a bunch of useless Russian conscripts who scramble about and get hit by artillery fire.

"There is no dogging button, eh, Freeman?"

A companion, who is actually worth having along, with emotions and expressions and opinions. With character.

What do Lionhead have? Again, lets reiterate: A wittle doggy! Played Nintendogs much, Pete?

Surely, what a game like Fable needs are really, really deep NPCs who actually justify the name. Its all very well RPGs having miles of terrain to cover and a billion different quests and thousands of items to collect and XP points to earn - but whats the point, really, when everyone you meet is just a cipher?

"Kill rats for me Protagonist!"
"Make love to me Protagonist!"

Its all the same.

Why save a world full of plot but bereft of everything else?

The overriding impression I was given by this video is that Fable 2 is going to have a dog in it. I doubt the dog will be integral to the plot but I'm sure you'll be able take time out to play with him when you want to and teach him tricks. I'm also pretty sure he'll help you out when you're attacked (of his own freewill, of course) and may prove vital in a couple of the puzzles.

So, just like Black and White then.

------

Jachap doesn't even want a dog.

Confessional Reading

2007-05-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

At one time, several years ago, approximately 1.2 million people used to get up in the morning, turn on their TV, switch to Channel 4 and read this:

"Steal-the-picture-me-do!"

I was one of that cult. We never met. We never wore cowls and chanted secret chants but we were united by the bitmap characters, the bright primary colours and a love for games. We were connected, like the followers of the religion in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Teletext: The old man's internet.

Digitiser provided gaming news and reviews in an irreverent way. And when I say irreverent I mean funny. And when I say funny I mean so funny there'd be tears rolling down your face because the cornflakes you'd been eating before school had been caught by an unexpected chortle, slipped down the wrong way and were starving your brain of oxygen.

Digitiser was AWESOME.

There can be no debate about that. And without trundling for the ifs and whys and whos, it was largely down to a man named Mr Biffo. Digi is sadly now defunct and he has moved on to writing for the bit of TV with moving pictures. He also jots down a column for Edge which is generally the best bit of that overly pretentious "Ooh look at us score so low!" publication.

He has recently written this book.

Disturbed? You will be.

Essentially, Mr Biffo (I staunchly refuse to use his real name) poses as a young woman, LoopyLisa: a batty schoolteacher and total newcomer to that hive of sophisticated communication and rapier wit (or, as the blurb puts it - that bucket of filth) The Internet Chatroom. Its never actually revealed what chatrooms he frequents in this guise but, to anyone who has ever fallen into the particular abyss Biffo documents, its all very familiar:

BigWang1112: A/S/L?

BigWang1112: Wat u look like?

BigWang1112: Fancy cyba?*

As LoopyLisa21f, Biffo lures these men in and proceeds to beat them around the head with the mighty Insanity Stick +3 he's been wielding so well for so long.

It is all, of course, almost breathtakingly bizarre. Mr Biffo's character is an amalgam of all the things you might remember from Digitiser if you ever read it. If you did as soon as cursory references to gin start slipping into the chat logs, you'll know exactly where you are. Its like visiting an old mad friend.

And its funny. I've read the reviews of other people who've got the book (yes, on Amazon) and they seem to think its pant-wettingly so. I've got to say, thus far in, I've been casually amused, certain segments have made me smirk but... well, I'm not completely sold on the subject.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you shouldn't get the book. Indeed, you probably should. If you read Digitiser, if you know who Mr Biffo is, or even if you don't but you have some passing knowledge of chatrooms (to the extent that you even know what A/S/L means - and the inherent connotations of the question) you will enjoy it.

To a certain extent anyway.

My personal reservations are based around a couple of things.

Firstly, a lot of the publicity for this book sets the book up as an amazing revelation. As if the fact the internet is populated by a lot of lonely, horny men is something none of us expected. Indeed, the chatroom - in my experience - has cultivated a certain evolved breed of desperation, where the slower, weaker strains of horniness have died off and been replaced to the super virus of:

BigWang1112: 20/m/UK. WHO WANTS TO SEE MY COCK ON CAM?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

But this is meant to be some sort of hilarious surprise? Like Eddie Murphy jumping out of a big birthday cake?

Its just not.

Le pompt le funny?

Stemming from that is the fact that, at times, when the guys are really quite harmless - and not demanding LoopyLisa21f to rub their cock - Biffo tries to bleed comedy from the situation by just descending into the downright bizarre.

Its funny when the Insanity Stick smites the perverted. Thats comedy justice. When its just some guy who can't spell soaking up all the punishment its wasted space.

Indeed, at these points, LoopyLisa doesn't even have a conversation. She just monologues on a ream of absurdities. Now, if Biffo wanted to write a full comedy book based on this character's misadventures with her abusive dad and her epileptic boyfriend (no, really) he should have just done that. That would have been fine.

Shoehorning it all into a book that should just be about ripping into internet chatrooms for the contorted mess of evil they are is a bit lazy, I think. The passages which are most effective balance the two and retain the feel of a conversation, rather than just reading one of the Man's Diaries** in an unusual format.

Perhaps most worryingly, the actual "ripping into the chatrooms" idea does not have that much longevity. I mean, put it this way, you're paying good money for one joke. A joke thats totally revealed on the cover.

LoopyLisa21f is actually a middle-aged guy in makeup and a wig.

[Applause, Exeunt]

I mean, in terms of a concept, its not mind-bogglingly complex. I suppose it doesn't really need to be. Yet, there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, as I read, that anyone - you, me, anyone - could have written this book.

Go onto a chatroom and announce your ASL in the public room as 21/f, sit back and wait. You will get so many p2p communication ("whispers" the real cool cats call them) your bottom taskbar will do that thing where all the tabs scrunch up and you have to click down through them.

Honest, it will.

Of course, Biffo feels the need to expand the base joke by making his character totally absurd. In many ways, this book could be just as disturbing and funny without his bizarre character and her stories - if Biffo just sat back and let the ridiculous happen to him, rather than shoving it out at other people. I mean this is the internet. People here don't need any provocation to be astonishingly weird.

Then again, that would be a very different book. And a very different Mr Biffo.

