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Ta-metru_defender

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Blog Entries posted by Ta-metru_defender

  1. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 184: Now For Something Old
     
    I’m busy this weekend. I’m writing a rationale, essentially a jumbo-sized one of these blog posts about everything I’ve been studying since coming to college to prove that my studies have had a point (which is, currently, Narrative (Re)Construction). As I’m focusing an inane amount of brain power into writing this paper, I don’t have time for a proper post this week.
     
    So let’s go back to before Essays, Not Rants! and find something old.
     
    The year is 2012 and Josh is futzing around in unemployment and playing Mass Effect 3. Josh being Josh, he decides to write a thing about it. Which I’m representing below in all its three-year-old glory.
     
     
     
    The close to the Mass Effect Trilogy came out a week ago and since then I've been playing through it. I've been meeting up with old friends, brokering alliances, and fighting evil sentient advanced biomechanical starship things with the eventual goal of taking back Earth and saving the galaxy from said evil sentient advanced biomechanical starship things.
     
    One of the things I love about Mass Effect is the immersion. Now, those of you who've heard me talk (rant) about video games will know that I highly value immersion in a video game (that and cinematic/plot). Mass Effect does this exceptionally.
     
    The man saving the galaxy is named Joshua Shepard, he was raised on a (space)ship and, I like to think, bears a passing resemblance to me. It's fun, I get to be the hero, saving lives, deciding what to do in circumstances, making big important decisions.
     
    Then I watched one of my favorite characters die.
     
    I was powerless to stop it, right? I mean, I had no choice in the matter, it was what the plot demanded, yeah?
     
    But no, I did have the choice.
     
    Instantly my mind backpedaled to a moment not to long area. I (as Shepard) chose to speak up about something.
     
    I could have chosen not to. I could have lied and reneged on a deal but, in the long run, wouldn't that have saved my crewmember's life?
     
    Guys, I could have saved him.
     
    And then I realized that this is what makes Mass Effect so immersive, so real.
     
    Choices.
     
    Everything I do has consequences.
     
    I could look ahead; crack open—who am I kidding—google up a strategy guide and see just where each choice I make will take me.
     
    But really? Where's the fun in that. Where's the adventure in knowing where each step will take you?
     
    Hang on. That's like life, isn't it?
     
    Everything I do has consequences.
     
    For example, staying up till 1 am writing a piece on a video game (and then proceeding to go investigate the supposed defection of some Cerberus scientists) will further mess with my sleep cycle and result in me waking up late tomorrow.
     
    Sure, it's not the same as having a imaginaryish friend dying, but, still.
     
    Point remains.
     
    I don't know what my actions will cause tomorrow. I can guess, I can do the right thing. But, like in Mass Effect, something will happen. Sure, I tend to doubt my decisions are as grave as Shepard's, but hey, they're choices nonetheless.
     
    Writer’s Note: I’ve been replaying Mass Effect 3 lately (when not, y’know, writing this rationale or doing other homework) and the choices the games present you with are almost as interesting as the illusion of choice. The game wouldn’t work with too many variables because, well, how do you program that game? Every now and then its inner workings show through, but hey, I’m really looking forward to the next game in the series. If only because the plethora of video game criticism I’ve read since then makes me super curious about the future of open-ended virtual storytelling. That and I love the Mass Effect universe.
  2. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 274: Andromeda After The Fact
     
    I finally finished my first playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda and dutifully started my second (this time as Sara instead of Scott). Ramping up the difficulty to Insanity makes combat much more frantic (and thereby makes the brilliant combat systems that much more fun), but we’ll see how far I get through it before I decide to finally replay Uncharted 4 because a) it’s a better game, 2) I haven’t replayed it, and iii) my god I want to play a game that was actually finished.
     
    Because there’s no doubt that Andromeda was rushed in some places. Its combat may be incredibly fluid, but a much of its mission design is outright boring. Some of the character models look great, but the animation in some parts is glitchy at best and magnificently awful at worst. And the writing. In parts, its great; in other parts it reads like a hasty first draft. And all this is not getting into the wonky pacing and exploitable systems that plague the game. But Andromeda is still a stupid amount of fun – it wrapped up well enough that I started a New Game+ after finishing it the first time. In fact, I’d say that most of its issues are emblematic of the central tensions in many AAA video games.
     
    So let’s start with its look, something that’s gotten a lot of grief on the internet. And rightfully so; it’s very weird to talk to someone who’s mouth is moving, but eyes are lifeless. There’s a fairly important cutscene where a character model just didn’t show up. Heck, even some of the romance scenes, which developer BioWare is famous for, are halting and glitchy. It’s a mess, heightened all the more since the character models and general graphics are pretty good. The animation issues, at times, overshadow everything else that’s going on. Sure, you have pretty worlds and characters and a sometimes-well written and often well-voiced script, but it’s easy to forget all that when the character’s acting is wooden. So maybe BioWare and publisher EA should have pushed the release back a couple months to work out the kinks.
     
    But why is there such a reliance on a game looking 'good?' We’re reaching a point 'good graphics' has become standard, with some, like Kojima Production’s FOX Engine, verging on literally lifelike. Thing is, when everything looks good, that’s no longer enough to stand out, and if your animation is shoddy – as in Andromeda – it becomes glaringly obvious. Other games find ways to complement their graphics: Uncharted 4’s animation is unparalleled, and games like Borderlands and Dishonored stylize their characters and locations. Then there are smaller, indie games like Sportsfriends or Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime which have simple, even retro, graphics, but ones that work with the gameplay.
     
