Thrills? All too few, man.

I won't lie. I was excited when I first heard the details for Too Human. A dungeon crawling game? RPG-ing of the grind 'n' find kind? Made by the company who made Legacy of Kain? Set in a Norse sci-fi background? The latest hyped up 360 release? Count me intrigued.

The combat is just lovely. It was a great feeling watching Baldur zip across the screen, robots flying, as more of their friends poured in from off-screen. The merest twitch of the thumbstick sends the hero Baldur homing towards the group of antagonists. The occasional fumbling left my character waving his sword at air but still... I felt like was actually good at this game. There is a lack of variety among enemies, but this didn't cross my mind as I crashed into the next mob, and the next mob and then...stopped as I was forced to 'play' through a clumsy exposition of how I came to be in this fascinatingly dark locale. Dark shadows on dark textures on dark walls, as is becoming the industry standard for 'adult' content. Thanks to Gears of War for that one.

Aside from the style of narrative, the story itself annoyed me on a visceral level. Someone needs to take the developers aside and let them in on a little secret; simply dropping Viking names into a dull, inspired story makes for... a dull uninspired story with Viking names. I actually cringed during some of the cutscenes, especially those featuring Freya and Baldur, and the baffling attempt to render vaguely eroticised body language in the game engine. This narrative intrudes upon the gameplay to a near unacceptable degree. In fact, lots of things intrude upon the game to an unacceptable degree. The walking. The puzzles. (which are ridiculously simple, they are more akin to a speedbump than a challenge). The pacing of the gaps between is all wrong, leaving a frustrated and unsatisfied player in it's wake.

I would give some credit to what I think the developers have tried to do with the game. They evidently took apart what people liked about these games, and thought of ways they could improve the subgenre. Simpler, more intuitive combat, check. A more involving narrative, check. They also thought about the staples; Grinding combat, check. Extensive loot, levelling and upgrade system, check.

Too Human achieves all these things. Yet it is not a good game. Unfortunately they forgot one thing; all of these have to be put back together, molded, sewn up, or whatever metaphor you care to use. This type of game has to play as a singular experience, that sucks the player out and away from his normal priorities and drags him through the game until the small hours of the morning, searching for that final quest that will allow him to return to the everyday world of coffee and girlfriends and furniture and jobs. Yes, this player may care about such things as a good story and great controls. But these aren't the things that make him play. The developers haven't made any real effort to smooth and pace the playing experience. Why did people keep playing Diablo, and the Dynasty Warriors titles for so long? Because the experience they offered was pure and uninterrupted. It simply offered a steady and varied stream of enemies to defeat, loot to claim and objectives to achieve. As pointless as it may seem to non-fans, this appealed to... well... the type of people it appealed to. There was an undefined, factor, be it passion or manic personality flaw, that keeps people playing through the same game over and over to uncover every single play style, item, combo. Silicon Knights have tried to improve on this, and have not succeeded.

The lack of real guidance about the combat system is intensely frustrating, as are the NPC humans who accompany you. For a game that is supposed to be about the struggle and mystery of being human in world of cybernetic Gods and robots, I found it difficult to work out if the humans had any real impact on the game at all. I dodged around a troll for about five minutes trying to work out if the rifle rounds pouring from the human's guns were having any impact, and I simply couldn't tell. If they are there simply for narrative effect, then why include them in the game engine at all? They constantly lag behind anyway, and are nowhere to be found in a fight.

The heart of any, is the urge and addiction towards finding that better piece of equipment, of sneaking up just one more level before friends and relatives gather to prise the controller from your pallid and trembling hands. For the both semi-obsessive and more sedate players, the pace of play is all important. People came back to play Dynasty Warriors and the like because they felt they could do something better, or faster the second time around. They felt that playing a new character or class could help them find new angles in what was enjoyable the first time through. I suspect that in Too Human, this different angle on play is likely to be too narrow to extend play time by much. the classes really need to feel different, to have viable alternative strategies for completing the game. With the failures in effectively communicating the narrative, the pull for this game should be to collect every piece of equipment, to master every kill, and to see the game through different play styles. The equipment all looks very similar, and the variety of swords, hammers and staves play virtually the same way, with the only real distinction being between fast weapons and slightly slower weapons.

It will probably be pretty well received online, but that's not saying too much considering the paucity of the market in this particular genre, and the hold of the Call of Duty 4 grind upon the general gamer is unlikely to be overly affected.

