Teasers and Sneak Previews

Heroes Of Might and Magic V Demo:

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3 were pretty awesome games but the series was dealt a bit of a blow with the very sub par fourth entry. The new one seems to have done almost everything right however, returning more or less completely to the gameplay of the more popular installments. The UI has been given a total overhaul and mostly it seems to be a big improvement. The graphics have of course been updated into full 3-D and it looks pretty good and runs smoothly even on my machine, although the artists seem to have been trying a little too hard to emulate Warcraft 3. Still, now that they've announced that the game will not carry the horrible rootkit installing Starforce copy protection, it looks like I'll be buying this one when it comes out.

The New Tool Single – Vicarious

After listening to what Tool have had to say about their new album I was expecting something pretty intense and difficult, however the first single at least seems like it will have a comfortable home on the radio, once the dumbass radio people cut it down from it's full seven minutes. It opens with a riff that sounds a little like the main one from 'Schism', but with a rhythm more like that of 'The Patient'. The polyrhythmic influence of Meshuggah isn't immediately apparent, but is definitely there, all Tool have done is taken Meshuggah's ideas that they use to make aggressive, difficult music and arranged it so that it sounds natural. The song might sound a little weird to someone not used to that sort of thing, but still quite listenable. However if you pay attention, the bass and guitar are usually playing in completely different time signatures.

Danny Carey's drums seem to have been kicked up yet another notch, which is very impressive, and the whole song is far heavier and angrier than anything off Lateralus (excepting of course 'Ticks and Leeches'). Maynard's lyrics have taken an unexpected turn to the political (rumour has it that A Perfect Circle are finished so that might have something to do with it) which could easily have gone wrong but fortunately on this song at least they're pretty cool, “Because I need to watch things die... From a distance”. It's a lot more direct and less esoteric than his previous Tool songs.

While it wasn't the face meltingly brilliant musical revelation I was secretly hoping for, it's pretty good, and Tool's 'pretty good' is everyone else's 'fucking brilliant', so no disappointments here.

Top 10: The Forty-Niners

Written By Alan Moore

Drawn By Gene Ha

The Top 10 series is quite easily one of the funniest comics you'll read. Alan Moore might not be in a bad mood like he was in the eighties but he's definitely still into mocking the superhero genre. The original Top 10 collections are a police procedural story set in a city called Neopolis, where absolutely everyone is a superhero. Naturally this is fertile ground for all kinds of piss taking. Recently Moore released the spin-off Smax, which follows one of the supporting cast back to his home dimension, a hilariously clichéd fantasy world.

The Forty-Niners is another spin-off, a prequel retelling the founding of Neopolis after the Second World War. Not being familiar with old-timey superhero comics, the vast majority of the jokes and references in this collection went right over my head, so I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the others (although I did get a kick out of seeing Popeye and Captain Haddock having a drink together in a seedy bar). Moore seems to be treating the material he's parodying with a bit more respect this time around, so the jokes are less dense and the story takes itself more seriously.

However while I didn't like this collection as much as it's predecessors, I did really like the art. It's done in a washed out old movie sort of style, which suits the story very well.

Astro City: The Tarnished Angel

by Kurt Busiek

So after reading five volumes of Astro City I think I've finally clicked to the concept behind it, courtesy mainly of Frank Miller's introduction to The Tarnished Angel. The other week I mentioned Alan Moore's Watchmen; at about the same time as that series came out Miller produced The Dark Knight Returns (which I regretfully still haven't read), and while Moore's book took original characters and used them to rethink the superhero genre with a cynical, unsympathetic eye, The Dark Knight Returns did the same thing, only Miller got to use Batman and Superman to mock and destroy the genre they represent. The long term effect of these two releases was to ensure that straight up superhero comics, already regarded mostly as juvenile rubbish (not a totally unfair assertion), could never be looked at seriously again. What Busiek is doing is trying to restore a bit dignity to the genre, by keeping Moore and Miller's mature outlook but treating the superheroes as human beings instead of as allegorical stand ins for arrogant, self-righteous politicians.

This collection is one long story arc, featuring a second rate supervillian who has been given the name Steeljack, on account of his being made out of steel. As the story begins he is just being released from a long stay in prison, and being old and tired decides to go straight. In the end it's a relatively straight superhero story, but of course it's the details that matter. Not many other superhero comics go to the trouble of considering how one goes about having a shower with metal skin, or what the families of deceased supervillians thought of them, or the private insecurities of second rate Justice League members (guys like Aquaman or El Dorado).

