Drakengard

Drakengard is an action hack n’ slash game published and developed by Square-Enix and Cavia, it was known as Drag-on Dragoon in Japan and spawned a small franchise consisting of Drakengard 2, Nier Gestalt/Replicant and the upcoming title, Drakengard 3, confusingly set before the events of the first game.

Made in 2003 for the Playstation and released in the UK mid-2004, the game is known to be rather controversial as it handles numerous taboos and was rated a 16 for release in the UK but not without altered and censored content.

The name of the game derives from the character of a dragon which is the main character alongside Caim, a young man whose parents were killed at the hands of a dragon owned by the Empire when he was young and has since harboured immense hatred for dragon and humankind.

He meets and forms a pact with a red dragon after both have become mortally wounded in a battle with the Empire, he becomes desperate to live and agrees to the pact in order to return quickly to the castle which houses his sister who is under attack by Empire forces. Caim’s sister, Furiae is a fragile woman who is the current Goddess of the seal, something which is a great burden on her. She was previously engaged to Inuart, a passionate young man, who doesn’t seem to let go of her.

Caim and Red Dragon

The pact between the nameless dragon and Caim mean they both can live through their wounds and are empowered by each other, however, for humans to join with powerful beasts, there is a sacrifice involved, especially if your pact animal is as strong as a dragon. Caim loses his voice after the deal and thus the dragon must make his speech for him, as they are now mentally linked. The red dragon has contempt for humans and often talks candidly about the situations of the people and armies around her.

The game is set in a western-medieval setting where dragons, elves and magic exist and the gameplay is reminiscent of games like that of the Dynasty Warriors or Sengoku Basara series, Drakengard consists of a character fighting many enemies on screen at once and working their way through a large army while completing objectives. Caim can use a variety of swinging weapons such as swords, short lances and cleavers, he uses these in a hack n’ slash fashion with the square button mashed to make chains of attack with the weapon and when pressing the triangle button after intermittent flashes he can round of the combo with a finisher which does some splash damage, triangle outside of combos is used to do a magic attack, which depletes manna. The combo lengths, styles and type of magic depend on the weapon you are using, you can level up the weapons with use and can find more weapons in the game.

The other type of gameplay is the dragon, which involves Panzer Dragoon style combat like a shoot em up, or there are the battlefield levels which you can change between Caim and the dragon.

There are two modes, story or free expedition. In free expedition you are able to level the dragon, Caim and his weapons as well as search for new weapons. The story mode has a few branching paths and several endings depending on whether the extra missions are unlocked and completed by successfully accomplishing the objectives that are required, such as time limits.

The gameplay is idealistic at best, although the idea of it is good and for the most part is playable, the feel of the controls as well as how clunky they can sometimes be bring the game down a lot, there are times when you can get stuck in a volley of hits and are unable to escape as the character’s model is reset when damaged, this means you cannot roll or block in time to prevent being hit.

The dragon’s part is less broken, however there are some awful bosses that are fought, which can be a pain as they are stationary and can be difficult to fight.

Red Dragon gameplay on the left, where you can burn things.
Caim on the right who can also burn things, just not all the time.

The story is fairly basically told, but is by far the redeeming feature of the game. Most of the detail in the game is unfortunately background detail, which although very interesting, cannot hold a candle to true storytelling, but considering the style of genre, it has in droves. All story aspects outside of creations of situations and actions, lies in the insinuations in dialogue. This is how the game handles the taboo.

The game tackles complex themes such as incest, cannibalism, obsession, jealousy, hopelessness, rage, sacrifice and in the Japanese version, paedophilia. However all of these subjects are served on a tactile plate during cutscenes or dialogue pieces between characters during game segments.

It is a shame that there was such extensive cuts to the localised versions of the game, as it renders some parts a little confusing, however if you’re paying attention you’ll grasp the insinuations.

The music of the game features famous classical pieces remixed into very repetitive background music, which is both eye scratchingly irritating and mind numbingly enjoyable.  What I can say about the score is that it does suit the gameplay in that it is samey and dull, but you continue playing anyway.

There are various endings of which lead onto other games, the default ending leads onto Drakengard 2 and the weirdest ending leads onto Nier’s storyline. Either way, it requires a fair amount of work to unlock as some of the paths have very high-levelled bosses you must defeat to get the ending you want.