    Which is where Andromeda’s pretty good. Gameplay is solid, the addition of the jetpack and different AI making it much more dynamic that prior Mass Effects’ waiting-and-shooting. And with difficulty on Insanity, it’s got me using the new Profiles feature as much as I can. Andromeda is fun. But some of its missions are terribly repetitive: you go down a lot of corridors and clear out a lot of cookie-cutter bases. Sometimes there are moments of genius, like getting to dash through a battlefield in your space car or the narrative gives mystery to exploring an ancient alien superstructure, but when the vast majority of side missions are fetch quest after fetch quest, it gets really dull. Andromeda is a long game – I logged over 90 hours by the time I beat the game – but its myriad of fetch quests make it out to be padding out the length. Not to mention they distract from the central narrative (which, once it gets going, is actually not half bad). So is quantity or quality better? Uncharted 4 is a fifteen-odd hour game, but its narrative is incredibly tight and doesn’t fall into repetitiveness. It would take a lotta work to fill four full days worth of gameplay with Interesting Stuff, so maybe Andromeda could have used some tight cuts?
     
    I will complain about Andromeda a lot. But I also really liked the game – again, I’ve started a second playthrough. I think that AAA games like Andromeda are reaching a tipping point where the old rubric of what made a game exciting (graphics! gameplay! big budget!) are no longer enough to make a game stand out. I do wish Andromeda was better than it is, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad game. Rather, its flaws are ones we see in a lot of other AAA games – look at Destiny. Maybe there’s a shift coming in the way games are made, maybe the next Mass Effect, whenever it comes out, will get things right. In any case, it’s a perfect adequate game. But we’re reaching a point where that’s not enough anymore.
  3. Ta-metru_defender
    Two years ago yesterday I was told I had a very potentially fatal heat condition.
     
    Several doctors later and here I am. I’ve got a bar in my chest and my heart seems to be fine. Yes, like Iron Man.
     
    So here's to two years of amazing grace.
     

     
    Your move, heart disease.
  4. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 158: Another Boyband Saving The World
     
    So Final Fantasy XV is finally coming out ‘soon,’ with the demo dropping recently. The game’s been on my radar since the debut trailer for Final Fantasy Versus XIII (as it was called then) was released almost nine years ago and as a fan of the Final Fantasy series — mostly because I plain love a good JRPG (there’s something fun about Japanese melodrama and saving the world) — I’m quite eager to see how this game works and if it’s any good.
     
    As we’ve slowly found out more about the game, however, I’m a little annoyed that the game essentially features what looks like a boyband as the main characters. It’s disappointing to see yet another male dominated video game, but certainly not a deal breaker, least at this stage. That said, I’m curious as to the reasoning behind them going in this direction. Fortunately, game director Hajime Tabata explained why:
     
    "Speaking honestly, an all-male party feels almost more approachable for players. Even the presence of one female in the group will change their behaviour, so that they'll act differently. So to give the most natural feeling, to make them feel sincere and honest, having them all the same gender made sense in that way,”
     
    This is where things start to really bother me: I don’t see how having a more diverse cast would be less approachable. These days around half of gamers are women and if we want video games as a genre to grow up we’ve gotta get away from this girls-have-cooties mentality that’s permeated the industry for far too long.
     
    It’s especially frustrating that it comes a part of Final Fantasy of all things. The series has usually been quite good at representation, with the games featuring multiple female party members who often had an important role in the story beyond being damseled. The latest major installment, XIII had a woman as protagonist, something I talked about in my first post here three years ago. Not every game needs a female protagonist, but that doesn’t excuse making the game about a boyband.
     
    Now Tabata does have some good intentions. He wants to get into the private life of men and stuff I’ve read about the game has said that the game does feature its male characters openly showing affection to each other. Which is actually really cool (suck it, patriarchy!). An unironic, actually honest look at a bromance is possibly as rare as strong female protagonists. There’s a reason one of my favorite moments in the finale of Agent Carter was Howard Stark admitting that he loved Steve Rogers and missed him. I am so down for more honest bromances in fiction.
     
    But I do not believe that this has to be an either-or scenario. I think we can have a single story or game that features both male intimacy and strong female characters — especially since Final Fantasy games usually take well over thirty hours to complete. Final Fantasy XIII had a mixed cast, but had some great scenes between sisters Lightning and Serah. If it’s vitally important for there to be chunks of time with the guys alone, then why not split the party? Final Fantasy VIII did it sixteen years ago, why not do it again?
     
    I realize that in some ways I’m splitting hairs here, and we still have an indeterminate time before launch during which, unlikely as it is, things may change for Final Fantasy XV. I’m probably going to play the game at some point too; this isn’t a boycott. But I love video games and representation matters as much as defying gender norms about men. In an ideal world, we could do both at once and I don’t see why Tabata’s game couldn’t be that ideal world.
  6. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 171: Another Life
     
    I’m me. That’s pretty obvious. I’m a biracial guy in my mid-twenties who lives in New York. I’ve had my own relatively interesting life, but at the end of the day it’s mine. Barring some crazy The Matrix or Total Recall-esque invention, I’m only ever going to live my life. It’s the only experience I’ll get.
     
    Well, outside of certain kinds of fiction. Fiction offers a window into someone else’s life. The thing is, it’s hard to really make someone experience that life. Doesn’t matter how expertly crafted the movie is, at the end of the day you’re watching someone else’s life, not experiencing it first hand. You’ve no actual involvement.
     
