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Story Review: “Wet”

02 Oct

WARNING: This review is only concerned with the story of a game. Even though the story is an important part of a game, by no means is it the defining component. A game with a horrible story may very well be one of the best games ever produced. It’s just that my reviews are not about that.

SPOILER WARNING: The following text may contain spoilers for the people who have not finished the game in question yet. Reviewing the story sometimes makes such things inevitable.  

Idea:

“Wet” is all about mixing crazy Hong Kong movie action with 70′s exploitation cinema. While this presents the developers a lot of opportunities for storytelling and stylistic purposes, there isn’t really anything terribly original here. The writers obviously did not delve deep into the films of the era they are trying so hard to mimic. So in theory the idea is good. If only it was in better hands…

Rating: 1 out of 2

Setting:

An otherwise pretty contemporary setting gets partly interesting for being free of the usual constraints of the laws of physics. This is your usual video game universe where people never suffer any injuries if they consciously jump from great heights, slow motion saves you from bullets and chainsaws are actually better melee weapons than swords.

There is no constant location here. True to form, this is a location hopping adventure. Rubi literally travels around the world. You will visit, Texas, Hong Kong and London. The problem is that none of these places have a distinctive look to themselves. The world in “Wet” usually consists of hallways and warehouses. The setting is neither interesting nor pretty to look at and it doesn’t help the story at all.

Rating: 0 out of 2

Characters:

Like my review of characters in “Batman: Arkham Asylum”, this is a tough one too. In theory things are great. “Wet” has a lot of interesting, larger than life characters like “Batman: Arkham Asylum” does. And they all have a pretty detailed background written for them. Especially on the visual side of things, it’s clear that a lot of care went into creating these characters. Rubi’s outfit is carefully constructed to be both utilitarian and sexy at the same time, but the sexiness is subtly male instead of pure female. For all intents and purposes we can say Rubi is a man in the body of a woman. Many of the character designs are so interesting that my research partner Dr. Gülin Terek Ünal, was especially interested in them and took her time to examine every single aspect of their clothing and accessories. Pelham, Tarantula, Ze Kollektor and even Dr. Afro are all interesting characters living in a 70s comic book version of our modern world.

The problem though is that there are simply an awful lot of them compared to the relatively short run-time of the story itself. So many of them have literally a few seconds of screen time. Some of them, like The Torturer, die right after they are introduced. It’s a funny detail that the life of some mobs in this game last more than quite a lot of supposedly major characters.

Side characters in a story are there to challenge the protagonist in different ways to invoke different character traits in her, so that we can get to know her and she can evolve. But the number of characters in this story make it very hard for any side character to be involved in the proceedings in a meaningful way. Consequently Rubi’s interactions with them are very limited. Combine that with horribly uninteresting dialog and at the end of the day you will realize that the wonderful visual style of the characters is gone down the drain and you don’t care about any of the characters at all.

Sure, Pelham is evil, but you don’t hate him enough because you don’t exactly get his motivation for doing that thing he did. Was it a threat directed towards William Ackers, was it payback or was he trying to frame Rubi? Why should I be surprised or impressed upon witnessing Zhi’s betrayal when he isn’t even established as a likable character I know or care about. Why should I be sad when the terribly generic Ming dies? You could have replaced him with a simple computer screen giving info. (minus the accent).

In fact the characters are so forgettable that I am struggling to remember their names even though the names are printed on screen with giant letters.

Rating: 0 out of 2

Plot Structure:

This is a fairly generic revenge story with no interesting plot development at all. Rubi is a “fixer” who does not really need any reason but money to do whatever she does. She is double crossed and fooled. She then gets angry and kills everyone on her path. And that’s pretty much about it. In spirit of fairness though, this isn’t any less than what was expected from the movies “Wet”s trying to mimic. Plot, here, is just an excuse for steering the characters to the next action set piece, and a very weak one at that.

On the plus side you have some nice plot twists thrown into the mix. The main mystery here is the reason why Ackers wants to save his son and then kills him. The fact that Ackers isn’t Ackers makes some sense. But it also proves how dumb Rubi actually is for not checking out who she’s working for exactly.

