Ta-metru_defender

In the words of a Taylor Swift song I loathe: Welcome to New York.

Essays, Not Rants! 366: Thursday Nights I don’t know if you heard, but getting tickets for Avengers: Endgame was quite the trip. AMC Theaters’ website full-on crashed and they shut down their (also overloaded app). Other websites, like Fandango were showing errors if you tried to access showings for an AMC. As someone with that fancy-shmancy A-List subscription, this was a real pain (I ended up going to the theater in person to buy my tickets). This isn’t the first time there’s been a mad dash for movie tickets. I had similar (though not quite as intense) issues when getting tickets for Rogue One and The Last Jedi. Midnight and Thursday night showings have always been a bit of a Big Deal, but these website-crashing hypes are a little more recent. Now, it’d be easy to lambast companies like AMC for failing to account the wild demand for a movie like Endgame. But with it, there’s also the question of just how this urgency to catch a movie as soon as possible became the thing it is. Now sure, there are the huge fans that have been waiting for the movie. There’s no denying that opening nights are fun, the crowd is excited and the atmosphere is electric. Yelling and cheering when something cool happens is a neat experience that you don’t get in many other showings. No doubt that that’s something special. But I’d wager it goes further than that. Most of these website-crashing movies are sequels or at the very least the continuation of a franchise. There’s the want to find out what happens next, and with that, to not have it spoiled. And, man, is it easy for stuff to be spoiled these days. I remember when the series finale of Lost aired years and years ago; I swore off Facebook, Twitter, and my beloved TVTropes until I had the chance to watch it, lest I find out how it ends. The internet has only gotten bigger in the last nine years and with it, the potential for spoilers. Even if you avoid social media and anything marked with spoilers, there are hosts of articles on the internet with leading titles along the lines of “That Character’s Shocking Return Explained” or somesuch that even if it doesn’t outright spoil the ending, at least hints at something. Then there are the memes. My god, the meeeeeemes. Seizing on the pop-culture zeitgeist of the moment, these image macros waste no time in having fun. When The Last Jedi came out it didn’t take long at all for Ben Swolo — that is, the scene with a shirtless Kylo Ren — to gain traction. A quick check of Know Your Meme shows that BuzzFeed had a listicle of reactions by December 15th (the day the movie came out) and the name Ben Swolo was popularized by the 20th. Infinity War also saw its share of memes, one of the most famous being parodies of the dusting that happens at the end of the movie. Keep in mind that this is a Major Plot Point at the end, when Thanos succeeds at killing half the universe, including many Avengers, with a snap of his fingers. It’s a really Big Deal. According to, once again, Know Your Meme, memes of various characters commenting that they don’t feel so good were online by April 29th; the Sunday after the movie’s release. Barely took a few days for the movie’s big ending to be a meme. I’m not sure how I feel about all this. The mad dash to get tickets is a pain, but I also wanna see movies right when they come out (especially ones I really care about). Yet I remain of the opinion that spoilers don’t really spoil (though I enjoy a good surprise as much as the next person), so really, much of the fun of the opening night comes from that feeling of community and being able to make a big deal about it with friends (I bought out an entire row of the theater for The Last Jedi). So maybe I’m a part of the problem. All that said, when Star Wars Episode IX comes out later this year, I’m gonna get tickets to the Thursday night I just hope the infrastructure is ready by then. But seriously, don’t tell me anything about what happens in these movies.

