Self-Indulgent Compare and Contrast

I love House, as I believe I have already pointed out. It remains untouched as one of the most dazzling things on television- dramatic, insightful, darkly funny, unafraid to push boundaries (if the constant praise The Wire gets from the Guardian is anything to go by, then House might not be the only claimant to the throne, but it’s one of those things I’ve never got around to watching…). Why is it, then, that other programmes find it so fething difficult to produce material that is anywhere near the same calibre? Recently, I’ve found myself investigating season 3 of The Tudors and fledgling drama Flash Forward (alongside the consistently-wonderful season 6 of House and the surprisingly-high-quality season 5 of Heroes), and they seem to pursue completely different narrative agendas; nay, they have completely different mentalities though they inhabit the very same genre. Let us first consider The Tudors, which you might (not unreasonably) believe to be a historical drama. Don’t be deceived: it is nothing of the sort. ”Showtime commissioned me to write an entertainment, a soap opera, and not history… and we wanted people to watch it,’ said Michael Hirst, the show’s writer and creator, in an interview with the New York Times last year. The Tudors being set in early-modern England is mere happenstance, a device allowing the show to cram in as many novelty costumes and as much sex as possible.

The Tudors, then, is essentially a televised version of crack- really quite bad, but compelling for its run-time, albeit in a way which induces considerable guilt for subjecting you to a period-drama version of Hollyoaks. Give it anything more than a second thought and one realises how dissatisfying an experience it is- it has no real storyline as such, and merely seems to follow events in a documentary fashion, taking great pains to chronicle every adulterous liaison and lust-drenched meeting. Along the way, we are starved of sympathetic characters, instead provided with men seeking only to advance their own cause and women who either scheme for some greater purpose or who are the pawns of their male overlords. Indeed, it seems that our protagonists only really resonate when they’re on their way to the scaffold to be executed on some tenuous treason charge. Take Thomas Cromwell (James Frain), a low-born man made good who rose to prominence towards the end of season 1, cheerfully clambering over the corpse of his benefactor Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neil) and a man who took great pleasure in dissolving the Catholic monasteries of England during seasons 2 and 3. Throughout it all, he comes across as selfish, power-hungry and venal, a main character whose only saving grace (if indeed it can be called that) is that he is dedicated to his religion, the newly-birthed Protestantism. If we’re supposed to have empathised with this guy, I really don’t see how: he manipulates, connives and back-stabs, inflicting huge suffering in the name of both power and religion. Only when the tables are turning and he falls victim to the intrigues of the Duke of Suffolk do we start to see anything close to what might be called a sympathetic character- in the space of a couple of episodes it is suddenly revealed that he is over-working himself, actually quite generous, a family man with a son he loves and something of a democratiser of faith, advocating the notion that priests are not required to speak to God, and that anyone can do it. This is really too little, too late, and by the time we see him reduced to a prisoner stripped of his fine robes in the Tower of London begging King Henry VIII (Jonathon Rhys Meyers) for clemency, we are only too aware that he has bullied and cajoled not a few others in that very building, and sent many of them to their deaths, and as such we just don’t care when he is finally and cruelly dispatched.

That, right there, sums up the flaw of The Tudors as a drama: we just don’t care. All of the characters follow the same troughs-and-peaks system- we are supposed to suddenly start giving a damn when their fortunes fail and adversity begins to squeeze, but we remember that while their star was in the ascendancy they were quick to condemn others to equally grim ends, unlikeable in prosperity and hence unforgivable in defeat. Lacking a protagonist as such, The Tudors becomes something else, mere spectacle, all glossy glory and nubile flesh; drama without attachment to the characters, documentary without the interest of the real facts. One could argue that it’s a sexed-up look at what courtly life in Tudor England may have resembled, but this barely counts for a defence, and doesn’t do much to dismiss that the programme really has nothing to it. What’s frustrating is that it could have something to it quite easily. The producers and writers have already demonstrated a willingness to play fast and loose with the facts, so why let mere history get in the way of telling a genuinely decent story, rather than having the show simply being a window onto what are, essentially, the spoiled demands of a king who never becomes anything beyond adolescent? The closest the show has come to dramatic credibility is the fifth episode of season 3, ‘Problems In The Reformation’, which features Henry, grieving for his beloved Jane Seymour, becoming solitary and reclusive, getting drunk and only spending time with his Fool (David Bradley), during which time Meyers gets a chance to act something other than petulant and the two plumb some slightly deeper levels of psychology regarding the reality of life at court, what Henry is really like and the nature of illusion and reality itself. Combined with the much darker editing and direction, these scenes stand out in a series which is otherwise about as deep as a puddle. Why not have some genuine theological discussions? Whilst the theological details in the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism are perhaps not exactly attention-grabbers in themselves, the themes which divide the two make worthy topics: ritual, subservience and the iconography, tradition and rich imagery of Catholicism versus the individualism, revolutionary nature and stark minimalism of Protestantism. What about relationships? As it stands, couplings in The Tudors simply occur, with little discussion as to their meaning and occurrences. They are required to happen, and so they do, end of story, missing a fantastic opportunity to talk about the position of love, friendship (and their absence, perhaps) and convenience in Tudor relationships. Again, however, because of the way we interact with the characters- observing them, rather than understanding them- we are limited to merely watching Henry’s sister Margaret shack up with Suffolk, bereft of why they love each other, what it is they find attractive and necessary about each other, or any sort of other genuinely interesting or insightful details about their relationship.

So that’s The Tudors: a glossy appeal to your sense of decadence masquerading as drama, addictive but far from substantial. How, then, does Flash Forward compare? I first caught wind of this in a Spotify advert, which touted it as being “from the network that brought you Lost”, a tag that one feels is perhaps stretching the boundaries of  credentials a little (“Yay! The people who broadcast Lost are broadcasting a different show featuring different actors and written and directed by different people!” Though saying that, Flash Forward features Sonya Walger, who was/is actually in Lost…), but it nevertheless flitted around in my mind long enough to warrant watching it.