A little bit of the old Miller/Moore cynicism shines through in the Honour Guard's (Busiek's analog to the Justice League) attitude towards a shifty old crim like Steeljack, but by and large Busiek is trying to make a mature superhero story without the grimness. He does a pretty good job, and the series is quite enjoyable, one of the few superhero series that aren't embarrassing to admit that you read.

See also:

Local Heroes and Life in the Big City

Family Album

Confessions

The Friday Lesson

If you're ever out in town and you see me about to have a second helping of BZP, make sure you come up to me and say "Whoa there Jon, I'm the 'Don't Take Too Many Drugs, Dance Around Like A Gimp All Night, Make A Total Idiot Of Yourself And Then Lie In Bed All The Next Day Wishing You Were Dead Panda', and I've got a song to sing to you called 'Don't Take That Second Pill'".

V for Vendetta

by Alan Moore

The book that is, not the movie. I've heard enough lukewarm things about the film to not be inclined to see it, but as usual I've been hearing that the book (or in this case, the comic) is much better.

The concept is brilliant: a modern day Guy Fawkes battles the government in a dystopian future Britain. Future in a relative sense that is, the comic was written in the early eighties and is set in the mysterious, futuristic, far away year of 1997. In his introduction to the collection Moore wryly acknowledges his lack of success in predicting the future, noting that the plot depends on a Labour victory against Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 election.

V for Vendetta is one of Moore's earliest works, and it shows, the story, while it may have worked well in a episodic format is a little rambling and directionless in collected form, many plot threads are more or less irrelevant and the theme is a little obscure. In a recent interview about the movie (can't seem to find the link unfortunately) Moore declares that our central character, V, is not meant to be a hero but rather an opposing evil to the fascists, chaos in contrast to their order. I didn't really get that impression myself, a character with as much style and wit as V is always going to appear as a hero, no matter that his methods are callous and he is prepared to kill innocents to get his way.

There are plenty of great scenes though, the story of the rise of fascism in alternate history Britain is quite affecting, and even though the analogy to Nazi Germany is too explicit, that doesn't always appear to be as much of a stretch as you might hope. In fact, while I hope that such a thing never happens in my lifetime, this book has just made me feel even more than I already did that our western democracies are not as immune to being subverted by totalitarianism as we might want to believe. I'm genuinely starting to think that some kind of revolution will have to take place one day in the next century (not necessarily a violent one, but a replacement of the current system of government against its will) in order to ensure that our society will be truly free and have a real assurance of having it stay that way. God help me I'm even starting to agree with some of what Jeremy says. Our current governments are descended from the days of monarchy, and while they've transformed somewhat in accordance to Enlightenment principles, they've inherited some of the baggage of that old totalitarian form of government. Fundamentally, they still exist to 'push folk around and tell them what they should be doing', and that's the way most people like it, or at least expect it. Of course I haven't thought of a replacement system, maybe we just have to wait for the Singularity...

Moore went on to write another superhero comic a few years later called Watchmen. Set in America and using characters that were close analogues to superheroes from mainstream comics it makes a similar point but with vastly improved skill. Not only is it easily the best superhero comic I've ever read but in fact one of the best comics I've ever read. V for Vendetta, while it has a lot going for it just doesn't live up to those standards. It's not a bad book, but you're better off reading Watchmen.

That said, there's no reason it couldn't have been adapted to a kick arse movie, especially seeing as it's message is just as relevant to today's politics as when it was written. But as usual the Wachowski brothers took a brilliant concept and turned it to shit. At least we can take comfort in the fact that in 1982, and again in 1988 when Moore wrote the doom laden introduction to the collection, we were no further away from having western democracy subverted by fascism than we are now, no matter how depressing we may find the evening news.

The Good Shit

Check out Fourth Eye's collection of Tool and Mike Patton related videos here. I've only watched the Fantomas ones so far but they're pretty awesome. Their new drummer is even more fucking insane than Dave Lombardo, and his kit is probably half as big as my flat.

Going Postal

by Terry Pratchett

It's been a long time since I read any Pratchett, save for Good Omens a couple of months ago. It's not that I don't like him, but in my early teens I was his biggest fanboy and must have read every book of his large oeuvre, but I possibly overdosed on it a little and found that I grew very bored with his style after a while. Even though I often think “Oh I should check out the new Pratchett”, there's always something else that attracts my attention a little more. This book was a christmas present, and it finally gave me the impulse to give him another chance.

Going Postal is the ten zillionth novel in the Discworld series, a comedy series which parodies both the fantasy genre and the real world simultaneously. In this particular book Pratchett's choice of subject to be outraged about is corporate greed and mercenary capitalism. While that is a subject that caught my interest, I found the way he dealt with it far too simple and clichéd. Despite this it's still a fairly amusing, entertaining read and it's fair to say I rather enjoyed it.

