The Catcher in the Rye

It took a while but I finally got round to reading The Catcher in the Rye last week, after years of procrastination and to be honest, I couldn’t have made a better decision.

Written in 1951 by JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye is a first person narrative, told in a personal style by the main character, Holden Caulfield. The novel has been both the most banned and the mostly widely read at schools since its publication and is known for its controversial use of profanities and sexual intercourse.

Caulfield is 16 years old and has just been kicked out of his 4th prep school for failing to achieve the necessary grades, feeling neglected he ventures to New York City where he wanders around  for the next few nights, contemplating life and the people around him.

I really didn’t know what the book was about at all and knowing that 3 murder attempts, of which two were successful, have been attributed to it, I thought that it would be more exciting, not that this is a dull book in any way.

The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most relevant American novels of all time.

The narration is very fast-paced and sentences are formed in a vocal way, making you feel more like you’re listening to someone’s thoughts of the moment, rather than a diarised series of events. Caulfield makes use of frequent 50′s profanity, meaning there is a lot of “goddamn” and “hell” going on. The stream of conciousness leaves the reader with a unique feeling of empathy, especially as the character is met with somewhat normal situations and reacts in predictable yet uncomfortable ways. For example, he is unable to go through with sleeping with a prostitute that he finds himself ordering after an unikely encounter with a pimp in an elevator. We see in Caulfield all of the insecurities we often feel or felt in ourselves at some point or another. It’s not merely his self amongst others, it’s his lines of thinking and his abrupt and almost random mannerisms that endear one to him. Speaking of which, one of the things that Caulfield mentions once or twice in the novel is where the ducks go in winter at Central Park’s pond, it seems like Central Park gets asked this so often now that they’ve dedicated a webpage to it, which I thought was odd.

About three or four chapters into it, I really had no idea what to make of it. It reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis meets Mark Twain, which seems pretty apt considering the fact that the book alongside Huckleberry Finn and the Great Gatsby is considered one of the great American novels and the Ellis was inspired by Salinger for Less than Zero. I had a feeling that the end of the book would be a little like Taxi Driver, but instead we’re treated to one of the most poignant, moving and relevant moralistic endings I’ve seen in any medium.

To explain it I will move through a couple of the themes in the book which precede and enhance the effect of the ending.

The novel begins at a time that Caulfield should still be in education, but his being expelled means that he is in limbo, he is not a fully fledged adult outside of school, but nor is he a student under a teacher’s guidance. This conflict is indicative of the initial setting/mood, starting off Holden’s journey, not into adulthood, but into acceptance.

In his attempt to reconcile his own conscience about failing and resolve the conflicts of his own place in the world, Caulfield firstly attempts to seek aknowledgement as an adult, but his own self-confessed “yellow-ness” leads him to reject the prostitute he orders, shy from confidently ordering alcoholic drinks and not being able to stick with attempts at sexual intercourse and the like. After an attempt to meet his sister, which resulted in a walk around the museum, musing nostalgically, we begin to see Caulfield recognise his failed attempts at becoming adult prematurely, possibly as a revolt against his own not-so-secret desires to remain young and carefree, away from the phony adults that he doesn’t wish to become.

An all too realistic glimpse into the mind of an adolescent.

The museum reminds him of a history that remains and of the constant it resembles. This results in a trip to his home to talk to his younger sister, this return to his home is metaphorical to his own regression and it’s around here we learn more about the title of the book and its importance. In a mis-rememberance of a poem, Caulfield thinks about how he wishes to be a catcher in the rye. Someone who saves children from falling off a cliff whilst playing. It’s this preservation of innocence and his own torment at growing older that leads Caulfield to live a dualistic life.

The book eventually ends with his sister giving him back his hat, which shows that she is the only person truly paying attention unlike the other “phonies” and Caulfield watches as she rides on a carousel, while trying to dangerously reach out to something. He epiphanises that children are capable of making mistakes and are able to “catch themselves”, he lets go of his control issues and decides he can stop trying to cling onto innocence. This fulfills the circle of the book into one of confusion and disassociation into one of growth and maturity as well as understanding of the world that surrounds us.

Caulfield is known to be an unreliable narrator, one of my favourite lines in the book is what I believe one of the most clear proofs for Caulfield’s unreliability and could offer insight into why he is incarcerated into an asylum. “That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose.” I think at this point, Caulfield percieves the world is out to get him and the innocence he stands for, the writing on the wall is a delusion which chronically haunts him.

To read this book is to take an all too realistic glimpse into the mind of an adolescent, something that could have become a very obsess-able object for me in my younger years, on the face of it, it’s hard to understand why controversy surrounds this book, but twinned with its own candid expression of the most difficult time in a person’s life, with the somewhat social commentary on the 50′s and also general societal issues, makes the Catcher in the Rye one of the most relevant American novels of all time.

The Catcher in the Rye

Hyper Japan 2013

Like any convention there’s Hyper Japan has an abundance of animé, food and extortionate pricing, costumes are interesting, the people are rude and the layout is both uneconomic and hard to navigate.

But despite all that I still go to these things and I managed to pick up Paranoia Agent series on DVD.

Nintendo and Namco Bandai brought a bunch of games such as;

Wii-U

• 
  

  Wonderful 101

  
  


• 
  

  The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker HD

  
  


• 
  

  Pikmin 3

  
  


• 
  

  Wii Karaoke U

  
  

3DS

• 
  

  Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy

  
  


• 
  

  Etrian Odyssey 4

  
  


• 
  

  Inazuma Eleven 3

  
  


• 
  

  Tokyo Crash Mobs

  
  


• 
  

  Ace Attorney 5: Dual Destinies
  

  
  

PS3

• 
  

  Tales of Xillia and the collector’s edition

  
  


• 
  

  One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2

  
  


• 
  

  Tekken Card Tournament

  
  

Ace Attorney has a dedicated following and would do well with a physical release.

The demo for Ace Attorney was specially made for conventions and won’t be appearing in the final game so I played the demo all through. There was two demos, one for the courtcase sections and one for investigation. The court case introduced us to Athena Cykes, whose psychoanalytic ability to gauge people’s emotions in every sentence they speak, managed to glean the details we need to foil a bombers plans. The investigation portion featured Apollo following a mysterious letter from Phoenix alluding to being killed by a demon, but after some intense point n’ clicking you find he was just chasing after a turkey.

When I went to play Ace Attorney, it was quite early on in the event, before the hoards turned up, however, despite this, I still had a half hour wait behind 3 people before I could get a go and the game had the largest crowd around. It made me laughly  (albeitly sadly) that the one game here that is getting a digital-only release despite being retail in Japan, was the one game everyone wanted to play. There was even a bunch of Ace Attorney cosplayers that were there looking excited with its unexpected appearance. I’m hoping that Capcom will reconsider their release, because they’re fools if they think people don’t want this game. I’ll send them an email.

A pleasant surprise at the event.

There was a lot of people, so in the end I left and went to the Science Museum and Natural History Museum instead. I’ll probably go again next year.

Oh, and there was this guy.

 

Hyper Japan 2013

Halo: Reach

Having never played a Halo game at length, I decided to jump into the series here. Everyone told me how it was inspired by Ringworld and that I would probably like it.

Well, I didn’t dislike it, if that helped.

A first person shooter set in a future where the human race employs super soldiers in the military, the story begins as a prequel to the first Halo and recaps the events leading up it.There is no Master Chief in this game, instead it has a small team in which your nameless leader heads up to bring the fight to the Covenant.Well, I have no idea who the Covenant is, but I was helpfully told about some basic aspects, like that they are sort of a religion and that Master Chief was one of the last soldiers of his kind.

A game must stand up on its own merits as a single player game, otherwise it won’t be able to sit in a hall of fame for its own obsolescence.

The thing is, the Covenant in this just seemed to be faceless and ideal-less entities that appeared only on the battlefield as obstructions to menial goals. There was absolutely no characterisation set aside for them whatever and no mention of any kind of ideology, religion or culture.

