In Space no one can hear you shriek like a child

There have been precisely three occasions when I have been known to shriek whilst using a computer or video-game console.

Incident #1: It's the summer of 1987. A pale-faced teenage David Court squints at the lines of a computer program on an old portable colour television as a shaft of sunlight dares to penetrate this fortress of solitude from the gap between thick curtains.  He's approaching the end of a marathon nine hour programming session and decides he needs a cup of tea. In an incredible demonstration of dexterity he manages to get his foot caught in the power cable and manages to both crash into the closed bedroom door and switch the ZX Spectrum+2 off. A shriek is heard, and a valuable lesson is learned. He never programs without saving regularly ever again.

Incident #2: It's very late on a summer evening in 1998. A pale-faced and long-haired headphone wearing David Court squints at the post-apocalyptic Raccoon city on a new portable colour television as he plays Resident Evil 2 on his relatively new Playstation. All seems quiet – too quiet, in hindsight - as he picks up the ROOK PLUG from a small room inside the Raccoon City Police Department.  A licker suddenly bursts out through the one way mirror inside this room, a shriek is heard and the  heart rate of David returns to normal roughly six hours later. He never plays a Resident Evil game late at night ever again.

Incident #3: It's early one morning in the Autumn of 2014. David Court is sitting way too close to his 40" telly and playing Alien Isolation. Ripley has spent the past five minutes hiding inside a closet and the motion detector isn't returning any signal. The alien can't be heard – through either the familiar sound of it stomping around searching in frustration for prey, or the echoing metallic clanging of it wandering around in the vents.  Ripley throws open the closet doors and it's standing there in the doorway having waited patiently for her to emerge. David gives a shriek just as the alien is on him at the same instant as Tara is walking into the living room with a cup of tea. She sniggers.

So, after nearly thirty hours of gameplay I've just finished the new game Alien: Isolation (developed by the British software team Creative Assembly and distributed by Sega).  I'd say how it's one of the best uses of the Aliens license in an age but if you've ever been unfortunate enough to either play or watch somebody else play Aliens: Colonial Marines (and I use the term "play" loosely) then you'll know that’s not exactly difficult.

Set 15 years after the events of the first Alien film, you play Amanda (the daughter of Ellen Ripley).  Having never watched the movie Alien or having read the tie-in comic or the novel by Alan Dean Foster, she's trying to find out what happened to her mother on board the ill-fated Commercial Towing Vessel "The Nostromo". She hears that the flight recorder of that self-same vessel has been located and is being held at a remote free port space station ("Sevastopol"), so Ripley Jnr. and her companions travel to the space station to find it damaged and communications dead and they space walk over to the station to investigate.

To say that there's an alien on board the space station is as much a spoiler warning as letting you know that the new Call of Duty game contains guns, killing and nine year old American children calling you a faggot. This game is even scarier than those nine year old children.

It's no secret I'm a huge fan of both Alien and Aliens.  Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection not so much, but at least Alien: Resurrection made Alien³ seem brilliant by comparison (Much as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom suddenly stopped being the worst in the series when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released).

It's clear that the game was made by fans. It oozes atmosphere and everything about it feels spot on – from the worn-out and lived-in environments to the technology that looks modern but still has a definite seventies vibe.  Big clunky CRT monitors show green-screen displays, tape reels whirr on their spools and everything bleeps and flashes lights to remind you that it's still on.  Even the loading icon is a tape cassette.

The Sevastopol is a huge space station with three main towers and you'll often find yourself retracing your steps as newly discovered equipment opens avenues previously closed to you. You'll scavenge for equipment to construct makeshift pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, noisemakers and medical kits and your movement through the station will be slow and terror-filled because of that bloody Alien.

Alien: Isolation is an outstanding "hiding in cupboards and hiding under tables" simulator. You'll become very familiar with certain walls of the space station as you stare at them from behind the narrow slots in a locker door as that hiss is heard.

This game has made the Alien scary again after ColonialMarines turned the acid-bleeding razor fanged and clawed xenomorphs into nothing but cannon fodder. It's smart and if it spots you you're dead. You can't outrun it and you can't hope to fight it – all you can do is avoid or distract it.  I've never known a game quite as terrifying – the sound design is exemplary and you're forever straining to listen for the tell-tale signs of its movements - either the creatures heavy feet stomping across the floor of the complex or the sound of a vent opening or the familiar hiss as it desperately searches for you.

The Alien isn't the only threat on the station – huddles of survivors and  SPOILER  will confront you as you make your way around the claustrophobic environments of the station. 

If I have any issues with it - and this a tiny gripe - it's that it drags on a little too long. This may feel like an odd complaint from somebody who regularly moans about the brevity of single player campaigns in games, but the endgame goes on for ages and also features my arch-nemesis of a quicktime event to conclude everything - but at least that's still infinitely better than a boss fight, eh?

So, Alien: Isolation. Buy it, play it, be as shit scared as I've been. It's a survival horror game done right.

Final report of the remote free space port Sevastopol, third officer reporting. The other members of the crew are dead. I should reach the corridor in about six weeks once I've summoned up the courage to come out of this locker.   This is Court, signing off.

Hang on, it looks relatively safe. I'm coming out n-

Titanfall - or "How I learned to stop worrying and love the Big Stompy Robots"

Big Stompy Robots are definitely up there in the top half of my Super Special Top 100 List of Ace Things – If memory serves, they replaced “Medium to large sized Dinosaurs” back in the late eighties. So, I was quite excited about the early announcements of the videogame Titanfall – being, at its heart, a game about Big Stompy Robots. The screenshots looked brilliant and some of the game-play footage from e3 looked like it'd be something quite special.

An exclusive excerpt from my Super Special Top 100 List of Ace Things.  Spoiler Alert: Number 12 is Thousand Island Dressing.

In Titanfall you play a Pilot working for either the IMC (The Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation) or the Militia. I’d have stuck a respective “boo” or “hooray” against those names but the plot is pretty vague about which lot are the bad guys and which lot are the good guys – there’s no clear cut Empire Versus Rebellion here, unless I missed something.

And let me tell you, it’s easy to miss something. The plot reveals itself during the game itself in the form of little snippets of dialogue or little picture-in-picture clips of something imprecise happening somewhere even more indefinite that may or may not be very important™. During the game. While your attention really is dedicated to trying to shoot stuff, or – more precisely in my case - while you’re being shot.

It’s difficult to pay attention to the nuances of the script when you’re being torn into fragments of bloody meat by an assault rifle.

"Dear Diary. Making some lovely friends.  One Titan seems insistent on giving me a really big hug" *head pops*

And it’s the subject of being shot that nearly put me off buying Titanfall. It’s multiplayer only which – according to your perspective – is either

• A bold and brave new radical approach to game releases.
• A lazy developer excuse not to write some decent AI routines and not have to bother sticking a single player campaign in.

..but my big drawback of multiplayer games?

I suck at multiplayer shooters. Honestly, I’m fucking rubbish.