I am as of yet undecided as to its exact quality, but let’s just say straight off the bat that comparing it, albeit indirectly, to Lost was a mistake. One could argue that they’re both shows that begin by positing a main mystery and working from there, though even that gets short shrift- while the mystery in Lost is huge and sprawling, that of Flash Forward is tighter and more focused, a single enigma of an event and the puzzle of solving it. The event in question consists of a two minute seventeen second global blackout during which every person on the planet receives a vision of what will happen to them six months in the future; the series then follows a small group of characters in Los Angeles as they investigate what caused the event and their visions begin to impact their lives. This contains within it the potential for compelling drama, though two episodes in, Flash Forward is still on some shaky ground. It has seemingly looked at Lost, which it considers itself to have a shared pedigree with, and assumed that the show’s popularity comes from the simple fact that there is a mystery at all, ignoring Lost’s propensity for deep character analysis and an intelligent, detailed (some might say convoluted) mythology built up with considerable care and attention to detail. Flash Forward’s setting itself handicaps it- by dealing with a small interconnected group of characters, it loses plausibility from the off in its protagonists’ convenient central role in proceedings which have global repercussions (in the second episode, someone remarks, surprised, that they’re not the only people investigating the blackout- really? The whole world conks out for over two minutes and you’re shocked that an FBI office in LA isn’t the only unit looking into things?). This sense of the contrived is something that Flash Forward struggles to shake throughout, both in its general settings and in its central mystery. The protagonists are your stereotypical American drama characters: good looking, over-sincere at nearly every opportunity, all living in ridiculously big houses, nauseatingly adorable child, etc etc etc; and their conflicts are as superficial as you’d expect: a suicide attempt is averted in the first episode by the blackout, and then ‘explained’ in a two minute next episode (never mind that merely wanting to commit suicide is by itself a traumatic experience which would leave its mark), and the lead couple’s interaction with their daughter is beyond patronising. The central premise, meanwhile, revolving around seeing the future (and the concept of ‘the future’ as a fixed conclusion which cannot be altered) is rather flimsily examined, a rather feeble line being drawn between those who consider the future to be immutable and those who half-heartedly hope it isn’t, the entire show underlining the predilection towards determinism embraced by American television as a whole (take Heroes, for example: no matter what anybody does, the paintings by the people who can see the future always come true somehow).  Investigating the flash forwards, Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) gradually comes across a series of clues which, bit by bit, make their way onto his board, beginning to form the collection of evidence he sees in his own blackout- a friendship bracelet made by his daughter, words on post-it notes, a photo of a burned doll- all these things are assumed by the show to have huge significance, though it neglects to actually impart this, leaving the audience to goggle in wonder as they recognise bits and pieces which are, naturally, frenziedly highlighted as Mark’s flashbacks are tirelessly relived for the viewer’s benefit, just in case their significance might possibly have lost. It is not, though the details of said significance (why, exactly, are we supposed to be interested in a photo of a charred toy?) are left largely untouched.

This is not to say that Flash Forward is without merits; certainly it has qualities beyond merely being unabashed escapism/voyeurism (looking at you here, Tudors). It’s early days, after all. I’m told Dollhouse took a while to kick off, for example. And even this rocky beginning has its good points. Benford is actually quite a compelling lead, though one has to overlook his tendency to look like he’s about to burst into tears. Playing a conflicted ex-alcoholic with sympathy and realism, he throws himself into the investigation with vigour, increasingly determined to prevent the future he saw from occurring, nicely symbolised by grimly burning the bracelet his daughter made for him which he saw in his flash forward, a good contrast with the saccharine father figure he’d played up to that point. Terrified of losing his wife (Walger, who, after Lost, sounds strange with an American accent), he begins to keep details from her that he reasons she doesn’t need to know, whilst simultaneously demanding the absolute truth from her, which she obligingly gives, turning Benford into a believable and, crucially, still likeable hypocrite. His boss, Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance), provides some hard-nosed and entertaining comic relief of the ‘blacked out on the toilet’ and ‘gave mouth-to-mouth to a guy who was face down in urine’ kind, and his partner Demetri Noh (John Cho, of Harold and Kumar fame) is looking to have the makings of a good loose cannon convinced that he’ll be dead because he didn’t have a flash-forward.

The mystery itself is quite compelling (so far they’ve found evidence that at least two people were awake during the blackout, implying that the event was man-made), but is this, plus some fledgeling characterisation, enough to make up for what is otherwise a relatively average show, acting-wise and concept-wise? I suppose it isn’t fair to judge just yet- after all, The Tudors is on its third season and shows no sign of being anything other than period soft porn, whereas this could genuinely go places. One has to ask, though: with such good role models like House and Lost, should a new show like this really be so slow off the mark? Can it afford to be?

So Will The Floodgates Open?

Almost two months away, huh? I suck at this. In my defense, I have the excuse of being monumentally depressed, which does rather hinder the creative process (such as it is). But here I find myself again, and I’ve got a few more ideas for posts, so maybe in the next week there’ll be some more articles going up.

Enter Shikari are back, though to be fair they never really went away. Having completed a pretty comprehensive tour of a lot of smaller venues last autumn, they showed up at Give It A Name and will be making appearances at a festival or two over the summer. But as far as releases go, we haven’t heard much out of them since November 2007’s ‘The Zone’. To remedy that, June sees the release of their new album, ‘Common Dreads’, inevitably much-hyped and already promoted with free download ‘Antwerpen’ and upcoming single ‘Juggernauts’. Upon being informed of its recent pre-release leak, I took it upon myself to get hold of it as soon as possible- I’m going to buy it for sure, so there’s no guilt here. First impression? Weird. For some reason, it didn’t pull me in instantly in the way that ‘Take To The Skies’ did- it certainly lacks a song of the immediately-fantastic quality of ‘Mothership’, which is quite possibly their best song. Still, if there’s anything I’ve learned from listening to music, it’s to give anything more than one go unless it’s so diabolical as to warrant immediate destruction. And lo, ‘Common Dreads’ soon yields its rewards if you persist with more than a cursory examination.

The most noticeable difference between the Shikari of TTTS and the Shikari of CD is immediately obvious- they’re angry now, and they’re going to tell us all about it. Gone (for the most part) is the faux-mysticism of ‘Enter Shikari’, gone is the uncertain club-scene sexuality of ‘Anything Can Happen In The Next Half-Hour’. In their place, the environmentalism of ‘Johnny Sniper’ and the anti-establishment sentiment of ‘Acid Nation’ have been taken and blended into a new socially-conscious Shikari, who open their new record with a titular spoken-word track which bemoans the state of society: and as I walk the chartered streets of this familiar oblivion, I recognise nothing but unyielding unconsciousness, in which we have almost comfortably drowned, followed by a collection of voices from around the world who stress, We must unite! in a variety of languages. Only then does Rou’s voice boom out as if to a hushed stadium awaiting the onslaught: Here tonight, I clock a  thousand heads, here to unite through common dreads! And we’re diving into more familiar synth and guitar territory as ‘Solidarity’ kicks off. 

