Tuesday, 31 December 2013
VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER
A new The Raid 2: Berandal trailer, providing evidence that melee weaponry and car stunts have been added to Gareth Evans' mayhem repertoire.
Films 2013
5. You're Next
You're Next's strength was in the ways different characters contextualise the danger they're in. The Davison family respond to having crossbow bolts fired at their heads as an ingrained collective, complete with interpersonal baggage. They're so self-obsessed that even in the face of annihilation they cannot conceive of a situation in which their own egos are not being managed and coddled. A life of privilege has prepared them for nothing other than success. They expect to win; they cannot think in any other direction. They approach the assault emotionally, responding to a filmic scenario in a filmic fashion. They discern narratives within their struggle and cater to them. They are fools. Erin, an Australian interloper masquerading as pliant arm candy, is completely different. At rest she demonstrates the kind of quiet self-assurance that needlers often mistake as passivity. Galvanised into action, she reacts quickly and logically, upending genre conventions by stamping them prone.
4. Gravity
A 90 minute long panic attack that moves and functions on prehistoric story beats. Gravity is pure incident, Dr Ryan Stone evolving before our eyes from the kind of person who frets about losing a screw cap into a human missile. Her craft and crew shredded, Stone has to pick her way along international space debris until she finds a tin can secure enough to take her home. Disappointments and outright failures became the norm, mutating her sense of expectation. Stone changes from a single function component into a badass overseer, able to grapple with her situation and pummel it into compliance. Like You're Next, Gravity uses gender prejudices to turbocharge the will to power. Alfonso and Jonás Caurón understand that taking someone soft and reticent and turning them cold and hard is much more satisfying than seeing a military industrial man succeed.
3. Drug War
Protagonist is a slippery designation in a film like Drug War. At a glance, law and order man Zhang Lei fits the bill as he doggedly pursues a narcotics ring. Lei creates opportunity through a series of charades, adopting the identity of the last drug kingpin he met to woo the next. Lei is following a breadcrumb trail though, he has rules and regulations to consider, his success aligning with the wants of an all-powerful collective. He's a little too remote to truly root for. This interpersonal disconnect allows focus to shift onto Timmy Choi, a cowed drug lord who initial registers as cowardly and compliant. Of course he's nothing of the sort. He's just plotting, waiting for an opportunity to shift events in his favour. Drug War seems to be about how responsible ideology rarely translates into an exciting movie experience. In real life a well-oiled machine succeeding by inches is preferable, but entertainment mediums need people like Timmy Choi taking child hostages.
2. Milius
Milius is devastating. The documentary begins as a long overdue reappraisal of John Milius's contribution to the movie brat movement, covering everything from writing and directing AIP cheapies to being credited by Francis Ford Coppola as the main creative force behind Apocalypse Now. The documentary describes its subject as the go-to guy for boiling, bullshitting machismo. In between acting out anecdotes, we learn Sean Connery regularly had Milius employed to punch up his roles. Clint Eastwood fawns over Conan the Barbarian. George Lucas makes no attempt to hide a genuine love and affection for the man.
The doc charts a rise and fall then seems to be heading towards a wider reassessment. Suddenly everything falls apart. The effects of the debilitating illness that John Milius suffers are amplified by the situation, and I'm not just talking about my own selfish desire to see a Milius helmed Conan sequel. We see a man who has earned the respect and admiration of his peers struck down in the cruellest possible fashion. Milius then becomes a piece about how difficult, impassive older males attempt to articulate their love for each other. They can't just say it, they have to describe it using sports metaphors and denial.
1. Django Unchained
Django Unchained talks about identity and the ways in which extreme social situations impact upon it. Despite the ubiquity of the reading, it doesn't seem to me that the film is about an extravagant German transforming a humble slave into a superman. Instead it's about Schultz and Django's partnership providing a safe, stable environment that allows the former slave to reassert a personality he's always had. The rodeo shitkicker we see at the film's conclusion is, judging by Broomhilda's reaction to him, the man Django has always been. It isn't a comic book super state, it's the defiant one who stole Broomhilda's heart. We don't know him because Django has had to bury that person deep inside himself, lest he attract trouble.
This is the pantomime at the heart of Django Unchained. The white, master characters enjoy wild, overblown personas. They are indulged. Their social status and the colour of their skin allow them to act without filter. The black characters are not allowed this luxury. They have to pore over their statements and reactions, checking them for perceived provocation. While the white characters flirt outrageously with destruction, safe in the knowledge very little can trouble them, the black characters know death can come at any time. One wrong look could be their end. They are thus adept at behaving in a way that causes minimal offence - childlike, inferior. Anything that makes the people with power feel bigger.