To be a game that revolves around death as its main gameplay element, making me care about whether I or the enemy dies is pretty darned important I think.

The Noble Team isn’t much better than the Covenant though, there was a very 2 dimensional obligatory input session during a brainstorm but after that it seems like the only character interaction involved merely the predictably different coloured reactions whenever a situation arose, nobody seemed to want to instigate any revealing conversation about themselves, their thoughts on the mission, the monsters or the war, let alone hold a even-tempered discussion with another character. It’s almost like perhaps I missed a game length’s worth of satire on the perceived dopeyness of soldiers, the characters were so vapid.

Probably the biggest crime though, is that despite the single adjective-d personalities of the Noble Team, they still managed to remain instantly forgettable, there not even being enough narrative for you to identify them with inane events that happened to them, like perhaps ‘the guy that slapped the girl” or ‘the chick with the attitude problem’. Later on there is some tangible memory that you can grip onto with the characters, but only in the forms of the details of their systematic deaths, by which point they became wholly irrelevant, both in the story and as a piece of emotional bait.

In fact, some of the thoughts I had of this ring true with what I said about Starship Troopers. The whole aesthetic is more militaristic-SF than the explorative culture bomb that is Ringworld. A Marauder power suit from Starship Troopers wouldn’t go amiss with the other pieces from the Spartan armoury. Also in line with Heinlein’s “right-a-thon” is a swap of solid and consistent narrative to opt for the persecution of a soulless enemy while pontificating under-developed and aggressive views about the Military and its role in alien liaisons.

To be honest I had no idea what to expect, some people rave about the story while others cast it off and play the multiplayer exclusively. I was looking for the former and in that I was extremely disappointed, I hope that Halo 3 (which is the next in the series I am due to play if Anniversary is still expensive) is more rounded and descriptive.

The gameplay, however, is another story. Although not inkeeping with the story, the mechanics and feel of the game is incredible.

It starts with the gorgeous scenery and high detail to the environment, before landing in your space chopper, you’re treated to a glorious swoop of the planet Reach in which the dull story takes place. The land is beautiful and the feel of it is believable for a human space colony. Upon arrival my first 5 minutes were spent looking at all the nooks and crannies of the immediate clearing, finding exquisite features and some great looking bits of kit around. The armour in the game looks useful and fairly comfortable, something that other games and films like to ignore all too often in favour of pitiful sexualisation, like we all go home at night to think of breasts popping out of metal plate armour. I chose a woman as my character and apart from some kooky knee movements when move stealthily, she didn’t seem to look or feel like she would rather be holding a penis than a gun, Lara.

The gameplay is fluid and the level and mission design is fun and somewhat fresh when parts like the space battle come up. These are usually done to make the game appeal to a wider audience, but it felt more like a bit of ingenuity on the devs part. I don’t like Sci-Fi that forgets it’s Sci-Fi. The space battle that I mentioned is one of my favourite parts, it could have done away with the contextual assets in the sky to make it feel more grounded, I like feeling lost and without relative coherence in space. It’s not often you can just screw around with a player’s sense of direction and it should have embraced it, like Portal, rather than hide it. Actually another thing that bugged me about the space section was that you have to hold down the thruster wasting energy in order to maintain the speed, which doesn’t make sense physically speaking. It should continue at the increased velocity until another object or force comes into action – there’s no friction or air resistance in space!

Unfortunately the game doesn’t feel like committing to the outside scenes very often and you find you’re wandering samey looking ships and interiors for most of the game, but I suppose it was probably worth it for the initial ‘Wow’.

I can’t say I can really recommend it, nor can I truly say it’s not great. I enjoyed what I played and I think managing expectations with my current knowledge of the series will make me enjoy further games more, perhaps the game requires you play online to enjoy it, but I don’t judge games by online mode unless it is exclusively so, like Battlefield 1943. A game must stand up on its own merits as a single player game, otherwise it won’t be able to sit in a hall of fame for its own obsolescence when the community dies. Either way, it’s alright.

 

Halo: Reach

The Left Hand of Darkness

I’ve been meaning to read something by Ursula K. LeGuin for some time, as I have never read a Sci-Fi written by a woman, but also because she is a prominent writer, with one of her Earthsea books being adapted, albeit rather poorly, into an animé, Tales of the Earthsea.

The Left Hand of Darkness is a Sci-Fi novel which was published in 1969 and won the Hugo and the Nebula awards much like Dune.

The story is set on the icy planet of Winter, known as Gethen by its inhabitants, the Gethenians. An envoy has been sent down by an interspacial group in order to recruit them into their ring of trade.

The envoy is Genly Ai, a man of Hain, who is tall and dark-skinned and isn’t like humans of Earth despite us all having similar forefathers. The Gethenians in nature appear to look a lot like the Hainish so he manages not to stand out too much. Having already been there a year, we join in the fun just as he is finally attending a meeting with the King of Karhide,  which is a nation on Winter.

However before his meeting, he is given an odd and cryptic statement by the Prime Minister, who has been helping to organise this event.

The main flow of the book is about Ai’s struggles to get the world of Gethen in agreement with the Ekumen, the interspacial trade group, but the difference in physiology, politics and culture leaves Ai with little knowledge about how to get things done.

The Gethenians are a unique race as they are all hermaphrodites. They all are of one sex that only changes during a two day period once every month in a process known as “Kemmer”. During kemmer a Gethenians body responds to hormones and the reproductive organ changes into either male or female, depending on the sexual partner that they have found, it is somewhat of a mutual process and undergoing Kemmer without a partner in the same state can be distressing. During kemmer the two will mate and whichever is acting as the female of the pair has a chance in becoming pregnant.

Thanks to this unusual sexual system, the Gethenians are a race of note to the Ekumen and the majority of the novel deals with the Gethenians culture and “wholeness”.

Gethenians have never had a war, have limited technology but advanced political systems tied intrinsically to their code of behaviour called Shifgrethor. Shifgrethor is an etiquette that is rather complex, involving both parties engaging in a communicative war with one another. A man who is adept at Shifgrethor is able to wield a large amount of power other his peers, which proves as a major obstacle to the envoy’s mission when he is faced with the King. It is thought by Ai that the reason why the Gethenians have never warred is due to their lack of dualism as a nation.

Le Guin has blended the fascinating ideas from Science-Fiction, with the engrossing detail of characters and culture from Fantasy.

The dualist themes in this book are everywhere, firstly, the Gethenians are known as “he” despite them being non-gender, this is probably due to the lack of a pronoun in its stead, but also because it feels more general. The concept of androgony is hard for Genly Ai to comprehend and he constantly places gender on different members of the species. The book uses these biased perceptions to comment on the wider reaching issues of sexism within our own society.

Le Guin takes the concept of true gender equality to the highest extreme with this novel, bulldozing romance, war, parenthood and social conducts in its path. The race of Gethen knows no taboo on incest, there is no homosexuality and there is no control/submission within a relationship. A person can be a mother and father at the same time, laying out Freud’s theory of gender learning via the Oedipus complex in one swoop.

1st Edition.

The level of quality of writing is unusually high for a SF book, I am used to having to  suspend expectations of good prose whenever I pick one up, but this novel could easily be ranked up with writers at least to the level of Tolkien, she has a better concept of pacing too.

The relationship between two of the main characters of the book, Genly Ai and Estraven, the Prime Minister of Karhide, show a difficult and beautiful conception of love between worlds in a pure form. The use of the pronoun ‘he’ becomes particularly useful here as it challenges preconceived notions of relationships and companionship, but most of all it doesn’t make a huge deal out of the many themes that subvert the rules nor does it wish to shy away in fear. It creates the perfect balance to give a complete idea of the situation leaving the reader with their own ideas.

