How did Fringe become one of my favourite shows on TV?

J.J. Abrams TV shows and I don't really get on historically. I watched most of Alias years after it was on TV and while it had some interesting parts I couldn't make it past the third season, despite all of the DVD's being freely available to borrow from a friend. I eventually looked up how it ended on Wikipedia and decided I hadn't missed much, although I have heard people say that it picked up in the last season. As for Lost, I was a fan from the outset, being one of the first series that I can remember attempting to watch as soon as possible after it had been shown in the US. Again though I found myself losing interest by the end of season 3 and after hearing all sorts of comments about time loops and other far fetched ideas, I was glad to have given it up. I felt like I was starting to see a pattern in how J.J. Abrams repeatedly seems to want to totally shake things up or effectively reboot his own series' mid run, which isn't something that he's moved away from in Fringe.

So it was surprising in a sense that I even started to watch Fringe. I think that part of its appeal is that it feels like his first really 'honest' show. It's not a Spy drama with Sci-Fi/Mystery leanings, it's not a disaster-survival show with Sci-Fi/Mystery leanings - it's a straight up Sci-Fi-Mystery show. It may end up with a smaller target audience but you don't feel that it is deliberately courting the mainstream, basically tricking them into watching Sci-Fi when they normally wouldn't consider it. Sadly the same thing seems to have continued with Alcatraz and potentially again with Revolution, where what appears to be a cop show and a post apocalyptic survival drama aren't allowed to stand up on their own without a big mystery behind all of it.

Right from the beginning what really drew me in was John Noble and his deranged portrayal of Walter Bishop. His character was what kept me hooked, with his mixture of insanity, genius and just plain hilarity creating an intriguing character. While the early episodes may have felt a little like the X-Files, he was a constant presence that kept the show interesting. As his personal history was gradually revealed I also found him very believable as someone with a heavy burden upon him emotionally. He even managed to create a strikingly different version of himself in an alternate universe, who was gradually revealed to be more than just 'Evil Walter'.

That said, almost every actor in the show has an alternate universe counterpart and all have done a great job of playing them just different enough to feel like another character. Anna Torv is especially strong as the two versions of Olivia Dunham and I was also impressed by the episode where she is incredibly convincing in portraying her conciousness being overtaken by Leonard Nimoy's character William Bell. I loved how gravelly she managed to make her voice sound in this episode and she seemed to have his mannerisms down just right. Before hearing her and John Noble speaking in their natural accents while being interviewed, I would never have guessed that they are both Australian.

I could go on about almost every character but I'll just highlight one more, Jasika Nicole as Astrid ("Astro? Asterix? Aspirin?") specifically in the last season. The episode where her autistic alternate comes to our universe after the death of her father was particularly effective. It was totally heartbreaking as our Astrid managed to convince her counterpart that she didn't have a good relationship with her father either and that it wasn't down to her autism, only to see her go home to her clearly loving father at the end.

So it seems that I've answered my own question, the characters are probably what keeps me watching. Even Peter Bishop is so much better than you would expect Pacey from Dawson's Creek to be. Given that I can barely remember the events of the first few series, the overall plot took a while to get going - even if the weird problem of the week was usually pretty interesting. There were some great moments as it went on, the revelations of who William Bell was and more detail on what the alternate universe was like. A simple flashback episode was turned into something unforgettable by its '80s styled titles and music. It always came back to the characters though and your desire to see what would happen to them next. That it managed to achieve this and still have you root for them after a memory wiping reboot is pretty impressive.

So for the first time, here I am at the end of a fourth season of a J.J. Abrams show, looking forward to the final season (which didn't even look too certain to begin with). I heard rumours that two endings were possibly filmed depending on whether the series was renewed and I can sort of see how it might have been possible to finish it there. Some of the last episode may have resolved things a little quickly but it was in keeping with the show as a whole, mixing very disturbing scenes and tough decisions for its characters. The hints at what will happen next are quite an exciting prospect, making one last big shake-up and hopefully the show will go out with a bang.

That Mass Effect ending

It's been a difficult task avoiding spoilers for Mass Effect 3 while the rows about how it ended raged on, especially when I was fairly late picking up a copy. I knew it was something that I was going to be interested in though, so I've been using Google Reader to keep track of articles about it. I also had around a hundred pages of game forum posts to catch up on, some of which have provided much more eloquent criticism than I have found in other articles. There was plenty I could write about the game in general but the more I read it seemed like the ending was the clearly the biggest talking point. Since I'm a relative newcomer and have not been invested in the series for 5 years, I hope I can take a more impartial viewpoint than most.

Like many who finished the game after disappointment over its ending became headline news, my personal reaction to the ending was initially positive as I was expecting something terrible. I felt the game had been hinting quite clearly at what Shepard's fate would be, so I could accept that there was no way out for her. The last choice felt pretty tough (I went for "Control") and though I did question just why Joker had been piloting the ship away from the battle, I was just happy to see Garrus emerge from the wreckage at the end. That he was alive felt enough for me, I had no desire for an epilogue detailing their future exploits. The crew getting a fresh start on an unknown planet (Eden Prime? Virmire?) seemed quite fitting and also reminded me of the end of the recent Battlestar Galactica series.