King Schultz's fraternity helps stabilises Django, but it doesn't transform him. That comes in the hope that he can be with his wife again. Django Unchained is, at its heart, a deeply romantic film. Django exists to be with Broomhilda. It isn't just love or want, it's need. Next time you watch the film look at Jamie Foxx's performance when Schultz tells Django where his wife's name came from. The second Django realises he's going to discover something new about his love, no matter how tangential the relation, he abandons what he's doing - in this case eating - to sit in rapt attention. Passed over during award season and frequently described as the weak link in Django Unchained, Foxx is actually the calm, collected centre of the film. He knows the stakes better than anyone else and won't do anything to fuck up his last chance at happiness.
You're Next's strength was in the ways different characters contextualise the danger they're in. The Davison family respond to having crossbow bolts fired at their heads as an ingrained collective, complete with interpersonal baggage. They're so self-obsessed that even in the face of annihilation they cannot conceive of a situation in which their own egos are not being managed and coddled. A life of privilege has prepared them for nothing other than success. They expect to win; they cannot think in any other direction. They approach the assault emotionally, responding to a filmic scenario in a filmic fashion. They discern narratives within their struggle and cater to them. They are fools. Erin, an Australian interloper masquerading as pliant arm candy, is completely different. At rest she demonstrates the kind of quiet self-assurance that needlers often mistake as passivity. Galvanised into action, she reacts quickly and logically, upending genre conventions by stamping them prone.
4. Gravity
A 90 minute long panic attack that moves and functions on prehistoric story beats. Gravity is pure incident, Dr Ryan Stone evolving before our eyes from the kind of person who frets about losing a screw cap into a human missile. Her craft and crew shredded, Stone has to pick her way along international space debris until she finds a tin can secure enough to take her home. Disappointments and outright failures became the norm, mutating her sense of expectation. Stone changes from a single function component into a badass overseer, able to grapple with her situation and pummel it into compliance. Like You're Next, Gravity uses gender prejudices to turbocharge the will to power. Alfonso and Jonás Caurón understand that taking someone soft and reticent and turning them cold and hard is much more satisfying than seeing a military industrial man succeed.
3. Drug War
Protagonist is a slippery designation in a film like Drug War. At a glance, law and order man Zhang Lei fits the bill as he doggedly pursues a narcotics ring. Lei creates opportunity through a series of charades, adopting the identity of the last drug kingpin he met to woo the next. Lei is following a breadcrumb trail though, he has rules and regulations to consider, his success aligning with the wants of an all-powerful collective. He's a little too remote to truly root for. This interpersonal disconnect allows focus to shift onto Timmy Choi, a cowed drug lord who initial registers as cowardly and compliant. Of course he's nothing of the sort. He's just plotting, waiting for an opportunity to shift events in his favour. Drug War seems to be about how responsible ideology rarely translates into an exciting movie experience. In real life a well-oiled machine succeeding by inches is preferable, but entertainment mediums need people like Timmy Choi taking child hostages.
2. Milius
Milius is devastating. The documentary begins as a long overdue reappraisal of John Milius's contribution to the movie brat movement, covering everything from writing and directing AIP cheapies to being credited by Francis Ford Coppola as the main creative force behind Apocalypse Now. The documentary describes its subject as the go-to guy for boiling, bullshitting machismo. In between acting out anecdotes, we learn Sean Connery regularly had Milius employed to punch up his roles. Clint Eastwood fawns over Conan the Barbarian. George Lucas makes no attempt to hide a genuine love and affection for the man.
The doc charts a rise and fall then seems to be heading towards a wider reassessment. Suddenly everything falls apart. The effects of the debilitating illness that John Milius suffers are amplified by the situation, and I'm not just talking about my own selfish desire to see a Milius helmed Conan sequel. We see a man who has earned the respect and admiration of his peers struck down in the cruellest possible fashion. Milius then becomes a piece about how difficult, impassive older males attempt to articulate their love for each other. They can't just say it, they have to describe it using sports metaphors and denial.
