I Served Serial Joe a Slushie

Moved site to http://geoff.reluctantm.com/. This site won't be updated anymore.

Games of the Year ('07 Version)

Everyone likes end-of-year lists. Well, even if they don't, here's another one.

(1) Portal

Today's Penny Arcade says it all. Besides the aspects mentioned there (best writing, best new game mechanic, best song) it's maybe the only game I know of which doesn't overstay it's welcome. That is, it ends exactly when it's supposed to, and doesn't feel the need to be any longer than a four-hour game simply because the industry standard is 20-30 hours. This is a game everyone should play; it's just too much fun not to be enjoyed by all.

(2) Stalker

When describing it in a forum, I wrote "this is the game Half-Life 2 should have been". I don't know where that come from, but to me, it's exactly the right description of this game. By "should have been" I mean to say that it is truly the way next-generation first-person shooters should be. It remains essentially linear, yet with wonderful freedom of choice about how you get from point to point. It also shares, with Aquaria, the virtue of not making you feel as if the world is solely constructed to have enemies attack you - most humans will ignore you unless you start to bother them or they want something from you. It's also brilliant in how it handles certain monsters. Most games introduce an interesting creature, then repeat it ad nauseum - in Stalker, certain creatures appear only two or three times, and to great effect. Finally, it's simply a lovely vision of apocalypse - check out some screenshots to see what I mean.

(3) Team Fortress 2

The week before M went away, I was trying a number of squad-based first-person shooters. I played the demo of Quake Wars quite a bit (the "our scv is damaged, repair our scv" voice drove M crazy), and quite liked it. When I noticed TF2 was coming out, in the orange box (which, of course, also included Portal), I thought I'd try the newly-revamped version of TF1 - Fortress Forever. I played it, and thought to myself "there is no way I can ever see myself liking a Team Fortress game". The mechanics of the game were simply too convoluted, and the game didn't appear to reward team work in any way whatsoever. Nevertheless, I did buy the orange box, thinking I'd give TF2 a try. The fact that it is now one of my favourite games of the year is a testament to the developer Valve's brilliance.

They retained the interesting idea of the original - nine distinct classes to use - and made it work. A great example is the medic. No other first-person shooter has got a healing class right - most games simply allow the medic to drop health packs which players generally ignore. In TF2, the medic can keep a constant healing stream on a player, so long as he stays close by him. This allows a great symbiosis between the medic's target and himself, as the player being healed also gets to see the medic's health. By virtue of the design, the two players naturally work together. Besides having great design, the game is also wonderfully amusing, by virtue of the semi-random comments the classes say when they do things. Hearing the "heavy" sing opera off-key as he waltzes into battle is priceless.

Also-rans

Aquaria, The Witcher, and Oblivion (goty edition). I really enjoyed large parts of each of these games. In the end, however, something kept me from finishing each one. Aquaria just got too frustrating. After my initial wonderment (see the post below) the game fell back on old-school nonsensical puzzles, which was just too frustrating. The Witcher was absolutely brilliant, and I hope to continue playing it, but for now, it just got too convoluted (and with slow loading times - hopefully the newest patch fixes that). Finally, Oblivion is the usual Elder Scrolls experience - marvellously open, but in the end, too devoid of personality to last. And, of course, just simply too long.

Disappointments

Bioshock and Phoenix Wright 2. Bioshock has maybe the best first 15 minutes of any game, ever. But it's doesn't even come close to realizing it's potential, as it falls back on the corridor-shooting mechanics of old. The much-hyped "atmosphere" feels tacked on. Phoenix Wright 1 is my one of my favourite games of all time (it would be on the above list except for not being released this year), but the sequel just gets everything wrong. In particular, the writing falls far below par, with numerous leaps of logic that annoy rather than surprise and amuse.

Incidentally, Merry Christmas everyone! :)

Man, am I ever glad M is home. I'd forgotten how nice it is to talk to her :)

Aquaria

After seeing that it had won the IGF last year, I was super-stoked to play this. Unfortunately, the "spring" release rapidly changed to "summer", then to "it's done when it's done". This was looking more and more like it would up with other independent hopefuls (I'm looking at you, Braid - if you really had such awesome time-travelling mechanics, shouldn't you be out by now?) - lost in the limbo of endless revisions and fixes.

