playing and dreaming Uncharted 3

There’s an irony in the continual assertion of ‘immersive’ qualities in Uncharted. While it has the detail and animation to seem consistently ‘real world’, the world which Naughty have constructed is a childhood fantasy, dream realms for which their characters – human seeming but really sculpted from perfection, can fill with their ego and exploits. It’s jarring, much in the same way the often spoken upon ludo-narrative dissonance (that is the protagonist being a humanized everyman that ruthlessly butchers hundreds of third world mercenaries) and while the mechanics of the world are essentially fantasy, it wears the thin veil of the real world.  Because what is the world we’re really in right now? The characters are all written to fit in a generic simulacrum of modern time people and so in that regard Nathan Drake, the protagonist, is a simulacrum of modern traits (smartarse, American) but he comes from nowhere specifically. We learn, in flashbacks to his childhood, that Nathan Drake is a fake name. Even as a child he is in the process of inventing himself, making the name and stealing  Sir Francis Drake’s ring, so to frame himself as a descendant of greatness. This is exactly the same process the developers are going through, creating a hero bigger than any one person, real or fictitious. We learn that Drake was raised in a catholic orphanage, where he learned Latin. This too sounds like an invention – a character mockingly calls it ‘Dickensian’.  It is, and like everything about the game and its characters taking place against a wan, facelessly modern background. Rootless and baseless, just like the carefully unspecific details behind everyone. It may sound pedantic, particularly in comparison to the games pulp influences – but we knew with Indiana Jones the understated but crucial fact that he was a Harvard professor.  Where is Nathan Drake? Why do we gravitate towards him?

The answer is simple but not sufficient. He’s the hero we dream to be. It’s an escapist fantasy. True. But in filmic and novelized examples of similar pulp, we’re at a distance from our subject. And there’s more talking. The action, in which Indiana Jones may end up killing a few bad guys feel incidental and reactionary, briefly portrayed but not lingered over. But things are very different with video games. Firstly, Uncharted is a shooting series. This means there is less time talking than there is shooting, or more precisely, killing. We are also more intimately inhabiting the space of the hero and doing so for much longer. We can perhaps indulge in Drake more easily if he were constrained to a two hour film in which we see everything the filmmaker wants us too – but with games we have a more active role in creating our own perceptions.

Uncharted then operates an awkward space. It wants to be like the controlled frames of a cinematic adventure, but it has to deal with us and our imperfections as players, as well as action game conventions. There is less time for a real world than there is for a pretty world and that leaves us with a game that strides an unsettling place that looks modern enough for us to believe we are human, mortal and real people in the moment –to-moment excitement (Oh no! Drake almost fell to his death again!) but with extended periods of time there is something not quite right, the world around Drake seems a cardboard set in front of which he poses, trying to look cool. Somehow I find it easier to deal with a world in which the fantasy is upfront.  In a fantasy like Prince of Persia 08 or Lord of The rings, we can view behaviour and actions within a context that is made clear to us. Even the 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia, which contained the mildly irritating anachronism of ancient Iran being inhabited by two glib Americans was quelled by the games grandiose and magical fantasy world – one that elicited a suspension of disbelief instantly and cleanly. What about Uncharted? If we don’t look too closely, we can believe that we’re in some Nepalese Warzone (as in the second game) but if we do look we might just wonder when and why this is exactly happening. The world and Drake are an everyman in that they end up feeling generic. 

Uncharted 3 attempts to address some of these issues, but ends up mostly failing. By this point in the series I did not think I would be taken in by another entry.  The more you play, the more the stunning environments feel apart from the game. Tone has also been an issue, after the first game they’ve tried juggling light-pulp with darker drama, and it can sometimes feel clumsy. To date the the game with the cleanest suspension of reality was the first one. Partially because we had not seen many protagonists like Nathan Drake before in video games; slim figured, real sounding, plucky and reacting vulnerably to danger. But also because the game was so contained; its setting was a small abandoned island. Confined to this one area the whole thing felt like an intimate scuffle, the world itself easily identifiable by pulp adventure tropes. We were the hero because we needed to be, there were pirates because pirates are assholes. When the Ancient Gold turned out to be cursed so as to turn people into Zombies it was thrilling – but also funny because it was recognizable amongst the light-hearted landscape of referential pulp. By the end our three heroes sailed off into the sunset with a chest of Gold. Every aspect – pirates, uninhabited islands, lost treasure and rogue- become- hero protagonist fit seamlessly within certain Narrative and cinematic gestures. It was put-on, put perfectly so, like the flagrant cinematic genre fantasies you might find in a Tarantino film.

There are moments like that in later games, a dramatic reservoir-dogs walk across a London street with companions- it makes me think, to what degree do I keep playing these games because I’m taken in by Nathan Drake’  strut?

***                                                                                 

When I was a kid the first favourite game I had was Crash Bandicoot. Also by Naughty Dog, and also with a protagonist strut that fascinated me.  I was so wound up in Crash I would mimic his mongaliodal movements, swinging my head from side to side as I threw up my arms. I was so fascinated by him, what the fuck was he? When did he wear jeans? The world of his seemed more like ours and less of the dreampop of Mario and Sonic. There were cryptic, human tribespeople who would kill me for merely trespassing on their land. The geography was of the real world, not floating in psychedelic colours.  There were a series of fucked up animal creatures, possibly created by the scientists villains, having escaped and maybe, like Crash does at the start of the first game, washed up on the shores of a nameless island. There was a whole mystery about it and I tried to find every hidden cut scene and piece together a story in my head that would neatly connect the fucked up animal humanoid things to the magical floating mask men.

I realize now that Naughty Dog has always followed trends with genre. In the ps1/n64 they made platformers (Crash Bandicoot) with ps2/xbox it was sandbox action adventures (Jak and Daxter) and with the PS3 it’s all about shooters (and most recently survival shooters with The Last of Us) but they’ve carved out an identity for themselves, most consistently with their animation and environmental design.  With Crash Bandicoot, there was all this mystery that was their just to add colour to a forced perspective plat former, but there was also this whole implied ecosystem you could take away from it, as you worked you’re way through a couple of islands as a strange fucked up animal. In a context where the hero is only the hero because he had a funny wolfish grin on his face, hostility between all made sense. It didn’t need a princess and an evil king.  Then with the following instalments that element got obscured until it was lost. Naughty Dog had gained success with the character so they kept him and changed everything else, making more varied but less intriguing platformers, with warp rooms and time travelling, there was no longer a centralized setting. What was lost would not return until the character was sold and Crash Twin-sanity was made, years later.