1. Django Unchained
Django Unchained talks about identity and the ways in which extreme social situations impact upon it. Despite the ubiquity of the reading, it doesn't seem to me that the film is about an extravagant German transforming a humble slave into a superman. Instead it's about Schultz and Django's partnership providing a safe, stable environment that allows the former slave to reassert a personality he's always had. The rodeo shitkicker we see at the film's conclusion is, judging by Broomhilda's reaction to him, the man Django has always been. It isn't a comic book super state, it's the defiant one who stole Broomhilda's heart. We don't know him because Django has had to bury that person deep inside himself, lest he attract trouble.
This is the pantomime at the heart of Django Unchained. The white, master characters enjoy wild, overblown personas. They are indulged. Their social status and the colour of their skin allow them to act without filter. The black characters are not allowed this luxury. They have to pore over their statements and reactions, checking them for perceived provocation. While the white characters flirt outrageously with destruction, safe in the knowledge very little can trouble them, the black characters know death can come at any time. One wrong look could be their end. They are thus adept at behaving in a way that causes minimal offence - childlike, inferior. Anything that makes the people with power feel bigger.
King Schultz's fraternity helps stabilises Django, but it doesn't transform him. That comes in the hope that he can be with his wife again. Django Unchained is, at its heart, a deeply romantic film. Django exists to be with Broomhilda. It isn't just love or want, it's need. Next time you watch the film look at Jamie Foxx's performance when Schultz tells Django where his wife's name came from. The second Django realises he's going to discover something new about his love, no matter how tangential the relation, he abandons what he's doing - in this case eating - to sit in rapt attention. Passed over during award season and frequently described as the weak link in Django Unchained, Foxx is actually the calm, collected centre of the film. He knows the stakes better than anyone else and won't do anything to fuck up his last chance at happiness.
Also Liked:
The World's End / Pacific Rim / Only God Forgives / Spring Breakers / Ender's Game / Fast & Furious 6 / Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods / Elysium / Prisoners / Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 / The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The World's End / Pacific Rim / Only God Forgives / Spring Breakers / Ender's Game / Fast & Furious 6 / Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods / Elysium / Prisoners / Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 / The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Friday, 27 December 2013
Video Games 2013
5. Saints Row IV
Like playing a sandbox game with all the cheats on. Instead of a plethora of systems that barely hung together, Saints Row IV knuckled down on a basic combat stream and piled on the power-ups. After very little time at all your player character would be gliding between skyscrapers hunting XP orbs and zooming through traffic like The Flash. Saints Row IV marked the point an ugly GTA copycat became the spiritual successor to Crackdown.
4. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
The most enjoyable thing about Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was how few limits were placed on your basic movement. Rex Colt ran with the kind of clip that gobbled up even the most long-winded objective trek. Hill summits were briskly mounted and there was no fall in the game that would damage you. Designed to play like the end-game of a lengthy campaign, Blood Dragon was the short, e-number answer to a generation of games woozy from feature glut.
3. Papers, Please
Ever wanted to be a miserable cog in the communist machine? Of course you have! Papers, Please lumbered you with a lottery job that barely covered rent, then offered you a slither of power. Almost unplayable in quick sessions, Papers, Please piled on the bureaucracy, demanding you check and re-check a stream of permits and pass cards. Disinterest - the natural response to escalating, self-defeating responsibility - was kept in check by a results screen that gleefully detailed your failings as a provider.
2. RESOGUN
A Mega Drive scrolling score attack that used the power of the PlayStation 4 to construct a series of cityscapes built out of tiny, fracturing voxels. RESOGUN's strength was compulsion, you were always chasing the perfect game. Scraping though a stage wasn't enough, did you save all the humans? Did you deposit them in the safe zones when your multiplier was maxed out? What scores have your friends got? Just one more go then.
1. The Last of Us
The seventh generation was unusually long. Systems costs exorbitant 80s hi-fi prices out the gate, and everything remotely successful was iterated. Stagnation held sway. The visible video game mainstream became a yawning chasm of sequels, each propped up by poached mechanics and flavour of the month interaction. Everything resembled everything else.
The Last of Us stuck out because it looked a little further back than rhythm action battle prompts. Most obviously, Resident Evil 4's upgrade system was smuggled in, forcing the player to deal with permanence. What's going to get me to the next checkpoint? Deeper pockets for bullets, or a holster that lets me hold another pistol? Who says I'm even going to find one? The Last of Us was also Hideo Kojima's basic sneak 'em up, bitten and infected. Melodrama dialled way back, replaced with a video game approximation of the paternal love story central to The Road. Horror pops on triumph.