Drakengard is certainly not an easy game to recommend, it’s not for everyone. With terrible handling gameplay and shocking story elements there’s much to dislike, even I had a spat with the game when I came upon what I consider a particularly cheap boss, but overall, it’s a unique game which, despite being troubled, is a rewarding experience for those that brave its morally ambiguous tides. Plus it’s got dragons in it.

Drakengard

Haikus for Gentlefolk

The dawn of discomfort

I am sniffly.
It’s too bloody hot in here.
I want a tissue.

Morning

Hmm, is this my sock?
It looks like my kind of sock.
Well it’s my sock now.

Journeys and travels

One is on the phone,
The other is chewing gum,
I want to be home.

The Stain

Where did you come from?

From what dark depths you emerged?
O beautiful stain

Beauty in commonality

Walking through Asda,
Where have they moved the bread now?
To the other side.

People in my way,
Children bumping into me,
No, that’s my trolley.

Get to the checkout.
Load it, scan it, bag it all.
I forgot my purse.

Haikus for Gentlefolk

Grand Theft Auto V

1.57 million copies sold. On the first day of release. In the UK only. There aren’t words to describe the popularity of GTA, only numbers.

What can I say that hasn’t already been said by others? What’s there to talk about when everyone is out there playing it right now? Well for a start I am probably one of the only gamers in the world that spends such vast amounts of time on the medium with nigh zero experience with the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Like previous installments GTA V is an open world mission-based game, with a fairly linear storyline weaved throughout. The main characters are typically involved with crime and usually start out as a petty criminal working your way up the hierarchy to become a notorious gangster, this one however features three protagonists, each with their own special trait which comes in handy during gameplay.

The game starts off showing Michael during his last heist before he retired, he has a family and effectively settles down before he meets a young bloke called Franklin who is from the ghetto and wants to go legit. The third character is Trevor who was with Michael during the final heist that allegedly claims his life.

Once the story progresses and each character becomes playable, you are able to switch between them, with some of the missions being exclusive to certain characters.

The game is set in Los Santos and is much larger than any previous GTA, it’s set in the modern era, unlike other GTAs and the world is based on Los Angeles, sunny, with lots of varying areas, like rich houses, valleys, desert-like vistas and ghettos.

The main new attraction to the game is pulling off heists. They can be executed in different ways and you are able to choose how you want to approach it. After that you then pick what people you want to take part, basing your choices on their skills and how much cut they want to take, which is proportional. After every heist the characters the come back from it will gain experience and become better but will never take a bigger cut, however if you take people who aren’t good enough they can be killed or worse, ruin your heist.

It’s all about weighing up your options.

After you’re finished planning the heist, you then have to get started on it by first collecting the materials you’re going to need to pull it off. After that, you are then briefed and do the heist how you planned it.  There’s a certain amount of your choosing, some amount in your skill while actually doing the heist and lastly there is an element of luck.

After you do the heist, the successful winnings are divided between the crooks.

There’s not much to say about this game.  There’s so many miles of road, city-block and dust valleys. There’s so many characters, cars, clothes, guns and even properties. But it’s all the same as the little I played of GTA Vice City, except instead of coming back to the reassuring modern era after lampooning the 80′s, I’ve no place to turn when GTA rips into the social media and violent videogames like itself. It has nothing to replace everything it sneers at.

As I played the game, I didn’t feel anything outwardly wrong, but after turning it off, my brain switches back on and asks the rest of me if I missed it. I didn’t. But I am glad it’s back. Back to try and make sense of the weird unease that I am left with when I play this game.

That there is something hidden beneath a thin veil of cool music, fast-talking djs, sassy gangsters and shiny cars.

I’m worried that there isn’t anything there at all.

I am left with the same feeling I get when I finish watching American Psycho. That nothing matters at all. That the most macabre thing about the whole experience is the feeling of nothingness it leaves behind, giving me a knock-on effect of worry and sadness.

Everything looks so real, I didn’t even think about how incredible it is that I can see so far into the distance, because it all felt so lifelike. But it’s not. Not quite.

You know the uncanny valley? This game has it, but not with people, but with the world. The world is eerily realistic. And it feels so fake.

I don’t know if this game was ever meant for me, but I do like it. I’m just not sure how I am meant to be feeling. I’m not sure if the developers planned things to be the way they turned out. It feels too unintentional.