Jak and Daxter and Uncharted follow a similar course. They all start out on a mysterious couple of islands, making a very isolated first game, with touches of atmosphere. Then things ramp up and change. I’m not trying to bore you with the argument that Uncharted is a better game than it’s sequels – it simply isn’t, the second and third game are better shooters and are better paced. There is less atmosphere but the environments are more detailed and there are occasionally a few cool ways of interacting with it. No longer is it entirely look but not touch. But they resonate with less mystery.   

I do think there is something lost though and I think that might be why I get so wrapped up in the way the characters move.  Naughty Dog want you to love their landscape, you climb all over the damn thing, practically hugging it, but the only constant for us in an often loud, abrasive series is Drake. The series to me ultimately becomes about him and his body, the way it moves and what happens to it. It goes back to the vulnerability that made him so interesting to begin with, but is constantly coming into conflict with being a power fantasy shooter. A power fantasy dressed as a vulnerability fantasy sounds like gaming neurosis and maybe that’s partially why I have such complicated feelings towards an ostensibly simple, mainstream action series.

***

Uncharted 3 wants to be about fear.  It’s as if the developers realize they can’t keep making his physical vulnerability compelling, so they decide to wax psychological on it,  camp British villainess telling him that he ‘gets off an all this’ so what’s he really scared of? The answer is pretty simple, he’s got parental issues, probably manifesting themselves as abandonment issues, which can only be deepened by the kind of picaresque lifestyle he seems to leads. Also people afraid of being abandoned often abandon others, and isn’t It interesting that in the unspoken space between each game Drake presumably leaves his One-True-Love Elena to get back into a life of bone breaking thievery and unlicensed archaeology. So in a way, though these games always have too many gunfights and the enemies always soak up way too many bullets to maintain mobility and tension, there’s an effort to psychologically develop Drake and bridge the dissonance.  There’s even attempts to make him less generic, as I mentioned earlier, and they don’t go all the way or convince except once; a scene which shows Drake to actually be a nerd, much to the contrast of both his friends and the invisible ‘everyman’ (When Sully knows some history Drake is about to tell them, him and Chloe fist-bump) Drake is an obsessive nerd and he fears absence, specifically a parental absence that Sully has filled. Sully being the guy who is almost getting killed most of the time, usually because of Drake. These are some pretty cool developments that promise early on for there to be an evolution in the series, except narratively rather than simply tighter gameplay. It’ doesn’t deliver though because these themes are not expressed in a whole lot of ways besides text. The plot is nonsensical and the only way the developers can seem to find to express fear through mechanics is being chased by giant spiders. Yeah.  I’m pretty sure spiders as absent parental metaphor was not the most thought out or intended part of the story.

Their attempts to marry gameplay to narrative theme are entirely in isolated instances. For instance there are a lot of chases in this game, meaning Drake is on the whipping end of a lot of conflict. Some of these chases (like the giant spider one) move with a shaky, constantly moving camera that gives the feeling of a dream. An early one has army men in suits rising up from the small streets of Cartagena, and whether intended or not, it feels a bit surreal. More so they add psychological fuck-buggery to Drake’s endless traumas. So to list a few, he’s fallen on his back from high heights, been punched, shot, tortured, almost drowned, almost frozen to death and more. Now we can add being drugged with hallucinatory chemicals. The conceptually best part of the game (in that it marries the physical and psychological pain together, of being alone and also having your life at risk) is when you wander aimlessly through the desert, lost, dying and losing your mind. It was kind of perfect for me because it wasn’t just a union of the suffering Drake’s endured, but also because all you do is move him along, entirely tethered to his all-too-human stumbling gait. Obviously the whole game can’t be like that, but from all the sequences I’ve played in this series (including the awesome yak-stroking village in the second game) it seemed to represent the heart of the games appeal, at least to me. But the world is as it is and so Drake has to somehow find his way to the bad guys at random, take their guns and kill them all. I knew it was coming, but I guess I almost fooled myself into expecting something more unique. The conceptual glimpse at wandering hopelessly through a desert really seems to suggest it.

And mechanically, these games are fun. They have good, gradually building but eventually balls-out set-pieces and they get you from one to the other with personality. But they’re mechanically at odds with themselves. Movies depend on pacing, and the flawlessness of the hero to win. But we die.  We die a lot. It breaks the game down. The perfect, utopian uncharted game would be one where you couldn’t die but where the game reacts and diverts to accompany your failings. Ah well.

At this point I’m probably sounding like a crazy person who has a few issues and an abusive-relationship with these games. And I kind of do, to be honest. They’re not my favourite games by any stretch, but I’ve played Uncharted 2 five times, more than any other game. By the end of this, having gotten Drake through a collapsing ship in a storm and a desert, with the creators showing this hurt so palpably upon his body I’m kind of exhausted. These games are fun and exhausting in equal measure. There’s always a point in these games (and it was in The Last of Us too) where I go into a trance, where I’m not exactly enjoying the game in the same way. I’m under some magical compulsion to get the characters to the end because goddamit, they’re so tired and I’m so tired, I can’t just leave them there in limbo. I’ll be dreaming in the day of their walking animations, climbing, falling. Can’t leave them.  So I get them to the end so we can both fucking rest. But I guess it’s like Drake, I think I’m out but I’m pulled back in. The adventure still rings in my ear. I keep coming back. 

Uncharted 2: Sleepy Stoner Diary

So it was about 1: 30 AM and I realized if went to bed now I would probably not bother to get up for school the next time, or at the very least arrive stupidly late. Which normally would not trouble me, however this week is my final in school ever. Ever. Aside from university, but that doesn't count because I can go to lectures in pyjamas or something. So I figured I might as well show up. So I elected to stay awake and annoy my girlfriend by sending her offline facebook account of my nightly misadventures. Which was playing Uncharted 2. It's a bit weird, occasionally lucid and genuinely stoned. So yeah.




To Beth's Facebook


okay so i feel high and I've decided to fuck conventionality and stay up all night and go to school tomorrow. I just had a mug of coffeee and i feel insane and ready go. Think the guitar to European Son and how it keeps going,



if i get the caffine low I'll get another mug



your Facebook account is my witness to this night

1:41am - Brushing my teeth

1:48am - Considering reading but that can make you tired

1:49: Put Uncharted 2: among thieves into my playstation. That's the game i talked to you about ludo narrative dissonance the main character is a likeable smartarse who seems very human and has a slim figure but at the same time he kills thousands upon thousands of third world mercenaries. I've never been able to put my hand on whether or not i think this game is good or great - I've played it four times. perhaps the fifth offers clarity of judgement.