Also Liked:
Grand Theft Auto V / BioShock: Infinite / DuckTales: Remastered / Rayman Legends / Gran Turismo 6 / Proteus / Battlefield 4 / Call of Duty: Ghosts / Ridiculous Fishing / Call of Juarez: Gunslinger / Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Remastered / Tomb Raider / Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Like playing a sandbox game with all the cheats on. Instead of a plethora of systems that barely hung together, Saints Row IV knuckled down on a basic combat stream and piled on the power-ups. After very little time at all your player character would be gliding between skyscrapers hunting XP orbs and zooming through traffic like The Flash. Saints Row IV marked the point an ugly GTA copycat became the spiritual successor to Crackdown.
4. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
The most enjoyable thing about Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was how few limits were placed on your basic movement. Rex Colt ran with the kind of clip that gobbled up even the most long-winded objective trek. Hill summits were briskly mounted and there was no fall in the game that would damage you. Designed to play like the end-game of a lengthy campaign, Blood Dragon was the short, e-number answer to a generation of games woozy from feature glut.
3. Papers, Please
Ever wanted to be a miserable cog in the communist machine? Of course you have! Papers, Please lumbered you with a lottery job that barely covered rent, then offered you a slither of power. Almost unplayable in quick sessions, Papers, Please piled on the bureaucracy, demanding you check and re-check a stream of permits and pass cards. Disinterest - the natural response to escalating, self-defeating responsibility - was kept in check by a results screen that gleefully detailed your failings as a provider.
2. RESOGUN
A Mega Drive scrolling score attack that used the power of the PlayStation 4 to construct a series of cityscapes built out of tiny, fracturing voxels. RESOGUN's strength was compulsion, you were always chasing the perfect game. Scraping though a stage wasn't enough, did you save all the humans? Did you deposit them in the safe zones when your multiplier was maxed out? What scores have your friends got? Just one more go then.
1. The Last of Us
The seventh generation was unusually long. Systems costs exorbitant 80s hi-fi prices out the gate, and everything remotely successful was iterated. Stagnation held sway. The visible video game mainstream became a yawning chasm of sequels, each propped up by poached mechanics and flavour of the month interaction. Everything resembled everything else.
The Last of Us stuck out because it looked a little further back than rhythm action battle prompts. Most obviously, Resident Evil 4's upgrade system was smuggled in, forcing the player to deal with permanence. What's going to get me to the next checkpoint? Deeper pockets for bullets, or a holster that lets me hold another pistol? Who says I'm even going to find one? The Last of Us was also Hideo Kojima's basic sneak 'em up, bitten and infected. Melodrama dialled way back, replaced with a video game approximation of the paternal love story central to The Road. Horror pops on triumph.
Also Liked:
Grand Theft Auto V / BioShock: Infinite / DuckTales: Remastered / Rayman Legends / Gran Turismo 6 / Proteus / Battlefield 4 / Call of Duty: Ghosts / Ridiculous Fishing / Call of Juarez: Gunslinger / Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Remastered / Tomb Raider / Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Thursday, 26 December 2013
Music 2013
5. TV on the Radio - Million Miles
Luxurious swooning shot through with a lonely, crippled spaceship despondency. Last survivor signing off!
4. Run the Jewels - Get It
Dust Brothers headaches attended by irritating Kanye-on-SNL sample stabs. Music to dress up in oversized mob jackets and roll cars to.
3. Carpenter Brut - Obituary
Cyborgs in leather waistcoats jog dancing under overflowing drainpipes in Kabukicho. Much Cruising! NSFW promo clip.
2. Charli XCX - SuperLove
CLAP SYNTH. CLAP SYNTH. Sofia Coppola dressed as Betty Boo scribbling in her journal about some deadbeat she deigns to fancy.
1. Anamanaguchi - Endless Fantasy
A crashing wave of euphoric Master System music. Sounds like what beating Sonic the Hedgehog for the first time feels like.
Also Liked:
Icona Pop - I Love It / Lazerhawk - King of the Streets / Sadsic - Chamber / Zantilla - Call Of The Manticore / Gesaffelstein - Pursuit / Ryan Hemsworth - BasedWorld / Kanye West - Bound 2 / CHVRCHES - Lies
Luxurious swooning shot through with a lonely, crippled spaceship despondency. Last survivor signing off!
4. Run the Jewels - Get It
Dust Brothers headaches attended by irritating Kanye-on-SNL sample stabs. Music to dress up in oversized mob jackets and roll cars to.
