Sucker Punch Vs. Alice: Madness Returns

While these titles have some similarities (both about a girl suffering mental trauma, who escapes to a mental fantasy world with different elements each time) they might not initially seem the most obvious for a comparison or even something that should be compared. What started me thinking about them together though was the idea of looking at how well each of them would suit the others medium.

I wasn't a fan of Sucker Punch and for the most part it already felt like a video game just without the interaction (so, Dragons Lair then). As a film it had no real intrigue or consequence, it was just scene after scene of computer generated action and/or women in burlesque outfits, set to (admittedly very good) music. There's been plenty of talk back and forth about whether this is a 'feminist' film that empowers women, Zack Snyder certainly wants you to think so but I can't see it myself. I'm pretty sure the biggest group of people who liked this film are those who do just enjoy the dumb action and staring at women wearing revealing clothes, maybe he sees a certain irony in making the most money off those he is trying to mock but it's not like he has the best track record for showing violence towards women. I don't pretend to speak for all women about it as there have been some people who think there is a deeper meaning to it, I just didn't think that it worked very well as a film or do enough to convince the average person that there is more to it.

Sadly though I think it would have got away with much less criticism as a video game, just because I don't think we're really reached the point where serious critical analysis of video games and their themes can take place. I think this is shown by the backlash to a Film Crit Hulk article addressing the way Catwoman was presented in Arkham City, which wasn't even trying to say that the whole game was bad, just that this aspect could have been dealt with better. If Sucker Punch had come out as a game with a mixture of third person fighting, shooting and occasionally flying some vehicles I'm sure it would have sold millions and the plot would have been lauded as complex and original. Maybe a few articles would have appeared down the line questioning its attitudes towards women, only to be shot down by thousands of comments from angry male gamers - especially if it had been a woman who dared to write about it. It's not exactly the biggest of compliments to say that it might have done better as a game for these reasons.

Alice: Madness Returns on the other hand was a game I didn't play for quite a while but gradually heard good things about, some people even calling it their unexpected game of the year. I find it hard to believe that people really loved it as a whole though, I would think that for most people it was the art design and story. Gameplay wise it largely felt pretty dated to me, not feeling as much like a Quake mod as the original did but some of the third person shooting and fighting really didn't mesh together well. The camera was absolutely atrocious if you focus on one enemy for a long time, I found it best to hold the button to lock on and periodically let go to try and sort it out. This of course had to be done by manually wrangling the stick as there's no center camera button, you'll spend a lot of time trying to line up your jumps too. I frequently found myself infuriated by its inconsistent checkpoints, where falling to your 'death' put you back on the most recent platform but dying through combat would put you back much further, often meaning that you had to do the awkward platforming section again. Okay, so your combat deaths shouldn't exactly be frequent, but I had a few on a mini-boss that also gave virtually no hints on how to defeat it, which really soured me towards it.

I feel like I'm being pretty harsh there though, despite the average elements it did keep me coming back to see the story, find more of the memory fragments and see what the new design theme would be in the next chapter. There were a few places where I thought levels overstayed their welcome and got repetitive but mostly there would be something new on the horizon to keep you hooked. So while I've written before about playing games just for the story, this wasn't a 'comfort game' to just sit back and soak up because I felt like every now and then it would poke you in the ribs with a little spike in difficulty, though it did get better as it progressed. Overall it just felt like the core of the game didn't get as much love and attention as the art design. I think that Alice is the more effective title in its own medium though, the gameplay might not be perfect but it's acceptable, we'd be getting into a whole other discussion to try and determine what should be at the core of a film that Sucker Punch is missing.