Even with the bizarre riffing on the main theme, read two transcripts and your brain can basically extrapolate the other 200-odd pages. I mean, put it this way, there's no big plot twist at the end.

Mind you, for one of those "funny" books, this is about a billion times better than those little "Places that Sound Rude" and "A Million Euphanisms for Sex" booklets Waterstones sell in the racks on the cash desk. And for that, it should very definitely be praised.

*Not an actual quote from the book.
** A running character on Digitiser, The Man would be hired for a job at the start of the week, conduct himself bizarrely/incompetently and get fired by Friday.

--------
Jachap is not a middle aged man in a wig.

Plug Plug

2007-05-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

Hey there, loyal Transmogrifaniacs (must think up better name). Been a little quiet, huh? Well, yes. Yes, it has. Hopefully we'll be able to bring you some more of that compelling, scintillating blog journalism that you crave so dearly very soon indeed, but until then - you know what came out this week?

<- These did. ->

Have you picked them up yet? If not: why not?

If so: good, weren't they? Oh yes.

----

'Beat' Nick promises you gold and rubies and a new post at least every other day.

A Tale of Two Authors

2007-05-23T07:28:00.001-07:00

Last week, I couldn't think of anything to blog about. I'm a bit weighed down with essays at the moment and though some of them were about interesting topics, the last one of this year was all about work experience.

Having a whole course centred around "What Do You Want To Do When You Grow Up?" was actually exactly as boring as you would imagine. Forced to scrawl out several thousands words on the topic, my mind soon flitted off into the wondrous land of

I got thinking about the blog and what I could write and, oh boy, so much. I mean, all that stuff about Watchmen and Starcraft! And Team Fortress II! And The Dark Knight! I even considered having a long rant about how, at the higher education facility I attend, there are about seven different Art Orientated organisations all doing the exact same thing, all run by the same "Oh so trendy" students who seem to have started up the organisations just to have something great to put on their CV come the third year. POW - Play on Words, that is - SoftC, Ambidextrous - they all have such stupid names. And they're all so bloody pretentious.

"We're bringing the community together, dude. With art!"

"Empowerment through creativity, man. Like Che Guevara!"

What a load of bollocks. All you need to get a bunch of students together is loud music, pretty girls/good looking men, free booze and food. Haikus on helium balloons? Oh, please.

Yeah, well I could have ranted about that. I could also have ranted about how my fiber optic laser mouse of the future is slowly dying. The red light goes off and the cursor freezes. Not good for playing BF2142, let me tell you.

But, well, I was thinking today about authors. Writing is what I want to do, see, When I Grow Up. Writing in any capacity available. Magazines, newspapers, obscure web pages no-one reads... all that. But, in the end, I want to be published, you know, properly.

I want my novels in Waterstones.

I want to do frikkin' book tours, man. Of course, it probably won't happen but... well, it might. You never know.

Anyway, it got me thinking, in my life, I have only actually met two authors. And I met both at book signings.

This man:

Bernard Cornwell. Responsible for more dead Frenchmen than perhaps any other Englishman, ever. In a purely fictional sense.

And this man.

Terry Pratchett, a man who is the Internet equivalent of Norm from Cheers, in my experience.
Everyone bloody loves him. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are probably whole goblin-like web-cultures where he is treated like bloody Voldemorte.

"The Chapterless One Approacheth!"

But, in my wide travels, everyone bloody loves him.

I am not going to cause controversy by saying I hate him. No, sir. Despite the fact this would be akin to throwing Mother Teresa down a mineshaft, I have to say I don't hate him at all. Its just a bit of phenomenon not to have met anyone who can't stand him.

Certainly on the internet where you could say, "Oxygen is pretty great, isn't it?" and someone would end up calling you a "cockfag" or an "o2 noob" or something.

So, no, I don't hate him.

In fact, I was almost religious in my reverence of Discworld when I was younger. Unlike the other children who were spending all their money on crack and gin, I used to save up my shrapnel to buy Discworld novels.

This is not some sly boast at how, even as a child, I could appreciate the sophisticated satire of the books. Probably, I missed about 45% of the references. Funnily enough, the amount of Family Guy that goes over my head, even now, is around about the same, series by series.

Even so, the fact is, I loved the characters, the setting and the jokes I understood a great deal. It hugely influenced my writing - and, in later years, I have done my level best to drag myself away from the Discworld. This has been an actual physical effort. I mean, put it this way, when I was about 10 I was writing stories with Death in them. He even talked in capitals. Of course, I was completely unaware of the vast amount of copyright law I was breaching.

Not me, I'm sad to say. That Great A'Tuin is AWESOME, though.

Thankfully, Terry never sued.

Until about 15, I thought that it was easier to write comedy than serious stuff. Oh, the ignorance of my younger self. I tell you, if I had a time travelling DeLorean (and, God, if only) I'd travel back and slap myself around the mouth a bit while screaming, "Grow up, you stupid git!"

The reason there are about a million times the number of serious fiction novels out there, as opposed to the twenty funny ones, is that comedy is not easy to write and its easier just to fudge an approximation of what a person's genuine emotional reaction would be than write something that is properly, you know, witty.

Pratchett does the wit and he does the genuine characters. To me, Samuel Vimes is a better character, a more likeable character, a more realistic character and a more believable copper than the sixty billion hardboiled detectives from books called things like, "Love Lost" and "Traitor's Walk" and "Scarlet Opal." And he's fought werewolves.

Even Pratchett has said himself, about Lord of the Rings, that (this is a bad paraphrase) "There's something wrong with you if you're 13 and you don't think its the best book ever. There's also something wrong with you if you're 35 and you still think so."

I can apply the same wisdom to his own series. After my deliberate I MUST READ WIDER policy, I haven't really gone back to Discworld. The novels with the stories I particularly like I have probably read about 3 times or more anyway.

This gives you some indication of what I thought of the man, anyway.

The point is, at the book signing I went to, for whatever reason, the guy took my copy of The Last Continent, asked what my name was, signed my book and went, "Next!" Maybe I was a bit like a child seeing the Hogfather and trying so hard not to piss down his leg that I looked retarded or something, but he didn't even speak to me.