As time went on and I started to read other people's comments on it, I couldn't help but start to understand their disappointment. There are many issues that stand out, some of which can possibly be explained away but it all adds up to a picture that doesn't seem like it was fully thought out. On top of that there was also the fact that your final choice didn't really make any difference to the outcome, just changing the colour of explosions and some other minor details. The thought that 'ignorance is bliss' definitely passed through my mind as more and more problems were pointed out. One of the first things I found out was that I wasn't even offered the third option of "Synthesis". The final choices are determined by your effective military strength but I was sure that the bar representing it was very near maximum for me, I haven't gone back to check the exact numbers. I was ready to blame the fact that I didn't play any multiplayer missions to increase my 'galactic readiness' but it turns out that it is possible without it.

Given that I wasn't even aware that it was possible to save a whole race that was lost in my playthrough, I definitely could have done better. Using this military strength stat to determine your ending choices did not really make any sense though, it's a step further from the vague reasoning that has your loyal team members survive the end of Mass Effect 2. I feel like a very simple change could have been to rename this counter so that you were building 'galactic unity' and then use that to persuade the catalyst that there is potential for synthetic and organic life to work together, citing the Geth and EDI as examples. If there was to be a 'true paragon ending' to the whole series then surely convincing the reapers to break their cycle and leave the mass relays intact would have been it. That said, I have come around to the idea that losing the mass relays might not mean utter disaster and that it fits in well with the overall theme of not relying on technology that we don't fully understand.

I've been mostly thinking about small changes that could be made because the fact of the matter is that the ending is out there now and I think it will be near impossible to completely change it. That's why I haven't really touched on the whole indoctrination theory, even though there are some pretty convincing videos on the subject. As well as it being an unprecedented situation for a game not to contain the full ending on disc, it seems like there would need to be a lot added to deal with this theory, probably including new player controlled sections or choices. I can accept that indoctrination may have originally been part of the plan but I would guess that it was dropped and would now be too much work to put in. The promised DLC to elaborate on what happened next doesn't actually seem to be what players are craving - more true choices and for your choices up to that point to really affect how the ending plays out. That and probably the complete ret-conning of the Normandy's escape scene.

A lot of people have talked about the process of understanding the ending as being similar to the steps normally associated with grief. No matter whether you do go through these steps, to me I think the last step of acceptance is the most important and we have to accept the ending, flawed as it might be. While there are plenty of holes that can be poked in it, I think that its intention was to give an emotional ending to the series rather than a logical one. Your final choice may not have that much effect on what happens next but I would imagine that most put a fair amount of thought into which option they picked - based on the decisions they had made up until that point. None of the options seem perfect but you have to make the best of a bad situation. If I had not taken the Geth's side so many times throughout the series then I might not have had as many reservations about choosing the "Destroy" option (I also thought that I might well be sentencing anyone on board a spaceship to death). I have seen arguments supporting the choice of all of the options, which made sense to an individual and/or their character but to say that one of the options is clearly the true ending seems to miss the point.

So while there may have been some depressing days along the way as I thought through the flaws of the ending, it hasn't soured me against the franchise as a whole. In fact I've dived into the series from the beginning again to create a male character that is totally my own. Aimee Shepard's story was an interesting shared experience with my wife designing the character and making most of the dialogue decisions (with Kinect working pretty well in allowing her to take control of ME3's cutscenes without passing the joypad). I might know that my new character's journey is heading to roughly the same place as the last one but I'm sure it will be for very different reasons, with the aim of following a different character instead of deliberately trying to change what happens.

R.A.P. Music (2012)

I used to consider hip-hop to be my favourite genre of music but I've kind of been out of touch with the whole scene for a while. I can quite accurately pinpoint when it started to fade into the background as Guitar Hero managed to reinvigorate my love of guitar based music. It provided an insight into the music that I didn't have before, gave me a deeper appreciation of it and I even found myself starting to like guitar solos! It also introduced me to bands I hadn't heard before like Avenged Sevenfold and Lamb of God, which are now firm favourites. As much as I loved DJ Hero it didn't really have the same effect on my appreciation of hip-hop as I already knew a lot about production and DJing, even if it did give me the chance to 'perform' routines that I would never master in real life.

However I seem to have had a renewed interest this year, at least partially down to two albums produced by El-P - his own Cancer For Cure and Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music. I was originally planning to write a single post about both albums at a later date but when R.A.P. Music was made available to listen to online via this Spin article I decided to separate the two. It's actually looking like being the harder album to get hold of a physical copy so I'm glad there was a legal way to hear it, even if it's no longer available. It's also great to have a rough run-down of the intention of each song on the album, which helped me to get into it quicker. I can imagine I will be going back to that article regularly as different parts of songs stand out to me.

The first few tracks I heard off this album included Big Beast, which is the first track on the album and Don't Die roughly from the middle. They are both big bombastic tracks that showcase El-P's production and feel like Public Enemy's original energy brought right up to date. One line from the former seemed to sum this up perfectly - "Like Def Jam circa '83 you get rushed". Other than the amazing production that caught my ear I didn't really know much about Killer Mike, though I eventually realised I must have heard him guest on some of Outkast's material. The tracks that I heard first may have been rather brash and throwaway lyrically but there is more depth to the album as a whole.

I felt like the heart of the album is a track called Reagan, which is bookended by quotes from President Reagan himself, speaking before and after it was revealed hostages had been traded for weapons. I'll admit that the Reagan era is not really something I know much about and it felt very surprising that I'd never heard these contradictory statements before. It really seemed to highlight how almost anything can be spun in a positive way by a charismatic speaker. I felt that this is where the album took a more serious turn, the delivery of the lyrics on that track seeming calm but still masking anger and pain caused by that era. There are some calmer moments again later but I was left with the feeling of an album that just doesn't let up.