In general the plot follows a pattern. Rubi does some job. Things go wrong. Rubi needs info. Rubi finds info. Rubi does the next job. Redo from start. Insert combat between these sentences and you have the plot structure of “Wet”. It never pauses to develop character relations or conflicts. It has no tolerance for scenes in which you can breathe. Consequently this action roller-coaster turns into an action free fall. Action saturation makes you care less for the plot.

Some obvious opportunities for developing the plot are missed. There is obvious potential for a love affair between Trevor and Rubi for instance. Imagine the impact Trevor’s death would have if he and Rubi were romantically involved a few years ago. Imagine Rubi’s anger. Imagine how the final relationship between William Ackers and Rubi would be. And this is only one of the many missed opportunities here.

The plot here is simply not personal enough for us to care. It almost feels like there were previous episodes of Rubi’s adventures and we have missed them. This would have been okay in this genre but “Wet” doesn’t feel like a good Rubi story.

Rating: 1 out of 2

Craftsmanship:

Again in theory “Wet”s central idea is a great opportunity for the developers run wild with their craftsmanship. In practice it feels rushed and centered too much around the meta aspect of things. They went you to feel like you’re in a movie theatre. There is a grainy filter, visible flickering of the projector, commercial breaks and a great licensed sound track. The occasional red filter is done well too.

The problem with these ideas is that they are not always utilized correctly. Commercial breaks are not between acts and come off as random. Transitions are awkward. Red filtered scenes feel interesting for the first few times but afterwards you get tired of them. There are no other filters and even though it sounds like a nice idea to use the filter in a car chase scene, “Wet” uses it in the wrong car chase scene. You get to see a red haze in a spectacular scene which makes you want to see it in all its explosive glory.

“Wet”, also fails in writing department. This kind of story requires a lot of impressive one liners, punchlines and long dramatic speeches following the action. “Wet” fails in all of these areas and fails to use other attributes of the movies it’s trying to mimic. The dialog is simply forgettable.

Rating: 0 out of 2

OVERALL:  2 out of 10
(0-3= BAD, 4-6= AVERAGE, 7-10= GOOD)

Already Reviewed: “Infamous”, “Batman: Arkham Asylum”, “Wet”

NEXT: “Planescape: Torment”

 
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Less than entirely obvious

03 Apr

I want to talk about a scene in an episode of The Mentalist today.

The Mentalist is a TV show in which the titular Mentalist “helps” the police solve crimes. I won’t go into the general fiction of the series too much, but I just want to point out one thing to illustrate how the writers of The Mentalist feel about being obvious.

The “outsider helps police” trope always needs an explanation. Is he an author doing “research” for his book who hangs around because he falls in love with the pretty, sassy, unavailable detective? Does he discover a higher calling to use his talents, whatever they may be, for good? Those would be two obvious approaches. Revenge doesn’t seem to fit too well as a motivation for the outsider helping the police, but this is precisely what motivates Patrick Jane. A serial killer has taken his wife and daughter from him. There are no useful leads. By being part of the police in some way, he sees the best chance for Red John to be apprehended. This colours his relationship with most other characters on the show–he sees no reason to play by the rules, he makes no excuses why he does what he does, and he surely doesn’t hide the fact that, given half a chance, he will choke the life out of Red John with his own two hands.

The episode I want to talk about today is 3×18, The Red Mile. Let’s not preoccupy ourselves too much with the plot. The butler did it. I want to shine a light on the relationship between Patrick Jane and Dr. Steiner. We’ve seen Dr. Steiner before. He’s a medical examiner and a rather stuffy personage. Obviously, Jane played a practical joke on him when he first appeared in the show. This is set up early in the episode in the usual way for The Mentalist:

LISBON: We all know how much you like to make fun of Dr. Steiner. So don’t!

JANE: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

LISBON: No humouring yourself at his expense!