Would Alice have worked as a film? I guess I would like to see someone try, though it would probably be commercially non-viable to actually make it violent to the degree that the game is (a mini series on HBO perhaps?). A long time ago you might have expected Tim Burton to make a really dark, interesting take on Alice rather than the film he made. I feel that even as a game though, Alice manages to handle a similar story better than Sucker Punch; there's nothing necessarily wrong with the concept of the film but it's executed terribly. I felt like the opening scene in the asylum was trying to be clever but it ends up giving the game away, which immediately makes the rest of the film feel redundant. Alice on the other hand keeps the intrigue up all the way through and just when you think you know what's going on you're hit with a very harsh section that makes you question whether the situation can be resolved at all. You feel the fear and unfairness of the situation and care about the possibility of Alice recovering her sanity. In the end it has a reasonably satisfactory resolution that still leaves room for interpretation about what actually happened. Whereas Sucker Punch finishes with its 'twist' and tries to create some semblance of an ending that wraps everything up but actually just leaves you going "where the f**k did that come from?".

The best film I saw in 2011

Poster by James White - Signalnoise

I've rambled on about Drive in various bits and bobs but felt like I should still write something about it here. There were loads of great posters for this movie but I particularly liked the one above as it gives a hint of the 80's feel that the film has.

This felt like a film that kind of came out of nowhere for me, I first read about it in the weekly Odeon film e-mail that I get and I pretty much dismissed it from its description - though the warning of extreme violence kind of went against the fairly generic sounding plot. A colleague at work recommended it highly however (he has had the main poster as his desktop since it came out) and after watching the Half in the Bag review I decided I should definitely get to see it. However, a couple of weeks consideration is a long time in non-blockbuster terms, so it was of course no longer being shown by Odeon. Thankfully I have access to a great independent theatre, the Tyneside Cinema, which was still showing it at this point.

As plenty of people have pointed out, this isn't really the most complex film in the world but what makes it stand out is how it is filmed and its overall sense of style. While it is visually and musically very 80's inspired, the whole feel of it reminds me more of some of my favourite 70's movies where they aren't afraid to take things at a slow pace sometimes. But when it comes to action the tension in some scenes is incredible, which is something that's very hard to describe or show in an isolated youtube clip. So if you measure it purely by the amount of driving action scenes I could understand you might be disappointed but the driving scenes that are there are very unique and gripping in their own way. The violence in it is brutal, quick and feels incredibly shocking,  which is I think how you are meant to feel, rather than aiming to please avid gore fans.

It really isn't very often that a film draws me in so completely and has me thinking about it for such a long time afterwards. Just in terms of characters it manages to make them interesting despite them not directly talking about themselves that much. The driver in particular leaves you with plenty to think about in terms of how he got to this point in his life and what will happen afterwards. So much is suggested by subtle actions, like how his hand shakes in one scene where he is really in over his head. I posted on Google+ ages ago about one song that is used twice in the film and how it feels like it serves a different purpose each time you hear it, which I think shows that the soundtrack is not just part of the film's style but can give another level of insight to the characters.

This isn't to say that all of the characters are of the strong silent type, Bryan Cranston is great as the driver's mechanic/manager and is probably the most fun and well meaning character in the film. I also liked Oscar Isaac as Irene's husband, who turns out to be a much better man than you would expect when you first hear that he is in prison at the start of the film. I wouldn't say there are any particularly bad performances, Ron Perlman is his usual self but still works for me, even the kid isn't bad.

Clearly it's not a film for everyone, though I have been surprised at the contrasting opinions it has received - I don't think you will find anyone who thought it was merely okay. While I can appreciate some people's issues I think it's worth finding out which camp you fall into and hopefully you can appreciate it on some level. I can't wait to watch it again on Blu-ray but I may well be watching it alone...

Underworld: Awakening (2012)

This turned out to be a lot better than I was expecting actually, though reading the rest of this review you might not think it. I saw it in 'IMAX 3D' and while it isn't a true IMAX 3D film it was at least filmed in 3D using the RED EPIC Digital Cameras, so it did also fill the screen rather than just being letter-boxed. Sadly I had some problems with the 3D glasses, I don't know if our local cinema has changed its lighting conditions or now uses more reflective lenses but throughout the film I was getting reflected glare all over the place. This isn't something I remember happening in other films at the same cinema so I don't know what has changed, I'm pretty sure the theatre lights used to be darker though. Mostly the 3D was fairly unimportant or just to throw things at your face now and then but there was one shot that actually made me feel a little ill - the camera is rotating on a spiral and you start to lose your frame of reference and feel like you're rotating too. I'm not sure if this is a good thing overall, I found it interesting and kinda fun but if you suffer from motion sickness it might put you off.