Delightfully, ‘Common Dreads’ has enough continuity to it to lasso older fans in- Shikari have already demonstrated an understanding of themes in their material, and here a link to the past is maintained from the off, sounding exactly like the closing song of TTTS could blur seamlessly into the start of the opening track, the conclusion of which also bears the, And still we will be here, standing like statues refrain which ran through the previous album. Musically, Enter Shikari are on more mature ground- their usual blend of metal and trance is joined here by jazz and grind, the tracks ‘Zzzzonked’ and ‘The Jester’ proving that the lads are more than capable of experimentation with less conventional sounds as they bounce maniacally from concept to concept, their rabid energy shoe-horning what could have been a cluttered mess into a bold statement of intent, and, more importantly, it works. Rou and Chris (and sometimes Rory) put out some brilliant vocals, Chris’ clean harmonies contrasting wonderfully with Rou’s vitriolic or passionate rhyming. And there’s something- another band doing this sort of thing could stumble on a ‘political’ album, but Shikari have too much determination and sincerity for that. The same spirit that saw them convince thousands of people to party with them the first time round will convince thousands more that they’re doing this for the right reasons. You can hear the anger that’s gone into writing the songs, and they are definitely an outlet for the current popular mood- on ‘Fanfare For The Conscious Man’, Rou spits, Our gracious Queen should grasp her crown/and take a good fucking swing at Blair and Brown/for leading the country into illegal warfare/and trying to pass it off that we’re doing it because we care! It’s followed with a mocking, Now preemptive war is a redemptive cause, Rou affecting a stereotypical English accent to highlight the absurdity of the position he attacks in a song dedicated to decrying the privatisation and awful nature of warfare, as well as the US and UK’s Janus-like two-faced attitudes to ‘wars of liberation’.

There are issues to be had with this politicisation of the band. Staking a position so starkly brings with it the potential to alienate fans, most likely those of a more conservative or apolitical nature who either disagree or want nothing to do with the sort of issues Shikari are tackling in place of their previous ‘party hard’ attitude (one only has to look at Green Day’s ‘coming out’ as a starkly anti-Bush band with ‘American Idiot’ to see that taking a side has its risks- the band were roundly decried for allegedly ‘jumping on the Bush-bashing bandwagon’). On top of that, one has to examine what exactly it is that Shikari hope to achieve. Sure, their call-and-response-heavy, chant-friendly anthems are good for getting the crowd going at a gig, but do they fall prey to the usual malady of musical idealists? Obviously there’s a limit to the amount a band can actually do, but for all their talk of tearing down the establishment, rarely do they veer towards proposing an alternative (at one point, Rou asserts that we were meant to build, not break, but there’s not a lot else to go on); for all their songs of unity and coming together, there is not one musical implication that they have a suggestion for how to achieve this. This is not to say that they don’t have any ideas- at the very least, the band has publicly and routinely decried the ever-popular Top Shop for their rarely-publicised use of cheap labour, and who’s to say that the album won’t come with material detailing Shikari’s further thoughts or links to who they support? But at the moment, they’re all style and not a lot of substance when it comes to politics and ideals. Come out in support of a party or a politician or a movement, state some aims and some ways to achieve them. It’s easier to criticise than it is to create, as Shikari themselves recognise, and while they get points for sheer convincing conviction at this point, to be more than just a singalong group playing the demagogue angle for cheap thrills, they’ve got to put their own alternative forward. Not to do so risks their considerable reputation, something I’d really rather not occur.

Giving Anything A Go

So I thought I’d try my hand at writing something for this world I’ve been going on about, and distract myself from going postal in the meantime.

* * * * *

Icarus stopped. Now he had got this far, he found he wanted to talk to the man who had done so much damage to the city.

In front of him, Merrymaker sat on a four-legged stool. He almost looked normal, clad in dark, uninteresting fabrics which would fit in anywhere in London. It was the mask that did it, the bright red ball-mask which hid his face from the nose up, pointed red horns jutting out from the top of the head in what would, on anyone else, look like a clichéd attempt at a demonic visage- but on this man it was menace, anonymous nihilism, revealing a mouth which grinned and twisted to some awful rhythm Icarus couldn’t perceive. He didn’t move, apart from a persistent twitch in his arms, a shudder which would spasm down to his hands and leave his fingers jolting as if he had an electric current running through him, but the rest of him seemed calm and controlled, and Icarus decided that he was the one who was meant to speak first.

 “Why are you like this?”

 “Why is rather a pointless question, don’t you think? Surely the only thing that matters is that I am, and the consequences of my being as such.”

 Icarus was surprised- Merrymaker didn’t sound mad. He didn’t sound like a man who had orchestrated the bombs and the murder and the flying rock and the blood; in fact, he sounded… normal, frighteningly normal. “Call me curious. I want to know what led you here. I want to know why I’m here, having to put you down.”

 A more pronounced twitch in the left arm. A vicious grin. “I’ll call you interested. I’ll call you someone who shares misfiring synapses. Why else would you call yourself ‘Sparrow-Hawk’, kit yourself out like this, cover your face? The papers say I’m mad. What’s your excuse?”

 “I’m stopping people like you,” said Icarus, feeling his eyes narrowing. “This country’s gone bad but it wasn’t always, and it doesn’t have to be. I was given a way to make things better. You honestly think I’d sit at a computer and spout off on, on the internet when I can actually do something?”

 “Ah, so you’ve got a plan. A blueprint, a manifesto, a hope, a good intention waiting to be soiled.” A noise escaped his lips, a half-giggle hinting at violence. That twitch again. “Plans are pointless. Plans are useless. Do you know why? Because there’s no rhyme or reason to,” he gestured sharply at the room around them, and Icarus flinched a little, “any of this. Anything. You can have dreams and desires, and the best-laid plans, and yet still something can hit you like a kick to the nuts faster than you can think, and there goes everything you wanted, everything you dreamed about. And that’s just the way it is.” Merrymaker stood up suddenly and lashed out with a foot, sending the stool crashing into a wall. He turned back to Icarus, and for the first time his eyes became visible in the half-light, and in them Icarus saw chaos. “It’s funnier that way. I saw that. It’s not a huge gap to cross, believe it or not. One day you’re laughing at an abortion joke and the next you’re laughing at abortion. You all come closer than you dare realise, and you justify it as ‘coping mechanisms’- you draw an arbitrary line in the muck and you think that’ll help you get up tomorrow morning.”

 He walked over to the window, past Icarus, and seemed to gaze out over the Thames. Outside it was raining, the kind that seemed half-hearted in its effort. “It had to happen here, really. I couldn’t’ve done this anywhere else. It wouldn’t’ve been right. This country’s been anaesthetised, drip-fed on television, handed dullards and been told they’re comedians. That’s funny in itself, if you think about it- the sheer double-think of it all, that we can be given something we know to be ‘red’, but it is called ‘blue’, and at most we shrug and ignore it. Apathy!” He was animated now, turning back to Icarus, movement in his body beyond the twitches, born of real energy rather than static shocks. “Apathy. Even apathy’s funny in a way. To have me so excited, so bent on this, and yet there are still people sat out there doing nothing while their country burns around them! People who will rot on their couches until somebody comes to them and makes them understand. It would be so appropriate- and it would be funny. Life is already a sketch show in its own right. I’m just adding some punch-lines.”

