The Last of Us

My new year's resolution was to get through the year buying only one game. That one game is The Last of Us, which came out on Friday last week; I completed it late on Saturday with a total playtime of just over thirteen hours, and it's been stuck in my head ever since.

Part of that is because of the haunting score by Gustavo Santaolalla (which I'll be torturing my wife and neighbours with as I fail to learn it over the next few weeks), which constantly sparks flashes of the people, places and events from Naughty Dog's post-apocalypse.

The critical acclaim the game has collected so far is not unearned; while bits of the game do feel derivative and there's maybe too much emphasis on combat - I'd prefer fewer, tougher enemies and more sudden, brutal confrontations than the squads of opponents - the atmosphere and characterization is, I'm fairly certain, unequalled in gaming.

Spoilers follow.

Cowboy Bebop

At the end of last month, a one-off event in Edinburgh brought the director of Cowboy Bebop, Shinichiro Watanabe, to Scotland for a screening and Q&A session. There are few anime fans who've seen Bebop and dislike it, but it's getting pretty old by now and despite listening to Yoko Kanno's soundtrack albums fairly regularly I'd not seen it in a few years.

There were two episodes shown, both selected by Watanabe - Session #6 Ballad of Fallen Angels and Session #22 Cowboy Funk. According to the question-and-answer session afterwards, Watanabe picked the most serious and least serious episodes - and remarked that it's difficult to believe they're from the same series.

I often feel like anime series' are trying to split the difference between super-serious and slapstick; recent shows in particular, like Gargantia or Oreshura have really interesting setups that get regularly sidelined by wacky adventures. If they were just comedy or just drama I'd enjoy them a lot more, but sitting on the fence often just highlights the weaknesses in both elements of a show.

But it's a testament to how great the characters, atmosphere and design in Cowboy Bebop are that it not only manages to pull off such disparate storylines, but I can't imagine either the comedy or drama being removed from the show. I think it comes down to the personalities of the characters; they're such believable people that having a laugh makes sense. They get on each others' nerves, tell jokes, fight and work together in a way that makes sense.

Two episodes wasn't really enough. While I've not found the time yet to start a rewatch - I might wait for the Blu-ray release at the end of next month - I'm really keen to give it another run through.

The photo at the top of this post is of my now most prized posession. The cel cost me a few hundred dollars when I bought it eight years ago; I'm sure it's probably worth a fair bit more now. I was originally planning to ask Watanabe to sign Moanin', by Art Blakey, but realised I'd only bought a digital copy of the album.

Attack on my Patience

Oh, Attack on Titan, you started off so well. Despite the shonen trappings, tropes were falling left and right - culminating in the wonderfully shocking end of episode six, the ultimate "fuck you" to my, and no doubt many of your audience's, expectations.

You even followed it up with two episodes that seemed to keep that middle finger firmly raised to the predictable nature of anime shows with a clear hero, ignoring the events for an entire installment. I dared to hope that you were going to leave the knife twisted.

Then came the end of episode 8. Cracks appeared in my optimism, as the single best thing you'd done was suddenly and irrevocably undone. Then the end of episode 9 fucked it into a cocked hat, ensuring I can never be surprised again by your antics.

And now, after the tenth episode, you're back on familiar, even predictable territory. The storylines set up in the last 22 minutes have such obvious outcomes that I'm not sure I care if my assumptions are correct.

So this has gone well

This whole post-a- day thing took a pretty severe rumble of a cliff. Knew that the first day I let myself skip it would be dangerous.

I've even has stuff to post about - meeting Shinichiro Watanabe, for instance, or the new YoYo Games office - but actually writing has been difficult to commit to.

Must try harder.

Starting tomorrow.

Xbox One

The media reaction to the Xbox One is going to be interesting. Most of twitter, Google+ and forums I've seen so far have been less than impressed - but they don't have to play nice with Microsoft for press materials.

I've not read any articles properly yet, but the headlines seem to be sticking to facts - the machine's name, launch window and other basic indisputable information.

I wonder when - or if - we'll start to see opinions seeping into the coverage, given how poorly-received it was by enthusiast gaming communities.

Nexus 4

So long, webOS.

Palm's (and then HP's) little phone OS that couldn't quite has served me pretty well these last few years, but with the hardware slowly getting on my nerves and no app ecosystem to keep me with it, I have given in and moved to a more active operating system.

I got my Nexus 4 delivered today (I'm typing this on it now), but have been using Android on my tablet for the last few days so the growing pains have, so far, been minimal.

The biggest change is the keyboard; the last three phones I've used have had physical input so moving to a touch keyboard is a bit weird. The Nexus comes with a fancy swipe keyboard installed as default though, so it's an even bigger change.

I'm still not as fast with the swipe as I was on the Pre, but I do think I'm getting faster. It takes some of the imprecise pecking out of the equation too, which was worrying me a bit about a touchscreen-only phone.

