Sunday 30 October 2011

Batshit

I’ve always liked Batman, my affinity for the Dark Knight is probably similar to how Christians feel about Jesus, he’s A-OK. But doesn’t everyone like Batman? The success of his last cinema outing suggests that his appeal is universal, much like birthday cake and trying on someone’s glasses. Not everyone will have a Batman section on their bookshelf but most people will have seen The Dark Knight and concede that “yeah it was alright”. Most Batgeeks however can’t get enough of Batman and will currently be going Batshit over Batman: Arkham City, myself included.

Two years ago Batman: Arkham Asylum was released on those consoles that turn kids into murdering rapists and not many games have bettered it. If I was writing this blog two years ago I would have definitely written about Arkham Asylum and it would have probably read like this:

“I’ve cum in my pants!”

Arkham Asylum is one of those rare moments of gaming perfection, like Donkey Kong Country or Ico. Set over the course of one night in Arkham Asylum, as Batman you must beat the shit out of the Joker and pretty much anything else that moves. It captured the tone of the comics perfectly and the gameplay was pretty much flawless. It had moments that surprised and shocked you and that just doesn’t happen enough in games.

So it’s been two years I’ve been waiting to play its sequel Arkham City, was it worth the wait? The short answer is yes. The set up is typically textbook comic book, Arkham Asylum has been relocated to a vast section of Gotham City (think District 13, that brilliant French parkour film), shit is going down, and it’s up to Batman to stop it.

As it’s Batman the storyline and scripting is vital to the game’s success, and to an extent it works very well. There are countless twists and turns that drive the story forward and while some are predictable they will at least make you want to play on. The dialogue is what really makes the game come to life, as you glide over Arkham City you can hear its inmates’ conversations, often discussing the events of the game. The Joker (expertly voiced by Mark Hamill) has some excellent dialogue which will have you genuinely laughing out loud (or LOLing as the kids say), while characters such as Catwoman are somewhat cringe worthy in their crusade on breaking the world record of puns per minute.

While the mechanics of the game have been refined and work even better than its predecessor, there is something about Arkham City which isn’t quite right. Unlike Arkham Asylum there is a strong emphasis on freedom, if you don’t want to continue the story you can glide about the city and complete some side missions. Oh, it’s a bit Grand Theft Autoy, or Assassin’s Creedy then? Well sort of. The side missions aren’t much of a challenge and only take as long as they do because the objectives are quite well hidden, and when you realise you’ve just been aimlessly searching for a corpse for ten minutes it’s not really that much fun.

The freedom aspect of the game is something of a lie however, you are in a prison after all. As open worlds go, Arkham City isn’t much of a city. Of course it’s supposed to look run down and shit, but there’s nothing really interesting to look at. There are a few fairly large interior locations (and it feels like you’ll spend most of your time in these) but the city looks much bigger than it actually is. What makes things worse is there’s a big chunk of the map you can’t access.

Contrast this with the last two Assassin’s Creed games and you may feel somewhat short changed. What would you prefer to jump around in, a beautifully recreated renaissance Rome or a dank squalid slum? Unlike Assassin’s Creed, Arkham City wasn’t limited by history, it was free to create any kind of interesting city, instead it made a boring one, and you run out of things to do in it very quickly.

Arkham City is like a Crème Egg, amazing but disappointingly short lived. The few hours you play the game for may be cosmic (I‘m bringing it back), but they will only be a few. Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield can get away with this because of their multiplayer content but what does Arkham City have to offer? There are some moments in which you can play as Catwoman. Well there are four and they’ll take you less than an hour to complete. There are the aforementioned side missions but these also take relatively little time to complete. There are challenge maps but their longevity is dependant on your level of OCD. So too are the 400 Riddler trophies to collect, either little green question marks scattered across the map or various challenges, however there seems to be little or no reward in doing so.

This brings me to my next qualm with Arkham City. I’ve grown up playing games in which you unlock content by playing the damn thing, though in the case of Arkham City and many other games you can only unlock content by purchasing it. Some content can only be obtained by purchasing the game at a specific shop, or even by purchasing a different product altogether (by buying the Green Lantern blu-ray you can play as a special Lantern Batman or something). For most content you have to purchase it online, and in the case of Arkham City, this content is superficial, largely consisting of different costumes for Batman.

This should be available to the poor soul who spent £40 on the game, especially when there is very little content in the first place. Collecting the 400 Riddler trophies would be a very long and very boring exercise and the player should be rewarded for their efforts, and not in the form of concept art. Why do I have to pay to dress up in a different costume when other games give me the privilege for free? It’s not going to radically change your gaming experience by wearing a different cape but it’s incredibly cynical to charge you for it.