It doesn’t help that Titanfall has possibly the worst matchmaking I've seen outside of the Television show “Take me out”. Apparently paying little heed to your skill level or how long you've been playing the game in whatever hopefully inadequate algorithm its using, it’ll happily stick you inside a mission against six guys who've lapped the game eight times over and know every inch of the map off by heart. Every new mission is a blind leap into the unknown where – if you’re lucky – a reasonable player might have a fighting chance.

Unfortunately, I am a far from reasonable player.

"Dear Diary. Just taken control of my very own Titan! I'll stand a much better chance on the battlefield n-" *BOOM*

I am to First Person Shooters what my cat Aslan is to testicular ownership. I’d like to blame my old man reactions (only any good for quickly shaking walking sticks at children) but truth is – outside of a fortunate couple of months in Goldeneye or Halo – I'm utterly bobbins.

I'm that player on the leader-board who’s never quite at the bottom but is often only spared that ignominy and humiliation because the player at the bottom is a household pet who’d logged onto Xbox live by accident or it's somebody who either died in real life as the match started or whose internet connection dropped off 8 seconds into play. I'm like an eager terrier (or again, my cat Aslan when he was a kitten whenever he saw the dustmen drive past in their van) in that I'm happily smiling running alongside my companions and going through the motions but I haven’t really got a clue what i going on.

Your pilot character is a spritely little chap in a 6 versus 6 match on a battlefield also populated by less agile and able grunts and Spectres (variants of Johnny 5 with an auto-rifle, essentially). You can zip around the map at a phenomenal rate of knots, jet-packing about and wall-running like those bonkers French parkour chaps you see throwing themselves off motorway flyovers whilst wearing tiny backpacks.

The Titans of the title are huge robots being built in orbit - heavily armoured humanoid tanks with thick hulls and devastating weaponry. Every kill you make takes seconds off the default construction time (from a default two minutes) until eventually you can call your Titan down from orbit, clamber into its cockpit and raise merry hell for as long as your armour holds out. Eject to safety upon your Titans destruction, and repeat until fade.

The end game comes when - in standard death-match or "attrition" -  one team hits a certain number of points and wins. The losers have to made a desperate mad dash to an evacuation point to escape safely, whilst the winners try to pick them off before they do so - or if they're lucky pump enough missiles into the escape vehicle so it explodes before they can get away.

It looks and sounds awesome, the maps are varied and large (with a lot of height, that makes a change for multiplayer games). You're never that far away from a frenzied gun battle, and it's balanced that you even stand a reasonable chance against a Titan if you're lucky and you're not me. And even when you're doing badly, it's damn good fun.

Honestly, I'm so bad at it it's not even funny any more. But I still keep playing and slowly grinding up through the levels - I laughably say "level up" but you can take that in much the same way as a drip of water will eventually soften rock if you leave it alone for several million years.

I can even cite a recent example - yesterday I was on what I laughably call "a winning streak" - as in I'd managed to survive more than 60 seconds without dying and I'd luckily killed an opponent by calling a Titan in which had landed on his head.  I ran into a room to find an opponent facing away from me in the window happily sniping my colleagues.

I had all the time in the world. I could simply have wandered in a straight line until I was behind him and a single simple melee attack would have broken his neck and killed him instantly. "But that'd be too easy", thought the tactical part of my brain, "What I should really do here is miss him at point blank range - several times, mind - until the very noise of me firing at him annoys him so much he'll turn around and pop a pistol shot between my eyes just to put me out of both of our respective miseries."

So if you ever play Titanfall, you may well see me. Maybe Folds5 will come blundering through a room towards your soldier and spend several seconds spraying SMG bullets into every single thing between the ceiling and floor that isn't you. Possibly you’ll wonder what that member of the opposition is playing at as he spins in circles angrily punching the empty air two metres to your right. Perhaps you’ll catch a last glimpse of me in another room as I throw that Arc-grenade that bounces off the door-frame and lands back at my feet.

But then one day you'll stand in one place for too long - more than likely caused by you dropping your joy-pad - and you'll give me the precious long seconds I need to perform my kill.  Or you'll be exactly in the wrong spot at the wrong time as I reverse in my Titan to avoid a missile and I accidentally tread on you. Or you'll run into the room just as I'm about to commit suicide with a poorly thrown grenade. Or the nuclear explosion that my Titan makes when it explodes takes you out because you're standing too close.

And then, my friends, revenge will be sweet. And only slightly dampened when you make me pay for it by blasting me to scarlet paste.

Regular readers of the blog will have noted that it's been an age since I posted anything, for which I can only apologise. I've been trying to finish my novel - last act now, so hoping to have it finished in a couple of weeks - so normal service should resume ASAP.

The exciting world of Cowboy/Hair puns and yet more Spoiler free Dredd

Last weekend was the official opening weekend of the new Judge Dredd movie - readers of this blog will know ("Yeah, I know, Dave. You've banged on about it enough") that I was lucky enough to be invited to an exclusive screening a week ago in London, but thanks to John Burdis (author of the excellent Cellar of Dredd blog) the evening of Saturday the 8th would see us both clad in our Judge outfits promoting the film for the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square.

This time Tara would be with me as would my friend Paul, neither of whom had seen the film yet. Lunchtime Saturday saw us on the train again and I was absolutely dreading (no pun intended) what was to come - mainly because it was absolutely sweltering (uncomfortably so, in fact) and I found myself loath to be wandering around in sweaty leathers for a whole evening as I'd seriously be running the risk of passing out.

The train journey was unexpectedly made more entertaining by a twitter related pun-off between my friend John Moynes and myself prompted by a crap gag I'd thought of on the way up that I felt had to be unleashed upon the world.

Yes, I'm not sure why either. It just tickled me at the time. Moynes quickly returned with a post..

..and thus Cowboy/Hair War was declared and the salvo began.

"Unless you're the man with no mane" - BLAM - "Or that guy from a Fistful of Straighteners", "Or the fella from High Plaits Drifter", "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Curler Robert Ford" - KABOOM - "The GHD, The Bad and the Ugly", "Bury my Hair at Wounded Knee" - WUMPPHHHH - "Redhead Redemption", "There will be blondes", "Bunanza", "Butch Cassidy and the Skinhead kid". The onslaught continued...

..and then (with the sound of a whistle growing louder) BLAM, an unexpected and blinding assault from Fifth Columnist Tara - who by this stage had suspected what I was busy doing when I asked for her help in thinking of a Western that had "The real" in the title so I could pun on the word "L'oreal"

..and then we arrived at London. Proof therefore of two things - that punning can act as a distraction from tedious long journeys, and secondly that the whole genre of cowboy/hair related puns is a rich vein from which to tap. If you can think of any more, please let me know - there must be some that we hadn't thought of.

Meeting Paul in London we headed to Leicester Square to grab a bite to eat - however, we happened to choose a KFC that had been equipped with the most sensitive fire alarm known to man, which of course chose mid-meal to go off, so were left standing on the streets to finish our meals, having been evacuated. Upon our return inside the alarm went off again, but this time the flames would have had to be lapping around my trainers for me to desert my chicken and chips.

