Game Review - The Darjeeling Limited

As gaming technology progresses ever closer to full immersion, with HD graphics and motion recognition tech like Microsoft's Project Natal pushing the boundaries of what games can represent, we have seen an explosion in abstract gaming genres, more concerned with telling convoluted and compelling narratives than merely giving the player an avatar to guide through a series of environments. This attempt to match established storytelling media such as books and films might be misguided. Arguably, games can do certain things that other media cannot, so why not continue to do those things instead of trying to imitate old media like movies? However, this has not dissuaded games developers, and the latest release from game developer Wes Anderson, in association with Tweesoft Games, is a notable progression in this abstract-narrative sub-genre.


The Darjeeling Limited is Anderson's first project since the critical failure of his first-person shooter / marine exploration simulator The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. After sales failed to materialise, Anderson split from long-time collaborators RagnarokRain, a move that shocked the gaming community. The success of their previous games -- Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums -- cemented their reputation as purveyors of eccentric gaming experiences, with Anderson's fertile mind served by RagnarokRain's incredible coding prowess.

Nevertheless, it was risky to change their style from increasingly complex Sims-style strategy game -- with Rushmore allowing you to manage Max Fischer's career at school, and The Royal Tenenbaums expanding your responsibilities to controlling a large family in a New York brownstone -- to a peculiar cross-breed of other genres. Regrettably their gamble failed terribly. The character of Steve Zissou was promoted as being the next Master Chief or Gordon Freeman but, with the traditional macho couture of the first person hero abandoned in favour of a wetsuit and red bobble hat, Zissou failed to convince. To make things worse, the underwater sections were poorly designed and overlong, until eventually fatigue set in for most players, ditching the game before completing the fabled Jaguar Shark Forgiveness achievement. Not long after the game was released, it was Anderson who ditched RagnarokRain.

Following the acrimonious split, RagnarokRain's head project developer Colt Wendell moved on to collaborating with French game desginer Jean-Luc Godard on the heavily guarded project Weekend. Godard has confounded expectation in the past, which is a reassuring thought to hold onto after initial rumour hinted that it was merely some form of 2-D side-scrolling driving game. Anderson, meanwhile, teamed up with Tweesoft Games, in a move that surprised all of us. Tweesoft's projects to date have been the amusing on-rails shooter Snakes on a Plane, which featured infamous voicework from Samuel L. Jackson, and the diverting Singstar-esque Hustle and Flow. Though those games sold well, neither hinted that Tweesoft was a good match for the ground-breaking intellectualism of Anderson.

Thankfully, for the most part, The Darjeeling Limited is a return to form for Anderson, and a notable leap for Tweesoft after the choppiness of their previous projects. The player takes control of three self-obsessed brothers -- Francis, Peter and Jack Whitman -- as they search India for their estranged mother in order to connect with her following the death of their father. The majority of the game takes place on the train of the title, switching from first-person to third-person and back again, as you interact with a selection of beautifully written NPCs, with occasional excursions off the train providing some much needed variety. These adventures usually end with a mad dash, either on foot or by taxi, with a countdown clicking off the time until the train departs. Though most of the game is leisurely, these sections definitely get the pulse racing. (Click on screen grabs for greater detail.)


As you progress through the game, your primary goal is to monitor two variables: Frustration With Brothers and Obliviousness To Others, both measured as percentages. The first measurement must be kept as low as possible, a task hindered by the insufferable selfishness of all of the main characters. As you hop from brother to brother, you see terrible behaviour from each of them, bringing that frustration level to the boil several times. Only by acquiescing to their neediness will your frustration level drop, but this will stop you from progressing through the game, meaning you have to balance your frustration, and your efforts to bring your siblings closer, with the need to get to your mother's abbey to reconcile with her. If you fail to keep your frustration tempered, and the percentage counter goes past 90%, the game momentarily changes to a first-person shooter mode, with your currently controlled character attempting to incapacitate the other two brothers using pepper spray.