1:52am - The soaring intro music calls back to the old school Indiana Jones adventure serials of the past. ancient treasures and purple monkeys and shit. i know this game beat for beat yet this excited me. I select medium difficulty as I've already played it on the hardest (because I'm a man) and aint got nothin to prove

1:54am Consider stopping this update list because it may be insufferably pretentious and deprive me of my lover but then remember I'm just indulgent enough to keep going with it

1:55am Nathan drake wakes up bleeding on a train in the barren wilderness of nepal (snowy and shit) it then turns out the train is hanging off of a cliff, and in a clever shift of perspective vertigo is instilled into the player and drake falls, clinging to the end of the train. game starts now. fucking hell of an opening, always will be 'oh crap' drake says

1:58 - climbing a train. god i love this

2:00 the snow is so pretty in this game. the art directors are so amazing they deserve concubines made of candy

2:02 drake flashes back to planning a heist with a British dude who just said 'bobs your uncle' he may be British but the writer sure isn't

2:04 'How's your thirteenth century Latin, mate?' is a good line

2:08 'Karma's a bitch' another good line

2:09 - the lovely orchestrations are so much cooler when delivered by ear penetration headphones. I can feel the great jolt of music swell and thrust inside me, eliciting such joy that I almost gasp

2:11 another flashback to drake planning to dick over the British chap with his new exotic girlfriend - who is either British or Australian depending on how the (very good) voice actress feels. they have off screen sex. No one uses a bloody condom in fiction. bastards

2:16 so now we're on a long flashback that extends for several hours. its a heist on a very pretty and very real palace in the also very pretty Istanbul. Nothing like robbing those pesky foreigners! Drake insists that they use tranquillizer pistols. which is hilarious given how many mercenaries he kills. mercenaries who come from poor countries and were probably forced into that line of work to support families. Yay american!

2:35 - 'relax Ghandi they're tranquillizer guns!' he says to drake, the fucking murderer

2:41 all that shit about pacificism and drake just killed his first guy by shoving him of a ledge. trolololol

2:47 oh hohohoh it turns out the English character betrays the american protagonists for no reason other than because he's a dick! didn't see that coming!

I suppose my longing for a homo erotic bond developing between two characters with different cultural backgrounds, one heavily influenced by the other, manifesting itself in sexual power politics between the two, the British man hungering for more of the Americans' goodness yet slightly repulsed by how he feels after a night with him, his individuality overwhelmed and muted for the Americans assertive charm. The american has a natural way of making other his own, yet he understands a lot of who he is is owed to the British and his demure sensibility, reminding the america of himself when he was younger. Sigh. I suppose my cross continent man romance will have to wait. Another game, another story.THIS ENGLISH MAN IS A DICK YAY AMERICAN PROTAGONIST

2:54 Nathan drakes (the american) is rescued from Turkish prison by his old pal and mentor sully from the first game. he brings along the girlfriend, who Nate assumed double crossed him as well. 'No offence sully, but you've never been the best judge of character, ESPECIALLY, when it comes to women'

2:57 so now we're going to Borneo to search for a lost city Marco Polo tried to find. I'm feeling tired. NO IM NOT UGEHIGEHG MAN SHRIEK

2:58 - Nate asks Chloe for a diversion 'give me five minutes in [Russian bad guy name] tent' to which she replies ' Five minutes? that's great I wont even have to get my top off' Oh you smug characters you!

By the way I don't expect you to read any of this/ That would be insanely indulgent. I'm just being eccentric

3:02 'I'm sweating like a hooker in a church' thanks sully

'You bought a hooker to church?' 'Why not?' lolololol

3:04 - and the shooting begins. kill me.

3:05 - When I think about it there is something so sexual about this game. There's a huge emphasis on your characters form. His sleek yet slightly bulging shoulders, and narrow hips. You see him constantly stretching to climb and fling himself over obstacles. The animation and motion capture is as delicate as any I've ever seen. The visual effects make his shirt glisten after going for a swim. You spend hours looking at this dude from behind. Hmm.

3:13 so playing this on medium for the first time in years I am afforded a lot more mobility in fire-fights than I was on harder difficulties. This fits with the pace and style of the game, given the nimble, area traversing characters and their vulnerable seeming bodies. This give the play a consistency of tone and feel. Yet in harder difficulties you're basically held static behind cover until you carefully eliminate baddies. I wish in creating more difficult levels designers would think more about some core experience they would like to preserve rather than artificially making it harder for the sake of it. In this case, as you are weaker and enemies stronger it forces you to become less mobile, whereas harder difficulties should force you to utilize the wonderful geography more, making things more kinetic and chaotic rather than slowed and precise. Nerd.

3:18 I have some pot left over from a few weeks ago when I was hanging out with some friends. Ima take a break from the game and open the window.

3:23 got a mug for an ash tray

3:36 this game is really pretty. Oh gosh there are modes to play this game in black and white and Sepia. and it is fabulous. I feel like the dirtiest of hipsters now, playing this in a classical sepia tint

3:39 Okay so even though sepia gives everything this photographically mythic quality, i am probably not in the best state to be playing it this way. Changing it back to colour. Which is good because i just go this bit where you're in a dark cave and you light this resin on fire, giving you a torch of blue flame. Now we're making our way with the darkness illuminated by blue light, leaking over the walls. All the action , and yet it's always the little moments which are most enchanting.

3:42 so we're walking by tonnes and tonnes of ripped up skeletons from Marco Polos crew and i'm supposed to be shocked like the characters are but i'm not because i play video games and this isa pretty typical sight for me. Digitally speaking

3:45 so now we're going Nepal Yay! the globe-trotting is exciting but I miss the intimacy of the last game; it all took place on one island in which you followed in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake, who our protagonist claims was his ancestor. The singular setting was its own character and there was something very personal about it all.

3:52 'you go meet your girl in Nepal i'm going somewhere warm' wise words Sullivan, wise words. Also in the same exchange a butch Cassidy reference. yay for good films!

3:53 a character just said 'Throw a little gasoline on the fire' because you love David Bowie

3:56 so I just played a cool bit where the camera comes around to face your front and you run away from a huge armoured car. It's a throwback to the old boulder chases from Crash Bandicoot, except here i'm shooting the boulder as i run. It's nice to see creators i grew up with referencing a mythology around them but for the record, i prefer boulders.

4:06 'Oh is that an ancient Tibetan ritual dagger in your pocket?' 'Or maybe im just happy to see you'

4:08 okay so now we're at one of the best bits in the game. Nate wonders around a Nepoleze Warzone chitchatting with his girlfriend. The casual image of these two thieves needling their way unnoticed as a larger and unrelated conflict goes by is a very smart way of making us feel cool. KOOL

4:10 Of all the incredible geography in the game the ordered chaos of the Neploze war zone has got to be the most visually inventive aside from maybe the lost city which we got too later, which is a stunning flight of fantasy. There's more opportunity for creativety here than in the jungle miasmas we've been in thus far. also I'm such a nerd and strangely coherent ...

