[Game Review] Football Game

 

Football Game was one of those rare instances where I was intrigued the moment I saw the banner above.  There is something about titling a game or book or movie something so very plain that has me intrigued - like you're attempting to dislodge something hidden in plain sight.  A quick glance through the images on the store page and you'll see that was most definitely what developers Cloak and Dagger Games were going for.  Aesthetically hearkening back to roughly the Maniac Mansion era of point and click adventure games, Football Game uses a dark color pallet and a pixelated portrait style art to key you into something unnatural and threatening.  Backdrops are black with vague pixel bars ghosting in and out similar to CRT scan lines, wide shot characters and environments are pixelated and undetailed, and close ups are crude and off putting.  There is a vague Lynchian element at play in the execution of Football Game, immediately recognizable before you've even purchased the game.  

Football Game ends up running about an hour long, roughly as long as it really needed to be, but even with its impressive aesthetic and its haunting, stylish soundtrack (which deserves praise all its own, to be sure), there is a gap whistling wind at its center.  The story follows Tommy, high school football star, sometime in the 80s waking up late at night with beer bottles strewn across his room and the sudden realization that he is late to the big game tonight.  But the game can take a back seat, because it is who is at the game that really matters to Tommy.  Suzy, Tommy's apparently attractive and popular girlfriend, is supposed to be there, and Tommy has a present for her.  If the beer bottles didn't tip you off to something being weird, then the odd behavior from Tommy's mother should definitely start sending signals.  She seems normal until she decides to rest for a second, going catatonic in her chair and unable to be awoken.  Tommy, ready to look his best for Suzy, goes into the bathroom and shaves and a nearly industrial tone begins to creep in ever so slightly in the background soundtrack.  When Tommy gets to the game, he finds that not only can he not find Suzy himself, but no one else has seen her either.  

Football Game wants to make you think something terrible is afoot, that there is a dark, potentially existential secret waiting around the corner to devastate you, but the reality of the plot turns out to be incredibly banal.  Football Game rides entirely on its incredible aesthetic and sense of place and characters (caricatures, the whole lot of them, but they service a particular vibe that runs really well with the rest of the game's execution).  There isn't much in the way of meaning within Football Game, and that's truly a shame because it really feels like this is going somewhere.  What Football Game turns out to be is an exercise in craftsmanship, of creating a world and a tone that encapsulates a certain feeling, that feeling being somewhere between Twin Peaks and Silent Hill 2, a great praise if you know anything about me.  

But a feeling only does so much for a game.  The gameplay is precisely oldschool point and click adventure games, down to your inspect, use, combine verbs and a small inventory.  (Thankfully there is no verb dictionary like you find in games such as Maniac Mansion, because that is a design that should stay in the past).  I wouldn't say this was much of a criticism in and of itself - there is plenty of life for a modern point and click adventure game, a genre literally about interacting with and observing your environment, to work in these darker themes games and media explore nowadays - but when combined with a plot that ends up leading somewhere painfully traditional, well, we just don't end up with much outside of an impressive demo.  There is a sliver where this could have been a radical vision on a slice of life story, but that would have taken far more twists and turns, and more than likely twice the length, to really pull off.  As is, Football Game is a neat little game with screaming potential for its creators.  Make this a part of your reel, Cloak and Dagger, because I want to see you do something a little bigger.   

 

 

6.5

[Game Review] F.E.A.R.

 

For the sake of my own sanity, I will be writing F.E.A.R. as FEAR, so sorry if you're the kind of person who has issues with incorrect formatting.

 

FEAR came about as a combination of things going on in 2005.  Three years after The Ring proved to be a surprise hit, and a year after Half-Life 2 blew away critics (and The Grudge proved that The Ring wasn't a fluke, but rather a rising fad), various unconnected parts of the social consciousness were threading together at Monolith Productions.  Monolith, up to this point, had been most notable for developing the cult shooter Blood, but between then and 2005 they had mostly toiled in obscurity with a few notable outliers, such as No One Lives Forever, a spy-shooter well liked at the time, and Aliens Vs Predator 2, the sequel to the acclaimed PC shooter.  With the move into the HD era of gaming (and the 7th generation of consoles, though FEAR would have to wait another year for a port), it was time to step things up a notch, as many other studios tried to do at the time.  

2005 turned out to be a busy year for Monolith, releasing the relatively well liked The Matrix Online, the criminally underappreciated cult game Condemned: Criminal Origins as a launch title for the Xbox 360, and FEAR as their benchmark-worthy graphical powerhouse for PC, all within a span of nine months.  While Condemned at the very least deserves its own review eventually, FEAR stood out from the crowd for a number of reasons.  Firstly, and most obviously, was its premise.  

In FEAR, you play as Point Man, a nameless, silent protagonist who is a part of the secret military agency called First Encounter Assault Recon, or F.E.A.R. for short (one of the dumbest backronyms in gaming, but let's not dwell on it).  A man named Paxton Fettel is running amok around facilities owned by the ATC corporation, and he seems to have a telepathic link to an army of clone soldiers.  You're tasked with trying to hunt him down, learning what ATC was up to in the process and repeatedly encountering a little ghost girl named Alma.  That latter bit, in particular, was a major selling point for the game.  The general plot is more than a little ridiculous, giving just enough reason for some of the more fantastical elements of the story, but likewise explaining too much to be effective in what the game is trying to sell itself as: a horror game.  

FEAR was the shooter with the creepy little girl in it, the horror game that somehow (according to popular opinion) managed to be scary and let you shoot the hell out of everything in sight.  There had been horror shooters before - hell, the shooter genre got its biggest boons from Doom and Quake, games with plenty of horror DNA - but they had rarely integrated the horror elements so sincerely.  Rarely is the key word there, because FEAR is more a collection of influences than it is an original work.  FEAR, as far as gameplay and setting goes, is an odd hybrid between the horror and dark environments of Doom 3, the level design and general banality of Half-Life, and bullet time gimmick from Max Payne.  The three styles blend together surprisingly well, with the darkness and eerie atmosphere of Doom 3 draping nicely over the offices and industrial environments right out of Half-Life.  To say that FEAR is scary, though, is a bit of an overstatement.  It's eerie, most of all, and though the game attempts a few jump scares or unsettling moments, most of them play off as corny in this day and age.  Creepy little girls are cliche, cryptic talking corpses that pass by windows and dissipate into a dust feel like standard creepy game fare, and really the only thing left in the horror toolbox happens to be one of the game's strongest assets: its sound design.  

FEAR was noted for its sound design then, and, though it has dated somewhat compared to how ridiculously good modern shooters have gotten at getting guns to give off a walloping bang, still feels impressive today.  The atmospheric soundtrack does well to indicate when things aren't right without overloading you with information.  One of the greatest assets any work of multimedia horror has is in utilizing silence, and FEAR understands that a lot more than it doesn't.  When you are running around an abandoned office building at night and the loudest thing you can hear is your own footsteps, the game is working a little bit of magic.  Industrial sounds will squeal and hum at appropriate moments, and, most notably, the staticy yelping of enemies doesn't just let you know that they are around the next corner, but will often give you some of your few jump scares in the game, whether intentional or not.  

That staticy talk is part of what is probably the most acclaimed aspect of FEAR.  FEAR, upon release and to this day (to some degree), has incredible AI.  Enemies will call out to one another about your whereabouts, whether your flanking or have somehow slipped away from their sight.  They will call out grenades being lobbed their way, or whether they need backup.  These call outs aren't just for maneuvering and understanding the battlefield however, often times lobbing insults at one another when a command is barked at them that they don't like.  There is a layer of humanity to them, and of desperately trying to out think you at all times (something sort of funny considering they are telepathically linked clone soldiers, but like I said the story is sort of silly).  The AI is the cleverest I can think of from the era, feeling far more the descendant of the original Halo's AI than any of that series' sequels.  More than once I had my reticle at an enemies head and the first thing he does is duck, giving him the opportunity to get in a few shots before a blast from a shotgun turns him into a red mist.  It is the small touches that really make it feel like you should be on your toes.  One of the bigger touches, however, is in their incredible aim. 

As far as difficulty in games go, one of the invisible sliders being adjusted is enemy accuracy.  In FEAR, that slider is surprisingly high even on low difficulties, and the reason for that is to balance with the bullet time effect.  Being able to slow down time becomes an essential part of your arsenal throughout FEAR.  This isn't something original to FEAR, as Max Payne likewise had high damage and incredible accuracy from enemy fire, but FEAR's improved shooter mechanics make the ability sing.  Shooting in FEAR just feels really good.  It has dated some nowadays with our Titanfalls and modern Counter Strikes, but at the time it was cream of the crop.  Maneuvering around corners is made easier with the lean ability (although, admittedly, I hardly used it, opting for bullet time running out of cover instead), and all the guns feel satisfying to use (except perhaps that weird phaser sniper, which never didn't feel a bit like a Nerf gun).  FEAR's dirty little secret is that, underneath the somewhat unique veneer it was marketed with, there is an actually good and tight shooter here.  