Judge Burdis was already outside the cinema trooping when I there at around 17:45 so I went straight inside the cinema - where we'd been given the warmest disabled toilets in the UK to get changed in - and got into costume. There was a brief moment of panic where I ruined three out of my four contact lenses trying to put them in, and another horrifying moment where I thought I'd left my headband (essential at sweat collection for the Judge helmet - a phrase that sounds way cruder than I'd intended) at home. Still, some fifteen minutes later saw everything done and me out in the hubbub of Leicester Square.

Judges Court and Burdis greet the Brit-Cit movie-goers with the famous
Mega City blend of hospitality and warmth

Luckily there was a bit of a breeze and Steve Green (of Minty fame) was there with bottles of water, so my fears were unfounded. The crowds seemed to enjoy having us there - and a surprising amount of people knew who we were dressed as - and the afternoon and early evening were taken up with having hundreds of photographs taken of us posing with our guns and beating up passers-by (many of them children, I'm ashamed/amused* to say). John was in his element, at one stage picking up a bride from a hen party with a firemans lift, much to her (and her friends) amusement, and rushing inside the cinema with her. I also failed desperately to convince a lovely 76 year old lady (who was desperate to get a photograph with me, although she had no idea who I was supposed to be) that she should go to see Dredd instead of Anna Karenina **.

There was also some amusement when a foreign gentleman asked me who I was supposed to be in very poor English. I tried to explain as best as I could, but he'll now go home convinced he spent a while on Saturday evening in Leicester Square speaking to an oddly dressed man named George Court.

By early evening many of the 2000ad forum members coming to the showing - along with my wife and Paul, now returned from sampling Londons finest ales - were now all present so we all made our way inside The Empire. In advance of the adverts before the movie starting we had the opportunity for some photographs of us sitting in the cinema in full costume and also got the opportunity to have some photographs taken with John and I standing on the stage right in front of the curtains.

Judges Court and Burdis laugh in the face of 18 rated gore whilst those around them drop their popcorn in astonishment

After the film - more on which later - we had the opportunity for some photographs with people inside the cinema and then it was time to - at long last - get changed out of some very sweaty clobber and return to relative normality. And for anybody who happened to be travelling on the tube between Leicester Square and Snaresbrook last Saturday evening, I apologise if you had to stand anywhere near me - You'll know if you were, as your nose won't quite have recovered yet. I was humming like a barbershop quartet after a hot day in leathers.

So, how was the second viewing? Despite the fact that both screenings saw me in the presence of fanboys (and I'm not ashamed to count myself as one of their number) it was interesting to see it again without the whole "Squeee I'm Sitting Near To John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra in an exclusive screening" fever pitch mood accompanying my first viewing and to actually pay proper attention to it.

Much as I still love the film - the look and feel of it despite the differences from the strip (low-tech vehicles, an oddly sparse Mega City One) are incredible, for instance - what I'm most excited about isn't the film I've just watched but that which will come after it.

If there is any justice in the world it deserves to do well - It's a British independent film so deserves our support, after all - and the world of Dredd has such a fantastic wealth of material to tap into. Subsequent Dredd films (and I sincerely hope it does well enough at the Box Office that this happens) might be bigger and fancier but Garland understands the material and this shows in every second of Dredd 3D. It might not look exactly like the Dredd we'd envisaged, but it sure as Drokk feels like it.

..Time to check out the time of the next showing of Anna Karenina

And it's brutal, uncompromising, ridiculously violent and earns every bit of its 18 certificate - and it's nice for once to have a film that hasn't been watered down just so it gets a bigger audience. As I said last week this is the Dredd film I've wanted to see since I was a kid - and I'm anxious to see what Garland could do next with it, if given the chance.

And the traditional Coventrian*** exuberant review from Tara? "Well, I didn't hate it.". That is as high praise as I'd expected from my lovely wife :)

So, thanks to John Burdis for organising an excellent evening, The Empire in Leicester Square for letting us muck around outside their building, Steve Green for loads of photographs/looking after the Judges and also (last but not least) to Tony Richards for taking the excellent photographs that accompany this piece. There are some awesome photographs of the weekend, and undoubtedly more will emerge over time.

* - delete as applicable. Or don't. It's your call.

** - She told me she might get to a showing the week after. I suspect she said that to humour/placate me.

*** - The inhabitants of Coventry, by their very nature, seem to find it difficult to get overly excited about anything. If Zeus were to visit Earth, his arrival accompanied by the sound of a billion triumphant horns being sounded and a kaleidoscope of colour as the Heavens themselves joyously greeted his arrival, a Coventrian, upon witnessing said spectacle, would announce "Yeah, s'alright.". The cause for this phenomenon is mostly unknown, but it's believed to be something to do with Coventry City Football Club.

Dredd 3D - The Verdict - Spoiler-free

June 1995; The Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Space Station Mir for the first time, Jacques Chirac resumes nuclear testing in French Polynesia, Stuart Maconie is busy scribbling down notes about what he's watching on television for his inevitable appearance on "I love 1995", South Africa has just won the Rugby world cup and a 24 year old me sits down in the Odeon cinema in Coventry with his friend Gary to watch Judge Dredd.

The cinema darkens and (after being handily informed about the availability of cold drinks in the foyer by an anthropomorphised drink carton and the proximity of local curry houses which I might like to try) the credits roll. The awesome swell of the (underrated) Alan Silvestri soundtrack plays over a backdrop of a flickering montage of Dredd panels, and then we see The Cursed Earth (also known as Bigg Market) and some exposition read out by Darth Vader.  "It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base..".  Or something like that.

A H-Wagon approaches a city from the Cursed Earth, docks inside the City Wall and then we see our first glimpse of the metropolis of Mega City One - at first crowded streets which then open out onto a huge vista, a megascape of vast city blocks and flying vehicles. "This is it", I think, tears of emotion welling in my eyes, "This is Mega City One. This is the city I've been reading about since I was six years old, the city I've had countless roleplaying adventures in. This is soooooo cool. (Or 'wicked' as may have been a popular colloquialism back in the mid nineties).

And then the vehicle we're following descends (and in hindsight, so did the quality of the film) and we find ourselves at ground level watching two Judges caught in the crossfire of a block war awaiting backup.

Hershey and Brisco in position outside Heavenly Haven! We're under fire from the upper floors. Request backup! Cell "B" in Heavenly Haven, on the corner of Abbott and Costello - request backup!

Cue a dreadul slow motion shot of a lawmaster bike approaching through flames and slowing to a halt. And then the driver dismounts, only his huge ridiculous boots in shot. This has to be Dredd.

Holy crud! He's a sitting duck out there!
He knows what he's doing.

And then.. wait for it.... It's Sylvester Stallone!

Armour designed by Gianni Versace. I shit you not.

Uuuuh uhhhhm.. thuuuuuh luuuurrrrh!
Druuuuhp yuuuuuh wuuhpuuuns!
These bluuuuuhks.. are uuuuuhnder.. uhhrest!