This all builds towards the penultimate track Willie Burke Sherwood, a song about Mike's grandfather. He talks about the emotional effect it has on him in that Spin article and I can totally agree with him. Regardless of the personal context for him, it also feels like a moment of calm after how furious the album seems by then, that chance to relax seems to let emotions creep up on you. To me this track cements the fact that this is still a personal album, despite gaining the limelight largely due to El-P's involvement.

The closing track has the same name as the album, where it's made clear that R.A.P. in this case is an acronym (another popular '80s rap trait brought up to date), meaning Rebellious African Peoples Music. The song pays tribute not just to hip-hop but all genre's that were influenced by black culture, which seemed a fitting end to a wide reaching album that's made me excited about the future of hip-hop again.

Vicarious Gaming

I've written before about playing fighting games less but still watching footage of them and I suppose the next logical step is having no intention of ever playing a game that you enjoy watching. This is the case with Day Z, a new mod for tactical shooter ARMA 2. Firstly I don't have a home PC that would be capable of running it and looking at how the game plays I wouldn't have the time to play it either. That said, from what I've seen and read, it sounds like the greatest zombie game ever made.

The basic premise is that you play a survivor of a zombie apocalypse, dropped onto a huge map with nothing but the most basic supplies and tasked to survive for as long as possible. Other than zombies, the only characters you will come across are other human players, who are under no obligation to either help you or fight you. How you interact with other players is totally down to human nature, although your appearance is either that of a 'survivor' or a 'bandit' depending on how you play the game. The other important factor is that it features permanent death, so if you are killed then you must start again without any of the items you may have found, including such things as food, bandages, maps and compasses, which are of just as much importance as weapons.

You might be slightly put off by the fact that it features 'fast-zombies' rather than the more traditional kind but I think that slower moving zombies are only really a threat in confined spaces or large numbers. Day Z is mostly made up of large open areas with some villages scattered around and I doubt it could support thousands of zombies in a small area that would be required to make slow moving ones a threat. The fact that the zombies can chase you indefinitely also makes it very dangerous to run into them if you currently have no way of killing them. This video shows the aftermath of an attempt to raid a town, where two guys are eventually left running for their lives with no ammunition and a horde of zombies on their tail. Their final solution to the problem? That one of them should sacrifice themselves so that the other one has a chance of getting away.

That said, a lot of the time it seems that other players are a bigger threat than the zombies and you never know what to expect when you come across a stranger. Will they kill you on sight out of spite or fear that you will do the same to them? Or could they possibly be friendly? It is mostly these unique encounters that make the game fun to read about for me, coming across like a script for a zombie movie but with the drama evolving naturally. If you're looking for a place to start then Rock, Paper Shotgun has this piece and another, following players adventures so far. I initially discovered it through a gaming forum that I frequent so that also adds to the feeling that you kind of know the people describing their experiences (in some cases I do).

It can be a bit tougher to sit through videos of it that were recorded live as there is a lot of 'dead time' spent travelling or just doing nothing to hide from/stalk other players. Sometimes this gives a good flavour of how it must be to play it though, with the long quiet periods making the brief bursts of action even more tense. The video footage can also show up some of its clunky animations and weird glitches but it's still very impressive for a mod that's only at an alpha stage.

A little while ago I might have wondered whether such an open ended game without a clear ending or goal could not be that successful, especially from a commercial perspective. This was of course before Minecraft came along and achieved almost universal popularity, who knows where this might lead. It also follows in a long line of mods to existing engines that have gone on to become games in their own right like Counter Strike and Team Fortress. The slightly complicated setup process required at present might put some people off, so I could definitely see a packaged version drawing in even more people in the future. I'll just leave off with a video of the more humorous side of the game, where an army of players manages to scavenge enough items to repair a bus and then goes on a joyride...

A Tribute to Adam Yauch

When I think back to what first got me into Hip-Hop, the first names that come to mind are Jurassic 5 and DJ Shadow but I often forget that the Beastie Boys were a big part of it too. While I was vaguely aware of them beforehand, their fifth studio album Hello Nasty was what made me sit up and take notice, it was perfect timing from a personal point of view as I started to take more of an interest in hip-hop and DJing. The video for 3 MCs and 1 DJ just blew my mind in terms of showing what could be done with one turntable and a mixer, it also became a firm favourite of school friends who otherwise had no interest in hip-hop. This was a trend that continued throughout my University Days, with Intergalactic being one of the few songs still guaranteed to fill the floor on a Rock Club Night.

I feel slightly embarrassed to say that I never really went on to buy any of their earlier albums, though their anthology album The Sounds of Science is one of the best compilations I've ever seen. Cherry picking 42 of their best songs from previous albums, it at least helped me to get a feel for how they had evolved as a group and the different genres of music they had encompassed. Their eclectic taste in music largely matched my own and a lack of fear in experimenting with different styles meant they were always a group that I would respect even if I didn't already like the music. There was plenty of fun to be had throughout, even if 'Country Mike's Greatest Hits' pushed the comedy a little too far.