JANE: Is he that way? (walks off)

We know what’s coming: a bureaucrat out of his depth playing by the rules, Jane running circles around him, embarrassing him in inventive ways. And sure enough, a note appears on the deceased saying “You are about to think, what the hell? How did Jane do that?”

So far, so normal for the Mentalist. Soon enough, Steiner shows up at the office and asks to help with the case. The corpse has gone missing, he considers himself responsible, etc. Jane is very eager to have him help, and those of us who’ve seen a bunch of The Mentalist episodes before immediately start asking ourselves: what’s the play? What is he setting him up for? Has he understood that Steiner is involved in the disappearance of the corpse? Is this some convoluted practical joke? Lisbon asks Jane point blank, and Jane insists that Steiner wanted to be brought along and he said yes, and that was all.

Then, of course, we find out that Steiner is dying and that Jane understood this immediately upon seeing him at the crime scene. I kept trying to construct plot-paths that would end up with the “I am dying” bit being a lie; at one point, Steiner uses the fact that he’s dying to sell a solicitation for a bribe, saying essentially “why am I asking for $50,000 to keep silent? Because I’m dying, and I’d like to have a few days in comfort.” Immediately I wanted to say, a-hah! Jane has been coaching him for this. Jane has probably told him to mention the fact that he was dying in the suspect’s house so the butler could overhear it, and that would help sell the bribe. It wasn’t a convincing development, and the writers of The Mentalist are more cruel than me: Steiner is dying.

In the scene when this fact is revealed, Jane immediately reveals his motivation for bringing Steiner along: it’s a distraction. Something to keep his mind occupied. Keep him from thinking about the fact that he may not have much more than a month.

The case is solved. The butler and the mother-in-law are arrested. And then we come to the final scene. Jane is at Steiner’s house. Steiner says that he knows what will happen next. That it will be bad, and that it will get worse. Says he has no intention of letting nature take its course. “There are pills I can take.” Jane, being the pragmatic man that he is, just nods and says he understands. But, Steiner continues, the thought of him being the corpse on the slab being examined is something he can’t take. Highly irrational, possibly, but even Jane would probably allow a little irrationality in the face of death. So Steiner has found a solution: if his death were to be witnessed by a law enforcement official, no compulsory autopsy would take place. He is asking Jane to witness his suicide so that he does not have to be dissected.

And here we are. From a setup that reminded us of the practical jokes Jane played on this man a few episodes ago (including the abduction of a corpse to be used as a prop in tricking a confession out of a suspect), from an initial scene that seemed to set up further shenanigans, we come to this dying man’s home where he asks a final favour of Jane.

And Jane says no. The character of Patrick Jane is highly complex, and one of his many facets is that he knows exactly how much he can take. He does not overestimate his mental capacities. And clearly he’s made up his mind that witnessing a man’s suicide is not something he can stomach. As Steiner walks him to the door, apologizing profusely for having brought the subject up in the first place, Jane hesitates and asks if Steiner has tea in his house. This recalls an earlier scene where Jane offered Steiner tea at the CBI offices. Steiner rejected at the time, and we understand now that Jane wanted to create a private moment to broach the topic of Steiner’s sickness. This is a very gentle echo of an earlier plot point, but it gets better.

Now I pride myself on understanding narrative at a deep level. Most series that I watch, I can roughly predict most developments simply because they feel “necessary” to me. I can decipher motivations and immediately understand where scenes are going. The tea threw me, though.

Jane walks into the kitchen. Steiner tells him where the tea is. Adds that there’s cookies in the cupboard. Accepts the offer of a cup for himself. Then, and only now did understanding dawn on me, Steiner says that he’s going in the other room now. And that he’ll only be a few minutes.

When you make a plot development less than obvious, when you make it, dare I say the word, subtle, you manipulate the intake on the side of the audience. Jane could have said “I will pretend to make a cup of tea while you take the pills now!” and whereas that would have made absolutely certain that everyone in the audience understood, it would have been the equivalent of inserting a suppository with a well-aimed blow from a sledge-hammer: certain delivery, but a little all-at-once and not entirely pain-free.