FEAR's main issue is in part timing, and part that it really wasn't innovating so much as taking the next step up the ladder.  It did what the big guys did before but with a bit more polish, and a bit of style.  As a series, FEAR fared notoriously poorly, with the generally lesser FEAR 2: Project Origin bringing the gunplay but faltering on the horror in a disappointing way, and FEAR 3 (stylized stupidly as F3AR) was so obviously released under pressure (and by a different studio at that, while Monolith was forced to toil for Warner Bros. Interactive on the immediatley failing Gotham City Imposters and the MOBA copycat Guardians of Middle Earth), clocking in at roughly 4 hours of shoddily made game time.  FEAR's peak seemed to be here, in the first release, doomed to the life of a cult game, much like most of everything Monolith made around this time.  There's nothing wrong with that, and FEAR still has a seat in the video game cannon, defining the high-end PC specs of the mid 00s and bringing together a lot of elements from the previous years that would carry on in the likes of Bioshock and pretty well any shooter after it.  It was an industry benchmark for awhile, and though it lead to a trend picked up by some pretty poor games (Alone in the Dark (2008) and The Darkness come to mind), what it would be remembered for was its solid gameplay and its attempt at a hybrid that, as of now, looks not to be the fashion for quite some time.  FEAR stands as a unique shooter experience in an ocean of samey, brown military cock measuring contests.  It may not ultimately blow you out of the water, but it will feel rather fresh nonetheless.

 

 

 

8.5

[TV Review] Mr. Robot - Season 4

 

This review contains spoilers for the entire series of Mr. Robot, including Season 4!  You've been warned.  

 

I was lead into Mr. Robot with one cheat, albeit a cheat I didn't realize was going to be so literal.  A friend of mine, the one who was relentless in recommending the show to me, told me to think of Mr. Robot as a super hero show.  This ended up being a hole he had to dig himself out of in convincing me to give the show a shot, because if there was one thing I was less excited about watching than a corny show about hackers, it was a show about super heroes.  Now, I'm not a man so shallow as all of that (I do enjoy The Boys, along with just about everyone else), and as he gave me little tastes here and there as to what this show could provide for me, I decided to give it a shot and found that description he originally led in with to be rather apt.  Mr. Robot has always had an air of comic book story telling in it - from its melodrama to its alter egos, its crime fighting to its insanely on the nose and constant references to pieces of pop culture, to its goddamn narration - Mr. Robot hasn't exactly been hiding its roots, but because of its stylistic choices it could have hoodwinked me had I not been aware.  

I've somewhat criticized Mr. Robot's melodrama in the past, or at least made note of it with a somewhat soured tone.  Melodrama has its place (one of my favorite shows, as stated before, is The Leftovers), but there always felt like something itching at the frame's edge of Mr. Robot, a desired realism (or heightened realism) of filmmakers like David Fincher, or of an eye for the human in chaos like Denis Villeneuve.  From the isolating shots with zero nose room and tons of dead space to flattened cool colors and the harsh warm colors, the show's aesthetic has always felt like one of control.  Yet, here in such a frame was the Enron logo, slightly adjusted so as to act more referential than literal.  And here again was a discount Guy Fawkes mask, and obvious Lolita references, etc.  The aesthetic promised subtlety, and the content screamed its purpose.  

The comic book aesthetic helps to, if not synergize these two points, then intentionally direct them as conflicts.  The biggest spoiler of Season 4 is that it turns out the Elliot we have been following this entire time was never the real Elliot, rather another personality split from the original Elliot.  It is the sort of twist that comes off as incredibly corny and forced shock nine out of ten times it is done, but because Sam Esmail planned this series from the start, looking back you see layers of it all the way back from Season 1.  Angela screams at Elliot that he hasn't been himself in months, and Elliot mistakes his own sister Darlene for a love interest much to her disgust.  If Sam Esmail is good at one thing, it is playing a story carefully to make sure that when he uses cliches they land (and, as a slight criticism, well executed or not he does use a lot of cliches).  Elliot not being the real Elliot puts a lot of his unhinged behavior into a rather strict and freeing perspective: he was the alter ego the whole time, unable to see the seems of his mask.  The seriousness of the real world meets the comic book persona in control, the one who sees the Enron logo, who makes references to pop culture and integrates them into a fabric that is like reality, but not. 

This doesn't entirely fix the tiny little issues I've had with the show up to this point, but it does certainly help.  Despite a new context that will be sure to recolor a second watching whenever I have the energy for it, I can't help but still feel like a lot of these are references without grounding.  There is something to be said about drowning in self aware references, some of it obviously bad, but when it is good it is almost always with reference to post modernism.  Infinite Jest is chock full of references and end notes with even more references that swamp the reader with information they honestly don't need to know.  All the information almost always informs the greater story and themes of the infamously long novel, but more than anything it provides the feeling of drowning in information, a post modern take on the television age buzzing around people's heads in the 90s (and, unintentionally, acting as prelude to the internet age in its shape, if not content).  Gravity's Rainbow - a novel I have admittedly never finished - references obscure engineering and localized pop culture references.  Not all post modernism is swamped with references beyond what one person could catalogue without an intense and ridiculous amount of effort, but it is a feature and often times an effective way of putting you within a story even as it holds you apart by its very nature, allowing you to feel the general room temperature of a story as you are kept at an analytical distance.  Post modernism has its head(s) wrapped up in itself, a painting that not only references the frame, but the building in which it resides.  Mr. Robot oozes this type of feeling, that references to Back to the Future Part II must significantly echo Whiterose's obscured and never answered plan to turn back time or open up a dimensional rift.  But the references act as a sort of pallet, a swatch of colors the show will use but without the actual feeling of it all working necessarily.  The most often brought up reference by me is the Enron logo, a reference I find gaudy in a lot of ways, but likewise the most effective in the entire series: remember Enron?  Remember what corporate America is capable of?  It is paramount that you do, for the betterment of your experience with the show.  Other cases, such as the fsociety masks and Lolita references seem to be threads with frayed ends, references for their own sake as though to force you into realizing what should have been an "a-ha" moment so covetous in video games.  Art works its best when it sends your thoughts into an intersection at a hundred miles per hour, and you're the one who feels the crash you never get to see.  Mr. Robot manages this several times, but it will take a full rewatch to really consider if it manages it as much as it thinks it does.  A new perspective on Elliot for the series is a great gift that is extremely difficult to pull off, but what exactly that yields I will have to return to.

Season 4 as a standalone season was simultaneously stellar and slow.  The previous three seasons ratcheted up the tension to an almost unbearable degree, as secrets, conspiracies, and trauma whipped you back and forth until you could hardly see in front of you.  Season 4 slows things down.  The first half of the season starts out with a bang - a heist involving Elliot and Mr. Robot working together that could have been the opening to a James Bond film - and quickly switches gears.  The midpoint to the season is probably the best episode of the entire series, but the point everything is moving towards is just beyond that, with a meeting between Price (the CEO of E Corp.), and Whiterose, orchestrated by Elliot in order to gain access to all of Deus Group's (the group lead by Whiterose) bank accounts and liquidate them.  It is the Robin Hood story the show has been promising this entire series, and finally, with some three or four episodes left to the entire series, they finally make good on that promise.  But it takes quite a bit of time.  Elliot and Mr. Robot make progress by the inch, each episode leading up to that moment being just a couple of hours of a single day, all leading up to the meeting on Christmas.  It can be a tad bit agonizing after the quick paced series that lead up to all of this, but that time is, for the most part, well spent.  The slowdown allows for some character growth, some shuffling of the chess board, and some illumination on various characters' trauma and world view.  It works, but it definitely doesn't always feel flush with the show entirely.  It feels worth it in the end, mostly because of one episode, the famous 407, where Elliot learns the birth of Mr. Robot, but the show isn't over yet.  The latter half of the season is where the real twists are.  People are put into life or death situations, as you do in the final season of a TV show, but more importantly we see the villain Whiterose pressed into a corner, and we see what her final moves actually look like.  

Season 4 pulls an actually great trick at the end, one that feels completely like no one but Sam Esmail could have pulled off.  Whiterose tells Elliot she will show him what her machine really does, and though Elliot thinks he turns off the machine, a bright red light takes up the entire screen.  Next we see him, he is a completely different Elliot, engaged to Angela who died in the first episode of the season, and his father, no longer a source of abuse but rather loving and supportive, is still alive.  This world feels like an alternate world, one with only one caveat: Elliot's sister Darlene is completely absent.  It's the only indication we get that this is not, in fact, Whiterose's utopian machine at work.  Elliot has been sent back into his mind, into a place he created for the real Elliot, and now he must reckon with who he is: the Mastermind.  The one who wanted to save the world so Elliot wouldn't have to be hurt by it anymore, the ultimate protection against the ultimate threat.  This twist, where the sci-fi trip we thought we were going to get is secretly swapped for a more accurate Mr. Robot locale is incredibly executed, done with such a flare and such a resounding disappointment as to open us up for the reckoning the show has in store for us.  It works because there was a plan, because the show has been secretly setting us up for this ending all along, and though we didn't think it is what we wanted, it is what we needed in the end. 

