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Moana (2016) [Review]

“If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess.” Thus does a Polynesian demigod chastise the daughter of a Pacific island chieftain who has maintained that she is nothing of the kind.

Of course, for all intents and purposes, he is right and she is wrong. “Chieftain’s daughter” is merely “princess” by another name. But with this cunning wink, Disney’s Moana inoculates itself against the charge that it is yet another of the studio’s unwoke princess movies.

Better still are the substantive upgrades: The 16-year-old titular heroine is proportioned like an actual adolescent female, rather than a saucer-eyed, wasp-waisted Barbie. And you can scan the ocean horizon in every direction without spotting anything that remotely resembles a love interest.

Such political advances, however, are secondary to the sheer virtuosity of Moana. The movie is an absolute delight, a lush, exuberant quest fable full of big musical numbers and featuring perhaps the most stunning visuals of any Disney film to date.

As the story opens, the chieftain’s daughter, Moana (played by young Hawaiian actress Auli‘i Cravalho), is perpetually vexed that her father (Temuera Morrison) will not allow her to venture beyond the reef encircling their island home of Motunui. But the island and the ocean around it are slowly dying, because long ago a capricious demigod named Maui (Dwayne Johnson) stole—and subsequently lost—the precious-stone “heart” of the fertile goddess Te Fiti. When the sea itself entrusts that heart to young Moana, she knows that she must set sail beyond the reef, find Maui, and with his help restore Te Fiti’s heart.

Though the narrative is linear, there are inevitably perils to be met: a horde of pirate raiders that seems to have snuck in from Mad Max: Fury Road, except for the fact that they are all…no, I won’t spoil it; a treasure-hoarding monster crab (voiced by Jemaine Clement), who puts Smaug to shame; and the smoldering lava spirit Te Ka, who also has designs on the Heart of Te Fiti.

But the principal obstacle for Moana to overcome is her demigod partner in adventure, Maui. Vain, selfish, and utterly uncommitted to her mission, he is also in the midst of a crisis of confidence, having lost his magical fishhook and with it most of his demigodliness. Once a a shapeshifter of uncanny ability, he’s now hard pressed to turn himself into anything more impressive than a half-shark—a transformation that is precisely as useful as it sounds.

Indeed, even as Moana—the princess who defies her father to venture across the sea—cannot help but recall Ariel of The Little Mermaid, the problematic and polymorphous Maui bears a distinct resemblance to Aladdin’s genie. Nor does this intra-Disney cross-pollination seem entirely accidental: Back in the day, Moana directors Ron Clements and John Musker were also responsible for both Mermaid and Aladdin. And like Robin Williams’s showstealing turn in the latter picture, Johnson’s charming, witty vocal performance here is perhaps Moana’s greatest pleasure. There is a particularly delicious irony in the fact that an actor who first arrived onscreen thanks largely to his physique (Johnson was formerly the professional wrestler known as The Rock) has now done the best work of his career without the use of it.

Disney Animation is currently in the midst of one of its periodic streaks of greatness—the first since the Mermaid-Aladdin-Lion King run in which Clements and Musker played such a central role twenty-odd years ago. But what is notable this time around is the sheer variety of the studio’s offerings, from the high-concept premise of Wreck-It Ralph to the classic virtues of Frozen to the Asian-inflected tenderness of Big Hero 6 to the ingenious mammalian noir of Zootopia.

Moana definitely resides at the Frozen end of this cinematic spectrum, a conventional story featuring just enough innovation to feel current and relying principally on its dazzling execution. The musical numbers by Opetaia Foa’i, Mark Mancina, and (yes) Lin-Manuel Miranda may not be quite Hamiltonian, but they will soon be on your children’s lips and perhaps your own: the ensemble introduction “Where You Are,” Clement’s hilarious “Shiny,” and the anthemic “How Far I’ll Go” which, for better and worse, may rival Frozen’s “Let It Go” in sheer catchiness. These serve as accompaniments to the film’s flat-out gorgeous CGI cinematography—lush greens, sunlit golds, and a deep blue sea that doubles as a principal supporting character.

[jayedanalysis-blog]

Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) [Review]

A dreamer on a desert planet, waiting for a chance to reach for the stars. A caped and cowled villain in a black helmet, seduced by the Dark Side. A lost droid, beeping and chirping the urgency of its secret message for the rebellion. An apprentice turned against his master. A son turned against his father.

If these elements recall for you George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy, well, that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, J. J. Abrams’s much-anticipated reboot of the franchise, is in many ways less sequel than remix, a loving mashup of familiar scenes, characters, themes, and dialogue. “I have lived long enough to see the same eyes in different people,” explains one character. Anyone watching the film is likely to feel much the same way.

Of course, fans of the franchise are also granted the opportunity to see the same eyes in the same people, as the movie reunites the original castmates Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill in their iconic roles of yesteryear. In movie-time as well as real-time, more than 30 years have passed since Return of the Jedi. And while neither Fisher nor Hamill is given a great deal to do, Ford proves to be as spry and charming at 73 as he was at half that age.

This time out, these elders are set in orbit around a new generational quartet: Rey (Daisy Ridley), a scrappy scavenger on the arid planet Jakku; Finn (John Boyega), a sensitive turncoat stormtrooper; Poe Dameron (the sadly underutilized Oscar Isaac), a hotshot rebel pilot; and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), a masked acolyte of the Dark Side. The newcomers all offer strong performances—in particular Ridley and Driver—and one of Abrams’s more cunning flourishes is to set up their characters as interlocutors for a younger cohort of fans or proto-fans: They, too, have heard of the Force, and Luke Skywalker, and Han Solo; and like some portion of the millions who will make their way to the multiplex this weekend, they, too, are wondering what all the fuss is about.