Random Access Memories

I have something of a standoffish enjoyment of Daft Punk. I like Discovery (apart from One More Time, which just reminds me of unenjoyable school discos) and the Tron Legacy soundtrack (who doesn't?), but could never get into Homework or Human After All. I was mostly looking forward to the new album, Random Access Memories, but had fully accepted the fact that I might not click with it.

Disappointment has been avoided however, because it's fantastic. With the exception of Get Lucky, which I've been overexposed to on the /r/mashups subReddit, there's not a single track I'll skip. Some of them are a bit long - possibly just because I'm used to the shorter Tron tracks - but I've had it on repeat for a couple of days at work and I'm still loving it.

It's a weirdly old-school album for a techno group, though; aside from its obvious disco influences, most of the instruments are being played live rather than replicated electronically - which has a much bigger impact on the sound than I'd expected. There are still synths, but the non-electronic foundations of the tracks really cement the old-school 70s sound.

Into Darkness

This is going to go into spoiler territory for Star Trek Into Darkness, so consider yourself warned.

Fuse (solo)

I know that Insomniac's official feed is only going to be retweeting the positive responses they're getting to the Fuse demo, but I am pretty stunned that it's getting such enthusiastic feedback. It's not a disasterous demo by any standard - it has some flaws but is clearly non-final work - but it's not done anything to assuage my fears that the final game, post-OverStrike, is anything more than a solid 7/10 shooter.

The game's level design and UI reminded me a lot of Vanquish which put me a bit on the back foot - I was spending a lot less time in cover than I probably should have been and ended up being put down quite regularly. There was always an AI companion nearby to pick me up in short order, but I would have liked to have some control over their actions, Mass Effect-style during the general gameplay. It didn't feel like a coherent experience; they didn't seem to try to follow my lead and their targeting priorities were... questionable.

That's almost certainly solved by using human co-op partners - or maybe actually using the LEAP option to move between characters - but playing solo was a frustrating experience. Another Vanquish-led expectation was the enemy strength - while Platinum's hyperactive cover shooter swarms you with enemies, the majority of them are easily dispatched with a headshot or two so I rarely felt overwhelmed. By comparison Fuse's bad guys are veritable bullet sponges, which only added to my trouble when peeking out of cover.

Add to that a surprisingly large number of high-level enemies (for an intro/demo level, at least), snipers and oversized robots, and I wasn't having a whole lot of fun. I felt on the back foot for the majority of the play time, swamped and alone - not a reassuring sensation in a game where you have three companions who should be helping out.

Shock and awe

I was planning on writing something about the Fuse demo.

But then I watched the new episode of Attack on Titan and I can hardly form a coherent thought. Jesus.

Jesus.

It's had a few slow plot-heavy episodes and seemed to be building up to particular shonen tropes in this latest installment, but it's still taking such delight in confounding expectations and pulls no punches with its more gruesome moments.

I can't remember the last time a show had its hooks in me this badly when I was still trying to make up my mind if I like it.

John Dies at the End

I could've sworn this film was much older than it is; Wikipedia says it was only released in the US in December last year, but I swear I remember seeing the first trailer for it long before that. It still hasn't had a proper UK release, but the DCA had a preview screening last Friday as part of the Dundead horror festival thing.

I don't know what I was expecting, exactly, but John Dies at the End isn't it. It's one of those films where its component parts seem like a recipe for greatness, but it somehow never pulls everything together. It's brilliantly shot, the dialogue is sharp and brilliantly delivered, and it has a core idea - a narcotic drug called "soy sauce" that gives people clairvoyance and the ability to see and communicate with the dead - that's full of promise.

It never really goes anywhere though, at least metaphorically; the characters literally go to an alternate dimension at one point but it feels like an attempt to up the stakes in a conflict we've not heard much about. The film opens with a ghostbusting endeavour undertaken by the two main characters - unreliable narrator David and the eponymous John - but then jumps into flashback for its entire running time with their (for want of a better term) origin story.

I'd have preferred a full film of low-tech paranormal investigations. It might have been less original, but it couldn't have been less coherent.

Oculus Rift part 2

Mike, the guy at work with the Oculus Rift (also my immediate boss), let me borrow it for the weekend, so I spent what feels like a lot of this evening setting it up. I say setting it up, what I mean is, trying to set it up.

Everything plugged in and powered on, I wasn't getting anything. I didn't know if it was the cables, the drivers, the graphics card, Windows being a jerk, or if I'd somehow damaged the Rift while gingerly taking it out of the box and setting it on the desk.

It turns out, as near as I can tell anyway, that the graphics card is the problem; its second monitor port appears to be non-functional. I've updated the drivers and restarted the machine more times than I can remember tonight, but it won't pick up anything I plug into that second slot - even the monitor, which works fine on the first port.

The Rift, of course, also works on that first slot, but it proved very difficult to set up, test, configure, tweak and use a head-mounted VR display with only its video output, so in the end I gave up.