3. Carpenter Brut - Obituary
Cyborgs in leather waistcoats jog dancing under overflowing drainpipes in Kabukicho. Much Cruising! NSFW promo clip.
2. Charli XCX - SuperLove
CLAP SYNTH. CLAP SYNTH. Sofia Coppola dressed as Betty Boo scribbling in her journal about some deadbeat she deigns to fancy.
1. Anamanaguchi - Endless Fantasy
A crashing wave of euphoric Master System music. Sounds like what beating Sonic the Hedgehog for the first time feels like.
Also Liked:
Icona Pop - I Love It / Lazerhawk - King of the Streets / Sadsic - Chamber / Zantilla - Call Of The Manticore / Gesaffelstein - Pursuit / Ryan Hemsworth - BasedWorld / Kanye West - Bound 2 / CHVRCHES - Lies
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
Die Hard 2: Die Harder
A vulgar coked-out sequel about an ego-driven maniac who is always in the right. Die Hard 2 reconceptualises the vulnerable hero of the first film, taking a guy who had the ability to weep for his failing marriage then transforming him into a flippant monster in the Schwarzenegger mould. Although he shares a writer credit (with Jeb Stuart) on the first Die Hard, screenwriter Steven E de Souza isn't interested in constructing a progressive, mutating, arc for this John McClane. Die Hard 2 instead moves with the same mechanical grace as a mid-80s Austrian Oak film. In short, this McClane is an arrogant, insistent, prick. Die Hard posited a situation in which McClane fluked an inside track on the unfolding mayhem thanks, in part, to his street smarts, but mainly his physical geography. He was embedded in the panic. Die Hard 2 attempts something similar, but frames it on a hunch.
Couple this aggressive intuition with a sequel think that demands every stake possible be raised into the heavens and you end up with a hero who spends the majority of the film seething and screaming at the people around him. An interlude in which McClane accidentally roughs up a meek janitor, doesn't apologies, then shakes him down for airport blueprints is a particularly brutal structural grind, one completely at odds with the guy we met in the first film. Fortunately this overindulgence extends to everything in Renny Harlin's film. A tidal wave of invectives is matched by some truly nasty, brain haemorrhaging violence. Die Hard 2 is unrestrained; shoot-out wish fulfilment cranked all the way up and featuring an invincible middle-aged avatar. Harder also enjoys a particular kind of mystique in the UK thanks to some BBFC deletions made to the film on its original release. Trimmed for a 15 rating then incessantly beamed into my mind on a pan and scan VHS, the unedited, widescreen 18 edit - complete with icicle injury detail and gooey pistol wounds - still registers as wonderfully, gleefully, excessive.
Sunday, 22 December 2013
Call of Duty: Ghosts - SHOUTCAST
With team killing all but impossible thanks to the ricochet mechanic, the majority of the Call of Duty troll clippers seem to have lost interest. Thankfully, StoneMountain64 has a fresh take on lobby wind ups.
Vid
Saturday, 21 December 2013
Thursday, 19 December 2013
HIDDEN PALACE
Previously only accessible as a corrupted mess via cheat cart hack codes, the scrapped Sonic the Hedgehog 2 level Hidden Palace Zone has been given a new lease of life thanks to couple of committed fans and a recent mobile release. Using assets only available in Beta code, and level layouts suggested by pre-release magazine appearances, Sonic sceners Taxman and Stealth have created a wonderful, speculative stage tucked away in a dark, cavernous corner of the main game.
Vid on the fritz?
MISS
Based on the slightly wonky premise that 80s video games aren't already difficult enough, NES Remix extracts stages and situations from a variety of 8-bit Nintendo titles, then challenges the player to succeed with a handicap. Obviously this all looks incredibly fun and I deeply regret not owning a Wii U.
Our second clip is a promo segment for NES Remix from the Japanese TV series GameCenter CX. Comedian and resident retro game master Shinya Arino plays against a trio of kids and probably throws the contest so as not to look mean. There are currently no subtitles available, but I'm sure you get the jist of it.
Vid 1, Vid 2
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
JUNGLE BEAST
Aside from the dearth of melt-faced mutants, I'm a little disappointed to see Caesar painted up like a Cambodian river savage in this tease for another Planet of the Apes sequel. While I'm sure Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will deliver an ample amount of cowering human scum, I would have liked to have seen Caesar's tribe filling the mankind gap while we were off in disease control facilities feeling sorry for ourselves. With this in mind, we could've had vacant buildings tweaked and customised for the oversized chimps and their gorilla neighbours. Fanciful new technologies crafted around the ape's needs and desires. Finally we could've caught a glimpse of Pierre Boulle's original idea of a settled, civilised ape race, with massed humans as the primitive, bestial aggressors.
