On Writing Criticism

I recently came across a blog post via Good Games Writing, which took a humorous approach to writing an 'opinion free' review. It was of the recent SSX game, inspired by a lot of complaints about the subjectivity of reviews. The point of course being that reviewing anything is always going to have a large dose of personal opinion.

I'd been thinking about the same thing recently and also whether sometimes reviewers need to be reminded of this fact - myself included. Certainly when I was writing up my thoughts on Prometheus, I felt like I was presenting my problems with the story as almost unquestionable facts. But my focus on its flaws was almost certainly down to my initial feelings on the film as a whole and plenty of other people have either not noticed the same flaws or did not find them jarring enough to spoil their enjoyment of it.

In fact comparing it to Alien you can point out some similar flaws in both films, specifically simplistic characters who make lots of mistakes. But because I enjoy Alien overall, my first thought would not be to bring up these criticisms in a review and it probably took some time to recognise them. To be able to see issues like that I think takes both experience and knowledge but sometimes just time to reflect on it too. That's something I would imagine a lot of professional critics don't have the luxury of and I'm quite happy to write reviews with no set deadline, so that I have more time to think through what I've experienced.

There have also been some Film Crit Hulk articles on this subject too, a slightly older one was Tangible details and the nature of criticism. The crux of this was how we can all end up out of our depth in certain topics and make judgements by what stands out to us most. The first example in this article was something I've probably railed against in the past, the 'strut' sequence from Spiderman 3. It suggests that there was nothing wrong with this scene overall but it stands out in most people's minds as the worst thing about the film over more fundamental problems. The conclusion here is also that it takes an in depth knowledge of a medium to truly understand why something doesn't work sometimes. Obviously I have an interest in films and know a little about the process of making them but I'm by no means an expert. In that respect I try to stay humble and accept that there will always be someone who knows more than myself and more for me to learn.

I often feel that I don't really have one single area with a huge amount of knowledge, I've always been a bit of a 'Jack of all trades, master of none' in terms of having a lot of interests that don't really go past a surface level knowledge. It's not something that I do intentionally though, I think it always comes from a genuine interest and a desire to understand how things work. Even things like understanding combo systems in fighting games that are way beyond my dexterity to perform, I just enjoy having that knowledge of how it all fits together.

In terms of one specific area that I have the most detailed understanding of I suppose it would have to be video games in general. Having trained to write them and gone on to work on them, I'd like to think I can use this knowledge to give a balanced view of games and perhaps suggest more in depth reasoning for why they turn out a certain way. Even so, that doesn't always translate into the most important part of a games review. What makes a game fun is such a difficult and personal concept to nail down, both from the point of view of those creating games and those criticising them.

A more recent Hulk article, What makes a movie good?, almost feels like the antithesis of the in-depth knowledge approach. Similar to the idea of writing an opinion free review, it suggests that it's pointless to critique a film via an X, Y and Z checklist, where a film lacking in Y can never be considered a classic. Here I felt the take away idea was that everyone ends up with a different view of movies, that may well be influenced by the circumstances in which you watch them and the people you are with.

With games largely being a more lonely pursuit there is often less of an influence from others but there are certainly some games that are remembered fondly because of who you played them with. From the split screen co-op of Halo played with university friends, right up to playing the Lego games with my wife, these experiences tend to elevate our opinion of individual games to another level again. And obviously there are purely multiplayer games that are highly dependent on finding a good group of people to play with, as I've been hearing about Day Z most recently.

If I had one point to end this on, it would be that we should probably be more honest when writing reviews and where possible not be so quick to judge. Try to separate our personal opinions from more technical issues but not just remove personal feeling completely. Be more open to having our opinions changed and admit that we may have been hasty in our initial judgement. I think I would find it refreshing to see more reviewers admit that they were drawn in by the hype or that they found more depth to a product later. Just looking back at the range of emotions I went through after finishing Mass Effect 3, writing a review of it based on my immediate thoughts would have created a very different picture than what I think now. The controversy over its ending in particular seems to have led to a lot of gaming sites really digging their heels in and branding fans as 'entitled whiners' when there have actually been a lot of well made points about its issues.