4:21 'powers out and the girl is trapped... i swear to god if there's a zombie around the next corner' the game has stunning lighting but its visual language could be better at directing you to where you need to go. Though when considering the vastness of colour and panorama, that i still find my way means it's probably quite good anyway

4:23 Oh god i just jumped onto a Pakistani flag pole! and yesterday was the election there! I was meant to stay up late playing this an annoying you

4:26 I just took cover behind a bathtub in a devastated apartment. For some reason i really liked that i did that.

4:30 so i just got to this cute bit where you get to the top of a hotel and there's a clean swimming pool. It sticks out, and the creators know what happens when they leave that there and we have control. We jump in. So they leave a little dialogue interaction to anticipate this, which gives the game unimaginable warmth. I was just told by Chloe, Nate's girlfriend that I am 'So unproffesional' Damn right, i'm playing video games at 4 am before a day of school.

4:38 I AM GOING TO STAY AWAKE

4:48 - Drake just happens to run into Elena, his journalist ex girlfriend in the middle of our Nepalese war zone. She introduces herself to Chloe as 'last years model' It's a funny, knowing line that puts a finger on how the characters, particularly Drake, look to us and each other. Over- Attractive thrill-seekers and daredevils - immortals who test fate encounter after encounter, drifting from tryst to excitement to tryst. So she's mocking Drake, his tastes and lifestyle, but in a way it's joking at the way we look at this game too. I just wish this thinking penetrated to the characters and their behaviour more, rather than simply being sharp dialogue. The game is full of sharp dialogue, but in the end it seems there are two types of writing (well there isn't i'm pretending there is for the sake of my point) Writing that tries to convince you it's human and writing that truly is human. All the sharp dialogue (delivered with magnificent spontaneity and personality) is very convincing, but man, it doesn't ache.

4:57 they try to, in the third game, make our perception of Drake (and his own self image) a serious part of the narrative, by telling us that he lied about being a descendant of Sir Francis Drake to give himself a sense of greatness. That idea of greatness and perceived greatness is fascinating, especially to us, the player who wish to escape into our vicarious heroes. I just wish that critical attitude was more deeply seated within the series rather than trotted out in a few cut scenes in the final game.

5:23am I dont want to play any more. I'm going to make a Panini


Love you xxx

-

Taha

Artistic forms, the increasing invalidity of writing, and the inextinguishable force of music

This is not me dissing writing. I love writing. I want to be a writer more than anything else. Writing is the form of which I engage with the world. From a young age, my mind would look at standard spaces in houses and parks, and process them in a photographic, picturesque way. To deal with constant slew of striking images, I often narrated what happened in my head, like writing a mental autobiography. This is true of people I've met, and places I’ve seen. So, in a sense, writing is fundamental to my being. At the same time, I've always had something of an inferiority complex towards other artists, particularly of the purest artistic forms: Music composition and painters/drawers. Writing takes maturity, meditation, and wisdom. 'Writing prodigies' are unheard of. Don't tell me about Christopher Paolini. He's bereft of any ideas other than regurgitated, spunk-stained Tolkien. However People with rare ability in music composition and visual art just 'get it' like a math genius. Provided the composer has skill in a particular instrument, he can quickly pick one up and play out a composition, and prove he is good. I could read a poem I have written, but words are literal, and thus even if I am a good poet, my skill is much more subjective. Music, and to a lesser degree images, are abstract. Some compositions are so stirring words fall at their feet helplessly, only able to describe the bare surface. The same is with a great painting. You might have people like Jackson Pollock who are a little more contentious, but if you look at a Renaissance era master, his talent in aesthetic beauty is self-evident. In other words, Da Vinci may not be one of your favourite painters, but he was indisputable brilliant at painting, as was Mozart at composing.

This bothered me always, because there is an inevitably invalidity to words. Also because i can't draw or read/write/play music (yet!) However, I still think words are rapturously beautiful, and as important in our everyday lives as other art-forms. So my sense of inferiority is, to some degree, flighty and jealous. At the same time I can't help but feel some degree of truth in these thoughts, and as a mantra of mine is absolute honesty will always lead to good. (As in absolute honesty that my life has no meaning and further purpose may at first be devastating, but when addressed is the only way for me, or anyone to achieve true liberty in life) So I as I always do, I read. I read about music and art, and on the philosophy of perception and aesthetics (Emmanuel Kant, Fredrick Nietzsche)

I have a conclusion. Not a conclusion that changes my ambitions. In fact, as I suspected, it made me more comfortable with them.  And that is, in philosophical terms, music is the most important form of art. The most enduring.  Closest to the essence of life.  This is of course following the philosophy of Kant, which can be argued with.  Kant, and many others, believes that everything we see is a perception unique to every individual. No human sees things as they really are, but as representations of what they really are. This makes sense to me. It explains why beauty is subjective, and why what looks beautiful may not always feel sensuous. Or, in some films and music, images and places are evoked without ever bringing them up. Just look at the absurdist masterpiece ‘Synecdoche, New York’ (Favourite film ever, by the way) So that essentially denotes any visual form. Even photography, as raw as it, will rely on the perception of the photographer when he chooses to take the picture, and the individual who looks at the final image. Simplified: What is green to me is purple to you.

One can denote, and this is in broad, almost irrelevant philosophical terms (as it was before and will be till the day language falls) writing even more than the visual form. Writing, unlike sound or sight, is a human invention. Though I shudder to say it, it’s a…. a tool which we invented for communication. That our dreamy imaginations managed to turn this tool into a dazzlingly nuanced and effusive form of expression is I think a triumph of the human race. But this does not distract from the fact that in all its aesthetic beauty, and emotional range, it’s fundamentally artificial. This doesn’t mean you shouldn't read. Don’t be stupid. Many of the best writers (Samuel Beckett) have been aware of this invalidity, and reflected in in their abrsudist writing. Art forms like surrealism, absurdism, and Dada are all aware of the invalidity of our creations, particularly language, which is why they seek to make art of the meaningless and incomprehensible. It’s part of why Beckett was a great writer, and also part of why Paul Auster (a post-modernist writer, and responsible for one of my favourite novels) can get a bit tiresome when, among his surrealist absurdism, continually writes about writers talking about writing, and metaphysically reflecting on writing. It’s interesting in some cases, but not continually, as it essentially reiterates a sadly inevitable fate.