The characters pinball off one another in one familiar-yet-satisfying sequence after another: a dogfight between the Millennium Falcon and pursuing Tie Fighters; an encounter with a wise and bearded mystic (Max von Sydow); a motley cantina; an X-Wing assault on yet another asteroidal super-weapon. The narrative revelations, meanwhile, unspool quickly enough that any further description of the plot would likely describe too much. This is very much a movie best experienced with a minimum of foreknowledge.

Careful readers may by now have noticed the absence of any references to Lucas’s second, prequel trilogy—no Anakin (at least not by that name), no Amidala, no Darth Sidious, and (thank god) no Jar Jar. This, too, is entirely deliberate. From the earliest stages of Abrams’s production, it was clear that he was well aware of the deficiencies of those latter films: the orgiastic overuse of CGI, the window-mannequin performances, the fourth-rate dialogue. And so with The Force Awakens, Abrams has begun one of the most important reclamation projects of our time: the complete erasure from cultural memory of The Phantom Menace and its sequels.

This is Abrams’s second relaunch of a beloved celestio-cinematic property, following his Star Trek movies, and it leaves no doubt whatsoever where his heart lies. His impatience with the talky moral theorizing of the Trekverse was evident in almost every frame of his Federation forays. With The Force Awakens, by contrast, he is directing for fans, and as a fan. It’s borderline miraculous how well he captures the mood and rhythms of the first Star Wars trilogy: its pace and wit, its balance between earnestness and irony, the joy it took in set design and creature-building. The Force Awakens may have cost $200 million to produce, but what one sees onscreen is not the money but the love.

There are plenty of complaints one might make of the movie if one were in the mood to make them. Almost no effort at all is made to establish its political context in relation to the previous films: The nefarious “First Order” slots in seamlessly for the Empire (they haven’t even bothered changing the uniforms), and the Rebels have become the “Resistance,” despite their alliance with an indifferently sketched “Republic.” The movie’s structure, too, is more than a bit flimsy, from the accidental acquisition of the Millennium Falcon to an unnecessary encounter with some notably Abramsesque tooth-and-tentacle monsters.

But perhaps the strongest critique one could make of The Force Awakens—in the sense that it is completely accurate—is that it’s ensnared in its own nostalgia. The original Star Wars was in almost every way an original, a movie that forever changed filmmaking for both good and ill. And while The Force Awakens is giddy and good-natured enough to provide fun for fans and non-fans alike, much of the enjoyment it provides is by design derivative, a refraction of past pleasures. For some that may not be enough. But for my part, I was delighted to be once again transported to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—specifically, to May 25, 1977, when my 10-year-old self saw Star Wars on opening day and had my mind forever blown.

[jayedanalysis-blog]

Terminator 2 - Judgment Day [Review]

Twenty-six years after its release on Independence Day weekend in 1991, it’s difficult not to watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day through a scrim of irony. The film concerns the efforts to prevent the near-apocalypse that was foretold by its predecessor, in which sentient machines turn on humans and realize threats that were inherent in the Cold War. The machines were built by humans as an elaborate defense system, suggesting Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars,” and are visualized by James Cameron as abstractly geometric flying war vehicles that lay waste to humans from the sky as well as terrifying robot exoskeletons with beady red eyes that blast soldiers to bits on the front lines.

In 1984’s The Terminator, the machines tried to win the war by preventing it, sending an endoskeleton disguised as Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother of the future leader of the human resistance. In T2, as the film was marketed, the machines attempt to directly kill savior John Connor (Edward Furlong), sending a new murderous emissary back to the early 1990s while Connor is a 10-year-old boy. Which is to say that the heroes of T2 are dreading a hellish future that may potentially be inevitable. And as we watch them scramble to destroy relics left over from the first Terminator, their efforts are cloaked in the retrospective understanding that T2 brought forth its own kind of culture-quake.

The passage of time has only made us more complicit with Sarah, who warns of a catastrophe that, in its broad strokes, is more possible than ever, and which has already been partially realized—with the help of T2. Aesthetically, T2 features still-fairly-impressive CGI effects that have proven revolutionary, opening the floodgates for animation that divorces action filmmaking of its visceral corporeality, allowing technicians to show us superheroes and Transformers who hurt each other harmlessly and pointlessly ad infinitum, nurturing, along with increasingly sophisticated video games, a culture of seductive militarization. Socio-politically, T2 is so retro it’s prescient, inadvertently anticipating renewed tensions with global superpowers as well as a proliferation of self-controlled technology that divorces people of responsibility, complicity, and power. The warplanes of T2 are drones that ceased, one day, to feign a pretense of fealty to the human race.

Another irony to the CGI revolution that Cameron helped to initiate is that corporeality is actually the strength of his own aesthetic. While there are few beautiful images in The Terminator, Aliens, and T2, they’re still astonishing works of kinetic force. Cameron’s a master of the collision of bodies against their settings, and of showing bodies in a duress that’s simultaneously painful and exhilarating. In Aliens, images of the insect-like monsters awkwardly jostling along metallic corridors in pursuit of humans are unforgettable for the sense of weight that the figures themselves possess (which is affirmed by brilliant sound editing). In the same film, Cameron lingers lovingly on the muscled skin of his macho marines as it glistens with sweat and exertion.