To me this is yet another reason to not give scores in a review, that official number that is the final opinion of an outlet as a whole makes it very difficult to overturn. In a sense the internet should really free us from the issue of a printed media writer's opinion being set in stone but there is still a sense that you should never back down from your review if people question it later. I get especially concerned about this when I hear about developers being rewarded based on average metacritic scores, which have no way of being updated to reflect changing opinions. Just today I've seen an article on The problem with Metacritic, which features opinions from both sides and I disagree just as much with the idea that a reviewer should feel pressured about writing a negative review that might drag the average score down. Sadly even those who don't give scores aren't immune from contributing to this problem as metacritic will assign your review a score based on what they think the content of your review suggests. It seems like this issue is probably here to stay and we can only hope that developers can gradually aim to negotiate better ways of being rewarded for their work.

The Walking Dead (2012) - Episode 2

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

After a long wait for some, the second episode of The Walking Dead game is finally here, released with surprisingly little build-up or fanfare. Entitled 'Starved for help', it centres around the group's growing need to find food. When I wrote about the first episode, I didn't really mention the story much, but with the mechanics of the game set in place, now seems like a good point to focus on it more. What stood out to me about the first episode was that like Day Z, it seemed to capture the feeling of being in a zombie film very well. Whereas Day Z is more focused around your interactions with real people, and whether you can trust them, here it seemed to be about making the tough decisions that you might be yelling at the screen for people to make in a movie. Ironically, I found that the decisions became tougher and less black and white in episode 2, with my own character starting to become the unsure person who couldn't always make the tough decisions.

The episode opens with the knowledge that three months have passed, which made me chuckle a little as it means there has been roughly the right amount of time between episodes. It did make the whole situation a little confusing though, as it immediately introduces a new character and a new threat: the lack of food. I had been wondering how they were going to get into this situation given that the threat at the end of the first episode was a sudden loss of electricity, which I suppose was just a bit of dark humour really. I feel like this could have been handled better as it pretty much diffuses any tension that there was and leaves you confused as to what exactly is going on, where the new character has come from and whether you should care about them.

You don't have too long to wonder about this though as the game kicks into action with some more new characters and a grim decision to make. I messed up this sequence by taking too long to look for a perfect way to deal with it, which I don't think exists. This was a great way of getting you back into the feel of the game and remind you that bad things are going to happen regardless of the choices you make. It's also another example where you have to repeatedly perform actions to follow through your choice, which makes it all the more harrowing.

Tensions are running high among the rest of the group after this introduction and it seems that trying to remain a mediator and not take sides isn't going to cut it much longer. You are eventually tasked with dividing up the limited food supplies for the day - again no right or wrong decisions, just down to what you feel. Beyond making sure that the kids got something I thought it was quite difficult to choose who else to help and whether others would consider it favouritism.

Any bickering comes to a sudden end via an unexpected zombie attack, which eventually leads to the discovery that zombies are not only created through people being bitten. This is actually something I haven't seen for a while, with more modern zombie films usually explaining the situation through some kind of virus. Though there is still the possibility that a virus could be the cause, it seems less likely to be the case and leads to more of a focus on survival than the search for a cure. It also adds an additional element of danger to the death of any character, which is an important issue later on.

The majority of the episode is focussed on yet another new group of people, who offer to help out with the group's food situation. I thought that this offer was a little suspect early on and I was slightly disappointed that there didn't seem to be enough dialogue choices to fully express that. It's one of those situations where obviously something had to happen to push the story forward but forcing the player to make bad decisions is frustrating. The same kind of situation can obviously work in a non-interactive story but it's something that I think games should shy away from unless you're absolutely certain you can pull the wool over the player's eyes.

I won't say too much more about what happens but I can say that despite my suspicions it was still intriguing to find out what was going on. What follows is certainly gripping and the gradual revelation of what's been happening is pretty disturbing. I mentioned in my previous piece that I would be looking out for a way to get rid of one character but when the opportunity finally arose it didn't feel as cut and dried as that. In fact the only decision that felt quite easy to me was at the end of the episode, though the final report on other player's choices surprisingly showed that it was nearly a 50/50 split.

Putting aside the story, it seemed that puzzles were a little thin on the ground this episode, with most items having pretty simple uses. The first episode wasn't that different but even in a section that was mostly about combat, there was something cool about figuring out how to take down a group of zombies silently. This wasn't something that I specifically missed while playing, more something that came to mind afterwards but I would still like to see more complex problems in future episodes.