Essays, Not Rants! 365: Adaptational Change There’s a delightful twist late in Captain Marvel that adds a nice layer of added depth to the narrative. It’s one that I didn’t see coming, but a friend who’s less familiar with the comics thought it was well telegraphed. The reason I didn’t expect it is arguably because of how used I am to the way things are in the Marvel comics. Turning things on its head is a concept so wild as to be unthinkable, and it’s something that the movie can uniquely do since it’s adapting a prior work. Adaptations are weird beasts. We’ve all seen movies that failed to do the book justice, just as there are movies that take a book’s source material and improve on it. There’s a natural tension since what works well in one medium won’t necessarily work well in another. Oftentimes, the best adaptations aren’t the ones that try to recreate the source material but instead use it as a base to build something new. Aragorn is a cool character in the books, but Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings gives him a much more complex arc that’s far more dynamic to watch on screen. Because sure, reading about Aragorn as a man ready to be king who’s preparing for his return makes for a compelling read, but it could play dull on screen. Giving him self-doubt and swinging his arc so that it’s about his accepting of the mantle as he grows from Strider the Ranger to King Elessar makes for a real interesting watch. The heart of it is the same: Aragorn will be king, but it’s been developed to work better for the chosen medium. Now, superhero movies as adaptations are a little odd, mostly because they seldom adapt one particular narrative. For the most part, these characters have massive mythologies unto themselves. This vast mythos allows storytellers a whole lotta room with which to craft a narrative. The Dark Knight isn’t a retelling of any specific Batman story, instead, it takes elements from the Batman mythos to create a new, compelling story. Arguably, one aspect of why The Dark Knight works so well is its distillation of its characters into their core archetypes: The Joker is chaos personified, so to oppose him Batman is the embodiment of order. Two-Face comes to exist between the two, in some ways offering a vision of a fallen Batman. There’s no question that these characters are who they purport to be, It’s a totally new story; unconcerned with retelling a specific comic book arc it’s able to do its own thing with these larger than life characters. Carol Danvers, like so many other superheroes, has decades of adventures to inspire Captain Marvel. I’ve read just about all of the Captain Marvel comics with Carol holding the mantle and so in the lead up to the movie I was really curious as to what story they’d tell. Would they adapt "The Enemy Within?" Would it be a more spacey like DeConnick’s second volume? Or were they going to incorporate something from Carol’s time as Ms. Marvel (which I tried to read but really couldn’t get past the high-cut leotard she was in most of the time)? More importantly, were they gonna get her character right? They do, not be recreating a particular arc or anything, but by keeping her her. Even though there are a bunch of changes from the comics regarding her backstory, she’s still her. More than anything, that’s what I wanted from the movie. As much as I wanted to see Carol hang out with Jessica Drew, Kit Renner, and Tracy Burke, it’s far more important for her to be that determined, headstrong woman from the comics. A twist that simply wouldn’t work in the comics works in the movie because, as an adaptation, it’s allowed to take those liberties and we go along with it because the character at its core feels so right.

Essays, Not Rants! 364: Apex Teamwork Ever since my brother got himself a PS4 I’ve been paying a bit more attention to online games. Sure, I play my share of online, games like Battlefront and Destiny are a great way to relax while watching The Daily Show, but an online multiplayer component has never been a big draw. Now that my brother and I can play online together, I’m ever on the lookout for a game where we can throw down together. Over the past couple of years, Battle Royale games have very much become in vogue within the online gaming community. I’ve been aware of them, but never really knew what they were (in fact, a few months ago I looked the genre up on Wikipedia to see what the whole buzz was about). Anyway, Apex Legends was released recently, and my brother started playing it. I watched a game or two and figured, ah, what the heck, should be fun, yeah? It is. Each game has twenty three-player squads who air drop into a massive map. Players then scramble for weapons and gear and fight it out as the area of playable space slowly shrinks. You’ve only one shot at this; once your whole squad goes down it’s game over (and you return to the title screen to find another game to repeat the whole thing over again). That gameplay loop necessitates a lot of quick decision making. Where do you land? Do you go to an area with good loot but is sure to be crowded and result in quick violence? Or do you go further off and try and gear up before joining the fray? Most important, however, is the teamwork of the game. My brother and I are in constant communication while playing, each of us keeping an eye out for foes while making plans about how best to navigate the map (always go for the high ground). The fact that death in Apex is permanent makes teamwork so vital; since you can’t just respawn, staying alive together is paramount. Knowing where your opponents are — and keeping your teammates aware of that — gives you that edge up to outlive a squad. Here’s the thing that makes Apex such a delight: its ping system. A tap of a button and you can tag whatever you’re looking at for your squad. Could be an untouched treasure chest, could be your idea of where the team should go next, could be an opponent. In and of itself, this system isn’t anything really new, Uncharted 4’s multiplayer had a perk where you could mark enemies. But it’s absolutely vital in a game like Apex where being able to communicate exactly where something is makes the difference between life and death. See, it’s hard to point in games, and exclamations like "contact right" make little sense when you don’t have that physical sense of presence you do in real life. Pinging helps give the squad a shared sense of space, where "over there" actually means something real. Take sniping and spotting. The ping system means I can be perched high on a building while my brother goes in for a closer look. If he sees someone, he can ping them and I can take potshots at them while he beats a hasty retreat (or uses my covering fire as a way for him to flank 'em). It’s a lot more immediate than me having to search for them myself, or having to figure out what "up the hill behind that rock" means. Teamwork’s encouraged, and I get annoyed if our random third squamate doesn’t ping enemies. I haven’t won a game yet. We’ve been top-three a couple times and come painfully close to being the last squad standing. I don’t really mind, though; I play the game for those wonderful moments when a plan we’ve hatched comes together (or falls apart stupendously). But I’ve never played the game on my own, and I don’t really see why I would. So much of why I enjoy Apex is the teamworkiness of it, and playing with someone I know is a guarantee that that’s in the cards.