I have seen all of the previous Underworld films at one time or another but couldn't remember much of the details, so it was probably a good thing that it started with a brief summary. This summary continues on to new events as well though, which felt a bit of a cheap way to try and set the scene. Overall it felt like they wanted to reboot the whole thing almost and the first section of the film is a little bit confusing because of it. The idea of humans trying to wipe out Vampires and Lycans is almost forgotten after the first few scenes. I guess I have got so used to True Blood's 'coming out' style revelation to the public that this version seemed a little simple although I guess it's open to interpretation and entirely possible we would try to eradicate them because they are different.

After this awkward start it does mostly start to roll along at a fair pace and it doesn't require too much mental power to follow the plot - not to say that this is a bad thing or there are no surprises at all. By comparison to a lot of recent blockbusters it's pretty straight forward and doesn't overcomplicate things. I had to chuckle when this guy turned up, as I've watched Lost Girl where he plays a werewolf too - I imagine he'll now be typecast as one forever. It also sets out to be fairly gory from the offset, more so than I remember the other films but I may be mistaken. It does feel very strange to see mainstream 18 rated films these days, after the disappointing news that Expendables 2 may be aiming for PG 13 it feels kind of refreshing that this has stuck with it.

I have to say that the CGI was a bit overused though, specifically it didn't really feel like anything had any real weight to it. People are chucked around unrealistically without a scratch and there is a big car chase scene with Lycans jumping from car to car that stood out in a bad way. I'm pretty sure I didn't see any effect on the cars for most of the landings and the drivers seem to potter on unconcerned until they realise that a werewolf will be added in post production and they'll maybe start to wobble the wheel a bit.

As a whole though it passed the time enjoyably, I could have stood to see it be a bit longer to be honest, at 88 minutes it does seem to wrap things up pretty quickly. I was expecting it to move away from the area that it ends in but gradually came to realise that it was probably going to have to finish soon. I had a look around the web to get a general feel for reviews of it and though they are generally negative, I thought this quote picked out on Wikipedia summed it up quite well - "although it’s about as lasting as dust in the wind, I think it represents what the series should have been right from the start: An escapist supernatural action thriller that gives us license to put our brains on autopilot.". It definitely seems like the best use of the whole concept so far, you'll just maybe have to try and get your brain back into that late 90's mindset of thinking that long leather trench coats are cool...

The worst film I saw in 2011

I wasn't sure whether to write about this but then I recently saw that it had the dubious honour of being the first film available to watch on Facebook - it was like the universe was telling me to do it. To clarify this is taking into account films that I saw in the cinema that were released in 2011, as I may have also watched the first Twilight movie last year - it's been a long year. It should also be noted that films from 2011 that I haven't watched include Transformers 3, Hangover 2 and Zookeeper if you think I'm being particularly harsh. Thankfully I didn't pay to see it due to Odeon's reward card scheme and my wife being intrigued by the trailer, I think we both agreed we would rather have seen something else for free though.

So lets start with the basics - no one gets abducted in this film. That kind of says it all really but I guess Adoption wouldn't have made for such a good title. I can't remember the whole thing exactly but the plot is that some terrorists or something want to find the main character Nathan, to use as bait to draw out his real father, so they set up a fake website about abducted children because they somehow have a photo of him as a child and very accurate age progression software. I don't know who the other examples of abducted children are - maybe they are looking for multiple children of special agents, the film doesn't make this clear. Anyway, the terrorists get lucky though because Nathan has just been given a school project on child abductions *gasp* and through their impressive SEO skills, their fake website is the first result that he chooses over the government's official site. They did actually need to find him in a pretty short time frame, if he hadn't gone to the site himself I imagine they would have had to wade through a lot of false reports from people around the country who thought that the age progression image looked a bit like someone they knew.