Somehow Stallone achieves the impossible - with every single unintelligible word he utters, the film becomes noticeably worse. It's a rare talent. And you see he's got a gleaming codpiece. And it gets worse. And says the catchphrase, "I knuuuh yuuuud say thuuuut". And it gets worse. And a comedy sidekick is introduced - and it's Rob Schneider - who has never been funny. And it gets worse. And then you think "Man, this can't get any worse", and he takes the helmet off without batting an eyelid and the film achieves what you'd thought impossible - It gets worse.

Flying lawmasters that only work when the plot dictates Dredd killing more Judges than any of the villains. Dredd kissing Hershey. Rob bloody Schneider.

And you end up sitting through a Judge Dredd film assembled by a committee - a melting pot of disparate plot lines. It's like a Jive Bunny megamix of what Dredd should be. Hey, lets throw in the Angel Gang! And somebody can go on The Long Walk! And lets have an ABC Warrior!

And I came out of that cinema, blinking into the daylight, and did something I never did again until I went to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.  I convinced myself it was good. I'd gone in with such expectations and couldn't quite come to terms with how bad it was, so tried to convince myself - but it never quite worked. Luckily it never put me off Dredd himself though, a fact that regular readers of this blog (and friends of mine on Facebook) are probably bored sick of.

Thing is, with hindsight, Judge Dredd is quite a reasonable throwaway eighties movie. Unfortunately, it was an eighties movie made in the mid-nineties.

But, by Grud, let's put aside memories from 1995 and fly kicking and screaming into the year 2012 and the release of Dredd 3D.

Expectations for this have been high, with only a trickle of publicity surrounding the film. The trailer was released only recently - but was well received - as was an exclusive showing of the movie to fans at San Diego Comic Con. For all intents and purposes Karl Urban makes a great Dredd, and - most importantly - the helmet stays on, as it has done throughout the characters illustrious comic career.

So.. last week I received an email from Michael Molcher, the PR coordinator for Rebellion (publishers of 2000ad) asking me if I'd like to attend a private screening of Dredd 3D for fans in Soho on the evening of the 30th of August, with a meet-and-greet with Karl Urban (Dredd) and Alex Garland (the writer) before the screening. How could I refuse?

And then the nerves sank in. Days passed without hearing anything. Did they get my confirmation? Had I been forgotten about? Was my invitation a huge, ghastly mistake? And then the email arrived, and what a relief - 1 seat for the screening, arrive at 6:30 for a 7 p.m. showing at the private screening in London. So, with train and hotel booked, off to That London again with the missus (who, despite not being able to see the film - despite trying to win a ticket via competitions - can catch up with some of our old friends in London.. which I'm off to do now). I seem to be making a habit of travelling to the capital on the days following Olympic Opening Ceremonies.

And I've literally just left the screening and am on the way for drinks now. It's 17 years since I saw Stallones Dredd and here I am again, blinking back into the real world.

When I arrived at the screening, it was a relief to see some of the Minty crew there. John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra were there also (who both graciously signed my dredd travel pass holder, the only Dredd related thing I had) and after a brief intro from Alex and Karl, the film began...

And then 95 minutes later drew to a close and was met by rapturous applause... Which must have come as a relief to the writer Alex Garland who had already said in his intro that this was one of the most nerve-wracking screenings he had ever attended.

The verdict? Amazing. The Dredd film that we should have had back in the nineties. Urban has absolutely nailed it. Incredibly (and brutally) violent but with a satirical sense of humour and a firm grounding in reality.

There are plenty of little touches in there to keep the seasoned 2000ad fan happy, but it is also an incredibly well written introduction to the character.

Face off.

The ghost of the Stallone version has finally been wiped out, presumably by Karl Urbans Dredd armed with an exorcist bullet. This is the definitive Dredd movie.

I for one cannot wait to see it again.

Derek Yu hates mankind

This is Derek Yu (He's the one on the right, by the way).

"What a nice chap", you're probably thinking, "He certainly looks very happy, which in this cynical age is very refreshing. Hurray for him. And blimey, hasn't she got a tiny head? And is that Woody Allen in that picture?"

But I beg you to desist and hold back your hurrays. For Derek Yu is smiling for one sinister reason in this picture, and one sinister reason alone. If you're a gamer, he's looking for a way to destroy your life and royally fuck you over. Derek Yu hates you.

One day, perhaps, in a scenario playing out in my head right now, Derek Yu was watching a friend play Demons Souls on the PS3. "Crikey", he thought, "Thats a bit difficult. I'm surprised that this is selling." and he went away, thinking no more of it.

And then a few years later (again, only in a fictional scenario that exists solely in my head) he was watching the same friend play Dark Souls on an xbox 360 and thought, "Crikey! (which is the favourite expression of surprise of the imaginary Derek Yu in my head) This is even more difficult than Demons Souls, and that was next to impossible. Why would anybody play a game like that?" - and once again, he went away, thinking no more of it.

Not on a concious level, at any rate. The subconscious of Derek Yu was hard at work, mentally constructing a game that would be harder than Chuck Norris in a Viagra factory - and from this evil seed, Spelunky was unleashed upon the world.

The concept is straight forward enough.You play a treasure hunting Indiana Jones type character in an old-school side scrolling platform game, armed only with a whip. Standing between you and the ultimate treasure at the end of the game are snakes, spiders, tribesmen, scorpions, killer wasps, poisonous explosive frogs, yetis, mummies, flying saucers (?!), spike pits and much more.

Every single thing in the game wants you dead, and you will die. A lot.

The corpse of a poisonous frog will explode, sending you flying across the map until your fall is halted by a spike pit. A chain reaction of explosions will disintegrate the ceiling above your head, causing a large stone block to crush you. The ground will collapse under you and you'll fall to your death, breaking every bone in your body. You'll end up at the bottom of a ridiculously deep chasm without the means of getting back out, and you'll be forced to quit.

And with your one life gone, you'll go back to the very start of the game. And I guarantee that you'll click 'Start new game' and play again. And again. And again.

And the primary reason you'll do this is that your death was entirely your fault, and you'll swear you won't get caught out like that again. And as all of the levels are entirely randomly and procedurally generated, you'll never be confronted by the same map and same combination of enemies ever again.

Little by little you will make progress. The mysterious Tunnel Man is one of your only allies, and in return for gifts (the bombs or ropes you own, or the treasure you've found) he'll dig a tunnel to the next level so you have a shortcut straight there.

"But this doesn't mean  that Derek Yu hates mankind", you cry, "merely that he's crafted an entertaining and charming videogame with a high level of difficulty."

No, it doesn't. What convinces me that Derek Yu hates mankind is that I'm nearing the games end and would like Tunnel Man to make me a shortcut. Which he will do, provided I bring him a Gold key. A gold key that only exists in the very first level, for which I'll need to go back to the start of the game and carry it - without dying once, remember - through every single level all the way to him. When even surviving to the end of a single level is a miracle in itself.

Fuck you, Derek Yu.