I mean, I didn't cry afterwards. I can say that, at least. But it wasn't anything like I hoped it would be. Thinking back, it was a little like that one day you first realise that your Dad isn't the All Powerful God Of The Universe you thought he was.

Pratchett was not wearing a big floppy hat and he was grumpy and bored and silent, more like a hostile badger than anything really. I'm surprised he didn't gore my face.

The thing was: he seemed to be labouring under the impression that the reason I was there, and what interested me most, was getting his name in my copy of his bloody book. As if I gave a rat's arse about that. I wanted to meet this chap and just, you know, chat a bit. For the thirty seconds allotted time I was allowed.

I mean, sure, I had just rushed from school and I was still in my uniform, sure I wasn't dressed as Rincewind and I didn't bring all his other books in a large black plastic bag and expect him to sign every single one. You would have thought he'd be bloody glad I wasn't in a cowl and carrying a scythe and about to quote footnotes from The Light Fantastic at him verbatim. You'd think.

He didn't even look up when Dad asked if he could take a picture. I have a photo of the top of Terry Pratchett's bald head. And its fuzzy. But that's not really Terry's fault. My dad is rubbish at taking photos.

The point here is not that Terry is a bastard. There could be any number of reasons why he looked like wanted to throttle me and my Dad and everyone there with our own intestines. I mean, put it this way, I don't think he's been down to Cornwall since. It was hot and it was stuffy and the queue was halfway down the street and he must have done about a billion book tours and they had doubtlessly been better organised in New York or whatever...

Maybe he hated me. This is something I've had to accept over the years. The idea that Terry Pratchett might have got one look at my teenage face and thought, "What a little shit."

It was just a bit sad, is all. It'd be a much nicer memory if he'd said... well, I don't know. Something funny or something.

Now, Bernard Cornwell. My Dad joined the Sharpe Appreciation Society as a bit of a laugh, way back in the olden days. We went to this sort of thing in London and, I suppose, in many ways, it was sort of like a Sharpe Festival. You could maybe call it that. If you wanted.

There's nothing shameful about going to Sharpe Festival with your Dad...

Sean Bean wasn't there. I bet he'd have hated me too.

... is there?

Anyway, I suppose Cornwell was in a good mood because we were relatively near the front of the line and he hadn't had hundreds of people shout "Form Square!" or whatever (what do Sharpe fans shout, anyway?) yet. But he was an absolute gentleman. Really friendly and chatty and he took a real interest in me and Dad.

This is perhaps because he moors one of his boats in Falmouth, so knows Cornwall a bit. And it was the height of the foot and mouth thing and he asked us if we were affected by it at all, perhaps assuming (wrongly, I might add) that, as we came from Cornwall, we were farmers. And perhaps also assuming, in the back of his mind, that I do my sister up the jacksie.

I don't even have a sister.

At the time, I liked to think it was because whole bloody swathes of land were impassable, all over the county, because of the disease and that was inconvenient if you wanted to, you know, walk anywhere. I mean, Dad and I don't look or talk like farmers. Really, we don't.

Maybe Bernard was happy because the Sharpe Festival (or whatever it was called) was essentially a day devoted to his genius. I mean, its hard to be particularly sad when everyone there is united in their love for your French killing, scar-faced bastard murderer, isn't it?

But, by the same token, any book tour is probably 95% populated by people who love your books. There's probably some people there who are going to flog the book on ebay as soon as they get home but the majority of them, to queue for that long and so on, in the cramped aisles of an Ottakars or whatever, must have some appreciation of your novels and deserve to be treated, well, nicely.

So. One bad memory. One good one. Nothing stopped me buying Pratchett's novels.

Not until Monstrous Regiment, that is.

Ooh, buuuurrrrnnn.

--------

Jachap will always be happy and bouncy and friendly if he ever gets published.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

2007-05-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

We do. We all do, avidly, without cessation. Every move that comes along for the development of the Watchmen movie has fans chomping at the bit for more. Mainly because, well, we comic fans like being outraged. We love it when Hollywood screws us over, so we can roll our eyes at how infantile a product the film biz has wheeled out, and how they don't understand the source material, and how much better it would have been had David Lynch/Terry Gilliam/Tim Burton/insert cult director here had made it.

Though to be fair, this picture of unfair criticism can be levelled more at the true-blue superhero flicks. We lucked out first time around with Superman and then Batman, so now every time a Fantastic Four or Daredevil lurches around the corner and collapses, half-formed, onto the red carpet, we scream blue murder. But what can we expect? These are usually cash-in flicks, based not on stories, but on character bios. Get in the origin story in some form, cast a big-name actor and then have the character's biggest baddie pop up so he can be beaten up at the end.

With Alan Moore's comics, it's a different story. Alan Moore writes stories from the ground up. If he's working with an established character, he re-invents it from the ground up. There is no part of an Alan Moore comic that has not been meticulously planned, considered and researched. He writes the best comics known to mankind, full stop. Just ask Jonathan Ross:

"Ooh hoo! You tell 'em, Nick!"

So, more than other comics, when filmmakers screw up his work (which they have managed to do in every case thus far), it smarts. Of course, I say that partly because I've not been pleased by any treatment of an Alan Moore film to date, so I'm just reserving the right to complain. Selfishly. But I think there's something in that. Take James McTeigue's take on V for Vendetta. It's not like Joel Schumacher doing Batman. It's like Joel Schumacher doing Remains of the Day. "Stevens! What are you doing!? Put down that gun!" "Looks like the butler did it, sir."

BLAM!

So yes, back to the point: the Watchmen movie. As someone who's been disappointed utterly by all other screen interpretations of Moore comics, you'd expect me to meet this adaptation by Zack Snyder (director of such cerebral masterworks as the Dawn of the Dead remake and 300) with sneering derision and dismissal. So why is it that I keep meeting each new tidbit of information with seemingly boundless optimism? It could just be that until now, everything he's said about it has been encouraging. His first move was throwing out the script and starting work on one treating the comic as an 80s period piece. That's great. That's a good start. Then the infamous, nicely-captured Rorschach teaser picture surfaced:

"Tyre tread on burst stomach, y'all!"