 He rounded on Icarus, clasped one terrifyingly normal hand on his shoulder and squeezed slightly. Icarus wondered if he’d finished, and then Merrymaker leaned in closely and smiled, almost sweetly. “We’re not that different, really. We both know that there’s nothing to this. There’s no guidance, no map, no plan. I just accept that and act accordingly. You need to convince yourself that what you do makes a difference, because… well, can our brains even process the alternative? You think: or I might end up like him. I’ll be honest with you, ‘Sparrow-Hawk’,” and now he smiled again, and there was anger in it, but just for a second, sadness too, “it was agony finding out. But frankly, I think I’m better off for it.”

 In a split-second, the smile became a manic angry grin, and Icarus realised too late that he’d been a fool. Merrymaker’s knee hammered into his groin. Instinctively he tried to scream, use his sonics, but the wind was knocked out of him, and as he doubled over, a fist cracked his jaw, sending him stumbling to the floor. Merrymaker pounced, a second punch dazing Icarus, and while he lay there the masked man retrieved a syringe from his pocket and stabbed it into Icarus’ neck. 

“Sorry about that… I really do need to get a bit of exercise, listen to me,” Merrymaker chided himself, breathing heavily, that awful twitch still present in the corner of Icarus’ eye. “That was a paralytic, by the way. None of your pesky shrieks to make things awkward, eh? These things last for, oh, I don’t know, ten, fifteen minutes, I think, I didn’t give you a large dose. Or check the label too closely for that matter. Here’s the fun bit- there may or may not be a bomb somewhere on the premises, and it may or may not be set to go off in twelve-and-a-half minutes. It’s also quite possible that it’s voice-deactivated. Almost wish I’d read that label now!”

Merrymaker knelt next to Icarus and patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. “If you can’t laugh, what can you do, hmm? Have fun, dear boy.” 

Woe Is Me!

Alas- my beloved Malignus is, as feared, not an original name at all! He is, by turns, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain, a hardcore punk band from Arizona or a member of the GameBanshee forums.

I has a sad.

An Age-Old Dispute

The timeless duel I refer to in my typically-uninspired title is that between the forces of Originality and… I’m not sure what to call the other side. Consistency? Someone tell me a word that sums up the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality. Bah, I’ll stick with Consistency for the minute- it serves my purpose if nothing else now that I’ve defined it. Originality versus Consistency. The denizens of pushing the boundaries pitted against the conservative streak inherent in humanity which, not unreasonably, has no particular inclination to give up something already demonstrated to work quite well enough, thank you very much. My patchy and judgmental gaze falls, in this instance, on the realm of computer games (though it could just as easily settle on cinema, on which, with just as much justification, I am also a self-proclaimed expert), in particular on a pair of offerings which tussled with the market in the run-up to Christmas and which I mentioned that I’d be tackling earlier in the month- Mirror’s Edge and Call of Duty: World at War, or more specifically, what happens when innovation combined with sometimes-sloppy implementation faces off against an entrenched urge to squeeze as much money as possible out of the consumer with the minimum expenditure. 

EA is actually known for the latter rather than the former, but in this instance it was the one which put its weight behind an original intellectual property, supposedly a manifestation of a rethought strategy which, assumedly, aims to convince gamers that EA is not actually a vehicle for Satan and all his devilish machinations, a concept a great many have not particularly much difficulty imagining. Though the release of Spore and the beginning of subsequent Sims-style milking does make one wonder at the level of heartfelt sincerity in this change of direction, it has at the very least given us games not burdened with a number tagged on, new IPs which dare to try something different, like the interface in Dead Space or the mere concept of our focus game, Mirror’s Edge. Conceive for a moment, if you will, what it must be like trying to get something like that green-lit in a market where it seems the vast majority of people just want to shoot Nazis, aliens and zombies (I know I’ve praised Left 4 Dead, but that’s more to do with the style of gameplay and the irreverent take on the genre than the fact that I just can’t get enough o’ dem zombies). This is a game in which you are encouraged to run away from a fight, not only by your mentor, Merc, who wisely advises you to avoid confrontation with armed guards, but also by the fact that the game has a sense of realism about a skinny girl taking on a gang of big guys wearing body armour with guns- you’ve got to be pretty good to survive face-to-faceconfrontations, using hit-and-run tactics to stay alive and hugging the cover as if your life depends on it, which I suppose it does. This is a game which cheerfully shrugs off the dull brown-and-grey realism which pervades so many games and utilises a stark, minimalist palette of bright primary colours. This is a game which, for the most part, puts puzzle-solving above combat. This is a game which is stylised, which has picked an image (and a sound- I’m absolutely in love with the soundtrack and its many remixes) for itself and which deservedly stands out from the pack as a result. It’s got its fair share of flaws, mind. For a game that puts you at such a disadvantage in a fight, Mirror’s Edge sure puts you in a few situations where fighting’s the only way to survive or progress, and where Faye’s understandable inability to stand up to the inevitable withering hail of gunfire which will be kicking up dust at your heels will ensure repeated death, reloading and incalculable frustration. Add to this the oft-cited criticism that the story is too short (nine chapters’ worth of material, which will take more or less time depending on the difficulty setting; on Easy, you could probably breeze through it in an evening if you weren’t getting all the hidden bags) and you’ve found yourself plenty of ammo for criticism.

In the opposite corner sits Call of Duty: World at War, the fifth game in the CoD series (but, somewhat confusingly, lacking in numbering). Courtesy of Activision’s frenzied desire to have a game from the franchise released once a year, production responsibilities shifted to Treyarch rather than Infinity Ward- the former were responsible for the beastly CoD 3, the latter for the original two games and the much-praised fourth installment, Modern Warfare, as well as a sequel for it that’s currently in development. Most don’t argue that the original CoD was like a shot of adrenaline in the arm, which the second iteration streamlined and improved before Infinity Ward dragged their series out of complacency with Modern Warfare, a desperately-needed breath of fresh air which dropped the franchise into a contemporary setting and added a riveting story, in stark comparison to the tired old World War 2 setting which we all already know the conclusion of. In a wider context, Modern Warfare is debatably just as cliché- the ex-Soviet villain and his Genericastan Arab allies could be right out of any Tom Clancy or Chris Ryan novel- but its variety of missions (note the superb ‘Ghillies In The Mist’ mission, and the part where you’re tasked with commanding the weapons of an AC-130 gunship), its moral flexibility (the bad guys have justification, the good guys aren’t saints) and its shocking story twists (rarely will you come across a moment in a game as impressive as the nuclear explosion and your dying character’s brief, agonising crawl through a helicopter’s wreckage), combined with the polish and refinement it has on just about everything it does, are enough to dismiss almost any doubts.

Look at me, I ended up waxing lyrical about Modern Warfare when I wanted to discuss World At War. 