My only other technical complaint is that it seemed to suffer from a lot of stuttering that I don't remember happening in the previous episode. Some of the pauses I saw were so long that I thought the game had crashed and I was just about to reach for the power button before it kicked into life again. While a relatively minor issue, I hope this is something that can be resolved in the next episode. Here's hoping that it won't take as long to appear this time.

Games Vs. Women

It's not been a good month for women and videogames. First there was the furore over the new Hitman: Absolution Trailer (the top comment for that particular instance is currently "They should have stayed in the kitchen."). Then there were some disturbing quotes about the new Tomb Raider game in relation to players wanting to protect Lara. Of course there were also the attacks on Anita Sarkeesian and her kickstarter campaign and just the other day I read another article about how a female journalist was treated at E3.

I initially wasn't sure whether to write anything about this, I would be rather late to the party and almost anything I could say about it had probably already been said better by someone else. There was also the feeling that as a man it feels difficult to speak about issues that affect women and not myself directly. I've felt this way in the past when I wrote about Sucker Punch; I had looked around for other reviews and found women who made arguments for it actually being a feminist film so I felt it best to leave that argument alone. I think that was probably one of my weaker pieces on reflection and that feeling of holding myself back could well be part of the problem with it.

In the end I decided to write something mostly about the Tropes Vs. Women campaign. The positive outcome of it must feel like a poisoned chalice since the controversy has brought so much attention. Sadly I doubt I would have otherwise become aware of the project and gone on to watch her previous videos, which I've mostly found to be pretty informative. One video by someone else convinced me that men should not be afraid speak out against these kinds of issues - I don't have any new ideas about how to combat the relentless youtube trolls but I did think it could be interesting to look at how games could be improved on a practical level.

In amongst the insults one question that has been asked repeatedly is what the point of these videos will be; that the clichés are already well known and written about so it doesn't need funding to make videos about them. However I think that for the games industry they could actually end up being quite a useful resource, something that clearly and simply sets out things that you should avoid doing. I know from experience that it's almost always preferable to avoid having to add something to a game in the first place than cut it out later.

With a 10 part series on what not to do though, I could see that some people might wonder how exactly to go about writing better female characters. Like my own difficulty in writing about issues that affect women, I think there's also a fear that men feel they wouldn't be able to write believable female characters and instead fall back on simple stereotypes. I think the first step is not to worry so much about this issue and just write characters the same way as you would any other. In fact there are plenty of examples of female characters who have gone on to become popular, who were initially written as men and changed nothing but their sex at a later date.

Ripley in Alien is one particular example and while it may have been done for slightly dubious reasons ("wouldn't it be funny if the survivor is a girl"), Sigourney Weaver made the role her own and there was no question about whether this was a believable female character. Within the gaming world you could also look at Mass Effect and the character of Shepard. While some of the secondary female characters in the Mass Effect universe don't fare so well, Shepard herself is incredibly strong despite there only being fairly minor differences in dialogue for the male and female choices. I have seen more praise for Jennifer Hale's voice acting than her male counterpart and I have to agree from what I've heard so far. The only area where she hasn't fared quite as well is in her visual representation, with her cup size suspiciously increasing between the second and third game...

This approach might seem a little simplistic and given that one of the tropes that Anita Sarkeesian will be investigating is "Man with Boobs", I did wonder whether that would be about characters that have received a simple gender swap. I'll be interested to see what that video is actually about, I would guess it might be the stereotype of a really butch female character who tries to act the same as the male characters. I think that changing less stereotypical characters in this manner is valid for all sorts of areas that you might not have an in-depth personal knowledge of, including different races and sexual orientations. If you come up against an issue where you don't think you are representing a character very well you can always seek additional advice but I think the important step is getting more variety in the first place.

All of this is probably basic knowledge to any writers out there but I am also thinking of those in the games industry in general. I recently read this article via the Good Games Writing Blog, which gave a good insight into the process of writing for games and how writers are involved in the project. While starting filming without a script normally spells disaster in the film world, it's pretty much standard in games. Even in the best of circumstances where a writer may be working on a game from the start, there will probably still be others heavily involved in shaping the look and feel of it. In the worst case, if a writer is brought on at a later date to do a 'patch job' on some story issues, a request to change the sex/race of a character would probably be laughed at if art and models were already completed.