Where's Sora?

Essays, Not Rants! 363: Captain Marvel Captain Marvel’s my favorite superhero. Well, most of the time; every now and then Iron Man noses his back to first place. But that’s beside the point. Carol Danvers first showed up on my radar in 2013’s Infinity event where she was one of the Avengers fighting bad guys in space. It all culminates with, of course, the Avengers back on Earth fighting Thanos. Captain Marvel’s one of the hardest hitters, and it’s positively epic to see her, Thor, and Hulk throwing down with Thanos. I promptly got a hold of all of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s run and the rest is history. It stands to reason that I was super psyched when they announced Captain Marvel would be getting a movie of her own. And that movie finally came out last week and folks, let me tell you, Captain Marvel is a wonderful joy of a movie. Part of what makes Captain Marvel work is how well the filmmakers nailed Carol’s character. Carol’s brash and headstrong, the sort who’ll jump first and think later. She’s also a very warm person, someone who frequently tries to do what’s right. And she’s super powerful, what with the flight, super-strength, and ability to shoot photon-blasts. Her super-powered nature gives her the same issue as writing Superman: How do you make a foe for someone who’s essentially invincible? Now, Carol has her limits, sure, but the real hook to her character comes from her flaws. Carol is someone who likes to solve problems by punching things. The natural way to give her pause is to provide her with an opponent who can’t be defeated by just punching things. The Skrulls of the movie are shapeshifters, able to assume the guise of a friend or enemy. Since it’s hard to know who’s really the enemy, fighting isn’t the solution. Instead, Carol sets out to find out why the Skrulls are here of all places, a question that, curiously, seems to be deeply entwined with Carol herself. It’s hard for me to really hash out just how a lot of this works without getting into the plot and spoilers, which, given how new the movie is, I’d rather avoid. So things might get vague here, my apologies. Suffice to say, this movie doesn’t really have a big bad the way that basically every other Marvel movie does. Sure, there are villains, but there isn’t someone who Carol has to punch into submission to win. The goal of most arcs is to self-actualize, that is to realize one’s potential. In action-y movies that’s usually beating the bad guy, whose role is to be the shadow of the hero, the question of what they could have been were things different. Tony Stark goes up against Obadiah Stane, a someone who would use Stark’s technology for militarization and power. Captain America fights Red Skull, the result of the super-soldier serum used on the wrong person. Their stories are about getting to the point where they can beat that person. In doing so, the hero proves they aren’t like the villain. Self-actualization can also come from a more quiet place, one that’s often the mark of internal conflicts. Iron Man 2 sees a Tony Stark who struggles with himself and his own mortality. Though Vanko’s the villain, Tony’s primary conflict is with himself and his self-destructive behavior. It’s only when he overcomes that that he’s able to build the Mark VI and fight the bad guy. Carol’s arc is similar; as an amnesiac who’s known only her life on Hala as part of the Kree Starforce, Earth holds mysteries for her to uncover. She’s trying to figure out why this place is important to her and, with it, who she is. Her fight is with herself, who she thinks she is, who people say she is, and who she really is. She has to first reconcile all that before she can properly fight the bad guys. Captain Marvel throws all this at our hero, with enough turns to keep her on an off-foot throughout the film. Her awesome powers are balanced with her very real flaws, and the movie successfully translates that character I love from the comics to the screen. Here’s a movie that makes the most powerful character in the MCU still interesting and flawed without compromising her character. Cheers to that, go see it. And I cannot wait to watch Captain Marvel throw down with Thanos.