So I was understandably shocked and saddened to hear about the death of Adam 'MCA' Yauch, one of the groups founding members. Though it seemed to come out of the blue, I think I do remember hearing about him being diagnosed with Cancer a few years back. It's still one of those things where even if people say it is treatable you kind of have to be prepared for the worst. To me MCA always felt like the father figure of the group, a little less upfront than the jokers Mike D and Ad-Rock. Whether there's any truth to that I don't know, that was just how it seemed to me. His gravely voice was unique and instantly recognisable in the rap world but his musical contributions were sometimes less obvious. He played bass for their live performances and was responsible for some legendary riffs, including those in Sabotage.

Outside of music he was a long term supporter of the Tibetan independence movement and was himself a practicing Buddhist. Bodhisattva Vow, a song from their fourth studio album Ill Communication was written after Adam first attended a teaching session by the Dalai Lama. Many have described this song as rather sanctimonious but Yauch himself is refreshingly honest when he writes about it in the liner notes of the Sounds of Science Anthology. "The idea that a person could read a couple of books, go to one teaching, and then attempt to write an updated abridged version of the Bodhicaryavatara is presumptuous at best." I felt he stood out as the conscience of the group, again I'm not sure if that's an entirely fair assessment.

I found myself thinking of an Edan lyric "It'’ll be a sad day like when the Biz Mark dies" referring to old school rap legend Biz Markie, after reading his response on twitter: "My brother you are truly going to be missed. My heart is heavy." At only 47 it still seems a very young age to lose a legend and it make you think about the possibility of losing other heroes of our generation. I read an article by ?uestlove of the Roots, which seemed particularly apt as they went from being fans of the Beastie Boys to opening for them in shows. I'm sad to think that I never got around to seeing them live, I can't really think of much else to say other than that my thoughts are with his family and friends.

How Deadly Premonition could have been a better horror game

I read an article recently entitled 10 ways horror games need to evolve and I eventually got to thinking about whether it could apply to Deadly Premonition. This game has become kind of a cult classic in a very short space of time, gaining a reasonable following despite having some fairly major flaws. It's unique oddball characters and setting are a big part of its appeal and it could be scary on occasions but it never felt like it lived up to the ideas it sparked in your mind. Comparing it to this list of suggestions for future horror games may help to figure out what it did right and what it could have improved.

1) Normality

While the strange characters and backwoods town of Greenvale may not seem all that normal to most, it's a pretty mundane setting compared to what's to come. There's no horror game staples like a secret lab under a mansion, no abandoned spacecraft, no cabin in the woods even. Compared to the bleak and unrelenting nature of Silent Hill, Greenvale is a pretty cheery place, which is compounded by the joyously infective whistled tune that plays a lot of the time. The people you meet are mostly a little eccentric but they are generally not evil or part of what is going on in the town. The game also allows you to perform plenty of mundane tasks in your daily routine like shaving, having breakfast (even if this is mostly to check for psychic messages in your coffee), changing suits and getting them cleaned. All of this helps to draw you into the game's world even if it doesn't have that much in common with your real life experiences.

2) Long Build-Up

The game does not stray from the pattern laid out by most horror games and introduces the horror elements very early on. You go from having a car crash to an 'other world' combat section straight away, largely as a tutorial for its awkward Resident Evil 4 style combat. If this section had still been a spooky walk through a dark forest but instead featured no combat it might have been quite an effective way of building up tension but then emerge from the forest in the early hours to find that there was nothing really to be scared of. The other world sections are pretty much integral to how you go about investigating crime scenes in the game but they could have done with less combat early on (more on that later). After the tutorial like section you also have a little more freedom to do other things before the next other world is triggered so this possibly allows for a slower build up but that depends on how the player approaches it.

3) Doubt

Deadly Premonition has doubt in spades to begin with but there is a point in the game where things start to be made explicitly clear and that is where the game started to fall down for me. I can't really think of any horror movies that are made better by having a thorough explanation. A friend of mine once said this about Ring 2 in comparison to the first one, where they start to bring in concepts of what has happened to the video tape in scientific terms. Once you start spelling things out that people have built up their own opinions of you are bound to leave them disappointed as they are forced to discard their own theories up until that point. You have to be pretty sure that your central revelation is going to be so good that it would seem better than anyone else's theories.

There were plenty of questions to ask throughout the game, whether the other world sections were all in Agent Francis York Morgan's head and whether you were actually playing the part of his silent split personality Zach. The other world sections managed to achieve this feeling of doubt without any kind of player character sanity meter, it was just the weirdness of the scenario and characters that lead you to think about it this way. It's then doubly annoying to see such a great concept pretty much thrown away by the end.

4) Minimal Combat

This in particular must be a sore point to the developer 'Swery', who has gone on record stating that they did not want to include combat, that they were pushed into it at the last minute as their publisher advised that a western audience wouldn't accept a character who doesn't fire a gun. The combat controls are clunky and awkward, meaning that no matter how much of an apprehensive atmosphere the setting has built up you are likely to be brought back out of it due to frustration. It can't even really be described as survival horror in the traditional sense of needing to carefully conserve your ammunition as your basic pistol has infinite ammo and is sufficient for most encounters. Hand held weapons take the opposite approach and will break after a very limited amount of uses, it will be a long time before you find an everlasting melee weapon, most of which are comedy side-quest rewards.