The protagonist is a conman named Moist Lipwig, who is recruited by the Patrician, the ruthless but effective ruler of a large city called Ankh-Morpork, to restart the old post office, a public service which long ago fell into disuse and has since been replaced by a much faster semaphore system known as 'the clacks'. The clacks, while a revolutionary technological marvel, is run by a fairly nasty bunch of plutocrats who are using their monopoly to extract a great deal of cash from the citizenry, which they then use to literally get away with murder.

The story is very breezy, and Pratchett's humour is still as good as ever, sarcasticly making fun of both fantasy clichés and the real world. For example when a bunch of wizards try to use a crystal ball type device to communicate with one another across a long distance:

“It's still not working Mr Stibbons!” he bellowed. “Here's that damn enormous fiery eye again!”

The geek in me was particularly amused by the clacks, which is a fictional analogue to the internet. Pratchett has a genuinely good non-technical understanding of how the real internet works, it's strengths and weaknesses, and it's potential. Most notably his descriptions of the crazy bastards who run it are bang on. He also includes the golems, introduced in an earlier novel Feet of Clay (possibly scheduled for a reread), who are based on Isaac Asimov's robots, right down to the three laws (which are written on scrolls inside the golems heads, in an interesting combination of science-fiction and myth).

However as soon as he starts getting serious everything goes wrong for Pratchett. His characters work well as comedic caricatures, but he expects us to somehow be emotionally attached to them, which just doesn't work. The romance especially, while well conceived, is contrived and unconvincing in execution. It's not all bad though, he does a good job with the aforementioned golems, who's great age and inhuman motivations are nicely portrayed.

His message is a bit awry too. While we probably all agree that greedy heartless executives ruining industries and lives to make a buck are bad, his proposed solution of having a benevolent tyrant sort everything out doesn't appeal to me. Can anyone think of a historical precedent for a benevolent tyrant? The closest thing I can think of is imperial Rome, and that only went well for a generation or two.

Fortunately Pratchett's weaknesses are overshadowed by his strengths so while they are a little bothersome they don't much impinge on one's enjoyment of the story. I may just have to catch up on the dozen or so books he's put out since I went off on him.

The Lions That They Led You To, Lie Down And Take A Nap

Nick Cave – No More Shall We Part

I've learned a lesson about Nick Cave albums over the last few years. With the exception of Murder Ballads (which is a bit of an oddity in his catalogue in many ways) they've all taken a while to grow on me, and I've said many dumb things about them on this very website. “Too boring!” said the young and foolish Jon of last August about The Boatman's Call. “Kind of weird...” said ignorant and stupid Jon of May 2005 about The Good Son. “Not as good as Slipknot,” said Jon of November 2004 about Abattoir Blues. What an idiot! So I kept an open mind about No More Shall We Part, and despite not finding it all that appealing on first listen, sure enough it's turned out to be very rewarding.

At any rate the first track, 'As I Sat Sadly By Her Side', is an immediate attention grabber. With a simple piano and string arrangement, sad but laden with menace, Cave presents a bit of a philosophical dialogue. He and his wife look out the window at the world, and while his wife sees the beauty of God's creation, Cave sees only misery and hopelessness. Both points of view are myopic, but as well as contrasting them the song sets up the story of the album, Nick's wife dumping him for being a miserable bastard.

The second, titular, track is a grim, slow, gloomy piece, not at all appealing to listen to until about two thirds of the way through when the strings and drums join in with the piano and the music shifts from an unpleasant, dissonant D minor scale to the relative major, rewarding your patience with a very beautiful contrast.

The next track, 'Hallelujah', is a long tale of Cave going for a walk, an activity we'll see again a few times time before the end of the album. The track perhaps goes on for a little too long, but it's redeemed by a weird but catchy string riff and some good lyrics, ranging from the silly “And I took the small roads out of town/ And I passed a cow and the cow was brown” to the just plain awesome “The tears are welling in my eyes again/ I need twenty big buckets to catch them in/ Twenty pretty girls to carry them down/ Twenty deep holes to bury them in”.

The next set of three songs take a break from the albums signature sound of slow downbeat piano, and also a break from the overall narrative. 'Love Letter' is a slow piano song, but a sadly hopeful one rather than a depressingly hopeless one and is one of the best tracks. 'Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow' is again a piano song, but a fast aggressive one. And the very memorable 'God is in the House' is a total departure from the serious mood of the rest of the album, as Cave lightens up a little to take the piss out of everyone's favourite oppressed majority: hypocritical, puritan Christians.

