The Wii isn’t the XBOX 360, Playstation 3, nor PC.  We understand you may be angry you got stuck playing a game on the Wii, but getting angry about Nintendo’s cheap-ass decision to skimp on the Wii’s hardware specs isn’t going to change the fact that the Wii platform, as a whole, is crap.  Coincidentally, it also won’t make Wii titles magically become HD-quality…SO STOP DINGING WII GAMES FOR CRAP GRAPHICS, adapt a professional standard where you grade titles based on the limitations of a system’s specs and how they make use of/take advantage of said specs instead of what they don’t have because the specs don’t do it.

Not meant as a knock at all to some of the smaller independent game review sites, but it’s just pathetic that the larger review sites—like IGN, Game Informer and the like—have such juvenile and short-sided “professionals.”  Why is that worse?  It’s how they are making their living, you’d think…well, I dunno.  That they’d know that kinda thing.  Unless it has a big fat “Nintendo” stamp on the label though, the dipshit is going to cry about it not being another noisy & washed HD title.

Have a goodnight, folks.

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Let me start off by saying that Halo: Reach is truly an awesome game.  I’m addicted to playing it, I’m eager to finish my second single player run-thru on the legendary difficulty and multiplayer has never, ever been better.  The achievements this time feel fair (I really hated the Halo 3 multiplayer achievements), I love the character customization, and combat’s exhilarating.  The only real big issue I have with the game is the story, and not even the story itself—more so the lack of what it could have (or, in my opinion, should have) been.  As a Halo fan, I was very excited to have a shot at being part of what would become known as the Fall of Reach.

To start with, one of the largest problems I have with the game is the cinematic style chosen for it.  Truth be told there is really not any “right” way they should have been done I suppose, it really just comes down to personal preference. 

Halo 3 introduced what I thought was a really poor game design choice—one I figured Bungie would learn from as any game designer can (or should) admit we’re all guilty of those “well, it seemed like a good idea at the time” moments…taking control away from the player.  You would have these moments where Cortana would kind of take over your vision, forcing you to move sluggishly…it wasn’t a big deal, but it bugged the hell out of me as a player and I’d hoped it wouldn’t return.  Which it didn’t, technically.  However in the cinemas you will often go into this forced first-person perspective for a good chunk of time.  While in this first person view, it feels like you should be playing the game yet you’re being forced to wait & watch instead…essentially like someone is grabbing your head and forcing you to look a certain way.

Which takes us into the next problem I had, the camerawork.  The cinematography is a mixture of handicam unsteady shots (similar-ish to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica), mounted surveillance cameras (think dashboard cam, NASA camera on a shuttle’s rocket), and then more cinematic/major motion picture camera work which is more or less what’s been in the Halo franchise up until now…tack on to the end some kind of satellite imagery shots that are really glorified user interface stills.  It’s this mixture of camera work that leaves the cinemas feeling like they’re patched together and trying too hard to be too many things to me, like they couldn’t pick one to stick with so they just went at it with them all.  This may appeal to some people, but for me it just makes everything seem like it’s falling apart…incoherent, no focus.

So, that covers the cinemas…I think that if they would have picked one style instead of multiple slapped together it would have been a stronger focus visually & better convey the story elements to the player/viewer.  It felt like I was just playing a video game, not experiencing a story…and to be honest, that’s probably just fine for some folk.  I just expected better than “just a game.”

The second major area I had a problem with was the telling of the story itself.  Being a Star Wars nut and former writer of fan fiction for fun, I’ve learned the difference between assuming and not assuming things as far as telling background information to the viewer.  One of the only things I knew going into Reach was that Noble Team is not made up of Spartan II’s like Master Chief was, they are Spartan III’s—the mass produced version that’s of far less quality but a hell of a lot cheaper to make.  I did manage to pick up, on my own, that Jorge was a Spartan II though (the only one on the team), hence his much larger size than the rest of the team…I grasped this when Noble team meets Doctor Halsey and Jorge is the only one she recognizes (she’s the “mother” of the Spartan II program and knows every one of the Spartan’s as she recruited each and every one when they were children decades before).

