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
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Taha