Essays, Not Rants! 362: Top Nine Movies of 2018 Captain Marvel came out this weekend but I have other engagements and so cannot nerd out intelligently. Instead, please enjoy a curated selection of movies from the past year that I consider exceptional in one way or another. As always, there are nine because there’s always space for one more. 9. Bumblebee Look, I’m as surprised as you are. As much as I am a sucker for giant robots, the Transformers movies have hitherto all been cheap thrills with not much else going for them. Bumblebee, however, is a movie where all that’s got a whole lotta heart behind it. Its 80s set plot draws on John Hughes and The Iron Giant creating a surprising, warm, delight of a film. 8. Annihilation When I watch a movie I want to feel something. Annihilation so throughly envelopes you in this feeling of uneasy sublimity that I left the cinema haunted. It’s a beautiful watch, but the beauty within is not always a pleasant one. 7. If Beale Streets Could Talk In this film there is nothing more important than the situation its protagonists find themselves in. Gorgeous cinematography and a wonderful score lend themselves to making this specific, tragic story feel epic and yet personal. 6. Set It Up I am a sucker for good rom-coms and Set It Up is so charming and so cute it’s hard not to fall in love. I’m sure I could find some intelligent-sounding reason for why this movie is on this list, but screw it, I just really liked it. 5. Crazy Rich Asians I have a maddeningly complex relationship with this movie, owing to a complex relationship with Singapore and a dislike of the book it’s based on. And yet there’s so much about this movie I really like, from the changes to the book that improve it considerably to its excellent choice of music. So here it is. 4. Black Panther Dude. This movie is proof of the wonder that happens when we let the underrepresented give us their fantastical vision. Unapologetically afro-futuristic, Black Panther is a tour de force in every department. It feels so fresh and, of course, is super cool. 3. Sorry To Bother You This movie is weird. Delightfully, freakishly weird. Boots Riley’s movie comments on race, capitalism, and so much more in a surreal world that feels a little too real for comfort. It’s fun, it’s nuts, it’s terrific. 2. Eighth Grade Coming-of-age movies are usually gentle affairs, kid gets older, learns something about life, so on. Eight Grade is a brutally honest take on all that, telling a story where something that seems so small in hindsight becomes as important as a superhero showdown with Thanos. It’s honest and full of heart, and truly special. 1. Into The Spider-Verse This movie is a triumph. It’s rare that a movie does something quite this outlandish, incorporating so much of one medium (here: comics) to tell its story. It speaks to a masterful vision that it all comes together so well, creating a story that looks like nothing else. And what a story; Spider-Verse fully embraces the everyman nature of the Spidey mythos and soars.

Bittersweet! Tragedy can be bittersweet! And I was happy with that being that. I think what I'm saying about KHIII is despite how much I wanna see them again, I was happy to have let Roxas/Namine's arcs be.

I too wish we had more time with the folks from Rogue One, but that's what makes it so beautiful: that feeling of loss. Roxas is a fantastic character, and that the book was closed on his chapter (okay, lousy idioms) was beautifully sad. Left me wanting more, but there was none. Traaaagedy.

Eh, not particularly.

Ah, I love you both. JMJ, I'm with Pahrak on this one. KH II does have the best ending of the games, hands down. I loved the tragedy of it, of people nobodies like Axel and Namine giving their lives for Sora and friends; all that. Heck, the melancholy throughout the game (Roxas' end of summer continues to be a gutpunch) is so well done that one of my biggest frustrations is how so much of that is undercut. That said, the Wayfinder Trio's reunion was actually really sweet and I did like that (even if, again, so much for tragedy). Maybe I was just hoping for more melancholy than I got, and then when it finally happens with Sora it feels weak because, well, look at how everyone came back! Finally, Spider-Man's fantastic with its storytelling, using phone calls and banter to communicate character as much as cutscenes. I kinda give its QTEs a pass because they seldom happen during cutscenes proper but as a beat during action scenes — and the command prompts are tied to the controls in the game (O = dodge, X = jump, R1/L1 = web).

Essays, Not Rants! 361: Showing, Not Telling There’s this saying in writing that you should show, not tell; that is instead of telling the audience about how John is smart, write a scene where we get to see that John is smart. That way the audience can see how smart John is and think to themselves "Wow, John is smart." Idea is because the audience drew their own conclusion (rather than being told such) it’ll resonate more. A similar rule of thumb applies to video games, except instead of just seeing something it’s better to be able to play it. Watching a character fight a boss is one thing, getting to actually fight that boss is fantastic. Over the years, there have been different attempts by different game designers to figure out how to let players play scenes. Half Life never took control away from the player, allowing them to look around outside the tram car as they made their way into Black Mesa (or muck around in a room as a scientist provided story information). A clunkier solution was the use of quick time events, interactive cutscenes where you’d essentially press a button for your character not to die and the scene to continue. At its worst, these QTEs interrupted the flow of the game/cutscene: throwing in reflex-based minigames when you least expect it, forcing you to do over these scenes again and again. The rationale behind QTEs – letting the player remain involved in scenes that don’t quite work with the controls – is a good one. Kingdom Hearts II had a really neat solution: Reaction Commands. During some fights with some enemies, a prompt would appear where if you hit triangle you would trigger a special move. If you were fighting a Samurai Nobody, you could trigger a stand-off where Sora and his opponent face off in a samurai movie style duel. Other Reaction Commands have him using an enemy’s abilities against the other bad guys or allowing for some really cool moves in boss fights. It adds depth to combat and, importantly and let’s the player be the one who pulls off that anime-esque move. It’s been a while since that game came out, though, and in the meantime others have been figuring out how to let the player take a more active role. Uncharted 2 let the player still be in control during big set pieces, like maneuvering through a collapsing building, fighting bad guys, and then jumping through the breaking window into the building next door. It’s a fairly typical trope for an action movie, but what makes it so cool in Uncharted 2 is that you are the one who does it. It’s not a cutscene or even a qte, you’re in complete control of Drake as he scrambles around. The bar was raised and many games followed suit, finding ways to keep the player in control during big moments, further immersing the player into the game. All this brings me (once more) to Kingdom Hearts III where a lot of the action is not just unplayable but actually takes place off screen. I’m gonna be talking about the ending here too, so there are spoilers beyond this point! I have my issues with Kingdom Hearts III, particularly how its pacing feels so darn weird. That so much of the plot happens off screen, including a vital part of the epilogue, leaves the player (me) feeling really unfulfilled. Point is, show, don’t tell; and if you’re making a video game, let us play the important bits.