Too Human is certainly no masterpiece, and is hugely flawed in certain areas. The enjoyment gained from the smooth combat is stunted by the stuttering enemy placement, laughably bad story, and a lack of variety. It is painful, in the regard that there is a perfectly enjoyable game somewhere inside, but the whole package is let down by a persistent lack of streamlining and finish. It is shallow in about every department, and in such a way that isn't going to be fixed by downloadable content. Still, they have two more games to get it right, and the game probably has just enough Good Stuff to allow this to happen.

Silicon Knights needs to sort out what it wants Too Human to be. If Too Human hadnt spent most of the last decade in development, this would be excusable. But 9 years is long enough to develop a concept and run with it. To put it simply, Too Human barely manages to pull anything off successfully.

There Will Be Blood; or Why The Hell Did White Europeans Settle In The Desert In The First Place?

There Will Be Blood is not here for you, and it does not need your fucking pity. It does exactly what it wants when it wants to. And it is probably the best film I have seen in the last couple of years. It is hardly a film for the faint of heart, but we never wanted those guys in here with us anyway.
From the beautifully brief and threadbare intro sequence to the jarring and booming soundtrack, it is rare in managing to be a both artistic and apparently successful.

It is, in a sense, the anti-Lost. Lost is convoluted, and uses its shallow one-note characterisation and cheap cliffhanger endings to keep the audience hooked as well as confused. Blood does exactly the opposite. It keeps the focus narrow and dense, and instead leaps about within scenes to keep you on your toes. The editing is first rate, and introduces the dislocating scene changes, slow pans and unsteady rhythm that I usually associate with more esoteric offerings. In fact the early part reminded me aesthetically of the weirder moments in The Wicker Man. The dialogue is kept minimal and to the point. There is no dialogue for the first 20 minutes. yet when the speaking starts, it is so well measured that you don't notice the acting. Oh, the acting.

The fact is ththat there are no particularly great performances. Sure Daniel Day-Lewis is convincing and mad as a big bag of crazy, but as usual he still speaks in a maddeningly untraceable accent and still insists on chomping away on nothing, rather like an old man eating a cheesestring. The preacher-child (for it is he.) looks every inch the giggling buffoon serviceable but hardly stunning. The lines are delivered in a perfectly workable way, but it is not the acting or actors that you are looking at. It seems to be a film almost completely without subtle body language, usually the sign of first rate acting performances. If Plainview is angry, or plotting, he has to show it very obviously on his face. :-(
To put it simply, none of this matters. Themes include everything (I dont mean literally everything but its damn close) except notably love and death issues, both being as common as muck in modern media, and as such having no place in this film.

There are some downpoints though. It does severely lull at certain bits, although this may simply be exhaustion resulting from the density of the preceding scenes. As I mentioned, the acting isn't great, despite what you may have heard, but the script more than shines through.

An obvious comparison is Citizen Kane, and this is not unfair. The story of a tycoon, the lust for power and wealth (or something like it) is all too familiar. But there are no morals at the end of Blood, only lessons on consequences. This sets it apart from Citizen Kane, which is couched (though very loosely) in 30's moralising about comeuppances. This is present in Blood, but far more visceral, immediate and equitable. The differences between Kane and Blood are of distance. Despite the closer urban conditions of Citizen Kane, the viewer is often far removed from the protagonist. In Blood, you are so close to the protagonist it's hard to breathe.

Duo-quotes of the week.

'It should be noted that the female RPG-er is a theoretical construct'

http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=03062008

'People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, to keep out the scum.' Alan Moore

Quote of the Week

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.
Vladimir Putin

Salt of the Earth

Last Monday I thought I was going to watch a BBC3 pilot, so you can imagine my shock when I was subjected to a Shameless episode. Mrs Inbetweeny was written by one of Paul Abbots Abbotettes and it really shows. If Caleb Ranson is trying to emulate his mentor it's kind of cute, pathetic but cute. I think it's far more likely that Paul Abbot beat what little originality there was in the script and added all the phnah phnah, carry on, lowesest common denominator bullshit that dominates Shameless. The music sounds exactly the same as Clocking Off and Shameless which is a huge mistake as it sounded dated in Clocking Off. It's shot in the same way as Shameless and is full of that "people in the north are salt of the earth, poor but happy blah blah fucking blah" bollocks a that makes all northern dramas really shit and unrealistic. If Paul Abbot had any interest in helping new writers he'd let them write their own thing, not push them into writing a crap version of Shameless (which is also dire).
So three pilots in and two were shit and one was good. Being Human was original and showed a lot of promise, it also lacked the tedious sexual slapstick prevalent in mainstream british telly. Phoo Action, in an attempt to be "down with the kids", succeeded only in making a CBBC program with worse writing and the occasional swear word.The colours clashed in such a sickening way I'm sure I've developed some sort of retinal cancer. It's disgusting that Danny Cohen greenlit this awful program before it even aired, showing his disregard for what the viewers want and I'm sure pissing off the production companies responsible for the other five pilots. I'm convinced the only reason he greenlit Phoo Action is because it looks suitably "yoof" when it's plain to see it's just childish.