The second measurement, Obliviousness To Others, has to remain high. Any other gaming designer would require you to keep that level low, but this appears to be Anderson's satirical take on the selfish and clueless behaviour of American tourists around the world. The higher this level, the greater the chance you will be thrown off the train, which allows you to progress deeper into the game. This counterintuitive choice is one of the many delightful Andersonian details that have made him such a star of the gaming world, and belongs with other memorable game moments as the failure of Max Fischer to win the heart of his teacher in Rushmore, or the death of the father figure triggering the reconciliation of his family in the final level of The Royal Tenenbaums.


Once off the train, the rules change, and you are required to keep the Obliviousness meter as low as possible, which triggers the River Rescue level. Again, Anderson plays tricks with the player by making the level impossible. Controlling Peter Whitman, you attempt to save a boy from a raging river, sadly to no avail. No matter how many times we restarted the level, the outcome was always the same. Though the consequence of this failure is continuation to the Funeral In Two Timezones level, it might frustrate many players expecting some kind of heroic catharsis, and could lead to the same kind of protests that followed the unavoidable death of Ned Plimpton in the helicopter level of The Life Aquatic.

Hopefully gamers will see past this and continue onwards, as the final levels of the game feature a race against time to reach the sanctuary of the Abbey, all the while chased by a man-eating tiger. This antagonist is as relentless as Nemesis from the third Resident Evil game, and can only be distracted with the use of pepper spray, cobras, and bottles of perfume. After this exhausting series of challenges, the brothers finally reach the Abbey, where they attempt to reconcile with the mother, who has absolutely no interest in making nice and instead just vanishes. Again, this could alienate the gamer as much as the lack of Jaguar-Shark-killing action in The Life Aquatic, especially as the game doesn't finish there, and doesn't give you any hint of what to do next. At least an hour was wasted walking the characters through the halls of the Abbey, with the same five phrases being spouted by the other brothers over and over again (we never want to hear the line about Peter stealing a belt again), before we realised that we had to leave the Abbey to head back to the nearby train station. A comment on the lack of tidy resolution in real life? Or crappy quality control by the game-testers? Who can say?

Throughout The Darjeeling Limited are littered a number of mini-games, each one specific to a certain character:

Jack:

• I Want That Stewardess: Can Jack seduce Rita while avoiding her angry boyfriend?
• Hotel Chevalier: Here comes Jack's ex-girlfriend. Can you activate your iPod in time for her arrival?

Francis:

• The Search For Brendan: Find your assistant and get him to laminate all of your itineraries before he gets sick of your nonsense.
• Dinner Time: Can you order dinner for each of your brothers before they get a chance to interject?
• Those Are $3000 Loafers!: Chase the young urchin through the streets to get your shoe back.

Peter:

• Is This Meant To Be Sad?: Finish reading Jack's short story without anyone seeing you cry
• We Think A Snake Might Have Gotten Onboard!: Hunt the cobra.
• Are These Dad's Keys?: Find all of your father's belongings, which are littered throughout the train and the Indian countryside. Hint: The final suitcase is hidden in the Funeral In Two Timezones level.

While these distractions are enjoyable, they tend to get in the way of the central narrative, diluting the effect of all of the rug-pulling mentioned earlier. It's hard to become completely affected by the emotional rollercoaster of the Whitmans' reconciliation when you're interrupted constantly by crude racing simmulators. Another annoyance is the poor choice of unlockables, which are mostly songs by The Kinks. For some reason Anderson seems to think that gamers are only playing his games in order to access songs by British bands from the 60s, and has added Kinks unlockables to all of his games. Time to move on from that particular peccadillo, especially as there are very few unused Kinks songs left.


These are small quibbles. Technically the game is a marvel, with excellent motion capture of the main actors throughout. India is atmospherically rendered, especially during the final scenes as the characters beccome more in tune with their surroundings, meaning the avatars become smaller and smaller in the frame. Narratively, the game is unusually complex, easily surpassing the inexplicably lauded driving game Little Miss Sunshine and its gimmicky colour-blind level. After a disappointment, Anderson is back, and Tweesoft have established themselves as a force to be reckoned with. We look forward to their forthcoming collaboration with Alexander Payne on the wine-themed platformer Sideways.