Vid on the blink?
Friday, 13 December 2013
"Looks like an enemy recovered the car, so..."
It's hard to get a handle on what Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is going to be. All released footage has revolved around the infiltration of this particular POW camp. The emphasis on rescues and recruitment recalls Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (itself intended to be the fifth series instalment at one point), suggesting a hub based collect 'em up? Systems and gameplay feedback are also front and centre, looking delightful. The ability to create a solid, working foundation of interactive expectations is an undervalued ability. The best games allow players to generate a sense of security through basic calculations - cause and effect is everything. In that sense, Zeroes looks like it's got a rugged, but flexible machine pumping away under the hood. Out in March and budget priced, Zeroes would seem to be a slimmed down, chaser experience, with the real meat to come later in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Vid
20XX BULLETIN
Regular readers may have noticed that things have been a little quiet here at 20XX for the last few weeks. This radio silence was a result of a house move and the subsequent lack of internet access. 3G updates were considered but rejected on the grounds they would be a total ballache. Rest assured though that Neo Disaster Towers is plugged in and raring to go.
I have a couple of hand-written notes lying around that could be re-purposed into film reviews, as well as the site's annual favs lists on standby. I'm also considering another The Fast and the Furious (such a terrible shame about Paul Walker) / Godzilla style franchise review. I'm currently narrowing down my options. Suggestions are also welcome. Finally, in real person adult news, Miss Disaster has agreed to be my wife. The proposal involved me on bended knee, a pitch black driveway and some rapidly cooling Chinese food. It was more romantic than it sounds. Either way, I'm a very lucky man indeed.
Sunday, 24 November 2013
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #1 - Fallout 3
Fallout 3 had a thread of narrative woven through it. Identity established through statistic choices and facial feature sliders, you were set free to plod along through the ruins of Washington DC. Your main quest was to find your missing father, puzzling out his movements following an escape from an isolationist nuclear shelter. These breadcrumbs drove the game on, unlocking new areas and enemies. If you got pally with the locals, they'd offer distraction tasks that got you exploring. These missions taught you to be patient and methodical, instructing you in the basic tools of post-apocalyptic survival. Those avenues exhausted, it was up to you to create and discover your own adventure. Doggedly follow the father quest line and eventually it'd stall the title dead with a disappointing pay-off that had to be retconned through DLC.
That's Fallout 3's narrative, but it wasn't the story. It wasn't the game. Fallout was the land, and all the people in it. Fallout was wandering around a God forsaken rubble pit, stumbling across decrepit buildings and traumatised survivors. Although framed by a binary morality system, Fallout 3 frequently put the players in positions with no obvious solutions. If you found your way to the Tenpenny Tower luxury hotel you'd be confronted by a turf war between two equally unappealing factions. You couldn't do right for doing wrong. Throw in with the bigot who ran the place and he'd ask you to vaporise a thriving human settlement because he considered it an eyesore. Side with the gang of idealistic zombies and the tower's innocent human inhabitants would end up dead and stuffed into a cellar. This idea of moral uncertainty was the cornerstone of Fallout: New Vegas, a semi-sequel that relished compromise and missed opportunities.
The Fallout experience was rifling through pip-pip computer records, uncovering solemn accounts of post-war hardship. The sunken Vaults scattered about DC were an explorers paradise. Layers upon layers of burnt out living space, each housing secrets more terrible than the last. You could make allies out of dogs and mutants, and then be stuck trying to keep them out of trouble. Fallout 3 was wandering, plundering, discovering. The player as a cultural archaeologist, digging deep into the paranoid psychological state that facilitated the world's devastation. If you ever wanted to ride with The Road Warrior, or found the idea of investigating Los Angeles 2029 appealing, this was the game for you.
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #2 - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare ditched the moral certainty of World War II, taking the series forward several decades to arrive in the midst of a post-Cold War fog. The covert missions that formed the backbone of the campaign were nasty snatches of ruthless wet working. An assassination here. An ethnic cleanse intervention there. Infinity Ward drafted a muddled theoretical conflict, utilising hot potato concerns like break-away ex-Soviet nations and Islamic fundamentalism, to take the player somewhere other than the beaches of Normandy.