Quote of the Week

A militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of everyone of their flock, forever.
Iain Banks

Rules of the Wire

1. Play or be played
2.As such, life be divided into two camps; playas and playdas. Playdough may be shared between the two.
3. Everybody who aspires for any kind of power over their fellow man must be prepared to become really, really wealthy.Anyone who aspires to do good for their fellow man must settle with just really wealthy.
4. If you're going to be corrupt, be really corrupt. Swap bin liners full of cash for bin liners full of heroin. In broad daylight.
5. If you're police, drink a lot of alcohol. The more you're drinking, the better you can assess crime scenes or some shit like that.
6. The male/female role dichotomy cannot be broken, though there is considerable moral flexibility. Ditto police brutality.
7. Sheeeeit.
8. White men make very bad drug dealers. They try to hide this fact by doing bad impressions of black people.
9. If you're going into an interrogation thinking that you won't have to mentally or physically torture a suspect, you probably will.
10. If know how to pronounce someone's name, you will then have to learn how to un-pronounce it, bastardise it, or screw with it in some other way. THIS IS MANDATORY.
11. You fuck with me, I'll kill your whole family.
12. While drinking alcohol has the predictable effect of making the police drunk, violent and fucked up, drinking coffee and tea appear to have absolutely no effect on the smart, capable yet refreshingly laid back drug kingpins
13. If you are going to run a city, make sure it has a murder rate equivalent to a quiet mid after noon Baghdad. Or two Groznys.
14. The best, the absolute pinnacle of what you can hope to accomplish is to be a murdering, robbing, chain-smoking sodomite. Man up.
15. All accents are suspect. The thesps are clean, you can trust them.
16. S'all in the game, yo. Outside the game there will be refreshments served. (no vegans)

Fun and Jeopardy

Well this week saw the return of Lost, one of the most infuriatingly overrated programs ever to be made. It didn't start out bad, in fact I really liked it at first and then it started to dawn on me, none of the writing staff knows what’s going on. They have no better idea about this island than anyone else, that’s why they answer every question in the series with about three more. It's like playing a game and just when you think you're winning someone changes all the rules. Also if you take away the mystery you're left with a lot of clunky dialogue, a list of poorly constructed characters and acting that’s sub-par at best. Solving mysteries in programs is entertaining, but when all the characters are so dull and unlikable (with the exception of Hurley) it feels like instead of watching TV I'm reading a series of long essay questions. It also reeks of the worst kind of pretension, at a quick glance it's a smart program full of mystery and intrigue but on closer inspection it's a poorly written soap opera hidden beneath a cloud of absurdity. It's dull and utterly lacking in any kind of heart, I have no attachment to these one dimensional caricatures and so I don't give a toss about what happens to them on their sodding island.

Modern British telly at the moment seems to be governed by two words, fun and jeopardy, this seemed absurd when I first heard it (Boys from the Blackstuff was without fun and so was Threads but Funhouse was full of it) but with BBC’s Ashes to Ashes it all makes sense. Thank god for this, it's everything it needed to be and more, the writing is crisp, there's mystery and bucket loads of nostalgia. The acting is great, Keeley Hawes is brilliant and Phillip Glenister is a dream to watch playing the role he was born to play. I love the way they've taken the fun to a new level (the music swells as the camera pans to a statuesque Gene Hunt) and actually managed to up the jeopardy with DI Drake having to get back to her life because of her daughter. Hawes performance with her onscreen daughter brings real heart to the new lead that was always lacking in Life on Mars. It's also really scary; the David Bowie clown will now haunt my dreams along with Zippy and fucking George. Ashes to Ashes has managed to perfectly capture both fun and jeopardy (Gene Hunt on a speedboat under Tower Bridge clutching an Uzi), the only problem with it is that it raises the question of why is nothing else on British telly able to do it right?

I Saw 'The Trial of Tony Blair' And All I Got Was This Lousy Satire

'Unfortunately, it is also representative of the way in which our political culture tends to patronise and infantilise.'