..but I can do it next time, right? One more go... I can do it...

Spelunky is available on Xbox live marketplace for 1200 Microsoft points you'll never regret spending - or available as a huge demo for free on the PC from Spelunky World. Try it out - I want other people to swear as much as I have over the last fortnight.

FoldsFive, Dragonslayer

"Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit."

Verily (and other such olde world phrases), gather ye round and hear my tale of adventures great, derring-do and derring-don’t. I am David K’ort, Thane of Jak’Danlz, only heir to Dread Lord Bernard, High King of Khrr’lsberg and scourge of Belgium, and this is my story. Enjoy your ale responsibly but remember it’s a sipping beer and not designed for quaffing.

Skyrim may sound on the surface like a very specific sexual act carried out by members of the mile high club, but is in fact the sequel to the RPG Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (which is in itself a sequel to Elder Scrolls: Morrowind). Much like its predecessors, it takes place in an open fantasy world which you’re allowed to explore at your own pace in the manner of your choosing. Oh sure, it has the traditional ‘Only the one spoke of in legend can save the world and, by the way, that’s you’ plot, but there are plenty of sub quests and distractions to keep you busy for hundreds of hours without you even needing to go anywhere near that.

It opens with your as yet unnamed character being carted off for execution. Said execution is unsurprisingly interrupted (which is lucky, otherwise I’d be wondering why I spent 40 quid on a cut scene) by the emergence of a dragon which fries everybody it can see enabling you to perform a daring escape (for ‘escape’ read ‘tutorial’). It of course emerges that you have a great destiny, blah de blah, so far so every fantasy trilogy you’ve ever read or glanced at on geeks bookshelves.

And you’re then let loose in a huge fantasy world racked by Civil War where if you can see it, you can travel to it. Much like Oblivion this is slightly overwhelming at first, but the pure joy of this game comes from exploring Skyrim which hosts a cavalcade of dungeons, ruined temples, haunted caverns and fortresses. Admittedly once you’ve discovered a location you can travel there with a few key presses, but this defeats the object. The fun is in wandering off the beaten track and discovering the secrets of the world for yourself.

YOUR SKILL IN BLOG WRITING HAS INCREASED TO 31.

"Have at thee, tiny crab! That's for giving it all that!"
*does comical pincer hand movements*

It’s not without bugs (by which I don’t mean the Horned Skull-Beetle of the V’poresh Mountains which I may have invented). Characters will happily speak over each other like they’re on the set of Iron Man and I met one poor woman in a town who had found herself unfortunately phased into the wall of her house. I chatted with her for a while and she didn’t seem bothered that she was tethered to the spot with her face sticking out of a wall though, so no harm done. Dragons will swoop overhead and people won’t even react, despite the fact that the game presents them as some World destroying threat.

But oh, those dragons. They’re Skyrims major selling point, and they’re brilliantly realised. If you’re lucky you’ll hear the familiar screech of one of them in the distance, circling some distant misty mountains and marvel a while at the sheer majesty of the beast. If you’re unlucky it has spotted you first – you’ll hear the sound of huge leathery wings shaking the earth, catch a glimpse of its vast shadow and then you’ll be flambéed (thanks to all that Nord Mead you’d ingested) inside your armour. If you’re really unlucky it has dragged a mate along as well, meaning you'll end up as some kind of dragon pull-toy.

A hoary old fantasy plot dictates that it is your destiny to be a Dragon Slayer but I’ll be honest in that I haven’t managed to do so yet without assistance. Why couldn’t the ancient tales have dictated that a legendary Crab killer would walk the earth? I’m awesome at that – the scourge of Crustaceans everywhere. If you’re in luck the dragons flame or ice breath will also irritate some innocent Giant who was previously just minding his own business herding his mammoth who’ll then wander in like a pissed off 60 foot tall Phil Mitchell and give the dragon a piece of its mind. And the large tree it uses as a club.

YOUR SKILL IN BLOG WRITING HAS INCREASED TO 32.

Your unique talent as a Dragon Slayer gives you the ability to learn new abilities from vanquished dragons souls in the form of allowing you to learn previously discovered magical words which form a Shout (“Get! Orf! My! Land!” – that kind of thing). These shouts bless you with superhuman abilities – the ability to move faster than sound, to freeze time, to breathe fire, etc.

My character in Skyrim is an angry ginger lady called Tara who is quite skilled at fighting and cooking. For the benefit of the Court (no pun intended), I’d like to point out that any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

If I had any criticism of Skyrim at all, it'd be that I've been spoiled by the excellent quality of voice acting in both the recent releases Arkham City and Uncharted 3. Many of the Skyrim characters seem like they're attempting sub-par Schwarzenegger impressions delivered with all the charisma of the big Austrian himself. And then you'll meet a cockney. The EDL should take note - this is successful racial integration at its most extreme.

So, in closing. Skyrim is a real time-magnet. It’s beautiful looking and completely absorbing with that annoying hook where every minute of gameplay makes your character that slight bit better but it never feels like a grind. The plot is clichéd but absorbing and (almost) every element of the game feels crafted to the point of perfection. I've been adventuring for hours so far and have barely scratched the surface of this fantasy epic. Skyrim is an icy world so utterly compelling that you'll feel the need to turn your heating up.

Right, I’m off looking for dragons. What’s that shadow abov-

ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!


RESTART FROM LAST SAVED GAME?

It's my party and I'll Crysis if I want 2

If Crysis 2 was a man and not a computer game - which may seem like a very odd analogy, but bear with me - if he climbed into the helicopter next to Dutch and Co at the start of Predator, they'd all feel incredibly inadequate by comparison. Crysis 2 would sneer at Jesse "The Body" Ventura (so called, apparently, because he is in possession of a body - and "The Spleen" was taken) chewing his tobacco (which apparently makes him feel like a "goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus") because Crysis 2 would be too busy gnawing the corners off house bricks. For fun.  As it mocked its colleagues sexual orientation, as they sat helplessly nearby and wept into their Malibu and coke.

Crysis 2 (or "KABOOOOOOOOOM!" as it should be called) is the excitingly titled sequel to Crysis, a PC only game that I never played because I've never owned one of the only three super computers on the planet capable of running it. The kind of machine that when you switch it on causes you to get warning letters from your electricity supplier and complaints from your neighbours regarding their house lights dimming every time you power it up.

Crysis 2 tells the story of.. Actually, I've played it to completion and I'm still not really sure what the story is. There are some aliens and some bad humans, and they might be in league - or might not - and you have to shoot them up regardless. Except for when you're teamed up with them, and end up shooting them by accident as they wander into your line of fire as though life suddenly became too overwhelming for them, like a man forced to watch the Box Set of Series 1 of "Horne & Corden" in its entirety. Anyway, there are loads of huge explosions and loads of stupidly large weapons that no mortal man could even lift, let alone fire, without fire of dislocating their arms or shoulders. Or heads.