That’s what I love about this book the most, it’s the beautiful way that Le Guin has blended the fascinating ideas from Science-Fiction, with the engrossing detail of character relationships and culture in a Fantasy novel. Like Dune, when you pick the book up you are transported to this world as real as our own and exists beyond the turning of the page. Between chapters sometimes there are stories in the form of folktales or even fables that give extra depth into the world of Gethen, but also  the attitudes that come with it. The passivity, the resilience and the awareness that the Gethenian race seem to express that is unlike our own aggression, cowardice and ignorance. They may not be a better race, but they are an interesting one, that can be unpredictable without becoming ridiculous.

Not a may; this is a must read.

This book was chosen recently as a novel that Sci-Fi fans would give to people to get them into Sci-Fi. I am impelled to agree, if someone read this book and said that it didn’t make them think or feel a little differently about our world and its conventions, then I couldn’t recommend any book to them whatever.

A glorious and insightful trip into our own Earthen minds, The Left Hand of Darkness offers a story about discovery of self and others, an adventure into the unknown lands and above all, a lesson in surpassing and redeeming humanity, no less than a must, not a may, read.

 

The Left Hand of Darkness

Films of 2013

If I hadn’t made it abundantly clear, I went to see Pacific Rim earlier this week. I loved it. I particularly enjoyed the part where the mech punches the kaiju in the face.

I wouldn’t say it’s much of a stretch to say that all mainstream Hollywood films should look to this film as the minimum they should be doing, as what made Pacific Rim work was the unique idea and attention to detail, not budget.

This month has a slew of good movies coming out like The World’s End and The Wolverine but there are also a lot of other interesting films coming out in the near future.

Elysium is a Sci-fi movie with Matt Damon in the lead role, the trailers looked really pretty and there was a lot of interesting tech in also, Damon appears to be wearing mechanical-assisting exoskeleton.

The Grandmaster is a film by Wong Kar Wai, who directed In the Mood for Love and 2046 which are some of my favourite films, this time he is telling the story of Ip Man, a legendary martial arts master who taught Bruce Lee and you might remember Donnie Yen playing him in the self-titled Ip Man and Ip Man 2 films of a couple of years ago. The Grandmaster features Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi sharing the silver screen again like previous roles in Hero and 2046. We can expect a more drama-based retelling with this new rendition and hopefully a return for Wong Kar Wai to the public eye.

Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick were some runaway hits that I surpisingly didn’t think were half bad, now Vin Diesel returns in Riddick, but it’s not really much of a surprise because he’s always talking about it on Facebook in between 90′s styled shopped images of him on beaches with sentimental quotes from him in italics. Katee Sackhof who played Starbuck in the new Battlestar Galactica is going to be in this film so that’s nice. I’m mostly looking forward to them explaining away Riddick’s aging of nearly ten years in the space of a few minutes.

There’s a film coming out called Gravity which has a really cool looking poster, but it looks like it’s basically Open Water without the enticement of sharks.

Not content with expanding a short trailer into a film, Machete is getting a sequel, which apparently has Mel Gibson in it. For some reason.

The Fifth Estate is a film about Julian Assange with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the title role, way to go Batchy, I thought there wasn’t anything you could do to make yourself undesirable, but you proved me wrong.

This movie sounded interesting, and for all the wrong reasons. Escape Plan, about a man who is incarcerated in a prison he designed, it looks a bit sci-fi and has Sly Stallone, Arnie and… 50 Cent. Whu-What? I’ve not heard of this film before so it will be interesting to see how this is marketed and what people make of it.

47 Ronin is a famous story in Japan about samurai that have lost their master and seek revenge on the culprit, now the American’s have decided they want a slice of the action and thought that inserting Keanu Reeves as Japanese is enough. There is a brilliant actually Japanese cast behind him, particularly Hiroyuki Sanada from Twilight Samurai and Tadanobu Asano from Ichi the Killer. For some reason I have always enjoyed seeing Keanu Reeves in films if only to ridicule him so I figure it will be gold watching him try to put on a Japanese accent.

There are also some obvious choices of films to watch this year, Thor: The Dark World, Hunger Games 2, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Wolf of Wall Street which is directed by Martin Scorcese so I figured these needed no introduction.

However this year also has it’s fair share of tosh in the remake of Oldboy, whose trailer decided to ambiguously ignore a key plot issue from the original film/manga, KickAss 2, which features a ludicrous boy-child playing hero and an irritatingly innocous girl playing super-assassin, Anchorman 2, more of the same dreary and unrefined “humour” wasting away what little comical value Ferrell has, Carrie the film nobody wanted a remake of and finally there is Ender’s Game.

Oh, Ender’s Game. How I want to love you, but it’s so hard to love something that denies an entire section of society’s right to exist and pursue happiness. Of course I’m talking about the bigoted author, Orson Scott Card.

The book looks interesting if not rather derivative of Starship Troopers, and we all not what I thought of that, but it upsets me that there is a movie for this film when there are so many more filmable and better Sci-Fi books out there just waiting for illiterate audiences to mong through. I will be boycotting this film like I have his book, but if I find either in a charity shop where my money is as far away from Card’s homophobic sniffing nose then I might painfully indulge myself, knowing that a charity will earn from his intolerance.

Fortunately backwards thinking folk like Card are rapidly becoming a thing of the past as this week England finally received Royal assent, so in celebration here is a picture of Jennifer Connelly, to whom I will someday be married.

Films of 2013

Ghosts of War

Another Steampunk novel?! Another sequel which I didn’t realise until midway through the book?!

Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann seems to be a relatively little known book and its sequel, Ghosts of War, more so.

Found gracing the general fiction section at a charity shop, the front cover depicting a zeppelin above New York intrigued me.

Set during the Prohibition era with flappers and the like, the plot is based on an alternate history timeline as is usually common with steampunk. In this world, after Queen Victoria and her artificially prolonged reign, came Queen Alberta whose war-obsessed mentality negatively impacts Britain, who is currently in a cold war with America.

The book is based in America, particularly New York. The main character is Gabriel Cross, possibly the worst case of over-romanticising a name I’ve heard, he is some form of a playboy that also has a dark and damaged past as a WWI fighter pilot. In order to maintain a semblance of sanity, he’s done what all good citizens do and take up the mantel of being a powerless superhero, but luckily for Gabriel, he lives in a steampunk 20′s, so he can make the tech to kit himself out.

He is The Ghost, a hero of the night, who wears a cape and a sneer for the bad guys. We’re thrown straight into the action when he goes on the hunt for some flying brass creatures which have been nicking people and making off with them back to their lair and The Ghost is trying to stop it.

So, already from the start I had questions, which I thought would get answered after the obligatory action scene ends, but this is a sequel so it just never answers the questions like, why is Gabriel Cross rich? How is he able to make his gadgets work? Later on there comes more complex questions like, why are the police force so under-powered?

As the book progresses the world turns from “Steampunk Superhero” to Lovecraftian horror as a creature from another dimension gets involved. Pretty heavy stuff to be laying on a genre piece like this. It seems like the main arc of the first novel’s story covered this Cthulhu-like creature that entered our dimension by dark magic and science, however like with every aspect of the technology in this world, there is no explanation or plausibility following any of these ideas as interesting as some appear to be.

Steampunk, unlike all other types of genre fiction focuses almost entirely on the technology, as opposed to using the setting to tell relevant stories/or express viewpoints counter to that of our current world. Sometimes, they go to such lengths as to attempt to justify Victorian era philosophies or even ignore environmental issues entirely, just to remain inkeeping with action and spy/detective stories set in a kooky place with killer gadgets. Unfortunately for Ghosts of War, the nerdisms of Steampunk are simply not there. Perhaps in the previous book some of the details are explained, but why on earth would someone read a steampunk novel where the gadgets make no sense?

The book is clearly aimed at adults unlike the previous steampunk book I read, which was aimed at teenagers, however that book was able to offer better realised gadgetry and mostly concepts that had relevance in the book’s plot and structure. There was no way you could take it out and it remain the same, however I feel like there could be everything taken out of this book and it would simply be a sub-par detective story, with illogical conclusions and no relevant commentary to offer on any of the key issues it could have.