Alistair Beaton creator of The Trial of Tony Blair, on Blair's House of Lords reform.

Before reading any further please answer the following

What do you believe about Gulf War II?

a) The war was wrong and illegal. Blair and Bush lied to secure oil supplies and to get rid of a tyrant who was only there because of their support. And even then it was only to get a step closer to invading Iran. Or shoring up support for Saudi Arabia. Or Israel. Or getting at China. Or Russia.

b) Anything else.

All you really need to know about 'The Trial' is that if you thought Tony Blair needed to be put on trial for Iraq, you'll love it, because it will just affirm everything you already thought. The early part of the story can be likened to a load of Stop The War coalition supporters furiously beating off into a camera. Blair has panic attacks about being blown up by a suicide bomber, a messiah complex is vainglorious and morally superior throughout. The show would be much easier to take if the viewer weren't teased with sympathy for Blair, only to have it immediately withdrawn. Its written as if every time the writer let themselves any human feeling for Blair, an anti war protestor appeared shoving a sign directly into a synapse reading 'NO. BLIAR. B-LIAR. BLAIR + LIAR. DID YOU NOT GET THE SUBTLE POLITICAL SATIRE?' These sequences are only funny if you are the kind of person who took the Iraq War personally.

How the hell would they get Tony Blair to take the stand at The Hague anyway? They fucked up Milosevic's trial so badly he had to die a natural death in order for them to secure a reduced conviction of 'well-kind-of-you-knew-about-it-but-didn''t-do-anything-to-stop-it...ish' - GO MORAL CONSCIENCE, FLY INTO A NEW AGE OF JUSTICE.

'Politics requires analysis as well as passion, insight as well as conviction, lucidity as well as sincerity. Above all, it requires healthy, open debate. But Blair has never cared very much about healthy, open debate'

Alistair Beaton

The fact is, Blair almost certainly wasn't a war criminal. Bush probably wasn't a war criminal. They almost certainly lied, cajoled and massaged the truth in order to take their countries into a war neither country wanted, but when is that news? (Hey ma did ya hear? They're posthumously indicting every political leader from Nebuchadnezzar onwards? Apparently they led their nations to war without good reason.) The anger of anti war-o's is explicable but their surprise at the duplicity of politicians is not.

This is not politics, or if it is politics, it is the politics of the nursery.

Alistair Beaton

There were plenty of good reasons for criticising the Iraq war, but there were also good reasons for going in In addition the complex and frankly, boring, legal questions. I don't appreciate being treated like a retarded 5 year old, no matter how many packets of Wotsits I can consume if left to my own devices.

Is it weird that I found Brian Haw moving to the street outside Blair's house as funnier and sadder than the plight of Blair himself? The lack of this war's universal significance could not be more pointed. The David Cameron parts are much funnier, asking inner city youths if they 'staying off the charlie' But I think Steve Coogan is going to need to get his lawyers onto the producers about some of the lines.

At this point I'm very much in danger of turning into a fat white guy from the Deep South, wearing denim Stars and Stripes jackets and shouting profanities about the weak knees and elbows of liberals. To slow this inevitable decline, I'll stop talking.

If you remember nothing else from this. remember: WHEN TONY BLAIR GETS ANGRY HE TRIES TO RUN OVER MUSLIMS IN HIS GIANT 4X4. FEAR BLIAR.

BBCs Mistresses

It's not bad, the writing is ok, the acting is fine but it is very slow. Like some kind of relentless soviet behemoth that just keeps going, never ending, for the love of god it just goes on and on. It's just another in a long line of British dramas that feels ten times longer than it should be.
The problem is Sex and the City has already been made, and Atlantic crossovers are usually doomed from their foul, seedy, lazy conceptions. I'm sure the BBC get nice original scripts but they, like all channels, are lazy and money obsessed.
Also, why is it that the supposed 'cool' people in British drama always look like they've just stepped out of the 80s, the cringeworthy Dallas 80s.For example the sleazy PR boss telling his underling he wants her to be "working under him". I mean for fucks sake it's like our writers decided what was cool when they were children and they're going to stick with their misplaced faith in the Wall Street book of cool until the day they die.
Another problem is that with the BBCs ongoing desire to avoid seeming too Londoncentric the program looks like it's set in some kind of null space that could be the suburb of anywhere. All the sets are as bland as the costumes in an attempt to appeal to everyone, far from appealing it's just dull. In fact scratch the bit about it being fine, it's awful, lazy, predictable tripe that British channels need to stop making.