Treyarch have tried. You can see it in the game. They saw that Infinity Ward had made something special and they tried, bless them. But somewhere along the line the decision was made to send the franchise back to World War 2, and no amount of polish can take away from the fact that this just wasn’t a good choice. One mustn’t ignore the game’s good points, of which some do exist: the addition of a bayonetted weapon to the Japanese campaign has proved highly satisfying, as has the arrival of the flamethrower; chucking collectibles (‘Death Cards’) into the game was a nice touch; the visual style adopted in the cut scenes is impressive; the Nazi Zombie mode unlocked upon completing the campaign adds a much-needed multiplayer cooperative option, ala Gears of War 2’s Horde. But too much just smacks of trying to emulate the previous game’s successes, like levels that try to be carbon copies of the sneaking and aircraft missions in Modern Warfare. Where that was realistically grey in its portrayal of mendefending their countries and made you give a damn about Gaz and Price, here we have an ugly, crude and macho outlook which convinces itself that it’s making a stark example at war but in reality just glories in it all, trumpeting the old lines about heroes and duty between missions while characters bellow and snarl and demonise as they gun down hordes of identikit Nazis and Japanese, who are given as much sympathy as cockroaches. There’s no narrative, just the familiar old WW2 routine of pushing onwards to the eventual victory we know is coming, and along the way Gary Oldman sounds indistinguishable and Kiefer Sutherland alternates between being bored and angry- what’s the point in having recognisable voice talent if they’re going to be impossible to spot or phone it in?

General opinion on World at War has criticised the return to WW2. The smart gamer doesn’t want to kill Nazis anymore- at least, not in a manner that’s so formulaic and distasteful. One only has to look to the best television and films on the Second World War to see that the greatest examples treat the Germans as what they are- human. That’s not to say that they didn’t need a good pwning, but Band of Brothers doesn’t just set the Wehrmacht up to be the Imperial Stormtroopers of the piece, and that’s what games need to do. Thinking about it, they need to either get out of the Second World War altogether or find a new way of dealing with it. Gone is the excitement of reliving Normandy, the North African Campaign, Stalingrad, etc. We’ve done it all, and the lack of variation can only get you so far in future. 

And yet, in spite of critical disdain, the game has sold bucket-loads, while Mirror’s Edge and its ilk have gone relatively unnoticed, at least in terms of sales. Why? You can only really blame gamers themselves- if we buy this stuff it’s no surprise publishers and developers are going to keep offering it to us, especially when they go out of their way to offer us alternatives and we just lap up the gruel. How can we lay all the blame for churning out piles of sequels at the feet of huge companies like EA when the public spurns its offerings which actually do show glimmers of creativity? It’s quite depressing in and of itself to think that a game as crude and ugly as World at War gets a wider audience than something as fresh and inspiring as Mirror’s Edge. Sadly, given the human preference for stability over change, even if that change is a good one, this state of affairs is unlikely to change any time soon.

Modern-Day Witch Doctors

I’m on the warpath.

I couldn’t tell you at which point specifically I came to the conclusion that Man, in all his rational, logical glory, is the ideal. Perhaps it was when I first heard about humanism in a primary school assembly- I like to date it back to this, personally. Over time, my opinions have hardened, taken the form of a principle that it is Man who needs to be, and can be, in control. Not gods, not nature, not kings. Over time humanity has gradually bested everything that has been thrown at us, and I believe that we will continue to follow this track. I’m hardly the most patriotic of people, but Churchill really was onto something when he said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the other ones which have been tried, and in that vein I believe that humanity has never reached such a pinnacle as has been achieved in contemporary Western civilisation. That’s not to say I think it’s perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination- but it’s better than anything that’s come before. More people are better off than ever, technology is more advanced than ever, we are more pluralist than ever. The forces of science and reason have never had such great success as they have enjoyed in the 20th and 21st century.

So why, then, do we still allow quacks to practise medicine?

I’m gunning for homeopathy. On a different day, it might be Christians or Muslims or theists in general. Maybe Daily Mail readers. Today it’s homeopathy. Somewhere along the line people allowed themselves to be convinced that drinking water had a viable medical effect, and that trusting fraudsters was a better strategy than taking the advice of a real doctor. Somewhere along the line it became accepted fact that taking something diluted so much that you would need a bottle bigger than the planet to actually get any of the substance the bottle was said to contain was a great idea. Somewhere along the line, society nodded and agreed to this notion that mysticism and spirituality was the way to deal with health problems.

The point at which this bizarre notion entered the public consciousness was 1807- the beginning of the god-damn 19th century, when people were still treating amputations with boiling oil- and was the work of one Samuel Hahnemann, who, sensibly, disagreed that blood-letting should be an accredited technique and instead came to the conclusion that diseases had spiritual causes as well as physical. Wait, what? Yeah, that’s right. Spiritual. Vitalism, the view of living organs Hahnemann stood by, was debunked in the 20th century thanks to germ theory and advances in chemistry. Meanwhile, his ‘law of similars’-inspired homeopathy took off in popularity, at the very least achieving the abandonment of more archaic practises, people being understandably more willing to undergo a treatment which promised a significant lack of pain as opposed to, say, purging. Yet even early on, people were making the same astute criticisms of homeopathy which they are still having to make today- Sir John Forbes, physician to Queen Victoria, said that homeopathy, with its meaninglessly small doses, was laughably ridiculous and “an outrage to human reason” (Homeopathy, Allopathy and Young Physic, 1846). By the early 20th century it was dying out- the last American school teaching it closed in 1920. It should be gone, like lead-based make-up, but has somehow conspired to effect an Optimus Prime-like resurrection.

Let’s look at what homeopathy does these days before any more history comes out to play. It works by taking an ingredient and then diluting it down to the point where there are, at best, only the most minute traces of it left in the final dose, using the centesimal or “C scale”, diluting a substance by a factor of 100 at each stage. A 2C dilution, for example, would require the original substance to have been broken down into 100 parts, and then for one of those parts to have been broken down into a further 100 parts, one of which would go into the final dose. The recommended dilution for homeopathic remedies is 30C. The Society of Homeopaths website itself admits that homeopathic remedies”are diluted to such a degree that not one molecule of the original substance can be detected”. The concentration of arsenic- arsenic!- legally acceptable in drinking water in the USA is 4C. Hopefully that gives a bit of perspective as to what you’re getting in one of these things, i.e., NOTHING. A 30C dilution would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient. If a 30C solution did actually contain one molecule of the original substance, it would require a bottle 30 million times the size of the Earth, as noted by Robert L. Park, former executive director of the American Physical Society. Ben Goldacre of the Guardian’s Bad Science column observes: 

At a homeopathic dilution of 100C, which they sell routinely, and which homeopaths claim is even more powerful than 30C, the treating substance is diluted by more than the total number of atoms in the universe. Homeopathy was invented before we knew what atoms were, or how many there are, or how big they are. It has not changed its belief system in light of this information.