This cynicism taints Arkham City. It has a great main story, but as a complete package it’s pretty awful. It has a mode called new game plus and this sums up everything wrong with Arkham City. In any other game, new game plus would be known as “playing the game again”, but Arkham City has put fucking bells on it, as if in an attempt to convince us that it’s not as threadbare as it actually is. It’s not that the game is short, it’s the lazy attempt to cover up the fact that makes Arkham City disappointing. The developers are laughing, and we’re left wanting justice, sound familiar?

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Terrable: A Tale of Dickheads and Dinosaurs

Before I even watched Terra Nova I thought of the title I would use for this post: Terrable. Not that I’m a pessimist. No, if I liked it I would have used Terrabrill, which is the better title. I wanted to like Terra Nova purely because of this, I’ll be proud of that title all week, like that time I came up with the best pun ever (you had to be there/I’m still smug about it) a few weeks ago.

You can see by the actual title that this is anything but Terrabrill. At first Terra Nova seems a bit confusing, there is so much clunky exposition during the first hour of the pilot that it’s pretty hard to follow. That is until you realise you’ve already seen it. At its simplest, it’s Stargate meets Jurassic Park, but it’s so much more than that. There’s echoes of Avatar what with the jungle and weird creatures, and they even have the crazy colonel from Avatar playing a crazy colonel. There’s a forbidden zone just like in Planet of the Apes, there are some strange hieroglyphics on some rocks just like in Smallville, there are “others” just like in Lost, there’s even a weird midget guy just like in Twin Peaks. Well not the midget…yet. There is hardly anything original about Terra Nova, you’ve seen everything already so what’s the point of it?

A spork is just two pre-existing things mashed together and that works fine so why can’t you mash several films and TV shows together? Well you can, and they have, but much like the spork it’s not a revelation. A spork doesn’t function better than a spoon or fork, and Terra Nova isn’t better than Stargate or Jurassic Park, it’s not even better than Avatar.

*This may be a good time to explain the premise of Terra Nova. It’s the future (2149), Earth is overly populated but luckily a rift in time and space enable the people to start a colony in the Cretaceous age where there are dinosaurs and shit.*

Its formula may be readymade for success - the money thrown at it means it probably will be a hit - but there’s something inherently shit about it. It looks nice and all but so did Avatar, and what’s a beautiful setting if it’s populated with dickheads? And boy are there some dickheads. We’re introduced to a family who have broken the law by having three children (in 2149 you are only allowed two) and their reason for having three children? We just felt like it really. We just felt like breaking the law for shits and giggles. Just so we’re even more sympathetic towards these rebels the dad punches a policeman and goes to prison. Oh the injustice. He then precedes to break out of prison and smuggle himself into Terra Nova with his family.

So they’re a flippantly lawless family but they’re not annoying, boring but not annoying. Well maybe the teenage son is annoying. Maybe he is like Tom Cruise’s son in War of the Worlds, fucking annoying. Carrying around a hatred for his dad like it’s nobody’s business. “Oh I hate you and it’s all your fault I turned out to be a total prick” and all that bollocks. It’s understandable because he left a girlfriend behind in 2149, and he wuvs her. It would be understandable if he wasn’t cavorting with some other broad a mere twenty minutes later.

I could probably live with this, so what if the characters aren’t interesting and one of them is irritating? If the concept is good then I’m in, I fell in love with Lost before I even noticed how dreamy Sawyer was. Terra Nova could have been brilliant, unoriginal, but brilliant all the same. It’s easy to think that Lost was bad because of the ending, but it was truly great at patiently giving you details and keeping you intrigued. Aversely Terra Nova sets out to explain everything as quickly as possible, and badly. To tell us what Terra Nova is, the sister of the family (didn’t catch her name) tells her annoying brother what it is, because he seems to be more clueless than us. She might as well have looked straight into the camera during her expository speech. She even told us about how it’s a parallel timeline and therefore we needn’t worry about the butterfly effect. She was very clear on that.

We’re given too much information too soon and with this there is no mystery or intrigue. The family are told they cannot leave the confines of the colony, ooo what’s out there? I’m interested, but ten minutes later we find out exactly what’s out there. The forbidden zone is no longer a mystery, it’s just Jurassic Park and shit. We learn that there are others out there, but we immediately learn who they are and how they came to be. Lost was able to keep their “others” shrouded in mystery for almost three seasons giving us little details here and there, Terra Nova managed about thirty minutes.