An unexplained image of a wheel of cheese.

Essays, Not Rants! 360: Frickin’ Damsels The original Kingdom Hearts follows a pretty typical story structure. Boy is childhood friends with Girl and Rival. Home gets destroyed, everyone gets separated. Boy sets out to find Girl and Rival. Girl is captured by bad guys, Rival turns to dark side. Boy rescues Girl, helps redeem Rival. In the third game, Kingdom Hearts II (don’t ask about the numbering), the Girl, Kairi, winds up being captured by the bad guys again and the Boy, Sora, sets out to rescue her again. There are turns and twists, more Disney worlds, and stuff. There’s nothing really ~fancy~ inherent in the broad strokes of the games’ stories, most of the fun comes from its aesthetic of mixing Final Fantasy tropes with Disney characters and worlds. They draw a lot from the Disney canon and Saving The Princess is a big part of that whole thing. Plus, rescuing Kairi isn’t the big climax or resolution of the first game. Even after she’s rescued there’s still Stuff To Do. It’s not an excuse for damseling her, by no means, but it’s something. She also gives Sora the Oathkeeper Keybalde (which is objectively the best Keyblade). The good news is that even though she does wind up something of a damsel in Kingdom Hearts II, by the end of it she’s using her own Keyblade and fighting bad guys. That’s right, after all this time having Sora and Riku save her, now she can fight her own battles. Anyway, thirteen real-world years go by, a bunch of other Kingdom Hearts games come out and I play a couple of them. And finally, Kingdom Hearts III, the tenth game in the series (please don’t ask about the numbering) came out last month. Something teased by the prior games is that it’s been leading up to a bunch of heroes fighting a bunch of villains, one of those fighting heroes being a Keyblade wielding Kairi. Which, dope. Let’s have the Boy, Girl, and Rival fighting together against the bad guy in the kind of anime showdown I’ve been awaiting for the past thirteen odd years. Alright, here there be spoilers for Kingdom Hearts III, as I’m gonna be getting into plot details. I haven’t finished the game yet, but I’m getting real close to that final boss.

That is a sexy car.