But anyway, it all works out alright for the terrorists, they hack his webcam to make sure he looks like er... their age progression estimate? Nathan goes to confront his parents about it, who could have probably saved themselves a lot of trouble by telling him from the start that he was adopted and his real parents died in a car accident (hey it worked for Harry Potter). Before anything can be explained though some fake government agents are sent by the terrorists, who kill his adoptive parents and then blow up his house while he's still in it, despite wanting him for a live hostage. Nathan then escapes with his high school not girlfriend Karen and when he tries to get in touch with emergency services he gets re-directed to real government agents, one of them being Alfred Molina who's also kind of the bad guy because Alfred Molina is always kind of the bad guy. Sigourney Weaver then picks them up, tells them to trust no one but his real dad and some other guy, who I think is just one of his dads aliases and then fakes her death so that the two kids can go on the run.

I remember there being a focus on it being good for Nathan and Karen to stick together, there's even a "I couldn't have done it without you speech at the end" but the only useful thing she does in the entire film is use her feminine wiles to convince some guy at Nathan's mother's grave site to tell them where the flowers on her grave were sent from. So they then get a train to Nebraska, which involves the most uncomfortable scene in the whole film. Amongst the many things that have made me feel old this year, watching a love scene between two horny teenagers was pretty high up there. I found myself squirming in my seat and wondering who exactly could even potentially find this scene watchable, surely even teenagers don't want to watch people their own age getting it on. I guess Taylor Lautner was just happy to get the girl in a film though, and not through being a psychic paedophile.

I think after this point I stopped paying as much attention, the terrorists seem to keep catching up with them for no apparent reason, other than the fact that they're better equipped and armed than the whole of the US government. If the CIA had been any use then the film could have been over a lot sooner as Nathan plays no part in the final outing of Alfred Molina as a traitor, he could have just given the CIA his dad's secret data as his dad would have still told his superiors that he'd found his name on the list. They're often helped by Nathan's half nerd, half jock schoolfriend who has the magic ability of turning up wherever they've travelled to in the country in a hearbeat, using only his own car.

The final scenes are basically to wrap everything up in a nice neat package deal as it turns out that the main terrorist is implausibly also the man who killed Nathan's mother. His dad turns up to kill the main terrorist with a sniper shot from afar and then only talks to his son on the phone. For some strange reason I found myself disappointed that you don't get to see his dad either. I thought that maybe just seeing the actor who played him, having maybe had him turn up somewhere earlier in the film or something, would have made the whole thing feel like it made a bit more sense or just have some kind of purpose. As it stands the whole thing just felt like a big mess that could have been sorted out so much easier if the characters weren't complete idiots.

Twilight ½ / 10

Attack The Block (2011)

I think on some subconscious level I didn't really want to watch this film. On paper it sounds like the perfect film for me; Alien invasion with a gritty real setting, directed by a UK comedy legend and featuring Nick Frost (though he's often an iffy prospect if not accompanied by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright). I'd heard complaints about the London slang in it but I didn't expect that to bother me that much. The thing that put me off a little though was when I first heard about it I read that the opening scene involved a mugging, which is something I've had happen to myself. It's not like since then I've avoided any films with a mugging in them but just because of the way it sounded similar to my own case there was always a sense of apprehension that I didn't really want to watch something that would make me re-live the experience.

But since it's cropped up a few times recently in last years best of lists I figured I should give it a go and as it turns out I wasn't really bothered by the mugging scene after all. This kinda surprised me a little as it was also at knife-point - not what happened to me but something I think I'm quite scared of in general just because of the potential for things to suddenly go really bad because of it. For example, I always feel a sense of shock in the pit of my stomach during that scene in Kick Ass where he gets stabbed, even though I should know it's coming by now. I thought there were a few bits that were quite well observed from the girls point of view though - that "Oh S**t" feeling as you realise what's going on and her panic later on when trying to get back in her flat quickly.