Following these little interludes is 'Oh My Lord' , a track that is very similar to 'Hallelujah' in that it's about seven minutes long and is about Cave going for a walk. This track definitely overstays it's welcome, as Cave frets about everything from his marriage to his drug addiction to accusations of going soft from his former fans. Even an unexpected distorted rock out outro doesn't reclaim your attention.

It is followed by 'Sweetheart Come', a sad invitation to a potential lover with some more great lyrics. 'The Sorrowful Wife' pulls the same trick as 'Oh My Lord' with much more success. Starting as a mournful piano ballad in the same vein as the rest of the album, it abruptly changes pace to a heavy guitar backed plea to “Come on now and help me!”

Finally the last three tracks apply a redemptive coda to the gloomy tale of the preceding songs. 'We Came Along this Road' is a simple, direct piano ballad mourning a failed relationship without the angst and bitterness of the other songs. After this turning point the rest of the album becomes more and more upbeat, the sad but uplifting 'Gates to the Garden' continues the recovery process, and then in 'Darker with the Day' Cave goes for one final walk, this time with a positive attitude, despite some kind of apocalypse going on around him.

The overall arc of the album works perfectly, from the opening tracks introducing the unhappy marriage, the later ones documenting its end and the final ones gradually recovering from its aftermath. I'm not sure if the story is autobiographical or not, perhaps it works as a metaphor for Cave's recovery from serious drug addiction, which immediately preceded his recording this album. In any case it's a productive emotional journey for those of us who are not so good at just getting the fuck over things.

1001 Albums – Number 1

In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning – Frank Sinatra

So it's taken me a while but I finally got around to buying the first album on the 1001 albums list. Actually going to record stores and rooting around in the racks for something in particular is something I've not done for a while, and it was nice, but considering my disinterested reaction to this album I think I'll just download the rest unless I think there is a strong likelihood that I'm going to enjoy it.

That's not to say I think it's bad music. There's no denying that Frank sure has a great voice, but the entire album is based around it and the backing music is just a little snooze inducing. A few songs stand out, mainly the first, titular track, but after twenty minutes ago the whole act gets old. Frank doesn't really change his tone or style for the duration, and I find some of his phrasing quite annoying. The lyrics vary a lot in quality too. That's only to be expected when every song is written by different writers, but some of them are pretty cheesy.

This album is held in high regard for several reasons. Firstly because it was one of the first recordings to really be designed for the LP format. The songs have a uniform sound and subject, and it even tells a little bit of a story. This is a valuable development in popular music, but as I've already noted, I find it a little too consistent musically.

The second notable thing about it is that it was recorded in the aftermath of Sinatra's breakup with Ava Gardner and is one of his most emotional performances. Maybe I'm just a cynical product of a jaded generation, but to someone whose introduction to the love of music involved Trent Reznor ripping his guts up screaming “kill me”, Frank's gentle and almost insipid delivery of “When I get that mood indigo/ I could lay me down and die” doesn't rate very high on the intensity scale.

So the 1001 albums isn't off to the best start. Next up we have Elvis and we'll see if he fares any better.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

by Bill Watterson

So Gary Larsons' Complete Far Side came in a giant cloth bound two volume set, but The Complete Calvin and Hobbes tops that with a similarly presented three volume set. Compared to The Far Side's accompanying art the Calvin and Hobbes set is presented in a very restrained manner. Whereas Larson drew an elaborate cover containing giant stone heads and flying cows, Watterson has included very simple renditions of the title characters in endearing poses. I guess Calvin and Hobbes evokes a lot more sentiment in it's creator than The Far Side does.

For anyone who doesn't know, Calvin and Hobbes is a newspaper cartoon strip that ran for ten or so years in the eighties and nineties. Calvin is an obnoxious little kid in the Dennis the Menace mould, and Hobbes is his stuffed toy/imaginary friend, a tiger with an incongruously mature outlook. It sounds like a twee and irritating premise, like most of the rubbish you'll find on the comics page, but Watterson has a somewhat twisted mind; for every saccharine strip about friendship there are at least a couple of sarcastic pokes at human nature, and if you're lucky one or two strips involving aliens, dinosaurs and grisly dismemberment. (It would have been nice if they'd included the letters of complaint that the editors received like The Far Side collection did, Calvin and Hobbes definitely has far more capacity to offend.)