In T2, the exoskeleton, when we first see it, stomps a foot with nightmarish solidity into a human skull, crushing it. And recurring auto-critique is fashioned from the dust-ups between Schwarzenegger’s T-800, an antiquated machine programmed to serve the Connors, and the T-1000, an evil new “liquid metal” robot played predominantly by Robert Patrick and a gallery of clever and occasionally quite scary CGI effects. In essence, we’re watching a war between practical and computer trickery, and the winner in the film wasn’t the winner in real life. Cameron makes blunt, startling comedy out of the sight of Schwarzenegger, an international icon on the level of John Wayne, getting his ass kicked by a man who appears to be roughly a third his size.

There’s also a sexual element to these skirmishes, as if these nearly indestructible colossi keep pairing off to fuck without hope of ejaculation. Per Cameron’s wont, the collision of the men is vividly rendered: by the pain in Schwarzenegger’s face; the cacophonous sounds of walls and other surfaces exploding upon impact; and the uncanny sight of Schwarzenegger’s head as it’s partially unpeeled to reveal the monster of future shock technology underneath, which is the unlikely key to reclaiming human life.

Like its predecessor, T2 is a blend of action and horror, and, as in most films belonging to either of those genres, it has a reactionary streak about which it’s fascinatingly unresolved. Cameron’s self-conscious enough to know that he can’t have his “good” Terminator killing people willy-nilly, especially as played by a man who became a superstar by softening the hard and narcissistic image that he honed in Pumping Iron. And so John must teach the T-800 to be more sympathetic, which entails shooting innocent people in the kneecaps, causing them great pain and potentially handicapping them but providing us with the sensory exaltation that’s expected of action cinema, only without the guilt that might go with laughing along with outright murder. In this sense, T2 divorces audiences of responsibility in a fashion that suggests the pop-cultural equivalent of, well, drones. Carnage is diluted so as to pair ideally with our supersize Coke and popcorn.

Cameron invented a new form of action-movie hypocrisy, showing how ultraviolence could be marketed to kids (despite its R-rating, T2 was pitched shamelessly to children), yet he doesn’t entirely subscribe to it. Underneath Cameron’s bluster lurks an artist, which is notable in a moment in which John first discovers that the T-800 has been programmed to obey him unquestioningly (which makes no sense, though little of the film’s plot does). John, an impetuous and troubled boy, gets the T-800 into a fight with a pair of vapid yet empathetic bodybuilders, reveling in his power over the men, until the T-800 pulls a gun to unceremoniously kill them. In this moment, the primordial senselessness and violation of murder is explicit in a way that’s profoundly rare for mainstream action filmmaking, and this sensitivity is later affirmed by the hauntingly prolonged death of Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), a key and morally conflicted innovator of the machines that will ruin all.

Yet T2’s visionary qualities are tethered to a chase narrative that’s stretched out to an interminable length. The Terminator is masterful for its propulsive relentlessness, its noir-ish underworld, Schwarzenegger’s chillingly playful use of physicality, and, above all, for its seductive metallic sheen and nihilism. It’s the closest that action filmmaking has come to emulating the percussive and sentimental hopelessness of heavy metal. Of those qualities, T2 emphasizes, and explodes, only the relentlessness and the metallic impersonality.

Striving for an epic, Cameron overdoes the repetitive scenes of familial bonding and vehicle- and building-shattering chaos, and his pointed disinterest in the existential quandaries raised by the machines, particularly by the T-1000’s fluid identity, grows increasingly distracting throughout the film. Why doesn’t the T-1000 better use its gift for shape-shifting, which is clearly inspired by the creature of John Carpenter’s The Thing? Because Cameron is obsessed with pummeling momentum above individual specificity. If his work has a philosophy, it’s one of ceaseless, pragmatic exertion.

But that philosophy is marred in T2, as it is in much of Cameron’s subsequent work, by sloppy, conviction-less sentimentality. The violence of T2 doesn’t go with the cuddly daddy-bear routine that Schwarzenegger imports over from Kindergarten Cop, and, while that unlikely blend of tones provides friction, it also dulls and flattens the film. Cameron’s endless recycling here of The Terminator and Aliens, particularly in the climax set in the steel mill, also underscores that his true passion resides in the very effects and violence that he’s forced himself to consciously decry in this narrative. Cameron’s at war with the crass megaplex culture that he helped to pioneer. He’s Miles Dyson.

[jayedanalysis-blog]

Blade Runner 2049 [Review]

Blade Runner may have shaped the future, but it’s easy to forget its past. Now universally accepted as a classic, Ridley Scott’s future-noir fantasy (from an android-hunting novel by Philip K Dick) flopped in 1982, widely dismissed as an exercise in ravishing emptiness, as eye-catchingly hollow as Rachael, the glamorous “replicant” played by Sean Young. Late-in-the-day recuts didn’t help, adding an explanatory narration and dopey happy ending following negative test screenings. Indeed, it was only when Blade Runner was reconfigured via a 1992 Director’s Cut, and later Scott’s definitive Final Cut, that its masterpiece status was assured, sitting alongside Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Kubrick’s 2001 in the pantheon of world-building sci-fi.