    Books can be a little better, as can let you actually into a character’s mind. Something like Ulysses is an exercise in empathy. There’s very little actual plot to the story, rather the catharsis and enjoyment of the story comes from being someone else. I got to spend a day in the head of an Irish man in his thirties in 1904. It was weird, somewhat long, but a completely new experience. Few books can really make you feel like you are someone else, let alone at this level.
     
    So ‘normal’ narrative isn’t really that good at giving you another life. But video games are. Video games are an experiential medium, rather than being a spectator, in a good game the player experiences the narrative. In The Last of Us I got to be a father trying to protect his daughter. Hopefully, I’ll never have to carry my daughter through a crowd of zombie-esque people, but the game gave me that experience. And because I ended up so invested in the action — after all, I was the one trying to protect her — the ensuing story progression was that much more visceral. I got to be Joel.
     
    It’s part of what makes action games like Halo or Uncharted such fun. You’re not vicariously taking part of the action, like when watching Bruce Willis Die Hard his way through Nakatomi Plaza, instead you get to be the action hero. Halo has you fighting off aliens while Uncharted 2 lets you run across the rooftops escaping from an attack helicopter. The player gets to be the action hero.
     
    But it’s not all fireworks and zombies. Papers Please has the player as an immigration officer in a country that’s not unlike a Cold War USSR. Gameplay centers around making sure travelers have the right documents to cross over, and then rejecting or allowing them. This means double checking stamps and forms with a precision that gave me too many flashbacks to my time as a temp at a law firm. There are some choices too, like whether you help the resistance or if you’ll let the old lady with the sob story over even though everything’s not quite in order. But the strongest aspect of Papers Please is the experience. Suddenly I found myself caring a lot more for immigration officers at the airport, since for a few hours at a time I’d gotten to be them. I wasn’t just told their story, I got to live it for a while.
     
    It’s fun to be someone else for a while, to not just be told someone else’s story, but to actually experience it. When games give you choices (from small ones like how best to get through a group of guards in Uncharted to major ones in Mass Effect where which squad member you assign to a task risks their death), they let you take an active part in the narrative. Storytelling then stops being a spectator sport and lets the audience be a part of it.
     
    So yeah. Games are a fantastic method of telling stories.
  7. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 126: Antisocial Gaming
     
    My brother recently got Titanfall which means that I got to go a few rounds at it. That game is fun. It’s also unique in that there’s no traditional single player mode; the only way to play is competitive online multiplayer. It makes sense. There are plenty of games out there where the single player campaign is often passed over in favor of the far more popular multiplayer. But here’s the thing aboutTitanfall: only one person can play per console. If you want to play with a friend, they’ll need their own copy of the game and their own console and tv to play.
     
    What strikes me as odd is how opposed this is to what gaming used to be. When video games first went mainstream with Pong back in the ‘70s, the arcade cabinet was designed so that when people were playing it they’d be forced to be almost shoulder to shoulder. In this brave new world of digital gaming there would still be interaction with other people. Sure, single player games against AIs were there too, but there was always the option to play a game with someone.
     
    I’ve always loved playing video games with someone else. Sometimes this would mean scrambling to find my cable so I could battle that kid’s Pokémon team with my own. I have many fond memories of hours spent playing Crash Team Racing and Bomberman Party Edition while growing up. Heck, we even found ways to make single player games in the Mega Man series multiplayer by taking turns every game over/level.
     
    In recent years this could be four of us yelling and taunting each other while playing Fifa or the hilarity that inevitably ensues when playing Super Smash Bros at four in the morning. Then there are the hours spent playing Halo in one form or another, or running around Lego New York with a friend in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. Sure, these games can be played alone and you don’t necessarily even need to be in the same room as someone else to play with them, but there’s something special about sitting on the couch and playing against or with those around you. There’s a shared enjoyment for the comedy of what can play out on screen, or even the simple knowledge that someone saw that awesome move you just pulled.
     
    Social-on-the-couch-with-your-friends-gaming probably hit its peak with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Those games let you live out your rockstar fantasies and were that much more fun when you have some friends playing members of your band. You could play on your own, and it was still fun, but the experience was enhanced by having people with you. These games were designed around sociality. By having the controllers be plastic instruments rather than tapping buttons on a gamepad, players were encouraged to really immerse themselves not only in the game, but in the fantasy of being in a band on stage. And c’mon, if you’re gonna play a cover of “Livin’ On A Prayer” you can’t do it alone.
     
    But as those plastic controllers have gotten dustier it seems that less and less games are aiming for that on-the-couch interaction. No, not all games need to have local multiplayer. Some do very well without it: The Last Of Us’ incredible atmosphere works best when it’s only one person using the television. But even then, when racing games with local multiplayer are becoming less and less common, it’s worrisome.
     
    Don’t get me wrong, I think some of the stuff that’s happening in games is great. Titanfall making the campaign a competitive multiplayer is a cool idea and Destiny’s amalgamation of the FPS and MMO genres is not only unique but a heck of a lot of fun. Destiny in particular fosters a sense of togetherness by letting you team up with other Guardians roaming the wastes. It’s fun, especially if players have other friends with the same game and console. I just want there to always be games for those of us on the couch.
  8. Ta-metru_defender

    Apartment

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Brother and I signed a lease on an apartment today, as neither of us wanna live in dorms next year.
     
    It's very much a dinky New York apartment (sixth floor walkup, no sink in the bathroom), but we figure it's got character (also: actual two bedroom, a living room [!]) and it's near our usual haunts (few minutes from some decent bars, not far from my favorite dollar pizza place, near Trader Joe's, near campus), so, yeah, it's a win.
     