Miracles Do Happen

Many a drink or chat or pop culture discussion has been ruined, by me, with my admission that I'm not too keen on The Beatles. Such a statement appears to be like some kind of neuron-stripping destructo-meme, so virulent and so dangerous to those who experience it that it has the effect of instantly atrophying all parts of the brain not devoted to the reflexive and deafening defense of the lovable Scouse quartet from criticism by heretics. Even when I admit I like about half of Revolver, and think Tomorrow Never Knows is one of the most incredible pieces of music in the entire 20th Century, this is not enough. "But... but... you have to admit they are the most important popular artists of the 20th Century!" Well, I don't really, as I think you could make a case for Elvis or Dylan, but fine, if it makes you happy, The Beatles are the most important popular artists of the 20th Century, and I still don't have any urge to listen to their music.

Or at least, I didn't until today. There were so many great games and projects announced at E3, including such inevitably-to-be-owned-by-me things as BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bungie's Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST, the inevitable by-products of the seriously mindblowing Project Natal, the pure joy that will be Super Mario Galaxy 2, Alan Wake (a very welcome kind of reserved horror game after enduring the incredibly nasty -- and incredibly entertaining -- Dead Space), the baffling Metroid: Other M, and Valve's Left 4 Dead 2. And yet, I find myself most excited about a game I figured I would buy Canyon as a birthday present and not bother with myself. Consider myself surprised.


What was it that triggered my sudden overwhelming, concentration-wrecking enthusiasm for a game revolving around a band I care so little about? Marketing, baby. Stunningly well-designed marketing. First, this gameplay trailer shows ten of the forty-five songs available on the original disc.



Though I've never been a big fan of the band, I do love the iconography, and am fully aware of the progression the band took, and how their sound evolved. Seeing that captured within the game thrills me, as does the inclusion of Taxman -- which transcends its whiny origins to be a fun track -- and Here Comes The Sun. I'm very much a George fan. Oh yes. That song gives me chills. As does this other trailer, which is beyond belief.



Recently we saw Julie Taymor's Across The Universe, and I'm not sure who was more disgusted by it. Canyon is a huge Beatles fan, and was horrified at the dreadful reimagining of those songs, especially when the juxtaposition of the songs and images was so completely wrong. She almost completely lost it when Happiness Is A Warm Gun was played over a hallucinogenic scene with one character suffering PTSD in a military hospital after being wounded in 'Nam, man.


My main gripe with it is that I'm not crazy about the songs anyway, but I'd much rather hear the original band sing them than Jim "Wet" Sturgess, or Bono, who makes I Am The Walrus even more unappealing than I already find it. In addition to that is the awful shoe-horning of Beatles song characters into the Hair-inspired narrative. When Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood are introduced as Jude and Lucy, I had to be restrained from turning the hellish thing off. There was much gnashing of teeth when a character called Prudence gets depressed and locks herself in a closet, which naturally means the other characters have to sing a song to coax her out. That song? Eleanor Rigby, of course. (This is a lie.)

The second trailer shown above does what Richard Lester once did, and what Taymor (and writers Dick Clement and Ian LeFrenais, on a really really off day) completely failed to do: capture the essence of the Beatlesniverse. They had a public persona that remains appealing even after all these years, four scallywags running through life with pure joy fuelling them. They also created a weird inner space of imagery and mood, with their interest in psychedelia manifesting as that sinister and candy-coloured alternate universe of Blue Meanies, Buddhist and Hindi imagery, and swooning surrealism. Across The Universe tried to get at this and failed. That short trailer nailed it, and did something else; addressed the enormousness of what The Beatles were, and what they achieved. I came over all emotional when I saw it.