There were two themes in the book, that of loss and of the horrors of war. Firstly, throughout the entire novel our hero is lamenting  the death of a lover in the previous book, however he seems to be rather superficially upset, also when he’s hopping onto another bird when it’s only been a couple of weeks makes it seem all the less important. Then there’s the War hero side of things. Unfortunately, without making a large effort, it’s always going to be difficult to try and pull the war vet has trauma line as quite frankly it’s been overdone to the point of becoming a comical trope. Yes, HUMOUR out of real-life terror. That is how clichéd this is. What little was done right stood out as we were taken above war-torn fields of France, but to then introduce to an alien squid in a barn really detracts from the experience, reminding us that there is little room for war, steampunk, horror and love issues in one book.

Overall it is an enjoyable book, but notably as a guilty pleasure, the steampunk aesthetic is merely just that and many plot points don’t hold to scrutiny, but there is a lot of action and it’s enjoyably cheesy, with the obligatory Batman-style helper detective stealing the show. The new love interest serves as a guntoting piece of eyecandy with a grief-healing philosophy and that’s all there is to it.

Fans of Steampunk will feel let down by the sloppy approach to a beloved genre, but comic book fans will love the gritty, action superhero character of The Ghost and the mystical element behind the book’s main show, the creature from the other dimension. It’s only short so it’s probably worth a read either way, after the first book of course though. I’ll be looking out for more from this guy in future.

Ghosts of War

Ocarina of Time-off

There was supposed to be an Ocarina of Time review here, but unfortunately I had a major disagreement with the craptop – which I lost. So instead I’ll give some highlights.

The only other Zelda game I have played is A Link to the Past, so I was surprised when I found that Ocarina was very similar to it, just in 3D.

I liked combat and the new gadgets but found that the Z targeting system is a little fiddly, the new weapons were great but was a little upset at the lack of purpose of some of the items like the Magic Hammer.

The dungeon design was fantastic although not quite as focused and formulaic like A Link to the Past, but this works in its favour as it follows some of the other slightly unintuitive parts of the game which make it feel more like a point n’ click.

The hardest dungeon for me was the Shadow Temple and not the Water Temple like most others.

Overall I loved this game and it’s now one of my favourites, I particularly enjoyed that the game was able to make feel awe-stricken, which is a feat considering that I am playing it so late and I’m so critical. The last time I felt so amazed at a game was when I was playing Dragon Quest VIII for the first ever time, which went on to become my favourite game.

I’m currently taking a few days off work on holiday, which I am using to see Pacific Rim at the cinema. I don’t often go to the cinema as I dislike being penned in a room with a collective simple aim of watching a film that for the most part will not be understood in between the moments of inane chattering, checking of phones or stemming of infant’s trachea, all that I have the privilege of paying roughly a tenner for. But, for Pacific Rim I will make an exception, because Kaiju and also because I heard today that it’s not doing so great at the box office, not that I should care as a consumer, but it makes me feel very sad a film that leeches money and interest from viewers like ‘Sharknado’ will get more headway than Pacific Rim.

I’m not trying to pick on what is still clearly an under-dog here, but this film is the same sort of pilfering tripe we see come from The Asylum, uninspired, uncharming and unconvincing, these kinds of B movies are making a very insincere attempt to cash-in on the cult adoration of people like myself, and it’s all the more upsetting that people seem to be falling for it while letting a genuine fan-letter AND boundary-pusher like Pacific Rim trail in the box office.

Evil Dead made a very honest attempt at horror and failed, when they made the second film, which was completely aware of itself, it still managed to remain a very honest attempt at making a good movie, one with convincing characters and a solid plot. Just because you have sharks in tornadoes, it doesn’t mean you have a literary license to throw all rules out of the window without replacing it with context or consistent narrative. It’s just being ‘random’ for ‘random’s’ sake.

Anyway, in order to hype myself for tomorrow, here’s my top 5 Kaiju Monsters.

5. Rodan

Rodan began in his own movie of the same name but managed to mingle himself in with Godzilla in Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster. Rodan is more of a race of flying creatures, but he’s still included because he has sonic boom powers.

4. Mothra

Like many Kaiju monsters, Mothra began as a baddie in self-titled film from 1961 and went on to become a staple good guy in Godzilla movies after Mothra VS Godzilla, which was the first crossover Kaiju film.

3. King Ghidorah

A three-headed monster that is Godzilla’s rival, he first appears in 1964′s Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster. He is a fearsome opponent and uses gravity beams and other breath powers.

2. Godzilla

Go, go! Godzilla! With his atomic breath, he is the King of Monsters, well Toho monsters anway. Godzilla was created in 1954 and represents all of the horrors of nuclear energy and was inspired by the creature from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

1. Gamera

He’s a jet-propelled flying turtle with fire breath! Originally created in 1965 to cash-in on Godzilla, Gamera is more powerful and crazier. He becomes a good guy unlike Godzilla and fights all sorts of strange creatures. I prefer Gamera as the films only feature him against the antagonists instead of loads of different monsters. Also he has tusks.

Gamera flying on left. Gyaos an recurring antagonist on right.

Ocarina of Time-off

The Monster-Horror Genre

So after the narrative disaster of “The Swarm” I realised that perhaps I should learn to manage my expectations when approaching books and learn to perhaps be more open-minded about different interpretations to the monster-horror genre. Or perhaps not.

There is a very strict structure in Monster-horror, and yes, I have coined this as the new term for the genre as you can’t go around calling it “monster-movie genres” all the bloody time.

Almost all Monster-horrors stick to the basics and tweak it just enough to be interesting and identifiable.

I think I already mentioned a lot of the basic issues with the book, but here I am going to outline the formula for a Monster-horror, which borrows a lot from general horror and may be useful and interesting for you to note when you next watch a film, so you can be just like me, a cynic who forgot how to enjoy life.

DEFINITION AND PREMISE

The beginnings of the Monster-horror genre can be said to have begun with The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, whose titular tripods follow many of the same tropes of Monster-Horror, oversized, unknown and unexpected.

The monster in question is always hostile and inhuman, lacking any communication skills and with no real reason as to its ultimate goal however destruction of humanity is one of the by-products.

INTRO

All monster-horrors, even ones like Alien, start with a semblance of normality, showing the people who we are expected to deal with for the rest of the book or film in their normal routine and trying to make them as relatable as possible. This is where the main character’s personality is established and their relation to other people. This entails showing that the protagonist is a normal person with some abnormal traits like being able to actually think and are also either extraordinarily well-equipped to deal with the monster due to some hobby or in the less inspired stories, their occupation directly relates to the specialising in or destruction of the monster in question.

FIRST CONTACT

The creature appears and almost instantly starts causing problems. This gets dismissed by local authorities despite deaths happening.

Protagonist notices this and is promptly ignored by an idiot in authority.

SECOND CONTACT

People can’t possibly fail to notice as the shit hits the fan good and proper, the main character is forced into action and never makes full use of saying “I told you so”. They begin to assemble a team and this is also where love tends to blossom between the main character and an under-developed bint who the author/director thinks will escape criticism because she’s occupationally relevant and her IQ is good on paper but not in application.

HOPE

The team makes a plan and works really hard on it, character bonds are formed and personalities developed. Some bright spark, either main character or the inevitable weirdo comes up with an ingenious plan, which is needlessly over-explained to the viewer/reader.

FALL & DESPAIR

They go to execute the plan but it doesn’t work, the creature is too overwhelming and the plan only serves to boost the power of the monster, the public lose faith in the team and their good cause – someone important usually dies here in the attack.

DEUS EX MACHINA/DESPERATE ATTACK/ANNIHILATION

Here is about the only place where things differ between books and films. There’s the easy route out, like in The War of the Worlds where, out of the blue, the aliens are struck down for seemingly no reason by bacteria, a lot of Hollywood stuff use this, it’s especially good for ones with romance in as then the woman can feebly cling to the man as they await their fates, only to be embarrassingly saved at the final second.

The other one is for the main character to use a last ditch attempt, something seemingly impossible to get a “lucky win”. This is just boring, at least there’s potential desolation with the former! But this one is usually reserved for more in-the-moment monster-horrors featuring lots of action like Jaws.