The inconsistent tone means that reading the comic's entire run in one go can be a bit disconcerting, Calvin's character changes pretty wildly from day to day, as he quickly goes from being a wide eyed paragon pointing out the flaws of the adult world to a crazy kid with serious psychological problems to a greedy manipulative sociopath whose parents openly wish they could get rid of him. The first and last personae are curiously related, in both of them Watterson rails against the greed and corruption of the adult world, either by having Calvin the innocent point out the injustice, or have Calvin the greedy display what a monster the influence of the modern world (mainly TV and superhero comics) have created. It's kind of interesting how he at different times embodies two polar extremes of human behaviour, but I doubt that it's intentional.

Calvin in his third guise, the kid with the imagination so over-active that it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that he is tormented by it, is the one that I find the most appealing. Certainly his continuous encounters with aliens, clones, possessed snowmen and of course dinosaurs, combined with his preference for his imaginary worlds over the real one remind me a hell of a lot of myself at his age. And at my current age too, come to think of it.

The character of Hobbes gives the comic its uniqueness, and most of its humour too. The comical juxtaposition of a stuffed animal who is both as scatty and irrational as a housecat, and as witty, worldly and charming as everyone secretly wishes they were is comedic gold. His grounded, pragmatic views are a good counterpoint to Calvin's philosophising in either good or evil mode, and usually involve something along the lines of “In the end we're all here to eat each other so why worry about it?”

The nonsensical contradictions of the tone make for a curious story. As enjoyable and funny as it is I couldn't help being a little put off by the implications of Calvin's personality. What kind of an adult would he actually grow up in to? At best a reclusive misanthrope, at worst a psychopath urged on by the violent commands of his only friend in the world, a demonic feline that exists solely in his imagination. And maybe I'm just fucked in the head but I kept picking up on a weird sexual vibe between the two title characters. For these reasons I can't feel as sentimentally attached to Calvin and Hobbes as its creator and most ardent fans do, but it's still damn funny, and yes still a little touching, as long as you don't think too much about it.

Brilliant

(via Ruthless Reviews) Nickelback get booed off stage in Portugal.

In Fact, I Just Like To Say The Word 'Incarceration'

Meshuggah – I

I liked Meshuggah's other albums Catch Thirty Three and Chaosphere when I wrote about them last year, but wasn't overly impressed either. However I've found that they've both really grown on me. That's not much of a surprise considering how technical their music is. As it doesn't have a big emotional impact most of its worth becomes apparent through careful listening.

I is an EP that was released between those two albums, and while short it combines the strengths of both of them. Like Catch Thirty Three the album is one continuous piece of music, although only 20 minutes long instead of 50, and like that album it contains a mix of heavy passages and weird atonal interludes. From Chaosphere it inherits the incredibly brutal riffs that manage to be catchy despite being in completely deranged time signatures.

While the bizarre rhythms of the other albums have their own strange kind of order to them, I goes in a little bit of a Dillinger Escape Plan direction using completely random time signatures. Other than that there's not much to add except that it's another excellent release from these guys but without much to differentiate it from their other albums. It's short and succinct and would probably be a good introduction to Meshuggah.

I Don't Like You Any More, You Lying Trying Waste Of Space

Placebo – Meds

You know, I had absolutely no idea that Placebo had a new album out. I guess never listening to the radio can have a downside. After I got their first album a few weeks ago and was underwhelmed, and found their last release Sleeping with Ghosts a bit of a disappointment, I was surprised to find that I was still pretty excited to hear this new album.

Musically Meds continues to develop in a similar direction as their last few albums. The more or less straight up three piece grunge of their first album has been joined by string sections on the slow songs, and a touch of electronica on most tracks. The emotional tone of their albums has continued to develop in a linear fashion as well, the teenage 'I hate myself' angst of the self titled and Without You I'm Nothing have given way to sadness, mostly directed at others rather than internally.

The lyrics of Meds spend a lot of time dwelling on a relationship that failed due to the substance abuse of the other. This is pretty good material for some intense music, but I'm sad to say that most of the album is fairly straight forward and unexciting rock. Not bad and certainly catchy but lacking anything to make it truly memorable. A few tracks stand out however, 'Space Monkey' has a cold unearthly vibe which gives its surreal imagery a unique twist. Plus it's about a monkey. The final two tracks are both excellent as well. 'The Cold Light of Morning' is about as sad as songs come and will no doubt hit a chord with anyone who's ever found themselves wasted at 10am on a Sunday and realising that the party is over and you have to sober up. 'A Song to Say Goodbye' is another classic, with a more upbeat melody contradicting the sad story told by the lyrics (basically 'I'm through with you, you fucked up junkie') and somehow making it that much more poignant.