Let me just for a second praise the acting here: George Wyner as Dr. Steiner and Simon Baker as Patrick Jane do a tremendous job of being less than obvious. The distress in Jane as he makes up his mind to stay after all, the gratefulness in Dr. Steiner–all these are handled deftly and carefully, with small movements and subdued facial expressions.

This was the point where the relationship between these characters had come to its final, logical stage: not only does Steiner trust Jane entirely and without hesitation, Jane has come to respect Steiner to the point where he does him a massive last favour. A lesser series would have cut to credits here. It’s clear that Jane will watch him die. A squeamish director would have ended here for another reason: what follows is emotionally brutal. But we linger.

In the final scene of the episode, Patrick Jane is sitting next to Dr. Steiner on his couch. Steiner has taken the pills. He is clearly fading. He asks Jane about the note. Did he have an arrangement with the deputy? Jane confirms that he did. And then we come to the final bit that prompted me to write this little piece here. Jane tells Steiner that he used to work with carnies, that he got a start in close-up magic. And he takes out a coin and demonstrates, vanishing and reappearing the coin in front of Steiner’s eyes.

And as he does this, it becomes absolutely clear to us that the relevant action of the entire episode is replayed to us in summary. Jane distracts a dying man. This is so subtle, so gentle, that it sinks into your awareness calmly and silently. When you realize that you understand, you feel the goosebumps. There was no rectal application of sledge-hammers; only a soft, gradual percolation of understanding.

STEINER: “Patrick. Thank you.”

JANE: “Just watch the coin. And it’s gone. It’s there… and then it’s gone.”

 
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Pat Ingoldsby

20 Mar

I live in Dublin. It is a good city to live in: anywhere that’s worth going to is within walking distance of my flat (thank you Dublin, how very thoughtful), the architecture is pretty enough (as long as you keep your eyes high enough not to notice the piles of rubbish accumulating around the lower parts of the architecture), and the people. The people!

Since I don’t know much about architecture and everywhere I go I go for people, this post is going to be about the people. Or one that I met today, briefly. His name is Pat Ingoldsby, and he is a poet.

Here’s a thing that Kurt Vonnegut once said about humans:

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.

– Kurt Vonnegut, the Books of Bokonon / Cat’s Cradle

He also said this:

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!

– Kurt Vonnegut, The last rites of Bokonism / Cat’s Cradle

When I look at people around me and I feel a cynical thought (of which I have a great many in my head), I think to myself, what would Vonnegut have to say about that thought, if I were a character in a book he was writing? A direct consequence of thinking in this way is that I met a lot of other kinds of sitting-up mud. An indirect consequence is that I say “so it goes” way too often. So it goes.

Today I was walking Róisín, who has a lot of apostrophes in her name and is a very new friend indeed, to the train station. This proved harder than it sounds since there are a lot of people in Dublin on a sunny day like today, and she knows all of them. Every single one. Finally we left the very crowded Grafton Street area behind us, only to run into Pat Ingoldsby on Westmoreland Street, who was selling his books by the central bank. Pat’s a poet.

Now here’s the thing about clichés: they are valid and logical thoughts that died because they got thought too often. The starving poet is a cliché. The starving poet who has withdrawn from big media and refuses to have his work scrutinized by academia is a bigger cliché. But then you meet Pat, and it makes sense.

Buggies are frequently followed by a debris trail
Which usually includes a pink sock.

– Pat Ingoldsby, “A Beautiful Fact of Life”

You see, for the longest time I was labouring under an unfortunate misconception: that poetry, to be any good, would need to be cryptic and densely stuffed with meaning and metaphor and imagery. I blame it on my mind’s tendency to make its own etymologies, really: the German word for poetry is “Dichtung”, and dicht is German for dense. Which, of course, plays no role in Dichtung’s etymology: it derives from the Latin dictare, which is to speak in front of people.