Season 4 of Mr. Robot certainly sticks out as a stellar season of a stellar TV show, one that was worth the wait and the trials the series sent us through up to this point.  It might rank on the lower end of my favorite TV show endings of all time (can you guess the few that rank among the top?) but it still makes it onto an extremely exclusive list.  Mr. Robot has always felt a bit at odds with me throughout its run, a show that has had me wanting something it wasn't willing to be, and whether that is my fault or Mr. Robot's for giving me something pulpier than its premise promised will come in time (and a rewatch), but until then I'm glad to say the show was a great success.  I may not quite have the love for it most people do, but I at least understand it.  Goodbye, Elliot.      

  

 

 

9.0

[TV Review] Mr. Robot - Season 3

 

Spoilers for Season 1 and 2 of Mr. Robot.

 

In a TED talk by J.J. Abrams about writing, he talked about what I refer to as "black box" writing.  J.J. Abrams brought out a black box he said was given to him long ago, and told never to open it because what he imagined was inside would always be greater than what it actually contained.  The lesson was simple: your audience's imagination and the questions they come up with are greater than anything you could ever provide.  The talk has gone down in some infamy as a revealing admittance that J.J. Abrams is some sort of hack, that his writing style is simply a trick to get you engaged without any intention of fulfilling the proposals it teases.  You can look at the insane amount of set up in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a movie that is held together almost entirely by references because everything new it brings to the table is a question to be answered later.  Those answers, it turned out, either never happened or stretched credibility and are a large reason as to why The Rise of Skywalker was so heavily panned (as an aside, I have a fondness for The Last Jedi, even if I think it sort of disrupts the Star Wars flow - a bad sequel, but an alright movie, essentially).  

Black box writing has been criticized numerous times in numerous shows, but that isn't to say it does not work.  The high bar, the masterclass of black box writing for me comes in The Leftovers, a show created by Damon Lindelof, not coincidentally one of the showrunners of Lost.  One of the reasons The Leftovers worked so well with this type of storytelling was that it provided a series of questions too enticing not to wonder about, and continually forced you to step back and ask why you wanted this question so bad, what were you searching for, and what will you do if you ever figured it out?  It was a show about unanswerable questions and our obsession with them, how they reflect insecurities and needs as much as they compartmentalize and stoke trauma.  It was an emotionally complex show that liked to hang out just on the other side of reality, where it leaned against the fence asking you what proof there was in the fence anyway?

Mr. Robot has consistently flirted with the idea of black box writing, utilized its style and tropes in order to feed intrigue in its premise and in what was going to happen next.  It brought an intoxicating element to the high-pitched drama unfolding and changing this alternate history world that often times did a better job reflecting our world than real life did (and isn't that what great art is supposed to do?).  The first season had elements of this type of writing, but it was so focused on the potential twist it was building towards that whatever thing was being obscured was relegated to the margins.  The real question Season 1 had was "what is real?" and "will they pull it off?"  The answer was "some", and to a degree "yes".  The first season was able to get away with something that, at this point, is tediously obvious because it cast a coy eye to your observance, teasing you with "have you predicted what will happen?" over and over with its style.  It seemed to border on post modernism, but within the first season alone it was hard to tell. 

The second season made things a little more obvious, in a sense.  The black box writing style was in full effect, as conspiracies snaked over one another with large gaps in their systematic production line, issues with the overarching implication of what is happening due to gaps of why this was all happening, and who was doing what.  This obfuscation made it difficult to know whether the series' social and political commentary was something sincere, or simply another bit of smoke and mirrors meant to give the impression of significance where the show was unwilling to follow through.  But what definitely came in crystal clear was this was certainly something post modern. 

In comes Season 3.  For me, my main issue with the entire series prior to Season 3 was that I wasn't sure if this was actually going anywhere at all.  I watched The X-Files, I watched a portion of Lost, I've been burned many a time by ambiguous promises of high octane drama, and there was a scent in the air with the early seasons of Mr. Robot that I could not dismiss.  Whiterose was up to something, Mr. Robot was acting crazy against Elliot's best interests it seemed, and Angela was getting herself into serious trouble.  As things start in Season 3, Angela is working with Whiterose because of an ambiguous promise to turn back time, to return her mother to her.  None of that really makes a lot of sense, but it is obviously flagged as "Season 4 stuff", so okay.  Elliot, meanwhile, is recovering from being shot by Tyrell after he tries to lock the back door to E Corp's servers, something the Dark Army is particularly pissed about.  The Dark Army is in the process of executing stage 2, where the paper filing of E Corp is to be blown up, causing casualties that Elliot cannot live with.  Meanwhile, Darlene is in FBI custody, being flipped into an informant in exchange for her and Elliot's immunity.  

Season 3 works a lot like how previous seasons have worked, in 2 acts.  The first act is whatever it was the last season left off with, in this case Elliot trying to stop stage 2 while Angela secretly aids Mr. Robot and Tyrell in helping the Dark Army.  The last half is spoiler territory, so I won't get to that just yet, but know that it is a doozy.  The execution of this first half is where the show finally cinched up for me, where all doubts evaporated and I knew that this show was being sincere.  Season 2's showing of the cost of a revolution is given the perfect capstone here, as it is shown time and again that those who suffer are not the 1%, but those lowly 99% that were struggling to begin with, those a revolution was supposed to save.  And now that the global currency is quickly switching over to a corporate owned ecurrency, things will only get even more oligarchical.  

I'm only really scratching the surface of the commentary present within Mr. Robot, where themes about wealth disparity and declining democracy crosses with themes of isolation, of paranoia, of multiple selves in a world where the online and the offline begin to bleed into a mess of pixels and flesh.  Mr. Robot is cooking up something fierce and complex, already arriving at something worthwhile without having entered its final act.  And yes, Season 3 casts a more favorable light back on the first two seasons as well, eliminating the anxiety of doubt that any of this was actually going to pay off.  The pay off isn't here, exactly, but it does validate that what came before wasn't a trick, but the opening speeches setting up the real subject at play here.  What once looked coy and teasing now looks deliberate and patient (albeit with some trickery here and there, it cannot be helped).  There was a story to tell, and the story has begun to illuminate its folds. 

I've been vague up to this point, and that is because a show like this is extremely difficult to piece apart.  I imagine to do it true justice would be to rewatch it again with a healthy amount of notes.  But for the sake of posterity, for the sake of being able to say things before I am forever tainted by the knowledge of what happens next in Season 4, the final season, I will try.  Season 3's greatest strengths are in how it breaks down the chaos that has been happening up to this point and threads them into something meaningful.  The great architecture to the show's plotting turns out to be just as petty as it always should be, albeit with one, absurdly outfield caveat that hasn't been revealed yet.  Whatever Whiterose is planning, Mr. Robot as a show has planned for her to be wrong.  There is hubris among the elite in this show's version of the world that allows for delusion to be just as equal an answer as being unrealistically correct.  The show could end up being a simulation and Whiterose has the ticket to reboot the system, and I would probably still be on board.  But whatever is the case, the themes of Season 3 resonate because the plot resonates.  We can see the system at play here, where Elliot and Mr. Robot's relationship starts to make a lot more sense, something that began in Season 2 and is furthered here.  Angela's struggle becomes a full-on existential crisis with layers of desire, of delusion, and of weaknesses.  Darlene is playing a very difficult game on a high wire, where one missed step could ruin everything for everyone, not just herself.  And, most importantly, it puts the revolution in its place.  It was idealistic in the beginning, extremely wanting.  

Since Season 1, that revolution has always felt like a pipe dream.  Regardless of what we want to say about society, I do not believe you can take out the elite without actually, literally, taking them out.  What made them elite was a survivability at all costs, of expending millions in favor of a minor edge.  Revolution is passion, but those who excel are pragmatic.  Living in the pacific northwest currently, it is easy to want a revolution.  I was guilty of it this past summer when protestors were being misreported as aggressors while I watched people who want a sincere change get abused and beaten by a militarized police force.  I and all of you, I'm sure, watched police with a budget inflated beyond comprehension, while I was at home during a pnademic without the money to pay for healthcare.  Let us not kid ourselves: the modern world is apocalyptic for anyone outside of six figures.  Healthcare costs too much, don't you know, but we need police with tanks and automatic rifles to fight back, what was the term, "soyboys?"  Make no mistake, a revolution, in one fashion or another, is something required.  But I do not see violence or protesting as much of the answer.  It keeps the conversation going, which is a good in and of itself, but what really needs to change is literally everything.  As I write this, the president of the United States is denying election results, and many believe him.  If Mr. Robot isn't relevant now, then I don't know when it ever will be.  Season 3 doesn't hold any answers for my grievances with the present, but it does make me feel at least somewhat heard.  It is a sickening feeling when you realize a revolution is so much violence, so much upheaval, so much suffering and all it amounts to is a slideshow presentation for the elite, who look over at you with a mildly impressed expression as they say "we will get back to you.  Thank you for your time."

 

 

 

9.0            

[Game Review] Superhot

 

In 2016 first person shooter games were due for a shake up.  Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, which started the trend of battle royale games, wouldn't be out in Early Access for another year, and the lauded Doom (2016) was still months out, so it was up to indie developer Superhot Team to start breaking shit down.  By this time, shooters had long since begun to wane in favor of more RPG and Open World type games as the popular choice for the medium.  A decade of yearly Call of Duty and Battlefield games had taken its toll on the gaming public, and though games like Borderlands certainly tried to shake things up, simply pointing and shooting at shit with new guns and XP just wasn't cutting any innovative shapes from the fabric.  