Tiny snippets, to be sure. And even now that potentially incredibly controversial and hope-killing news is beginning to surface, I still can't kill my relentless buzz. The first official casting word has surfaced (through the infinitely hateful, yet similarly efficient organ that is Ain't It Cool News), and some of it might split opinion somewhat. This is only half-official, since some of the actors are still in talks with the studio, apparently, so I can't promise that this is definitive. Still, the word seems to be fairly certain.

First off, Jude Law is playing Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias.

No huge surprise, he's well-known to have been trying to get a place in the film for God-knows-how-long, and he'd be pretty well-suited to the character. He's also such an immense Moore fan that it'd probably be unfair not to give him a part in the movie. And I liked him in eXistenZ, so there you go.

Second up, this dude is playing Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl 2:

Apparently his name's Patrick Wilson, and he was in Phantom of the Opera and Little Children - two films I have never seen. Physically, at least, he seems to fit the bill (though they'll have to get him on the double cheeseburgers for a couple of months first), So I can't complain. This sets a trend of casting relative unknowns in some of the major roles, which is an extremely good one.

However, this is a trend almost instantly broken by the casting choice for Jon Osterman, aka Doc Manhattan...

Yes. Yes, I know. Yes, that is Keanu Reeves. Ted Theodore Logan. Yes, it's a bizarre casting move and one that's not going to be at all popular with a lot of Moore fans. But I'm not ready to throw it out utterly yet. He does unreadable and vague well, and he was good in A Scanner Darkly, so I remain hopeful for the project on the whole. Still, I imagine that for a lot of people, this is enough to throw out the whole project sight-unseen. Maybe for me, there's just something deliciously anarchic in shaving your biggest name actor bald and painting him blue. Well, so to speak. They'll probably just mo-cap it. But still. In voice terms, there are a million wiser casting moves, it's true. Still, it seems like this might well be another project where Reeves pushed for it because he loves the source material (like ASD), so perhaps he'll find an impressive performance in there somewhere.

Of course, there's a reason that these characters have been announced already - because these won't be the most controversial. Those will most likely be the Comedian, and of course Rorschach. Fans have speculated endlessly on the nature of the casting here, and not without good reason. Though the Comedian spends little time onscreen (or on-page, even), he's one of the most pivotal characters in the book, and one of the 'biggest', personality-wise. Fans and internet rumours have kicked up suggestions of Bruce Campbell or Ron Perlman, either of which seem fine to me. However, Snyder himself has said that there's a place for Gerard Butler in Watchmen, so that place may well end up being Eddie Blake. Of course, this is just wild speculation on the internet's part, as usual.

But the most important casting decision is Rorschach. It was always going to be. And for the first time, it seems like the fans may be influencing the decision. They seem to be pushing online, and with letter petitions, for this man:

"GIVE ME BACK MY FAAACE!"

Doug Hutchison. And, from photos, the part seems made for him. I can't judge, myself, because I haven't seen him act, but it seems plausible. He's apparently 5'6'' and has a deep voice, so on paper, he's perfect. Almost too perfect? Who can say. Still, apparently fan pressure has caused his representation to badger Warner Brothers about the project, so it could conceivably happen.

Of course, again, this is all speculation. The facts are: Jude Law, Patrick Wilson and Keanu Reeves. And call me crazy (you wouldn't be the first), but I still hold out hope that this project will, in part at least, do justice to the comic book. Or at least be an enjoyable retelling, or trailer, if you will, of it.

Man, even after V for Vendetta? I must be crazy.

----

'Beat' Nick custodiet ipsos custodes.

Hand-Crafted

2007-05-22T02:51:00.000-07:00

Oop.

Arp.

Eep?

"Hayull. It's about taaahm."

Yes! It's the brand new, hot-off-the-presses, delightfully fan-pleasing cinematic trailer for Blizzard's long-awaited Starcraft 2. It tells us very little about the game that we couldn't already have guessed (other than the fact that, hooray, Kerrigan's back), but it gives us some idea of the ludicrous standard of production values that we can look forward to from Blizzard's new offering. And what else would you expect from the designers and manufacturers of the world's most insanely successful MMO?

Not only is it extremely good to see Blizzard moving on to new projects rather than merely resting on their laurels, it's also encouraging that they don't seem to be going down the obvious route and making World of Starcraft (as was previously speculated). Of course, there's no direct evidence of this here, but the '2' suffix implies that the game's going to be in the same vein as the first - that is to say, real-time strategy.

Now, I've never really been an RTS fan. I've always been an avid lover of its 'slow gaming' cousin, the adventure game, but for some reason I've usually found it tricky to get into war games, probably for similar reasons to why I don't like MMOs. It could be the grinding resource management, or the sense of detachment from the action, but I've always managed to lose patience with them - except Starcraft. It could just be that I'm a sci-fi nut, perhaps the superb characterisation in the units, or it could be that it was bloody good, but Starcraft really grabbed me. And given the great standard of gameplay and animation that's been seen in RTS games of late (Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, Company of Heroes), I imagine this latest installment will be one for the books as well.

And in other 'burly gaming mascots saying amusing things in excellent-looking trailers' news, this:

"WHO TOUCHED MY GUN!?"

Team Fortress 2. This trailer may at first glance not look as gorgeous as the Starcraft 2 one, but is far more impressive given that those are in-game graphics. Getting on a bit now, but I thought it was worth posting for the benefit of those four people who've not yet seen it. As Jachap so eloquently put it when he linked me to it for the first time: "I am incoherent with glee."

EDIT: And oh look, RTS it is! That's how up on the latest and greatest gaming news we are over here, readers, it's been up since yesterday! That link goes to a 22-minute developer walkthrough on Gametrailers, and very nice it looks too. Very traditional, but very pretty. Perhaps not quite as kinetic as Dawn of War, but still nice. A shame, however, that they're not branching out quite as much as they might. We could have had Starcraft: Total War! Vast Zerg swarms washing over epic landscapes. Ho hum. Should be fun enough. I'll give it a look, for one.

----

'Beat' Nick is not as burly or gorgeous as he would perhaps like.

Just Joking

2007-05-21T04:42:00.000-07:00

I just nicked this off the Empire website:

"Why don't you love me no more, Jack?"