As I was saying, I was walking around town with Róisín, who has a band in Germany called Róisín and the Beards, and who’s been making music for the longest time. Now Pat, he used to be on the telly here, doing a show for children until he apparently got fired for saying a bad thing. At any rate, Róisín had known his work for a long time, and she had written a song about one of his short stories.

If you approach someone who is holding
a JESUS LIVES sign and say – “Don’t be silly!”
you will sometimes get an amazing reaction.

– Pat Ingoldsby, “I have learned”

So we sat on the pavement and chatted about things. Róisín wrote down the lyrics of the song for Pat, and his reaction–I cannot do it justice. The thing when you are near a man like him is that you feel so much honest, genuine happiness that you ask yourself, later, when you’re no longer in his presence, if you don’t maybe misremember. Surely this man of 68 with a paralyzed arm who spends hours every day trying to sell his books on the street (and often sells none), who clearly should be but isn’t recognized as one of the great living poets of Ireland, surely that man can’t be this happy. But he is, and he is funny in a way that makes you happy too. Sure, he screamed abuse at an innocent-looking tourist girl who took a picture of his “Dublin poet. Anywhere else I’d be a God.” sign without talking to him first, but that, too, was genuine.

Realising that I had got a graveyard full of dead people
all to myself, I stood on a convenient pedestal
and said – “I’d like to start off today
with a little poem that I wrote myself entitled…”
Before I could go any further
there was a chorus of shouts and yells.
“Hey! Cut that out!”
“We’re trying to have a rest here!”
“Come back when you’re dead,” one voice said,
“You’ll be great then.”

– Pat Ingoldsby, “Dead or Alive”

I think Pat taught me two things:

  1. The starving artist thing is pretty cool, as long as it happens to others.
  2. Poetry is about talking to people. Sure you pick the moment and make sure it’s poignant, but don’t hurt yourself with the how. It’s the what.

This confuses and elates me. Pat scribbles poems in a cheap notepad all day long. He has a thought, turns it around in his head once, commits it to paper, and moves on. He does not compose. He scribbles.

Every time the bus-driver jammed on the brakes,
the old ladies shot forward on their seats
and finished up on the floor
but they didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Again!!” they shouted. “Again!”!

– Pat Ingoldsby, Just Do It

This is poetry. What can we learn from this for prose, for narratives, for stories in games and films and tv shows?

Nothing, really, because I’m sounding like an academic dissecting some imaginary ephemeral message in Pat’s stuff. There isn’t, and that’s the point. He’s an old man who’s lived a pretty interesting life and who never lost the fascination with it all. He observes and records life through the prism of his mind. That is all. It is that simple. It needs nothing more.

Stories don’t need to twist a hundred times. There doesn’t need to be thematic coherence and dialogue doesn’t need to be a clever dual-meaning commentary on the theme in the underlying action. Things should happen that are funny or sad or infuriating. You, the audience, should react. And it should be honest.

For extra credit, write a 2000 word essay on how the story of The Nameless One who lost his mortality (laced with theme as though it may be) is a hundred times funnier and sadder and more infuriating than the pointless exploits of Shepherd, the silly travels of Soap McTavish, and the empty rebellion of Jim Raynor combined.

“I don’t believe in me anymore,” said God.
“Oh shit!” said the cardinals with the big rings.
“It’s alright,” said God, “I was only joking.”
“We’ll decide what’s funny or not!”
said the cardinals. “For your penance
say ten Hail Marys!”

– Pat Ingoldsby, “And Watch Yourself in Future”

 

 
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Posted in Art, Story Review

 

Fuck you, grapefruit

01 Mar

Fuck you, grapefruit. Fuck you right in your sickly dark-red ass.

Grapefruits are the Nigerian spam of the world of fruit. Yay, I just got $20,000,000 off this Nigerian prince on the internet. Wait, why is my bank account empty? Yay, oranges! Wait, grapefruit.