    Holy [censored] this is what growing up is. My name's on an apartment lease.
     
    Move in day is June 1st, but move out day of my current place is May 20th... Figure that means couchsurfing/sleeping in NYU buildings. Should be fun.
  9. Ta-metru_defender
    My lease ends at the end of May and I'm moving. It's part price, part the mouse hunt of the past couple months, part the six floor walkup, part the uneven floors, part the lack of a sick in the kitchen, part the price, part the fact that my bedroom door doesn't really close properly anymore, and part the price. I'm gonna miss the fire escape and the roof and the location and the apartment, though.
     
    But Mata freaking Nui apartment hunting in New York is rough. I mean, probably not if you have a poopload of money, but I have no massive wealth, being an underemployed recent grad.
     
    Listings are a pain and NO ONE HAS ANY FREAKING FLOORPLANS so we've gotta hoof it out there to investigate.
     
    asdfghjkl;
  10. Ta-metru_defender
    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.
  11. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 062: Arrested Protagonists
     
    Pain and Gain is a movie with villain protagonists. Not like Dr. Horrible, more if a couple of the thugs from Taken had a movie about them. This creates a whole host of problems for the film. We shouldn’t like the three main characters, they’re based on real life people guilty of torture, theft, and murder who wind up in jail. The paradox is that we shouldn’t like them but we still need to be invested in the show. For better or worse (mostly worse), Pain and Gain wound up humanizing the protagonists far more than the lawful/good antagonists. Their first victim is so unlikeable that you find yourself just waiting for him to be killed. Which is kinda messed up when you realize that it all really happened. In short: Pain and Gain simply couldn’t commit with the direction to take its three protagonists. Compare this to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog where they embrace the idea of a villain protagonist and run with it.
     
    Pain and Gain has it particularly hard, given that the events happened barely twenty years ago and the inherently dark nature of it all. That said, the Austrian SS officer Hans Landa from Inglorious B is an example of a villain antagonist-sorta-protagonist who we embrace. Why? Because he’s charming, intelligent, and all-around devious enough that we want to see what he does, but it’s also exciting to wait for the good guys to figure out how to outsmart him. There’s a tension there that’s incredibly engrossing. Daniel, Paul, and Adrian from Pain and Gain were no Hans. Hans oozes charm and is such a magnificent human being we’re invested in him by default. Pain and Gain humanizes its characters through moments of comedy and stupidity, which yes, invests us, but it winds up being more sympathetic than the awe we have of Hans.
     
    Arrested Development, on the other hand, shines with its unlucky, bumbling, and sometimes out-and-out dumb protagonists. It takes the show a couple episodes to really find its groove, but once it does it doesn’t stop. The Bluth family is nowhere near as magnificent as Hans Landa and they lack the villainy of the three from Pain and Gain. Rather, Arrested Development channels what can best be described as situational slapstick.
     
    We don’t really want them to succeed all that much because watching them fail is simply so much fun. We want GOB to screw up his trick — sorry, illusion — because watching him make that huge mistake and the ensuing consequences drive the show. It’s the Bluths’ misfortune that attract us to the show, be it Buster’s inability to leave his mother or Tobias’ acting delusions. So the characters in Arrested Development are terrible people and we enjoy watching them fail. Easy?
     
    It’s more than that, though. As much as we may enjoy watching them fail, the characters still wind up being likable. They aren’t quite so terrible that we wind up hating them. If we did, then why would we watch the show? The Bluths manage to walk that line between being terrible and likable. We don’t care much for them, but we like them well enough. It’s a paradox similar to the one that Pain and Gain tackled, but one that’s pulled off much better.The members of the Bluth family are far too flawed to ever get what they really want, but we love them all the same. This garners our investment and the show itself rewards viewer investment by setting up jokes or gags that either pop up consistently or won’t pay off for a few episodes. We don’t get dragged along watching the same thing over and over nor do we suffer the frustrating sympathy-confusion of Pain and Gain. It’s wonderful mix that makes the show so entertaining.
     
    In less than twelve hours the fourth season of Arrested Development will finally be premiering on Netflix. It’s not quite enough time to watch the show in its entirety, but it’s something I really suggest you do.
  12. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 050: Art or Not

    Here at NYU I hear a lot of things about movies and art and stuff. With the Oscars being last week and half of my classes being primarily film related, I heard plenty (like how Beasts of the Southern Wild was everything an indie film needed to be [...so?]). But one thing that really stuck out to me was the opinion that Argo shouldn’t have won since Argo was more Summer blockbuster fare as opposed to Best Picture fare.
    Yeah, I know, I touched on this last week. This time, well, we have to go deeper.
     
    I don’t understand this disconnect. Well, no. I kinda do, but I don’t agree with the disconnect. Argo isn’t any less Best Picturey than any other movies on the list.
     
    Did Argo not deserve Best Picture because it was funny? Other nominees had their moments of humor and past winners were funny too. Even Lincoln solicited the occasional chuckle. Still, what is it that bars a comedy from winning an award? Sure, a lot of them can be crude and really base, but on occasion you’ll have a comedy that’s just clever. But these won’t win because of the perception that comedy is not art.The Hangover, bawdy as it is, has a brilliant script; firing its Chekov’s guns and playing off it’s excellent foreshadowing. But due to it being a comedy it’s not award worthy.
     