Why I think Music is different, is because I’m not sure if it’s a representation of anything. It could be argued that music, with their own set of aesthetics is an obscured representation of what actually is, but I’m not convinced, and neither were philosophers like Fredrick Nietzsche. Music does not even attempt to try and represent anything in life. It is not created from observation, but is a sheer force of will. It cuts though both physicality and shallow image right to the centre of your brain; and stimulates all of it. Whereas other forms are merely representations, Music is life, and not one that always needs to be learned. It’s a form that is fundamental to us all, because it’s believed by some psychologists that we all possess some innate knowledge of our humanity. This is complicit with the objectivity with musical geniuses.  Whether you like Beethoven or Chopin more, Mozart was undeniably a genius. He wasn’t so much writing compositions as channelling something he had since infancy, or as Peter Schaffer described ‘taking dictation from God’  

“…Inextinguishable suggests something that only music itself can express fully: the elementary will of life. Only music can give an abstract expression of life, in contrast to the other arts which must construct models and symbolise. Music solves the problem only by remaining itself; for music is life whereas the other arts only depict life. Life is unquenchable and inextinguishable; yesterday, today and tomorrow, life was, is, and will be in struggle, conflict, procreation and destruction; and everything returns. Music is life, and as such, inextinguishable.”

-- Carl Nielsen (Composer)

Thought Nugget: Porn and Erotica

I think what bothers me about porn is that how faceless and clumsy it is. I dont think the concept of erotic fiction is flawed, though. How is blood and violence accepted entertainment, but not sex? Sex is natural, violence is not, and is far more a 'perversion' of our natural instincts than sex. But they both should be depicted because they both are in life.Honest, erudite,cutting and unpretentious storytellers would understand that all sorts of impulses fuel life, including sexual ones. I think the perverted, sadistic torture/rape can be born, not from sexual freedom, but from someone's who's erotic impulses and desires are repressed so much they manifest themselves in ugly, violent ways. The problem with most porn is more to do with simple untactful silliness, with their puerile noises, and how they seem to always be in elaborate positions that serve no other purpouse other than to give the camera a clear view- its not more pleasurable that way (im assuming) Obviously i dont know for sure, but I dont think anyone would have sex like that unless they were trying too hard (hoho)

Sex and erotic freedom is a mature matter that deserves to be catered to with respect and artistry. This is not so with ubiquitous internet porn, which would rather try and cater to angsty thirteen year old boys.

- Taha

So....2011

I know there are things I’ve missed. This is meant to be more of a stream of consciousness more than anything. Just trying to get end year thoughts out of my system. Skim-reading recommended.

As always, it seems to be the fashion of bloggers and journalists to reflect on the last year’s lot of pop culture. I suppose we delude ourselves into thinking an entire year of art, some mind-blowing, some mind-numbing, can be defined in a few hundred words. Yet, here I am, dutifully trying to make sense of 365 (366?) days of art. Why? Probably because stringing together single statements on the/my highlights of the year with segues is easier than designating them out for a detailed analysis. So for what little it’s worth, here’s my lazy reflection on a year in passing, for Games, Films and Comics. *Yawn*

Firstly, this year was an all-rounder of greatness, and a definite improvement over 2010. However, to get the most of it, it really did take a look in the cracks and crannies that people often ignore. If you got your hands a little dirty (AKA searched around on the internet a little more) then you would’ve been vastly rewarded, so much so that I pity those who routinely lapped up the mainstream stuff. Not that this year was lacking in mainstream quality. In films, there was perfectly fine blockbuster action with stuff like ‘Captain America’ or Steven Spielberg’s ‘War Horse. But that’s really all it was, ‘perfectly fine’ I felt the same way about War Horse in the theatre; an impressive piece of old-fashioned spectacle, but nothing more, with exploitable characters and emotions that tread well-worn formulas. More notably, we had Martin Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’ which I loved. However it’s devoid of pacing, and advances with groggy slowness, and is completely devoted to a Scorsese finding an outlet for his awe-struck love of movies, particularly those of George Melies. Its disregard for convention and personally fuelled existence makes me suspect it’s going to take a while to catch on, and will probably mean more to movie-buffs than to the children it was marketed to. Besides that, there was the mega event of the final ‘Harry Potter’ which was good but rushed, and Pixar’s very first failure in the  form of ‘Cars 2’ which is filled with so much love and puns on classic spy films that I’d much rather watch a classic spy film. Speaking of spies, atmospheric director ‘Tomas Alfredson’ (Let the right one in) filmed an adaption of John Le Carre’s famous spy novel ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ – a deconstruction of the James Bond myth, with a chillingly terse tone, and spies who’s faces bear the sadness of W.H Auden. Probably one of the best things to come out of this year. 

However, if you looked in the cracks, you would’ve’ also found ‘Drive’ an arty act of virtuoso movie-making, dripping with the paint of 80s pulp movies and sexy Muscle Cars. It’s slow, showing its violence in devastating sporadic bursts, and adds more quiet intrigue to its characters than it does simple words or stock-roles.  There was also ‘Take Shelter’ and ‘The Future’ which both shared a speculative dread for what is to come, whether it stagnation, or a disaster that ruins everything as it is now. They both feel like what would happen when people come to a comfortable, copasetic time in life. The Future in particular, is awkwardly uncomfortable and scary in how its upper-middle class characters begin to hurt themselves and each other. It’s so disconcertingly affecting in this way that I’m not sure I even like it. But it’s thought-provoking and irksome in a way that’s admirably powerful and brave.

Unfortunately we didn’t get too many games that seemed to contain an auteur driven expression of soaring, earth shaking audacity like what we would see in this year’s ‘Tree of Life’ (Which I have not seen) I would say ‘El: Shaddai: Ascension to Metaron’ which combines Religious philosophy with flashy stupor-inducing techno-visuals comes close. Unfortunately, I can’t get fully behind it because I haven’t finished it yet. The combat system has a smooth balletic quality, allowing you to spin a yarn of moves with simple controls rather than overwrought combos. Unfortunately its combat is over-exhausted with a game that feels padded, especially at boss fights. So for now, I’m going to have to say it takes a sidestep just before it reaches brilliance.(As far as soaring ambition goes, there’s also XenoBlade, a game that appears as the next evolution of JRPGS, but I haven’t got to play it yet) Other ambitious (and also big-name events) for gaming this year included the expansive Fantasy epics ‘Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’ and ‘The Witcher 2’ They’re well-worth the time, but The Witcher is still a sequel to a 2007 game, and Skyrim does what the creators have strived to do since the first Elder Scrolls game. Still, The Witcher 2 is a strong push in the right direction for RPGs. Its choices are presented naturally through the narrative, as opposed to big ‘point of no return’ forks in the road, and the conflict is not lazily thrown onto some evil coming over the hill, but all through the politics and relationships of its startlingly human characters. And the feeling I have when I want to play Skyrim is the same as when I want to take a walk in the park. It doesn’t exactly work as a game, but it sure as hell does as a place. A place to be, to wander, and to witness, all for the sake of its natural beauty.