So yes, I cannot wait to play the game. The new peripherals, shown above, are not essential, but I'm a little in love with the drums, even though I doubt Ringo's drumming will pose the same challenge that mimicking Jimmy Chamberlin or Keith Moon has in the recent past. Even more interesting, the vocal game has been expanded to include harmonies. I've long wanted to get a mic stand so I can sing and play guitar at the same time, and now I see that you can play this with three mics as well as the other instruments. Imagine playing this as a four-player game, but with one drum, two guitars and three mics. Even more exciting is the knowledge that some bands that I've had no time for in the past have become firm favourites now that I've experienced their songs from "inside" via Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I expect the same thing to happen here. Ninth September 2009. It's scribbled on my calendar, and I'm ready to finally join the only band bigger than The Beatles: their enormous, hyper-passionate fanbase.

Burnout Paradise Is A Dirty Life Thief

Last week Canyon and I were lucky enough to be able to enjoy a long weekend together (trapped in the house because public transport in the UK shuts down during holidays. True fact!), a period spent catching up on Mad Men (we warmed to it by the time it had finished) and eating large meals. However, our equilibrium was threatened by a very stupid decision made last Thursday. I bought the latest installment of the superb Burnout franchise for Xbox 360, and even though it has failed to do the one thing I wanted it to, it has taken over my life.


At about this time of the week I usually post a long long dissection of the most recent episode of Lost, a week late but just in time for the next episode. Of course, it's off our screens for four more weeks, so I don't have that time limit going against me, but I still wanted to get it done, because, you know, it's Lost. Instead I have virtual-journeyed back and forth across the fictional Paradise City, from the Naval Dockyards to the Observatory, along Angus Wharf and then up around the top of the city into the windfarms, then down to the Wildcats Stadium, trying to memorise everything, find every hidden shortcuts and ramp and destructible billboard, all the time attempting to upgrade my licence and unlock better cars.

Last night I managed to find an untouched section of the city, and spent half an hour trying to crash into one billboard. I went up and down the same stretch of road about 100 times, each time missing my mark by a couple of inches and crashing into the same goddamn tree over and over again. When I finally smashed through that heinous billboard I screamed like Roy Scheider when Jaws blew up.


If you've not heard of Burnout before, a quick explanation. It's a racing game, and an incredible one at that. At least, it started out as a racing game, in the first iteration, but with traffic and suchlike to complicate matters, as well as a Burn Gauge that allowed you to drive faster for a short space of time, like a nitrous injection to your engine. That meter was filled when you did reckless things, a feature that partially explains its popularity. The other was the use of the Renderware engine (designed by Criterion), which ran fast enough to allow crash moments to be animated with more detail than was usual.

It was this feature that allowed Criterion to add a Crash Mode to the sequel, Burnout 2: Point of Impact, which was my introduction to the franchise, and is possibly my favourite version of the game. Part of that is because it's great fun and still remains a very entertaining racing game with only a few distracting bells and whistles (see below for more on the bells and whistles), but most of it is because a few years ago my mother fell very ill and while helping her convalesce I needed to switch off the clatter of worry in my brainblob, so I played this constantly. Like, for nine or ten hours at a time. And this coming from someone who only enjoyed one other racing franchise before (the futuristic craziness that was Wipeout), and usually think racing games are a load of old blah. Perhaps it's because I can't drive. (Another true fact!)


I also liked that it allowed you to play any music you liked while driving, and so I burned a couple of Blink 182 albums to the Xbox hard drive. Say what you like about that band, they are the perfect accompaniment to driving a virtual car at about 160mph into traffic. It's a hell of a rush, made all the more exciting because the music gets louder when you hit the Boost button, and that's before we get into the Burnout chains. Boost is only available once you've filled your Burn Gauge, and as you Boost, your Burn Gauge will run out. If you've managed to Boost without crashing, your gauge gets filled again, and you keep Boosting. If you keep doing it right, it fills up again and again, and you can keep Boosting until you screw up. I think my longest chain was about 13 Boosts in a row, though afterwards I realised I had forgotten how to blink and my hands wouldn't release the controller.

If you're not interested in the racing, Crash Mode in Burnout 2 allows you to use the car like a kind of wrecking ball, sending it hurtling into traffic and trying to cause as much damage as possible. That damage is calculated in dollars, and you get medals for surpassing certain targets. It's great fun, though it was at this point that the series started to concentrate less on the racing and more on unique modes like Crash Mode and Canyon's personal favourite Road Rage (where the tracks become demolition derbys and you have to destroy as many enemy cars as possible by slamming them into walls or traffic).