The final one is just failure, like in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The hero never succeeds and humanity is doomed. I like these ones best, if you hadn’t guessed.

There are also some other common tropes that are usually dotted about the narrative like false alarms/misplaced fears, as I said in my last post, but this can also mean danger from things other than the monster like other characters etc.

The monster is indiscriminate in its killings, but in a predictable way. Basically they are written to kill characters that are good purposely to show that they couldnae give a toss.

THE ANTI-TROPE

Zombie movies are a bit like Monster-horrors however they typically don’t feature the same tropes as above.

The main characters are often completely normal with no special abilities, knowledge or anything, frequently other side-characters are shown to be more capable all round than the protagonist is.

When the shit hits the fan, it does it steadily and somewhat slowly in comparison to the explosion of chaos seen in other monster-horrors.

The plan that is created is usually to escape and not to eliminate the zombies, it’s due to this that the end of zombie films is usually just the survivors finding a place to hang out relatively zombie-free until help hopefully arrives.

The Thing is singularly exceptional in that it deviates nigh all conventions throughout the course of the plot, this is why for me The Thing is the best monster film ever made.

With the release of Pacific Rim it looks like some of these tropes are being crushed, but in a good way. The Lovecraftian-style untameable horror mixed with Japanese Kaiju VS giant mechs? This is a brilliant way of dealing with monsters!

Monster-horrors have no singular theme or underlying message in common, however the closest there is, is that humanity is to blame for their own downfall, if we looked after this better, if only we hadn’t done that. However this feeble message I feel often means squat when twinned with a happy ending where we win. How exactly are we taught a lesson to change our ways if brute force won out?

The Monster-Horror Genre

The Swarm

When you pick up a book called “The Swarm” and it looks like this, despite that awful phrase, ‘Never judge a book by its cover”, you’re going to make a few judgements about its content and when you start reading it, it will be with certain expectations in mind.

Rather, you’re not exactly expecting Crime and Punishment levels of realism and seriousness when you pick up The Swarm. Clearly you want a cheesy but fun, horror inspired monster book based on swarms of killer bees. Preferably GIANT KILLER BEES.

What you wouldn’t want then is to be given a rational and plausible scientific diatribe about “slightly larger than normal” bees with a “somewhat aggressive” streak in, with very little integration of such heavy facts in the novel, would you?

Why then are we fed a boringly acceptable version of a beaureaucrats killer bee story, complete with mild interruptions of daily life and reduction in honey stock at the supermarket?

So as you might have guessed this book is about “Killer Bees” supposedly. Written in 1974 by Arthur Herzog, the story follows an entomologist damage analyst something-or-rather who discovers that there is soon an African bee epidemic about to sweep America.

As with every monster-movie style story, the protagonist has an occupational affiliation with the particular problem at hand and also a personal issue in that he has a phobia (a pretty mild one to be fair) of the “monster” in question.

Why do these stories feel the need to involve a professional? To give some semblance of reality I can understand, but they make it feel like you have to be some kind of insect enthusiast just to merely be in possession of any knowledge of how bees work.

For once I would like a normal office worker to be the hero in one of these stories, we shouldn’t be leaving it to zombies, the pop-culture black hole of speculative fiction to be making average people dealing with problems.

The inevitable and unlikeable female sex interest is anomalously more vapid than usual, she ONLY appears in order to relieve the main character at critical moments by using sex whenever he feels remotely stressed. Not only is this incredibly sexist on many levels, but it’s also a terrible diversion that the author uses in order to avoid making his character, well, actually have CHARACTER by dealing with problems. Even just seeing him under a little bit of pressure without his favourite sex toy might have been vaguely entertaining. As the situation with the bees worsens he seems unusually calm and relaxed despite not having a clue on how to defeat his ridiculous adversary.

The majority of the book is detailing the lives of bees, explaining in news-fashion incidents involving the bees and the main group of scientists who are trying to beat the bees using SCIENCE in a large warehouse laboratory. Now the least we’d expect is some brilliant character dialogue and rapport here, because as we have established; the story is rubbish, the characters are rubbish and even the main stars, the bees, are rubbish, but no, we have yet another load of old toot when we’re faced with possibly the worst dialogue in the history of ever.

What do you say to some children whose parents were just violently killed before their very eyes in broad daylight by a swarm of bees, the same swarm that also chased them for miles stinging them before reaching safety? Let’s see what main character John said.

“I know how you feel,” John said to the boys. He explained how bees had chased him and stung him when he was ten. “But you mustn’t be scared of bees for the rest of your life, or-” He started to say, but didn’t, ‘You’ll have bad dreams’.

The African Bee from which the books bees are based are known colloquially as ‘Killer Bees’.

Really John? Is that what happens? Bad dreams? Not years worth of mental strife which spirals into a deep chronic depression that perhaps means a lifetime of alcohol, domestic or violent abuse, not to mention suicide? No? Just some bad dreams because you had one or two boo-boos. What a wimp.

The book is peppered with such bad writing, with even the scientists made nearly completely forgettable by having such non-descript personalities, there’s not even the “minimum” requirement of character development given to these people to make the reader care when they inevitably get killed off.

Any times when there was the potential for a showdown or horror segment with the bees the book just “opts out” and I actually mean they don’t even show some of the interesting bits. For example, what remains of the scientists in the warehouse place is attacked by a swarm of bees, but we’re only told when these scientists have already arrived at their next destination.

“The Swarm is the over-realistic monster book that nobody ever wanted.”

Now, I hate this technique, even when used mildly effectively for horror purposes; relating past events about a scary situation, because the knowledge of the outcome will always dampen the effect of the scares. Stephen King is notable for using this technique in the best fashion it can in books like IT. But in this novel, the “relocation” of the people is told literally in passing with no sense of drama. Another odd lack for this paltry horror is false alarms, you know, usually cats and stuff screeching after a curtain is slowly peeled back. Not a single one of those. I can think of some really good ones too.

Overall, I couldn’t recommend this to any horror or monster fans as there simply isn’t enough material that was enjoyable, The Swarm is the over-realistic monster book that nobody ever wanted. The formula was tired and when not being overused, was averted in all the wrong ways, the themes were not incredibly thought-provoking and some of the concepts like the roles of women in science, were dated if not socially incorrect. However, it wasn’t boring and was a far cry from being bad, it merely seemed to lose it’s way a lot. At very least I learnt a few things about bees, like Queens only mate once.

I have included thus a scene which I wrote and think would have greatly benefited the book if it was included or had I been alive at the time the book was written.

As he investigated the small clearing, John thought he could hear a faint buzzing from an overhanging branch in a large Oak which towered above the others in the forest.

With trepidation, he approached the Oak, leaning over to arm himself with a thin, but durable stick lying near the roots.

The trunk of the tree was dry and pieces of bark fell off into John’s hand as he attempted to measure the suitability for climbing, pressing his palms on the surface. Just as he began to retreat for re-assessment he felt a brush against his ear and a thrum of wings buzzed as if inside his very head.

With a yelp, John threw his hand up towards his face, acutely aware of the unexpellable nature of the human ear. He twisted and hopped, throwing his branch hand up wildly, desperately hoping to hit home on the assailant. He turned and his eyes opened, just in time to see a large Bluebottle zip back behind the Oak tree.

The Swarm

Tales from the System Shock 2 Pt.2

And things were going so well…

Stiffy wakes up and finds that something has gone wrong with the ship and he’s been ejected from cryo-sleep. For some reason he is now on the Von Braun and not the Rickenbacker. He is also has amnesia. Hmm… I wonder if this will become relevant later on?

Some woman who calls herself (a certain game made by some of the developers of this one have made me a little suspicious of helpful friends that you don’t see) Dr. Janice Polito who tells you that you’re recovering from surgery and that something has gone very wrong with the ship. She doesn’t tell you why you had surgery or what exactly is wrong with the ship. Apparently an evil force has hijacked the ship.