So while these guys are still capable of some great stuff and even though the tracks that don't live up to those standards are still worth listening to, this album is no return to the quality of Without You I'm Nothing and Black Market Music, and it seems like they're treading water a little. Placebo have always lacked a certain element of intensity in their performance and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. Maybe they need to take more drugs...

Some Little Bastard Crawled All Over Him For Ten Minutes...

Shadow of the Colossus (Sony)

This game is the followup to Ico, which I finished a few weeks back. Both games are quite original in terms of both plot/theme and gameplay, and it's very heartening to see that inventive games are still being made by big developers, and (in Shadow's case but not Ico's) even doing well financially as well as critically.

I enjoyed Ico a lot, but I am pleased to say that Shadow of the Colossus is even better. The fundamentals of the gameplay and the art direction are very similar, but it has a darker, more adult story and theme. The protagonist is a young man named Wanda (a mistranslation from English to Japanese and back of 'Wander') who wants to resurrect his dead girlfriend. He is offered a chance to do so by a collection of godlike beings known as the Dormin who manifest as a beam of light. In order to satisfy the Dormin, you must hunt down and kill sixteen gigantic beasts, the colossi of the title. All of this is conveyed in a very nice but overly long introduction movie. I would have preferred the plot details to be dealt out in more concise portions throughout the game instead of being dumped on you in one big chunk at the start, but hey, your patience will be rewarded.

The gameplay itself is original and unconventional, but fortunately it works really well. It uses a similar engine to Ico, but instead of being a platformer it's more of a 3d action game. Defeating each colossus is roughly a three step process. First you must find the beast, by following a trail of light that shines out of your magic sword. This usually takes a while as the world area is quite large and very detailed. There are no enemies or challenges in this phase of the game, so you would expect it to be a bit of a bore, but as it turns out the anticipation of seeing the next colossus is more than enough to keep the interest levels up.

Once you find the monster there is usually a trick to finding a way to climb on to it. This section of the game is more of a puzzle than anything else, and is mostly about thinking of some creative way to take advantage of the environment or the enemy's behaviour (while avoiding its fists, feet, teeth, weapons or laser beams). The colossi are all mechanical, robotic versions of mundane and mythical animals. There's a lion, a minotaur and an electric eel for example. They range in size from just a bit larger than your character to so hugely massive that they blot out the horizon. This aspect of the game is the real content of the gameplay and it's refreshingly original and perfectly executed. The designers have really come through in creating interesting and varied scenarios to fight each enemy in while using only a limited set of gameplay gimmicks.

Finally once you're on the beast an action element comes in, and you have to climb to the colossus' vulnerable point and stab it until it dies, trying to stay attached all the while as the monster tries to throw you off. This part is usually not too challenging, and I think ideally should have been made a little harder. The final colossus balances the difficulty of this aspect well, but the others are all a bit too easy.

The lead designer claims that both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are meant to evoke the same emotion, and if you feel differently it means that you've grown as a person since you played Ico. Since I played them pretty much back to back and I don't think I've changed much in the last two weeks I must disagree. There are certainly similarities, both games evoke loneliness through the deserted, crumbling backdrops and silent, inhuman enemies, and contrast this with a close relationship with your companion, in Ico the vulnerable girl Yorla and in Shadow of the Colossus your faithful horse Agro (am I the only one who, instead of waxing poetic about the horse's bravery and nobility, found it intemperate and insolent?) However Shadow is a lot darker. Contrast the two games endings, Ico's twee love conquers all message and Shadow's grim warning against hubris are worlds apart, although they make a nice pair especially when you take into account that plotwise Shadow of the Colossus is a prequel to Ico.

More Important News

New Tool album artwork here.

Some very serious and important promo shots of the band are up on Toolshed. Numbers 2 and 3 are the best.

Hangover Day Random Link

(via Google Video of the Day) The old movie that the Smashing Pumpkins' video 'Tonight Tonight' was based on.

The More I Settle Down...

Breaks Co-op – The Sound Inside

I saw these guys at Southern Amp late last year and really enjoyed their gig. Then I bought their first album Roofers and very nearly died of boredom. Since eight years passed between the releases of Roofers and The Sound Inside I was hoping it would be more similar to their recent live show.

And I do like The Sound Inside a lot better. At it's core it's the same easy listening hip-hop for old people as their earlier record , but they've given the proceedings some more life with the inclusion of a new cast member who does some actual singing and acoustic guitar playing. It gives their music a more 'rootsy' feel. The first track 'The Sound Inside' is really good, and I know saying this will cost me like 1000 metal points, but I really like their big single 'The Other-side' as well.