Superhot is probably best known for its comparison to the John Wick films, a fortuitous release just two years prior.  In Superhot, time moves when you do, and (nearly) stands still when you don't.  It was the bullet time mechanic from the mid-00s, but with control rather than a simple button toggle.  Red, crystalline enemies would shoot, and all you had to do was stop moving to see where the bullet was traveling and then dodge out of the way.  At least, it's as simple as that conceptually.  With this new power also comes more challenge, as far more people can be shooting at you than in your average shooter.  Dodging bullets is one thing, dodging a hail of bullets from every angle is quite another.  

Controls are extremely simple, with the ability to punch, catch, throw, and shoot being your primary toolbox of carnage.  A guy has a gun in your face?  Punch him, watch that gun fly and pluck it from the air to give that guy some lead.  Out of ammo with red guys running after you, guns drawn?  Toss your gun at one of them, duck away from the bullets of the other, pluck the gun from the air (you will be doing that a lot) and let it rain.  Superhot is about feeling like a badass, part visceral murder simulator (as all shooters are, let's be honest), part strategy game.  Knowing where your enemies are is paramount to survival as turning your head to check your six also moves time.  And don't forget your gun has kickback, and that kickback has to finish its animation in order to get off another shot.  There are little mechanics sprinkled all over the place to give you a sort of breathing room between all of the killing, a strategic assessment time as you think over your next move.  When every Red Guy has been taken out, the level will be replayed for you in real time so you can see just what it would have looked like if you had unreal reaction time.  Superhot is an empowering game, more so than a lot of RPG type power hoarding mechanics can manage because you aren't just watching a number go up.  You're watching your assessment of the situation play out with aplomb.

There is a plot to all of this senseless killing, but I can't say it's all that great.  The game starts and you are on an old school computer, an ambiguous looking build you'd see in an old movie.  Someone sends you a message about this cool new game you should try, and as you play this game and converse with your faceless friend, you begin to realize not all is what it seems.  The plot develops in a predictable way, but I still don't want to spoil it.  It does its job and that is really all I can ask for from a game like this, but it does feel like perhaps video games should lay off of this one trope once and for all.  

If I had big criticism of Superhot, it would be that it was insanely short.  The game is packed with roughly 30 levels, but you are likely to power through that in a couple of hours without too much trouble.  Upon completing the game, you will unlock and endless mode and some challenge modes to keep you playing, and they are certainly worth dabbling in, but I couldn't help but hope for a really good chase scene while I was playing.  I had it in my head that for one level of this game there would be a sequence out of Enter the Matrix, but, you know, not from a shitty game.  Unfortunately, Superhot Team went the short challenges route toward level design, and I can hardly complain about the quality that is actually here.  Superhot, obviously, didn't really change the FPS genre after release, but it stands out as a stellar and unique entry into a genre that often feels like it has nothing fresh to show us. 

 

 

 

8.5  

[Game Review] Pokemon Sword/Shield - The Isle of Armor

 

Pokemon Sword/Shield was a contentious release, and though it divided many people, I considered myself one of those who fell in love with the game.  It had its issues, looking like a suped-up 3DS game and following the same formulaic (if much more conveniently plotted) plotline that most of the other games in the series did.  But with the usual and the disappointing came some innovation for the series, including a semi-MMO type instanced area called the Wild that let you catch Pokemon and go on raids with other players, looking for monsters with the best possible stats to enter into the competitive meta.  Pokemon felt much more freeing and social than it had in years, and with the promise of DLC in the future - a first for the series - things looked bright a year ago.  Now, both DLCs are out, and while the newest one, The Crown Tundra, is getting a lot of praise, The Isle of Armor has hardly had words said about it that pierced my various feeds.  

When I finally put down Sword/Shield, I meant to give myself a great deal of time before I returned to it, if I returned to it at all.  Despite not hearing about The Isle of Armor through my news feeds, I did go out of my way to look into the DLC around release (and ask some friends who had jumped back in).  At the time, it didn't sound interesting enough to warrant me dropping the various games and writings I was working on at the time in order to fit in an extremely addictive game.  The Crown Tundra, however, has caught my ear, and in order to properly play that I thought it best to give this DLC a playthrough.  

The Isle of Armor doesn't add all that much for what amounts to a $15 DLC expansion when you factor out The Crown Tundra in the expansion pass' cost.  After purchasing the DLC, you get a train pass that takes you to an island to the East where a world famous Pokemon Dojo resides.  The island itself acts as another Wild area with a few new biomes such as a swamp land and a massive ocean type biome to catch different types of Pokemon (seeing a massive Wailord sitting on the ocean is a cool sight, as is the torpedoing Sharpedos that will beeline for you in the water).  There are raids, plenty of items to nab, and, once you get far enough into the story, your Pokemon are allowed to follow you around like in SoulSilver/HeartGold, a nice touch but one that should probably have been added to the original release.  The new wilds are nice to look at, even as they feel far more video game-y than just about anything in the original.  There are bizarrely shaped islands in the oceanic area, corny labrynths such as the forest area meant to distract you from how simple it is (and on a more technical level, this forest is hardly unique to the series - just about every game has had a similar one) and it feels overall far more like an amateur mod than an official release.  The way the island intersects with itself to give it this more complex layout is definitely appreciated, but this Wild area feels far less grounded than the one in the base game.  

Wild Pokemon here run the gamut of generations, but primarily you are going to find Pokemon from Gen 1.  Pinsar, Scyther, Tauros, Jigglypuff - there are plenty of Gen 1 Pokemon to catch, something relatively welcome since it is a great (and nostalgic) generation to include, and contains at least a couple that are relatively competitive.  But if you came hoping for more Galarian versions of your favorite Pokemon, you will be disappointed as there is only one this time around.  (As a quick aside - why doesn't Gen 2 get any love?  Just asking).  With the old wild Pokemon newly added to the Pokedex (or, rather, the Isle of Armor Dex, as the Dex's are separated by region, apparently and annoyingly) comes a new legendary to get you hands on, and unfortunately it isn't all that great.  It has two stages (so does it even classify as a legendary the way the game likes to state?), first as a small fighting bear called Kubfu, and then when it evolves at the end of the plot it turns into Urshifu, a better but still not great Pokemon that will either have a Dark or Water sub-type depending on your choices in the story.  This little bear isn't particularly exciting at all, and the game's plot requires you to use him quite a bit.

Kubfu, it turns out, is a rare Pokemon that needs to be shown the Isle of Armor in order to bond with you, so the plot dictates.  After arriving to the island, you accidentally become enrolled into the local Dojo, prove yourself worthy enough for Kubfu, and must train him (to level 70! From 10!) to fight in one of the two towers on the island.  The towers correspond to the Dark and Water sub-types Kubfu can gain upon evolving, so choosing the tower is really just choosing how you want him to evolve.  The idea is sort of neat, like having a modular Pokemon typing, which could make party creation creative, but its execution here as story specific and with such a limitation means it is little more than a gimmick.  Likewise, leveling the little guy up so much could be a chore if you aren't already in the end game with experience candy to spare (and that is sort of assuming you don't care about EVs), but I'll say that at the very least your training of Kubfu is consistent with the plot of the game.  As a matter of fact, it just might be the best synergy Pokemon has ever had between gameplay and story, so it's hard for me to criticize it even as playing it out was slightly annoying.  

Once Kubfu evolves at the end of a rather easy gauntlet of trainers you must fight with 1v1 party rules (using only Kubfu, of course), you can enter a sort of post game section that allows you to give Urshifu a gigantamax. On the Isle of Armor are Max Mushrooms that can be brewed into a soup that will give a Pokemon a gigantamax form if they are able to get one.  It is a pretty neat idea, but it dos devalue some of the vanity catches you can get through raids.  Regardless, if you've beaten the post game of Sword/Shield (where you catch the legendary wolf of your game, skipping the re-battles and all that) you can go on the hunt for Max Honey to get your new friend a gigantamax form.  A neat little thing, sure, but really not much for all of your effort.  What is nice, however, is at the end of the DLC you get to fight one of the hardest battles in the whole game.  If you've had a lot of time building up your party in the post game, obviously this isn't going to be too much trouble for you, but it was still a welcome challenge nonetheless.  

The Isle of Armor overall amounts to very little with a steep price tag.  While some of the elements appeal to me, such as getting my shiny Charizard a gigantamax I've always wanted for him, and catching more Pokemon because I cannot help but delve into collector mechanics in games, that hardly justifies the price.  The story is dull, the new mechanics are really just old mechanics with a little more leniency and customization, and although a new wild area is nice as is a hefty addition of more Pokemon, it feels a bit like a Nintendo premium as other games on other platforms would probably have made this a free update to continue engagement from its player base.  In a lot of ways, this DLC shows how very out of touch Nintendo still is with its methods in the gaming sphere, and while I still look forward to the legendary filled DLC that comes next, I cannot help but temper my expectations a little after such a disappointment.     

 

 

 

5.5

[TV Review] Mr. Robot - Season 2

 

Contains spoilers for Mr. Robot Season 1.