As for being warned that I would hate the accents/characters, I don't think I ever really felt that. Very early on I think the film tries to establish that the group aren't a really tough gang, they are just kids trying to act hard at the end of the day (who were in turn inspiring even younger kids to act like them). I think because of this, without going into too much spoilerific detail, when members of the main group died it wasn't a sense that any of them deserved what happened. I always think that's what makes a horror film horrific, rather than a queue of unredeemable characters that you can't wait to see the back of (though there is one death in this for someone who deserves it). You can see why most of the characters are how they are, either through ignorance or neglect on their parents part.

I was quite glad in a sense to watch this on Blu-ray and be able to watch some of the making of stuff straight afterwards. I wanted to know how much was practical effects and how much was CGI and I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of it was computer enhanced effects rather than complete CGI creations. It was one of those situations where just the look of the creatures tipped me off to them being CG as it wouldn't be possible in real life but after that point I didn't really give it much more thought so they obviously weren't distracting from the rest of the film. For those who are interested, there were actually people running about in furry gorilla monster suits, with animatronic jaws controlled by remote control. A lot of the actors made mention of being genuinely scared of the guys running at them full pelt while filming and while I think that probably helped their performances, I didn't find the creatures all that scary myself. Not sure if that was the intention all along though, having the threat of gang violence seem more dangerous than the aliens.

I also couldn't help but think back to the London riots in August, and it was probably lucky that this came out earlier in the year as I remember there being some ill timed adverts during the riots that had similar imagery. I found myself thinking of a common complaint I heard in August, which was that people didn't understand why the rioters were turning around and destroying their own community. Not to say that it was okay to ransack large chain stores but I found myself more saddened hearing from a friend living in Croydon who told me about a family run business that had been running for years, which was burned to the ground just for the sake of it. I felt that in this, though it was a bit misguided, the kids at least had some sense of community for their block. That they probably wouldn't have mugged the girl if they'd know she lived there. Whereas the drug dealer Hi-Hatz explicitly refers to the block as his, to use however he pleases while not actually living there from the sound of it.

So on the whole I thought it was a great film, not my favourite of the year (that honour goes to Drive I think) but it was a good balance of action and humour. Lots more that I could write about it but it's mostly already been expressed more eloquently than I could hope to. Definitely worth a watch.

Competitive Gaming

As a contrasting title to my last post, competitive gaming can mean a lot of things to different people but I'm going to be talking about probably the only thing I do have a major interest in, which is fighting games. I've never really been a huge fan of online FPS games or anything like that and thinking right back to my early gaming days they are the only style of game that I've had a consistent competitive interest in, even if I didn't initially realise it.

Like most I was first introduced to fighting games through Street Fighter 2, we had a local video rental shop that also had two stand-up arcade machines and it was probably a while before I could get through the crowds of older guys to have a go of it. Back then I was a Sega Master System owner and later Mega Drive so I never experienced a proper home version of it, probably being drawn more towards Mortal Kombat's blood and gore (c'mon, plenty of us fell for it at the time). After the initial excitement for the genre wore down they remained as something that I would play with friends but not really take that seriously. The release of SSF2T HD Remix and Street Fighter 4 however would be the perfect storm of nostalgia, experience and disposable income that finally made me take a serious interest again. I invested in a basic arcade stick for the 360 as neither the standard pad or analog stick really worked for me and finally mastered the dragon punch motion *cough* input shortcuts *cough*.

This was the first time that I really took a great interest in what goes on behind the scenes in fighting games too. I've always been the kind of person to go through the tutorials to try and learn a characters moves (not that it usually helps me) but I think a combination of working as a programmer at this point and HD Remix having an option to display hitboxes, it just sparked my interest in how you would go about making a fighting game as well. I gradually started reading stuff that probably used to be reserved for 'professional gamers' on frame data, which really made me appreciate that not all combos are pre-programmed chains that can only be executed one way. It made fighting games seem that much more creative that someone could work out combos that the creator might never have even expected down to careful timing of another move just as the animation of one finishes. Of course a lot of these 'linked' combos will be carefully planned out these days but the history of fighting games is full of accidental developments that have gone on to be staple features of any modern game you can think of.