In every way that oranges are awesome, grapefruits are awful. Just look at them! Oranges are joyful, bright, full of life–they’re orange! Grapefruits are the sickly pale hue of a nerd that sits in front of his PC 20 hours a day grinding quests in World of Warcraft. “That’s not all I do,” Grapefruits insist in their whiny high-pitched voices. “I have other interests! For instance, let me show you my 15 terabyte collection of racist hentai. I’m the only collector outside of Japan!” Go away, grapefruit. “This one is about a nazi officer who summons demons by raping Chinese mothers to death.” Fuck you, grapefruit.

Look at their flesh! Oranges are brimming with positive orange-ness. You can see all the sun they stored up, conveniently turned into TASTINESS for you. Even their flesh looks joyful and willing. “Yay!” it seems to shout. “Eat me eat me EAT ME!”

Grapefruits look like afterbirth.

And then you taste them. Oh my god, why would you do that to yourself? Oranges taste of summer and carelessness. Grapefruits taste like a fire in a chemical plant. Where your grandma burned to death. No, grapefruits taste like that horrible medicine you had to take when you had that embarassing childhood disease, and so you ate the whole packet at once just to get it over with, only to learn that those were suppositories. Grapefruits taste like something that is meant to go up your ass.

Guess what, oranges are good for you too. Only they don’t feel the need to punch you in the balls with every sip and every bite to drive the point home.

We must rid the world of this plague of grapefruits. We must destroy all of them and every last drop of the drink derived from them must be evaporated. We must exterminate all the juice.

 
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Posted in Editorial

 

Eggsbox

21 Dec

I’m busy preparing for my thesis preview these days. So there may not be meaningful updates for a while. Until then this should make you realize why BBC rules (occasionally)

 
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Welcome To The Future of Guitar

19 Dec

According to Misa Digital Instruments, their soon to be released Kitara is running Linux. Yes we are talking of a guitar running an operating system inside. You didn’t see this one coming Les Paul, did you now?

Inside a body of high-density injection-molded ABS polymer, Kitara contains an onboard digital synthesizer, MIDI controls and an eight inch multi-touch screen. It is the future of guitar or so we think. It will be released on the 3rd of April and will come in two variants. You can pre-order now. The regular edition goes for $ 850. For the limited edition though you’ll need to part with $ 2900. So what are you waiting for. Go, go, go!

 
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Posted in Linux, Technology

 

Opera 11 released

18 Dec

Opera, also known as “the other web-browser” was updated to version 11 today.

It’s a sad story. Opera is almost always at the bleeding edge of innovation and technology but still it’s the least popular of the five big browsers despite the fact that it is available on almost every operating system known to humans.

Once again Opera 11 brings a lot of improvements. It is also worth noting that Opera is probably the only browser speedy enough to go head to head with Google’s Chrome. See the video for details, and download it here if you like.

 
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Posted in Software

 

Story Review: “Batman: Arkham Asylum”

16 Dec

WARNING: This review is only concerned with the story of the game. Even though the story is an important part of a game, by no means is it the defining component. A game with a horrible story may very well be one of the best games ever produced. It’s just that my reviews are not about that.

SPOILER WARNING: The following text may contain spoilers for the people who have not finished the game in question yet. Reviewing the story sometimes makes such things inevitable.


Idea:

Instead of breaking out of Arkham Asylum, this time, Joker wants to enter it and Batman has to prevent whatever Joker wants to achieve by doing so. This demonstrates how you don’t need grand ideas for a good story. Sometimes something as simple as reversing the usual formula can serve you well. In this case it instantly creates a mystery and gets the audience interested. Why is Joker trying to get into Arkham Asylum? What’s his endgame? The center idea also justifies the limited setting of Arkham Asylum itself. It’s not like Batman cannot leave the asylum. He certainly can. But because of the events which come to pass, it doesn’t make sense for Batman to leave the asylum before the main conflict is resolved. Therefore he stays and confronts many villains from his past. The appearance of these villains are perfectly justified too, because this is where he put these villains in the first place. A very simple and effective idea worthy of all sorts of applause.