Despite this, one of Modern Warfare's most triumphant aspects was simply chatter. Your time with the 22nd SAS regiment was full of state sanctioned murder and cold-blooded euphemisms. This pally back and forth registering as gallows humour, rather than tone-deaf posturing. A mission set aboard a Lockheed gunship had an alarming, almost documentary sense of reality about it. Modern Warfare was a rare game that seemed informed by solid research instead of just raking over the same old 1980s action films.
The real juice in Modern Warfare though was the multiplayer mode, an unending avalanche of feedback and positive reinforcement. Guns and loadout perks were rationed on a keen trickle, meaning there was always an interesting piece of kit to chase. Every conceivable action tallied towards some form of reward, from exciting new rifle sights to simple XP currency. There was an exhaustive list of conditions to be met, congratulating players for both the mundane and the superlative. In-game kills granted access to rewards that ran the gamut from an in-game radar sweep to a match shredding Hind attack helicopter. Modern Warfare gobbled time. There was always something new to learn, or something old to modify.
Saturday, 23 November 2013
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #3 - Street Fighter IV
Despite creating the excellent polygon scrapper Rival Schools, Capcom has always struggled to translate its premier fighter franchise into a viable 3D property. During the fifth and sixth generations the Street Fighter licence was farmed out to Arika, a dev studio full of ex-Capcom staff, for the short-lived Street Fighter EX series. EX was a love-it or loathe-it side-step, hobbled out the gate in Europe thanks to lousy 50Hz conversions. Regardless, even on 60Hz import the results never touched contemporary 2D instalments. After the wonderful, but undersubscribed, Street Fighter III series it seemed like Ryu and friends were being slowly relegated to nostalgia prompts in big-budget franchise clashes.
The Street Fighter series unexpectedly bounced back in summer 2008 with the arcade release of Street Fighter IV, spearheaded by Yoshinori Ono and The Rumble Fish developer Dimps. Street Fighter IV ditched the arena roaming of modern fighters, instead sticking to 2D planes with 3D assets. The vast cast were rendered as chunky, colourful, charm lumps, blessed with spectacular ultra move movies, and Looney Tunes injury faces. Everything old was new again. Since then the basic gameplay has been tugged and tweaked over five distinct iterations, each designed for maximum scrutiny. At the beginning of this generation Street Fighter was washed up and bled dry. Likewise, the game's parent company Capcom has struggled since the departure of high-profile talents like Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya. That the Street Fighter brand was resurrected so completely during this tumultuous period is nothing short of miraculous. Let's hope Capcom can eventually get their shit together long enough to do the same for the mouldering Resident Evil series.
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #4 - BioShock
BioShock offered players a one-way ticket to Rapture, an underwater utopia on the wane. Ayn Rand's Atlantis was built to house the great minds of the post-World War II world. Artists, industrialists and philosophers crammed in tight and unburdened by morality. Cast as an interloper, players got to poke around and investigate the aftermath. With minimal friendly faces around to tell the tale, a timeline is established through exploring and collecting the diary fragments scattered about the ruin. Rapture's citizens were promised paradise but reductive class systems still emerged, eventually prompting a popular revolution. There were less obvious examples though. Everything in Rapture told you a story.
Rapture was hermetically sealed by design. This was its flaw. A healthy culture is built out of mutations and alien invasion. Foreignness informs a fluid, growing intellectual consciousness. Rapture failed because it assumed it already had everything it needed. It could only build on the elements it already had, hence Rapture is monument to an incestuous obsession with early twentieth century art movements - Jazz, Deco, Futurism. With nowhere else to turn, the city turned inwards, consuming itself. BioShock offered the chance to sightsee around this cultural apocalypse. You took in the sights. Gauche bunny art built out of murdered people. Nannies with car wreck faces that whispered lullabies to sleeping pistols. Rivers of discarded refugee clothing, patrolled by pyromanic Policemen. It was like no place you'd ever seen before. Sadly, there's been nothing quite like it since.
Friday, 22 November 2013
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #5 - Earth Defence Force 2017
Earth Defence Force 2017 was a crack compulsive shooter from budget developer Sandlot. You took control of a slender, androgynous suicide soldier, the only chap (or chapette) with chops enough to halt an avalanche of rampaging space aliens. All the atmoic age enemy archetypes were present and correct. Mutated insects, laser robots, hubcap spacecraft, and, most impressively, radioactive mecha kaiju. All massive. All aggressive.