Essays, Not Rants! 359: Final Boss A mainstay staple of video games is the final boss. After a number of levels (or dungeons, chapters, what have you) you finally fight the Biggest Baddest Boss, the defeat of which leads to winning the game and the ultimate resolution. It’s the climax of the game, both from a gameplay perspective and narrative one: everything has led to this. It’s important that the Final Boss feels like a Final Boss, though. I love Uncharted 3, but one issue the game has is that it’s final boss, a showdown with Talbot, doesn’t quite land. Talbot hasn’t really been Nate’s nemesis, so the fight, though big, doesn’t really feel like That Big Moment. Comparatively, Rafe in Uncharted 4 spends much of the game as a foil for Nate, so fighting him is not just a culmination of the game, but also feels in many ways like Nate fighting his own inner demons. The Mega Man games, though a series that varies wildly on narrative quality, is a stellar example of mythic storytelling. This extends to its grasp of the Final Boss. After beating the eight (or so) regular bosses and going through the multiple levels of Wiley’s fortress, Mega Man has to reface the eight (or so) prior bosses one after another before finally fighting Wiley. But because you, the player, have already beaten these guys, you know their patterns and their weaknesses and will have a much easier time beating them than long before. In the lead up to the final fight you can see how much you’ve grown; now that you can beat Heat Man easily you’re definitely ready to take on Wiley. Before facing that Final Boss it’s important to remember all that came before and how now, more than ever before, you’re ready for this culmination. And guess what! The Final Boss principle applies to stories as much as they do to games. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious, the Final Boss in Empire Strikes Back is Darth Vader, whom Luke must face to complete his arc in that story. That one plays out not too much unlike how it would in a video game: it’s a hero against a villain, the hero hoping his training pays off. But it doesn’t have to be a conflict like that. Hot Rod has a Final Boss, and it’s not Rod finally kicking his step-father’s butt. It’s him attempting that massive jump over the busses: it’s his moment, it’s what the movie has led to, it’s what allows him to self-actualize. Of course, Final Bosses aren’t always so obviously so; just about any good story should have one. Eighth Grade doesn’t have much in the way of villains for Kayla to fight, but there still is a Final Boss. In a nice touch, Kayla’s Final Boss turns out to not be another girl or even the guy that tried to take advantage of her: it’s herself, from the past. When Kayla opens a time capsule she’d left herself a couple years ago she’s forced to reckon with who she thought she’d be by now. Despite not seeming like a particularly big moment it’s a profound one for Kayla that leads to a quiet resolution with her father and a renewed lease on life. It’s the opponent that Kayla must overcome to succeed. We know it’s her Final Boss because we’ve spent the past hour-plus with her, and we know how much this means to her. It’s when a Final Boss isn’t particularly clear that a story’s pacing begins to feel wonky. Alita: Battle Angel is a really fun movie that I really enjoyed, but couldn’t help but feel let down by the ending because it turns out I hadn’t realized Alita was fighting the movie’s final boss when she was; something that’s complicated by us not really knowing what it is Alita wants. Luke Skywalker and Mega Man want to defeat Darth Vader and Dr. Wiley, so we know who their bosses are. Rod Kimble wants to be a stuntman, and so accomplishing that is his Final Boss. Kayla struggles with being comfortable as herself, and so she is her own Final Boss. For Alita it’s not clear if the big motorball game is the titular character’s Final Boss, or if it’s the giant cyborg who’s been plaguing her throughout. Or the guy pulling the cyborg’s strings. Or the guy pulling that guy’s strings. If Alita is a story about identity (and it certainly feels like one) shouldn’t her Final Boss involve her declaring who she is? That the movie’s Final Boss happened without me realizing (and honestly, I’m still not sure who or what it was) leads to a feeling of hanging threads with the story. 'cuz man, I wanted to see Alita and the Final Boss square off! Final Bosses and climaxes are similar enough ideas, but I think I like the term Final Boss because it’s clear that that encounter is with the ultimate obstacle. It’s what the hero has to overcome to 'win,' to self-actualize. It can be a big fight or a personal reflection, but most importantly, we gotta know what it is when it happens.

I never knew how much I wanted a VHS tape tile until I saw this.

Essays, Not Rants! 358: KH3: GOTY 2008ish As I continue to play Kingdom Hearts III while balancing all these newfound adult responsibilities that have sprung up since Kingdom Hearts II came out thirteen years ago, I’m struck over and over again by how much of a flashback the game is. Not just in the way that it makes me feel like a teenager again, but in how it embodies a game design ethos that’s been eschewed by a more contemporary zeitgeist. For example: Invisible walls. Virtual game spaces are limited by nature —there’s only so much world you can code. Figuring out how to demarcate that boundary has been a near-constant tension in game design. Mario cannot go backwards once the screen has advanced, if Mega Man tries to go beyond the edges of the map it’s a bottomless pit and he dies. Classic Pokémon has its hedges and fences that prevent you from wandering off the map. As games progressed into a more proper 3D space, limiting the play area became harder. There was only so much mileage you could get out of high walls and bottomless pits when you’re trying to make these massive, immersive spaces. Invisible walls were one solution; here’s a foot-high fence but try to jump over it and you’ll be unable to proceed. It’s an understandable device, but over time level designers have found more elegant solutions, be it by hiding those invisible walls in a thicket of trees, creating a level so intricate that the player cannot easily find the edge, or using a narrative intervention where the player’s character decides to turn around (and if you don’t you die!). Kingdom Hearts III is having none of that and is all about those straight-up invisible walls. Not even the sort where they make it look there’s a ~magical~ barrier; nah, these are actual invisible walls that prevent you from jumping on to that rock over there that you could probably almost definitely reach. It’s almost charming in its bluntness, in how no attempt is made to disguise it. It’s positively old fashioned, particularly jarring against the game’s very contemporary graphics. This probably factors into the nostalgic factor of the game, but there are so many things that make Kingdom Hearts III feel like a much older game. Where many modern games have been trying to find ways to keep players in control as much as possible, Kingdom Hearts III goes all in on its massive combat finishers and the like — these things are long enough for me to put the controller down and take a hefty sip of my beer! And also limited combos in an action game? The Arkham games and more recently Spider-Man let you whale on opponents endlessly, but Kingdom Hearts III still rocks the upgradeable three-hit-combo. When you’re used to being able to chain together hits, blocks, and dodges it’s weird to have to operate within a paradigm that requires a more measured approach that somehow also means mashing 'X' a lot. Then there’s the animation. Major AAA game studios are all about that motion capture these days: they get actors to actually act out the scenes and then animate based on that. It’s what gives the beautiful cutscenes that Naughty Dog is known for. Kingdom Hearts III makes no attempt at that verisimilitude. Sora, Donald, and Goofy will stand around in cutscenes in their default stance, gesture as part of their dialogue/action, and then return back to their default immediately after. This was par for the course around the time Kingdom Hearts II came out in 2005, but it’s been a while, man. Once again, it’s almost charming to see how much this game harkens back to an earlier time; if anything it’s a marker of how far the ethos of game designed has evolved over the years. I still don’t know if Kingdom Hearts III is an objectively good game. But what I do know is that I’m having an absolute blast playing it and, had this game been released closer to its predecessor, it’d definitely be a contender for Game of The Year… but, like, in 2008.