I hope they one day make a game that can reach the headlines the way GTA does, but this time I want the headline to say something positive, something that is able to translate what is great about videogames to the unaknowledging public.

I just don’t think GTA will be that game.

Grand Theft Auto V

Thoughts of a violent videogame maniac

Videogames have changed.

They’re no longer a place for the persecuted minority.

A haven where I can express pent-up feelings of the rest of humanity.

Where I can freely enact fantasies of violence against work colleagues, friends and family.

Where I can create maps as organisation for my real-life crimes and plan out maximum devastation with maximum efficiency.

It used to be an exclusive place, which harboured a unique community with whom I could talk about my troubles and we could support one another with our aggressive countermeasures against the evil, corporate society.

But now, there isn’t anyone like me, I am alone, the exception, because the internet is filled with sneering women-defenders and game reviewers going on about ‘ludo dissing’ my games, changing them, warping them into an unsightly beast I no longer recognise.

Like that Bioshock Infinite, it was really awesome, I got to kill people with my claw thing, but then at the end it was all talky and they kept going on about stuff that was uninteresting and at one point was saying about how my dude was evil because he kept killing those people. Like, that’s what games are about fools! Just actions, not thinking about actions!

Tomb Raider was much better, but it could have done without those cutscenes, they were too depressing.

Not to worry, it’s not all rubbish. I am going to get my copy of the new GTA V game.

I hope they get rid of all those pointless missions where you don’t get to shoot anyone and those annoying main characters who want to ‘get out the business’ all the fucking time. They bring the game down, they’re holding me back. I just want to shoot hookers and shit.

Nowadays, I am simply unable to get my message out there. I work hard, playing games and planning, but when my work is finished and my victims’ families lay sobbing at their gravesides, they won’t thank me. They won’t blame me.

They’ll blame the videogames. I have no thought, I have no responsibility.

All of my suffering, their suffering, is nobody’s fault. No single person or movement can prevent it. Only games.

I am sick and tired of everyone ignoring me, nobody cares about me. I am fed up of it, it’s been happening my entire life, first my parents, then the kids at school. Now all of society is just trying to ignore me, push me under a rug, they won’t write about me, they only care about the videogames.

Well, I’ll make them regret it.

Thoughts of a violent videogame maniac

Why Tomb Raider isn't Game of the Year

When Tomb Raider’s new incarnation was released earlier this year it came amid much fanfare, the early teasers were good and promised a new “edgier” game with the tagline “A survivor is born” being filed, the game was a departure from the usual blind adventure of games past. The reviews came out and all were positive and some pundits were touting it Game of the Year, saying it was creating a bit of early competition for the honours.

Then Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us came out and the game was quietly pushed aside and the Game of the Year is now being argued out between the two behemoths and their respective fans.

Square Enix released some sales figures for Tomb Raider and a couple of other ganes, all of which were very impressive and then said that it wasn’t good enough.

Arguments were made about the games industry and the budgets and expectations for modern games, but in the end, what it means is that something like Tomb Raider isn’t recouping the costs and so we probably won’t be expecting games that are like this one, that is fairly ambitious but not absolutely life changing, to be made anymore. At least not by Square Enix.

As a consumer, the only thing I have to care about is the game itself. And for Tomb Raider, it still has its issues in remaining a relevant game.

In which Lara defends herself suggestively from a wolf.

For a start the game aimed at the darker, edgier Lara, being exposed to much more horror than before. The problem initially with this, is that bloody everything is darker and gorier nowadays. It’s simply not enough to give the game a lick of blood and have done with it, and on really simple terms, that’s pretty much all that they have done with the game.

Obviously I will give them some kudos for remembering that gameplay goes hand in hand with narrative content, so they changed the gameplay to reflect the story better by adding more stealth and survival elements in, but the thing that stops Tomb Raider from getting Game of the Year and what stops it from being a terrific title on its own feet without the comparative element is that they didn’t go the extra mile.

Everyone has already mentioned that Lara goes from weeping over a dead animal one minute to turning into Mrs. Fucking Cabela on a prize hunting day the next, but that’s not all. Once every cutscene ends, the game jumps straight back into game mode, where objectives pop up and she has special vision for no discernible reason and she can jump around with life-threatening wounds.