She’s on Deck 4 and we’ve got to find an elevator, but first we have to get out of the cabin before it depressurises. We got a wrench though. Past a pane of glass a woman runs past and is chased and shot at by some sort of man.  It’s a little bit creepy.

Those damn Ice cream trucks always escape me.

I can imagine the ghosts of the future probably will be doing retail therapy in the afterlife.

There’s a bit of a rush before we’re safe and then it’s pretty much exploring after that.

It’s here that I saw my first ghost apparition. Some story segments and background information are told through audiologs while others are through these apparitions of dead people that appear who re-enact moments of their lives.

After finding a code for the door we enter the main area of this deck. This is where the game really starts as instantly Stiffy finds himself attacked by some weird… mutant man. It takes a number of hits from the wrench to bring him down and he dealt a fair amount of damage.

After this we are then told we need to charge a battery to enter the next area, while a nosy camera in the way. We also get here an in-game game which is a small version of Minesweeper, I quickly noticed that they forgot to program in first-click invincibility, so sometimes the first click can lose the game.

Moving on we enter a room with a decidedly creepy man hanging on the ceiling and then a mutantman jumped me! I yelped when this happened, the game is already creepy but it also has some incredible jump scares.

The horror…

We also find the regeneration tubes here, which work when you die, but cost nanites. After this we find a small hub area where there is a cyber-looking face on a panel. Dr. Polito tells us Xerxes is blocking passcodes and doors and so we have to find some kind of Doctor in his lab. But first we must charge that cell.

I presume this face here is the visual representation of Xerxes. It kind of reminds me of Gamesmaster, an old TV show.

Chemicals can be used to make stuff in this, but I am not really sure what, so skipping past the chem-room we find a large-ish room with turrets on the lower floor. It took me ages to take them out in the most conservative fashion as it is here that I discovered how little ammo the game is supposed to give you. Between the two turrets is the charging station for the cell.

Attempting to sneak up on these fellows is a little harder than Thief.

After placing the cell in the required door, Dr Polo or whatever “uploads” some upgrades to me which I can use. How very 90′s. Here is where I spent ages trying to decide what I wanted to upgrade as I was scared I would screw it up.

Moving into the next area we learn the term for the apparitions as “Self hypnotic defects in the R grade unit”. There are lots of monkeys around here, which throw blue balls of magic at you and are really hard to kill as they are so low to the ground. In fact it all starts getting really difficult here! There is a room filled with radiation and then two mutants appear and one even has a shotgun! It’s hardly fair, what are these people even doing with guns on this ship? This isn’t the military ship remember, this is the escorted ship!

Past a turret in another room we find a key card and not much else, going back and following the right-hand route and a bunch of monkeys jump out and scare the hell out of me.  There’s a small area here where it seems that they were experimenting on the monkeys and there is another  card. After a lot of exploring and backtracking I eventually found a corridor I missed, Dr Panda says that Dr. Watts who has the key is badly wounded and has the number I need for the maintenance shaft, rushing along to find him because I really don’t put it past this game to just kill him off and leave me high and dry, I find a large room with a floor below and a member of the Many, the name for the infected survivors of the ship.

Too little, too late.

Well, looks like we were right on time! To get the number that is! Dr Watts is dying and tells us that they were trying to lure Stiffy there to become a host. Whether that means one of what they are or something else I don’t know and certainly don’t wish to find out, I take the two audio logs and then move back to find that there are now two mutant men upstairs where we just were.

After a lot of messing around I finally kill them and start listening to the audio log which contains the passcode on my way back to the maintenance shaft when I bump into this fella.

Oh bugger.

It takes a lot of hits to take down and then on the final hit, the sodding thing blows up taking off loads of damage. What an arse-hole.

Now I have the passcode to the maintenance shaft we can now enter the next area…

Hydroponics Deck 3

The beginning of this deck is full of windy corridors with lots of radioactive areas, after wandering around I found a room  with a lock on the door, which had some goodies in, Dr Parappa then calls and says that someone is wandering around controlling people. The room just next to this has a camera in, but I didn’t get far as I then I got killed a bunch of times by a robot that kept walking into me and blowing up. Tsk! Another time then!

This robot lacks preservation instinct.

Tales from the System Shock 2 Pt.2

Perception of Gaming

A little while ago I made a couple of posts aimed at the positivity of the videogames becoming a more mainstream pursuit, especially in terms of equal footing to films and books as a medium of entertainment.

There are a couple of informative and in-depth pieces people have written lately on the subject, so I shelved it for a little while until I had something else to add to the table and this week, I was dished aplenty. With videogame crowdfunding problems, censorship & banning in Australia and possible microtransactions added to World of Warcraft, I finally felt I had enough material to go on, so here I am with the final part to my trilogy of posts on the expansion of games which started with the treatment that game companies give their fans and was succeeded by the generalising of gameplay in modern games.

Firstly, current perception of gaming is a lot better than where it was 10 or 15 years ago, the geek culture that encompasses videogames has become more popular culturally since Marvel films started getting made but at this point in time there is still a negative image surrounding the general idea of playing a videogame.

Games of the video and role-playing variety, were incredibly popular amongst stay-at-home people, for those that did not have much social company there is an abundance of single player videogames on home consoles and PCs and for the more sociable, they can play games like Dungeons and Dragons.

In both examples the kind of worlds often portrayed and the kind of ones preferred are more often than not vastly unrealistic, namely Sci-fi or Fantasy-based, lending itself to an assumption of escapism for the people who are playing them.

It’s not entirely disagreeable, even now most people including those that do not “game” on a regular basis could probably agree that playing a game is often an act of escapism as well as entertainment. Here is where the first misconception came in. Just because someone enjoys escapist hobbies, doesn’t mean they are unfit for society in some way or even avoiding it. Sometimes I believe that psychosomatic belief in this is what causes a vast amount of gamers to confirm the close-minded oppressors’ suspicions of this stereotype.

Even when not following the archetype of a “common gamer” there is still the hurdle of being seen as either stupid or having a child-like mentality. This comes from when the NES was marketed as a child’s toy because of the videogame crash in the 80′s. People still believe they are aimed at children, especially as games were a convenient way of entertaining children with little to no input from guardians. It is usually these same lazy parents that blame videogames as evil and brainwashing as they do not pay attention to their children’s lives or in some rare cases pay too much to them without doing any external research on the things they demonise.

I agree that interactivity is primarily something that is marketed for children when it concerns purchasable products as it is all part of learning and “conditioning”. Unfortunately some people misguidedly believe that learning ends when you leave school, so any form of interactivity is soon dismissed as “immature” and “skiving-off”. Even when not considering that interactive entertainment is not actually a crime, it irks me that just having something that can exercise your mind, keep you busy out of harm’s way or even the fact that it’s entertainment so it shouldn’t be coming under worse scrutiny than harmful substances is getting such a bad rap. Not like it concerns these people anyway.

This week, despite changes in Australia’s Guidelines for the Classification of Computer Games that came into effect on January 1 2013, Saints Row IV and State of Decay were both banned.

I personally work under the philosophy of zero censorship, so obviously I naturally thought this ludicrous just like our own England’s banning of Human Centipede II.

We still haven’t gotten over “video-nasties” of the 80′s, so it was fairly expected, however Australia’s rating was not only shocking considering the new guidelines, but also incredibly unfair. If this was a film, this would not be happening, so why do they do this with games?

Children. Somebody PLEASE help the poor, innocent, Saints Row IV fan-children from this videogame nasty!

In England they ban Human Centipede II because they simply don’t want people to watch it.

In Australia they ban videogames because they don’t want children playing them.

Do they really not understand after all this time? Not all games are for your children! If children could grow up without needing any guidance and if the world was a nice place full of rainbows and chocolate pillows, then biologically we wouldn’t need parents.

But that just isn’t the case and just because there is a Pokémon movie out there your child liked, doesn’t mean that your child can watch The Thing, only for you to ban it because you afterwards you don’t think it’s suitable.