    Then is Argo undeserving because it’s thrilling? Argo was exciting from start to finish. But so were Gladiator, Braveheart, and The Return of the King. Those movies were even more action focused that Argo, but also had the same great technical achievements as the new winner. Just because Argo has its characters taking action rather than spending half the runtime ruminating doesn’t mean it’s any less than another movie. The illusion that art has to be angsty and eclectic is just that: an illusion. There is room for awesome in a Best Picture.
    Could the disdain for Argo be because it deals with the titular science-fiction movie? I’m being facetious here, but seriously: what is that bars science fiction from being ‘Best Picture’ material? Sure, a lot of science fiction is lousy and much of the pulp novels from which they originated are absolute drivel. But it’s been decades since those pulps and in the meantime we’ve had movies like District 9 and Inception that show us the allegorical and exploratory power of science fiction. So why is it that these movies keep getting passed over for the real awards?
     
    I don’t buy into the idea that one movie can be better than another simply due to genre or subject matter. Just because Argo could pass as a summer blockbuster doesn’t disqualify it from its Best Picture win. Art can be entertaining. Halo 4 has some incredible emotional (and technical) moments that rival and beats many films, but it gets discarded because it’s a video game (and a science fiction one at that [a science fiction shooter). The Dark Knight, despite proving that a superhero movie could be dramatic and weighty, wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture.
     
    There needs to be a shift in the perception of art. A movie that’s an excellent mix of direction, acting, music, writing, and editing not earning a nomination simply because it’s not ‘arty’ enough just doesn’t sit right.
     
    And yeah, I’m still kinda bummed The Avengers only got one nomination.
  13. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 333: Artistic Stratification

    So the Oscars announced a new category. Is it something like Best Stunt, to acknowledge some of the crazy cool things stuntpeople and Tom Cruise do? Could it be Best Choreography for beautiful fights or films where the blocking of camera and actors plays like a dance? Maybe it’s for Best Color Scheme, which sounds totally arbitrary but you’ve movies like (500) Days of Summer and Pacific Rim that use colors masterfully. The correct answer is none of the above, but rather a category that recognizes popular movies. As in what’s the best popular movie.
     
    Like many people who purport to not really care about the Oscars, I have a lot of opinions about them, both the awards awarded and the whole thing as an institution. For starters, recognizing a movie as being 'the best' is incredibly difficult, as my own consternation over my annual Top Nine lists serve to remind me every year. There’s also the thing that 'best' is incredibly subjective; is a movie deemed better than another by its quality or by how much it entertains you? Isn’t whether or not it entertains you really the ultimate litmus test? Can you like bad movies? (Yes.)
     
    For many recent years, the Oscars has, on a whole, come down on the side that there’s art and then there’s Art. Logan is a good movie, but it’s not a Good Movie like Birdman. So there’s been furor aplenty, especially amongst moviegoers who are more likely to be described as fans rather than critics, about the snubbing of more pulpy fare by the Oscars, with the inference that the Academy only considers 'serious' movies' scripts, direction, and actors to be worthy of recognition. Sure, those visual effects and sound design are neat, but, honestly, The Last Jedi with its magical space knights isn’t really Oscar worthy. That’s the divide between art and Art that the Academy has typically enforced.
     
    Creating a separate category to recognize 'popular movies' is really just more of the same. Sure, it looks good that Black Panther actually has a shot of winning an Oscar, but it’d be Best Popular Movie. It’s not Best Picture, it’s a movie that’s really good — for a popular one. It formalizes the notion that there should be different criteria for quality, that we’re willing to accept a movie as being good enough or one of its sort, rather than recognizing the art inherent in even, yes, 'popular' movies.
     
    Because why on Earth shouldn’t Logan and Black Panther be viable candidates for Best Picture? There’s masterwork in both of them, not just in technical things like sound editing and effects, but in direction, storytelling, and acting. Both Hugh Jackson’s performance as Logan and Ryan Coogler’s vision of Wakanda and the story of an isolated king deserve recognition by the highest court of cinematic opinion.
     
    No matter how much I don’t want them to, the Oscars do matter. Like it or not, they’re an established institution that have a great deal of import put on them. People care about who wins Best Picture and the decisions and taste of the awards tend to set the trend for the industry as a whole. My fear regarding the creation of a category for 'popular' movies is that it creates a ghetto for movies that are good, but thought not serious enough to be considered really good. It means that Black Panther could be nominated (and win!) that category and thus, technically, have all the recognition of an Oscar; there’s a space for blockbusters and offbeat films to be shunted off to so that Best Picture can still be those True Art movies.
     
    I don’t think there should be a divide between one sort of movie and another. A movie that’s really good is really good, period. I lament a category like this, because it reinforces what’s already a current of thought, and rather than the establishment acknowledging pulpy fare as art, it lets those movies go off and play in the yard while keeping all their toys indoors.
  14. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 304: Artistry in Disaster
     
    The Room is an awful movie and I adore it. It's terribly made, replete with an incoherent plot and some truly questionable acting decisions, but it also manages to cross that elusive line of terribleness into wonder. It's a movie that makes you ask how on earth could something like this have been made as you delight in the fact that it was. It is also a movie best enjoyed at a midnight screening with a multitude of plastic forks and having imbibed an adult beverage or three.
     
    Like I said, it's a delight.
     
    Part of the fun of the movie is, of course, Tommy Wiseau, the writer/director/producer/funder/lead actor. Him of indeterminate age and untraceable accent. In an ordinary world he wouldn't be the face of a romantic drama (turned comedy by happenstance), and yet, here he is, at the forefront of his realized vision. And by vision I mean a fever dream that borders on misanthropy. The making of the film is mythic, with stories from the set describing a filmmaker with too much money who didn’t know what he was doing.
     