 

There are many kinds of puzzle games, but there are two particular categorizations that make a great difference: puzzle games that challenge the rules, and puzzle games that follow a pattern.  It is almost reductionist the way I have laid these categories out, but a further explanation will help understand what I mean.  Lauded developer Zachtronics makes games that challenges the rules.  You are given a set of rules that the entire game must follow, but the conditions of how those rules can be expressed are challenged for each level.  The gameplay, then, is your ability to realize what these conditions are in order to solve the puzzle.  Classic puzzle game Portal by Valve is the opposite, a puzzle game that follows a pattern.  Portal does little to challenge the conditions of the rules, even in the second game when liquids are introduced that change how pieces of the environment are used.  What Portal does well mechanically is give you a language to follow in order to solve each puzzle.  Portal 2 is debatably guilty of over relying on this design as most puzzles can be solved by simply looking at where you can place a portal in the first place.  The difference is extremely important, and divides puzzle game aficionados on a lot of titles.  One wants you to re-contextualize your knowledge and create something you would not have assumed possible, whereas the other teaches you how to follow, how to read the room in order to carry on.  

Season 1 of Mr. Robot was a puzzle that follows a pattern.  It was obvious from the outset that something was off with the socially anxious vigilante hacker Elliot, and the reveal at the end that the world was more than a little skewed - that Darlene was not just some hacker, but Elliot's sister, and that Mr. Robot himself was not the ring leader, but rather a separate personality of Elliot's mental illness in his father's image that allows him to go to extremes he otherwise wouldn't - was the general focus of what Season 1 was building towards.  Season 1 used somewhat obvious foreshadowing and clues to point toward what many probably guessed, myself included.  When you've seen plenty of "it's in their head" tropes, you tend to key in on them rather early.  But Mr. Robot's success was in admitting that this was likely to be the case, of playing off on your probable knowledge of the season's twist before it was revealed.  The show worked both ways, for the attentive and for the casually watching.  Knowing the truth didn't diminish the season, but rather colored it in a way that allowed for more depth to be mined from its cryptic storytelling.  It had a pattern to follow, and so long as you followed it you would understand all you could about the season at hand. 

Season 2 of Mr. Robot is a puzzle that challenges the rules.  What is or is not predictable in Season 2 is more than likely going to be up to guess work more than deduction, and that isn't a criticism.  The biggest twist of Season 2 comes in the middle, a twist I admittedly didn't see coming although on reflection was certainly considered by creator Sam Esmail at all times.  It wasn't an overt trick meant to confuse and play for profundity, but rather meant to avoid distraction while Elliot wrestled with his understanding of himself and what it means to have another person living inside your head, making actions when your current self is asleep and obscuring whole chunks of your life.  

There is a lot going on in Season 2 and, much like many other shows, that much going on can lead to a season that feels far more like it is moving pieces than actually getting anywhere.  Angela, Elliot's childhood friend and co-griever in the loss of a parent after mega-corporation E-corp ("Evil Corp", in Elliot's head) covered up radiation in one of their facilities, is now working for the corporation she so despises.  What may sound like a sudden change in a character actually makes a lot of sense: she has been out of the loop, disrespected, and generally left blowing in the wind.  Now she has a position of importance, one with the means to finally dig into the truth as to why E Corp was so adamant about covering up this particular disaster, and, more importantly, why they continue to let the disaster continue, even as they lie the problem has been fixed.  Meanwhile, Darlene follows up on the hack that ended the first season, where the world's economy was irreparably disrupted when everyone's debts where forever encrypted.  Credit cards and bank accounts are near impossible to access now that the banks (owned by E Corp) can no longer trust their systems, or measure what has or has not been payed off.  The world has changed over to Bitcoin and, disturbingly, E Corp owned Ecurrency, as their preferred money of choice.  Darlene and the gang of hackers are trying to follow up on the sudden windfall when one of their own is found dead, a bullet in his head.  Things enter crisis mode as everyone scrambles to figure out who did it, and how they can remain safe.  Meanwhile, Tyrell, the would-be CTO of E Corp who, at the end of Season 1, initiated the hack with Elliot, is missing and wanted as the ring leader.  And all the while, Elliot remains in isolation, trying to come to grips with his reality and with the person living inside his head.  Things are rightfully falling apart for all parties, even as they seem to get close to what is actually happening.  

From a writing perspective, Season 2 drops most of its David Fincher influence in favor of David Lynch, recalling everything from Twin Peaks to Inland Empire, and maybe a bit of the behind-the-curtain fear of Mulholland Drive.  What felt like a film-school reference in Season 1 has now blown into a full, homage worthy presentation in Season 2.  It actually does feel like Lynch, particularly in the latter half of the season.  With this greater focus on surrealism comes a much more difficult to discern reality from within the show.  One of the biggest questions is whether Tyrell is dead or not, as the end of Season 1 strongly implied he was shot by Elliot using the gun hidden in the popcorn machine.  Evidence flies left and right for his being dead and in turn alive, and you are never really sure what is fact.  The entirety of Season 2 feels as though it is trying to instill the feeling that none of this could possibly true, all the while developing a conspiracy only ever alluded to behind the drama unfolding.  There is something far darker, far more reaching than is being shown.  The true powers seem to be motivated by things we cannot see or understand just yet, and the one rallying them all comes as no surprise, but it does complicate the storytelling in a delightful way. 

Season 2 does suffer a bit from a seeming lack of focus.  It isn't true, necessarily, as all things add up in the end, but the season has a slight disjointed feeling as it has to move things quickly and complicatedly in order to pull off the latter half.  Information and events are whipping around your head with only the tiniest bit of ground to contextualize it all.  It's exciting, but difficult to parse at first.  A second viewing, I'm sure, would be better than the first, but is unlikely to avoid the feeling that you just want it to get to where it is going already.  All the pieces are there, but there are a lot of pieces, and it can feel a bit like they may be trying to allude to too much all at once rather than drip the information in a usable way.  As it stands, there is a lot of information throughout the season that needs to be recalled in the later episodes that it can feel like you've missed some stuff in the shuffle.  A criticism and a praise, but a criticism nonetheless.  Sometimes perfection really isn't the goal.   

Season 2 is a weird beast, all things considered.  Complicated and challenging while at the same time keeping you just far away as to not be able to predict or see the lines being drawn into any particular shape.  Why some of the agents in this season are motivated to participate is still one of the greatest questions the show has to answer, and one I assume will be held close to the chest until Season 4, or at the earliest end of Season 3.  But what Season 2 is about, more than the machinations that whir behind the curtain, more than the players moving into position, is how fallible people are in everything.  If you've ever read or seen a documentary about how hackers have generally done their job, you'll find that more often than not they have very little to do with any sort of coding.  Rather, hackers are good at exploiting the weaknesses of people, at learning their past to guess passwords, at creating a reliable character for their victims to entrust documents or powers to that they otherwise shouldn't.  The weakness is people, not the machines.  Here, the tables are turned, and those weaknesses are exploited in the hackers, revealing themselves as they scramble to understand the events transpiring that put them into a state of paranoia.  Nothing comes cheap, and certainly causing one of the most historic hacks in history comes at a great cost of confidence, sanity, and even life.  The ephemeral of the digital realm becomes extremely real in Season 2, as the digital wall falters for the unwavering lens of the eye, here in real life.  Repercussions are a bitch.    

 

 

 

8.5

[TV Review] Mr. Robot - Season 1

 

There is an oddly delicate dance at play throughout the first season of Mr. Robot.  The series seems to split its story up like waves of light through a prism, creating layers for different people depending on attentiveness.  Smoke and mirrors may affect those who aren't used to this sort of story (a hard-to-imagine individual, but fortunately or not I've known some in my lifetime), but the show spends just as much time making those smoke and mirrors interesting that to notice them isn't killing the tension of the show, it is ramping it up.  If it isn't obvious already, Mr. Robot is a difficult show to talk about without going into full spoilers.  The gist of the series follows Elliot, a socially anxious hacker who hacks people in order to get to know them, overcoming his difficulties in real life with an invasion of privacy.  Elliot, being a good person at heart even when his actions threaten that identification, often uses what he learns to help good people and thwart awful people.  In the world of Mr. Robot, a corporation like Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet combined has virtually (no pun intended) taken over the capitalistic world.  They have their hand in everything from tech products to banking, and it is virtually impossible to live in the modern (that is, 2015 America) world without somehow shaking hands with them.  It is the modern day from the view point a lot of us probably hold, that of a corporate dystopia.  Mr. Robot is hardly far from the truth, either - tech companies are essentially the same as the show's evil E Corp, which Elliot refers to as "Evil Corp" (whose logo looks awfully close to that of Enron, one of many references to tech's past).  Mr. Robot has a lot to say on the subject, a lot to say that has, to be fair, already been said.  But that doesn't mean Mr. Robot can be written off so easily.  

For a majority of the pilot episode, I was pretty largely on the fence.  It was obvious there were seriously talented people at work here, with stellar direction, an effective score, and wild talents of pretty much the entire acting body of this thing, but while skill can get you a long way there is still something to say of good writing.  In the first episode of Mr. Robot, I predicted most of the twists that would unfold with one or two outliers in the actual plot to surprise me along the way, but the biggest twist of all was that all of my predictions would be revealed by the end of the season.  What a lesser show would have drawn out over multiple seasons - perhaps even more seasons than the entirety of Mr. Robot's run - here, it comprised the first act.  The set up was a keen eye towards cliche, a jumping off point to something that, now, I can no longer predict, and that is incredibly exciting.  