5) No Enemies

There are some good aspects to the enemies in this game, the basic zombies are kind of inventive and make you question what they are about as they often have disturbing dialogue like "Kill me" and "Don't want to die" even if these are delivered in a rather comical style on occasions. They also come at you while bending over backwards and rather than try to eat your brains they instead usually try to put their hand down your throat, again with no explanation why. The fact that they attempt to track you down by listening for your breathing is interesting and should have made for tense encounters too. They stop being interesting creatures though and become repetitive enemies due to the amount of them and how many bullets it takes to put them down. I would have much preferred for them to have gone down with a single well placed headshot, adding to the feel that you are literally shooting at shadows.

The list of enemy types in the game as a whole is very limited, other than the Raincoat Killer I remember the ceiling crawling shadows and not much else (according to websites there are also demon birds and dogs). The naked ceiling crawling woman should have really been the most creepy enemy in the game but the difficulty of your first encounter with one is likely to make you think of them more as an annoyance. They seemed like something worthy of having an origin story like the main ghosts in the Fatal Frame series but they isn't really much to find out about them and having them appear in countless locations kind of negates their uniqueness.

6) Open World

In the general sense of this description, Deadly Premonition is certainly the most open world horror game yet. However, the important pieces of the story are fairly linear, it would have been nice to have multiple leads to investigate at once, some of which would be possible to miss out. There is plenty of stuff that can be missed though due to the game's real time schedules for its characters but these mostly amount to sidequests that can provide some helpful items (and a bit more information on the characters themselves). I suppose in that sense it does at least help to give more of a feeling of the freedom of real life, which ties into the first point about normality. It would have been nice to be able to tail characters that you suspected to observe them doing more nefarious things than the mundane tasks they usually do, even if that could have lead to moving the story on quicker than expected.

7) Agency

I had to look up what agency means in this context, it's basically referring to how much you as a player are actually in control of and what is left up to cut scenes. Deadly Premonition does rely on quite a lot of cutscenes, even if their B-Movie quality is part of the games appeal. It does have some QTE style sections that let you take some control while temporarily avoiding the games clunky movement controls. These sections do feel quite tense and probably make the Raincoat Killer seem more of a threat than a simple cut scene would. The most tense experience of the game was finding a hiding space and having to hold your breath (in game) while the camera switches to the killers perspective and hope you are not found out. Perhaps a Kinect enabled game could take this further and make sure that you remain perfectly still in a similar situation.

8) Reflection

Here the article was talking about how games make you think about your own actions/opinions, which reminded me of my previous post on Limbo and Shadow of the Colossus. I can appreciate that this approach could be more disturbing than something which appears to be a clear yes/no decision you're forced to make. I thought that it would have been interesting to play the role of the killer outside of the short flashback section near the end of the game. I'm quite surprised in general that there hasn't been a horror game where you play the antagonist, you could perhaps say that Manhunt came kind of close to that idea.

Another idea is to have differences in what happens affected by more subtle means than a simple A, B or C dialogue choice. One idea I had for Deadly Premonition in particular was to have the outcome of the game affected by the game mechanics that just seemed like fun additions, for example how regularly you decide to shave could be taken as an approximation of your emotional state and which ending you end up with. Its open world nature and how many optional side quests you undertake could factor into this too.

9) Implications

I don't have any great ideas about how this game could have really affected someone's conciousness long after the game was finished. But the end of the game as it is, it feels about as far removed from reality as possible, negating any chance that you would be left with any long term fear in real life. One idea that I had, however implausible and cheap it might seem would be to have your character turn out to be the killer after all, kind of suggesting you can never fully know a person or even yourself. If you had been able to play the killer more then perhaps the computer could have partially controlled the character and you could either resist or just go along with it, feeling like the game itself was part of the horror.

10) Human Interaction

While Deadly Premonition doesn't really much new in terms of having the horror affecting human characters, their unique and memorable traits are effective in making you care about them. The fact that they all go about their daily routines regardless of what you do also makes them seem more human and they almost all have some kind of secrets to uncover about their life. That said, I didn't find the loss of many of them really affecting as most of the victims weren't particularly likeable, even if that sort of makes sense from a story point of view. The one death that you do care about makes its impact that much stronger though.

After covering all of these points though, the question is whether any of these changes would have changed the game from the oddball classic that it has become and if it would have had any impact on how it sold. For some fans of the game the appeal is partially that 'it is what it is' and is unapologetic about its flaws. I might even come across as hypocritical in wishing that it scared me more but defending Cabin in the Woods from the exact same criticism. I guess I see the difference as being how Cabin in the Woods clearly didn't really set out to be scary but Deadly Premonition felt that the developer was not fully aware of how effective some of the other sections would be and makes it feel like there wasn't a clear plan for the whole thing. I think only so much can be blamed on the publishers insistence that it should have combat etc. and some of it is down to Swery's "throw every idea at the wall and see what sticks" approach.

I'm not sure I would be that interested in a direct sequel to it as I think that a lot of what felt most interesting about it had been abandoned by the end of the game. I would however be very interested in more of a spiritual sequel that could take some of the concepts in a different direction, while creating a new cast of interesting characters. Perhaps we will get a chance to see that happen, depending on how well an English language PS3 release of it does.

The Avengers (2012)

The longer it's taken me to write a review of this, the more it feels like I'm just repeating what everyone else has been saying - even down to making the same opening complaint about it being called Marvel's Avengers Assemble in the UK. While it initially seemed ridiculous that anyone would possibly confuse it with the '60s spy drama, it actually seems that this might have been a valid point with some people older than myself assuming that it was based on the TV show. I'm not really sure that those who might be confused about it would be the target audience for the film or that they could be convinced to give the film a try if they knew what it was about (though I suppose I can understand they would want to distance themselves from the late '90s film version of The Avengers).