    In any case, it’s kinda hard to sum up The Room in all of its absurdity and unintentional hilarity, but needless to say, it’s totally deserving of its cult status.
     
    Which is what makes the film The Disaster Artist so odd. Based on a book about the making of The Room, The Disaster Artist dramatizes the production of The Room, showing off some of the set’s idiosyncrasies and also zeroing in on the friendship-of-sorts between Tommy Wiseau and co-star Greg Sestero. It’s a perfectly decent movie in its own right, but its choice of subject matter is where things get hairy.
     
    Because the production of The Room wasn’t really a great thing. Wiseau was a draconian director which, if reality was remotely like how it’s portrayed in the film, created a really not-great set to be on. Yet it’s really funny to watch, especially as something of a dark comedy. The problem is, Wiseau’s presented as being kinda heroic, which isn’t quite bad, it just makes it a little harder to laugh at. Especially because in The Disaster Artist’s revisionist take, The Room’s premiere is met with immediate laughter and applause and Tommy quickly revels in the so-good-it’s-bad status (in reality, the film was reviled and only later became a cult classic; Wiseau’s embrace of that came even later). In essence, The Disaster Artist is about a funny-but-tortured filmmaker who puts his cast and crew through the worst to make Art. Which feels overly simplified.
     
    It doesn’t seem much better if you look at the movie as one about friendship. Tommy and Greg are friends, friends who promise to push themselves further than they’ve gone before in pursuit of their dreams. Yet, within the context of the film (and maybe real life too), Tommy effectively sabotages any chance of Greg’s success outside of the film. And when Greg calls him out on it, Tommy gaslights him into staying friends. Sure, it’s funny, but The Disaster Artist’s basis on a true story moves some of it into the realm of the uncomfortable. Because for all its talk about dreams of success, the real life ending to the story is that neither Greg Sestero nor the rest of the cast went on to any level of filmmaking success.
     
    Maybe The Disaster Artist would have worked better as a really funny tragedy, maybe if the movie had some breathing space after the premiere where Tommy made amends and tried to become a better person before getting his catharsis of being a 'beloved' filmmaker. As it is it feels… odd.
     
    I enjoyed The Disaster Artist well enough, and it is a very funny movie. But it falls into the category of a movie about making movies that’s so in love with the idea of making movies that making movies is the ultimate absolution and apotheosis. Which is a bummer, because The Room is at its heart, so much more. Well, maybe less. I’m still not sure. But it’s sure something else alright.
  19. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 083: Awesome Non-Combatants
    Originally published October 18th 2013
     
    During my idle perusal of the vast wastes of internet I came across a review of this past week’s episode of Agents of SHIELD. What caught my interest was one of the reviewer’s criticisms: there were still too many techie-type characters who couldn’t fight. And that that was lame and frustrating.
     
    Now, besides wrong, I find this criticism fascinating. Because yes, it is interesting to see an action-orientated show where half of the main cast aren’t able to actively fight bad guys. What often happens instead is we get only one of these characters who gets overshadowed by everyone else. When done poorly, this can get to the point that we wonder why they’re even one of the main characters. Yet there’s an obligation to have these sorts in a story. After all, not everyone in real life runs around guns blazing. Paramilitary groups and ships’ crews need their support teams. So they’re there, and that’s about it. But when written well, like I think Fitz and Simmons of SHIELD are, they can become great, interesting characters in their own right and add another dynamic to their story.
     
    Let’s look at Fitz and Simmons further for a second. No, they don’t fight, in fact, they’re pretty adamant about avoiding combat. They’re scientists! Yet the show still keeps them vital to the team. In the pilot it was Fitz who engineered Coulson’s nonlethal third option, for example. Skye too, the other non-combatant, holds her own too, be it through hacking or sweet-talking. Point is, they do stuff! They’re cool! And, rather than having one Science Guy to do all the sciencing we have a team of three splitting the load.
     
    We see the idea of vital non-combatants in another show Joss Whedon worked on: Firefly. Kaylee, Simon, and some of the others don’t do much fighting, but they’re still made to feel useful through how they’re written. The show’s plots aren’t always (and seldom solely) of the “we’re in a tight spot, let’s shoot our way out” variety. Instead, we’re given a variety of plots where sometimes mechanicing or doctoring is the best solution. Yeah, it’s harder to write, but when it works it makes each character feel that much more needed.
     
    Pacific Rim did it too, with the scientist characters of Newt and Gottlieb. They’re interesting enough as they are, clearly, and they also want to help with the cancellation of the apocalypse. No, they aren’t pilot Jaegers and fighting Kaiju firsthand, but, as Newt puts it, he wants to be a rockstar. And later on he and Gottlieb are given their chance and proceed to get the information needed to save the day. The film’s written well enough that their moment doesn’t feel awkwardly worked in or just tacked on. Furthermore, it ties in to the movie’s theme of everyone having a part to play in saving the world, even the nerds.
    There’s an interesting misconception that a strong character has to be a fighter. Ergo a strong female character has to be out doing something adventurous and can’t be one who stays home. Yet a character like that can still be terribly boring (see: Salt) and a character can be stay in the castle yet still be terribly interesting (see: Cersei Lannister). The strength of a character isn’t judged by the amount of butt they can kick but that they’re both interesting and vital. It’s up to good writing to ensure that characters feel needed and interesting throughout a story.
     