Rating: 2 out of 2

Setting:

Almost the entire story takes place inside the boundries of Arkham Asylum. This may sound a little claustrophobic but thankfully this version of Arkham Asylum is more than a simple building. It occupies a huge area made of several separate locations including but not limited to a gothic manor, ancient underground passages, catacombs, a botanical garden and different wards. The size of the facility may seem stupid for the uninformed but it’s suitably overstated for the city of Gotham. After all this is a super-asylum which doubles as a prison for the insane super human villains we can see Batman fighting against. Some of them, like Killer Croc are barely human. The setting not only contains the story focused on a single location, but it also provides variety due to the presence of several different villains.

Of course, on a grander scale the setting itself resides in an original interpretation of the DC Universe, resting comfortably somewhere between the stark realism of Nolan movies and the colorful insanity of the comic books. This is a dark Batman for sure. There is no Robin or no yellow Batman logo here. Things are much more plausible than the comic book adventures of the silver ages. Yet there is ultra high technology in every day use. There are fast acting toxic mutagens. There is poison Ivy. And people are referring to each other using their nicknames in private conversation. So we can safely say things are much closer to comic books than the Nolan movies. It’s a mature version of the DC universe we’re seeing here, balanced perfectly on the slippery edge between too real and too silly.

Rating: 2 out of 2

Characters:

This is a tough one. On one hand you have the legacy of DC Universe, especially the Batman part of it, with its quirky and insanely original characters. One of the best decisions made by DC at the start of things was not giving Batman any super powers. Throughout all these years this decision prevented escalation. Most villains in Batman stories are just ordinary humans. They are neither planet eating intergalactic organisms nor Norse gods from another dimension. They are just criminals with above average intelligence. This opens the doors to potentially interesting stories although, I have to admit, we rarely see such stories in comic books. We can still say the characters in Batman comic books are of the interesting variant. A good writer can always turn them into gold.

On the other hand we have the cardboard cut, empty characters of Batman: Arkham Asylum. This is quite a wasted opportunity given the interesting interpretation of the setting and the cool idea. Sadly the characters in this story, hero or villain, don’t really have any plausible motivations for their actions. Batman: Arkham Asylum is almost romantic in its way of dealing with characters. Joker is doing bad things because he is well …a bad person. Batman is trying to stop him because he’s the hero. He’s supposed to be doing what he does simply because he is who he is.

Part of the reason for this antiquated system of characterisation is probably the game’s presumption of its audience’s high degree of familiarity with the subject matter. Those who have no idea who all these insane people are, are directed to an in-game encyclopedia not much different from the one you can find in the Dynasty Warriors series, although it’s certainly more stylistic. The voice recordings in this encyclopedia are superbly produced and written really well. The problem is the fact that your main source of insight about the characters in the story is these optional, collectible voice recordings. There is no character development to be found anywhere and very few of the character traits you learn from this encyclopedia are to be found inside the main story.

Batman, with his superb deductive abilities, makes horrible mistakes of judgement, relies more on his shiny gadgets than his intelligence and has trouble connecting obvious dots. Bane, a character known both for his great strength and his superior intelligence behaves like a common thug in his brief boss fight appearance.

More disconcerting is the lack of real motivation in Joker. Even though it can be argued that the plot vaguely resembles Nolan’s second Batman movie The Dark Knight, this Joker is just a half mad evil guy who, at the end of the day, proves to be not that clever after all. Heath Ledger’s depiction of the same character was terrifying not because Joker is a chaotic character without any purpose, but because in that story Joker actually had a point. There was hint of method behind the madness lurking beneath that smiling mask of paint. It’s not the insane who make us uneasy. It’s the barely sane who reject the rules of the society and say the things we know to be true deep in our souls, but reject them because we’re afraid of the implications. Compared to that, this Joker is a simple clown with a huge budget.

The few touching moments are there thanks to Scarecrow, but there is nothing here we don’t know about Bruce Bane.

Rating: 0 out of 2

Plot Structure:

What starts as an intriguing mystery and a horrible crisis quickly turns into something very simple. Joker makes a pact with a person inside the Asylum, when that person doesn’t deliver on her promise, he goes inside to pick up his package of mass destruction. Batman follows him. He throws baddies and some simple traps in Batman’s way. Batman kicks his ass. End of story.