But back up there a bit - cliche?  While watching the first season, a fight was developing in my head.  Mr. Robot has next to no subtlety as to what it wants to reference.  Shot and scored like a David Fincher film - specifically The Social Network, Fight Club, and maybe a hint of Gone Girl - Mr. Robot doesn't feel immediately original.  As a TV show, perhaps it gets some leniency here for taking the style to a sister medium, but remember also that this follows David Fincher's show House of Cards (the American version) by a couple of years.  Layered within its obvious stylistic influence are obvious references to Anonymous, the hacker organization (with its own bootleg Guy Fawkes mask as symbol, no less, and even references to the Max Headroom hack of PBS in the 80s).  And the obvious references don't end there, but getting into too many of them threatens to spoil the latter half of the season.  Mr. Robot wears all of its references and influences on its sleeve, and for someone like me that obsesses over media it can be more than a little distracting.  It is to Mr. Robot's credit, then, that I was able to not look past this, but see it as an intrinsic part of the show.  These references are grounded points, showcasing real life versions of what is happening on screen all at once.  Mr. Robot isn't convincing you of an alternate possible present, but rather sending what is our present through the meat grinder and forcing you to contend with what is there, and that is a rather powerful thing to do.  

Mr. Robot does buck with my preferred writing style, but I can't really complain about that all too much.  Mr. Robot's high-strung tension (much like the dramatized super reality of shows like Breaking Bad) is far away from my more messy, character led preferences in Mad Men or even the surrealism of The Leftovers.  This sort of high anxiety, melodramatic storytelling can grate on me as time goes on, where eventually I just want to see more realistic people struggling with grocery shopping or something, a slice of reality where the banal and the internal become a war zone of existential dread and societal reflection.  Not necessarily so with Mr. Robot, because between the lines of hyped up dramatics is something horrifyingly real.  The moves players make in this show may be unrealistic at times, may be drama led to hook viewers and never let go, but between the lines is a very real sense of isolating despair, of  reality peeking through the fringes of our perceived reality.  The very key aspect to this has to do with Elliot, the central character and linchpin to this entire story working.

Mild Spoilers below - but enough to perhaps predict some things.

Elliot is not mentally well.  He has severe anxiety and PTSD from his childhood, but also finds himself at odds with reality.  In particular, he hears and reads "Evil Corp" instead of E Corp at every instance of the name.  It isn't just Elliot, either, as even when he isn't in the scene we hear it too.  This is set up in the first episode, where Elliot mentions that he scrubs the original name for the new one he has created, done so thoroughly as to not even notice it.  This is where the prism of light I mentioned above comes even more into play - the show has signaled to you, very early on, that you are not getting a clear picture of things.  There is a big lie - perhaps several - at the core of Mr. Robot.  You can go through a majority of the first season without noticing this slight winking away of reality, but by the end you have no choice but to confront it.  There is a cult anime show called Serial Experiments: Lain that comes to mind.  In that show, a teenage girl becomes a hacker, and reality seems to disintegrate around her.  One of the clever (albeit disorienting) aspects to that show is that it consistently felt like you were missing two to three episodes between episodes, so you were always trying to catch up with a story you could only see in patches.  It created a sense of detachment, of misstep with reality that I hadn't ever seen until Mr. Robot.  One of the most thrilling aspects to Mr. Robot, and one of the core reasons why all of these obvious references and cliches work, is because we are seeing an augmented reality.  We can sense there is a reality beneath what we are seeing, but we can only see snippets here and there, with scenes missing all over the place.  The most evocative moment in the season for me was when Darlene, a hacker Elliot meets early on in the season, met with Angela, Elliot's childhood friend, and they not only knew each other, but both had a tight relationship with Elliot.  It felt like whole episodes had been skipped over, like there was a hidden reality I wasn't able to see through the frame of the show.  This is what Mr. Robot does extremely well, signaling to you what is off without totally revealing its hand.  

Mr. Robot is a slight of hand trick where there is a slight of hand to the slight of hand, a distraction in the distraction to the execution so that you don't realize that perhaps there isn't any stage at all.  This review is concurrent with how much of the show I've watched - I have no idea what happens in season 2, or what it is even about, but I am unbelievably excited to see what comes next.  Mr. Robot's first season was the first Rotten Tomatoes 100% score for a TV season, and while I cannot live up to the praise that implies (which, debate about what Rotten Tomatoes scores actually mean is a topic for another time) I can still say that I haven't been this excited by a new show in a long time.  I don't usually write about TV seasons on here because I find it incredibly difficult to do, but I made the exception for Mr. Robot.  This is a show that should at least be watched.  Whether it lives up to the hype it has instilled in me remains to be seen, but what a season it has been.      

 

 

 

8.5

[Game Review] Titanfall 2 (Campaign)

 

If the above image makes your eyes glaze over, you aren't alone.  Despite the interesting story behind Titanfall as a franchise, I largely skipped the first entry when it was released.  The entirety of my experience with the first game is condensed into one marijuana hazed night at my brother's house.  I didn't own an Xbox One for a majority of its life cycle (is it too early to speak of the console in the past tense?), mostly because by that time I had moved on to PC gaming.  Titanfall was one of the console's showcase exclusives, one banking on its history as much as its neat concept.  

Before Titanfall, lead developers Jason West and Vince Zampella where heads at Infinity Ward, developers of Call of Duty (in particular, games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, i.e. not the Treyarch games like Black Ops and World at War).  They had negotiated a deal with corporate overlords Activision that, if they released Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, they would be given a much larger salary, bonuses, and creative control over the Call of Duty franchise.  Activision agreed, on the condition that if they were ever fired, control would revert to Activision.  You can imagine what motivations were at play after that deal.  What followed was a he-said, she-said mess that included accusations that West and Zampella attempted to conspire with EA games to damage Infinity Ward (accusations settled out of court), and various lawsuits regarding improper firing of the two studio heads.  Zampella and West created a new studio which included many of the former Infinity Ward staff that left in mass exodus after the pair's firing, which they called Respawn Entertainment, where they worked with EA.

I have no clue as to when or whose decision it was to make Titanfall, their Call of Duty competitor, an Xbox/Windows exclusive, but I can't say it was the brightest of ideas.  Call of Duty reigned supreme as the highest selling shooter across the consoles in part because it was cross-platform.  Still, the decision was made, and as such I didn't play much of the first game.  (It is worth noting the game was eventually ported over to Xbox 360, meaning I could have played it relatively soon after launch, but again I had largely abandoned consoles in favor of PC).  Titanfall was essentially Call of Duty with parkour, with hints of other stuff for flavor.  You were given a loadout with whatever guns and perks you wanted, and while on the field you could eventually earn a Titanfall drop, a mid-sized mech that could turn the battle around if used properly.  The mechs themselves worked a lot like the killstreak bonuses in Call of Duty, but with less variance and, hopefully, less balancing issues.  Notably, however, there was no single-player campaign to the original Titanfall.  The game's quick turn-around is partially to blame, trying to release near as possible to the launch of the Xbox One, but that didn't stop people from laying the criticism down.  Titanfall 2 aimed to fix that.  

Titanfall 2's campaign has received a surprising amount of praise over the years, mostly for that one level, but regardless, in a time when single player FPS campaigns are considered conciliatory unless you're fucking Doom, it was notable enough to gain it some new fans.  For a PC gamer, however, it was a hard sell limiting its release to only the EA owned Origin service (not as bad as it once was, but still far from ideal) or the Xbox store on PC.  Recently, with EA and Steam brokering some sort of weird deal, Titanfall 2 has finally released on Steam, and no longer does it quite have the bite it normally would in order to own it.  (Disclaimer: I do own games on both the Microsoft Xbox Store and Origin, and obviously GOG, but only when they are worth splitting my games library such as with The Sims - I'm not just a Steam simp). 

Titanfall 2's campaign follows a group of mercenaries who are on some planet you don't care about fighting a militia in order to save another planet you don't care about.  The crux of the story follows your player character, who is a trainee that quickly gets promoted to "pilot", the designation for those that get to pilot a Titan.  Titans are the mechs the game tries to sell its individuality on, sentient robots that bond with their pilots and can turn the tides of battle.  The story largely revolves around military hoo-rah criclejerking and this growing relationship with this Titan, nicknamed BT.  If that isn't enough to predict the entire plot of the 6-hour campaign, then perhaps you are new to blockbuster stories and might I recommend Star Wars first, since it has nearly the same story but done a lot better.  