Fortunately, they managed to pull everything together, and released it last Friday. I wasn't actually expecting that much from it, after all the waiting - and initially, it did start off a little slow. But the world quickly opens up, and once it does, it is friggin' sweet. It has all the joy and fun of the classic 2d Metroid games, but feels more fluid because you can swim around in any direction rather than hop from platform to platform.

What really makes the game, however, are the creatures. There's astonishing variety here, with most of the fascinating creatures of the deep represented - vampire squids, blowfish, moray eels, etc. What's great is that each of the creatures has different behaviour - some ignore you, some attack you in groups, others squirt ink at you then swim away - it's constantly entertaining.

Aquaria trailer: (man, I'm impressed I figured out how to embed videos)


I'm preparing a list of my favourite games of the year, and I'm pretty sure this will be on it. (Incidentally, my favourite game of the year starts with p and rhymes with ortal - but how could it not, being a game about cake and all?).

M. Night Shyamalan Films

I don't know why I was thinking about these recently. All the movies I've seen of his have at the very least been interesting, but there is only one I actually like - Unbreakable. Why is this?

I think because it's the only one where the twist at the end feels as if it makes sense in the context of the story that has been told. The twist for The Sixth Sense is probably more surprising, but upon reflection and a second viewing, brings little to the rest of the story. In fact, watching it after knowing the ending just isn't very interesting. The twist at the end of Signs is hardly a twist at all (maybe the twist, after seeing two of his movies, was that there was no twist) - but it needed something larger to complete the movie. The twist for The Village was rather predictable and tedious. (I haven't seen Lady in the Water).

But the ending of Unbreakable makes us realize the very type of story we've just seen, and completes the part that was missing. It just feels so right. Nor does it dectract from the movie upon second viewing. It also helps that the rest of the movie is enjoyable in its own right, with it's own climax before the true ending. I came away from the movie not feeling cheated or tricked, but as if I suddenly understood what the movie was trying to say. (Ignore the rest of this if you haven't seen the movie yet but plan to).

All through the film, there are two competing influences - the "comic book" story of the main character's discovering of his abilities, and the "real-life" struggles of the main character as a human being. For a long while, I felt as if these really were competing with one another - which story was it trying to tell? Of course, part of the problem is that something is lacking from the comic book part of the story - the presence of a villain. The ending resolves this, showing the villain, and making it clear that it really was a comic-book story - but at the same time, as the villain says, it is about discovering who we are. This brings two realizations. The first is that, after all, comic book stories really are about discovering our identity, as the main character has to do with both his abilities and his real life. Secondly, that discovering our identity is not always something we should wish for - as the villain finds out. This is not to say that it was his "destiny" to be the villain, but rather that his very act of determining his identity made him what he became. It's a brilliant revelation of the structure of the comic book story for both this film and for the genre.

Great article on the legend of Leeroy Jenkins. I find it highly amusing how much he actually is a celebrity - he's constantly harassed in game, his server is overloaded with people wanting to talk to him, his guild-mates are sick of the whole thing. He even had an in-game stalker; astonishing.

I have never been able to watch the video without laughing at the warcry, the "he's so stoned" or the ending "at least I have chicken".

Live feed of people playing Desert Bus for charity! Highly entertaining! Check it out! (I can't stop watching...)

Very cool - a recreation of Toronto as a Half-Life 2 level. Haven't tried it yet, but it sure looks interesting (and reasonably accurate).

Re-viewing Two Movies

Has anyone noticed that more television stations seem to be showing more movies these days? It seems to me that it used to a relatively rare occasion for a station to show movies, and if they did, there were usually of the movie-of-the-week sort of variety. Now, for example, the station-formerly-known-as-TBS shows a movie every night - and most are of them did fairly-well at the box-office. Anyways, with M away, I've been watching more movies on TV, and lately had the chance to re-watch two movies I was disappointed with when I first saw: Gladiator, and the Godfather Part II.

Gladiator

The actual watching-of of Gladiator I remember fondly. It was our second or third year at Waterloo, and M and I were out with a bunch of people. I believe we had been out pretty late the night before, and we decided to go see a movie with this group - Gladiator, as it turned out. After the first 15 minutes or so, M fell asleep - and soon after, I did too. Having been so tired all day, and having done so much, it was great just to doze off beside my lovely girlfriend. I woke up here and there, and watched bits of the movie, but each bit I saw only reinforced my belief that I wasn't missing much.