Despite seeing some good films already this year, this was the first that I was really looking forward to before the year began. I'd already made sure that I'd stopped searching out new information on it, an approach I've taken ever since I got so hyped up for the original Iron Man but then felt that there was hardly anything in the final movie I hadn't already seen. However, this was also the same year that The Dark Knight was released, which I devoured equally as many trailers for but was still blown away by the final result. The Avengers falls somewhere between these two examples as I still felt like early trailers had spoiled some good moments. Tony Stark's "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" line actually seemed to be a different take from the trailer, coming across more like a prepared statement than something thought up off the top of his head, which was quite strange as the original seemed pitch perfect. The "Hulk catch" sequence was also on my mind towards the end of the film as something I knew was yet to come.

That said I still think most of the important plot points were kept under wraps, including a surprising one that made itself apparent within the first few minutes. Like many other reviews I have read, I didn't think that it started off particularly strong; my concern was with the first car chase, which actually reminded me of the SWAT van sequence from The Dark Knight. I've read criticism of that scene as being difficult to follow and the same seemed true here in terms of which cars were involved and who was who. It then got a bit farcical when two cars end up nose to nose, trading gunfire at nearly point blank range with no casualties on either side and seeming to just give up rather than have a compelling reason to end this part of the chase. In any other movie it would probably be a perfectly serviceable action scene, here it stands out only because there are so many better ones to come later.

After this point, although there are not any overt action scenes for a while, I can't think of any more points where I wasn't totally gripped by what was happening. Some time had to be spent on bringing the Avengers team together but I felt that this was covered with just enough detail to re-introduce those of us who had seen all of the preceding movies without leaving others in the dark. In general I found this a very easy movie to follow, the stakes and aims are always clear and to me this is what really makes a film a 'turn your brain off' experience. This has come to be more of an insult directed at dumb summer blockbusters but to me the basic story problems they often have only serve to jog my brain back into gear as it questions what the hell is going on.

Here you can just sit back and enjoy the spectacle without having to second guess characters motivations, watching actors clearly having fun and playing roles that seem made for them. I would describe this as the first really great popcorn movie that we've seen in years and for once I feel sure that is a compliment. Maybe there was part of  me that was expecting more from this film, something more meaningful perhaps but I'm in no way disappointed with the way it's turned out. It's very hard to keep it all in your head at once when trying to think of its highlights, every time I read someone's impressions I'm usually reminded of another great scene that I'd half forgotten but had been a stand out scene to them.

An awful lot of these favourite moments revolve around the Hulk, who to me still stuck out as a completely CG creation on occasions but was generally light years ahead of any previous representations. As many have noted he is clearly the star of the show, simultaneously hilarious and totally bad ass. I was also reminded of Film Crit Hulk's article on the previous Hulk movies, where it was suggested that sometimes the draw of Hulk can be the tension caused when changing would not be the ideal thing to happen. One of his transformations certainly falls into this category and also for the first time gets to show just how much of a dangerous and destructive force he can be. The whole approach taken with him shows it was written with a great understanding of Hulk and what people love about him.

Everyone has great moments in this though and I think they're unique enough to allow for people to have completely different favourites, there certainly wasn't an over abundance of 'Whedonesque' traits, which some people might have been afraid of. I've become more of a fan of Captain America over the years and he comes across well here, although I sadly couldn't take his modern uniform seriously at all. This bugged me something chronic as I loved the WW2 inspired take from his own film, here it just felt like all the practical details had been abandoned, leaving a suit that offered no protection with the look of a Halloween costume. The rubbery looking helmet/hood was the worst part, so the more time he went around with his face showing the better. I'm pretty sure that having the mask off a lot went a long way towards creating a real human connection to him and since he didn't really have a secret identity to protect either, he felt kind of freed from the usual cliché of being highly concerned about revealing his face.

It was always a concern what role Cap and the other flightless members of the Avengers would play in the final battle of the film but everyone manages to get their own moments. The battle is spread more over a vertical plane than over a large area, which forms part of the characters strategy and is also sensible to allow them all to shine. Hawkeye moves from the ground to a mid level role (while receiving a new nickname), providing an 'eye in the sky' and still managing to be part of the combat. Black Widow seemed a bit out of place to start with but once she manages to start using the enemies weapons against them she seems a much more natural and important part of the team. The big hitters are still obviously very important and have some of their best scenes at the end but the rest never feel like they are forgotten.

I saw it in 2D but weirdly I could see it working in IMAX 3D, even if it is post converted. There were some great shots that almost gave me vertigo so lord knows what it would be like in 3D on an enormous screen. I also didn't notice anything that seemed blatantly directed at the camera, which is ironically what takes me out of the experience most despite being what you expect from 3D. When you are just allowed to settle into it and get used to the 3D seeming natural, that's when it works better for me. It might well be worth another viewing to confirm this hypothesis, it's actually quite a rare occurrence for me to want to see a film again while it's still in cinemas. It's a great cinema experience and sometimes it can be worth putting up with the possibility of people disturbing you or technical issues with the screen, just to be part of a hundred strong group of strangers, laughing at the same thing at the same time. I think Joss Whedon has done a great job of creating something that appeals to hardcore fans, the general public and just works as a film overall. There's already signs that it is doing incredibly well and I imagine it feels like vindication for fans of Joss' work in the past who will be hoping that this success might lead to more great projects from him in the future.