They're kinda gimmicky, but that's not to say they aren't generally awesome, and they set the game apart from your bog-standard straight racing games. They also work well as a party game, and guests have been sucked into it completely (it's one of those games that will be played by people without their own console who will subsequently talk feverishly about getting their own machine just to play that game). Though I'm nostalgic for the relative purity of the second version, the following editions with their insane multiplayer modes were where our obsession really took hold.


Burnout 3: Takedown generated a lot of attention for its increasingly complex crash physics and astonishing speed and beauty, and I love it dearly too, but it still felt a little gauche compared to its predecessor. There were little tinkerings with the game that annoyed me. The ability to listen to your own music was present but selecting songs was finicky, boosting using the Boost Gauge was made easier (which meant no more Burnout chains, and Boosting was available no matter how much flame you had in your Burn Gauge), Crash Mode was altered and less chaotic, though it was more fun to play with a group, etc.

Actually, I bitch about the music thing, but Burnout 3 features the best soundtrack of any of the games, with a brilliant set of "EA Trax", as they're called (yes, EA are trying to copyright a new word for "music"), including I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones, Orpheus by Ash, and many others, though none of which are as reality-alteringly awesome as Decent Days and Nights by The Futureheads [more like reality-stabilizingly boring. Zing! --Canyon], which remains one of my favourite songs ever, an opinion not affected by the weakness of their second album. With choices like that, not being able to play my own music wasn't as big a deal as it would become in later versions where the music is much less interesting.


Burnout 4, or Burnout: Revenge as it is known, was the first game in the franchise to graduate to a next-gen console, and the result is staggering. The non-racing stuff is more prominently featured, often with differences from previous games that harm the game as much as they improve it, but those next-gen graphics were astonishing, making the experience even more exhilarating and immersive. I have both the Xbox and Xbox 360 versions, and playing the older version is now a waste of time. Burnout: Revenge is the version we've played the most (as Road Rage is particularly incredible in this version), though some of the choices (such as fiddling with the Crash Mode and adding Traffic Attack, where you can knock traffic out of your way if you crash into it) are not so great. [Admiral Neck only complains about Traffic Attack because he sucks at it. Traffic Attack is awesome! --Canyon] But that Road Rage. Hooboy! I'm serious, Canyon is more than formidable at it. In the apocalyptic Mad-Maxian future, I'm calling shotgun with her, soon-to-be-crushed bitches!


So, being huge fans of the franchise, we figured getting Burnout Paradise would be a smart choice, filling our long weekend with much Road Raging and Crash Moding, in-between watching Don Draper ruin that weaselly little shitball Peter Campbell. However, it was not to be. Much to our disgust, Paradise doesn't feature offline multiplayer modes, so we can't play it together. Canyon is particularly disgusted by that, and though she likes the game in general, she considers the loss of offline multiplayer is the biggest strike against it, and I have to agree.

This version is the most different of all, gambling on reinventing the franchise by creating an enormous and complex city to drive in, with four types of event - Race, Road Rage, Burning Routes, Stunt Run and Marked Man (the latter two new twists on old formulas) - starting at junctions throughout the metropolis. As expected, this new format has angered a lot of people. Screw up an event, and you have to drive back to the junction you started at to redo the race, which can be very difficult if you haven't memorised the city. As I'm happy to forget about an event if I've screwed it up, I'll just move on to something else. Canyon is much less happy about that, and I see her point. If you want to get an event right by redoing it over and over, it's totally counterintuitive.


However, even though neither of us are fans of sandbox games (though I did enjoy Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and Crackdown), the sheer size and complexity of Paradise City is a marvel. This interactive map of the city doesn't even begin to show how much is going on. I've been playing it all week and have only completed 24% of the game, though I have been concentrating on exploring and trying to memorise the city instead of trying to finish the events. What's most amazing is how real it feels. When trying to explain my love of gaming to others, I have tried to describe the joy I get from exploring virtual spaces and being moved by their design. A truly great game, like Halo or Silent Hill, will often exist in a virtual world so well designed that it feels like a real place.