But, as fate would have it, you ARE no mortal man. You're a soldier embedded in a fancy space-age suit™ capable of briefly turning you invisible, giving you the armour of a walking tank or just allowing you to run around the map punching cars into peoples faces. Admittedly you're restricted by battery power and your suit seemingly runs off the same power source that powers my HTC Desire (or "Mr. Sleepy phone" as I call it) but you're pretty kick-ass nonetheless. Although your suit seems to have some basic operating system issues in that it reboots frequently throughout the game (It's probably Windows ME), but as this is mostly an excuse to force you to lie there whilst you watch some manner of drama unfold around you (and by "Drama" I mean "Another huge explosion").

Your character is one mean-assed son of a bitch. The evidence of this is through his voice which is so gruff and deep it's impossible to hear what he's saying without having the subtitles switched on. 

It's both a busy and noisy game. Levels almost without exception begin with you perched on some high point on the map and after you've consulted the super-duper visor mounted computer™ to give you your tactical options (which extend as far as "sneak past the baddies", "Find some more ammo" or "shoot the baddies in their alien/devious human faces") you're in amongst it.  Oddly, despite the tactical options, most battles start off in stealth mode until you're discovered either by your own incompetence or the AI deciding to be able to see you even though you're invisible, and then all hell breaks loose.  Find ammo, continue allowing hell to break loose, find more ammo, repeat until fade.

The prequel Crysis was set in the jungle, and this new one relocates you to New York, an urban jungle. It's a beautiful looking game - arguably one of the best looking games on the XBox 360, but cheats with the frame rate occasionally with blurring effects and tiny bits of scenery have an awkward habit of disappearing and reappearing. I.e. I'm looking at some lovely detail on a packing crate (which coincidentally is one of my real life hobbies) and slightly turn my head - and the crate vanishes. Turn it slightly more and it reappears. Damn aliens invading New York and causing innocuous street furniture to phase in and out of reality - IS THERE NO END TO YOUR EVIL?

And it's never mentioned in the plot, but the aliens also seem to have attacked New York with a Super-retardo-ray™ which backfired on them, because every opponent you'll meet in the game (except for the odd occasion which really stands out), be they the standard human variety or some nasty tentacled beastie, is a fucking idiot. An enemy soldier will see you in plain view become invisible and will suddenly forget you ever existed, going about his business as though he's decided you were simply a mirage or trick of the light. An alien will see you emerge from stealth mode and stab his Martian friend in the back with a knife and will completely ignore you, as though he never really liked his friend anyway. Despondent opponents will charge at a wall and run against it for ever until you put them out of their misery with a grenade. Honestly, some of the scenery shows more intelligence than your opponents.

But despite this, you know what? It's dumb fun. All too often the game throws so many enemies at you that you almost forgive the stupidity of them - they're all simply fleshy shouty bullet receptacles anyway. It's noisy, has one gear like Charlie Sheen ("Go"), has a plot that it thinks is way cleverer than it actually is, but it's entertaining from start to finish. There are some wonderful set pieces, the soundtrack is pure excellent bombastic action film theme, and some of the map design is surprisingly good, and the tactical options at the start of each level don't quite make it the sandbox game that it's predecessor was but it's still surprisingly open. It's the gaming equivalent of a Summer Blockbuster - stupid if you think about it, but fun whilst it lasts. And for around 10 hours worth of single player campaign, it lasts a fair old while. And to be fair to the makers, I think this was exactly what they were trying to achieve.

And the epilogue movie sets Crysis 2 up perfectly for a sequel with such a nonsensical piece of exposition that I've watched it three times and it still makes absolutely no sense.  Honestly, for all the logic in this game the end movie could have revealed that the great big baddy behind the aliens was a sentient piece of Caerphilly Cheese flying a Anti-gravity bagpipe and it still wouldn't have been any less daft.  Huge dramatic music plays over a clip that doesn't really seem to mean anything, the end titles show and I'm left going "What?  Is that it?  What does that even mean?".

So, Crysis 2.  Like all the stupid films you ever watched shoved together randomly into a huge odd shaped mass.  But astoundingly daft fun.

Topical reviews of 13 month old games: Heavy Rain



X is the easiest button to remember, so Write a blog post it is then.

Last week Tara and I watched the excellent Video Games BAFTAs (hosted by the as-always excellent Dara O'Briain) which was pretty much overwhelmed by artistic and music awards for the Playstation 3 game Heavy Rain (and sadly nothing for the excellent yet overlooked Limbo). I'll admit that I never picked up Heavy Rain first time round because it didn't look like the sort of game that would appeal, but what with it being dirt cheap now on pre-owned I thought I'd give it a try to see what all the fuss was about - and before the price suddenly rose on it with the inevitable "Game of the year edition" that'll no doubt be released shortly.

It was purchased on Friday, and some six or seven hours of gameplay I beat it this afternoon - Well, by 'beaten' I mean 'Reached one of the many endings'. So what with the game only being 13 months old I thought what better time than now to give you my opinions. I'm nowt if not typical. Next week I shall be reviewing the eighties classics "Weird Science" and "Teen Wolf" and making some humorous jokes about the skiing accident of Sonny Bono.

Heavy Rain isn't so much a computer game - It's the expensive genetically engineered nephew of those 'Choose your own adventure' novels from the eighties, albeit one with more swearing and nudity. It tells the tale of four protagonists living in a permanently rain-soaked city in America which is in the grip of a serial killer. This 'Origami Killer' is grabbing children from the streets (exclusively from poorer areas) and their bodies are found in wasteland several days later, the cause of death being drowning in rain water, an orchid left on their chest and origami figure in their dead grip.

Four protagonists.  One Origami Killer.  Millions of thriller cliches.

Despite billing itself as an intelligent crime thriller noir, the storyline is hackneyed rubbish. The motivations of the four main characters are vague or non-existent as they wander haplessly through ridiculous coincidence and plot-holes you could march a damp parade through.

What the game does well is atmosphere. The soundtrack is brilliant although oddly paced - even an action as simple as trying to open a fridge (Well, I say 'simple'. More on that later) will be accompanied by an ominous orchestral backing as though Freddy Kruger is in there lurking behind the Frozen yoghurt. The permanent moist setting is brilliantly realised and feels like a living, breathing place, but then...

It introduces one of the characters, an FBI agent, investigating a recent murder. All makes sense so far, but then you're introduced to an item from his inventory - some magic FBI glasses that he puts on.. and any atmosphere previously established runs kicking, swearing and screaming out of the room.

I'd previously thought of the FBI as being hard-working individuals, skilled at investigation and criminal profiling. My faith in them has slipped somewhat knowing that they're equipped with magic glasses which, at the press of a button, show the world in an eerie green tint and handily identifies nearby clues with a level of technology that will be difficult to create in a few decades time, let alone one supposed to exist in the modern day setting of Heavy Rain. It's definitely set in 2011 and not 2036, I checked.

Some fairness is restored in that said FBI agents investigations are hindered by the fact that even when a clue is right in front of him glowing bright green with some neon arrow pointing down at it reading 'Here's a fucking clue. CLUE!  CLUE!' that it'll take him a good minute or so to be able to actually manoeuvre himself into a position to do anything about it.