Surely something this dilute can’t affect anything? Wrong, apparently- the Society of Homeopaths site educates us thus: “It is thought that [the process of succussion] imprints the healing energy of the medicinal substance throughout the body of water (the diluent) as if a message is passed on.” At this point one starts to feel like banging one’s head against a wall and weeping at the stupidity of it all- water memory? Oh, come on. In spite of the obvious contradiction, homeopaths refer to solutions which are more diluted as having a greater potency, even though their end product is, more often than not, indistinguishable from the dilutant. James Randi, magician and debunker, has offered £1 million to anyone who can actually prove this unusual proposal- as he says, “unusual claims require unusually good proof.” To date, nobody has claimed this prize. Similarly, the Ernst-Singh Homeopathic Challenge has offered a £10,000 prize if anyone can manage to come up with proof- it remains to be seen whether homeopaths will rise to the challenge, but history suggests that they won’t.

Why, then, do people use homeopathic remedies? They don’t work, functioning as a placebo at best. The whole notion of water-memory runs counter to the laws of chemistry and physics, and there is no evidence for it. Richard Dawkins states what you’d think would be the obvious: “”Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn’t. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some ‘alternative’ sense” (foreword to Snake Oil by John Diamond). But apparently it’s not obvious- people cling to the belief that homeopathy has magical properties. They maintain that they get better with homeopathy, so clearly it works for them. Many openly confess they know it’s a placebo effect. It’s either that or regression to the mean. Surely if homeopathic remedies work as they are claimed to, then they’ll stand up to trials. Ben Goldacre helps us out again:

Here is a model trial for homeopathy. You take, say, 200 people, and divide them at random into two groups of 100. All of the patients visit their homeopath, they all get a homeopathic prescription at the end (because homeopaths love to prescribe pills even more than doctors) for whatever it is that the homeopath wants to prescribe, and all the patients take their prescription to the homeopathic pharmacy. Every patient can be prescribed something completely different, an “individualised” prescription – it doesn’t matter.

Now here is the twist: one group gets the real homeopathy pills they were prescribed (whatever they were), and the patients in the other group are given fake sugar pills. Crucially, neither the patients, nor the people who meet them in the trial, know who is getting which treatment.

This kind of trial has been done again and again, and there is to this day no conclusive proof that homeopathy works. Early homeopathic trials demonstrated major methodological weaknesses which cast serious doubt on their findings; the Lancet has concluded that homeopathy is nothing more than the placebo effect; the Cochrane Library has found insufficient evidence to assert that homeopathy is beneficial for asthma, dementia, osteo-arthritis or migraines. The UK NHS, the American Medical Association and the FASEB have all concluded “that there is no convincing scientific evidence to support the use of homeopathic treatments in medicine” (thanks, Wikipedia). Doctors and universities are increasingly turning against homeopathy- the previously-mentioned Dr. Edzard Ernst of Exeter University, Britain’s first professor of complementary medicine, who you might expect to be the poster-child of homeopathy, has denounced it: “Homeopathic remedies don’t work. Study after study has shown it is simply the purest form of placebo. You may as well take a glass of water than a homeopathic medicine.” In 2007, the NHS withdrew funds for a homeopathic hospital after a public consultation, reasoning that the money could be better spent elsewhere. In 2008, GPs were prescribing almost half as many homeopathic remedies as in 2006. This year, the universities of Salford and Westminster have followed the lead of the University of Central Lancashire in turning their back on homeopathy. Research professors dismiss it and band together to implore the government to take sensible action on alternative medicine. There is a wealth of evidence out there that demonstrates that homeopathic remedies do not work and that intelligent people at the tops of their fields know that they do not work.

Phew, that’s a lot of links.

So? homeopaths and their supporters might argue, what’s the big deal? It doesn’t hurt anybody. If somebody can take a placebo and get better, why does it matter what it is they take? Let’s start with the fact that it medicalises problems which would otherwise be shrugged off. Then there’s ethical concerns- if a practitioner prescribes homeopathic remedies, he or she is either deceiving the patient by claiming that they do work, or he/she is not aware that they don’t work, and hence, not familiar with the data on the topic, and therefore not competent to prescribe them. And there are very real problems about what happens when a homeopath’s opinion is taken as a genuine medical one- Goldacre observes that “One study found that more than half of all the homeopaths approached advised patients against the MMR vaccine for their children, acting irresponsibly on what will quite probably come to be known as the media’s MMR hoax”, and also that “A BBC Newsnight investigation found that almost all the homeopaths approached recommended ineffective homeopathic pills to protect against malaria, and advised against medical malaria prophylactics, while not even giving basic advice on bite prevention.” These are not the sort of people who should be practising what they are claiming is medicine. Where Western medicine has a culture of self-critique and analysis, homeopathy ignores its negative testing and the mountains of criticism, turning a blind eye to its failures and continuing to perpetuate its fraud upon us. I’ll let the oft-quoted Mr. Goldacre finish up here:

When I’m feeling generous, I think: homeopathy could have value as placebo, on the NHS even, although there are ethical considerations, and these serious cultural side-effects to be addressed. But when they’re suing people instead of arguing with them, telling people not to take their medical treatments, killing patients, running conferences on HIV fantasies, undermining the public’s understanding of evidence and, crucially, showing absolutely no sign of ever being able to engage in a sensible conversation about the perfectly simple ethical and cultural problems that their practice faces, I think: these people are just morons.

That about sums it up, I think.

Simulated Buggery = Good Show

I find that hoping for good things to happen is highly counterproductive, because it only seems to lead to bad things happening, and, hence, disappointment, misery, tears, death, etc. Instead I try to pursue a life of unpresuming readiness, committing to as little as possible so as to be able to react as best I can to opportunities, rare though they are, and setbacks (altogether more frequent). So last night, I was expecting only to finish my first day of work and head home on the train, maybe to eat a pie and watch some episodes of The West Wing before collapsing into bed, courtesy of not having had to get up before Whenever I Damn Well Please O’Clock for four months now and hence being a bit taken aback by getting back into a morning commute. I most certainly was not expecting to end up at the Electric Ballroom in Camden watching a trouserless lady play occasionally-discordant piano while mimes simulated strap-on-enhanced sodomy on stage. Turns out I saw Amanda Palmer, of Dresden Dolls fame, and I was frankly surprised by how enjoyable I found what was essentially a piece of burlesque musical theatre. Of particular note was a song called ‘Oasis’, a delightfully upbeat song about date-rape, abortion and becoming a crack-whore, which had its tongue wedged firmly in its cheek and which pushed all my internal ‘dark humour’ buttons. Surprise surprise, then, to find that her label Roadrunner Records (who are themselves hardly spotless) have had trouble getting UK stations- including, rather shamefully, Kerrang! and Scuzz, who should in theory be happy to showcase such alternative material- to play it, as it is “making light of rape, religion and abortion“. I shake my head in wonder and ponder what has happened to a country supposedly so at home with black comedy, a country with a reputation for relative nonchalance when it comes to things like this. It’s supposed to be the US which has issues with censorious radio and television stations, not Britain. Hell, Family Guy and American Dad run all manner of cancer and disability jokes in America- on FOX!- and get away with it. Bizarrely, the BBC (who banned, amongst others, the Sex Pistols and Frankie Goes To Hollywood songs) quite happily aired ‘Oasis’, which is something to be relieved about. Getting jokes out of bleak subjects is a coping mechanism, a way of robbing terrible things of their power to make us afraid and upset, and it works too- just ask Frankie Boyle, who’s turned making jokes about rape, drugs, paedophilia and death into an increasingly-lucrative and ever-hilarious career. The day we stop being allowed to indulge in morbid and bad-taste jokes is the day cancer, AIDS, dying, substance abuse and all the other terrible things about life get the better of us, and what use is there in that? What point is there to living when existence ends up so weighed down by over-sincerity and earnestness about unpleasant subjects? Religion, abortion, death- it all needs satirising, it all needs making fun of, because if it wasn’t it would be impossible to deal with. And that’s not a pleasant conclusion.