Speaking for myself, I have had much trouble all throughout my life with people judging me and what I do, despite my other redeeming qualities clearly showing that I am not some mindless drone stuck in the body of a pubescent teenager. I did well at school, I have a job in publishing, I read Milton AND I play videogames, NOT as a guilty pleasure but as something I rate as highly (if not in ways higher) as literature, cinema and music.

Obviously,  many people that do not deem games as art, despite believing that art is an undefinable term that encompasses much more than paintings and sculptures.

I recently read an amusing review for a film, done in the style of a game review, however humourous, I couldn’t help but be somewhat offended by the casual dismissal of review format for the industry. Unlike other artistic mediums that often undergo the “review process”, games are part-service and part-product, meaning that functionality has to be taken into consideration. And YES. This does mean you must talk about them AT TIMES as if you were reviewing a defective kettle. That in no way detracts from the validity of the form as art, as even art can be reviewed purposefully too, at times like this, I like to think of the difficulties that sports writers have when writing about a match, this in no way detracts from the sport.

Other mediums do not have many facets to cater. I did hear once that just having many different aspects and creators was enough to denounce games as art, but then, I also remember the late Roger Ebert’s very same struggle with explaining the artistic vision of a film director’s role in movies.

A gamer once expressed distaste for the term “The Citizen Kane of gaming” and too right too. There is no Citizen Kane of gaming, there is only one of film. If by that, it is meant a game defining games as a truly unique medium and a tour-de-force to be reckoned with, well in that case we have hundreds. It happened long ago. Is there a Beethoven of films? Or a Shakespeare of music? No? That’s because these references are not transferable in terms of themes but only in terms of impact.

In that respect we have Super Mario Bros. It ticks all the right boxes. It is a perfect example of a game. A game that deserves this title always had to be gameplay based and intrinsically ground-breaking.

In order to convince people you must first just accept yourselves.

Tim Schafer once said that “You have to act famous, before you can become famous”. It’s true of games, instead of throwing fits whenever someone criticises your games, just concisely say you disagree and that perhaps the person should try something to play. Whenever discussing games, don’t shy away as if ashamed and always just continue talking and acting that games are already accepted as the art you believe they are.

But Tim Schafer cannot always be trusted upon for sound videogame virtue, as his very own company is a good example of why businesses from other sectors look enviously upon the lucrative videogame industry, but also laugh at the embarrassing rookie mistakes it makes, like Schafer’s own Broken Age crowd-funding campaign.

The Double Fine Adventure was initially kickstarted over 8 times the amount required, but just this week he announced that on the current track they’re running, he’ll have to cull 75% of the game.

I mean, give or take 5 or even 10% off leeway, but 75? No way. That’s just the world’s worst planning and I’m certainly not too proud to say I already called that.

This is all more concern for our industry, showing its unbankable roots and juvenile dreams. We need to play a bigger game if we want to be taken seriously.

Fundamentally the games industry is ostracised by its peers and our sole defender is Geoff Keighley, a conspicuous person himself. It’s odd that none of the company’s whose interests involve videogames being desirable do not ever step up to the plate when it comes to not so much defending the medium, but advertising and shouting about all that is good about it, all it requires is a change of demographic marketing. Nintendo has partially grasped this by making non-gamer based ads, but with the inherent acceptance of gaming being weird with their ad campaigns of “not a gamer” this is proving rather difficult as it is only reinforcing the belief that gamers are separate entities to “normal people”.

As games become more mainstream, we can certainly look forward to a lot of these problems we experience becoming a thing of the past as people become more tolerant. The games industry itself as a business can stop being laughed at due to its fledgling policies, reviews will be accepted as relevant and teachable form of journalism and most importantly, people everywhere can enjoy and pursue their non-harmful activities without the fear of persecution.

I hope that this acceptance will lead to the money-grabbing schemes which harm the artistic integrity of games, such as monetising, micro-transactions, DLC etc, becoming discontinued, if not better refined by the very companies that are representing us and currently “safe-guarding” our medium. But for this to happen, we have to prove that games are worth the fight, we have to ensure that we do want to be taken seriously and in turn make ourselves the very ideal we wish others to embody.

In the meantime, I will continue doing what I do best, playing games and then writing about them.

Perception of Gaming

Brave New World

Long before Orwell’s 1984 there was Brave New World, a work of dystopic fiction that was written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley.

As a work of speculative fiction it depicts a totalitarian world of the future whose oppression is not based on violent restriction, but instead chooses to nurture its inhabitants to make them happy with their slavery.

Several hundred years in the future, the world has embraced widespread psychological conditioning and reproducing humans using their chemical components.

The world is a utopia, there is no poverty and everyone is happy.

The entire beginning part of the book is dedicated to the complex world in which Brave New World is based.

The government (the World State) has large people farms called Hatcheries, which using machinery to fertilise ovaries externally means that there hasn’t been a real human birth in years. This is done to regulate the population, which is capped at two billion and to also keep the citizens as single minded as possible. After the foetus’ have been decanted they are then conditioned into their lives in society.

There are 5 castes of citizen, the three lower ones are interfered with in their… creative process? Which means that they are essentially substandard humans that are made for their job roles. The higher castes are not given anything extra and are higher functioning.

Baby clones for everyone!

Each caste’s conditioning makes its members believe their group is superior and they enjoy being what they are. The conditioning is done mostly by Hypnopaedia, where they play recordings to the children when they are asleep in order to imprint thoughts and teachings on them. The recordings are usually little ditties and rhyming phrases and older citizens can be heard reciting them on occasion.

Religion and art are all but wiped out, taking its place is Ford, who is revered almost as a god for creating the first assembly line, feelies, which are essentially porn films with sexual inhibitors in the theatre and orgy porgies, which are basically as they sound.

The society is based on controlling people by making them enjoy their lives and living to the excess, even to the extent that they are wasteful, just to keep the economy and need for new things going.

The main character of the book doesn’t appear until quite late, the novel requires a lot of setting up for the framework of the story. Before we meet the protagonist we firstly see the world from the eyes of some of the inhabitants, whose lives revolve around sleeping with each other (with a contraceptive belt being worn) and buying things. Lenina is the focus for the beginning, we see that she is a fairly normal person in the world of the novel, however is still able to infringe upon some taboos such as not having many sexual partners and involving herself in a fairly abnormal man of a higher caste.

She wishes to go to the Reservation in New Mexico where there are still some “savages” living outside of their society.

After reaching the reservation the rest of the novel rests on John the savage. He is the illegitimate son of a higher official and a mistress that was born because the mother became lost on a trip to the Savage Reservation and was unable to return back to “civilised society”. This made very little sense as surely the reservation has quite a number of visitors and she would have been found at SOME point during the 20 odd years she seemed to be there bringing up her child John amongst the savages.

John is found by Lenina and a male companion called Bernard and is brought back with them as part of a scam to threaten the boy’s father in order to get him to halt negative proceedings on Bernard.

John was brought up with savage ideals and only some knowledge of the World State’s beliefs. The novel covers the horror of the “Brave New World” to John.

The title of the book is based on Miranda’s speech after seeing sailors land on the island in The Tempest. Aldous Huxley was a political satirist in several notable magazines such as Vanity Fair and the book reflects his dark humour in that respect. The style of the novel is third-person and is necessary as it flicks back and forth between different characters and also different scenarios.

Huxley was clearly afraid that society would become docile to the point of submission, World War II hadn’t happened and the world was becoming intoxicated with capitalist economy. The novel seems to encapsulate fears of this mixed with the rule of communism. It seems an odd mix, but it blends well in execution.

The 1956 radio adaptation.

The novel has been banned several times in many countries since its publication, even now schools are still having to take it off reading lists as parents deem it too subversive.

The book heavily endorses art and free-thinking as part of its philosophy and for the most part much of the opposing values in the World State reflect that. However, regardless of how free love still seems unusual today, I think that the implied aversion to it is somewhat counter to the “free-thinking” message, especially as our monogamist habits come from social pressure and residual religious teachings, something he was clearly rallying against. In this sense the book feels a little dated and even somewhat close-minded.