This is the extra mile that we’re missing here guys, and I don’t want to be the one that constantly points the finger at the better game but in The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite,  the main characters feel like they are integral to the story and are fleshed out, with pointless information about themselves and stuff, but you pay attention, because the story is engaging and characters are well developed and express themselves in a more human fashion, instead of soliloquising like Lara in a very robotic fashion with only information concerning objectives and not thoughts or feelings that couldn’t be expressed without words.

I did wonder what would happen if you failed the QTE, turns out he throttles her.

The non-playable characters also have the same kind of treatment but to lesser extent, whereas the characters in Tomb Raider were just expediting tropes for stories and cliché character relationships with Lara. The conversations between Joel & Ellie and Booker & Elizabeth went beyond just 2 dimensional emotions and they knew when some things were better left unsaid.

In fact, one of the biggest problems I had with Tomb Raider is that it felt… sexist, despite it being the only one of the three whose main character is female, the whole game didn’t feel like it knew who or what Lara is. It felt like it knew what it wanted her to be seen as. Basically it felt like men making a woman character instead of Lara just being a person.

I’m not reminded about women in games when I play B: I or TLoU because I am too busy enjoying the seamless presentation of what feel like real people enduring a situation that I feel immersed in. Whereas Tomb Raider leaves too much room for these thoughts.

Also there are problems with “women handling” in Tomb Raider. The “rape” attempt. Now, I plan on going in depth with the subject of sexual assault in games, but the gist of it with this is that you can’t show this kind of thing without it being a big deal and the developers don’t seem to have understood that at all. It would have been better not to have it if they weren’t willing to explore the subject fully. In the same way they should have been doing with all of the emotional events in the game.

There’s a vein of sadism in Tomb Raider, it’s always been there with the suggestive noises she makes when undergoing tasks or getting hit, but this game is the worst for it. She spends most of the time getting battered and making awful noises that mean you have to turn your TV down at night in case anyone suspects you of watching porn or something. In a way, it kind of is.

Lara was unable to have a relationship with any men that wasn’t either, patriarchal or warding off sexual advances or being used. All of the men in the game still treat her as a lesser object in that regard, with the cool character being a man and all this just felt like they were still trying to make Lara less identifiable despite her being the one doing all the work, it was like the devs were afraid men wouldn’t relate so had to add in a hard dude.

The one thing I thought was odd right from the start is that the Queen of the island, Himiko, was only ever described as being beautiful and powerful, being said in conjunction with one another enough times for it to be clear that it was all there was to this person, how many times has a male general or been repeatedly described as handsome and powerful? None? I thought so. It doesn’t matter as they only made her rotting and ugly at the end, because good looking evil women have to attempt to seduce someone and being that there were only women about they decided they had to just make her ugly instead.

Even the one part of the game that was vaguely redemptive had a strain of sexism, there was one section where Lara had to rescue a damselled man, the only problem being that a) he inevitably fancied her and b) she didn’t end up saving him and he died a martyr’s death, making her look like  a failure and him a hero.

The gameplay is imitating the imitator that is Uncharted. Like Bioshock Infinite it becomes over-streamlined, meaning that the game is somewhat easy and treats you like a fool, it takes the playing out of the game. Also like many hybrid games it doesn’t… scratch the genre itch that you get when you pick up a game like the original Tomb Raider or Soul Reaver. It’s hard to explain, but it basically comes down to me not getting the urge for playing it again, as it’s a jack of all trades and a king of none. Both The Last of Us and Bioshock suffer from this also.

There is also a considerable amount of clutter in the game. There are tonnes of useless collectables that show up when using that unexplained vision I mentioned earlier, then you have all of the tombs and stuff that take away from the progression of the game, the pacing is thrown off whenever I encountered these, I suppose they are optional, but it would have been better if they were encompassed in the story somehow.

Straight out of the gate, Tomb Raider had a lot of obstacles to being an impact on gamers. The competition was very strong this year, the entire genre of adventure action games have a hard time getting the title of Game of the Year, when there are such narrative laden, psychological experiences in modern games. But I think that if they’d played the right hand and put a bit more effort this game had a good chance of being something incredible.

But I guess it doesn’t even matter now…

Why Tomb Raider isn't Game of the Year

Don Quixote of La Mancha

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha is considered one of the first ever novels and was published in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second ten years later in 1615, the author is commonly known as Cervantes but his full name is Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and he is credited often as the father of the Spanish language due to his profound influence through the novel Don Quixote, such as terms like “Quixotic” and “Tilting at Windmills” entering not only Spanish but English usage.