The controls are absolutely horrible. I know it wouldn't achieve the revolutionary aims that the makers of Heavy Rain set out to meet, but would there really be anything wrong with the old tried and trusted 'move the joystick in the direction you want to go' control mechanism?  Instead you have to rotate yourself around with the joystick and hold a button down to walk forward. Even an act as straightforward as walking into a different room will result in your own screen avatar wandering haplessly into every bit of furniture and crashing his (or her) face repeatedly against the door frame. Trying to open a cupboard?  Get used to spinning around on the spot whilst trying to do so and looking for all intents and purposes like you're wearing ill fitting (and different sized) rollerskates with broken wheels.

There is a particularly nightmarish sequence in which you're trying to make your way through an electrical powerstation without stir-frying yourself. Hold down the Square button on the PS3 controller to begin the process, and then hold down the triangle key at the same time. And then hold R1. And then hold R2. And then - hang on a fucking minute, I haven't got enough fingers for this. Bzzzzzzzt.

Although, that said, for much of the game you're not actually in control of the characters anyway. Just sitting through lengthy cutscenes or involved in set pieces where you can't actually die, no matter how dangerous the situation, matching key presses that appear on the screen that barely seem to represent the on-screen action your character will actually carry out. Unless you're the type who always opens cupboards by swiping your hand right across the front of it and then moving it slowly clockwise.

My hands... if only I could control them.

But do you know what?  Despite all my reservations about it and that it pretty much stands for everything I hate about videogames; I.e. it's pretentious, badly written and that it barely qualifies as being a computer game at all, I've really enjoyed the time I've spent in it.

The ridiculous storyline is far-fetched but I genuinely wanted to know how it panned out. Some of the set pieces, despite the fact I felt I had little influence over their outcome, are genuinely gripping and had my heart racing more than once.

Also, It looks absolutely gorgeous. The character models are truly incredible, although their realism is somewhat ruined as soon as my on-screen avatar comes blundering into a room like a chieftain tank. The voice acting is also spot-on with some genuinely decent acting - despite the incredible cheesiness of some of the dialogue, which makes a change.

So, all in all, a brave experiment. I'd have felt cheated paying full price for it, and I can't ever see myself playing it again - I can't imagine the plot will deviate that much as a result of my actions - but I enjoyed my time in Heavy Rain. It's only slightly more interactive than Dragons Lair, but in comparison to the bland identikit first person shooters that make up the video game marketplace these days, it genuinely felt different.

And it's the first game in history that Tara has been interested in and has watched from start to finish.

Let's get a proper author writing the script for a computer game and bung the Heavy Rain technology behind it. Keep the setting true within its own guidelines - that means no silly uber-technology anachronistic Magic FBI glasses, and we might genuinely be onto something interesting. And we'll be a step closer to that oh-so elusive "Video Games as Art".

It's like real life.  PLUS.

Whats that coming over the hill? A predictable blog title.

(This article was originally written for the coll3ctive blog on February 11th 2011)

I was off surrounding myself with Geeks last weekend (at the SFX Weekender – The missus and I – and seemingly every other participant – won tickets) and caught a showing of “Monsters”. I was intrigued by this because despite huge critical acclaim it never got shown at our Huge-Monstro-Cineplex because it didn’t star Martin Lawrence in drag (“Big Monsters House 3″, anyone?) – I was doubly excited because it was going to be introduced by the director Gareth Edwards who was going to do a Q&A session afterwards.

As it transpired, however, Gareth Edwards couldn’t make it. He’d been flown out to Hollywood for a top secret project he’d been given – turns out he’s got the gig as the director of the new Godzilla movie.

My seating position wasn’t ideal. The chairs were very low and as Monsters is set in Mexico, there are a fair few subtitles. Cue everybody comically half standing up every time subtitles appeared.

But, I digress. Monsters. The poster would have you believe it’s a big special effects and action epic, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The background is simple – a returning space probe several years back crashed on Earth in Mexico carrying some samples of extraterrestrial organic material. Since then, said organic material became huge monsters and most of Mexico (and certainly the border between it and the US) is now a quarantine zone. The story follows a war reporter trying to get the daughter of his boss safely back to US soil. Right, let the action begin, eh? There will be at least a couple of gunfights, some big explosions and the guy you just KNOW is going to betray the team is going to be ripped in half by one of these huge beasties.

Sorry, it’s not that kind of film. And it’s all the better for it.

I can’t say too much without spoiling it, but the pace is very different from what I expected. The monsters have been around so long that they’re almost part of the scenery – a very real threat, admittedly, but are as much of a novelty as wild bear attacks. What threatened to be a brain dead actioner turns out to be a character drama with two very convincing leads – the monsters in it just act as background, as scenery almost. Almost in the same way that many films are set against the backdrop of World War 2 but don’t actually have any war scenes in them.

Don’t get me wrong, there are monsters in it – and they’re excellently realised too – and on a stupidly low budget, apparently – but they’re not what the film is about. They’re a metaphor for something else, which will become apparent if you watch the film.

So, despite not watching it in its optimum surroundings (big screen cinema with fancy sound system), I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although, as a word of warning, many others didn’t. They were clearly expecting the F15 jet explodorama that I was frankly relieved it wasn’t. Be warned.

I have the need - the need to crash into walls repeatedly

"WOOP WOOP Thats the sound of the Police".  Or rather, during an average session of me playing Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, "WOOP WOOP CRASH Arrrrgggghh!! Bloody oncoming traffic!"

I've never been a fan of the Need for Speed games, especially recent iterations which glorified the Fast and the Furious world of the American equivalent of Chavs and their souped-up Vauxhall Corsas with blue neon under-lighting and loads of stick-on-plastic crap.  And oversized exhausts on tiny engines which end up making their cars sound like hover mowers.  They're almost as bad as the various versions of Gran Turismo with their unhealthy obsession with what borders on Car porn.  This doesn't mean I hate driving games - Far from it; I'm just not that interested in the simulator aspect of them.. which is why I've always preferred the Burnout series - good old fashioned stupidly fast arcade fun.

Which is why I was delighted that Criterion, developers of the consistently excellent Burnout series, had been picked as the new developers of the Need for Speed series.  And Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is their first release for it.  And it's fucking brilliant.

It's the age-old concept of Cops versus robbers.  A series of race where you play as the police attempting to take down illegal races through spike traps (Cue the yelling of 'Stinger!' every time you deploy one if you've ever caught any of the myriad of late night Cop shows), Road blocks and electromagnetic pulses - or alternatively as said illegal racers with jammers (that block the police abilities), spike traps, EMPs again and nitrous oxide boosts.  

As per the Burnout series, every single success is met with a drip feed of rewards.  A promotion here, new equipment there - and here is another new car to add to your already stupidly large garage, which must have to be the size of an American state to house them all.  The cars range from standard road models to almost science-fiction-esque concept models which would look more at home flying around the sky in the ridiculously overrated Blade Runner.