No such tribulations await Blade Runner 2049, which has opened to the kind of critical adoration that sorely evaded Scott’s original. Yet Arrival director Denis Villeneuve’s audacious sequel, co-written by original screenwriter Hampton Fancher, really is as good as the hype suggests, spectacular enough to win over new generations of viewers, yet deep enough to reassure diehard fans that their cherished memories haven’t been reduced to tradable synthetic implants.

The action plays out 30 years after “blade runner” Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) gave up chasing down androids and fell in love with one instead. In the interim there’s been a “blackout” – 10 days of darkness that wiped digitally stored replicant-production records, creating a blank space in humanity’s database memory. Promos for the off-world colonies still burble through the acid rain, jostling for attention amid corporation logos for Sony, Atari, Coca-Cola and Pan Am.

Through this dystopian swamp, Ryan Gosling’s “K” walks in Deckard’s footsteps, tracking down wayward androids and “retiring” them. “How does it feel?” asks Dave Bautista’s Sapper Morton, taunting this deadpan hunter that he can only do his job because he’s “never seen a miracle” – an enigmatic phrase that will haunt K (and us) as he attempts to unravel its meaning.

K lives in a poky apartment with his virtual girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas), a holographic artificial intelligence who seems to exist in the same world as Samantha from Spike Jonze’s Her. In his post-mission debriefs, K is subjected to a Pinteresque form of interrogative word association that surreally flips the replicant-detecting Voight-Kampff tests previously administered by Deckard. After years of being an unflappable killer, the “Constant K” is experiencing doubts about his job, his memories and his nature. “I never retired something that was born,” he tells Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), musing that “to be born is to have a soul”. Joshi is unimpressed, insisting that in this line of work, you can get along fine without one.

Such existential anxieties are at the heart of Villeneuve’s movie, which has the confidence to proceed at a sedately edited pace utterly at odds with today’s rapid-fire blockbusters. Mirroring and inverting the key themes of its predecessor, Blade Runner 2049 swaps unicorns for wooden horses while retaining the visual grandeur that fired Scott’s film. From vast landscapes of grey rooftops and reflectors, through the rusted shells of post-industrial shelters, to the burned-ochre glow of radioactive wastelands, cinematographer Roger Deakins conjures a twilight world that seems to go on for ever. Bright candy colours are restricted to the artificial lights of advertising and entertainment. Architecturally, the production designs evoke Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, all angular lines and expressionist shadows. Elsewhere, we encounter statuesque nods to Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence, along with a self-referential homage to Kubrick’s The Shining, outtake footage from which was incorporated into the original release of Blade Runner.

The sights are staggering, yet the real triumphs of Blade Runner 2049 are beautifully low-key. Carla Juri injects real magic into a heart-breaking, dream-weaving scene; Sylvia Hoeks rivals Rutger Hauer as Luv, the ass-kicker with terrifying tears; and Ana de Armas brings three-dimensional warmth to a character who is essentially a digital projection.

Narratively, Fancher and co-writer Michael Green pull off a remarkable narrative sleight of hand that leaves the audience as devastatingly wrongfooted as Gosling’s cosmic detective. As for Villeneuve, he teases away at the enigmatic identity riddle at the centre of Scott’s movie, brilliantly sustaining the mystery of a blade runner’s true nature (“It’s OK to dream a little, isn’t it?”) while chasing the spirit of Philip K Dick’s electric sheep.

Composers Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer dance around memories of Vangelis’s themes, creating a groaning, howling soundscape that occasionally rises in horrifying Ligeti-like ecstasy. The first time I saw Blade Runner 2049, I was overwhelmed by its visuals and astonished by its achievements. On second viewing, a sense of elegiac sadness cut through the spectacle, implanting altogether more melancholy memories. Both times, I was reminded that Blade Runner editor Terry Rawlings had described Scott’s original as “a grandiose art movie” and marvelled at how perfectly that phrase fitted Villeneuve’s new dreamy vision.

[jayedanalysis-blog]

One-Punch Man [Review]

This article needs no introduction. You know what One-Punch Man is, and if not then you better recognize, son. That intro was 20 words or less (a joke you’ll only get if you’ve seen the show). Anyway, this will be an extensive review of One-Punch Man and why it’s amazing. Oh, spoiler alert, I think the show is amazing. There will be no plot spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t been blessed by this anime yet don’t worry, this review won’t reveal any secrets. Anyway, let’s get started.

One-Punch Man is a 12-episode anime series based on the manga and webcomic of the same name. The anime was picked up by the animation studio Madhouse, a powerhouse in the anime industry. They were the studio behind Trigun, Black Lagoon, part of Hellsing Ultimate, Summer Wars, Hajime No Ippo, even Beyblade believe it or not. There are tons of other shows that they’ve animated. They all look beautiful but the studio goes all out for One-Punch Man. Every single frame of animation in this show has so much care put into it. Different artists and animators worked on different scenes so an episode can have a different feel with each scene which just adds to the overall magic.

This show has so much character in it that the animation has to be on point to fully bring out the script and Madhouse definitely knew that when they were doing their thing. The art style does a great job with every single detail, making each villain look cool and sometimes creepy with how detailed they are. It allows each character to fully express themselves and makes each villain look and feel imposing with their animation and style. In terms of looks One-Punch Man is just about perfect.