There might be more revelations to come but they have shown us too much too soon, Jack Bauer wouldn’t catch the terrorist in the first hour and then relax for the next twenty three. There’s not much you can do with dickheads and dinosaurs and you have to think that the show will only get more and more ludicrous as they run out of ideas. Why dinosaurs anyway? Are we that impressed with them? I wanted to like Terra Nova, I wanted it to be Terrabrill, but it’s Terrashit.

Sunday 9 October 2011

Hate-Factor

It’s perhaps a little clichéd of myself to come out and say I despise the X-Factor, but hey what, of course I do, and I despise it more than I did last year. The reason for this is because I didn’t watch it last year, but like a serpent handing out free apples it was too hard to resist and I just had to watch it to see what’s going to happen to my country.

Every year it’s always the same, that’s what I’ve always said, but surprisingly this year it has evolved. No, not the new judges, they’re exactly the same as the last, but the contestants are different. We’ve had gimmicks in the past but with the ever increasing popularity of Twitter we now have trends, and that’s what the contestants are this year, sixteen trends. It doesn’t matter if they can’t sing, we just want to talk about them.

Take Essex girls 2 Shoes for example, or as I like to call them, Two Shoes, or Matt Lucas and David Walliams in drag. Everything about these girls is fucking awful, but they’re from Essex, and even as Tulisa spelled out for us all, Essex is very “current” right now. Yes, because TOWIE has become inexplicably popular so to has anyone from Essex. The stereotype is that everyone from Essex is a horrible human being, they’re stupid, they’re orange, they’re self obsessed, and watching them makes us feel good about ourselves, but it also aggrandises the act of being from Essex. If these were two stupid orange girls from Wiltshire we wouldn’t give a fuck, but because Essex is “current” we do give a fuck. Say something Essex! “This is so emosh” HAHAHA, do something Essex! “I’m so happy being pregs” HAHAHA, she’s pregnant, typical Essex. They’re singing a cheesy song in a pink car, and she’s smeared lipstick all over her face and she looks like one of the Joker’s henchmen, HAHAHA, typical Essex.

Apart from talking about people from Essex, we like to talk about people who are just total wankers, and that’s what Frankie “The Virgin” Cuntcozza is to his parents. For everyone else, he’s worse. I admire the X-Factor producers for their meticulous research and ability to find the smallest thing and fucking run with it. For Frankie they found out (without too much trouble I imagine) that he has some girl’s names tattooed on his arse. That’s dynamite! Let’s run with that, we’ll portray him as a lothario and girls will love him. Why? Why would they love him? He’s a prick who’s admitted he’s only in the competition to fuck girls, he’s going to use his fame to take advantage on vulnerable girls with low self esteem. He should be put on the register, but girls do apparently love him, shouting such inanity as “why r u so fit?” (that’s how she’d spell it). People who brag about having sex are the people who don’t have sex, and it won’t be a surprise that his sob story will be all about how he’s a virgin. For now, he’s just a cunt.

Cuntcozza will only cater for a relatively small hatred demographic, so they needed someone we can all hate and that’s why they’ve put the mentalist Kitty through. Anyone with the name Kitty who is not an actual cat is likely to be a mentalist. That’s the clue and the producers probably looked out for the name on applications. Ah Kitty! Get her in here right now! And fortunately for the producers, she is a mentalist and could potentially be the most hated contestant in the show’s history. Twitter went livid when she got through to the final sixteen, but they should be happy, they get to talk in anger about her for the next twelve weeks. People will vote for her just so they can carry on hating her.

At least Kitty sings though, the majority of this year’s contestants are intent on rapping their way through the “competition“, because Cher Lloyd was a hit wasn’t she? Urban music has become the most popular music so it kind of makes sense that the contestants are rapping, but really it doesn’t. They’re not saying anything political or profound, there is no wisdom or nous emanating from their mouths, they are just saying things, or just as Rhythmix (or shitmix) did this weekend, they’re just copying what someone else said. The talent is in what you say, not how you say it, covering someone else’s bars (I’m streets ahead) is redundant. Reciting Wordsworth does not make me a poet, reciting Niki Minaj does not make me a rapper.