Essays, Not Rants! 357: Thirteen Or So Years Later I think it was my cousin who turned me in to Kingdom Hearts, years ago, via a ROM of Chain of Memories. It was a novel game, mixing as it did Disney worlds with a Final Fantasy mentality. I played the original PS2 game later and shortly after rented the third game, Kingdom Hearts II from Blockbuster (remember those?) and subsequently bought it. This was all back around the summer of 2006. This past Tuesday, the tenth non-remake game in the series came out: Kingdom Hearts III (the numbering system is weird, man). I’ve frequently made the joke that I’ve gotten old waiting for the game to come out, a gag which culminated in a recent Instagram post. It’s been a long time since Kingdom Hearts II and it to finally be holding — and playing — this game feels almost surreal. I’m not talking about the plot here. Though III is the third numbered sequel and tenth game, all those spin-offs, interquels, and prequels have all been integral to the overarching story. But never mind the scope, length, or complexity of those games; here at last is a big one meant for the PS4 (and XBox One) and meant to be played on a tv. This is Kingdom Hearts freaking III. Not 2.8, not 358/2 Days, and not 3D: Dream Drop Distance, it’s frickin’ III. So like I said, it’s surreal to finally be playing a proverbial white whale of video games. I’m playing Kingdom Hearts again, man. I did buy and play the remakes for the PS3, so it’s not like I haven’t touched this world in the last dozen-odd years. The sense of the surreal doesn’t stem from an unfamiliarity to it all — I’m quite used to seeing Mickey Mouse discussing the darkness in people’s hearts. It’s that here’s a new game, so long after the last one and yet so familiar. I’m playing this game in my apartment in Queens, and yet in some ways I feel like I’m a teenager back in South Carolina on summer vacation. For all its shiny graphics and the bells and whistles afforded as a major contemporary game, much of Kingdom Hearts feels like an older game; it very much plays like its predecessors. It’s a good sequel in that it feels like a continuation. But through it all, I’m terribly curious about why this game, at once very new and yet more familiar than just about any sequel I’ve played resonates so strongly. What is it about it that tinges it with such nostalgia? Part of it, I reckon, is because it’s a video game. Games are, by their nature, interactive and thus there is a level of projection to their immersion. I’m the one who rescued Kairi and teamed up with Donald Duck and Goofy to beat Ansem. Returning to an old series will of course bring back those memories. The other thing is that no other game quite has mechanics like the core Kingdom Hearts games. Sure, I spent a lot of time playing Halo when I was younger, but replaying it or embarking on its sequels reminds me of how great a first-person shooter it is. There’s no other game that plays quite the same as these, even director Tetsuya Nomura and Square Enix’s other Final Fantasy games aren’t quite similar. Then of course there’s how singular this game is. Where else are ya gonna get Donald Duck, Jack Sparrow, and a kid with anime hair fighting monsters? The nostalgia towards Kingdom Hearts no doubt builds off of childhood memories of Disney stories, retold now in the over-the-top melodrama expected of a quality JRPG. I’ve shot space aliens in Halo, Mass Effect, and a plethora of Star Wars games; I’ve gone treasure hunting and spelunking in Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and Assassin’s Creed. But there’s really no other game quite like Kingdom Hearts. I’m only five-or-so hours into the game. Unlike the Josh of thirteen years ago, I have a job and other adult responsibilities to attend to. But the game’s a lotta fun. It doesn’t matter too much how ‘good’ it is (and I’m not so sure it’s really that good for a game released in 2019), it’s a new big Kingdom Hearts game and it’s about time.