Fez (2012)

Cover by Bryan Lee O’Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim.

To say that I'd been waiting a while for this game would be the understatement of the year. It's difficult to remember exactly when I first heard of it, given that it was announced around the same time as some other games with the same perspective changing concept I think it's fair to say that the art style was a big part of what kept me interested in it over the past 5 years. It started to take on almost mythical status as a game that might never see the light of day, with very sporadic updates on its progress leaking out. When your game idea is copied in an online flash game before its release, you must really know that you're taking a long time on something.

Funnily enough, for a long time I was expecting a game like that Sky Island clone, where it would be quite strictly level based. While some of the trailers hinted at a more open world I still went into Fez not really knowing how freeform it would be. I quickly found myself heading through door after door that lead to completely new areas and not really knowing how to get back. There was something quite exciting about this, it felt like you were really going on an adventure and falling down a rabbit hole that you might not come back from. I knew that some kind of warp gate would probably turn up to help you get around quicker but until you find one (well, two actually) there's definitely a sense of getting lost in a pixelated foreign land.

Sadly I didn't really find navigating this world as much fun as I had hoped though, due to its laggy and unresponsive controls. The old school visuals suggested to me that playing it would also feel like an old school platformer with tight and responsive controls but I would constantly feel like I wasn't fully in control and that actions like dropping down ledges or picking up boxes were a little inconsistent. I'm usually one to give games the benefit of the doubt when people complain about low frame rates but in this case I'm pretty sure that the laggy controls were largely down to the poor overall performance of the game. There is a section near the end where the detail gets really low and suddenly the controls got more responsive and the motion appeared smoother, I would have loved to have played the whole game with the responsiveness that this section allowed you a brief glance of. This wasn't exactly helped by some strange button choices, with X and B performing two separate actions that felt like they should have been one button and pause/inventory screens on the Back, Start and Y buttons!

It's difficult to know whether much blame for performance issues can be put on XNA, Microsoft's game development tools, which were used to create this. I've touched on this idea before, that using such a high level language must leave little room for optimisation after a certain point but it seems different with this being a full Xbox Live Arcade release and not just an Indie game which XNA is most commonly used for. To me it seems like the higher price point and level of polish expected should perhaps have lead to the game being ported to a different system that would allow better use of the Xbox's capabilities if they had reached the limits of XNA but if that was the case I imagine we would still be waiting for the game's release right now. Aside from the performance issues there were also numerous crashes and glitches like falling out of the world in small areas that should really have been caught beforehand. I have managed to avoid the issue that forces you to restart the whole game from the beginning but some friends were not so lucky. A patch for the crashes should be incoming but I doubt that there will be much that can be done to improve or stabilize its performance.

I have other issues with the game but these feel more like my personal preferences, rather than legitimate criticism. You'll quickly realise that the basic platforming and perspective shifting is only half of the game, with the majority of it centred around more abstract puzzles to find 'anti-cubes' and translating its language and numbering system. I've managed to find a few of these anti-cubes, some via cool solutions like scanning an in game QR code and another by building Tetris shapes in all four perspectives but the rest quickly started to feel like they were outside of my realm of comprehension. My preference would be for the game to help you out a little more but for others the lack of any pointers is clearly part of its appeal, revelling in the old school nature of making your own maps and noting down the strange symbols to piece together the clues littered throughout the game.

As it stands I feel like I'm in this weird limbo where I don't really have the time or patience to figure out all of its mysteries myself but I don't want to just go and find all of the answers on the internet either. Following the progress of other players on internet forums is perhaps a less explicit way of finding answers and sometimes just following someone else's thinking can help you to come to your own conclusions. I'm still not sure that I will ever find everything in this game without some serious help though and its basic ending doesn't seem to offer any explanation of what it was all about (though it is a suitably mind bending conclusion). Even if translating the language is not integral to finding any of the anti-cubes, I would still have liked there to have been some way of showing the translated text in game, rather than referring to your notes or some kind of website/app for a character by character translation.

Despite all this, the game does a great job of keeping you playing, sometimes purely because of how charming the whole experience is. It's filled to the brim with neat touches, references to other games and even internet memes. Even if you don't solve all of the puzzles they still add to the game's atmosphere and the feeling of a world that you don't quite understand. It's a great experience that I think almost anyone can enjoy to some degree but not everyone will get as much out of it. I guess I'm just a little saddened that it didn't grab me as much as it has done others when I've been waiting so long for it.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Spoilers Galore

Poster by Mondo

I'm making the assumption that anyone reading this has now either seen the film, is never going to see the film or just really doesn't mind spoilers. As I said in the previous post, it was difficult to write much without feeling like I was heading into spoiler territory. This is despite the fact that I wouldn't say it was a film centred around big twists, more that it's nice to see it unfold as it goes on first time around. For example, when I mentioned the opening credits I felt like drawing too much attention to them could lead people to the conclusion that it's all a modern form of human sacrifice to appease the gods a little too early. I could also have listed a multitude of films and games that it reminded me of but again that could have started giving people certain expectations outside of what the trailers show. It really surprised me to see other reviews that would happily give away the appearance of killer clowns and other horror legends, when there is initially nothing to suggest they will feature.