So while hanging writers out to dry for perpetuating negative female/racist/gay stereotypes is often people's first thought, it's probably not always the whole story. I think that there is a responsibility on everyone involved in the initial planning stages to consider the range of characters that might be in the game and try to create an appropriate balance. I can also imagine it might seem very difficult for someone working on a game to speak out about something offensive, especially if it is not an issue that effects them personally. I'm certainly not sure whether I could be that guy but it's something I'll try to keep in mind in future. Hopefully others will too, better representations are not going to magically appear and somewhere down the line there will have to be an effort from those who aren't directly campaigning for it.

An evenings worth of gaming

This double review was also posted on ArtFist.org

An evening of gaming for me is usually just enough to complete a couple of missions in Mass Effect. However I recently managed to finish two gaming experiences in the same amount of time. I'd hesitate to call them games, simply because they were both downloadable parts of a larger story.

First up was Harley Quinn's Revenge, a DLC expansion for Batman: Arkham City. I have been a big fan of both Arkham City and Arkham Asylum, but I was a little dubious about whether this would be worth 800 Microsoft Points. However, I ended up winning some bonus points from Xbox Rewards recently so it made taking a chance on it a little less painful.

For those who didn't buy the challenge maps that featured Robin (myself included), playing as him to begin with was quite a nice opening. That said it wasn't long before muscle memory kicked in and I started playing him in the same manner as Batman. He may have different animations and gadgets, but they don't really feel like they create a different playing experience. Compare this to playing as Catwoman, where a lot of her moves were overly flashy and took more time to complete, so you had to be more aware of whether you would leave yourself vulnerable.

I was also a little put-off after the opening section, as it used my least favourite scenario in TV shows at the moment: "48 hours earlier", gnnnngggh. This used to be a concept that was used rarely and was intended to make you think one thing from the brief glimpse of future events, before cleverly twisting your expectations when you finally catch up to what you've seen. Recently, it just seems to have become a standard way to open an episode, akin to a "here's what's going to happen in this episode" montage. I guess you could possibly be left thinking "Is Batman dead?" but c'mon - it's Batman!

Another complaint was how some of the new stealth rooms in this seemed very awkwardly laid out. Often they would be missing good vantage points to scope out your enemies, while good hiding spots were also thin on the ground if you were spotted. Some sections even seemed to be trolling you with grates that lead to nowhere, dropping you directly down to the next level rather than into an air vent, for example. Perhaps you were supposed to use these to escape from people on the same level as you, but it was a complete change in style from the rest of the game and not particularly clear.

All I can be thankful of is that none of the enemies featured the alarm collars that alert their compatriots no matter how you take them out. I always preferred having the option to mix up your approach, taking out lots of guards silently before finally making the last few aware of your presence. I was slightly surprised by one section featuring infinitely re-spawning guards though (or at least enough reinforcements to make it seem that way). Since this area featured Harley Quinn herself, I felt that it was very anti-climactic being forced to periodically drop down and wear down her energy bar before fleeing from guards rather than have a one on one confrontation.

Overall, the experience felt very short and despite the expansion obviously requiring new environments and character models to be built/modified, it didn't really feel worth the 800 points. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, I suppose a new unique boss fight or something was probably always out of the question. It was nice to have a reason to go back to the game (other than to visit Calendar Man) and I'll always enjoy a few rounds with its combat system but the story was so slight it was hardly worth bothering. I suppose in a way it was a fitting episode for Harley Quinn, lacking the Joker's twisted creativity, she couldn't really plot revenge on Batman and ended up sabotaging herself as usual.

My second game of the night was The Walking Dead, an XBLA adventure from Telltale Games based on the comics and TV show of the same name. Like most of Telltale's recent output, it's episodic in nature and only the first of five is currently available. It plays somewhat like a traditional point and click game, mixing in conversation choices similar to Mass Effect and Alpha Protocol, with brief combat sections a little like quick time events.

The first thing that came to mind after its brief introduction is how well it handles a point and click system on a console. Control is split between your analogue sticks, with the left moving your character and the right moving a fairly subtle cursor that highlights areas of interest. I found myself wondering whether this system could have benefited the first 3D LucasArts adventure with direct character control: Grim Fandango. While there was little to criticise about that game, interpreting exactly what Manny's head was tilted towards could prove difficult on occasions. The cursor may mean a slightly less immersive experience than having no HUD elements, but to my mind the ease of use this system allows is of greater importance.