Its the Joker, as he will look in the sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight. Yes, this Joker:

And, you know what, I simply have no idea what to make of it. I just can't... summon an opinion of any sort. I know Nolan's films are meant to be dark and gritty, sure. But, you know, the films are still about a guy who, in the end, fights crime dressed like this:

"Okay, I admit it! RedEye was not Hitchcockian at all!"

And can control bats with a device in his boot.

"The call of the Boot! I cannot resist it!"

I mean, this was okay:

REALISM

And this:

"Learism!"

And this:

"Oi'm Falcone. Fowmewy of der Ant Hill Mob. Oi'm completely wealistic!"

But a Joker who looks anything approaching this...

"If you think this is over the top, you should watch The Departed."

...is completely out of the question?

Having said that it does look pretty cool. And will probably work. And Nolan had such a supremely deft handle on the source material last time round, he could potentially craft a Joker who is both utterly memorable and utterly distinct from Nicholson's.

Heath Ledger, I still believe, could end up surprising us all. If you've not seen Brokeback, and, in that case, the first caption has completely gone over your head, take it from me: he can act. He's not just a pretty face. However, Brokeback did rely, perhaps, on the pretty face aspect too. Evidently, The Dark Knight won't. In any conceivable way.

Even so, the warning bells start ringing a little when comic book villains begin looking more like this:And less like this:

Books Overlooked #1

2007-05-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

Hello! 'Beat' Nick here, with a post showcasing a trio of trades that you might not yet have clued yourself into.

Fear Agent
Vol 1: Re-Ignition
Image Comics
Story: Rick Remender
Art: Tony Moore

Top-drawer high-sci-fi action here, in a vein not often seen these days - the vein of goldfish-bowl helmets, zap guns and space rockets. Rick Remender provides the audience with snappy dialogue, quick-fire action and a fast-paced story with all the pulp trappings you could ask for, in this tale of Heath Huston, intergalactic bounty hunter and pest control expert.

And there's not really much more to say, other than that Tony Moore is working here at his best first-run-of-Walking-Dead standard (though he doesn't ever seem to have taken a step back since then, bless him). If you liked the alien designs in Iron Giant and the heartfelt empathetic storytelling of Starship Troopers, you owe it to yourself to check this one out. If you're looking for complex character development, best look somewhere else, like perhaps...

Criminal
Vol 1: Coward
Marvel Icon
Story: Ed Brubaker
Art: Sean Phillips

Okay, this recommendation is a slightly bogus one, since not only did the comics themselves sell fairly well, but due to Titan Books acquiring the exclusive rights to distributing the collection, Coward isn't going to be published in the UK until August. And since it hasn't been released, I haven't read it in full (in trade format, that is), and neither can it be said to have overlooked at all. However, there have been copies floating about in the aftermath of the Bristol comiccon (one of which I grabbed a quick peek at), and so I hereby accept the right to rant about how much I love Criminal.

While the world swooned over his depiction of the death of Captain America, Brubaker's full love and attention were really directed here. Human, gritty and surprising, Coward is Brubaker's love letter to film and literature noir, and just the first in what will hopefully become a whole pantheon of traditional pulp stories under the Criminal banner. Sadly, Brubaker's real love letters to film noir - his columns on collecting and reviewing classic genre flicks, which acted as backups for the comic books - aren't collected here. These are worth looking up the issues for if you're so inclined, but what's really important is the story.

This is the joyous reunion of the Sleeper team, and they're both still operating at full tilt. Brubaker's dialogue and storytelling are first rate, and sterling Brit artist Sean Phillips is turning out as stunning material as ever. In comics, I was chomping at the bit for each new issue (for that glorious old reason of wanting to know what happens next!), but I can imagine the story benefiting hugely from being reprinted as one continuous, uninterrupted novel (as it has been). The next series of comics is slated to begin this month, and I personally can't wait. The remit for the overall series is as follows: individual short stories linked by personal connections between characters and/or the effects of previous stories. Sounds deliciously Stray Bullets to me. Get on board in time for #6 with Coward if you're in the US, and if you're in the UK, buy the next issue anyway. It'll be a stone cold gas, I can tell you.

And finally...

Cross Bronx
Image Comics
Story and art: Michael Avon Oeming
With: Ivan Brandon

Okay, now here's a properly overlooked series. The comics were nearly totally ignored, despite it packing the big-time comics punch of Mike Oeming, star artist (even now) of Powers. The book, in the month or so since its release (okay, so it's not quite contemporary) has done somewhat better, but this series needs some serious talking-up. In his first major-league book as both writer and artist (ably assisted by co-writer Ivan Brandon), Oeming serves up some of the best artwork of his career, and certainly the best writing.

Cross Bronx is the story of Raphael Aponte, a hard-bitten inner-city police detective trying to discover the truth behind a brutal gang slaying while grappling with his lapsed Catholicism. So far so predictable, right? Well, Oeming and Brandon kick it up a notch (bam!) by drawing in a tragic unsolved case from the department's past, as well as a heavy dose of the supernatural. The mystery in the book is pretty easily solved by the reader early on, but the joy of Cross Bronx is in watching Aponte struggle with his wavering grasp on reality, and in seeing how the writers depict the human effects of violence in the inner-city.

Cross Bronx's writing is exceptional. How much this is due to Brandon, I don't know, but together, the team serves up inventively verbose narration, and dialogue with a real sense of tension and motive, even lending credence to Aponte's spiritual development. Characters speak evocatively and believably, with one standout moment being the conversation between Aponte and a comatose young woman's mother, wherein it becomes clear that the NYPD isn't focusing the daughter's case as thoroughly as they'd claimed. ("I see she dances.")

Cross Bronx handles police procedure, murder mystery and the supernatural with far more panache than Powers ever mustered, and is well worth your money. Bendis should take note (and be jealous) of Oeming's admirable solo venture.

Really?
Yeah.
For real?
For real.
You're kidding.
Nope.
Huh.
Yeah.

----

'Beat' Nick enjoyed The Sellouts, he admits.

The Wrong Good Friday

2007-05-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

"Look, you tosser. British gangster films, right? Some people fink the genre is tired and cliched. Maybe they're right.