The novel is named after and follows Alonso Quixano, a moderately wealthy gentleman of a small village in Spain, who adopts the moniker and title of Don Quixote, after he is profoundly (and by profoundly I mean madly) inspired by books about knights and chivalry, to become a Knight-errant himself, a man who roams the country as a knight searching for rogues and performing noble deeds.

So Don Quixote rallies up the necessary requirements of a knight by finding a battered old horse and naming him “Rocinante” his trusty steed,  bothering an innkeeper who he falsely believes is a knight, into “knighting” Don Quixote, so he can start being one, then he returns to his village and finds a squire by promising a farmer of the village an Island in return for his service.

The only problem with all of this is that Don Quixote has clearly lost his marbles and everyone knows it, that is except his squire, Sancho Panza, who is as simple as he is stout.

Look at the face…

Translated from Spanish, the original novel featured differing styles and versions of the language as often Don Quixote would speak in old tongue in order to sound more like his Knight-errant heroes, often this would lead to characters not understanding him and looking at him in amazement, while they themselves spoke in modern Spanish.

As an early novel, often argued as the first ever European novel, there are usually some expectations one has when reading for the first time, the novel is going to be a hard read, with lots of archaic language and some questionable structure, old and somewhat outdated themes and some terrible pacing. I’ve read enough of later novels to know that there isn’t much to recommend for your average young reader and it can be hard to talk about without sounding pretentious. But Don Quixote is different, and is quite possibly the most hilarious novel I have ever read. It was written after books of chivalry became popular and was intended to parody them by portraying a man that people would realistically consider mad if attempting such feats, against the backdrop of La Mancha, an area of Spain which was very dry and desert-like and not ideal for tales of Knighthood.

The novel invented the now cliché setup of one man and his sidekick, who questions but respects him, with the stupid squire vs intelligent master, the sane subordinate vs insane superior and fat sidekick vs thin main character dynamics. The whole novel is set into two parts or “sallies” as Don Quixote leaves his village on two adventures, much to the dismay of his family who just want him to stop reading his silly novels and gallavanting off pretending to be a knight and come home. Throughout the narrative there are many little adventures and stories from people he meets, all of whom doubt his sanity, which adds even more to the humourous story, with Don Quixote appearing to be relatively profound right up until the moment he utters some sort of absurdity and then the listener realises he isn’t quite all there.

The character of Don Quixote is a man who is able to deduce and think clearly and precisely on all elements of thought and is able to converse and express himself well, when concerning Knights-errantry he can become obsessive and almost violently defensive of his pursuits, especially that of “Lady Dulcinea del Toboso” a supposed Princess from El Toboso who Don Quixote has decided will be his lady which he serves and admires above all else and would defend her honour with his life, despite never having met her, her only role being to fulfill being the required maiden of a knight. She is presumed to just be a simple woman who darns n’ farms and isn’t a princess of the sort at all.

Sancho Panza is the simple yet down to earth farmer who frequently pulls up Don Quixote when he is acting mad, he also doubts why he is with him on many occasion but he remains loyal, especially in the hopes of receiving an island for his work, although he doesn’t know what an island actually is. All of the funniest situations in the novel are due to Sancho and his actions, he is fairly incompetent and often spouts nonsensical proverbs unnecessarily.

The only problem with the novel is that it is simply too long. I started reading this on a e-book reader and so didn’t know how long the book was until I finished a chapter and realised it had only gone up by a percent. It turns out it’s over 1000 pages long and the narrative is stringed together making it coherent but not incredibly engaging, despite the language being relatively simplistic.

The first part has lots of characters with many interesting stories to tell about themselves, however they do take ages to get to the point and sometimes there are songs and poems in that can be a little distracting from the story. It got to the point in one such story that I forgot how it came about and who was telling it, so lost were the points in the tales concerning the plot of the main novel.

I would love to see this book made as a TV series for children/adults, like Mysterious Cities of Gold, as the small adventures would work really well in an episodic format. It would be the perfect adventure show that seems so lacking in kids TV today, it’s funny and innoffensive while also being unrepresented in other media dispute its reputation. It could even work as an ongoing comic… hmm…

Don Quixote of La Mancha

The Last of Us

It is the fast-selling game on the PS3, receiving all-round critical praise from the gaming media and other quarters.