After a short intro, you will soon be faced with one of the combat sections that I described earlier. The good thing about these is that to me they didn't really feel like quick time events, more like solving a simple point and click puzzle very quickly. The first event is probably the one that feels the most like this but I found that having to line-up the cursor to perform actions made you feel much more in control. While traditional point and click games featuring player death were usually frowned on, I felt that it fits the scenario really well - you should never feel completely safe in a zombie game. I think the important distinction is that you are unlikely to die by experimenting with the wrong item; it is more down to not reacting quickly enough. It keeps you on your toes knowing that killing a zombie is something you should never approach lightly.

I also really liked the conversation system, which is very similar to Alpha Protocol where you only have a certain amount of time to answer important questions. There were some differences though, and I liked the fact that you could take your time picking what to say in general conversation. Having the option to not respond at all was a nice touch too: I don't think you can spend the entire game as a mute, but there was at least one point where I felt that a response wasn't necessary. The text you choose is also the text you speak, compared to Mass Effect where the text is usually just a hint of what will be said, which sometimes doesn't match up with your intentions. Some of your conversation choices may not turn out to be important (especially if the character you're speaking to ends up dying soon after), but I'll be intrigued to see which of them do have an impact in future episodes.

Stylistically, the game doesn't really fit in with the TV series, but I can only see that as a good thing at this point. The relentless negative tone of the show has meant that I can't bring myself to watch more than the first episode of the second season. The game isn't exactly light-hearted, but it has a few funny points along the way and a lot more likeable characters than the show. Some of them are still bastards though: I'll be keeping an eye out for a way to get rid of one in particular in future episodes. I was also impressed by the kids in this game, I would guess largely because they were actually voiced by adults. Despite this, they come across as more believable than the annoying child actors in the TV show - I actually felt kind of bad when one of my dialogue choices led to me being short with Clementine in one particular scene.

Again, the experience is pretty short, but it feels like there is a fair amount to do and a good variety of locations, with the story moving forward at a good pace. At half the price of the Batman expansion, I definitely felt that I got my money’s worth and would be happy to continue buying the episodes as they are released, even if there is eventually a cheaper collected edition. In fact, the only real downer to it is how long it is taking for the next episode to appear, originally expected to be in June, its exact release date is still unsure. I doubt we could ever see episodes released in less than a month, but that feels like a reasonable amount of time to keep people ready to play the next one. Even I'm starting to forget some of the decisions I've made, and waiting much longer to see their consequences could mean that they lose their impact.

While Batman was a little disappointing, The Walking Dead still managed to convince me that I like the idea of episodic gaming. Having a complete gaming experience somewhere between the length of a TV Show and a film is something that definitely appeals to me, and I would imagine to a lot of people with limited gaming time. Only being able to get half way through a mission before being forced to quit can be a frustrating experience, especially if it is difficult to pick up again next time. I'm becoming increasingly aware of this while replaying Mass Effect and really looking forward to moving on to its sequel. Many have commented on how well paced Mass Effect 2 is, with nearly every mission feeling like a self-contained story of sensible length. In contrast, Arkham City's rather open-ended approach is perhaps the opposite of an episodic game, which makes you wonder whether adding content in this manner could ever have been a success - no matter the quality of it: you are just expecting to play it for a much longer time.

Cancer For Cure (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

El-P is someone that I've been aware of for a long time, but have never really got into. I've been a fan of his production on occasion: The Cold Vein by Cannibal Ox was a particular favourite, but I wasn't really enticed to seek out his solo efforts. I'd listened to bits and pieces, but they never really grabbed me, I couldn't really get into his voice and didn't feel like it was the best match for the beats he made. I also felt like the general perception of him was that he was the equivalent of indie rock in the rap world or the champion of 'backpacker hip-hop'. As I've made an effort to listen to his older work, I've realised that this opinion didn't really have much basis.

Cancer For Cure wasn't on my radar at all until I heard The Full Retard, which seemed like a total change in style from his previous work. No matter what my feelings were about him previously, it felt as though this time the music was compelling enough to get past the vocals. It's difficult to understand just how much hype the record got off the back of one track. By far my favourite quote describing it was on a forum I frequent: "It's like a nuclear bomb went off in 1988 and Rick Rubin has been left with a sampler in a post-apocalyptic wasteland." After that much build-up, it started to feel inevitable that there would be some disappointment in the album as a whole.