Let’s move on to the sound and voice acting. The opening theme is as hype as you would want it to be. The soundtrack feels like a superhero show with inspiring tracks that make you literally want to punch something, to slower tracks that will help you get through the toughest exam days. It’s very well done in general as the music has to be amazing to provide background for the animation. The soundtrack does exactly what it’s meant to do and goes to infinity and beyond with what it brings to the table.

Now the voice acting, oh man, the voice acting. Every single villain has that amazing condescending voice that all the old-school anime villains had and they go all out with it. The gloating and the laughing that the voice actors use to express their villainy is second to none and each villain has the aura of a Final Boss, that culminates in a comedic payoff in their fight with the main character. Speaking of main characters, their voice acting is amazing as well with great timing and little nuances in their voices that really bring them to life. Saitama’s voice matches his personality and character so well that it feels like the character was made for that voice actor. Every voice fits every character and the emotions are brought to life extremely well.

One-Punch Man follows Saitama, a bald dude who trained so hard he lost his hair and beats everyone with one punch, and Genos, a cyborg who wants Saitama to be his master and train him. They are the center of the narrative and they make a great pair. There are other characters but I guarantee that your favorite will be a different character who’s in the show for about 1 or 2 episodes. I GUARANTEE he will be your favorite by the time the show is over and if he isn’t then you need to look deep in your soul and find out what’s clouding your judgement. All jokes aside the characters are all unique in their own way and the way they handle villains and other situations will give you a different view of the world they live in.

The action and comedy blend together seamlessly and flow like a water bender throughout the 12 episodes. It takes the tropes of typical Shōnen anime shows and literally punches a hole through them. Saitama’s voice and facial expressions really stick out from the other characters and allow him to be even more special than he already is. The way he reacts to villain monologues or power ups is a sight to behold and it never gets old. Genos is more like your stereotypical Shōnen action hero. His moves are flashy and he usually takes a lot of damage from the villains. You could say he’s there to give some of them a fair fight.

The action sequences with Genos are breathtaking sometimes and will leave you with your mouth wide open. Saitama and Genos are almost exact opposites in terms of their attitudes and as the show goes on they grow to understand each other and even admire certain aspects of the other. Saitama is a hero and Genos just wants to bask in his light even if no one else will.

One-Punch Man was great in all aspects. The animation, the music, and the characters are all on point. The fact that Saitama is the strongest person and can defeat everyone in one punch might be the show’s selling point, but that’s not what will keep you hooked. The way they use the fact that he can do that, the fact that he IS the strongest, the fact that he truly just wants to be a hero because it’s the right thing to do, that’s what will keep you wanting more. The journey of Saitama is just beginning because there will be a season 2 and if it’s even half as good as the first season then we’ll probably have another Anime of the Year. Don’t forget to watch the OVA’s after you’re done with the 12 episodes!

[jayedanalysis-blog]

Shadowrun Dragonfall [Review]

The 2013 Kickstarter-fueled return to the cult cyberpunk setting. On the one hand, it’s a really strong RPG that pays respect to the beloved 16-bit games. The pacing is snappy, the systems are enjoyable to play around with, and while the setting isn’t quite as unique as it was twenty-five years ago, it’s still unusual enough to help invigorate the experience. I mean, this vision of a dystopian cyberpunk future is almost adorably retro at this point, like looking back at the 1960s idea of where the space race would lead us. The writing quality is strong enough that those feelings of quaintness are quickly shaken as you get into the plot. On the other hand, the iOS release was extremely buggy at launch, the developer was slow to fix anything, and it’s still missing content from the PC version, a situation that will likely never be resolved. The game has a tendency to grab you by the wrist and drag you along, with little in the way of role-playing options or any real agency on your part. That’s a valid choice and I enjoy many games that use that kind of design, but at least where I’m concerned, I tend to feel that Shadowrun RPGs are best when they’re a bit more open-ended.

With all that said, a couple of patches down and a ridiculous price drop or two later, it’s an easy recommendation to any iPad-owning RPG fan, even with its faults. Most importantly, the developer seemed to have heard the criticisms of the original game when they sat down to create its first expansion, Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut ($2.99). On iOS, this is a stand-alone release of the Director’s Cut, and that’s probably the most natural way to present it. The game’s setting and story are almost entirely disconnected from the original. Instead of Seattle, you’re in Berlin. While your personally-created runner might be the same one from the first game if you want to stretch your imagination far enough, they’re just as easily someone entirely new. The mechanics are nearly identical to those in the original game, making it all the more impressive just how different Dragonfall feels.

In case you haven’t played the other Shadowrun games, let’s go over the basic details. The Shadowrun games are based on a pen and paper RPG created by BattleTech publishers FASA in the late 1980s. The setting is a bizarre hybrid of dystopian cyberpunk and traditional fantasy. Basically, plug orcs, dragons, and elves into Blade Runner with a healthy layer of Snow Crash and you’ve got Shadowrun. The title refers to secret operations that are carried out by people known as runners. FASA made some pretty good connections back in the day to have video games produced based on their licenses, with the most famous fruits of that being the classic Mech Warrior series of games. Shadowrun had a couple of games made for the 16-bit consoles, and in a break from the norm, they were completely different from each other. Both were RPGs, however, and the shared setting helped create a feeling of consistency between them.