    So by all means, keep Fitz, Simmons, and Skye inept at combat, just keep writing them as interesting, legitimate characters.
  20. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 130: Background Details
     
    There’s a building I can see outside my window that’s under construction. I’m not sure what it’s going to be or where exactly it is, but it looks to be somewhere in TriBeCa. The basic structure of it is there, there’s a crane going up the side, and it looks like the skeleton of a monolith as there aren’t any external walls up yet. There are tiny lights on each floor that glint in the daylight.
     
    To my sci-fi-addled mind it looks like something you’d see in the background of Destiny, or maybe a new spaceship being built in Star Trek. It looks cool, almost otherworldly.
     
    In other words, it’s something that could help tell a story. Visual storytelling (comics, movies, television, video games; anything that requires you to look at images) depends heavily on details to give life to the scene. Filling the background of the scene with details lends credibility and reality to the world.
     
    This can be done in very subtle ways. In early seasons of How I Met Your Mother there were a pair of swords hanging on the wall of Ted and Marshall’s apartment. They were referenced on occasion, used once, but for the most part were sort of just there. That said, these two friends who met in college having swords on their wall added a sense of history to them, more so, than, say, a wreath would have (needless to say, Chekhov was probably very happy when they finally used them in a duel).
     
    For all its epic-ness and grandeur, The Lord of The Rings films are filled with smaller, tiny details. Carved on helmets are runes which, should you have the bother to translate them from Tolkien’s appendices, say stuff actually relevant to the world. One of the buildings in the background of Minas Tirith is a ratcatcher, for example. Another one of these details is found in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, where Sam rescues Frodo from the orcs. There’s a lamp in the uppermost room which, if you look closely, was made from the helmets of Soldiers of Gondor. It’s a tiny detail, one that most people won’t notice, but it adds to the overall feel of the film. As I’ve said before, it’s these little details make a world seem real.
     
    Which brings me back to Destiny and the spaceship-under-construction building out my window. Much of the game’s storytelling is done through environmental details. You’re not necessarily shown the story or the game’s background lore, but it’s there. When you enter Old Russia’s Cosmodrome you can see ruined buildings all about and, rising over the horizon, a huge spaceship with what look like futuristic space shuttles attached around the side. You’ve heard details about a Golden Age, expansion, and colonyships, but seeing that massive spaceship decaying in the distance adds a reality to it.
     
    For a game so sparse on explicit storytelling, it does wonders with the little things. Item descriptions mention how the Titans raised the Wall or the exploits of some Saint-14. We’re not told more details than that, but, again, it adds to the feeling of depth and bigness of the world. Even things like seeing the crest of the Vanguards on a wall add further reality to it. The world feels like it’s breathing. These details make it seem alive./color]
  21. Ta-metru_defender

    Backlog

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Y'know how when you're younger you figure when you're an adult you can buy all the LEGO you want? And then when you're an adult you realize you gotta budget for it? And then you do budget for it (by rearranging some priorities [movies and alcohol took a hit])? And then you get an employee discount? And then you save your money until double VIP points roll around and then you buy a bunch? And then you get a backlog?
     
    Yeah.
     

  22. Ta-metru_defender

    Bad Taste

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 376: Bad Taste
     
    I really like Iron Man 2. This is not a popular opinion; the movie is usually listed near the bottom of MCU movie rankings, especially when held up against its predecessor.
     
    But I really like it all the same. I suppose there’s no accounting for bad taste.
     
    Perhaps there’s some explanation for my deep affection for this much-maligned movie when the context with which I first saw the film is taken into account. The summer of 2010 saw my heart acting up with the symptoms of something potentially dire, but without any clear cause. This period of uncertainty was less than fun, to put it mildly, so a movie where the protagonist was dealing with his own chest-related issues struck a very personal cord. I’m fully aware of the film’s flaws, but my opinions of Iron Man 2 will forever be tied up with the circumstances when I first saw it.
     
    I go on and on on this blog about how art is a two-way street, about how the viewer/reader/player affects the work almost as much as the creator. What one brings to the table inherently changes the final effect of the piece. My own medical issues, for example, have had drastic effects on my opinion of Iron Man 2.
     
    In light of that, it’s hard to really provide a framework with which to declare a movie the best. Something I love may not work for you, and vice versa. I found Never Let Me Go to be profoundly moving, but I’m sure there’s someone out there who’d call it melodramatic schlock, just as there are people who loved 50/50 while I found it somewhat hollow. I still love (500) Days Of Summer, but what I like about has changed as I’ve gotten older (and hopefully wiser).
     
    Take the ending to The Last of Us. Without getting too much into it (because even six years on, talking about the ending still feels taboo), Joel has decided that there’s something that Ellie shouldn’t do and he’s going to do whatever it takes to ensure no harm befalls the teenage girl who’s become like a daughter to him. It’s a rampage, against a faction we’d been led to believe were heroic, culminating in the player – as Joel – shooting an unarmed man. Naturally, its response has proven it divisive. In the ensuing discussion, however, it became clear that players who had children of their own were more likely to sympathize with Joel’s choice than non-parents. The player’s own personal life informs their response to the narrative.
     
    So is it a bad ending? I certainly read some criticisms of it, just as I read praises. While I’d say that it is empirically good, I do have to wonder if describing something empirically is even possible. There’s little doubt that it’s well-crafted and, I’d say, well-earned. But that doesn’t mean you have to like it; and it doesn’t matter how good it is, if you don’t like it you don’t like it.
     