Most impressive to me though, was, again, easily missed small-hits. Probably indie title ‘Bastion’ was the best, a tragedy both elegiac and inspiring, wrapped in the tightly fitting clothes of an old-school Zelda-like adventure. Back a second- Those tightly-fitting clothes are so remarkably crafted that Bastion really draws attention to the uneconomical, overstuffed mess of mainstream games. It seems it’s now in fashion to be bigger, even when it’s not better. Most guilty of this are Uncharted 3 and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. With Uncharted, developers Naughty Dog show how little they seem to understand their own games. It was not the shooting, or overwrought explosive set-pieces that made the original game so captivating, or the second games so obsessively playable. But it to them it is, with manufactured Hollywood inspired explosion after explosion, gun shot after gun shot, and faceless hoards of baddies for the hero to kill. Uncharted used to be a fun as an interactive tribute to old pulp cinema; the kind filled with lost islands, cocksure heroes, and silly villains. With the third game, it’s become more of a tribute to the by-the-numbers system of Hollywood, spewing out manipulative action ‘comedies’ with plot holes that have swallowed up most of the actual plot. Uncharted 3’s script has so many traits people would recognize as a sign of bad writing. Most people would also only need one of them to make up their mind. And don’t get me started on how it depicts London.

Revelations on the other hand, is more tragic because Assassin’s Creed was to this point one of the best things I could hope to play. Unrivalled in cultural and historical artistry, the panache of its animation, and flavour of all its vast characters. The story is best dismissed, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget Ezio’s smarminess. The first game was ascension of new generation tech, and also the erudite lengths creators in our medium could go. Number 2 (the peak of the series) painted on beauty in the form of Renaissance Italy, and a washed-out visual style that made the game like a moving water-colour masterpiece. The third (Brotherhood) added a multiplayer about brains and observation, drawing attention to the infinitesimal subtleties of its animation and A.I behaviour. What’s Revelations gift to the prosperous series? Grenades. Grenades?! Yes grenades. And grenade crafting. Riveting. So now, instead of taking a carefully calculated plan of navigating architecture to get behind the enemies, you can just blow them up from afar. Revelations adds nothing but clunky artifice that resembles the cooperate Coca-Cola gaming of Call of duty, betraying the serene and innovative beauty of the earlier games.  The artifice is also present in Assassin’s Creed’s increasingly bloated and arbitrary monetary system, and this what games like Bastion work as a counter to. Also a counter: Rayman Origins, an onomatopoeic cartoon platformer that has the rare quality of evoking Dr. Seuss or The Beatles more than it does Mario or Megaman.

Oh, and we shouldn’t forget the early year joys of LittleBigPlanet 2 and Portal 2. Did you like these 2’s too? While I haven’t played LBP2 as much LBP1, I do believe it’s objectively better. It’s more of a game-sized expansion than a completely different game, with all of the previous title still there. It also manages to find a way to extend its tools to fill in the gaps our imaginations were previously needed for, but without cutting away the first games innocuous toybox charm. To accompany this is a first-rate single player, with kooky levels and kookier characters. Each world itself is basically an indulgence of a characters personality, and they’re all so detailed and lathered that they could each serve the setting for an entire game. And I hope I never forget Larry Da Vinci, who is exactly as he sounds; an amalgam of the erudite wise guru and a modern unpretentious hipster. That’s LittleBigPlanet in a nutshell. The finest of old-school platforming dressed in affably modern hipster clothes.

Portal 2 on the other hand, was not as well- paced as the first, nor as chilling, dignified, and sublime. Indeed, Valve’s passionately bubbling tribute to science and its affecting capabilities, is flawed in some areas. But then, look at what I just wrote. That’s enough to be great. And I know I will never forget Stephen Merchant as Wheatley, a moronic mouthy robot whose purpose and aim as a character runs in circles like an on/off switch. He is a robot, after all. But whatever status he is, he’s always the same endearing mouthy moron, filled with more of a personality than most organic video game characters.  

Things I haven’t got around to: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Batman Arkham City, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Golden Sun, and probably others that have slipped my mind.

 Comics seem to be following a similar pattern. There was still high-quality joy in the mainstream; Scott Snyder and Jock’s ‘Batman: The Black Mirror’ used Gotham City as a mirror for the new Batman (Dick Grayson) which his perfectly suited to the reflexive impressionist swipes of Jock. There was also Mark Waid’s lark reinvigoration of Daredevil. Both were great, but they’re not mainstream as can be, Daredevil being a bit of a niche character by Marvel standards, and Scott Snyder being something of a newcomer on the mainstream superhero scenes. The year also seemed to lack big work from the biggest names, like Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison (who are both part of DC’S new reboot, but that’s still in a warming up phase) or Alan Moore. If we were to expand our horizons, then we would see Craig Thompsons sumptuous ‘Habibi ‘an exploration of Arabic culture and myth. It engages both sides in this, the low-brow exploitation side and the high-brow artistry. Fiction that captures both ends of our mind; aesthetic desires and intellectual meditation is to me, the most honest kind of fiction. Also: American Vampire (Scott Snyder) and Criminal: The Last of the Innocent (Ed Brubaker), both of which I missed.

Let’s backtrack to DC’s big reboot. It was okay, on the whole. There’s enough good to justify it, though admittedly superhero comics are so self-indulgently stagnant that a reboot on this level would be justified anyway. Something I noticed however, was the best of it was art driven. The writing is fair, but it’s more of a crutch to the art (like what J.H Williams is doing with the Ghostly ‘Batwoman’ or how Francis Manapul uses his panels to depicts the infinitesimal vibrations and movements of its hero in The Flash) The rare moments where it doesn’t: Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man, Scotty Snyder’s Batman, and Grant Morrison’s Action Comics. These contain a half-way meeting point between writing and art, and it’s part of why they’re so good. It’s also interesting to notice that the comics where the art is a crutch to the writing (Geoff Johns’ Justice League) is usually much less readable than the art being the main force. Perhaps this tells us something about the nature of the medium. Geoff Johns in particular is a writer who prefers a Hollywood screenplay style of writing, with back and forth, naturalistic conversation building a world rather than a quickly progressing plot. This is all good and well if you take in the entire story in one well-paced burst, but these are comics. Reading this style of comic writing is like getting a ten minute slice of a Hollywood blockbuster every month. Probably better to read it when it’s released a collected trade, or ‘Graphic Novel’