There really is nothing to see here. Of course it works as a simple hero versus villain story but no one gains anything from this encounter. The story follows an almost episodic formula setting up the next installation in a quite irrelevant way and keeping the whole plot of this installation inside itself as an isolated event.

There are hundreds of plot holes and screwed up motivations here. Was this really the best way for Joker to obtain what he’s seeking? Couldn’t he simply kidnap the doctor at her home? How did Harley Quinn escape in the first place? If she could escape and take the warden of the Asylum hostage, couldn’t she also simply take the doctor hostage? After all it should be simpler. How did all the minions of Joker get into the asylum? Are they all insane? They looked very sane to me… Isn’t this a mental institution? Why are they incarcerated here?

We’re expected to ignore all these questions and more. In the end we’re left with an typical silver age comic book story. Even Riddler’s presence as the guy who’s providing the “secrets hunt” doesn’t really make much sense. The story is a more like forced pathway for you to confront a gallery of bad guys without rhyme or reason.

Rating: 0 out of 2

Craftsmanship:

Contrary to popular belief, the word “flawless”, may have different meanings. Usually when it’s about a work of art, it means that work of art is technically all it should be but not more. Nothing special or original. For the most part Batman: Arkham Asylum stays flawless. Visually, it’s a feast. Batman has all the moves and all the gadgets you’d expect from him, yet he does nothing you don’t expect. The dialog is well written and spoken, although you won’t find any lines you’d want to quote when you’re talking to your friends about this game. The music is effective, well used and produced but you won’t find a Batman melody you’d want to hum to yourself, like the one done by Danny Elfman in Tim Burton’s Batman movies.

What elevates this experience above flawless is the scenes involving Scarecrow. This interesting villain, with his hallucination inducing fear chemical, represents a great storytelling opportunity and the developers of Batman: Arkham Asylum capitalise on that. The first hallucination is hardly a surprise, especially for people who have prior knowledge of Batman lore. The event is almost telegraphed. However, the second one improves things quite a bit by its liberal use of dutch camera angles and slowly transforming reality. It proves to be a great way to retell Batman’s origin story in an exceptionally interesting way.

It’s the third hallucination though, which brings Batman: Arkham Asylum into the realm of unforgettable. Utilising the unique properties of the medium, here, writer Paul Dini makes the story jump out of the screen to invade your safe haven of sanity behind the game pad. The dosage of Scarecrow’s hallucinogen is so great that this time, it’s not only Batman who starts to lose his sanity. You join him. You, the player, who has since the beginning of the game identified himself with Batman, questions if he’s losing his sanity too. The story becomes aware of its own existence in a video game and the fourth wall comes crashing down. Sure it’s a disturbing experience, but that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. Bertholt Brecht would have been proud.

Not only is it a great way of making the audience feel what the protagonist is experiencing, but in this case it’s also a subtle critic of video game story telling in general. Hitting RETRY this time, you get to see Batman rising from his own grave as he did so many times before, when he died throughout the duration of this video game. Only he literally rises from his grave now, making this hallucinated unreality more real than the video game reality we’re used to. Simply brilliant.

Rating: 2 out of 2

OVERALL:

6 out of 10
(0-3= BAD, 4-6= AVERAGE, 7-10= GOOD)

Already Reviewed: “Infamous”
NEXT WEEK: “Wet”

 
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Posted in Story Review

 

Your Own Model Of Mac?

15 Dec

Do you like Mac OS X, but dislike Apple generally? Or perhaps there is a piece of software you want to use but it’s only available on Mac OS X. Isn’t a Mac too expensive? Can’t you make your own Mac if you want? Fear not, dear reader. Lifehacker can teach you how to build your own Hackintosh. For detailed instuctions in text, go here.

If you are too lazy to read you can always watch this instructional video instead.

 
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Posted in Technology

 

Be A Nicer Person With Necronomicon

14 Dec

What do you have to lose?

 
1 Comment

Posted in Art

 
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