At release, they were critically-appreciated for their quirky nature, but undeniably niche when it came to market performance. The games have been played by many since then, and are now considered cult classics. We’ll save the rest of the history lesson for a later date, but suffice it to say, fan demand for more RPGs in the setting was very strong, and Kickstarter helped the original creator of Shadowrun make that happen. Shadowrun Returns, and by extension Dragonfall, are not identical to the 16-bit games, but they hit most of the right notes. Done up as isometric RPGs, the games feature light exploration interspersed with tactical turn-based combat. You can customize your character to an almost ridiculous extent, leading to very different playstyles depending on what you emphasize. Unfortunately, I felt that Shadowrun Returns didn’t make the most of this customization due to its linearity, but that’s one of the main areas where Dragonfall diverges.

The back story has you playing as a runner of your own design who recently moved to Berlin after a job gone awry. You join up with an old associate of yours named Monika who leads a crew of her own. On a supposed milk run mission, something goes very wrong, with your team stumbling on secrets that they might have been better off not uncovering. It’s up to you to pick up the pieces and figure out what is going on. That same crew will be by your side through thick or thin as long as you don’t get anyone killed, and their presence is one of the more pleasant ways Dragonfall improves on its predecessor. It was hard to get attached to characters in Shadowrun Returns since they were either generics or not around for very long. Here, you’ll get to learn an awful lot about your teammates, and whether you love them or hate them, you’ll at least feel something towards them. This attachment helps add a bit more tension to the combat, even though you can’t really lose anyone permanently except through the plot.

Better still, it gives you options. Dragonfall feels a bit more like a Bioware RPG in that your teammates all have things they need to resolve. You can ignore that for the most part if you want, but if you go digging, you’ll find plenty of rewarding character development waiting for you. The structure of the game also resembles that of the games from Canada’s favorite RPG developer. While the opening is fairly linear, the game opens up significantly once you reach a certain point. You’ll work from a hub area, taking on missions in whichever order you’d like. This goes on for quite a while before the game needs to pull you back on the rails for its exciting conclusion. That end comes far later than it did in Returns. Dragonfall is probably twice the length of that game, yet still manages to maintain its solid pacing and captivating storytelling. As is usually the case in this setting, there are a couple of solid twists along the way that should have you reeling, and everything is told with a suitably cheesy but fun to read tone.

From an atmosphere point of view, it improves on its already strong predecessor, but it still suffers from one of its main weak points. The characters feel believable enough, and the dialogue reinforces the world, but the sets let things down a bit. Areas are a bit too small and empty, feeling more like movie sets than actual places. Oh, the details are done well, to be sure. Everything looks used and dirty the way it ought to, but it somehow also feels sterile, more like a museum exhibit of dystopian Earth than the real thing. I know a lot of that is down to the budget and the scope that it necessitated, but it’s especially noticeable in a game that’s more open the way Dragonfall is. All of the artificial barriers that keep the scant number of residents firmly roped in feel completely arbitrary, as though one good shove could send the whole thing toppling over.

That’s probably the only serious weak point in the game, though. Everything else is a treat. The combat is intense, strategic, and just plain fun. The AI has its quirks but the game’s difficulty seems built to accommodate them, so it’s not much of a detriment to the overall experience. The cyberspace aspect of the game meshes well with the regular combat, playing fast and loose with time itself in ways that add even more excitement. You have total control over how your character develops, allowing you to make them a tech-savvy decker, a rough and tumble melee specialist, a gun-toting brute, or even someone who punches people to death like it’s nothing because nature, man. Each of these builds offers something different to the group, and you’re free to experiment because any paths you choose to leave unexplored in your development are generally covered by at least one other member of your squad.

The controls work very well here, just as they did in the last game. It feels like it was designed around tablet play, and that hotly-contested save issue from the last time around has been addressed right of the gate. You can save anytime you want, though the game will auto-save at various times if you’re the careless sort. Speaking of careless, be very careful if you have to suspend the game for any reason. Just about anything will push Dragonfall out of memory on most iPads, so always save before you quit playing. On the whole, it’s a considerably less buggy experience than the original release was, with a recent patch plugging most of the worst holes in the game. That’s not to say it’s flawless in that regard. The game sometimes gets bogged down with slow loading and choppy scrolling, and older devices might suffer crashes here and there.

Generally, when I talk about RPGs, I find myself sorting them into little boxes. There are many games I love for their interesting stories and characters, and other games where I fell in love with the gameplay systems and compelling designs. The less common category includes games that balance both sides of that equation well, and I feel pretty confident in chucking Shadowrun Dragonfall in that box. People who play RPGs for character customization and fun battles will be quite satisfied, while those who just like to get into a good story with characters you grow attached to are also going to have an excellent time. This is an altogether greater experience than Shadowrun Returns, and I’m extremely impressed at the improvement on the developer’s part. I’m only sad that iOS gamers won’t get to see the next step in that improvement with the series shifting over to computers exclusively, but given how much this game seems to be bursting at the tech seams already, I guess I can’t blame them. That shouldn’t dissuade you from picking up this superb stand-alone gem, however.

[jayedanalysis-blog]

The King's Speech (2010) [Review]

Prince George (Firth), known as Bertie to loved ones, has been afflicted by a debilitating stammer since his childhood. And when his brother abdicates the throne and war looms, he reluctantly turns to Aussie Lionel Logue (Rush), a speech therapist whose methods are unconventional to say the least.