Amanda Palmer talks at great length about the topic in her blog, if you’re interested.
And here’s the video for ‘Oasis’.

Gloriously Grey Television

Before I go anywhere else, I want to ask: what the hell is the deal with this Twitter nonsense? It’s the ultimate in internet egotism- the assumption that other people are interested in every minute dribble that somehow oozes out of your synapses and onto the web in mini-fish finger sandwich-size bites. You stick it on your page and it lets you pose people the question: What am I doing right now? It could, alternatively, pose a different one: please will someone pay some attention to me and validate my existence? Is anyone genuinely so invested in another person’s life that they need to be updated 24/7 on what they’re doing? Are someone’s to-ings and fro-ings so god-damn mesmerising that you need a constant drip-feed of their actions and thoughts? NO FOR FUCK’S SAKE. People who ‘tweet’ need to stop assuming it means that they’re some sort of post-modern social networker and realise that they’re just self-indulgent wankers who for some reason feel the need to share the most trivial of information. And then, ideally, stop doing it.

Ok, now that’s out of the way…

I said I’d do some sort of ‘best of 2008′ for television at some point, and I guess I had best stick to that. What is a ‘blogger’ (ugh, five months on from starting this and I still hate that term) without his word, hmm? Yes, a more long-winded and only slightly less presumptuous version of someone who uses Twitter, but that’s besides the point. As I mentioned in the last post on the topic, I don’t actually watch much television. Lost, Heroes, House, The Big Bang Theory, Family Guy, American Dad, Robot Chicken, Battlestar Galactica, 24. That’s pretty much my range. Other stuff will venture onto the horizon infrequently- Planet Earth held my gaze week in, week out a couple of years back; the remake of Survivors got my attention and then failed to hold it; Stargate SG1 and The West Wing used to be regular time-sinks. So that’s established: I don’t watch soaps, I hold Top Gear in the highest of contempt and you won’t ever catch me watching a period drama.

One noticeable fact about almost everything I’ve mentioned is that it’s American, which I consider a little tragic- the Anglophile in me used to be very proud of British television, but the fact that the Yanks have considerably more money to pour into this stuff, plus a greater variety of television, means that inevitably there’s going to be more of it, and hence more good stuff (one filters out bilge like Gossip Girl, The Hills and CSI) via simple numbers. It really doesn’t hurt that some of it is genuinely challenging stuff either, I suppose. On the whole, the UK doesn’t have a lot to compete with this. Even the BBC struggles to achieve the level of visual gloss that HBO, Fox etc can manage, as Dr. Who and Torchwood attest- it has to collaborate with companies across the pond to come up with stuff that looks as wonderful as The State Within, so usually tries to steer clear. There are things it does very well, like the already-mentioned Planet Earth- for some reason it’s developed a great affinity for glorious sweeping documentaries. For the smattering of challenging stuff, one has to venture to Channel 4 and its hyperactive offspring E4, where the highlight was (emphasis on past tense here) Skins, the second season of which was dark, tragic and emotional, and which has since been bastardised by its third season, but more on that another time. In fact, though I need to remind myself of this since it feels like a lifetime ago already, Skins’ second season was in 2008, and so if it weren’t for the winner’s existence then it would probably have won. Tony’s recovery from being hit by a bus, the Maxxi-Anwar-Sketch triangle, Sid’s evolution into a stronger character, Cassie’s destructive tendencies, Chris’ death- Skins wove bleak and smart together with the cheeky humour of the first season, and, aside from some ‘what the…?!?’ moments in the last couple of episodes (mostly the whole ‘Cassie goes to New York wtf’ thing), was some pretty high-class television.

It’s no shame to lose to this winner, mind, even if the competition was basically a done thing as soon as it entered the race. I talk, of course, of House, which we Brits can take a smidgen of pride from on account of the fact that the genius American doctor is played, with clear delight and an undetectable accent, by a British thespian. This year has seen the end of season 4 and the start of season 5, and in that time it has demonstrated time and time again why it is just the best thing on the box. It follows a simple formula- a medical mystery, around which the cast’s story progresses- but from this has come four and a half seasons of genius writing, genuine drama and black comedy unmatched by anything else. One can debate the qualities of the old team versus the new team, but it’s an argument which has been rendered largely moot by the inclusion of Chase, Cameron and Foreman in the show as recurring characters, tying them into their replacements and opening up greater avenues for storytelling, rather than simply replacing them and having to play out similar plots with new actors, as lesser shows might’ve done. The show’s arrangement (character suffers medical problem, House’s team tries to diagnose, patient gets gradually worse until revelation is hit upon, patient lives/patient dies) is bucked every now and again with differently-paced episodes, like ‘One Day, One Room’ in season 3, in which House deals with a girl who’s been raped and will only talk to him, which do enough to keep things interesting that the relative similarity of the structure of most episodes never becomes a problem. Similarly, the necessarily-unrealistic nature of the characters, notably their insistence on guessing at each others’ personal motives the whole time, is a flaw only insofar as it becomes a tool for amusing digs at the show rather than as a basis for genuine criticism- through it we are given deeper characters and a show which actively explores the way people feel about a huge variety of issues. 

House himself has remained remarkably static as a character- he has to, for the show to work- though this is offset by occasional revelations that he doesn’t want to be miserable, notably during his hallucination at the end of season four, which can believably be brushed off to ensure he remains the House we know and love, though at a safe distance. House’s profound atheism, misanthropy and rationalism, though frequently the views that win out in arguments (possibly owing more to his style of brow-beating than to the coherence of his opinions), are pitted fairly and honestly against opposing view-points and, indeed, stances everywhere on the relevant scales, to the point where genuine discussion is prompted post-viewing about the issues raised in the show, everything from religion through to the nature of lying via whether it’s possible to be happy. Along the way it hands us real rounded characters who, though they might be magical super-doctors trained in everything from surgery to diagnostics, offer both real entertainment and real provocation about the way we think and the way we act. Frankly, you can’t ask for more than that from a 45 minute television programme.