Unfortunately after a strong start the album starts to decline fairly rapidly. It never gets as boring as Roofers but after a few songs it all starts to sound the same. While they're good at picking a nice, catchy riff or sample to base a song around, they never really develop any of them so it's just one gentle relaxing repeated refrain for five minutes, followed by another. Perfect for old people who need some inoffensive background music for a dinner party, or for a sunny afternoon outdoor concert, but not a satisfying listening experience on its own.

The Big News

Hola amigos. So I know it's been a long time since I've rapped at ya, but I've had a whole lot of crazy shit going on for the last week or so. Nevertheless I have been compelled to comment on the BIG IMPORTANT FUCKING NEWS of the week.

The new Tool album has a release date, a title, and a tracklisting. 10,000 Days will be out on May 2nd, and the tracklisting is up on their official site. It seems a little iffy to me though. There was a lot of speculation about the album title being fake, since it is a bit out of character when compared with their other titles (plus it sounds kind of similar to Disturbed's Ten Thousand Fists), but I was prepared to take their word for it. However the tracklisting seems a bit more suspicious to me. Names like 'Wings for Marie' and 'The Pot' don't sound anything at all like 'normal' Tool titles. Blair (the guy who writes news posts on the Tool website) is swearing up and down that it's true, but he did that when he claimed that Maynard had found Jesus on April Fools' Day last year too.

(A little historical context: before Lateralus was released Tool sent a different tracklisting to MTV every day for a month. Plus, April Fools is coming up again...)

So I remain skeptical. But of course regardless of whether or not this is the real tracklist, the proof will be in the listening, which is still fifty odd days away...

I Don't Speak Crazy Bitch

Ico

Cult games very rarely make it over to New Zealand. We're probably never going to see Katamari Damancy here, and there are no doubt plenty of other cool games that I've never even heard of that pass us by because they don't have a popular rapper's name in the title or have a girl in a chainmail bikini on the cover. Nevertheless occasionally something manages to defy the odds and receive an antipodean release, and after hearing about it for years I've finally had a chance to play Ico.

The new game by the team behind Ico (Shadow of the Colossus) has been selling reasonably well (on account of its more mature and violent theme no doubt, but it's still a great game, and I'll have a lot of good things to say when I've finished it) so they've given Ico a re-release.

The game is at its core a 3D platformer, but its unique twist on the genre is best explained by describing the plot. The story is fairly minimal, but I don't mean that in an Unreal Tournament or Tetris kind of way, it has a very 'fairy tale'-like mood, and as all the characters speak a gibberish language, only some of which is subtitled, exposition is kept to a minimum. In recent years I've come to really appreciate this approach to storytelling in games. Games which cram huge elaborate plots with fucking shitloads of cutscenes into themselves sometimes succeed in spite of it (see the Final Fantasy series), very rarely pull it off brilliantly (see Planescape: Torment) and usually turn into an execrable bore-fest (see Xenosaga). By keeping things simple but archetypical the designers are doing themselves a huge favour.

Anyway, our main character is a boy called Ico. Believed to be cursed by his family and their fellow villagers he is imprisoned in a spooky old uninhabited castle and left to die. Fortunately he escapes and finds that the castle is in fact inhabited by nasty shadow demon things. Before long he meets a mysterious ghostly girl named Yorla who is also imprisoned in the castle, and naturally enough it turns out that by working together they may have a chance of escaping.

Throughout the game you control the boy Ico, and you must guide the flaky and helpless Yorla through the castle and its environs, a process involving a moderate amount of bashing baddies with swords and a large amount of switch-pulling, block-pushing and general puzzle solving. Yorla herself is a somewhat frustrating companion as she and Ico lack a common language (communicating through yells and arm waving) and she has an annoying tendency to wander off in unhelpful directions. As usual with game related matters Penny Arcade sum it up pretty well. But despite this one annoyance the game is very good on every level, mostly through plain old level design.

The area that the game covers is very small. The castle isn't an endless labyrinth but instead feels like an actual building with reasonably proportioned and logically connected areas. Clever design enables the creators to extend the game length by reusing areas in different ways. You'll often find yourself in the same place a few different times, only on a higher level, or with the geography rearranged in some way. The puzzles are all well thought out and are very satisfying to complete.

The art direction is pretty nice too. It doesn't leap out at you in the way that some games can, but the old castle has a very memorable and visceral mood that stays with you and evokes a real place, both in the dark, creepy dungeons and the bright sunlit rooftops.