One comic of the new DC reboot I haven’t made my mind up on, is Wonder Woman. Again, it’s among the best, but more for art than writing. It’s a joy to see Cliff Chiang reimagine the Greek pantheon in a slick 21^st century ink. And writer Brian Azzarelo is good in staging his battle sequences (or should we be thanking the artist?) His script is an attempt to subvert the Greeks Gods, which is an idea I love, as I’ve done it myself, But so far, he hasn’t done anything more subversive than a stage play I handed in for my eleventh year of British schooling, which is kind of strange. Cause, yknow, he’s an adult with a lifetime of experience, and I’m not. And he’s being paid, and I’m not. His renditions of the Gods definitely sting with decadence, but they also hold enough glamourized reverence that they remain the same power fantasies they were before any subversion. Personally, I would’ve made a satirical mockery of them, not showing Ares as slick, but rather a drunken fool getting into bar-fights (off the top of my head) Then, I would build up the story and characters in a way that eventually reflected the power and essence of the old Greek myths. That would be the final point; somehow we got from a drunk abusing his god powers in silly bar fights, or a king that sleeps around a lot, to a massive-earth shattering scale of Gods. The myths may seem big to us, but they were born in stupors and intimate flesh. To make a mockery also, is I think the kind of jolt the Greek Gods need, especially with how much they’re blandly re-written with a ‘modern day’ concept. Just as long as the satire was actually going somewhere. Still, Wonder Woman is good, and far better than the overbearing tumult the series was before the reboot.

That’s enough I think. *Yawn*

What do we take from this? The often preached argument of keeping a varied pop-culture diet, comes to mind, but I don’t see much point in forcing people to examine the indie and arty when they don’t want to. Instead, I would advise you go with what the wind brings you, rather than what the billboards tell you.

- A rather ashamed Taha

Rayman Origins

Rayman Origins is a great game because I can’t fully explain why. Something about its supple, roly-poly level-design just clicks.  Its endless sea of preposterously desultory worlds and constructs disarm my critical mind of ‘Designers do this so we know to do this which equals this effect’ but instead transports me to a nostalgic time where I played adventure platform games like Crash Bandicoot or Rayman 2, for no other reason than to see what I would do next. Every couple of levels, I wonder ‘what are the default floating platform/swinging vine/enemy going to look like in this area?’  Well, it certainly won’t be easily recognizable as a ‘default’ anything. Its imagination is too far-reaching for that.

And yet, this insurmountable visual ebullience is never overwhelming. There’s brevity to Origins’ hand-drawn images, one that works to support its design. Somehow, amidst the flagrant colours, I’ve naturally found a way to play this game. This is what I can’t fully explain. I seem to have picked up the instincts to know how to operate each level with grace, and when I fail, each time I’m convinced it is my own fault, and usually even smile at myself for failing, eager to get another shot. The same cannot be said of another recent platformer ‘Sonic Generations’ It’s overly lush and complex backgrounds are pretty, but they violently tussle with its level-design. As much as I try, I have not yet learnt how to play Sonic Generations, instinctually or otherwise. It’s Rayman Origins’ marriage of aesthetics and level design that makes it so compulsively playable that I’m filled with the same wild-eyed enthusiasm its title character ‘Rayman’ is. The world is illogical enough to include, a limbless hero, unattainably delectable fairies (who are also a little clumsy), fountains of watermelon juice, and treasure chests that flee when found by Rayman, somehow consciously knowing he’ll bash them open. And yet, it’s all carefully constructed in a way that produces its own internal logic to navigate each world.

Rayman was created by unattainably delectable (but-also-a-little-clumsy) fairies, to be a hero of the melancholy forests that have always served as an identifiable anchor to the largely undefined universe. Yet, as in Rayman 3 the world lies in languid perfection, until Rayman accidently, or sub-consciously, creates the enemy through his own lazy blunder. It’s a funny sentiment, but it could be the driving force of earnest stories (and has) If the world is perfect, then what does the defined hero do? Rayman exists to be a hero of the land, just as the unattainably delectable fairies exist to be unattainably delectable, but also clumsy enough so Rayman gets a chance to save them. So we need villains, and that’s why Rayman has to accidently make them. (He snores too loudly that a next door race of ‘Black lums’ go rogue on peace-deprivation) This funny sentiment has been quickly accelerated by my imagination, but in Origins, it exists as merely as a small funny sentiment in a background of funny sentiments, usually in the form of visual inventiveness and level names (so far I’ve climbed through ‘Jibberish Jungle’ and taken a dive into the ‘sea of serendipity’) With all these aimlessly cute sentiments, The world Rayman inhabits exists to be a happy defiance of logic and reason. But as a defiance of this nature, it’s perfectly wound, from the colours to the design to the sound effects (which are indistinguishably merged with a superb original score) to the weird characters.  Both Rayman and his world are just the right combination of cheeky and bliss. Not too cheeky as to be mean-spirited, and not too blissful as to become a sanitized family-friendly dope. To play Rayman Origins is not just to play a virtuoso platformer by masters of the highest class, but to submit yourself to an idea nursery of such nourishing imagination, that it deserves the right to not make sense.

This is one of my favourite games of 2011.

- Taha

Good Critics

It has come to my attention, that with my recent preaching of ‘write personally’ I have forsaken some of my old writings, including the first couple of reviews that were put on this blog. Looking back at them I can see the thinking: I was applying the analytical tools I had acquired through my own thoughts, at through the avid reading of my favourite critics (Mostly of games and Films) I structured it to start with a grabbing and vaguely personal sentiment, and then launch into the rest of the film from there. But it wasn’t enough.  For in trying to be like my favourite critics, I ended up mimicking their voices, which is defiant of what makes them so good. Those reviews in question (Example: The King’s Speech review) use a good enough level of language, and they make perfectly fine points. But they aren’t really developing the ‘voice’ that made my favourite critics so great; and still has a plodding stiffly structure rhythm, that is a little reflexive of the un-artful, abominably bored, impersonal checklist form of reviewing that I’ve always loathed (See: IGN, Gametrailers.com, and many, many more)

 This led me to reflect as to why exactly I am attracted still to the opinions of critics, and why it’s always a select few, and the problem with my earlier mind set.  Let’s start with Film. I tend to read Roger Ebert, The New York Times (Usually A.O Scott or Manohla Dargis) The Chicago Tribune (Usually Michael Phillips) and The Guardian (Usually Peter Bradshaw) Peter Travers (Rolling Stone Magazine) and the late Pauline Kael (Known for creating the term ‘Kiss Kiss, bang bang)  Then for Games: Mostly Yahtzee Croshaw, and Tom Chick.  For the sake of brevity, I am going to focus on a few of these people, though a lot of what I say will probably apply to all of them.