Looking at the negative reviews that seem so quick to throw around spoilers, I'd say a common feature is that they didn't find it funny. I understand that humour is subjective and that some of it could have been a little insular to horror movie fans but it also seems that a lot of them had a pre-conceived idea of what it should be (while others clearly drifted off and invented their own version of the movie). Most seem so concerned that it does not have whatever makes a good horror movie to them, but I think that it clearly sets out to be a comedy horror in the tradition of the Evil Dead trilogy. Again perhaps not a series for everyone but those films have stood the test of time and are proof that comedy can be a valid choice in making a different kind of horror movie. In fact the only part of the Evil Dead films that scares me is when the taxidermy comes alive and starts laughing, which I don't think is even supposed to be scary (I was both disappointed and relieved that this concept didn't make it into Resident Evil 4 after seeing the prototype footage of it). You can imagine that the "I dare you to kiss that Moose" section felt even more uncomfortable to me than it already must have to everyone else.

So if you were expecting something scary and didn't find it funny then I can imagine that some of the faults in it might leap out at you more easily. I think if you let yourself get bogged down in the details of the film it can start to unravel - even though the film explains that the sacrifices have to make their own choices and ignore warnings, it does seem like a very overcomplicated method of completing the sacrificial ritual. Combined with the fact that they forget about the stoner Marty when they have sophisticated heart rate monitors... you kind of have to start tying yourself in knots to explain everything perfectly. Those who aren't having fun are much less likely to go along for the ride and put these issues out of their mind. There is also probably an element of backlash at the many positive reviews it is garnering, I can see how it might seem that some critics are over hyping it but I think that if it grabs you then it's hard not to get excited about it.

One criticism that I'm not sure I really get though is that it's trying to be cleverer than it really is or that it's a 'hipster movie' (something that was levelled at Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World too when it's pretty much an anti-hipster film). I think anything that ends the way this does is not really trying too hard to be clever or insightful, to me it just sets out to be a whole lot of fun. The last 20 minutes is like the most epic version of the end of nearly every zombie film I can think of. It's something I could watch again straight away as there was so much going on at once that you couldn't pick up on everything. One part in particular was the shot where it starts to pan back from an array of CCTV monitors with almost every screen parodying a different film. I immediately focused on one screen that looked a little like Alien but then heard someone next to me going "urrggh" and I switched my attention to the screen with something vomiting acid onto someone. Just thinking about the amount of effort that went into each of these little bits of footage cemented my opinion of it being a total love letter to horror. I was sure that the amount of creatures shown in this section greatly outnumbered the amount shown on the whiteboard near the start of the film - perhaps they had a pool to choose from each year...

By the time Sigourney Weaver turned up as the facility director, she seemed like the perfect cameo to bring the whole thing to a close. While I've heard it mentioned that Jamie Lee Curtis pre-dates her as a 'final girl' horror movie survivor I still think she was a good choice, especially as she seems to play a more malevolent character pretty well. I could probably have done without the final shot of the film - as many people have said it didn't seem to live up to the Lovecraftian nature of the ancient gods that had been suggested up to this point (although directly showing Cthulhu on screen doesn't usually go that well either). I also think that if it had ended just before you see the giant hand it might have been more interesting to leave that ambiguity over whether the ancient gods were real or if the facility was run by a cult that had kept up this ritual just for the sake of it. The end came at the right point though and its length felt perfect, the amount of stuff in it felt like it should have added up to more than 90 minutes but I can't really think of any sections that dragged. Overall it perhaps isn't as much of a game changer as Scream was back in the day but to me it is the more enjoyable film and always feels like it is celebrating horror rather than mocking it.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Spoiler Free

I think that this is going to be a fairly short post as it's quite difficult to really get into discussing this film without giving away what I would consider to be spoilers. Sadly there have been plenty of reviews eager to spoil parts of it, largely those that have had a negative opinion of it. Even trying to describe it in a positive light gets tricky very quickly and I'm even questioning whether I should talk about the opening credits! If you've seen the trailer and some of the posters for it then I would say that you have just about enough information to tell if it intrigues you and still go in to the cinema to experience it fresh, any more information than that and I think you risk taking away some of its entertainment value.

So what can I say about it? My first thought is that it's basically a love letter to horror movies, I would possibly have said a tribute to them if it wasn't a good film in its own right. If you like horror films in general I can almost guarantee that you will like it but it's more difficult to say whether it will appeal to everyone. If you don't like horror from a blood and gore perspective then there is plenty to put you off here but it isn't a particularly scary film if that's what puts you off. Some people might class an unscary horror film as a failure outright but I think it works more as a comedy and it's difficult to mix sustained fear with that. There are 'jump scares' but most of these made me laugh straight after the jump as the film had either been preparing you for it or tricking you at the last minute. The humour is a mixture of stuff that will probably be funny to anyone and things that may be more aimed at horror buffs but I don't think it comes across as being exclusive.

Overall I found it a fun film and while I wasn't impressed by the quality of the screen I saw it in (looked like an upscaled DVD), I think seeing it in the cinema added to this. As if the horror stereotypes were managing to escape the film, I was actually sat next to a young couple with the girl jumping at all of the shocks (I think she even dropped her popcorn at one point). I don't know if it has much more to it and if it's really the saviour of horror that some people seem to be deeming it but I'll certainly search out more about it now that I've seen it. I may even come back to it in another post with spoiler gloves off to give anyone reading this a chance to see it first.