Developed by Naughty Dog, the folks who brought us Crash Bandicoot on the Playstation and later Jak and Daxter on the Playstation 2 and Uncharted on the Playstation 3, it was an unexpected move for them to release a new IP so late into the console generation that has brought them so much success with existing franchises.

Released in June, I didn’t immediately get the game in lieu of waiting for a price drop, however, this many months later the price hasn’t gone down by much, so I decided to just bite the bullet. And what a bullet it was.

Following the visual footsteps of Uncharted, The Last of Us is third person and is marketed as a “Survival-action”, which involves both stealth and shooting mechanics.

The game is set 20 years after an apocalypse, where the world was ravaged by a fungal disease, turning everyone into zombies basically. It shows what the  ”post-apocalypse” looks like and how humanity has coped with the infection.

The main character is Joel, a man who escaped the initial outbreak, however with much consequence. He has survived the past twenty years as a smuggler, who shifts contraband such as rations and guns in and out of the populated zone which is controlled by the military, who came into power under martial law when the infection started.

He is given a job by the leader of the revolutionary group the “Fireflies”, who object to the military handling of the remaining population. She is wounded and wants him to take a young girl out of the city to where there is another group of Fireflies in exchange for a large weapons cache. The rest of the game involves Joel and the young girl, Ellie, making their way to the Fireflies.

The gameplay is like a lot of modern gameplay and is extremely hybridised, but whereas in other games, this interactivity only serves to exclude the player and separate the story, the streamlined and smooth transition in this work to bolster the solid plot and characterisation that is established through gameplay.

The two main forms of play are stealth and shooting. Combat segments use a cover-based system, which don’t feel too suffocating, as the game already uses hiding and the ammunition is fairly scarce, so when resorting to firepower you have to be a good shot and use a good strategy if you don’t want to end up flanked by the enemy. Guns are gained throughout the storyline and there are also melée weapons.

Stealth segments are varied, with some of the infected enemies requiring different strategies to be overcome, there is a listening mode, where Joel can sense where enemies are in close vicinity, however he can’t shoot and can only move very slowly when he does this. There are three types of infected enemy of whom you’ll use stealth for more than humans. The first is the Runner, which are newly infected people and behave as their name entails. They represent the normal idea of a zombie and can be taken out with guns, stealth or melée. Clickers, which instantly kill and cannot be taken out with melée weapons, but they can be easily passed by walking slowly as they can’t see. Finally there are bloaters which take a large amount of firepower to take down and instantly kill when close.

The crafting system is one of the best things in the game, with things like Molotovs using the same ingredients as the Medikits, this allows a fun system where you have to decide carefully how you use the stuff you find.

The gameplay is fun and can be rather tricky, certain areas left me restarting 5 or 6 times, although I think it would have been good if they had made a few of the areas impossible to traverse covertly without resorting to mixing up the enemies by throwing distraction items, as so far everything can be managed without.

The story is the main thing that holds the game together, the relationship between Joel and Ellie wasn’t maddening like in other media of this sort and it reveals an overall improvement in characterisation (especially of children) in games. The narrative is shown not only through cutscenes but also unobtrusive QTE’s and while exploring, where a character might instigate a piece of conversation and if you want to hear more you can go over and interact with them.

As the game features zombies, this makes it inherently a horror title, which a lot of people might palm off, however I would say this is probably one of the most effective horror games in recent memory as it manages to make you scared of things happening, without ever actually resorting to cheap jump thrills and without feeling like it’s teetering on the edge of the moment.

Basically there are lots of moments in the game where it feels like a zombie or something might jump out but it might also not, but there are hardly any of these moments that actually happen and when they do, they are played out slowly and not thrown in your face. This is quite unique and it’s something that only lower budget horror films from the past have done albeit to lesser success as by not being a game they cannot enjoy the leisure of time games afford, nor the added apprehension of gamers having to deal with any horrors that arise.

What makes the game incredible is its fluidity, even down to collectables and trophies, nothing gets in the way of the experience and I never felt like I was worrying about anything, which even Bioshock Infinite did at times, where I was thinking about how to kill enemies in a certain way. In this respect, The Last of Us is the better game, as the narration and outside features never divert attention from the gameplay.