Please tell me the stickers on the Snow Groomer are a callback to the Extreme Team.

Essays, Not Rants! 356: Colonialism… IN SPACE! While replaying Mass Effect: Andromeda I’m struck by one particular element of its central narrative: Colonialism. The game’s story sees a bunch of pioneers from the Milky Way, the Andromeda Initiative, arriving in the Andromeda Galaxy, ready to explore and set up a new life and all that. Turns out, their chosen chunk of Andromeda — the Heleus Cluster — is already inhabited, by the native angara and the invading kett. If the Initiative is to set up shop here, they’re gonna have to navigate relations with the other two species here. All this sounds an awful lot like a sort of colonialism redux. A technologically advanced outsider group arrives in a new place and starts throwing their weight around. Though the angara are as advanced as your typical science fiction race — faster than light travel, holograms, etc — they are also a fallen group, the shadow of a magnificent civilization laid low. There’s no doubt that they are the Other and, when compared to the Initiative and their sleek aesthetics, comparatively primitive. The comparison here is fair: although the Initiative is composed of humans from a variety of ethnicities in addition to aliens from across the Milky Way, within the narrative they are still outsiders entering into another group’s territory. Sure, it’s all a galaxy away, but it is a story that exists in our world, and so is seen through that lens. Dress the boats as spaceships all you want, colonialism remains colonialism. Of course, this is Mass Effect, a series too self-aware to blithely reenact Columbus. The Initiative is splintered, the same Scourge that brought down the angara throws a massive wrench in the Initiative’s intricate plans. The garden worlds are wastelands and attempts at settling has proven deadly. The narrative in Andromeda is changed: the colonizers aren’t quite marching in triumphant; they’re a ragtag group trying to pull it all together. The Initiative isn’t here to conquer the angara, they want an alliance. It helps that there’s also the kett, the de facto villains of the game and, narratively, the actual force of colonialism. Like the Initiative, the kett hail from beyond the Heleus Cluster. Unlike the Initiative, these guys have no use for cultural exchange. The kett are conquerors, exterminating the angara or exalting them — assimilating their DNA into their own and transforming the angara into drone-like footsoldiers. Within the context of the game’s narrative, exaltation is seen as monstrous and barbaric. On a meta level, the complete annihilation and absorption of a race seems not unlike a science-fiction reinterpretation of the conquistadors. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and so the Initiative winds up allied with the angara against the kett. The folks from the Milky Way aren’t the colonizers, how could they be when the kett are here following a page from Cortes’ rulebook? The dynamic between the kett and the angara — along with the Initiative being on their off-foot — means Andromeda can safely tell a story about exploring colonizers without having to really confront the problematic nature of colonialism. The Initiative, and therein the game itself, is absolved of malicious colonialist undertones because the villainous kett are the bad colonizers; the Initiative is allying itself with the locals! Yet the game does fall into the trap of the White Savior narrative. No, the (human) members of the Initiative aren’t all white, and the player’s Pathfinder can be whatever race you want them to be; but just as the undertones of colonialism play out within the relationship between the angara and Initiative, so does this one. At the start of the game, the angara are in a limbo: their civilization has fallen and they’re losing a war of attrition with the kett. It’s the Pathfinder and the Initiative — and their technology — that both turns the tides of the fight and helps the angara reclaim some of their past. The Pathfinder is the outsider who helps — teaches — the natives their own ways. At the end of the day, of course, this isn’t all terrible. There is a lot of leeway afforded science-fiction, and Andromeda does do good work to avoid ascribing the more problematic aspects of colonialism to its heroes. If anything, I’m fascinated by the way this game dances around with the topic and its ramifications. Because I could just play the game, or at least that’s what I tell myself as I think way too much about it.

Brickeeeeens!!!~ Work's fine. Trying to figure out the starving artist thing without starving and while actually making art. So. That's fun.

Eh, The Notorious RBG is as much a larger-than-life pop-culture figure as a political one; as the coloring pages on my fridge would attest. Not that much different from Shaq popping up in the original.

Makes sense.