French Fancy

Well I did have several things to talk about today; most of them are actually film related. Which is strange because I don’t normally enjoy watching films; but I’ve seen two recently which I have very much enjoyed and one of them I went to see of my own free will.
The first was something my class watched as part of our Wednesday afternoon activities was a French film which after forgetting the title didn’t take me long to found out again. Typing ‘French films’ into Wikipedia pulled up a least so short I was able to read through many of them before I found the correct one. ‘The city of lost children’ was its translated name but I did watch the entire film with subtitles but I think I prefer it that way. I find that with subtitles it forces you to pay more attention to what you’re watching because otherwise you will miss the plot. Not that the plot presented itself much in this film, oh no. It was one of those films where you have absolutely no clue as to what is going on until near enough the end, which was a new experience for me as I have a habit of finding out the plot of a film before I watch it, and then in the end seeing no point in watching it since I already know what has happened.
The opening scene was one of Christmas, decorations and presents. A small child eagerly waiting in their beds as Father Christmas descends the chimney. Followed by another, and another; until the room is filled with men clad in red and white, by this point I did mutter “why can’t we watch a normal film?” But as more characters were introduced I found myself getting enthralled with the film, the group of children part of the ‘Thieves Guild’ says Wikipedia (must be true then) reminded me of ‘Oliver Twist’ to some extent with their ringleader ‘Miette’ likeable to ‘Dodger’.
I found Miette a very likeable character because even though she’s only about 12 she was very world weary, cynical even. But still cunning and brave enough for the plot, she isn’t the stereotypical “save me” damsel in distress and even when drowning her head is held high.
Even the antagonist ‘Krank’ seemed like the human life-like version to Mr. Burns I still couldn’t find him totally evil, more like comedic evil.
I thought that ‘the Octopus’, the twin ladies who were so in sync that while one took a drag on a cigarette the other exhaled the smoke was quite comical and even though they tried to murder the main characters many times I still found myself to be fond of them.
Overall I preferred this film a lot to ‘Dark City’, sort of strange because the setting was similar in that everything happened at night, and the people known as ‘Cyclops’ were a bit like ‘the Strangers’. But I found the main characters in this much more likeable than ‘Dark City’ and I think because of the presence of children made things less malevolent.
I think that, one of the reasons I liked this film is that I like comedies; and that because the film is old, its serious areas which were once viewed as that come across in a comedic sense now; much like ‘Night of the Hunter’.
Now I realise I said I wanted to talk about another film, and I shall; in another post. There is a lot floating around in my head and I need some time to get it down before it floats off.

Opinionative

Reviewers. These people seem to be stuck to a very tight schedule; from what I’ve read and heard (I don’t know any personally). They only have 19 days to put together a magazine edition, seems like a pretty stressful job there. Kieron Gillen’s blog (link here) describes them as being lazy because ‘saving effort in one area gives them more time for something that they can’t cut corners on’ which I can understand and occasionally practise. They’re perceived as corrupt by ‘outsiders’ for what was rushed and stupid decision which seems to fall in with them being lazy.

When I’m reading or listening/watching a review about a game I like i’m drawn more towards a review when the person forces their opinion on me, if it’s a game I haven’t played I will more than likely accept it so long as it’s backed up by some sort of example. So for me ‘It’s crap because etc’ is fine but just ‘its crap’ and you’ve lost me already. So in short, when I reviewed something I like to stuff my own opinion in their like a Christmas gift, even it’s one of those unwanted ones. Ultimately, I think their needs to be a balance however.

I have read a few of these ‘New Games Journalism’ and I’ll be honest with you, I like some of it. For extreme examples here; I tried this one (http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html)
and lost interest immediately. The style it’s written in just didn’t interest me at all, it reminds me of some strange crime novel I read a long time ago but can’t remember the title, I just remember I didn’t enjoy that either...

I liked this one though (http://www.insertcredit.com/features/dreaming2/index.html),
mostly because I’ve played the game but it kept me interested with its style. Rhetorical questions, opinions seeping out everywhere; it felt like I was talking to the guy.

‘The worth of a video-game lies within the gamer not the video-game’ sounds kind of epic and corny too, but I believe it. If this is NGJ I welcome it.

My Time

With the development of the Wii being a huge success and essentially ‘creating’ casual gamers everywhere, the industry is under pressure from its own audience; yet I would also consider the Wii a blessing too. It has allowed more casual and ‘quirky’ games to emerge like Wii Music and Wii Fit. Because, let’s face it the big contenders of Europe and Americas ‘hardcore’ gamer market is a draw between the ‘FPS’ and the ‘3rd PS’; generally anything with a gun will do.
Game development costs have soared since 8-bit times, so now development companies have to get money from publishing houses to bankroll their endeavours, this is a strain because publishing houses don’t really care about making the game because they love it, they just want to invest in something they’re sure they’ll get a big return on; which is why they kill all of the quirky ideas in stillbirth. Games also take way longer too finished before they’re ready for sale, which is ok as long as it’s worth the wait. Publishing houses in my opinion on the main reason the market is flooded with sequels to Need for Speed etc.
Technology and its advances play a huge roll here, with the 360 and PS3 in an ‘I’m better than you’ war while the Wii steals the cookies (customers). No matter how great the Ps3 is I’ve heard it’s a pain to program for, which is why I think it’s just a box filled with magic made by the elves.
On my college course we briefly looked into the game interfaces of the future, brain power etc. But I will be honest now, stuff like the Wiimote is cool but if you have another console like a 360 you won’t use the Wii half as much as you’d like and the casual gamers and families that buy the thing will use it while the new games are out and then get bored, as long as they buy games it’s ok but if they’re like me who has never justified buying a Wii game since launch its bad.
I would like more realistic graphics, I understand the ‘uncanny valley’ theory but think of it this way ‘you either cross it completely or fall’ meaning; if you get it so realistic that it’s not noticeable that they aren’t human to the point that the audience doesn’t mind then you’ve crossed the valley.
I saw a spoof advert for ‘PlayStation 9’ which was a glass sphere that contained millions of nanomachines that connected to your nerve system or something.
It sounds interesting, is quite possible by the 9th version of the console, we already have magic after all.