As dismissive as I sound right now, Titanfall 2's campaign is surprisingly good, it just isn't the lazy story that really sells it.  Though I briefly described Titanfall's gameplay above, there is a meatier description that fits a lot better: it is Call of Duty meets Halo meets Tribes.  Mobility is perhaps the most important (and most fun) aspect of Titanfall, and, not coincidentally, one of the most tedious flaws of Call of Duty.  Getting around any given map is a blast, and the campaign really lets this shine.  Wall running lets you zip around the map and climb around, giving you verticality usually reserved for much faster PC shooters like Quake III.  While running, you are given a slide ability which feels like a slightly neutered version of skiing from Tribes, which can still give you that thrill of zipping around the map.  Guns feel pretty good, although it follows the Call of Duty formula, which is to say that half of these are virtually worse versions of the other half.  Slightly making up for this is the Titans themselves, which allow for a tank-type position on maps and in the campaign, though their balance and usefulness is somewhat questionable.  It is hard not to feel like these are more of a flavor than a core, competitive contribution.  They do, technically, change the way the game is played, but I never found them to be more than dressing.  

The campaign's levels are well equipped to give you the ropes of mobility, while giving you enough stuff to shoot at to get your bearings on all the weapons, pilot and Titan alike.  Recognizing routes you can traverse is incredibly fun throughout the campaign, even if the game tries to hold your hand and tell you the route if you take more than a few seconds figuring it out.  The fact that these hologram guides that show you the route require you to push a button to actually see is a considerate choice, but I played the game on Hard and would have rather they left it out on the top two difficulties.  Like you probably expect from most FPS campaigns in this day and age, the AI is pretty damn dumb.  Even on Hard, I found the game rather breezy so long as I was paying attention.  The decrease in difficulty was a mild disappointment, but considering the real strengths of this campaign lie with testing your movement and wall running, I can't say it amounts for a whole lot as far as demerits go. 

The real golden goose of this campaign is the "Effect and Cause" level smack dab in the middle of the game.  Spoilers for that sequence in this paragraph, but you've probably heard about it before.  In this level you are given a device that lets you jump back and forth through time, usually in order to avoid obstacles such as crushed in doors and walls on fire.  The rapid pace you need to switch and be thinking in two places at once is an absolute thrill, and the worst part of it all is that this level is probably only 30 min long when it could easily have been the whole game.  Maybe limiting the mechanic is part of what makes it so magical, but either way this sequence may not act as a worthwhile reason to buy the game on its own, but it certainly gives a good reason to play it if you can.  Platforming hasn't felt this mentally straining in a while, by my account, and adding in combat - which has you essentially fighting two fights at once - is just awesome.  

Titanfall 2 manages to be a good game not so much through innovation (outside of that one level), as through being incredibly solid at what it does.  The game just feels really good to play, and while the Halo-esque story (hey, there's an Ark here too!) and the lack of challenge will convert literally no one, the gameplay is bound to give you a thrill.  Titanfall 2 is a testament of how making a good game can literally just be you being good at what you do, rather than reinventing the wheel (or adding gimmicks) every few entries.  Gimmicks run amok in Titanfall 2, but they are played as gimmicks, as fun diversions to give you an excuse to utilize the fun core gameplay they've tuned to a near perfect pitch.  Great as I may praise Titanfall 2 for how surprisingly fun it is, this is pretty well just a game for people who like shooters.  It will convert no one, but please those predisposed for what Titanfall 2 has on offer.         

 

 

8.5

[Game Review] Cardpocalypse

 

Cardpocalypse wants to hit you in two spots that never quite overlap.  Taking place ambiguously in the late 90s, Cardpocalypse follows Jess, an elementary school girl now joining a new school with only two things on her mind: how do I not embarrass myself, and when can I play the new trading card game Power Pets?  Lucky for her, the entirety of her new school is obsessed with the game and the tie-in TV show.  Striking up friends turns out to be a breeze - find the dweebs who love the game and are generally too dorky for other friends, and Jess' charisma just seems to naturally take care of the rest.  But even with this motley crew of geeks, Jess isn't out of the woods for embarrassment.  An altercation on her first day of school gets the card game banned, creating an underground market and competitive scene that even starts to interest the older kids bent on rebelling against the teachers.  Jess' folly may have made her something of a social pariah, but it also created an economy she thrives in.  Jess passes through the halls taking up tasks for people in order to gain cards and build her deck, all the while investigating a supernatural mystery that has kids disappearing, leaving behind a strange familiar goo.  

Pokemon was released in the US in late 1998, and the developers at Gambrinous have left little out from the time.  The art style is reminiscent of early South Park, the writing and story right out of a 6th grade mystery novel, and the fury and obsession that was the Pokemon craze of the 90s is skewered with love and nostalgia.  But most of the game's charm strikes a very particular chord, one meant to provoke fond memories for those who were this age when Pokemon was first released, while also being written with the younger demographic in mind.  When was the last time you read an elementary school level book?  They don't quite catch your attention, and so is true of Cardpocalypse from a narrative perspective.  The characters are charming and the stakes are certainly there (and often spun in a somewhat humorous way), but there is the distinct feeling that this game would mostly appeal to a younger audience, rather than the audience it seems to be marketed towards.  The gameplay, which we will get to in a moment, is solid enough to brush aside the juvenile plot, but there is still the cost of how much plot there is.  The story never really gets much more complicated than it seems from the first half (although it does get a bit more ridiculous), but you will still find yourself going through a lot of dialogue in order to play.  Cardpocalypse, for all of its appeal to the digital card game genre, is a lot closer to Night in the Woods as far as presentation goes, and that means a heck of a lot of reading.  The writing here has a purpose it is going for and it is successful at achieving that, but the intention may be misguided.  Cardpocalypse gains its greatest pros from its gameplay, which is a bit too complicated for most in the age range the story is intended for, and from its nostalgia and satire, which appeals to people far older than are going to enjoy its story.  It can't seem to get satiric enough to make the plot worthwhile for anyone well into or beyond their teens.  

That isn't to say there isn't a certain warmth in Cardpocalypse, but the game is at its best when you are actually playing the card game.  The rules are pretty well a mix of Hearthstone and something like Slay the Spire or Magic: The Gathering's Commander game type.  You pick a particular Power Pet that acts as your health bar, and you spend "pet food" to cast other pets or something called "mutations".  Your champion pet has a general ability and starts with 30 life (which if dropped to zero loses you the match), and when that life gets to 15 or below, you activate a mega ability, usually the ability your deck is built around.  This can be as simple as cast a 5/5 creature to as complicated as gain lethal (deathtouch, for M:TG fans) while all of your other "minions" get lethal for one turn.  The number of synergies in this game are actually rather astounding for a single player TCG.  One combo I rolled with for a long time was putting out a minion with hiding (enemy cannot attack until the minion has first attacked at some point in the game) that gained +2/0 for every enemy minion destroyed.  Ramping this minion up was an easy way to push the opponent back to a point they could hardly get back from.  But there were numerous other twists and combinations and I never felt like I had milked the game for all it was worth.  Added to this game, due exclusively to the fact this game is single player only, is the ability to modify (and in one case create) cards.  Stickers allow you to change the typing, cost, attack, defense, and nature (such as lethal, defender, etc.) of your cards.  They come in a limited supply, but I hardly found the need to use them unless I was really ramping up a deck, and managed to hoard quite a few of each.  The basic nature and rule set to Power Pets is a lot of fun, but as you get closer to the end of the game, things start to take a bit of an interesting turn.   

Though it is mild, there are some spoilers from here on out. 

Towards the end of the game, you find out that the Power Pets from the TV show have invaded the real world, and you are tasked with defeating them.  Every time you do, however, one of the rules of Power Pets is changed for everyone.  You get to pick one from a pool of three rule changes (although I couldn't tell for certain, I think the rule changes are related to the powers of whatever Pet you defeated).  These rule changes can be exploited sometimes to make your deck better - such as allowing cards to be pinned to your first hand of a game, letting me get out that hiding minion out first turn to really ramp up his ability - but equally can screw certain deck types up, or the game entirely.  One type of card I haven't described yet is the mutations, which act sort of like trap cards from Yu-Gi-Oh.  You may place a mutation face down on the field, and whenever the conditions have been met, they will be activated.  You can build entire decks around these, with minion cards that gain +1/0 modifiers for each you have face down, among other things.  One of the potential rule changes, however, creates a face-up infinite deck of random mutations, and whichever player meets the conditions first gets to activate the top card.  It is a really fun mechanic in game, but it made matches less strategic and far more chaotic.  If a mutation was activated, there was no telling if a second mutation beneath it had also met its conditions until the first had been played.  What this means is there are times when your opponent could activate the top card, and suddenly find themselves activating one or two more, putting you at a big disadvantage with little for you to predict since the deck is random and unpredictable.  There really wasn't a great defense against this thing, but, on the flip side, you really didn't have to choose that rule change.  As a criticism, I would put this in the mild to negligible pile, because it certainly made the game more fun as it went on and your deck was starting to take something close to a final shape, but it is worth noting that the game won't let you totally pull one over on it.  

The digital TCG market is beyond saturated at this point, so making an effort telling you that this game is worth your time is immediately diluted by the fact that it will also not pierce through the top of the pile when it comes to this genre.  It is a fun, regret-free diversion that can't quite draw you totally in, but is still worth consideration if you want something without having to also delve into a rollicking and hostile meta in order to play.  As far as single player, digital TCG games go, this one sits in the middle of the "quality" file, far beneath the glorious Slay the Spire that I cannot help but bring up every chance I get.  If this game looks to strike the desire for an impulse buy, I say go for it.  It's 10 hours.  You've got nothing to lose, and charm to gain.  