It was probably a little earlier than SF4 that I started to become aware of the competitive fighting game scene as well, I imagine initially because of this legendary comeback video:

As well as being amazed by what actually happens in the fight, I was always struck by the response from the audience. Here was a room full of 'nerds' by anyone's standards but the cheers and celebrations after were equal to almost any sports event you could think of. Combined with the sheer amount of people there just to watch two guys play a video game, it's a great reveal as the camera pans back around to capture the scenes of hype.

Through the competitive scene I also finally changed my attitude toward 'cheapness' in fighting games. As discussed in Intermediate’s Guide by David Sirlin - simply put, I used to be a scrub. Back in the day everyone had their own ideas about what was cheap in fighting games; Throws (some truth to that), Cross ups, Special moves (any of them - my wife still sticks to this view) and certain characters just for starters. This article finally made me appreciate that although there may have been some unintended effects back in the day, most of the time what is in the game was specifically designed to be in the game and usually nothing is unbeatable. You wouldn't see someone complaining that "Rock is far too overpowered against Scissors" but so often in fighting games people will stick with 'Scissors' religiously and insist that people who constantly use 'Rock' are boring players, without going looking for the 'Paper' to counter them. This is still a difficult thing to fully accept when you're locked in a corner with someone throwing fireballs at you but hopefully I don't get as mad about it any more. Or if I do get mad then hopefully it will push me to learn some new tactics rather than make me feel like I never want to play the game again.

The internet has done a lot to keep me interested in fighting games this time, from the sheer wealth of information out there to help you level up, to the simple fact of being able to play against people who aren't right next to me. I would say there was a period where I had reasonable success online but I was still not able to perform most of the great combos I was reading about (as much as I like the idea of links in combos I think having 1/60th of a second window to perform them is too tight for mere mortals). I gradually started to get frustrated with my own failings, which is probably why I took a break from them in the middle of last year and caught up on some single player games that I had been missing out on. This wasn't a complete break from fighting games though as I continued to watch plenty of videos online - insane combo videos and the like and of course, The Excellent Adventures of gootecks and Mike Ross:

These guys have pretty much become the face of the fighting game community (whether the FGC wants them to be or not). I think the fact that they are pretty down to earth and funny really helps people to identify with them compared to the traditional view of a professional gamer. I see so much of myself in Mike Ross in terms of how frustrated he gets when he loses - that feeling that you should have won a match but got beaten by a gimmicky tactic is pretty universal I think. There are other big characters that are starting to make a name for themselves in fighting game videos, like Maximillian's series of comedic Marvel Vs. Capcom tutorials and FC Jago's Why We Hate You show that has a (probably exaggerated) rivalry with gootecks and Mike Ross.

I find it interesting that people are actually becoming the superstars of the fighting game world but that this may not be what some of the community wants. I read an article a while back called The Rise of the Armchair Street Fighter, which talked about the importance of making sure that primarily the fighting game community revolves around people who take part rather than just watch. While I agree that the focus should be driven by those who play the games I think there is a place for people who are primarily spectators and I would imagine that the rise in these numbers has done a great deal to expand fighting game events. After all, with the costs of holding tournaments starting to require sponsorship, why would a company want to sponsor an event or a player if no one gets exposure to it? The article also refers back to another post by Seth Killian where he asks why football is so popular as a spectator sport when most people have no real connection to it. I think that this misses out the fact that the biggest football fans probably did love to play football back in the day though and they now live their dreams vicariously through their teams progress. For all of us 20-30 something people who have no great interest in sport but grew up on Street Fighter, is it so bizarre that we find enjoyment in rooting for our favourite players just like a sports fan would? Yes in some respects these people aren't superstars that are totally removed from the public but for most of us we're so unlikely to meet them (well, I think Desk lives somewhere near me) that they might as well be celebrities to us. I just hope that the community continues to grow and improve, while still providing entertainment to folks like me.