Some films turn out to be unexpectedly good. Not that you’ve written them off, only they ply their craft on the hush-hush. Before we even took our seats, Inception had trailed a blaze of its cleverness the size of a Parisian arrondissement. We were ready to be dazzled. If you had even heard of it, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech looked no more than well-spoken Merchant Ivoriness optimistically promoted from Sunday teatime: decent cast, nice costumes, posh carpets. That was until the film finished a sneak-peak at a festival in deepest America, and the standing ovations began. Tweeters, bloggers and internet spokespeople of various levels of elocution announced it the Oscar favourite, and this also-ran arrives in our cinemas in a fanfare of trumpets.  

But for all its pageantry, it isn’t a film of grandiose pretensions. Much better than that, it is an honest-to-goodness crowdpleaser. Rocky with dysfunctional royalty. Good Will Hunting set amongst the staid pageantry and fussy social mores of the late ’30s. The Odd Couple roaming Buckingham Palace. A film that will play and play. A prequel to The Queen.  

Where lies its success? Let’s start with the script, by playwright David Seidler, a model for transforming history into an approachable blend of drama and wit. For a film about being horrendously tongue-tied, Seidler’s words are exquisitely measured, his insight as deep as it is softly spoken. Both an Aussie and a long-suffering stammerer, he first adapted the story as a play, written with the permission of both the late Queen Mother (George’s wife) and Logue’s widow. Stretching into the legroom of film, he loses none of the theatrical richness of allowing decent actors to joust and jostle and feed off each other.  

As their two worlds clash, this outspoken “colonial” and this unspoken aristocrat, Seidler mines great humour from the situation. Logue’s outlandish treatments are designed to rock George, whom he insists on calling Bertie (the impertinence!), out of his discomfort zone. He has to lie on the floor, his dainty wife perched upon his chest, strengthening his diaphragm. He has to swing his arms like a chimpanzee, warble like a turkey. And in a sure-to-be classic scene, Logue cracks the dam of his patient’s cornered voice by getting him swearing. “Say the ‘F’ word,” commands Rush, his eyes twinkling at Logue’s front. “Fornication!” howls Firth, like a man bursting. Such naughtiness — escalating to a magnificent chorus of “shits” and “fucks” — landed the film an R rating in America. The silly-billies: the moment couldn’t be more tender or uplifting.  

What Hooper sensed of Seidler’s play is that this is not about fixing a voice, but fixing a mind bullied by his father (a waxen-voiced Michael Gambon as George V) and brother since boyhood, a soul imprisoned by the burden of forthcoming kingliness. Between his handsome London backdrops, elevating any potential staginess with sleek forward motion and microscopic historical accuracy (from mist-occluded parks, to the Tardis-sprawl of the BBC’s broadcasting paraphernalia with the death-noose of their microphones), Hooper plays on the idea of childhood. We meet Logue’s scruffy brood and the twee Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret; while in another scene loaded with codified meaning, George begins to open up as he gently completes a model plane. The tragedy is that he never had a childhood. Friendship is a voyage into the unknown for Bertie. Logue is gluing him together.  

Hooper, whose own mother recommended the play, knew straightaway here was his cornerstone — the unlikeliest of friendships. To get all zeitgeist on its royal behind, it’s a bromance. One that required two performers to go to opposite places. Colin Firth has found a rich vein of form: A Single Man provided emotional entrapment in repressed grief, but here were greater perils still, treading the perilous high-wire of physical affliction. In terror of mockery or Rainman, he looked to Derek Jacobi’s definitive stammering in I Claudius (Jacobi winkingly cast here as a conniving Archbishop Of Canterbury) and got to grips with an actor’s greatest fear — being unable to find his words. It’s a bristling irony: acting is a craft exemplified in the crystal-clear diction of Shakespeare, but here is a gripping performance where the actor is virtually incapable of speaking at all. Not in a straight line. It is an anti-acting role, yet Firth doesn’t ever stop communicating: pain, sadness, yearning; intelligence and humour demanding escape; and the fierce self-possession of a man born to privilege. When Logue, pushing and pushing, oversteps the mark, Bertie rounds on him, furious, his voice suddenly eloquent in the spate of his fury. The idea of class is never far away; what marks out one’s place in the social network of yesteryear more than how one speaks?  

Logue, a psychotherapist before his time (a royal in therapy — the very thought!), finds Rush in equally fine fettle. He locates Logue’s own shortcomings, a failed actor who turns his office into a stage, striding and pontificating, a show-off with a big heart. A modernist trying to break through social prejudice. A colonial nobody desperate to be an English somebody. Stripped walls line Logue’s drafty chambers: the deprivations of pre-War Britain are here, yet warmed by family. The cushioned train of anterooms of Buckingham Palace appear antiseptic in comparison. Life crushed by velvet. Grimacing Whitehall serving as a cold reminder of war to come.  

Any behind-the-drapes depictions of British royalty carry the base pleasures of a good snoop. But these were changing times. Helena Bonham Carter makes for a vibrant Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mum-to-be), both devoted wife and teasing wit whirling around the word “contraverseeal” like a figure skater, another modernist in a dusty enclave who takes the risk of contacting Logue. If anything, older brother Edward VIII was the true trailblazer, breaking through the bars of royal absolutes to marry American divorcee Mrs. Simpson, and unthinkably vacate the throne for his timorous brother. In that decision, precedents were shattered and the modern world spilled into the royal household. Guy Pearce (an Aussie in English robes) has enormous fun as the arrogant older sibling, plumbing his voice to the borders of camp, but a flash harry flinty enough to shed a nation for a wife. As George will angrily point out, what use does a king serve anymore?  