Thing is, how would you know any of this?  My friend Eric is playing Halo for his first time here, which is kind of cool in one way (he can actually experience the story in order if he goes on to play Halo 1/2/ODST/3), he never would have known this back story.  However with just a bit of explanation through discussion, maybe an extra 60 seconds of story telling, any player could have known who Doc Halsey was or that Jorge is a Spartan II not III.  Halsey could have talked with Jorge and Carter taken a step back, then  the player—Noble Six—could have asked him who she was and explain she was the founder of the Spartan II program.  The whole game felt like it was missing these moments where the Noble Six character could have better fulfilled his role as “new guy/gal on the team” and asked pointed questions of the other Nobles to better explain the world to players.  Asking who Halsey is, while Emile has a chip on his shoulder, how Kat lost her arm, what a Spartan II is doing on a Spartan III team…the list goes on.  Instead, there’s no effort to answer any of these questions.

The Fall of Reach is a tragic event.  Very tragic, we’re talking about what’s the equivalent of a second Earth (in terms of civilization and population) being completely wiped out by alien forces that we’ve so far been completely ineffective at fighting against.  Billions of people dying, the planet being “glassed” as Covenant weapons super heat the sand (turning it to glass).  The general idea is given to us, but we’re never really shown the “before” as the game takes place during the “after.”  At one point in the game when you return to the city you find slain citizens all over, and any person capable of empathy feels a sense of loss for them however slight.  Imagine how much more horrifying a sight this would have been if you’d walked across these same walkways when they were full of people?  Perhaps at the beginning of the game, making your way to a transport to be taken to Noble team for your new assignment?  Kids running around, couples sitting, some jerk business guy cutting you off (and conveniently found slain by a news terminal later on)…the impact of the events could have been driven home far, far more effectively.

My biggest problem with this game however is the character development.  There are a few basic descriptions of character types in stories to describe (basically) the level of depth their character has…more often than not, for example, the protagonist (hero role, which is supposed to be Noble Six, I think—more on this later) is the majority of the time a “round” character.  Round characters have many sides to them that are all well defined and the reader is aware of them.  Antagonists (the bad guy) that are well fleshed out tend to be this type too.  Then there are dynamic characters (almost always the protagonist), flat characters (background characters), static (they do not change at all in the story), and stock characters (little depth, rely on stereotypes for the viewers to understand them).  Noble team is almost entirely made up of stock characters…Carter the clean cut military man, Kat the tough chick with an attitude, Emile the wannabe badass, Jun the quiet precise zen guy (for goodness’ sake he’s even a sniper).  Playing devil’s advocate, I put up the question “so…there are plenty of action movies with what you’re describing as stock characters.  What’s your problem?”

It all comes back for me to the tragedy of the story, and how it feels like Bungie was relying heavily on the player/viewer knowing this story and empathizing solely on the gravity of the situation instead of trying to make you feel like a member of this world, of this team, and the feeling of loss that comes with it.  If you’re familiar with the story ahead of time (the Fall of Reach, mind you…not the game’s story specifically), you know that no one left on Reach survives.  So as the game goes along (spoiler warning…) all of Noble team dies in the line of duty.  Since Jorge receives at least a little bit of character development time (while trying to comfort the girl earlier, and the farmers before that, we see how compassionate he is), when he goes there is a sense of loss—his sacrifice is felt.  However when Kat dies Bungie seems to hope the “women in the refrigerators” approach will suffice for us feeling her loss—which isn’t much of one as the only thing revealed about her up to then is she’s kinda bitchy?  She could have shared a sad story about how she lost her arm, or held out to the end and cracked her harder shell to show a little more of the human behind the standard-issue Spartan III nonsense.  Emile could have shown that instead of being some kind of badass (which was by far the weakest link—I was disappointed to see bickering within a Spartan squad, but then again they’re only Spartan IIIs so perhaps that’s why), he was actually just scared out of his mind and ashamed of it.  Perhaps confronting that fear later.  Carter…well, I don’t know.  Tales of his previous commands, further illustrations of him doing what’s right, etc.