Players got to trample the lot with a spiralling arms race facilitated by captured, flat, tech pick-ups. Weapons ran the gamut from small, useless welding torches to sub-nuclear screen wipers. The higher the difficulty, the better your technology seizure. Your hero was aided throughout by teams of endlessly enthusiastic CPU troopers that chanted slogans and died at a brush. Cities crumbled at the slightest barrage, nearly everything on-screen could be destroyed. Better still, you were never penalised for this collateral damage. As long as you made it, everything else was extraneous. EDF suffered no stealth interruptions or an enforced use of chugging, vulnerable vehicles. If allies fell, it was their hard cheese. Earth Defence Force 2017 was simply fifty odd levels of relentless enemy blasting. As pure as Space Invaders.
Thursday, 21 November 2013
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #6 - Crackdown
Power fantasy video games broadly emphasise environmental and psychological disconnects. Players are typically cast as lone adventurers who relentlessly come into conflict with their surroundings. Sand box games exacerbate this feeling, it's just you against an entire city calibrated to your undoing. Crackdown started you out as an athletic human, tasked with droning about a city dispensing jack-boot justice. You had an assigned arsenal, bolstered by arms seizures, with a fleet of cars back at the base. All the better to battle entrenched gangsters. So far so street level. Take your time to explore though and you came into contact with a drip-feed of floating power-ups.
Snatch enough and eventually your abilities were raised far beyond the mortal realm. Max out your stats though, and you'd barely need equipment. You were now the weapon. At peak you could leap tens of feet vertically and horizontally, your territory now in the sky. This created an immediate disconnect. Your landscape was transformed from urban grime to an airy, skyscraping loneliness. Feuding with criminals began to seem less vital, maybe even trivial. They could be thwarted in brief, hopping blitzkriegs, your limits rarely tested. Interest shifted to exploring and testing the upper limits of your character's physicality. Could I make that jump? Is the top of that building within my reach? This agenda break also emphasised the condition of your avatar, a blank slate super-soldier, unwillingly locked into reward tasks and undaunted by morality. You didn't explore your super-identity by crushing inferiors, you deconstructed it through escape.
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #7 - The Last of Us
The two most engaging video game experiences I've had in the last twelve months were the HD re-release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Naughty Dog's critical darling The Last of Us. Despite some cosmetic differences, the two games have a lot in common. Both are third person action games with an emphasis on scavenging. Your primary means of propulsion in either was a hunched, reticent crawl. Impatience punished with a retry. Players should have been scouting ahead, logging patrol patterns and looking for holes. Lots of time to think then. Why did this feel so fresh?
The seventh generation was unusually long. Systems cost exorbitant 1980s hi-fi prices out the gate, and everything remotely successful was iterated. Stagnation held sway. The visible video game mainstream became a yawning chasm of sequels, each propped up by poached mechanics and flavour of the month interaction. Everything resembled everything else. The Last of Us stuck out because it looked a little further back than rhythm action battle prompts. Most obviously, Resident Evil 4's upgrade system was smuggled in, forcing the player to deal with permanence. What's going to get me to the next checkpoint? Deeper pockets for bullets, or a holster that lets me hold another pistol? Who says I'm even going to find one? The Last of Us was also Hideo Kojima's basic sneak 'em up, bitten and infected. Melodrama dialled way back, replaced with a video game approximation of the paternal love story central to The Road. Horror pops on triumph.
Monday, 18 November 2013
20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #8 - The Orange Box
Nestled in amongst three stellar Half-Life campaigns and Team Fortress 2's class clash was Portal, a short, sharp first-person puzzler. Ingenious teleportation guns aside, Portal lingers longest thanks to some genuinely good character-based writing - quite the coup considering the player controlled protagonist, Chell, was mute. Basically, Portal was Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream if the central hyper-computer was a malfunctioning incompetent. Like the Ellison overlord, Portal's AI GLaDOS had long since outgrown her pre-programmed parameters. She was stuck regurgitating basic sequences, going senile in the process. Instead of openly sadistic trials, GLaDOS strung Chell along through a rotting obstacle course with the strangely specific promise of cake. Sections of the testing area were missing, the gun turrets had developed empathy and any sense of meaning had long since evaporated. When Chell finally disobeyed, GLaDOS threatened her like an admonished child, desperate to cling onto her fading glimmer of half life.
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