I can see the appeal of the Rift, and if it had worked I'd be dashing around City 17 feeling violently ill right now instead of typing this. But in the circumstances, I've got to take some comfort from the fact that I didn't spend $300 on this headset that I can't actually use without spending upwards of £100 on a new graphics card to go along with it.

The Cave

I think I'm done with this one. It's got a lot of great stuff going for it - the writing and narration are excellent, the artwork is beautiful and the puzzles are just the right side of frustratingly obvious-in-hindsight - but I've had enough of the tracking back and forwards across the environment.

What makes the puzzles that bit more complicated is your "party" of adventurers - you choose three, and can switch between them to hold down levers or activate devices in different places at the same time so you can for instance, ring a bell to lure a monster out of its cave with another character poised to lower a trap over it. It's an interesting way of playing with space to spread out solutions, so it's not a case of just using every item you've accumulated so far with every item in the room.

The massive, massive downside is that you have to move each character separately. So if you finish a puzzle and move on, you take the first character to the next location, then... you have to do it all again with the second. And then the third. And then again when you're finished that area, or if you've taken a wrong turn.

It's intensely frustrating; what I wouldn't give for a "bring all your characters to this one's location" button. Hell, maybe there is one, and I just haven't found it. But jesus, it's killing any enthusiasm I have for the game.

Standing still

Oops, missed yesterday.

One of the most intriguing things about this season of Mad Men is how little Don Draper has changed - or his behaviour, at least. When the show started he was womanizing, boozing, smoking and immaculately tailored - and that's all still true. He still acts like he did six years ago, and what's more he's still getting away with it.

But what makes it interesting is how different he seems. The world around him has changed so much, and maybe we've just been watching him for so long and have seen so many other characters move on and move up and grow and change that he's just standing still. He's gone from being the epitome of cool for all his flaws (and awesome suits) to being an almost tragic figure, trapped by his vices and not even sure how much he wants to give them up.

He knows he should, but he can't bring himself to actually change.

I hope he does. As the seasons have worn on and we've found out more about Don, and as he's started to notice the cycle himself, he makes efforts to varying degrees to give up his bad habits. But he's failed every time, usually right as he's about to get a firm grip on actual happiness and stability.

The Flute of Remembrance

The third episode of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet didn't inspire a lot of confidence, resorting to a threat-of-the-week villain and predictable battle. The opening couple of episodes had a lot of worldbuilding and deliberate pacing, which the fourth installment has thankfully returned to. I don't have a problem, as such, with episodic action, but it felt like it had made promises at the start and then wasn't going to deliver on them.

I wasn't sure what the newest episode was going to do, since the third already kind of dealt with the immediate aftermath of the pirate attack. But the longer-term repercussions are still unaddressed - Ledo's been given an invoice for the damage he caused when he first arrived on the fleet, but he's been given a lot of freedom to move around the fleet and has been given work to do. I'd like to see more about how the regular people of the fleet feel about Ledo and his mecha - or even just what they've heard.

But instead he's hanging out with his robot and keeping mostly to himself - which kind of begs the question of where he's picked up so much Japanese¹. He does start to make more friends, or at least acquaintances, in this episode though - finally meeting Amy's ill little brother Bevel and the fleet's doctor (they only have one?) in an attempt to learn how he might get back to the Galactic Alliance's main force. He also kind-of meets a couple of other messengers who work with Amy, but they've still not even been officially introduced to the audience.

It was actually the meeting (and the lead-in) with Bebel that restored my confidence in the show after last week's episode. I'd been worried that despite Ledo's distance from the Gargantia's people he was getting too used to the fleet without any real effort on anybody's part, but when Amy's taking him to meet her brother Ledo asks why they haven't "culled" Bevel, because he's too weak to be useful.

Ledo and Bevel have a conversation about what makes a person useful to a society (it's neutered a little by the fact that neither of them ever gets angry at the assumptions the other is making), as well as what makes a society worthwhile - Bevel's position is that living itself is motivation for humans to work together, but Ledo insists that without the Hideauze, mankind has no purpose. Which puts him wonderfully on the back foot when Bevel asks what he'll do once mankind defeats the aliens.

That was a question I'd never considered myself, and I can't recall a "militarized humanity vs extra-terrestrial threat" series that's ever bothered to ask that question. What did people do after the Buster Machine 3 was detonated at the end of Gunbuster? Apart from spelling out words in Australia's power grid.

So I'm reassured and looking forward to the rest of the show - watching Ledo integrate himself into the fleet and hopefully more of how they react to the spaceman and his high-tech flying robot. But more than that, I'm hoping that he eventually gets back to the Galactic Alliance after being changed by his experiences on the seas.

¹It's not "officially" Japanese that they speak, of course; whether it's Ledo or the fleet, their native language is Japanese and the others are speaking gibberish. The fleet's language has been referred to in the show as "words" or "Earth language", but the people are a mix of different nationalities so it's unclear what language they'd actually be speaking - assuming a modern human could even identify it.