It could have been much, much more with a more coherent vision brought to the cinematic approach and it’s story telling.  Sprinkling in a few story building moments at a few different points in the game, giving some character development time, letting you learn about this new world through the eyes of Noble Six.  Returning to the city to see it in ruins, thousands slaughtered, and feeling the rage build in you as you then head out and cut down every last one of the rotten Covenant scum that did this.  Revenge, justice, anger, sadness…could have all been there.  Unfortunately…they weren’t.  At least not for me, I was hoping for more and got a lot less.

In closing, one thing I meant to give a shot-out to and didn’t…the visual effects in Reach are absolutely phenomenal—amazing and inspiring work, just look at a waterfall and you’ll be amazed.  Dust kicked up has motion to it, there’s a real sense of atmosphere and weather around you, just wonderful stuff.

G’night.

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That said…what an odd mixture of pleasure & pain this game is.  For those that don’t know, Reach is all about the fall of the planet Reach during the war with the Convenant.  It’s the immediate precursor to the events from the first Halo game…when the Pillar of Autumn blindly jumps into the system that carries the first Halo ring in it, they were jumping away from the mass slaughter that was later called the Fall of Reach.  The book was amazing, very sad but exciting. 

Unfortunately, and somewhat shocking, Bungie decides to say “fuck continuity, we’re gonna rewrite it,” thus dissolving everything about that last epic battle you’d read in the book and loved.  I was a little shocked; I had a feeling when I saw the almost generic, Gears of War feeling characters in the first trailer that they were going down the path travelled by everyone rather than sticking to their less traveled path…it was that sort of moment where you know something’s going to turn out for the worst, but you blindly keep hoping it won’t be.  Then it is, and you’re still a bit deflated.  Reach is the perfect setup for a beautiful tragic piece, you see—there are no survivors.  Reach was the battle that kills all of the Spartans save for Master Chief, trying to defend the planet that ends up falling anyhow to the Covenant.  It could have been beautiful, even just taking the story from the book with minor alterations could have been amazing.

Sadly, the story in Reach is somewhere between bland and non existent.  You’re a generic, “mysterious background” guy or gal given the callsign Noble Six, filling a previously emptied gap in Noble team.  You discover none of this past aside from knowing how to pilot—which apparently everyone else does too so you aren’t so special—nor do you learn anything about the gap you’re filling.  The Spartans on the team are almost laughably bad, save for Jorge…I’m not sure why, but Jorge receives actual character development time (the only one in the whole game—and he dies first).  You have Carter, the standard issue GI Joe leader type with a perfectly generic voice to match.  Kat, the Russian tough chick.  Emile, the chip on the shoulder guy that likes knives.  Jun, the quiet sniper.  Then Jorge, the big teddy bear guy whom you see reach out to both a survivor and later Dr. Hallsey.

I came to wonder as the story just got more and more bland and forgettable if Reach is actually the equivalent of those action movies you see only for the action.  It’d be a fair argument I think, but given the immense amount of background detail and lore available it’s hard to accept that reason—as it feels more like an excuse—for what Bungie did to this game’s story.  The cinemas are horrible, while the animation is actually looking a lot better to me in this game than previous titles (and the character art) the cinemas are somewhere between amateur and embarrassing to watch.  It’s confusing, given Bungie’s past and their usual stellar job framing cinematic moments, but this just felt like it was lead by someone with no experience or clear vision.  No character development moments, you don’t really give a shit when someone gets killed, and it’s only the final shot of the final cinema that really evokes any strong emotion in me.

The few highlights of the story was the minimal amount of development time given to Jorge, seeing Doctor Hallsey for the first time (creator of the Spartan program and model Cortana was created from), and the short cameo Cortana makes near the end of the game.  I really think they could have gone an extra step and have you interact with—or see—Master Chief at one point as a bit of fan service.  Give you that feeling of passing the torch, so to speak.

So, story…overall it’s a big disappointing let down.  If you like story in your Halo games, just prepare yourself to be disappointed.  If you succeed with that—the rest is great!

Gameplay is what we’ve come to expect—it feels tight, it’s fun, the difficulty was a little higher than Halo 3 (a lot of playing in Heroic reminded me of Legendary in Halo 3).  Space flight was freaking awesome to me, perhaps a little simple but a lot of fun…I would love to see some kind of space flight multiplayer map come out for matchmaking.  I only really have two complaints…one, vehicles felt lighter to me in this game, I was flipping my warthog a lot more often than I remember (but, this could just be my own fault).  Second, the new armor abilities are great—armor lock, stealth, sprint, etc.  I was really disappointed though when I saw Elites using the armor lock ability though, down to the same animation…suddenly I felt less special to have the ability.  At the very least they could have done a unique animation that then made theirs seem different, or even better just given them a different ability than this one.