Those who heard it early on didn't seem blown away by it, and Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music was generally being talked about as the better album featuring El-P's production. I tried to keep my expectations unbiased, but it was definitely difficult to stay positive before I could get my hands on it. My first thought was that if you were expecting every song to be like The Full Retard, then you'd be disappointed. I can't say that there are any other tracks on the album with a similar bombastic old-school electronic feel. That's not to say that there aren't other powerful tracks though: if anything, it can be even more relentless than Killer Mike's album. It pulls in a lot of influences, and towards the end I'm not even sure it still sounds like hip-hop.

It took me a while to get into it though, and to begin with I was still ready to blame it on El-P's voice. It sometimes doesn't feel like he has enough range of tone to avoid becoming repetitive. On some songs, it fits perfectly and they might all work in isolation, but I just found myself getting overloaded with it after a while. When guest rappers show up on a few tracks, it feels like they add some much-needed variety and the chance to take a breath from El-P's relentless assault. I guess that others may have liked his vocal style from the start, but for me I think I just needed time to get used to it.

Other reviews of his work sometimes suggest that he's not the best rapper in the world, but I think that's not entirely true. Technically, some of what he does is very impressive and he's definitely extremely creative, but I feel that on first listen it can be difficult to engage with his lyrics. To me, it seems that they are almost never straightforward and that can make it hard to make that personal connection to them straight away. If I were to put my amateur rap psychologist hat on, it almost feels like a defence mechanism against exposing his personal issues directly.

That's not to say that this is an emotionless album, it can just take time to get to grips with it. After a week or so, more songs began to grow on me – The Jig is Up is becoming one of my favourites and that question of "just why is my partner with me?" is surely quite a universal one. Tougher Colder Killer is probably my favourite overall, not just because it features the talents of Killer Mike: the introduction to it, written from the viewpoint of a soldier who has just killed an enemy may be an imaginary scenario, but it is instantly understandable and relatable.

So while The Full Retard probably still stands out as the best track on the album, due to its brash, unconstrained insanity, there is clearly a lot to like here. It will doubtlessly always be compared to “R.A.P. Music” with the two albums being released so close together, but it is different enough to stand apart and on its own two feet. Just give it some time if it doesn't immediately click with you.

Prometheus (2012)

I think I did everything I could to try and avoid being disappointed by this film. As soon as I saw a trailer that started to show specific plot elements I cut myself off from any more promotional materials and tried to forget what I had seen. When a few friends saw it before me and their feedback wasn't very positive I tried to prepare myself to judge it as a film on its own and not to view it purely as an Alien film. However all of this wasn't enough to avoid making it the most disappointing film of the year so far.

I almost want to start with what I did like about it to get that out of the way, it's going to be a shorter list than what I had problems with. On the whole it looks fantastic, with the opening shots looking especially other worldly - even when I knew in advance that a lot of it was filmed in Iceland. I liked the Prometheus ship and alien structures, though both felt a little lacking in scale. Michael Fassbender is utterly convincing as David, a prototype android while Charlize Theron and Idris Elba were both interesting to watch, though not as good as I thought they might be. I saw it in 2D so I can't comment on how the 3D was used but I can imagine that some of it would have been impressive if it was originally filmed for 3D.

I'm writing this before reading most reviews but the first that I actively read was from the Strange Shapes blog. Knowing that the writer was obviously a huge Aliens fan I wanted to see if their opinion was similar to mine. I'd say that we were both disappointed by roughly the same issues but had different thoughts on the source of the problems. Valaquen concentrated a lot on what was down to editing, whereas my first instinct was to criticise its writing. This is despite the fact that I didn't want to be part of that group that was so quick to jump to criticise Damon Lindelof on Twitter, blaming him for everything that was wrong with the film.

What first bugged me was how it seemed to be full of lazy expository dialogue, that only seemed to serve to highlight what would be important later. "This is a totally separate unit?", "Yes, I can survive for years on my own if separated from the ship". "Wow, a Med Pod 720i, they only made a few of these. They're capable of performing surgery unaided, I know all of this because I'm an archaeologist". One or two lines like this I could let slide but they just seemed to build up and give the film a really cheesy feel that was out of character with the tone of the rest of the film.