Playing as either side is simply brilliant - and each side plays sufficiently different to keep the whole thing interesting.  As per the Burnout series it chugs along at such a rate that you effectively have to switch your brain off and run on instinct. 

The genius aspect of the game is the introduction of Criterions new 'autolog' system.  It's essentially an in game RSS feed following all your friends successes and failures.  The High score chart (or 'Speedwall') is a list of the times of your friends.  Shave half a second from your mates best time on a particular track?  Gloat about in on their autolog feed and then kick your cat/dog/child through frustration ten minutes later when they do the same to you.  A great concept for competitive play, and one which will be ripped off in every driving game released in the future.

And Criterion missed a trick in not calling the autolog RSS 'Need for Feed' which would have been my recommendation if I was one of the developers.  Which I'm not.  Which, in hindsight, is actually remarkably smart of them - otherwise Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit would have been a text adventure in which you repeatedly typed 'Accelerate', 'Turn Left', 'Brake', etc.  And that would have been, I'm sure you'll agree, shit.

The Girl with the Powerbook Pro

Firstly, a quick mention about how amazed I was by the success of my last blog post regarding the recent remembrance service poppy burning by Muslim Extremists and the ridiculous level of media coverage it received (and the subsequent "I'm not racist, but.." response on web forums).  It got more than 800 page views and was shared nearly 200 times on facebook, which is frankly remarkable.  However, this blog post will see things quickly return to normal as I remove my rarely worn 'champion of social injustice' hat and replace it with the all-too-commonly-worn 'reviewer of something what I watched' trilby.

Last Saturday afternoon I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor – "Men Who Hate Women").  It's a Swedish crime thriller currently being remade for Hollywood for those small brainers who don't like reading subtitles, but I've whinged about that in the past.  It's based on the first book of the bestselling Millennium Trilogy by Author and Journalist Stieg Larsson, who sadly died before seeing the success of either the novels or the subsequent film adaptations.

I'll admit I didn't think it was really my thing as I've never been all that interested in detective thrillers - If it involves detection but doesn't include Batman or Columbo, then count me out.  Tara, however, is currently on the last book of the trilogy and was constantly recommending the series (even though I would never have thought that crime novels were "her thing", as it were).  I came to the conclusion that seeing a film that is not really my thing is a damn sight easier and quicker (and a damn sight lazier) than reading a book that might not really be my thing.  And hey, it's got subtitles, right?  That's almost like reading.

And I'm glad I watched it - It's a gripping thriller with an array of intiguing supporting characters.  The premise is interesting enough; Mikael Blomkvist is a disgraced journalist awaiting a prison sentence after making damaging allegations about a billionaire Swedish industrialist, and is given the task of investigating the 40 year old case of an elderly former CEOs' vanished (and probably murdered) niece.  His investigations cause him to cross paths with the mysterious Lisbeth Salander, an expert hacker and researcher - the eponymous Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

After a slow start, the plot is gripping enough with all the appropriate twists and turns that are associated with the genre.  Blomkvist and Salander make an interesting (and unlikely) pairing, but they're both painted with sufficient depth that you genuinely care about them.

So what began as (to be honest) a chore to see what all the fuss was about, turned out to be a genuinely exciting, gritty, brutal and intelligent film.  The investigative procedures carried out in the film are nothing short of brilliant, computers are used throughout (more on this in a bit) but in a realistic manner and the dénouement is surprising, yet satisfying.  I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing the sequels, because these are characters I want to find out more about.  They're not that likeable, certainly, but they're deep enough to captivate my interest.  And, in absolute honesty, one particular scene involving a dildo will have you punching the air and cheering - and there aren't many films you can say that about.  Unless you've seen the deleted scenes from The Little Mermaid.

Despite my point about the realistic use of computers earlier on, the slightly odd thing is that the film seeks to take place in an alternate universe where PCs don't exist, in much the same way that you'd think Sony were single-handedly responsible for manufacturing every single thing on the planet in the recent "remake" of the Bond film Casino Royale.  Everybody has a Mac, and not just a Mac but a shiny Powerbook Pro.  The reason for this is presumably revealed in the (now forever) unpublished sequels, "The Girl who met Steve Jobs", "The Girl with the overpriced peripherals" and "The Girl with the smug sense of superiority".

Halo - Is it me you're looking for?

Peow. Peow. Whumph-whumph-whumph.  Dakkadakkadakkadakka.  "Incoming!".  Dakkadakkadakka.  Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep.  BOOOOOM.  "Shit!".

That, ladies and gentlemen, is just a brief transcription of me playing Halo Reach on the toughest skill level of "Legendary".  A difficulty level that makes Demons Souls and Braid look like Duck Tales on the SNES.

Halo Reach is Bungies last game in the Halo Franchise; a prologue that tells the last days of the planet Reach and the destruction of humanities last (but one) hope, the Spartan Super-soldiers.  You play Noble 6, the newest recruit to Noble team.  Your colleagues are a cliched bunch of action hero types; the sarcastic one, the clever one, the heavy weapon one.  They're such generic cyphers that I struggle to remember their names; they're probably Zack, Dirk, Hank, etc - a proper selection from the Puffin Bumper book of Action Hero names.  They're supposedly the last hope for Reach, but you're the only one that really does any work. In missions where you're accompanying them, they'll happily stand on the sidelines happily taking the odd shot but contribute little other than that - It's like you're the Spartan YTS guy; given all the dirty jobs.  I'm supposed none of the missions entail you having to ask for a long weight or being sent to suppliers for a glass hammer.

The single player campaign is epic in scope, moving back to the huge vistas (and multiple approaches) of Halo: Combat Evolved as opposed to the others in the series (Halo 2 in particular) that almost became corridor shooters.  Your time in Noble Team will be spent assaulting huge Covenant bases, dogfighting in outer space and prowling around enemy infested cities - Unfortunately, we all know it won't end well.  The very fact that Master Chief is the only Spartan alive at the start of Halo: Combat Evolved means that you shouldn't go making any long term plans; I.e. booking a holiday or the like.

On Heroic skill level (one above "Normal") the campaign is difficult enough - However, as mentioned in the opening paragraph, on Legendary it's an exercise in terror.  Even the enemies you typically found cannon fodder will attack you with deadly accuracy and new found vigour.  Fights against anything other than grunts become long drawn out wars of attrition, and it's a proper challenge - albeit a frustrating one.

The campaign will last a half decent player about six hours or so, but it seems to be the multiplayer where Bungie have really put the effort in - There's enough to keep a player busy for months.  The ranking system lets you earn credit for playing games to buy new armour pieces to customise your character; judging by this alone, it'll be around six months of playing before I can even afford a new pair of in-game fingerless gloves.

Overall, a very worthy conclusion to Bungies contribution to the series.  Although slightly worrying that now another company is taking it over, Microsoft have been quoted as saying they think three years is too long between Halo releases and will like to see the time between games released to just a year.  I feel that as more Halo games come out, the quality will drop dramatically.  Halo Reach may be the last truly great Halo game if Microsoft have their way.