The sound was solid, though I have to admit I wasn’t a fan of the new grunts.  They certainly look creepier, but now they sound like rapid little beasts more than actual intelligent creatures.  This may just be a case of liking the way they sounded before this in all of the other games.  The music was a little bit ho-hum to me, just as ODST was.

Animation felt better across the board to me, I’ve never been a particular fan of Bungie’s character animation until now.  Characters felt like they had weight to them, animations blend a lot smoother and overall leave a much greater impression.

Art…gorgeous as always.  Amazing skybox matte paintings, environment is beautiful and looking better than it ever has and the characters look amazing.  I really like the character customization and that it persists in the (shitty) cinemas.  I like the new look for the Covenant, though the story lover inside of me is slightly annoyed they make a prequel that looks different than the sequels, the art itself looks great and the new direction is a good one.

Multiplayer…best multiplayer yet in the Halo series, and seeing as it’s what Halo is known for more than anything else this is a pretty great thing.  I’ve never felt like I was in better matched games, skill-wise, ever for Halo which may just keep me playing for the months to come…Halo 3 eventually broke me to where it wasn’t fun to play anymore as it always felt like I was stuck with guys just a level or two ahead of me.  Not so here though, every match is fun.  The new weekly and daily challenges give me a reason to login and check out what’s new for the day, and the completionist in me loves trying to knock them all out in a short hour or so play session.  Being able to unlock new armor pieces is especially cool and I certainly hope they continue to add new pieces later on down the line.  Firefight is a ton of fun, I wish you could specify more options for these games to make them more challenging but they’re a blast nonetheless…it’s so satisfying to team up with four others and fight out several waves of Covenant troops!

So, that’s Halo Reach for me…the story is lame at best, cinemas bad, music ho-hum…gameplay, art, and multiplayer fantastic.  Now I’m off to bed!

G’night!

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For those not in the know:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/

This review is ridiculously spoiler-ridden.  If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you probably don’t want to read my review.  Why write a review then?  It’s more a snapshot of my own thoughts after having seen the film than an attempt to convince anyone to see/not see a film.

Christopher Nolan has got to be one of the best film directors alive at this point, in my eyes.  Not necessarily the greatest ever, or the most visionary (though he is certainly approaching that status level), but because every time I know I am about to sit down in front of one of his films I know I am going to be entertained.  Not just on a surface level either, oh no—I will walk away from that theatre or pull my ass up from that couch pondering the deeper meanings of the film at just the right level as to think, not be left perplexed or wondering about some vague & pathetic attempt at “leaving it open for interpretation.”

Inception is a perfect example of this, and I am fairly convinced when I go see this film for a second time and later third or fourth years down the road, I will pick up on different things and meanings.  But what makes this level of depth work is I don’t have to care.  I see this and want to explore it because I’m curious, not because he’s force-feeds you a story that makes no sense until you see it another time.  “I Can Feel a Hot One,” by Manchester Orchestra is an example of a piece of work that’s so entirely vague that people can come up with a million ideas and conclusions as to what was meant—while I recognize it takes a certain level of skill to do such a thing, I also think it’s even more impressive when you can tell a story that has multiple layers you can pull back at your own peril—or simply be left entertained from the first layer.

Anyhow…I am rambling.

So, Inception is all about the polar opposite of what Leonardo DiCaprio’s character does for a living…in the film he breaks into people’s dreams, steals information and then turns that information over to his clients.  He is approached by his most recent victim, however, to do just the opposite—he wants him to put an idea into the mind of a target.  The problem with this revolves around how simply the mind can tell when an idea is not it’s own (the film beautifully makes an example of this with the “don’t think of a purple elephant” trick…you think of the elephant, and you KNOW that wasn’t your doing).