I do have a few more criticisms though. Firstly it was too easy; while no one wants to come across some stupid unintuitive puzzle that requires either days of thought or a walkthrough to complete, it was a bit of a disappointment when I blazed through the second half of the game. I often find that once I have a handle on the designers' mindset the puzzle solutions become universally obvious. A little more variety and sneakiness in the later part of the game would have improved things a lot. Secondly, the graphics weren't so great. Being primarily a PC gamer I am used to feeling like my eyes are being stabbed with needles whenever I turn on a console, but I found this game to have far too much brightness, I often found myself squinting at the screen to see what I was doing. At first I thought this was a deliberate design decision, as light and darkness are two motifs of the story, but Shadow of the Colossus seems to have a similar problem. Combat is a bit annoying too. It's not a combat oriented game but it would have been nice to have less cumbersome feeling to the fighting scenes and it would have been especially nice to see where your character really is in relation to those smoky shadowy beasties instead of having to guess and swing wildly.

Lastly I found the end of the game a bit stupid. The last section is very good, but lacked any save points for almost an hours worth of gameplay, and that shit pisses me off. Console developers often seem not to understand that sometimes I have to get off the computer and do things like eat and go to work. The final battle is damn cool mind you, but again way too easy. Finally, the ending of the plot was far too twee. Yes I know it's a fairy tale but when the bad guy says 'Ha! Even if you kill me, you can't really win!' and then you kill them and everything turns out fine with no explanation, that's a bit stupid.

So while it sounds like I'm bitching quite a bit the truth is that it's a great game that deserves all of its accolades. I guess the good things are just more insubstantial and harder to describe than the bad things, which stick in your mind and are usually easily articulated. If you have a PS2 and have no aversion to platformers (or a mandatory rule of only buying games with hookers and guns in them) then this is easily one of the best games you can get for that console.

A final note on the plot. Normally I'd sneer at something as twee and kiddie friendly as this, but I find that I have a much higher tolerance for such things in games when compared to other media. I think it's the visceral feeling of grabbing Yorla's hand and saving her from the claws of evil with only seconds to spare (and doing it all yourself rather than reading about someone else doing it) that makes it much easier to form an emotional attachment to the story. Perhaps the finest example of this is the ending of Planescape: Torment, when you realise what a total bastard your character was in his previous lives, and are forced to view your relationships with your companions in a completely different light. It's a pity more designers don't utilise this strength of the medium.

Maynard, Make Me a Tequila and Gatorade Please

Tool – Schism

About six months before Lateralus was released Tool released a live CD/DVD, Salival, in order to build anticipation for the new album. It was pretty fucking good. In a similar move they've released a pair of DVDs containing the videos for 'Schism' and 'Parabola' (with a new album due in a few months). They're not so good.

I was a little sceptical about paying $20 for one of these discs but I received some CD vouchers for Christmas so I thought what the hell. The disc contains a mere three tracks; the original video, the same video with commentary and an audio remix of the song by Lustmord.

To be fair the disc comes beautifully packaged, with a nice booklet of cool stills from the video. The DVD menus themselves have had a lot of attention paid to them, with some really detailed art direction. The video itself is, like almost all of Tool's videos, completely fucking brilliant. Like the videos from Undertow and Aenima it contains all of Adam Jones' standard motifs; weird mutant alien things, characters combining and reforming, and freaky gross biological stuff. Unlike the older videos it contains live actors and CGI as well as the traditional stop start animation.

The songs themes of communication and loneliness are fairly straightforwardly represented by the video, although of course there's a whole bunch of extra crazy shit that doesn't make any sense at all. What the fuck's up with the little guy who comes out of the main guy's head? But that fire effect at the end (looks like oil burning on water viewed from below or something) is pretty damn cool.

The audio commentary is sadly not by Adam or Maynard, but we get instead the abstract ramblings of David Yow, formally singer for The Jesus Lizard, who tells us about what he had for lunch, makes gross burping noises, talks on the phone and refers once or twice to the actual video (“This video, is all about ears...”). To top it off, he has actually recorded two commentaries, which play simultaneously on the left and right stereo channels. One gets the impression that it's really meant as a commentary on how Adam doesn't like the idea of doing a commentary.

The remix is a very good ambient work, which happens to be at it's best before recognisable parts of the original song start appearing.

While it's cool to own the video, I feel a bit ripped off that I paid $20 for it. If it had contained both 'Schism' and 'Parabola' it would have been worth it, but I'm a bit gypped that they expect us to shell out for two discs when they could have easily packaged them together. I am interested in hearing Jello Biafra's commentary for 'Parabola', but I think it will have to wait until I find a really cheap copy.