However, the book remains uncannily modern in all other aspects. I was shocked to discover that this was not only older by 1984 which was published in 1955 but it also predates The Fountainhead and WWII. The language doesn’t betray its era, the science involved with the fertilisation process was sound and you could easily be fooled into believing a well learned man of science from today wrote it. I even noticed the style in which he kept snapping to and fro in a scene in the first chapter felt very cinematic and fast-paced. The book could easily last another hundred years and fool people.

Chilling and thought-provoking, I’ll never pass another week without doubts on my own thoughts and decisions again.

Brave New World

Incredible Crisis

This post marks my 100th on this site and so instead of a boring retrospective, it’d probably be easier for you just to hover over the tabs at the top there and just reacquaint yourselves with my other reviews and theories. For the centi-post today, I thought I would take a little look at a game that has a special place in my heart.

Incredible Crisis on the Playstation 1.

A somewhat strange game that was released at the latter end of the PS1′s lifetime in 1999, Incredible Crisis is an arcade style mini-game compilation game and so features a wide variety of gameplay set into small segments.

As a Japanese game by a small game developer it’s strange this game was released at all, it was published by Titus, who seem to have put their money behind a lot of games in the PS1 era, looking at their catalogue which includes such superb titles as “Superman 64” it’s not too hard to understand why they’re not around any more. Fortunately thanks to their aimless mass publishing and Virgin Interactive’s distribution in the EU, we were able to experience this amazing game. Also what the hell IS “distribution” anyway? Isn’t that the job of a publisher, or were they trying to share the burden?

When I say it’s a Japanese game, I really can’t stress the “Japanese” part enough, this game has a dance choreographer listed in the credits!

The game had to have two of its minigames taken out because they were kanji-based. (Kanji is one of the Japanese alphabets)

Why is her mouth stitched shut?

The game starts very similar to Gitaroo Man (Ooooh… Gita-roooo Man…) with a sexy lady’s voice saying “Welcome to Incredible Crisis…” and that’s how you know the fun begins.

The story is about a Japanese family and how all of the members are trying to make it back early for Grandma Haruko’s Birthday. The father of the family is a salaryman called Taneo and first chapter follows his day at work.

Now here’s where I would usually talk about the gameplay, but that’s a little bit difficult as it changes from mini-game to mini-game. So instead lets just go through some of the early games.

The first game is a rhythm game based on many Japanese workplaces’ habit of making their employees endure morning exercise before they start work.

Different buttons on the D pad and face buttons appear and you must press them at the right time just as they pass the line. After a few round of increasing difficulty, you then have to fill a meter by repeatedly hitting a button. The dance moves are awful and hilarious.

In Japan, everyone has trippy exercise routines before work.

But before Taneo can celebrate a good “working out” a giant metal globe that was being placed conspicuously on a statue without supports shockingly comes loose and somehow falls horizontally into the skyscraper window just where Taneo is at. This is the start to a very bad day for Taneo.

Taneo seizes his chance for survival and makes an Indy-style dash for it, which turns into a convenient mini-game.

Repeatedly pressing X makes Taneo run faster but uses up the energy drinks. Taneo seems to be able to drink them at superhuman speed and after a short interval eerily replenish them, I don’t even want to know how he recycles this liquid. Obstacles which are clearly a health and safety nightmare are in the corridors and he must tap up or down to avoid them.

Why are there so many stepladders in this building?

After reaching an elevator, it begins falling at rapid speed and Taneo must repeatedly press the stop button to get it to slow down. Notice how many button-mashing mini-games are in this? It gives Metal Gear Solid a run for its money for arm-ache. Also there are objects falling from the building which he must avoid.

I can’t help but feel like it would take a peculiar set of circumstances as well as a lot of health & safety violations for any of this day to have happened.

Know this, it’s not ninjas, yakuza, earthquakes or tsunamis that will most likely get you, it’s dangerous clutter.

After this there is a balancing game on a pole that he inevitably manages to fall onto and somehow survive. There is a meter which you must let go of the x button at the right time to hit the green area for him to move forward and if you make a mistake you must balance him right again.

After this, the bloody pole breaks anyway and he falls through multiple tarp before somersaulting safely in front of the entrance to the building. For some reason the Skyscraper had market style tarp on the sides of the building.

The globe rolls out of the entrance doors and goes right by him, but unfortunately he is hit on the head by another random object.

Smooth.

This next bit is a trivia game, but it has some of the most difficult and random trivia, ranging from, 1 + 1 =? to Did Florence Nightingale serve in the Crimean war? Seriously! Then there are fairly large multiplication sums you have to do in three seconds and if you get a question wrong twice in a row they zap you! And I heard Japanese Healthcare was best in the world…

Then the bastards push you while on your gurney out of the speeding ambulance! So Taneo does the only reasonable thing one can do in that situation and surfs it. This game you have to avoid various road stuffs and out of control cars as they come towards you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then it’s the sex game.

Well, not a sex game, but it may as well be. Some woman turns up (you can actually see her in the first mini-game doing the dance workout) and starts flirting with Taneo, who like any good husband, quickly succumbs and eagerly joins her on a Ferris Wheel out of nowhere.

Her dress has changed colour, but I could recognise that bust anywhere.

This is the most awkward game in the world, I say this because at least most the most lurid games have the decency of being on the PC where headphones are accessible.

You need to massage the woman, you can only see the Ferris Wheel and must listen to her instruction to move the D pad in the right direction and when… “prompted” repeatedly mash the button to fill up the gauge.  This doesn’t sound so bad right? Dead bloody wrong. She utters the directions in a very seductive voice and when you hit the right spot she moans orgasmically rather loud, but you kind of need to hear her so have to keep the sound on. Very embarrassing. It’s also the mini-game I’m best at.

Even she says I’m the best.

After she’s had her way, she jumps out of the Ferris Wheel into a helicopter and turns badguy by placing a BOMB in the pod! Taneo is blown onto the windshield of the chopper which makes it spiral out of controle, so he jumps off onto the badguy woman who has a parachute. Then for some reason she and the military start shooting at a giant Independence Day style UFO and Taneo has to shoot their missiles out of the sky with a nearby turret. Yes, a nearby turret.

It’s pretty easy to shoot the ones going to the alien’s ship, but I can’t ever seem to shoot the ones coming towards Taneo’s turret.

My favourite character in the game. He likes to hit himself on the head with a brush.

After this the boat has leaks and starts to sink. There is a really weird man in the boat with Taneo who is my favourite character in the game who helps you out. You must repeatedly tap the buttons (again) to fill the bucket with water and then empty it, while avoiding random objects that keep falling from the water spout. Serious litter problem in Japan!

One of the only times I would encourage someone not to help, is this Sailor dancing whilst I dewater the boat that is sinking.

This is all I could be bothered to play in order to get pictures, but I managed to get a lot of the weird sailor. There aren’t many pictures of this game online and it took me a while to get these together, I died quite a number of times. I own a copy on the Playstation, but the the console’s on its last legs at the moment.

The later chapters involve the other family members, but I’m not so fond of those. It’s a real shame that there aren’t more games like this in the west because you can damn well bet that Japan has tonnes of these every year.

After the boat, Taneo boards a train, helpfully derailed by badguy lady, but this backfires as it somehow manages to burst straight through the floor, not harming Taneo right in front of his house.

If you do play this or have already played this there are some games that evoke the same Japanese kind of vibe like No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! on the Playstation and there is another similar to this called Minon Everyday Hero on the Wii, Mister Moskeeto on the Playstation 2 and the entire Katamari series. If you find anymore that you would like to recommend send it to mike@ireofpurgatory.com I would love to see some more of this unique style.

Incredible Crisis is a great game, which is enormously fun and good to play with a friend, taking in turns. The humour is very cheesy and slapstick, but I found that I am still laughing loudly to the pure ridiculousness of it all. In the words of Taneo: U-WAAAYYY!!!

Incredible Crisis