 

 

 

7.0  

[Game Review] The Witcher III: Blood and Wine

 

When it comes to The Witcher III, Blood and Wine is seen as its swan song.  The final and longest expansion of an already massive, epic game has been praised as one of if not the best DLCs ever to be released.  Part of the weight can be shouldered on the base game itself, which alone deserves mountains of praise, but it is still hard to argue that Blood and Wine is an extremely valuable deal.  The DLC adds a new Duchy to explore, Toussaint, a weird amalgamation of France and Italy.  The Duchy was featured heavily in the book The Lady of the Lake, and, as far as Geralt's storyline in the books goes, is my least favorite part of his adventure.  Without getting too much into book spoilers, Toussaint was depicted as a lazy, wealthy area where Geralt blew half a book (and the last one at that) drinking, fucking, and lazing about.  While there were certainly aspects to enjoy in Geralt's time in the Duchy, I came out of it feeling like nothing much happened at all.  

Luckily, CDProjekt Red went with the approach of slowly tearing away the veneer, but the setting wasn't chosen by accident.  Blood and Wine is full to the brim with content, enough to fill a substantial (if not somewhat short) RPG on its own.  The main quests go by far quicker than you'd think, but the place in which it takes place has plenty of troubles for Geralt to take care of.  There is at least double the amount of side quests as there are main quests, each laid out in the path of where another quest takes you.  What this means in practice is that during any given you quest, you are bound to stumble upon two or more, giving the feeling that this area is a wealth of content.  In reality it is probably slightly less than it seems, but that feeling of being overwhelmed by a sudden new area - almost a new game - is prevalent throughout.  There are new characters, a new culture, plenty of new areas and rolling, tree-less hills laid before you as far as the eye can see.  It is so overwhelming, as a matter of fact, I highly recommend taking a break between Hearts of Stone (or the main game, if you are foolish enough to skip the preceding DLC) and Blood and Wine. 

But with this wealth of content comes a couple other interesting tonal shifts.  For one, Toussaint isn't war torn as the other areas are.  The squalor that was so commonplace in the rest of The Witcher III is gone here, and in its place is either prosperity or the troubles of wealthy people.  There is still squalor, obviously (this is a fantasy RPG, after all), but it comes in much smaller doses.  It is no mistake choosing Toussaint for this DLC, because more than anything this batch of content is meant to finally put Geralt to rest.  You're given a home you can renovate, given a pleasant ending to relax with (even if you get a non-good ending),  and a general sense of finality in Toussaint.  In a sense, you're fighting for retirement throughout Blood and Wine, and CDProject Red has pulled out all the stops.  

The main plot follows you being summoned to deal with "The Beast", as they call it, a monster that has been killing old knights with a particular theme that they weren't all they seemed.  As you begin your investigation, you bump into an old friend from the books, a higher vampire named Regis.  As a book reader, I cannot stress what a joy it is to see and hold conversations with Regis, easily one of my favorite characters from the books.  For those who have read the books, it may be counted as a small spoiler Regis is in this game at all, given his demise at the end of The Lady of the Lake, but hardly one that matters.  Regis tells you that he knows who the beast is, and worse it is a friend of Regis who, the vampire swears, could not do these horrible things without having good reason to.  Whether you agree with Regis or not really depends on how much leniency you want to give the plot, because it definitely has its problems justifying some of the sides here. 

Blood and Wine has been praised for its story, but its hard not feel like CDProjekt Red may still brimming with ideas, but are running out of steam when it comes to bringing these ideas to reality.  Toussaint is gorgeous and as creatively laid out as ever, but the story makes some leaps in logic and some appeals to empathy that don't quite strike the balance of all the previous content in The Witcher III.  It's very small, and the story hits far, far more than it misses, but there is still the lingering feeling I had throughout the main quests of Blood and Wine that Hearts of Stone worked better as a story.

When it comes to content, however, Blood and Wine nearly always succeeds.  Quests are varied and usually interesting (although helping two vineyards clear out their troubles felt the most "chore" -esque The Witcher III ever has), and combat is given a run for its money by being more difficult, adding grandmaster armor to build (at an extreme cost), and adding mutations, which complicates builds in a rewarding way.  Nothing blows the basic systems brought on by The Witcher III out of the water, but it feels like it adds more building to do in a game where, more than likely, you were nearing your upmost limit.  Combat's difficulty is mostly a plus, particularly where boss fights are concerned, but there is the distinct feeling that some of it is because of massive health bars added to even basic enemies.  Your taste on the matter will most likely vary, but for me suddenly having wolves take four or five hits with my fully upgraded Feline School sword felt a little ridiculous after being able to one-hit them for 50 hours.  With new, post-game content, creatures should obviously be more difficult, but it seems they may have over-corrected here and there.

The aesthetics of Toussaint are probably the most obvious difference between the base game and DLC.  Toussaint is given an odd bloom effect that is effective, but a little distracting earlier in the game.  I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure Toussaint has a filter over it to make the colors pop and to smooth out the dithering that The Witcher III's graphics has for objects rendered small on the screen.  Traveling back and forth between the base game and Toussaint feels distinctly different in a graphical way, not just with regards to design.  The bloom got on my nerves at first, but otherwise Toussaint is the prettiest area of the entire game (although my heart of hearts still belongs to Skellige).  A lot of this has to do with the design of the place.  The gorgeous colors in the DLC are accentuated by the rolling hills and the far view of the Duchy.  It was remarkable seeing so far in the distance, something I wasn't totally aware was such a rare thing in the base game.  In Velen, for example, the place is dense with trees and, though the place is very hilly, is almost all on a flat-ish plane.  With Toussaint, there are large hills and steppes that towns and the palace are built into, giving you plenty of places in which to see huge swaths of land like you couldn't in the base Witcher III.  This turned out not only to be an aesthetic delight, but a functional one as well.  The biggest black mark I can give to The Witcher III is its use of archaic minimap design.   

The Witcher III's minimap has been unfavorably compared to Ubisoft's usage of the same system for their Far Cry games, and the comparison isn't entirely wrong.  It isn't rare to find yourself staring at the minimap rather than the game itself, an annoyance I begrudge any game that does it (Fable comes to mind, as does Red Dead Redemption).  You can turn off the minimap path, where it shows a dotted line of which paths to take to your destination, in the settings, but turning the map off entirely presents some problems in the base game.  For starters, as beautifully designed and unique as all the areas are, you will still be opening up the big map constantly to check if you are heading in the right direction.  Some deride a compass feature (such as in Skyrim and Fallout) just as much as the minimap, but generally I've found them preferable.  It gives you a sense of direction without taking your eyes off the game world too much.  Red Dead Redemption II had a compass replacement in the settings if you wanted to turn the minimap off, and even allowed for a button to briefly bring the map back up before disappearing again if you needed it momentarily just to get your bearings.  Something like this would have done wonders for The Witcher III.  I spent most of my time in the base game with the minimap turned off and had a much better time than I did when it was on, but needing to check the large map slowed my progress down considerably.  By the time I reached the end portion of The Witcher III, I was forced to turn it back on so I could complete the game in a reasonable time.

Toussaint doesn't outright fix these problems, but because of its greater view distance by design, it makes relying on the minimap far less likely.  You can literally see the destination in front of you half the time, or at least the general area where it should be.  It lets you scan the horizon for where to go, and then go there.  This is a thrilling way of designing a world, but to recommend this as a solution is naive.  Not all worlds should be designed with the look of Toussainte.  Breath of the Wild had a similar kind of design, where looking around you there always seemed to be an interesting place to travel towards, but I would not propose Velen be designed the same way, or the city of Novigrad.  The problem is that open world design is difficult, and simply looking at the world and knowing where to go isn't always a choice that best informs the world.  You should not see great distances in a swampy area, for example, even if that area is an entire province.  But for what it's worth, I would call Toussaint's design a fortunate sort of fix or adaptation to The Witcher III's worst aspect, and it makes playing in the place that much more enjoyable.  

Blood and Wine is, when taken narratively, another attempt at a (realtively) epic story to put Geralt to rest on.  A colossal achievement for him to overcome, so that when it is all over he can feel valid in finally allowing himself some rest.  When taking in the gameplay, it is a sudden burst of gameplay and exploration to let you loose for the long, deep slumber this series is bound to take while CDProjekt Red finishes up on Cyberpunk 2077.  And while I cannot wait for that game, there is a tremendous sadness that The Witcher III is over, and that it is unlikely a Witcher 4 will feature Geralt in a major way (at least I can look forward to a cameo, right?).  The Witcher III is an astounding piece of work, one that took the fact it was a game seriously when telling its stories, while not diminishing what those stories were trying to say or how they were said.  When I think over how much work must have gone into this world and these stories, my mind cannot fathom how this game ever came to be.  How did so many people come together to make something that feels so singular, that has the patience to tell its story the best way it can?  It seems like a form of alchemy.  Blood and Wine never had to happen.  The Witcher III had earned its legacy well before it, but with it it is now unparalleled.  Blood and Wine, despite some of its minor shortcomings, very well could be the best DLC ever made.  But more than that, it was an exceptional cap on one of the greatest games ever made. 

 

 

                 

 

10