Comfort Gaming

Another series that I finally got around to playing last year was Assassin's Creed. Unlike Mass Effect I had a pretty good idea of what the series was like and the reviews I had read of the first one never really made me want to investigate further. But with Revelations on the horizon I thought it was worth a try and I figured I might as well start from the beginning. The reviews of the first one weren't wrong, it was incredibly repetitive and I really had to push myself through it. It didn't help that the main character was virtually unlike-able and while you are introduced to him at full power, in the time old Metroid fashion, all of your cool moves and weapons are stripped from you after the intro, to be arbitrarily dripped back to you after each mission. I traded it in soon after finishing it - safe in the knowledge that I would never want to go back and try to get all of the achievements.

And then of course the intro video to the second one pretty much told me everything I would have needed to know to get up to speed with the plot anyway... sigh. I also felt that the opening section of AC2 was what I expected to be the ending of the first one. I was pretty disappointed at the time in terms of how abruptly it ended but it was an early sign that the second one could be much better. In contrast to the original protagonist Altair, you are introduced to Ezio as a youngster (well technically at birth) and I think you're therefore more accepting that you don't have all of the assassin's skills yet. The game begins with simple tutorials but these all form part of the story and help you get to know your new character by doing rather than being told i.e. He can hold his own in a fist fight, is reasonably acrobatic, has a competitive relationship with his brother and a taste for the laydeez. Not the most original character traits in the world but I found him quite unique in terms of player controlled characters in video games and after how bland Altair was it made a refreshing change to just be playing someone instantly likeable.

So three paragraphs in I'd best actually make some kind of reference to the title of this post. I hate to use such terms but in the past I would have probably fitted into the 'Hardcore' gaming stereotype, I didn't see much point to games that didn't really take some amount of skill and effort to complete. But as I'm getting on in years and my reactions don't quite seem to be quite what they used to be, combined with less time to play games in general I'm finding it tougher and tougher to get through games. Vanquish for example I've been trying to complete for about a year and whenever I load it up I've forgotten how the controls work and spend about half an hour trying to get back up to speed, getting killed repeatedly in the same area I got stuck on last time. I'm seriously considering restarting it on easy so that I can blast through the whole thing in a much less disjointed fashion...

By contrast, aside from a few optional side missions, I don't think I've ever felt challenged much by the AC series. The free running controls, while not perfect, mean that you don't have to think about timing pixel perfect jumps and can just concentrate on where you want to get to. The fighting can be made more complicated if you want but most of the time it's enough to simply block and then reversal attacks in a very generous time frame - Street Fighter it ain't. Despite all this I'm loath to describe Assassin's Creed 2 as a 'Casual' game though as I still felt pretty invested in it, which is why I felt that 'Comfort Gaming' described it better. The whole game just has a wonderful atmosphere from top to bottom, quite literally in terms of the design of the cities from the streets to the rooftops. The music is some of the most gorgeous and relaxing I've heard in a long time, it really put me in mind of Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo, which had probably my favourite music of the 16bit era. And on top of that you have the completionist pleasing gradual upgrading of your home villa, gaming meta humour and a storyline that keeps you interested despite some fairly outlandish twists.

I wasn't as impressed by Brotherhood, I felt that it took it just that little bit too far in terms of being a game that virtually plays itself. The characters and storyline seemed to take a back seat and the gameplay felt like it took a step back towards the formulaic repetition of the first game. While I could see myself 100% completing AC2 one day, Brotherhood would possibly send me over the edge (or into a coma). After catching up on the first three games I've actually not got around to playing Revelations yet unfortunately. I've heard mixed reviews, with most of the positive ones being from people who liked Brotherhood, which isn't exactly a positive to me. However from the trailers I have seen, Ezio at least seems to show a bit more character again, with a different feel due to his age - he really does feel like a character that you've seen grow through the series.

So while I doubt I'll completely abandon more challenging games I think for me especially it's good to chill out now and then. I'm known for having a short temper games wise and when you're playing something and stuck repeating the same section over and over, not making any progress and generally increasing your blood pressure you start to wonder why you're continuing. At the end of the day most people are playing for relaxation or entertainment and I don't think there's any shame in playing a game that caters exclusively to that (probably not something I would have said in the past). I'm not saying to give up on something as soon as it gets difficult - I guess like anything in life, a bit of variety is usually good for you.