Dawn of Frustration

I bought Soulstorm back in March last year. I suffered through a rubbish single player campaign and a buggy multiplayer that wasn’t fixed for bloody ages. I patiently endured the drip-feed of new Dawn of War 2 information, playing down any worries I may have had about new things I was hearing, reigning in increasing excitement. Then last night I was up til midnight in time to download the Beta from Steam, having registered my Soulstorm CD key a week in advance. I waited 45 minutes (three quarters of an hour to download over 2 GB of data’s quite impressive…). I installed. I waited some more.

ACCESS DENIED.

The horrible horrible Windows error noise announced to me, with crushing disappointment riding in its side-car, that I lacked suitable hardware.

I knew this might be a problem, but for some bizarre reason I had hoped against hope that my now-aging rig (I’ve had it since spring 2005) could handle it- it managed Relic’s previous offering, Company of Heroes, with a bit of an effort, and apparently Dawn of War 2’s got much better optimisation. Still, as the Librarian noted in the first game, hope is the first step on the road to disappointment. I was asking for it. Now all that’s left is to read the forums while people play away, and hope that I can sponge a game or two off one of my friends and their vastly-superior PCs.

Oh for a pay-day, so I can afford to spend £100 on a new processor and graphics card! Can’t start this new job soon enough…

In other news, I will actually be making another ‘best of 2008′ post as soon as I can be bothered. As long as it’s still January when I make them, I think I’m alright.

And for fuck’s sake, shut up about Obama already. It’s one thing for Yanks to get excited- he is their president, after all- but you’d think the British would get off the bandwagon already.

Jet Black New Year

When in doubt, lob a song title in for the heading (thanks for that, Thursday).

So it’s 2009, which I fully expect to suck as much as 2008 did but am desperately hoping won’t. I do have things to say, but inevitably I put them off quite a lot until the one day I do decide to actually sit down and do some writing and then all my blog posts end up as being done on one day. So I think I’ll try and save the in-depth piece on Mirror’s Edge vs Call of Duty: World at War for another time, and instead do what is half cop-out, half publication tradition, and write a ‘Best Of…’ entry. Still, upon dwelling on this topic further, it occurs to me that as a general recluse when it comes to popular mediums, I’m fairly unable to comment on the vast majority of what’ll’ve been released this year. Being the coward I am, I had no intention of watching the allegedly-brilliant Dead Set, and having briefly glimpsed Gossip Girl (I didn’t want to link it, but in the interests of objectivity I felt I had no choice) I have no idea how such a glossy vapid piece of shit managed to even get nominated for TV.com’s Show of the Year 2008 (admittedly that’s a purely American site, and one does question the value of an awards system where the closest-fought result is in the ‘Hottest Actress’ category). I haven’t watched 18 of IMDB’s top 25 films of the year. I have actually played PS3 games, though they were either also available on the Xbox or solely racing games; and I think the one time I engaged in any Wii action was to play the new Super Smash Brothers game. For the most part, the only books I’ve read have been history-related- the closest I’ve come to fiction was an account of a Japanese textbook which got creative with its history.

So do bear, when reading the following, that when it comes to awarding the sought-after ‘best of 2008′ award I have about as much experience with television and all the rest as you can expect from a geeky 22-year-old whose idea of a good time is an hour-long Dawn of War game accompanied by a pizza.

Edit: having spent quite some time writing over a thousand words just about computer games, I think I’ll put ‘Best Film’ etc off until tomorrow.

Best Computer Game
A suspiciously strong showing from interactive entertainment in the last twelve months. Gears of War 2 improved massively on its predecessor in terms of story, variety and multiplayer; Fallout 3 provided a vast world of huge possibilities; Left 4 Dead saw Valve applying their trademark brilliance to the zombie apocalypse; Soul Caliber 4 took another step towards fighting game perfection; Mirror’s Edge was witness to EA publishing something new, innovative and beautiful; Motorstorm: Pacific Rift took blowing up monster trucks to a new level; GTA4 took Rockstar to Niko-inspired new heights.

Frankly it’s difficult to make a call, and I’m sure there are games that deserve to win that I just haven’t touched. Sins of a Solar Empire is, by all accounts, brilliant (and its shunning of hated DRM has earned it community acclaim); Metal Gear Solid 4 may well be amazing, but, unfortunately, I grew too tired of having to sit through hours of cut scenes when I could only play it on my friends’ PS3 so I gave up on it; Dead Space would’ve had me wetting myself, and as such I avoided it. And so on.

If it came down to ‘the game that came out in 2008 which I played the most’, the answer would, I imagine, be Dawn of War: Soulstorm, but since that’s not how we’re defining this, it gets a thumbs down for memory leaks which make single player intolerably boring, a stripped-down and less enjoyable campaign which consists mostly of a series of skirmishes, badly-implemented flying units, being alarmingly buggy on release and very poor patch support from Relic following the collapse of Iron Lore right before the game came out. As it stands, however… boy, this really is pretty hard actually. Part of me wants to hand it to Mirror’s Edge for sheer virtue of originality, visual style and music, but alas, its flaws (too short, too overly frustrating in places) preclude the game taking the top spot. Another part of me wants to give it to Gears of War 2- a great story which includes riding a Brumak, shelling Locust, machine-gunning Locust, chainsawing Locust, curb-stomping Locust and cutting through the insides of a giant worm and which also manages to squeeze in some genuine empathy and sadness is surely deserving. Alas, sloppy matchmaking in multiplayer really lets it down, something not helped by the lack of immediacy the game itself tends towards once you’re in the game. That said, Horde mode is delicious.

I think my decision ultimately comes down to the game I’ve had the most fun with, and also the game that shows the most potential to grow, and that game is Left 4 Dead. Almost entirely multiplayer in its conception, Valve have used the Source engine to create a masterpiece of entertainment which lets you live out your own zombie movies or, alternatively, grief the crap out of randomers online as the zombies. It’s got its downsides- without friends to fight with, it can get quite frustrating just playing with the AI or against strangers online whose brain-nomming abilities are considerably superior to yours. But to hold that against Left 4 Dead is to ignore that that’s not what you’re meant to be doing with it. You’re meant to be rounding up fellow survivors and helping each other out, keeping each other alive because you depend on each other to make it through to the next safe room… or alternatively you can team-kill all the way, getting ever-more hilarious revenge for the deeds of the previous map which you’d agreed to put behind you. And let’s not disregard the wealth of user- and developer-created content which can vastly extend the lifespan of the game- even without proper mod-tools (the community’s using Half-Life tools right now I think, but don’t quote me on that), people are still working on awesome-looking additions already. Obviously it’ll be easier for the PC to get its own mods, but surely it’ll be simple as pie for Valve to license the best user-created maps and port them to the Xbox.

So step forward, Left 4 Dead, and take a well-deserved bow.
Best of 2008!