Tuesday 27 November 2012

GAME REVIEW: The Walking Dead Episode 5, No Time Left


The Walking Dead, Episode 5, No Time Left

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS EPISODES

And so, the first season of Telltale Games The Walking Dead comes to an end, in an emotional, cathartic, highly satisfying installment, that just might be the game of the year. 

Picking up right where Episode 4 left off, Lee is on a mission to rescue Clementine from her kidnappers but he’s been bitten and only has a little time left to do so. I have never been more emotionally invested in a game as I have been in this one; so credit to the makers for being able to craft a believable relationship between Lee and Clem to make this episode feel personal not just to your character, but to the player as well.

More so than any other episode, the choices you’ve made previously (not just this episode, but all the way back in Episode 1) will come back to help or haunt you. Any time you noted a ‘____ will remember that’ but thought it inconsequential…could be the very thing that shapes how this episode, and season, ends for you.

Once again, the choices you make don’t really affect the outcome of the game much (all players will play more or less the same game) but what they do affect is your own soul. Bold statement, maybe, but this is the only game that has ever made me feel guilty for making a certain choice. No more so than in this episode where the decisions you make come thicker and faster than they have in any of the previous episodes, and most of them are life and death decisions. You don’t have time to think them through, you just have to react.

Everything about the episode is a triumph; the plot, which brings together various strands from every episode to date; the music, which at certain points swells and may cause you to tear up a little; the voice acting, which is full of emotion and will genuinely break your heart at points. Yes, the little niggles from the previous episodes are still present and correct here; some frame rate problems, slight juddering, out of time lip sync and music cutting out. But they’re all minor quibbles that don’t spoil the atmosphere or the mood in what is the best game I’ve played this year.

Oh, and stick around after the credits. If you can see through the tears.

Thursday 22 November 2012

Films You SHOULD Like


Recently, I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film The Master. I thought it was alright, nothing as great as a lot of the glowing reviews have suggested. It’s certainly not a bad film; it just didn’t set my world alight. Yet, PTA is a filmmaker whose films always leave me with this nagging feeling; a feeling that I’m somehow wrong for not loving his films. That for whatever reason, I should like them. For no other reason than this director commands my respect.

There are a few other filmmakers that give me this feeling, the most prominent among them being the Coen Brothers. I have seen most of their film output and can honestly say I wouldn’t rate any of them with anything more than an average score. I really do not understand the love for The Big Lebowski. Aside from a few weird characters and an admittedly endlessly quotable script, I don’t rate it as a cult classic or even that good of a movie.
Not me.
Now I don’t consider myself a cineaste at all. I watch, like and review a lot of films, but I’m not steeped in film knowledge, so maybe there’s something that I’m missing with these directors and their films. I get that Lebowski is a pastiche to the noir films of old, but just because there are homages to that genre while the director has also put his own spin on it, doesn’t make it a good film. Can someone tell me why they think it’s a good film? I’m actually asking here.

Closer to me.
Are the back catalogues of these directors too niche? Or at least too niche for my tastes? Other directors that can be considered artistes would be Fincher and Nolan. I love nearly all of their films, but when you look at them all you realise they for all their attempts to be art, they’re still very commercial at heart, and in particular Nolan’s Bat Trilogy, they’re downright blockbusters. Admittedly, not blockbusters in the Transformers mould, but blockbusters nonetheless. Is it this that I miss from the films of PTA and the Coen’s? A commercial bent. Perhaps it is, as my favourite Coen Brothers film is Intolerable Cruelty, easily the most accessible of their filmography.

So, is it my fault? Am I wrong? I understand that film is a subjective medium and all, but general consensus is that I am. Completely 100% wrong.

Then again, I love Darren Aronofsky. So maybe I’m just awkward.

Thursday 15 November 2012

Skyfall Snobbery


I’ve been writing film reviews over on the Belfast Times recently, so there haven’t been many updates here. From now on, the entries will probably be more like this. And there’ll be game reviews from time to time as well. 

If you want the movie reviews, clicky on the linky above.

Anyway, here’s a coupla short observations for you.

Skyfall Screw-ups

So, since I saw Skyfall this thought has been running through my head. In the movie continuity it’s usually assumed that the name James Bond is a codename (it is, isn’t it?) as a way to explain away different actors portraying Bond. The book continuity obviously doesn’t need this. But Skyfall messes with that but taking James Bond back to his roots; the titular Skyfall estate where we’re told the names of his parents, Andrew Bond and uh…Mummy Bond. So that now James Bond becomes his actual birth name.

But then you have M, who muddies the waters to a stupefying extent. It’s spelled out in the film that she has been doing this job for a long time, since at least the Hong Kong handover, and as we’ve seen she was in charge of Bond during Brosnan’s tenure, does that mean that Craig is Brosnan (and by extension Connery, Lazenby, Moore and Dalton)? And then does that mean that the Craig films are prequels?

Well, no.

Obviously. 

Wait, that's not right.

But I think this is what bothered me the most about Skyfall. It posits that Bond has had this long history, by throwing in little nods to the franchises past (the Aston DB5, the Q branch exploding pen gag) which means that these things have happened in the past to previous Bonds, but at the same time expects us to believe that Craig’s Bond is the only Bond there’s ever been.

Well, it’s either that, or MI6 hired a guy whose name just happens to be the same as the codename they’ve been using for 007 for the past fifty years.

Unlikely though.


TV Snobbery

One thing that has been really getting on my nerves recently is snobbery, specifically when it comes to TV. More often than not I’ve been told I should watch one or all of the following; Community, Parks and Recreation, Louie, Girls. I haven’t watched any of those besides a few episodes of Community which I couldn’t get into. I’m sure these programmes are fine and all, but people constantly telling me that I should watch Show XYZ are ever going to change my mind. 



It especially grinds my gears when people tell me I should watch Show XYZ rather than shows I do watch like The Big Bang Theory. I love The Big Bang Theory. It makes me laugh. A lot of people (internet folks mostly) tell me that I shouldn’t watch it for no other reason than it’s popular. I always counter with the fact that it’s popular for a reason. Mostly because it’s funny. (Two and a Half Men is the exception however) And yes, while it may not be as cutting as other shows, and most definitely broader in its humour, it doesn’t mean it’s not good. People these days seem to think that for a show to be considered good it must be as niche and as cult-y and as watched by as few people as possible. The irony being that they never stop telling other people to watch it.

Fucking hipsters.