The next twelve weeks are superfluous though because they’ve already found their winner. She can sing, she makes up her own raps, her surname is a single letter, yes, Misha B looks like she’s already won. They give her the most popular song of the year, they give her the most extravagant outfit, they give her the most dancers, and they even sit her in a fucking throne. They want you to vote for Misha B and they’ll manipulate you into it. There is no free will in The X-Factor and that’s why I hate it, it’s a totalitarian nightmare. If we don’t vote for Misha B then they’re going to put another contestant on a pedestal (literally) and manipulate us into voting for them. The only way out of this Orwellian torment is altruism, we all stop watching it and then they’ll just have to stop. But then what would we talk about?

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Still Who

Back in May I started writing about Doctor Who, because after all, I’m a geek with a blog and that’s what we people do (it’s not like we’re going to go clubbing). Due to a reoccurrence of acute laziness I never finished the blog, I added to it in June, and then again in August and September but I never managed to write the final paragraph. It was a good blog too (probably), look, here is an example:

“The Doctor should be travelling to weird and wonderful locations, instead he’s doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors.”

Ok, so it wasn’t that good, and that’s partly why I’ve started from scratch, the other reason is that now the series has ended I can finally gain some perspective on the whole confusing thing.

Doctor Who has always been for kids, it’s why I avoided it for so long, I thought it was silly (unlike Star Wars) and therefore not worth my time. I only watched Matt Smith’s inaugural episode last year with the intention to write a blog about how silly it was. Instead I ended up loving it because while Doctor Who is primarily for kids, it’s really for adults as well, or at least nerdy ones. It’s definitely silly - no nerd can deny that - but it’s knowingly silly and that gives it a loveable charm that even I can appreciate. Yes, I appreciate things.

For whatever reason the latest series has been a little more adult than previous ones, I don’t mean in a dirty “I’m going to sonic screw you” kind of way, but more in a “the new Harry Potter book is a lot darker than the last” kind of way. With its new super serious and seriously dark tone it lost its silly charm. No longer was it just a silly space adventure, it was sci-fi, with overarching plots, twists and reveals.

The writers’ ambition is admirable but I kind of liked not having to concentrate too hard. There was time travel and aliens and shit but I didn’t have to think too much where with this series I had to pay attention, I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the first two episodes and after watching the final episode I still don’t really know what was going on.

The whole series was structured around a seemingly inevitable death of the Doctor and the mysteries of River Song and the Silence, who were always going to be intrinsically linked to the Doctor’s inevitable death. Of course it’s hardly a spoiler if I tell you that the Doctor inevitably didn’t die and in hindsight this makes the whole 13 episode series seem kind of pointless. If we’re told he is definitely going to die and then he doesn’t, then what was the point of the whole hoopla about his death?

The series was intriguing and mysterious but only because we were constantly told it was. It had that Lost-esque answer a question with another question thing going on but with questions that we were never asking. I didn’t really care about who River Song or the Silence was because in Doctor Who everything is just an alien. There’s vampires in Venice, oh wait, they’re aliens. It’s James Corden, oh wait, he’s an alien (probably).

There was so much emphasis placed upon the big plot that the whole series suffered as a result. In the past the tone of each episode has usually been quite unpredictable, you never know what kind of episode you’re going to get, but with this series it’s been the same dark tone for every episode. Quoting version one of this post, it did seem like the Doctor was doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors. No matter where he was in time and space, he was usually down a dark corridor.

For me the low point of the series was the “Let’s Kill Hitler” episode. LET’S KILL HITLER! Fuck yeah! Now that’s a title, they’re gonna get Hitler and F him in the A. No, no, no. We didn’t get any of that. Rory, or Scrappy Doo as he should be known, gently punches Hitler in the first few minutes, and that’s the last we see of the Fuhrer. After that there’s a few plot twists while the characters try and evade the evil clutches of the miniature space police. Let’s kill Hitler? Should have called it “Let’s softly punch Hitler in the face, run away and get embroiled with the mini space police for 40 fucking minutes”.

Bad episodes aren't anything new in Doctor Who, in fact I’ve geekily calculated that 1 in 5 episodes are either bad or downright awful. For every “Blink” is a pavement with a face that gives blowjobs (not even making that one up). There weren’t many truly bad episodes this series however, there just weren’t many good ones. They were too dark and too complicated, and any jokes or moments of silliness felt somewhat inappropriate amongst all the seriousness, why was Rory dressed as Roman when his wife was in danger? Surely the time spent finding and putting on a costume could have been better spent? Fortunately the series’ conclusion suggests that the show will be going back to basics next year, without anyone chasing the Doctor he should have time to feature in some good episodes. Let’s just hope there are no more pavements with faces that give blowjobs (seriously, it happened).