But, however bored you are of it, there's somefin you oughta get in ya thick bonce. There's some solid gold classics out there, alwight? Whatever you think of "Guy" Ritchie and the latest stuff this country 'as been churnin' aaat, everyone loves Get Carter. Its like a British version of the blaaddy Spaghetti Westerns. Villain from the seventies? Thats blaady good too. And some of the modern ones - Sexy Beast and that lot. Classics, they are.

Anotha fing: some of these old gangster films... watchin' them is like watchin' a period fackin' drama. Take The Long Good Friday, f'rinstance. Thirty years old that is. Its like a blaady Jane Austen novel. Get Carter is even olda. The era, right, the blaady time the film is set... its like a second character. Whateva it is, the 60s, the 70s or the 80s, these films are products of their fackin' era and that's all part of the charm. Got it?"

Today, I read this.

There's probably about seven million websites and blogs out in the ether, bemoaning Hollywood's obsession with remakes. Probably half of them attempt to - at least in part - justify the obsession by saying "but The Maltese Falcon was a remake!" Etc, etc.

There are also a great deal of websites complaining about how Hollywood has to take British films and relocate them to America or make all the characters American.

The Ladykillers, The Italian Job, Get Carter...

Internet pleas to - for God's sake - leave the old films alone probably do as much good as pissing on the fires of damnation.

Even so, I have to say that the decision to remake The Long Good Friday strikes me as utterly silly and, essentially, illogical.

I mean, the film is interesting in a number of ways. I don't know if you've seen it but compared to, say, Get Carter, it doesn't seem to get nearly as much praise/acclaim these days. However, to my mind, its just as much a classic.

The best gangster films, bar none, are character studies. The Godfather, Goodfellas and Scarface: these are films about how crime and violence effects the protagonist. How it seduces them and changes them and, generally, how it leads to their downfall.

The Long Good Friday is the same but its, well, without sounding arrogant, I think it deals with Bob Hoskins' character - Harold - in a way only a British film really could. There is something so subtle, deft and ambiguous in the way his character and his actions are held under the microscope, the intensity of his performance has a completely different undercurrent to it than, say, Pacino in Scarface.

"Judge Doom don't faaakin' scare me."

Harold is a hopelessly flawed character: a gangster who had his heyday twenty years before, he yearns for the time when people could leave their backdoors open and the docklands were a powerful monument to British industry. At the heart of the character, is this ambition to give something back. Something historic to restore pride to his home. He is racist and brutal yet strangely likable. Yet, compared to the smooth representatives of the mafia that he tries to schmooze over the course of the weekend, the film shows just how laughably backward he is.

The times have changed and Harold is a relic, a dinosaur, like so many other middle-aged white men of the time (and even now) who wish Britain was Great again.

Put it this way, the first atrocity that is committed against him and his organisation over the course of the film is someone trying to blow up his mum while she's at church. There's something inherently comic in his reaction.

"MY MUM?!"

Everything about the film pulses, no, aches with the era. Thatcherism, the beleaguered state of the docks, the IRA... the presence of, among others, a young Pierce Brosnan and Charlie (Charlie!) from Casualty in early roles... this a film that is specific to London and, even more importantly, specific to the time.

If, in remaking a film, you essentially have to change every single element of the original, calling it a remake at all seems to me just a cynical way to get some more press exposure and guarantee a few more bums in seats when its eventually released.

A more honest approach would be to drop the term "remake" entirely and craft an original film set in America that deals with similar thematic issues. How times are changing, how the golden age of gangsterism has passed. You can even set it over a single day and show some other, more forward thinking organisation sweeping the main character aside (the inclusion of terrorists would probably be a bad idea). That main protagonist can even be a ridiculous relic of a bygone era.

But it would not be The Long Good Friday. A little "Inspired By" credit at the start would be the only necessary connection.

Maybe Martin Scorsese could do such an idea justice. Even then, he'd probably just ladle in loads of swearing, double the number of male characters just so even more people can die and halve the screen time of Harold's wife.

But, seriously, Paul W.S. Anderson? Director of this and this.

"Hi! I'm Uwe Boll only blander!"

The man whose only achievement is the cinematic exorcism of suspense from established franchises?

Fack off.

-------

Jachap is not from the East End of London.

Symbiote She Wrote

2007-05-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

Bruce Campbell is the best thing about Spider-Man 3.

There, I said it. But this is in no way to the movie's detriment - the rest of it would have to be bloody spectacular to outshine Bruce's turn as a French maitre d'. I'll say no more. Simply excellent.

So, to the rest of the film. Spider-Man 3 is a product of many, many good ideas coming together into not-enough-time. As Jachap predicted, this film does suffer from overstuffing. It takes on the black costume, Sandman, the Hobgoblin (or the New Goblin, as he is referred to here) and Venom. Those are four diverse Spidey plots which have been dealt with in various ways in the past, and to be honest, are too much to fit in this film. Then the film introduces Gwen Stacy as a side-note, just to add to the pile of New Bits. However, thanks to Raimi's direction, the abundance of plot-points feels pleasantly indulgent, rather than excessive. Raimi does his best with signature flair and a huge amount of personality, the latter of which is the film's real saving grace.

Which is not to say that Spider-Man 3 is a great film. It is a great ride which you'll be hard pressed not to enjoy, but structurally, it is rather weak. The writing's fine, but to bring together all the aforementioned plot-points, the film is forced to run largely on coincedence. For example: In the original comics, the parasitic costume was picked up by Spider-Man during the space-bound Secret Wars, a Marvel crossover event featuring an elaborate space-gladiator back-story. In the cartoon show, J Jonah Jameson's astronaut son brought it back as a mineral sample from a meteor crash site on the moon. This latter plot works far better, and would have been an excellent one to work with in the film, had they had more time to devote to it. As it is, in the first ten minutes of the movie, a meteor crash lands in Central Park near Peter Parker, and whap bang zoom, the alien costume latches onto his moped. Whoopee.

It's this slight sense of disappointment which pervades throughout Spider-Man 3 (or rather, it does if you're familiar with the characters). Snippets of excellence in writing and execution make you wish they'd split up the films and given us a properly thought-out Venom movie or a fully-developed Sandman flick. They've both got the depth to carry a film, and while well realised, both characters felt like they were undersold. However, both are done justice in one particular field - the effects.