Speaking of out of character, the characters in the film seemed very underdeveloped and confusing to follow. The familiar post-defrost meal which would often introduce you to the characters in the Alien films only really gives you a glimpse of a few new characters here, with one in particular giving you completely the wrong impression. Almost like a scene from a high school movie, a 'geek' sits down at the 'jock's table' and gets verbally berated for it. Antagonistic attitude, mohawk, only in it for the money - surely this guy must just be hired muscle along for protection. No? A short while later we find that this guy is actually a geologist who "loves rocks" and isn't as tough as he initially seemed.

This is one of the first points where I can't say for sure how this came about - was it written badly in the first place or did the way the movie was edited contribute to the confusion? Thinking about it later, an anarchistic punk rock geologist could actually have been an interesting character but his introduction was so screwed up that I didn't really care about him at the time. In a sense this character was lucky to even get a bad introduction, I couldn't tell you much about the rest of the crew at all. The 'geek' who I mentioned is supposed to be a botanist but I don't remember it being mentioned. That knowledge might have gone some way to explaining the attitude he has during their first alien encounter but at the time the guy comes across like a complete idiot.

In fact, for what was supposed to be a team of super smart scientists, they come across as the dumbest bunch of people ever to travel in space. The crew of the Nostromo in Alien weren't geniuses but most of what happened was down to bad luck and unbeatable odds, they weren't literally making the worst possible decisions at every possible turn. Making bad decisions is pretty much a staple of horror movies but you have to give the audience a reason to believe that characters could make the wrong decision. Unless of course it was trying to show that people can make dumb mistakes in the pursuit of science, compared to the pragmatic approach to survival the 'normal' people in Alien take...

It is also difficult to figure out who has more sinister motives for alien contact. Charlize Theron initially seems like she will be a figure like Burke in Aliens but she also warns the lead scientists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway (Rapace and Marshall-Green) not to make contact with any creature (shame they didn't pass that message on to the other scientists eh?). David seems to have a very clear goal of infecting someone with what they find, which initially seems like it could have been his main purpose as programmed by Peter Weyland. However when Weyland finally makes an appearance he seems to have no interest in anything other than speaking with the Engineers. In the end I can only assume that David was performing his own experiments just to see what would happen, he was quite a nasty piece of work when you think about it.

As for Peter Weyland himself, I found it very distracting that he was played by Guy Pearce in rather unconvincing ageing make-up. Obviously he played the role of his younger self in some of the promotional materials but they weren't used in the film. While I was watching it, all I could think was that perhaps he was going to get his wish and transform back to his younger self. I suppose that makes his death kind of a surprise to us as well as him but I think a different actor of the appropriate age would have made it easier to focus on what was happening.

Weyland's desire to meet with his creators and potentially make use of their technology was obviously the heart of the film and the reason for its name but it wasn't really the most interesting part to me. I felt that Shaw's alien 'pregnancy' was the best seed of an idea and if that had been the focus of the film I could have got behind it much more. Even if it was obvious that someone would need to use the Med Pod, the robotic surgical extraction was still the most disturbing scene of the film for me. The knowledge that her character was unable to have children naturally made the whole process even more horrific. To then completely forget about this extracted creature until the climax of the film seemed utterly ludicrous.

I would say that all of the alien encounters in the film end up feeling fairly throwaway, there are no real consequences after them. It's not clear whether the snake like creature went through some kind of transformation as it flees the scene and is never seen again. Shaw's partner Charlie's infection and then death is abruptly forgotten as it leads into the aforementioned pregnancy scenes. Even the return of the horrifically deformed geologist doesn't have much impact as we have barely been introduced to the crew members he beats to death. Valaquen's comments about the trailers initially suggesting that Shaw would take part in this scene feels like confirmation that all of these events got very cramped as minutes earlier she was undergoing the procedure in the Med Pod.

All of these issues seem to create a film that feels as if it needs to be cut down and extended at the same time. I keep coming back to the idea that it should have been more focused, perhaps losing some of the pointless plot lines and giving the film a chance to breathe so that you could get to know the characters. I wouldn't be surprised if there's eventually a directors cut of it but I wouldn't expect that to remove anything, it would likely just add more scenes and I think there are some mis-steps within it that would be difficult to fix with any amount of expansion.