Burnout Paradise is one of the best examples of that I've ever experienced. It has a character all its own, helped by the road names, range of different areas, Crash FM radio station (whose DJ Atomika is that rarity, an in-game narrator who is helpful and not annoying), etc. It's cohesive and varied and beautifully designed. Plus, its theme song is Paradise City by Guns n' Roses. Perfect.

The music in this version is frustrating. When I loaded it up the first few songs made me think I was onto a winner: Us v. Them by LCD Soundsystem, Would? by Alice in Chains, Stand and Deliver by Adam and the Ants, My Curse by Killswitch Engage, and a few other great choices (the Avril Lavigne song included, Girlfriend, works much better than you would expect). Then the generic rock anthems kick in, many of which sound like they're sung by Chris Cornell imitators, made all the more embarrassing by the inclusion of the mighty Rusty Cage by Soundgarden to show them how it's done. Once the rock tracks have stopped the game cycles through themes written for earlier versions of the game, and that's kind of the whole point of the game, something I have grown to realise after hours of gameplay.


Beyond the enormous city with its shortcuts and secret playgrounds (and coming soon: downloadable expansions!), and the awesome visuals, and mostly great soundtrack, the best thing about it is the nostalgia. Different cars have different attributes, allowing you to play the game as if playing previous versions of Burnout. Some cars are powerful enough to use in a Traffic Attack mode, knocking smaller cars out of the way. Some allow Burnout chains (yay!). Many allow Boost whenever there is a flamey thing in your Burn Gauge. It's like a compendium of previous versions, which is the sweetest surprise of all. Basically, you can make the game into the version of Burnout you want it to be by making a few selections. Though Canyon is right when she says that the amorphous nature of the game makes it less appealing than the very linear previous editions (especially in terms of being able to replay certain events), you still have the ability to make it resemble the game you once played.

And yet, and yet... That multiplayer option is still missing. Yes yes, I know, it can be played online, and is probably intended to be played online more than as a single player experience (Microsoft love to get people to subscribe to Xbox Live, after all), but a) it's still too expensive (not prohibitively, obviously, but I still think subscription fees are steep) and b) playing Halo 2 online for a couple of months meant I've had a lifetime's fill of being told to go fuck myself by 12 year olds. In theory I love the concept of online gaming, but the little jerks who are on there all the time waiting for their genitals to drop are not worth dealing with, and no, it's not because they are much better at gaming than me. Seriously. It's not that. Seriously. Oooh look, an interesting shiny object behind you! ::jumps into virtual car and drives into oncoming bus::

Sci-Fi Is Your Friend

I can't remember which terrible sci-fi movie I watched recently that made me almost give up on the genre. It might have been Kurt Wimmer's heavily compromised and noisy Ultraviolet, a film I want to moan about in greater detail some other time (and the internet goes crazy with anticipation, yes yes). For all the things I liked about it, there were a million other things that left me feeling very unsatisfied. As it finished, my TV automatically switched back to the Sky+ box, as it does, and Sky Sci-Fi/Horror was showing Saul Bass' Phase IV, one of my all-time favourites. It's a 70s sci-fi drama about intelligent ants and the scientists who study them. If you've not seen it, I thoroughly recommend it. In time, I will go on about that more as well.

Still, this "bugged" me, ha ha, if you will. The 70s may not have been the perfect era of cinema that many think it was, but I will freely and sadly admit it did have virtues almost totally lost to us today. Is the age of truly thought-provoking sci-fi cinema lost to us now? Over the past few years, as my favourite movie The Matrix, or Ghost in the Shell, or Star Wars, get cloned again and again to lesser and lesser effect, I do wonder. I'm writing this in a hurry, so I'm not thinking too straight, and please don't think I'm dissing any of those movies, the first two of which are absolutely wonderful and the latter was once upon a time, but the only recent film I can think of that delivered a similar rush of ideas as Phase IV or 2001 or The Man Who Fell To Earth is Shane Carruth's Primer, and to be honest I only say that because I don't even understand the damnable thing. Maybe we can include A Scanner Darkly in there. I'd also like to include Starship Troopers, though the ideas crammed into that slice of action heaven are mostly political and not speculative. Oh, and any haters out there who still think Starship Troopers is a bad movie liked only by deluded nitwits, look at this screen capture from the most recent 30 Rock.