Mass Effect and video game storytelling

I've been wondering how to go about writing a first post for this blog, one idea was to give a summary of the games I played last year but the more I thought about it the longer and more boring I realised it would be. So for various reasons I decided to concentrate on one game series I caught up with last year - Mass Effect.

This was a series I'd ignored for a long time - partially because I didn't have a very good impression of what it was actually about and partially because most of my gaming time had been spent labouring under the impression that I might eventually get good at fighting games (more on that another time maybe). All I'd seen of it was 'Generic Bald Space Marine' shoots things in space, which didn't really interest me (I'm sure some of you are making belm faces at me right now for how wrong I was). Eventually I heard more about the character customisation options, the conversation system and the fact that you could carry your character through to the next game, which grabbed my interest if only for the fact that I'd never heard of the cross game character thing being done before.

When I finally picked up both games I think I may have sprinted through the first game a little too fast - I'd heard a lot of people say to just play the first one to create a character and transfer them through to the second one as that was the much better game. In the end I liked a lot of things from both games though and found myself missing some of the stuff from ME1 that was more streamlined in ME2 (not the scrolling through every item you've ever acquired when selling them though). I generally enjoyed the storyline, which seemed pretty good by most games standards but that brings me onto my main reason for writing this. I was reading an article by Film Crit Hulk yesterday on why we should stop it with the hero journey shit and about half way through it mentions Mass Effect as a bad example of using the same basic stories and characters over and over again. This being my first Bioware game I obviously hadn't picked up on the similarity to their other games but there's no denying the fact that it follows a very similar structure to dozens of other stories. It wasn't something that bothered me while playing the game but it's interesting to look at after the fact and try to understand what I did like about the story.

Before reading the article on the heroes journey, I read another of his called The myth of 3 act structure (yes I am doing my homework Hulk). Specifically the idea that the end of an 'act' is characterised by decisions being made that you cannot be undone, which move the story forward. Aside from the gunplay in missions, this really struck me as being the main idea of the Mass Effect series, there are plenty of decisions that you are forced to make and they aren't just wishy-washy things that don't really affect the rest of the game. First and foremost you have your character, which in my case was designed in partnership with my wife and came out something like the following image I think.

A good deal of time was spent tweaking bone structure etc. and we were also thinking about her backstory choice and what her character would be like. We picked the option of being famous for having to make a tough decision to sacrifice people for the greater good, which made me mostly stick to the pragmatic best decisions possible despite the cost (most of the time anyway, my wife would quite often comment that I hadn't chosen the best dialogue option for her character). It really hit home when your last decisions really affected the landscape of the second game - it makes me want to go and see how things could have turned out differently but I think that will come after I've played ME3 and our Aimee Shepard's story  is complete. I think that identification of the character as 'ours' is what overrides any feeling that the story is too derivative, because you've taken a significant role in shaping the story so it obviously seems unique to you. Funnily enough I hear that the third game will have an 'Action' mode where most of the conversation options are taken out of your hands, it'd be interesting to see whether this results in you playing a completely bland character devoid of personality or if it will auto-direct conversations a certain way.

It's also an amazing undertaking from a technical standpoint and I can see how it must be hard to write/design ME3, taking into account every possibility from all the previous games. So much must have gone into it that would never be seen by someone taking a specific path. I particularly liked the fact that I could just leave certain conversation choices unfollowed, anything that seemed to stray towards traditional goody goody hero stuff or taking the moral high ground I would tend to avoid when in a lot of games you would just have to sit through the hero taking the holier than thou approach. I guess this is not something unique to Mass Effect but having never really played any other western RPGs this is the first thing to make me aware of it. I can see now why people talk about playing Dungeons and Dragons as good practice for writing stories as you're thinking about a character different from yourself and how they would react in situations. So while games should definitely strive to create better, more interesting stories I find it hard to criticize this too much when the moments that you helped create are what stick with you.