    As I said, there’s no accounting for bad taste.
     
    I think we’re too hard on people who like stuff that’s not considered good, that there are too many pleasures we consider guilty. I’m sure we’ve all stories in one form or another that seem childish or shallow now, but once upon a time meant the world to you. I will forever have a soft spot for Lewis Carrol’s “Jabberwocky” and John Betjemen’s “False Security” since they were among my introduction to poetry, and two I took a real shine to years and years ago. Henry V is my favorite Shakespeare play, not because of the St. Crispin’s Day Speech or really any merit of itself, but because it was the first of his plays that I really dig into sixteen-odd years ago. Pretentious as it is, I want to say that Ulysses by James Joyce is my favorite book, not out of an adoration for obtuse literature, but from the delight of classes spent examining the book and finding meaning and, with all of that, falling in love with the work. I’m sure had I read it under other circumstances I would have dismissed it as being overwrought nonsense.
     
    Secondhand Lions has a middling score on Rotten Tomatoes, but I absolutely love the movie all the same. I know that Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is far from a really great game, but it’s an absolute delight to play on the weekend with your brother and a couple beers. I don’t care what you think, Toto’s “Africa” is an absolutely stellar piece of music.
     
    Maybe I’m too hard on people. I think Batman v Superman is an absolute mess, but y’know what, if you like it, good for you. We can talk until the sky falls about what’s a good piece of art and what’s not, but I think we’re kinda missing the forest for the trees. So long as the story made you feel something and isn’t hurting anyone else, where’s the harm in liking it? I enjoy watching bad movies, I love playing excellent games, and I’ll gladly go to bat for Iron Man 2.
     
    After all, there really is no accounting for bad taste.
  23. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 240: Bang for A Buck
     
    Movie tickets here in New York short you around $15 a pop. Which is a lot for a movie, but we go anyway because, y'know, movies. So it's worth it, price of admission and all that for those two hours.
     
    Conversely, your typical new video game costs $60 at base, ignoring deluxe editions, special editions, and inevitable DLC. Which makes it come up to around a lot; Star Wars Battlefront totals out $110 if you buy the bundle for all the expansions, which I haven't though I really enjoy the game and would appreciate the depth those expansions offer. $50 seems too steep, y'know?
     
    The same goes for Destiny's newest expansion, Rise of Iron; it's a hearty forty quid and even though I've already bought all the other expansions, I'm not quite ready to invest more cash. I don't know if it's worth it.
     
    Then I check my playtime in the game. I've invested over 210 hours into Destiny. Holy cyprinidae (I didn't check the number until just now). For how much I've paid, that's better than 2 hours for each dollar I've spent. Or, in perspective, $1,575 worth of movie tickets. By that metric, Destiny has so far proven almost $1,500 cheaper. So picking up Rise of Iron seems like a steal.
     
    So that's it then; entertaining-hour per dollar is the way of measuring whether something is a good deal. Buy more games, go to the cinema less often. Easy.
     
    But what about theatre?
     
    Plays don't come cheap, Full-price tickets for Hamilton will short you around a $100 (roughly Battlefront+expansions, if you're keeping track) for a single viewing of a two-and-a-half hour musical. Discounted tickets to shows like Fun Home and Vietgone, plays I've raved about, are $30 a piece. If we go back to our entertaining-hour per dollar metric, then plays are crazy expensive, far more than a movie and definitely a video game.
     
    That is, of course, if you take things at a mathematical face value.
     
    Was Fun Home worth those thirty dollars? Oh man, yes. Seeing something live has a different aura than watching something on a screen. With a play, I figure you’re not paying your money for the story, but to have an experience. Hamilton tickets fetch such a high price because it’s such an experience to watch it live. Similarly, the wonder of watching Fun Home done in the round, with the stage playing the role it does and being in a room full of other people is part of the ticket. And my own experience of Vietgone wouldn’t be the same without a particularly great piece of live feedback from an elderly woman during the introduction.
     
    The whole entertaining-hour per dollar metric really falls apart as soon as you realize that entertainment isn’t just a blanket term. Of the over two-hundred hours I’ve spent playing Destiny, I can point to the experience of spending six hours venturing into the Vault of Glass with a six-person fireteam of strangers online and beating Atheon as being a highlight worth my purchase. That was an experience, of retries, strategizing, and, eventually, victory. It’s hard to capture that lightning in a bottle again, and that might be why I”m holding off on Rise of Iron.
     
    When I buy a game, I’m after an experience. I want to be thrilled by Uncharted 4 or haunted by The Last of Us; if I get that, the money was worth it. Same goes for the stage; I want to see something that I could only have seen on stage, something made special by how and where it’s done. I’ll shell out a hundred bucks on a LEGO set because I love the process of putting it together (with a record playing and a nice glass of whiskey).
     
    It’s why when Rogue One tickets go on sale I’m spending the extra money to see it in IMAX 3D: I want the experience, I wanna be there. And at the end of the day, that’s what you’re really paying for.
  24. Ta-metru_defender
    tl;dr: I no longer have a bar in my chest.
     
    Longer version:
    Got into Singapore on the 10th. Spent the intervening time playing video games and eating, Monday morning local time went into surgery to have my bar removed. Since, y'know, it's time. Everything went well; the bar's sitting on a shelf here in the hospital room (along with some chips of bone [my bones]); I can walk and move and stuff. Useful abilities, those. Current signs point to heart being alright.
     
    So yes. I did just pull an Iron Man 3.
     
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