If we start small, a lonely prince trying to express himself, we end big. History knocks the door down. Edward abdicates just as that unquenchable ranter Hitler gets warmed up, and Timothy Spall drops by as a slippery Churchill (a jar to the film’s subtleties) to sneer about oncoming “Nazzzeees”. A sense of terrible urgency engulfs the therapy, but what an ending it offers. George VI must use his faltering voice to soothe a frightened nation in a radio broadcast, all but conducted by Logue, transformed into match-winning glory. You’ll be lost for words.

[jayedanalysis-blog]

Fallout 2 [Review]

When the original Fallout shipped, it was hailed by many to be the savoir of computer RPGs. With its gritty story, compelling art design, and brilliant mix of old school statistical based combat and an interface easy enough for a beginner to use, the game not only pleased the hard core niche market, but also introduced the joys of role-playing to a whole new generation. Now all the company had to do was to make another one that would make everyone just as happy. With Fallout 2, the company has done just that. Despite the loss of crucial team members, economic difficulties within the company and an irritable consumer base, the development team at Black Isle Studios, Interplay's internal role-playing division, has put together a game that is everything the original was and perhaps, a bit more.  

Let's bring you up to date. You are the descendant of the original Vault-Dweller who wandered the plains in search of a water chip. As the game starts, you are asked to run a gauntlet that will prove you to be the Chosen One, the one worthy to wear the suit of the Vault-Dweller. Once you complete this relatively easy task, you find out what's really going down. Your village is dying. In a last ditch attempt to save the town, the elder is sending you out into the real world to find a device that has been whispered of in legends called the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (or G.E.C.K.). Sent away from the only home you've ever known, armed only with a spear you must wander into a world filled with mutants, ghouls and raiders in order to save your people.

Okay, so the basic story line is very similar to the first. You are an outsider wandering from town to town trying to find an old piece of post-war equipment. In each town there's usually a whole bunch of wrongs that need righting (or wrongs that need doing, depending on how you want to play the game) and you earn experience and knowledge that brings you closer to your goal by jumping in with both feet. What is different here is the number and depth of the quests and sub-quests. There's so many different things that you can be doing at any given time that it's almost guaranteed that every player (who's not following a cheat guide or their friend's advice) will find a much different way of finishing the game. The writers have done a fantastic job with extending and realistically aging the world created by the Fallout team in a way that will really please fans of the old title. Specifically, you'll get to see towns that have grown up quite a bit since the last time you saw them (Shady Sands is a lot different these days) hear what happened to characters you came across in the original, and basically see the way that society has formed itself around the events that unfolded in the first game.

One thing that should be mentioned about the story line is that it's a lot harsher this time around. I mean a lot harsher. As you travel through the game, you'll meet (and perhaps purchase the services of) prostitutes, drug dealers, slaves, and cannibals. There is an unbelievable amount of profanity and abusive language in the game, and while it seems that most of our generation is pretty much inured to it, enough violence to turn heads. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that all of this is in the game (especially since it all fits very well within the story), but people who are thinking about buying this title for anyone under the age of 18 should probably think again. This game is... well, it's harsh

There's not really all that much to say about the game's look. If you played Fallout, you've pretty much seen it all. While there is a nice new introduction, a few new faces and a load of new monster types, they all look a lot like the designs seen in the first game. On the positive side, it seems that the artists had a lot of time to add in a slew of new grisly death animations that are a real joy to watch. There's also some great looking dream sequences that take place throughout the game that look and sound excellent.

Gameplay's not going to surprise any old fans either. All the controls and interfaces from the original game have been brought back here with only minor tweaks. One big change that was made is the ability to give your NPC comrades some basic guidelines on how to act in combat. You can tell them (roughly) which weapons to use, which armor to wear and which enemy they should be shooting at in combat. Better still, you can also trade freely with them, which means that you can use them to carry items for you without having to worry about buying them back later. I did have a few problems with the fact that enemies seem to view your character as the best target in combat, deviating from centering in on you only if they can get through or another character has attacked them. I always seemed to find myself at the center of a pile of attacking monsters while my NPCs each tangled with one apiece. Still, for the most part, combat works just as it did in the original.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few little bugs in the game. While it's hard to be specific without giving away a lot about the people in places in the game, suffice it to say that you'll most likely run into a couple of lock-ups here and there as you play through. My advice? Save early and save often. While Interplay insists that the game can be played completely through as is, there are a couple of locations that you won't be able to experience as you should. Worse still, the patch that Interplay is putting out to fix the problems (which should be out sometime next week) will make your save games unusable. This means that if you've already started the game, you're either going to have to start over from the beginning, or just stick it out and play the buggy version. Yeah it sucks, but I haven't really had all that many problems with it. A lot is being made about the situation on bulletin boards right now, but people seem to be forgetting that the original Fallout had its share of problems too, and we all know that it was a great game.

So, what's the final verdict? A lot of people have complained that since the storyline, the graphics and the gameplay haven't changed much, that the game itself is no good. I just didn't find this to be the case. While there's no doubt that this title is extremely derivative of Fallout, I tend to want to thank the programmers for not fixing something that wasn't broken. With its great storyline, huge game world and well written scripts, Fallout 2 gave me many, many hours of totally absorbing gameplay. That's all I'm really looking for. If you're an RPG fan, I highly recommend this game to you.