That's a warrior bug on Liz's windowsill there, and it's been there since the first episode! If Tina Fey likes Starship Troopers, it is automatically a masterpiece. Though she does seem to like Star Wars more than is healthy. ::momentarily doubts own logic::

Gah! Whatever. The thought occured to me, though, that while mainstream US cinema is wary of creating challenging and thought-provoking cinema of the kind mentioned above, perhaps I can find it elsewhere, either in contemporary non-US cinema or back in the past. Which is why, for a couple of months now, I've been thinking of starting a mini-feature: Sci-Fi Through Space/Time! I have a few ideas for what to talk about, including a strangely large amount of French stuff, all of which proves there is more to that subset of sci-fi than Jane Fonda writhing around in various states of futuristic undress. I'll get onto that soon, hopefully, but until then, here is some sci-fi from South Africa; Alive in Joburg, by the man who almost helmed the Halo movie, Neill Blomkamp.

Puppet Angel PWNs Halo 3 (Updated)

And bodyslams Warren Ellis, apparently.


As reported everywhere, the collectors edition has a knackered supplementary disc thanks to it popping out of place in transit and sliding around, so I have to take it back. That was the same thing that happened with Warner Bros.' Superman special edition, wasn't it? Whatever. I'm just enjoying the game right now. Brutes may growl and shake their heads in anger at me, but I've got a hammer, a power drain, a fully loaded assault rifle, four grenades, and a backup squad of chatty Marines, so I'm not scared no mo'.

And will someone hire Martin O'Donnell to score a movie, for crying out loud??!?!? I see he's listed as composer on the abandoned Halo movie, which is fantastic news. Shame it's not being made right now. Here's hoping huge sales change the minds of the movie moguls.

I got my copy yesterday morning, and the guys in the shop told me a queue started at 3 in the afternoon the day before. A guy had made a sign saying, "Queue starts here". Funny. And then he got moved on by the town's shocktroopers as he was causing an obstruction. Killjoys. Political correctness gone etc.!!!

ETA: I was wrong about Edge. They gave it one of their hallowed 10 ratings and acted like it was the best game ever. Perhaps it is in the multiplayer mode, but even just single player, it's still amazing. A raucous battle involving Mongooses (futuristic Earth motorcycles) and pillion-riding, rocket-launcher-using Marines shooting down Banshees was already wonderful before an enormous Scarab turns up to kill everything in sight, prior to Master Chief leaping onto it and destroying its reactor. Thank you, Bungie, thank you for making my heart sing!

Halo 3 week is here!

Yes, it's Halo week. Though I'm sure it's as boring to most people as it has been to poor Canyon, I'm spending a lot of time talking about Halo and obsessing about Halo and counting down until the release of Halo 3, etc. etc. etc. I haven't been this excited since Superman Returns came out, though I will draw a veil over the aftermath of that. (Clue: It involved sulking.)


I remember when the Playstation was launched, Final Fantasy VII was one of the big early releases, and some of the press at the time mentioned, in astonished and whispered tones, that each FF release was treated like a big movie premiere in Japan. When Halo 2 was released years later the same thing happened in the West, though sadly most of the hype channeled through inept journalists whose sole experience of gaming is Minesweeper, Tetris, and that evil brainwashing Grand Theft Auto thing that makes children steal cars and shoot prostitutes. Game culture is more readily accepted in Japan, whereas in England most press coverage of gaming blames all the ills of the world on kids pootling around a digital environment for a few hours a week, not unlike Ye Olde Worlde village elders screeching that demons are possessing the youngfolk and making them do the sex and the violence.