However, lots of people seemed to like it, and it won a bunch of Oscar's, so when I saw it on TV again, I thought I'd give it a second chance. As it turned out, it was even worse than I remembered. The plot makes no sense, the characters are essential caricatures, and, to top it all off, the action is, for the most part, rather dull. The movie also takes itself far too seriously - always a bad sign. I still don't understand what people see in it.

The Godfather, Part II

(Note: re-reading this post, I realize it contains quite a few "spoilers" for both Part I and Part II. If you haven't seen these movies yet, I highly recommend doing so before reading this, even if you don't think you'll like a movie about the mob. If nothing else, see it as a fascinating study of the films' main character - Michael Corleone).

I really, really liked the Godfather Part I, and after seeing that most critics preferred the sequel, I was hyped up to watch Part II a few years ago. After it was over, however, it felt like a huge disappointment. Two things come to mind about that first viewing. First of all, I didn't quite follow some of the plot details. There are a number of events that happen quite quickly around the centre of the film, and I just didn't really follow what was going on. Secondly, I just didn't see the point. To me, it seemed as if the point was to compare Michael and his downfall to his father's rise to power - then to hammer it over your head, until you were sure to get it, that Michael was, essentially, a complete bastard while his father was just looking out for his family. By the last twenty minutes, I just wanted it to end.

After the previous evenings re-viewing of Gladiator, I saw that this was on TV again as well, and so decided to give it a second chance - and was I ever glad I did. What a difference this second viewing made. I can now see where the critics were coming from with this one.

Perhaps the key event that I failed to grasp was the ending of the movie. I loved the ending of the Godfather (I) - as I had written about in essay on aesthetics, it was the moment when the film became art. With the single image of the lackey closing Kaye off from Michael's inner sanctum, we realize just how much Michael has changed - and how power has corrupted him. This, just after Michael has flat-out lied to Kaye, and she believed him. It's a stunning scene.

On watching Part II for the first time, I essentially glossed over the ending, which I now realize is perhaps an even more insightful ending than Part I's. By flashing back to when Micheal first announces to his family that he is going to war, we are suddenly forced to realize how little Michael actually wanted any of what he now has. At that time, he had flat-out rejected his family "business" - but his father, and father's advisor, had "other plans". Now, after years of power and neglect of his own family, we see just how little Michael actually wanted this power he now has. As I mentioned earlier, throughout Part II it is almost impossible to feel any sympathy towards Michael at all - but with this one scene, suddenly we do.

Realizing this, I suddenly understood the structure of the film much better. By opening the movie with the killing of Vito's father, and Vito's subsequent flight to America, we start by feeling sympathy towards Vito, something that is carried throughout most of the film. For most of the entire film, he is shown merely trying to support his growing family - when he loses his job because of organized crime, he turns to crime himself to support his family. When the local Don tries to stop his business, he merely takes the next logical step. Conversely, by intercutting Vito's rise with Michael's fall, we feel almost no sympathy for Michael, as we are given little background. His attempts to grab further power, contrasted with his father's humble beginnings, make us hate Michael. Then, suddenly, the final scenes reverse all of this. Vito returns to Italy to avenge his father's death - but not for any real purpose, as the man he kills is barely conscious. We start to be worried about our previous sympathy towards Vito - and just as we think this, the final scene helps us understand Michael, reversing everything that has gone before. It's a brilliant ending.

Nor did I realize how much Part II reflects Part I, just as Vito's rise reflects Michael's fall. There are numerous parallel scenes, each revealing aspects of the other. The most obvious is the (modern-day) opening - each begin with a celebration on the Don's estate. But the celebration in part II serves to illustrate how Michael has lost touch with his roots (or perhaps is discarding them) as the food, music, and general atmosphere feel like a cheap Las Vegas celebration, rather than the opening of Part I, which feels like a joyous family reunion. Another good example of parallel scenes are the scenes where Micheal consolidates his power at the end of each movie. In part I, he has little other choice - he himself would be killed otherwise. In part II, he does it to enemies that are already fleeing, and have little hope at striking back. In part I, it serves as an example of how powerful Michael has become - in part II, as an example of how far he has fallen.

I can see where the critics were coming from. It is undoubtedly a more complex film than part I, and definitely required a second viewing. It was also an interesting exercise to then compare it with Part III - but that will have to wait for another post.