Let’s look at Yahtzee and Mr. Ebert first. Both have received high amounts of acclaim, and have made for themselves a public name based on their criticism, and have had works published. If you’re really into films, you’ve probably heard of Ebert, and if you’re really into games, then you’ve probably heard of Yahtzee. So revered is Ebert as a critic, that he’s sought out as a pundit on all things; politics, religion etc. And as I mentioned, Yahtzee’s voice has been sought out in the form of a novel.  Why do people long for the words of these writers in so many formats? Would they feel similarly enticed if Yahtzee and Mr.Ebert plodded out by-the-numbers academic essay that moved blandly from symbolism-to-character-development-to-history-to-writer-influences-to-motifs-and-summary.  Of course they wouldn’t. They would’ve either dismissed this as ‘Something I could write’ or have fallen asleep before they could scroll to the bottom of the page. If you read Ebert, you’ll see his reviews are usually quite short, cutting to what he personally found striking about a film, making some broader points here and there, but usually not some kind of earth shatteringly thorough analysis. Yahtzee similarly, presenting each week an approximately five-minute video, in which he rambles in his famously blase persona, to which each game is ‘Guilty until proven innocent’ Ebert’s writing is also sprinkled with life-encompassing sentiments, humour and witty musings. I think what makes them great is not that they vomit 50,000 words on examining every inch of their art, but rather succinctly choose words that cut to the heart of the work, capture the essence of what it is, so much so that if they’re opinion is negative, you still might be tempted to check the film/game in question out, because they’re descriptions are so evocative, and it sounds like something you might like. There’s an indelible tone of conversation that permeates they’re writing. Reading they’re opinions is not me ‘Wanting to be told what to think’ as it has often been ignorantly dismissed as, but rather me engaging my mind into a conversational tone with the critic. I love the solitary charm of my fiction, but I also love to discuss them. Why? Because they inform life. They change you in small (and sometimes big) ways, and there’s a need to share that with others.  So the reason Ebert’s opinions are probably so sought out for all matters, is because he used an intense understanding of film as a subtle ladder to talk about life. Not in a broad philosopher- like way, but in a way that acknowledges the way even the most far-fetched stories interact and relate to our lives. This might sound odd in the case of Video games and Yahtzee, but I have a subtle example.

In his review of ‘Crackdown 2’ (a game in which the player is let loose to muck about in a huge cartoony city) Yahtzee complained that the game wanted to much for you to mess around in the chaotic sandbox, as opposed to the previous game, which tried to push you into a main structured quest. His ultimate sentiment was that messing around when the game wants you to, psychologically defeats the point of it. We messed around because of the maniacal joy of not doing what we’re told. This isn’t just games; this is everything, like the gleeful mentality of child’s play. I’m not old enough to play with a BB gun? Well now I want it more. Or even for teens; there’s a roguish joy to ditching school work to hang out with a girl all day. The girl/in-game messing around is great too, but part of it is initially driven to break out of the ‘system’. I doubt that Yahtzee was thinking all that when he wrote the review, but then in natural, stimulating conversation, we are often unaware of the sweeping magnitude of some statements.

As for the matter of ‘cutting to the core’ or capturing the essence of a work of art, I think a good example of it would be Peter Bradshaw’s review of ‘The Illusionist’  a quietly mesmerizing French film about a travelling stage magician, who at one points becomes the accidental father-figure of a young girl, who is so mystified by his gentle, oddball charm, that she follows him around various cities, as he clings to his dying craft. Like many films about the life of an introverted maverick, it challenged my analytical standards. I loved it for doing that, but I still had to turn to some critics for an interpretation to satisfy my scrutinizing mind. Bradshaw sums up the quietly mesmerizing film in a quietly beautiful way:

 ‘Admittedly, one has to adjust to the gentle, undemanding pace of this movie, which does not force its insights and meanings but allows them to meander into view, a pace which suddenly jolts into a higher gear when Chomet and Tati show us how The Illusionist loses his faith in his vocation. There is something shocking in the way he deliberately, angrily sabotages a trick with short and long pencils, thus upsetting and bewildering a little boy. But the real magic, the magic he has created, is happening behind his back, and under our noses. The Illusionist is an intricate jewel’

The ‘real magic’ Bradshaw is referring to, is the experience and maturity the benign magician has granted the young girl who followed him, who during the moments he loses hope In his trade, has found mutual love with a young man. That was the magic, but Bradshaw implies it like a poet, and that understatement, is what makes his point powerful and heartfelt.  

So, in synergy with the conversational tone, there is an artful writer, who can move us in way that can occasionally approach the magic of the very art it is they write about. They are artful, because they ‘cut to the essence of the piece’ which I think means they are good writers because they are able to relate complex ideas in simple terms, or, if we are to abide by these rules, make the complex seem simple.

 A great example of that is Tom Chick’s review of Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, a sprawling mess of a fantasy epic, with a bevy of endless quests, lore, combat possibilities, and enchanting world interaction. Not to mention the glitches, and amorphously intestinal levelling structure. Yet in the mess of the beauty and glitchy carnage, Tom Chick grounds the game in a perfectly definitive statement, and makes  simple, creative sense of it all:

‘This is Skyrim at its best. When you accept it on its own flawed and often brittle terms. When you look past the FedEx delivery quests, almost all of which come down to going someplace to get a doo-dad. When you let the lore and dialogue and scripting carry you along. When you embrace what it's trying to do instead of scrutinizing what it actually does. When you just let it happen. This is when Skyrim will reward you most richly. Not when you're trying to win, or beat it, or get to the end, or level up, or earn the achievements. Not when you're playing it like a stat-based RPG, or a single-player MMO, or a challenge. Skyrim is putatively a game. More accurately, it's a narrative loom.’

A ‘narrative loom’! Now that’s a great writer. And having played a little of Skyrim, I now have no desire to write a review of it. I couldn't describe it any better, especially when you read the rest of his perfectly succinct review. 

  

I think, what I have learned from this, is that good criticism is both artful and natural, and isn’t about comparing dick-sizes via how much you can nit-pick. If what made these critics great, is relating how the game/film captures ones imagination, and by extension informs and inspires us, then It makes sense that in future writings, I ought to write a raw emotional/intellectual response to the work of art. That’s what the late Pauline Kael was famous for, and it’s why she was great. But I shouldn’t try to be her, a sophisticated intellectual with a lifetime of experience to draw from. Because I’m not. I’m a sixteen year-old, and have to acknowledge that.  So if I like some vapid crap, because it has lots of sex and blood in it, I need to be upfront and honest about it. I think that would develop me more as a writer. A little more ‘youthful’ in my ‘musing’. In that way, I can one day appear to be a fully-formed person purely through my words, just as the best critics do.

- Taha