Everything is balanced. The characters are believable. The ending had value.
But most importantly, I can play the game the way I want to without sacrificing challenge and enjoyment.

The Last of Us

Hell by Yasutaka Tsutsui

Often billed as the “Japanese Philip K. Dick”, Yasutaka Tsutsui initially piqued my interest when I watched the Satoshi Kon animé film based on the novel Paprika which was written by Tsutsui.

Japanese novels don’t often make it this side of the globe and despite the popularity of his novels in Japan and his involvement in the modern pop culture scene, there’s been scarce attention paid to him here, with only a handful of his novels having been translated and published in the UK, his work is hard to find in shops, libraries and even online stores, when I eventually found some of his work on eBay, the prices were rather high.

Hell is a more recent novel, written in 2003, it was published in the UK in 2007 and is a Magic Realistic approach to the subject of the afterlife.

The novel is a vignette of many different characters, following the circumstances of their deaths and subsequent travels through hell; a place that is imagined to be much like the real world.

“A beautiful unity of humanity not seen in the living world”

To name a main character however, Nobuteru is the first to appear and also every character is somehow (if only distantly) related to him. Nobuteru is over 80 years old and is reminiscing on his life, especially a certain incident involving his two best friends of his youth which left one crippled. He feels shame and guilt for his involvement in his friend’s injury and frequently thinks about the two old friends whom he hasn’t seen in years.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Nobuteru for some time, his two friends have already passed on into Hell. Takeshi, the one who was injured, does not feel any regret for the incident, not in life and also not especially in Hell, as people’s emotions become dulled. Things that used to matter in their former lives, including the manner of their own deaths, have little impact on the freshly risen spirits.

People who are in hell are initially believed to be there because “the Japanese don’t believe in God” and also that they have commited some kind of sin, however many different people are present and are able to interact with one another. Hell enables its denizens to “look in” on the lives of other spirits and can also be in two places at one time with no knowledge of it.

Cover of the localised edition of Hell.

 

The style of language is simple and straightforward, with a fast pace following the shifts of perspective from all the different characters. It follows characters from all different backgrounds, coming together in death and portrays a beautiful unity of humanity not seen in the living world. The plot is about people it’s about what happened and how they feel and where they are going from now in a unique Japanese view quite unlike the west.

Thematically, Tsutsui is no stranger to controversy, the book includes some more disturbing themes of torture and adultery as well as a good insight into the internal workings of Japanese business society and how they are viewed by the public. It could be well described as a vertical slice of the concepts of adulthood and mortality.

“Hell was a world that surpassed the conscious mind, a world where elements of the psyche took on physical form. But apart from that, it really seemed no different from life.”

Comparatively, the book called more memories of Don DeLillo than Philip K. Dick. The fear of death is a prominent part of why we as humans are so interested in it, and both DeLillo and Tsutsui use the popular culture surrounding death and warp it into a thing of fear unlike Dick’s themes of sanity and paranoia and the state of government. This isn’t exactly one of Tsutsui’s Science-Fiction-esque novels or his many short stories, so there is still room for the PKD references to come  to fruition.

Hell is a different kind of Japanese novel, it doesn’t go out to create a feeling or emotion for the most part in the reader, it’s aim is to explore and inspire. If you go in expecting dictation, you’ll only come out with questions, as such, it is a great introduction to Magic Realism as it is not too heavy on themes and leaves with more resolution than the genre usually permits.

Hell by Yasutaka Tsutsui

Killer is Dead

Marketed to appeal to fans of Suda 51′s cult favourite, Killer 7, the new game by Grasshopper Manufacture, Killer is Dead isn’t actually directed by the company head, but by Hideyuki Shin, a former Konami employee who has never been in the director’s chair before. A bit of an underhanded move in order to shift copies to be honest.

Killer is Dead is by no means a Killer 7 spiritual sequel and very little of the game feels informed by it, the only common characteristics being that it is also heavily stylised and features assassins. But then so do most of Suda’s games for that matter.

Killer is Dead follows Mondo Zappa, a man with no memory of his past and how he came to be in possession of a strange metal arm. He joins an assassination company which deals in executing monsters and bad guys and is funded via its own clients and government subsidies. The name of Mondo echoes of an earlier character by Suda in the game Flower, Sun & Rain on the DS/PS2, who also sported a suit and similar looks, however this guy apparently has nothing to do with him. He does also come with baggage however, but instead of a suitcase, he comes with a stereotypical annoying girl called Mika, whose only input in the game is to revive Mondo when he dies and get kidnapped.