Ah, the marvellous CGI in this movie. Stand-out scenes include Sandman's first attempt at becoming Flint Marko, Sandman's armoured car robbery, and Sandman's... well, any scene involving Sandman. But hey, you knew he was going to look good from the trailer, right? Thomas Haden Church is a great choice for the put-upon thug Flint Marko, and handles the role with excellent surly vigour. Venom... well, Venom's a bit of a different story. While the effects on the amorphous, disconnected symbiote are perpetually impressive (and rather creepy), Spider-Man's black costume... underperforms. It's just not as cool as it could be:

I mean, look at that. That is just rockin'. The big spider-limbs crossing over the chest, the jet black body of it... the film's watered-down dye-job just doesn't quite cut the mustard.

Still nice, but... well, y'know. Could be better. What's more, now that Pete was brewing his own internal web-fluid from the beginning, the black suit's advantages are somewhat diminished. But then I'm a nerd. As such, in my nerdery, I was also somewhat disappointed by Venom. While Topher Grace turns in an excellent performance as Eddie Brock (and hence later Venom, oops, spoilers), it's the kind of quippy, upbeat performance that would have served him much better playing Peter Parker. Venom's a character more traditionally suited to a physically imposing, bass-voiced actor, like, uh... well, Thomas Haden Church. Still, the frailer-looking Brock means the audience sympathises more with him later, so in the isolated context of the film, it's a pretty shrewd casting move. Even so, I'd have liked to see Venom in his burly maniac incarnation, swinging across New York, flicking his Gene Simmons tongue and singing Strangers in the Night in a booming baritone.

As has been well-advertised, one of the black costume's powers is turning Peter into a dick. Almost all mainstream press for the movie has sold the notion that this is all part of a Hollywood trend of turning superheroes into gloomy, brooding misanthropes. In comics recently, this has indeed been the trend, but not so much in films. In some cases, such as Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, the 'brooding' catch-all applies, but, y'know, fair enough. He's frigging Batman. In general, though, directors tend to take superheroes in a more true-blue direction, probably because they have a background of familiarity with the character they're using, and want to convey the interpretation they grew up with.

As such, the black-costumed Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3 is nothing like the My-Chemical-Romance-loving emo-boy the press have painted him as (trust critics to judge the film by a floppy-haired Tobey Maguire on the poster), and is instead the kind of finger-snapping, swaggering super-cad that might well have studied under Alastair Sim at the College of Lifemanship, rather than Curt Connors at Empire State University. It's somewhat unexpected, and very funny. The light tone in which Peter's corruption is conveyed allows Raimi to surprise the audience later, when the negative effects of the costume are revealed to run deeper than 'acting like a twonk', in one moment of dramatic mood-shift. Overall, Spider-Man's side of the story works very well, and I suppose that's the point, ultimately. Well, that and the CGI.

BIFF!

But on the other hand... you know who else is in this film?

Him!

Her!

Him! And of course...

Her!

All great actors, all spending about 15 seconds onscreen, and all kicking the shit out of their scenes in a manner which seems to cry out 'where's our film?!' (Well, except the very last of them, to be fair. Ursula's film would probably be a bit tedious.) Still, it's an achievement in itself to have such a great roster of talent across the board. Special mention must be made of JK Simmons, who, as J Jonah Jameson, once again steals every scene he's in. Several of the most enjoyable moments in the film are the ones that have nothing to do with the plot, and most of those feature top-drawer ranting action from JK as JJJ.

Spider-Man 3's certainly a worthy addition to the franchise, and one which has its fair share of memorably thrilling moments. It rambles, yes, but it does so with great fights, great villains, and great performances. Except for Kirsten Dunst, who's rubbish again.

In summary, then:

Fop Parker pleases,
Shame about skinny Venom,

Great fun nonetheless.

----

'Beat' Nick wishes someone would cast a single good female lead in a superhero movie ever please.

The Future of Gaming

2007-05-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

Yuh-huh.

From Eurogamer: IGA and Mediacom (well-known and respected corporations that they both of course are) have decided that videogamers are the most ultimately primo source of gullible idiots that they could ever possibly level their advertising cannons at. Thanks to their brand-new collaboration with Valve, big dumb posters for a big dumb action movie featuring a big dumb washed-up actor will shortly be appearing all over one of the world's most popular video games: Counter-Strike. And of course, the gaming world will soon be rejoicing! For as Justin Townsend, top wanker at IGA has publicly dared to state:

"We know from research that gamers crave real world brands as part of the game experience."

...

Yes. All gamers in the world (an increasingly diverse swathe of the population, let's remember) not only put up with grotesquely invasive advertisement in videogames... they crave it. And I think they're exactly right. In gorgeous adventure The Longest Journey, I felt totally disconnected from the well-drawn characters and the epic fantasy plot because the pre-rendered backgrounds weren't totally pasted over with Adidas posters. I found Half-Life 2 lacking because Gordon Freeman's health wasn't replenished by regular Irn-Bru breaks.

Ha ha no sorry ha couldn't keep it up. Of course, this is bollocks in the extreme. And it is such a phenomenal, swollen, bulbous set of bollocks that I cannot help but congratulate IGA. After the death of story in games and an increasing focus on soulless high-budget graphics, they have finally found the last tiny drop of escapism (and, of course, fun) that they can wring out of gaming.

Real-world advertising in games is becoming frighteningly abundant, and has never been satisfactorially excused. In some cases, PR people have claimed that it increases the sense of a believably modern world, or (yet more audaciously) that the endless slew of billboard advertising is offering some kind of social satire. That is so much lies that it is offensive.

Of course, their thinking is somewhat understandable. I mean, twenty-odd years ago, this shot became one of the more memorable in cinema history:

Never mind the fact that the advert's glossy presentation is designed to contrast with the faded husk that is LA in 2019, or that the film got away with it because it was delivered in context. No no. Nerds love Blade Runner - everybody remembers this bit from Blade Runner - all gamers are nerds - therefore they won't mind if we shit adverts all over their favourite pastime. Mind you, what does it matter? "Gamers are a notoriously fickle bunch", as king twit himself put it, what does our opinion matter anyway? We'll just spill our giant bag of crisps in shock before forgetting all about it five seconds later and getting back to masturbating over Bloodrayne's Playboy shoot.