I expected more of the same this week, but until today I was surprised by how muted it has been. Bear in mind I'm saying that after a few days staying away from the internet, so I have missed out on a lot of it. Now I'm beginning to see the hype starting. Not long ago I saw this wrapped around Waterloo IMAX:


My piddly little cameraphone does not do justice to the size of it. The mainstream press has started to talk about it; a piece in today's Financial Times talks about it as if it's the second coming, at least for Microsoft and their stock market value. I expect more as the week goes on. In addition to this, I've been getting ready for the launch by immersing myself in the Halo world: listening to Martin O'Donnell's superb score for Halo 2; reading the official line of tie-in novels by Eric Nylund and William Dietz; replaying the end of Halo 2 so I'm fully prepped on the events of the (somewhat rushed) finale.

To make my excitement even more feverish, at least one early rave is in, which cheered me (even though I don't always agree with their reviews). Hopefully Edge magazine will turn up this week with a review. Will it get one of their rare 10/10 ratings? Probably not. Knowing them, they'll dock two points for some arcane reason. Overuse of the colour purple, one sound effect used twice that reminds them of a TV show they hate; something like that.

One thing I won't be experiencing is Marvel's Halo: Uprising, by the amazing Daredevil team of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. Tackling the bridging story between Halos 2 and 3, Bendeev tell the tale from the point of view of survivors of the Covenant invasion. The first issue was great. The second? Out in mid-October. The third and fourth issues are out in December and February. I'm sure Bendis is busy with all of his other five million comics, and Maleev might have more trouble finding photo-references seeing as how the comic is set in the future during an alien invasion as opposed to being a contemporary urban crime tale, but still, this bi-monthly release schedule is absurd, especially as no comic is coming out in the launch week. Trust Marvel to screw up the tie-in.

However, the best thing I've seen so far is Microsoft and Bungie's ad campaign. To clarify, adverts are the devil's poops, doing nothing to improve mankind. At least most of the time. Some can be better than that: Tony Kaye's Pirelli ads; Jonathan Glazer's Guinness commercial with the horses; Sony Bravia (especially the balls one). These ads for Halo 3 are in that pantheon, especially the final one, which almost made me choke up earlier tonight. (You'll pay for that, Debussy!!!)







That's how you advertise a product. Of course, some wag managed to express my misgivings about the online multiplayer version and all of its off-putting and nauseating teenage players with this very very not-safe-for-work spoof voiceover.

Shane Black knows the score

A content-lite week, thanks to Canyon being inundated with work, and me getting dragged into the office for a useless absence management course as well as travelling to Ikea again and again in my miserable quest to replace a broken sofa. Something so simple is actually horribly time-consuming and depressing. Who knew?

So desperate was I to get something on here, I took inspiration from the last 15 minutes of Renny Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight (a film that truly exasperates me, what with the terrific script and the inept direction), and decided to do a quick post about cinema's best explosions, with the help of YouTube. However, instead of finding footage of the outrageously large final explosion (a very effective pre-CG FX sequence by Jeffrey Okun), I instead found out that the 9/11 conspiracy types think the film predicted the World Trade Centre bombing.


Who would have thought that multi-millionaire screenwriting supergenius Shane Black knew so much about CIA plots to screw Congress out of funding? I can't wait to read Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes now. I bet there's a whole chapter on that! Bear in mind Long Kiss was made in 1996. The fact that Evil Patrick Malahide is referring to the previous WTC bombing, the one that happened in the car park beneath the building, seems to have escaped many of the theorists on there. It's as if they're not really thinking this whole thing through and are just rushing to insane conclusions based on hearsay, bias, paranoia, and terribly flawed science. A mad idea, I know, but it bears considering.

To cleanse the crazy-tainted palate, here is one of the best scenes from Black's magnificent directorial debut, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, in which the only thing you learn is that if you meet Val Kilmer pretending to be a gay detective, you should not throw his expensive ceramic gun into the lake next to the crashed car or he will hurt your feelings with pithy insults.


And yes, I probably will do the explosions post at some point. It's either write about that or gibber, "Halo 3! Halo 3! Halo 3!" And you don't want that. Though I'll probably do that too. Sorry.