I suppose it’s really pointless talking about sexism at all in this game, it’s rife with it. In fact, there is not a single female character which isn’t not only heavily sexualised, but also completely objectified and advocating negative stereotypes at every given opportunity. This is without even playing the “Gigolo Mode” in the game.

The game is set into episodes, of which there are 12 and each features a level and a boss at the end. It is an action game in the style of Metal Gear Rising, but if Raiden was glued to the ground. Attacks and combos are all one button, with heavy attacks on another. You can block and dodge and if you do it just before being hit, you can get extra hits on enemies. The sub-weapon is the arm, which Mondo uses as a gun with blood as ammo… somehow. You can get more sub-weapons, but in order to do that, you have to do the Gigolo Mode. The skills, subweapons and passive abilities can all be upgraded by trading in crystals earned through killing enemies.

When I picked up the game I figured that the extra Gigolo Mode would be entirely optional. Unfortunately, although it is optional, the guns that are gained through doing it are incredibly helpful for the story mode and defeating enemies. Gigolo mode involves wooing ladies into liking you enough to give you guns. The aim is to seduce them and check them out, without them noticing you are doing so, although they know that you are checking them out and actually like it. It’s all very confusing and completely disgusting. People moan about Dragon’s Crown and the busty Sorceress, but it is only visually an offence if any, this however is demeaning to women and is endorsing rape culture, by saying that all women have no purpose than to be the objects of men and they enjoy being this, by bringing upon themselves.

I did make one attempt at Gigolo mode, however in order to complete the sexist circle, you must present the lady with a good enough gift for them to care about you enough (fantastic!) and I bought this woman a gem necklace, which apparently wasn’t good enough.

Morality aside, the game suffers from a number of defects, problems and just plain annoyances, most of which occur within the initial ten minutes of turning the game on. Loading screens are frequent, the game crashes, terrible hubworld, but the first noticeable issue, is the cutscene at the beginning of the game which shows Mondo’s shadow dancing on the wall, this is not the right generation to hinge a scene on a shadow, it looked blocky as hell.

The first segment of the game has Mondo walking excruciatingly slowly towards a target while telling you the buttons to simply move and turn the camera, which is completely unnecessary, but at least the tutorial is going to be thorough right? No, of course not, because the second the game starts throwing enemies at you, text boxes start turning up with the buttons on, completely counter to the show n’ tell method being used a little earlier.

The whole game has awful screentear, I was playing on a PS3, which is quite unusual as usually Xbox games have screentear from lacking V-sync but do have anti-aliasing which softens  sharp edges,  while PS3 games  are the opposite. I haven’t been able to hear what the Xbox 360 version plays like so far.

The story is also complete bollocks. Suda is known for offbeat stories and unusual characters, but in this it’s all very inconsequential and random. We don’t know anything about the characters and what we do learn feels rather pointless, there’s one point where the characters talk about someone being on the dark side of the moon, despite such a thing not even existing. Without context, this shows the lack of care and attention the devs afforded on this game, not only in programming but also story and game design. Speaking of which, the story is quite counter to the game flow, which is formulaic and numbingly linear.  There’s a few particular levels centered around dream sequences which are the worst, I spent the entire time not paying much attention as there was lots of locked-to-walking segments.

It’s not all bad though. The dream segment did spawn the second of only two examples of second-person gameplay that I know of, the first of which is Forbidden Siren’s sight-jacking ability. 2nd person gameplay involves seeing the playable character through the eyes of a non-playable character. This was refreshing, along with the  fast-paced gamplay, that albeit simple, was enjoyable and addictive. The character’s were at their best when breaking the fourth wall, and everything seemed to make a lot more sense when I imagined that Mondo was Keanu Reeves doing his usual bad act in an action film. He even sounds and looks exactly like him.

Overall, the game despite its flaws was a bit of fun, perhaps fans of Suda 51 will find more to their liking here, but it’s not altogether awful for people who aren’t either. It deserves it’s 6-7/10, but then, I’m not about to start endorsing numerical value systems for the sake of this game. Also, what happened to the fecking unicorn in the trailer?

Excellent!

Killer is Dead