It's difficult to know for sure whether my disappointment is still tinged by being a fan of the other Alien movies but I think that I gave it a fair chance. Without knowing exactly where the blame lies in terms of writing or editing, all I can really say is that the buck stops with the director. Aside from any studio pressure, Ridley Scott should have had the final say over things like editing and dialogue so it just gives the impression that he didn't really care as much about coming back to the world of Alien as interviews seemed to suggest. While the ending leaves things open for a sequel, I don't think the film ever did enough to make me care to find out what happened next.

Hidden in Plain Sight (2011)

I'd heard of Hidden in Plain Sight recently but didn't really expect to get around to playing it as it's focused on local multiplayer, ideally with more than two people. However, when someone forgot to bring along their arcade stick to a recent gathering with friends, we found ourselves looking for something other than a fighting game to play. This came into my mind and 80 Microsoft Points later we had it downloaded and ready to play.

I found it almost as difficult to describe it to my friends as it is to write a simple description of it here. It's a collection of mini-games, which all revolve around not knowing who is a player and who is computer controlled - including your own character. The first few seconds of any round are spent trying to figure out which of the many characters on screen is controlled by you, usually while trying to avoid giving away who you are to other players by making obvious movements. Each mini-game has different objectives, some of which are every man for himself and some of which are more team based. To start with we worked our way through each of them in turn but we eventually gravitated towards the game I had heard the most about beforehand - Death Race.

This is the most unique game of the lot as it has a different control scheme and every player has control of an on screen character and a gun sight at the same time. Moving your sights around is fairly straightforward but your character is moved by pressing either the A or Y button. A moves you to the right at the same speed as any other computer controlled character whereas Y makes you move much faster, which immediately highlights a player character as there is no other reason one will run. Your objective is to be the first player to get across the screen but you can also fire one shot per round, with the aim of killing a character that you believe is going to reach the finish line before you.

There aren't many other rules to playing this mode and you are left to work out your own strategies on how best to win. There are no penalties for shooting non-player characters and no restrictions on how much you use the run button but obviously wasting shots and making yourself conspicuous are not going to help you win most of the time. However I did find that I could use the run button sparingly at the start to quickly find which character I was controlling, most of the time others wouldn't notice as they were scanning for their own.

After a few rounds getting used to how the game played, with most learning to move their characters sensibly to blend in with NPCs, more interesting strategies gradually started to emerge. These would usually revolve around trying to misdirect the other players, which is something that I don't think would occur so easily if it were an online multiplayer game. The way people played would shift and change as time went on too - even making a run for it became a viable option on occasions. We all laughed at the first player to shoot their own character by mistake but by the end of the night almost everyone had done it (yes there was alcohol involved). I did it on one of the occasions where everyone started running from the off and for some stupid reason I took a guess on shooting one of the remaining runners rather than stop running to confirm which one was me!

This was just one of numerous situations that made me laugh harder than I have in a long time, not just specifically while playing a video game. I also managed to come up with some quite devious tactics, with two of them being variations on the same idea of following your own character with your gun sight. With only one shot available people would often assume that someone else would take the shot if the cursor was hovering over one character in particular, which could sometimes allow you to cover them to the finish line. I even did this on one of the occasions where we had got used to people making a break and running right from the start, covering my own character as I held Y all the way to the end zone. Obviously the same trick wouldn't work twice in a row and during the next games there would often be a tendency for all of the players cursors to hover over one character in particular that looked suspicious. Often one player would end up cracking and firing off a round, no matter whether it was a player or an NPC.

A lot of this was achieved without saying a word but sowing suspicion verbally could work very well too. Suggesting that a group containing your own character looked rather suspicious could be risky but at the same time suggested to others that you would be handling them. On one occasion it actually turned out that a group of identical sprites was actually controlled by myself and another player and I kind of unintentionally double bluffed myself, assuming that it was just coincidence and that the other sprite must be an NPC. I also took to holding back at the start of the round for a while and when a group of 4 characters formed at the head of the pack I remarked "we must all be in that group at the front". In the chaos that followed all of the other players were taken out and I casually strolled to the finish.

We could have carried on playing indefinitely, which was something I didn't expect at all when we first started, especially with some people unconvinced by the basic nature of the graphics. It really was the perfect party game, once again with it being priced at under a pound I feel that I want to give the developer more. One of my friends paid for it on Saturday night but I made sure to buy my own copy at home, even if I never get around to playing it. I'm sure I may try it with my wife eventually but it could lead to major marital strife...

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.