I call shenanigans on this and all other examples of it. I thought better of you, Valve. Look what they did to your baby. Don't you remember Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory?

'Course you do.

----

'Beat' Nick has sworn off using products for life.

The Art of the Summer Blockbuster #3

2007-05-14T04:44:00.000-07:00

The crucial third part of the trilogy. After the rousing opener that introduces the main concepts and characters, after the darker sequel, we have to return to the bouncy fun happy times of the first entry and provide some closure.

So, CGI, eh? Whats up with that?

Computer Generated Imagery. It has given us this. And this.

At times, CGI contributes to the modern blockbuster's highest highs. This is just a delightful smattering of a few things that particularly stick out for me. You probably have your own ideas.

(Yeah. I put The Matrix here. Sue me.)

(Whatever you think of the film, the big showboating Superman as the Messiah shots like this are utterly dazzling)

I don't know about you but, sometimes, in films I think, had I been in the character's shoes there or were I to be placed in a similar situation in my life, there is absolutely no way I'd choose the course of action that they opt for. I mean, just look at that, he's deliberately trying to attract a T-Rex away from a car with a flare. Seriously, Jeff. That's just silly.

Then, on the other end of the scale, you have all those moments where CGI drags you from your seat, treads on your face, screams, "YEAH! THATS RIGHT! You're watching a MOVIE!" Thus wrecking all your immersion and emotional investment. Low points, then.

Its hard to say who is the more ridiculous looking in this picture. I'll tell you one thing though: Jar-Jar has really not aged well. At all.

Well, that was the cheap shot. Seriously, though, the Star Wars Prequels actually serve as an amazing demonstration of how CGI should not be used.

So... bloody... shiny...

RACIST

These are the decisions that led to the creation of General Grevious:

1/ What the prequels really need is another villain.

2/ Villains are cool in and of themselves. They don't need any screen time.
3/ Fights between people are boring.
4/ People don't have four arms, dude. See above.
5/ A guy with four lightsabers will look even cooler than Darth Maul in the trailer.
6/ Obi-Wan needs to actually beat someone down in these films. All his other fights have ended in a sort of 1-1 draw.

I mean, we all read the Extended Universe books don't we? There's loads of backstory about General Grevious in some of them tie-in books! We do all read them, don't we?

And then Obi-Wan shoots him in his heart and quips about it. Awesome.

Its cruel (yet deeply satisfying) just to pick on the Star Wars films, though. Other lead contenders for the Woeful Application of CGI prize are: Van Helsing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the second and third Matrix films, Alone in the Dark. I'm sure there are many, many more you can think of.

The actual computer animation may not be bad. The design may not be terrible. But the fact is, wrongly used, CGI can ruin films.

Now, for all the film producers who read this blog, a few helpful hints from an industry expert.

The 5 Rules For CGI Use

1/ Never Forget The Human Element.

Look at this way. In the first Matrix, the entire film is geared to the climactic fight between Neo and Agent Smith. Its a proper duel. Everything that preceded lead to it. Everything relies on it. Its not just Neo/Smith its Man Versus The Machines. Its Us Versus Them. Its is the conclusion of everything Neo has learned up to that point. It is The Whole Point.

Then, in the second film. You have the Burly Brawl. Now its Neo fighting loads of Agent Smiths and its not entirely clear why or for what purpose. Unfortunately, this does not (as the Wachowski's evidently thought) make it instantly a million times cooler.

Indeed, Agent Smith is unstoppable because he's got a whole replicated army and Neo is unstoppable because he's the One. At the end, neither Smith nor Neo is defeated. Neo just flies off because, I assume, he's getting a bit bored.

Immediately, we see the One has limitations. He has boundaries. It crushes everything we learned in the first film. Bringing Smith back appeased the fans but it undermined everything we were told in the original Matrix.

Worse still, the fight has none of the emotional impact of that first subway duel. Its an unstoppable force versus an immovable object. Whereas in the first fight, we felt the impacts, we rode with the peaks and troughs in the narrative of the battle - ooh, yes, go Neo - ooh, shit, Smith is pounding him into the wall - in the Burly Brawl, we're just watching a spectacle. And, as it goes on, the quality of the actual effects deteriorates.

"The One needs a stick? Just jump in his chest, dude!"

In the first film, we were scared by six sentinels because of what their appearance meant. In the second and third film, the Wachowski's bring on about two billion of the things but forget the important thing. The human element. The emotion.

(As an additional point, I'd just like to say that there is a startling similarity between the actions of Agent Smith in the second and third Matrix films and V, in the film of V for Vendetta. In both, Hugo Weaving's character makes everyone look just like him in time for the final fight.)

2/ CGI monsters fighting one another = rubbish.

It just is, I'm afraid. As above, there's no human element when Hyde attacks the huge Hyde giant at the end of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Like the rest of the film, its bland and tedious.

3/ CGI battle scenes usually suck.

Once again, a definite risk where the human element is concerned. Peter Jackson does this really well (though I'd say he gets a little lost at points in Return of the King - the army of Dead's appearance in Gondor being probably my least favourite bit in the trilogy)

Again, just because you've filled the screen with billions of people doesn't make something automatically cool.

Troy = Rubbish. They're in a perfectly straight line, for goodness' sake.

4/ Shiny is bad.

Star Wars is the major offender here. The real world is just not glossy. As soon as you see those ridiculously yellow Naboo fighters in action you begin to yearn for something like the Millennium Falcon. A bucket of dented, pocked, dirty bolts. Iconic for just that reason.

5/ Real stuff is better than virtual stuff. FACT.

Miniatures combined with a deft touch of CGI look bloody amazing. See Lord of the Rings for details. Guys in prosthetics still look better, too. Nick's comments about Pan's Labyrinth illustrate that.

I've got a soft spot for Dog Soldiers, too.

The real lesson here is obvious. Its pretty simple, too. Filmmakers think because CGI can do anything, they have to use it for everything. This is not true.

CGI is just a tool like any other. People would get irritated if every shot was a crash zoom. The same principle applies. Use it subtly. Like this:

Not like this:

-------

Jachap is not bloody shiny.