Going into one’s mind successfully requires a team of specialists filling a variety of roles…an Architect for creating the dreamscape, a Forger to fake certain characters and events, a Chemist for the drugs that put you under, and so on.  With the fake world created, the target is brought inside and their mind populates the world with projections of their subconscious.  Where the absolute brilliance with this concept truly shines is the projections…your subconscious mind will try to repel these invaders (like white blood cells, DiCaprio explains at one point) and Nolan does the most amazing job driving this home.  Pedestrians on the street, random people walking through a building suddenly start looking at you, and eventually coming after you intending harm to repel you from their owner’s mind.  On top of this just amazing concept is that some people have been trained for this very possibility—and their projections will carry guns and track your ass down the second you get into their world.

I suppose some of the elegance of the solution rests with how simple an idea that really is, it’s simple enough to grasp the concept immediately and I’m fairly certain that within that simplicity lies the reason you believe it.  Unlike a cleverly designed plot point that was done to be cool, or save money, or be surreal, this basic concept is just accepted by you immediately and helps to immerse you in the film’s world.

Another cool mechanic is how  time works in the dream world…at the first level a dream lasts 5 minutes but inside of it an hour goes by.  At the deeper levels, and under special sedations, it can last years and years.  Essentially, just this basic concept alone can be applied to explain other things like people stuck in comas or other mental traumas…it’s never really insinuated, but it was a conclusion I came to while watching the film and have a hard time believing others wouldn’t have too.  Even as I write this, I have to wonder if this was intentional or not…I’m often left wondering how deliberate these little cause & effect moments are when it comes to plot points and devices.

Dreams within dreams become part of the major con as the crew struggles to complete their task of planting an idea in their target’s head, and the core conflict that comes from this is how to plant the most basic seedling of an idea that you know will then sprout to grow and become the intended result.  In the story’s case, it’s convincing a young man inheriting his father’s massive company to break it into pieces and sell the whole thing off rather than just fill his shoes.  To do this, they come to the conclusion that they must make him believe his father wanted him to become his own man—an idea that is familiar if not simple once again, and yet further complicated by his strained relationship with the man.

In the end, we get a happy resolution—and for this I’ll not spoil, though the final shot leaves you wondering how much of what you watched was, indeed, happening or just part of a larger dream.  I’m hoping the answers are there the next time I watch the film but it may be left open for interpretation..a concept my own mind tends to dread, I like more concrete answers, but I’ll live.

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432290/

This is, truly, a very unique film.  The first 5 minutes of it I was half tempted to turn it off while bitching and moaning to myself that it was another shitty independent film…I could not have been more wrong.

Flannel Pajamas is a story about Stuart and Nicole falling in love, their lives intertwining and then slowly unraveling over time.  The concept sounds like it’s been done before, but recently I’ve been on this “studying material” kick watching romance film after romance film looking for the kind of serious and real take on a relationship like what these two have.  There is real chemistry, real complications, and the reality that these characters are far from perfect along with the consequences imperfection brings us all.

What’s neat about this film is it isn’t so much about the plot points…there are no major stingers that pop up anywhere or shocking surprises, really you kind of get to see where everything is going well ahead of time as any outsider can when looking through the window at a relationship.  The many honest moments they have with each other echo quite a few (of course tweaked to some degree) experiences we have all had in any relationship, and I rather like that they show both of them are the problem instead of making just one character be the jerk (though I tended to think Stuart the idiot myself)…they both succeed and fail in different ways and it’s the beauty of that portrayal that really shines.

MAJOR SPOILER…

The ending was jarring.  I’ve plenty surprise moments, shocking moments, scared moments and disturbing moments watching films throughout my 31 years on this planet.  Never, ever have I felt so violently jarred out of a film than I did when this movie ended.  You don’t see the ending coming at all–and no, I’m not talking about a surprise ending.  I mean, literally, the film ends.  It left me sitting there, mouth open a little bit from the blow, and it took me awhile to decide how I felt about that.

Ultimately, the ending was the perfection finishing touch to the film.  Perhaps I am reading into this, but my own interpretation was it was meant to be so jarring because it was the end of a relationship.  You almost get to feel the full force of the character’s problems right then and there.  Perfect.

Definitely recommend watching this.  It’s a wee bit slow at times, I was in the perfect mindset for watching it so I was sucked into it the whole time…make sure you are too.

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