Welcome to 2005. Politically and internationally, things can only get better. Personally, if it’s half as good, I’ll be reasonably happy.
It’s nice to see how busy Grapefruit isn’t. I remember the good old days when reviews got pages and pages of comments. Now — nothing. Pah!
A common question when I returned from my time in Canada was “Did you fall in love?”[ftn] My answer was always “No, no, I have no thrilling romantic stories of travel and adventure.” Or occasionally just “No”.
But that’s a lie. I met a beautiful, amazing girl in Banff. Her name was Bastila Shan.
I met her at the races. I knew she was a prize the moment I saw her, yet things didn’t go smoothly at the beginning. She was uppity, and refused to treat me as anything even approaching her equal. But underneath there was an insecure charm that drew me in like some kind of force. When I was with her, it was like there was a mystical energy field controlling my destiny. When we kissed, it was like everything just disappeared.
Sadly for my struggling social life, Bastila was also a fictional character inside a computer game — Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, by Bioware.
I’m hardly qualified to write this review, really. My experience of role playing games is highly limited. I’ve started many of them, but rarely continued for more than a few hours’ gameplay. The list of these aborted games includes Ultima VII, Ultima VIII, Baldur’s Gate II…[ftn] Normally I’m scared off by the volume of options and sense of “sink or swim” in such games. It’s not something I’m proud of, but if a game just drops me in a town with only very wide, general goals, I try to avoid my responsibilities and just give up. Not unlike life, actually. Saving the universe can be just as boring as studying for an exam, sometimes.
Not in this case, however. Knights of the Old Republic manages to be very immersive and encouraging. It’s not as open, plot-wise, as some would probably like. In part this is probably a limitation of a console RPG, which has to simplify a few things. For a start, you can only have two extra party members at any one time — the others wait behind to hear your stories later. The plot is kept reasonably straightforward. Go to a new place. Exhaust all the minor side quests. Do your major quest. Leave. It’s usually pretty clear what the major quest is, so I rarely forgot to finish one of the minor ones.
You play some chump who has a peculiarly strong ability in the force. So peculiar, in fact, that you stand a good chance of being trained by the Jedi, despite being far too old to complete the training.[ftn] Meanwhile, there’s a nasty pasty called Darth Malak wandering around the universe, leading a grand Sith army, and generally causing problems. The Sith are the enemies of the Jedi, you see. Darth Vader was one. The Emperor was one. It’s just not a word that gets used very much in the films. But forget the films — especially the prequels — because this game takes place many, many years before them. This gives the game a nice distance from the movies, while still allowing strong links in terms of planets and mythology.
Choices are a big part of RPGs. Knights gives you many choices, usually between being good, being bad and not giving a damn. These have both technical and cosmetic effects on you. As you do good, your skin gets all nice and blue light shines down upon you in the character screen. As you do evil, you get all tattooed and ugly. Even your clothes change a bit — the Sith seem to have black and red standard issue long-johns. More practically, an evil player will be able to use evil powers more cheaply, and vice versa. This makes specialising in one direction the most obvious direction to go. Becoming perfectly good or evil gets trickier the closer you get, which makes sense, I suppose, but can be a shade irritating.
It’s much easier to be evil than good, by the way. Just like life, really. Take your standard person on the street. If he’s short on cash, you can give him some, if he’s being chased by people you can save him. But quite possibly, there’s nothing much good to be done for him. On the other hand, if you want to be evil you just have to pull his entrails out, string him up with them and hang him above his sleeping child. It’s the same in Knights.
While you will make many choices in your various quests, there’s really only one choice you get to make for the overall plot. That’s a shame — it would’ve been nice to have two or three at least. But I suppose they needed to cut down on their endings. The plot is however crafted ingeniously to make almost every action leading up to that point sensible for either an evil person or a good person.
Combat is handled well. I’m the kind that panics in a tight spot, but this game allows you to pause the battle and set in motion a queue of actions for each character to perform. You can then let things unfold, and change or add too the queue on the fly (or by pausing again). Very relaxing. The animation for the violence is pretty good, too. For basic maneouvres there’s a bit of variation in the sparring, which looks good. Sadly, the special moves, such as flurries and crushing blows, always look exactly the same, and don’t really interact with the opponent. Since in the end you’ll be using these all the time, combat becomes a bit less interesting as the game goes on, which isn’t quite what you’d expect.
Finally, I’ll talk about characters. In other RPGs I’ve often had trouble finding the characters interesting. Knights gets a little more sophisticated than some by always having recorded dialogue for every line,[ftn] and having the people moving with some limited body language as well as some basic lip movement. It’s almost like being there. Well, more like being there than most games I’ve played of this sort. I chalk my aforementioned crush on Bastila down to some excellent voice acting and good dialogue. Plus, she looks really hot in her Jedi bikini.[ftn]
Knights has a good story, fun combat, great dialogue and acting, lightsabers, and the chance to save the universe. Oh, yes, and destroy it, I suppose, if you’d like to do that. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Now excuse me while I go back to waiting for February’s Knights of the Old Republic 2.
Tom, politely, first asked me to write a gaming review a while back and I told him then I wasn’t interested. A short time later, he asked again, a little more pleading, and I said no, again. He didn’t ask a third time and me being contrary, decided to write it. It turned out to be harder than I thought and I nearly didn’t bother.[ftn]
I’m happy to tell everyone what I think about tv shows, movies, books, and stuff in general but I’ve been reluctant to write about video games. There’s a couple reasons for this. I find a video game a more personal experience than a book or a film. Everyone sees the same film but the interactivity in a video game makes things different in my opinion. There’s more factors involved and these can vary one’s opinion widly. Also, I feel more attached to games than other forms of media. I dislike critically looking at a game because that might force me to see its flaws.
Having said that, as long as I don’t have to weigh the game out of a hundred, I’m happy to tell you what I think. Although if I were to be keeping score, this game would receive bonus points just for being a Warhammer 40k game. All the 40k games so far have been crap to ordinary, so to see a decent game set in the 40k universe is a relief. It’s not a big call to say this is the best 40k computer game yet. Being able to control large mobs of orks as they hack up space marines is delicious. Watching a space marine dreadnought wade through my orks and crush my Big Mek is scary. Much like the Lord of the Rings movies, familiar characters being brought to life as I imagined them is enough for me to give it a thumbs up. Not having played the 3rd and 4th editions of the tabletop game, I can’t tell whether the game is faithful to the tabletop version. From what I’ve read, the developers didn’t aim for a strict conversion anyway, though they did adapt many of the 40k rules, including morale for troops and units having to stay in squads.
Without the 40k setting though, I probably wouldn’t have played the game. The game itself is a great game, but time is short and there are many games to play. I’m glad I played it though. The graphics, despite some glitches, are very good and the camera is able to zoom around right in to ground level to see the killing moves close up. Not that there’s time to appreciate the detailed animations: there’s a lot going on and all the troops need your attention. Resources, in a Ground Control 2 style, are collected by holding special points on the map. I didn’t like this initially but now I see that it makes the game much more offensive and the aggressive player usually wins. This prevents people camping in their bases, something I found to be a problem in Starcraft.
The single player campaign only uses one race disappointingly and features a radical plotline in which the main character is betrayed by his best friend. The AI is very poor. The AI is made more difficult by giving it a resource advantage and tougher units, not with better strategies so isn’t much of a challenge. The challenge and real fun is playing multiplayer. Although the rulebook and tutorial lack detail on controlling the other races, people online are willing to help and explain. Once you’ve got your race figured out, the fun begins. 1 v 1 and 2 v 2 games are very competitive. The games with more than four players are less cut throat and more relaxed as people tend to build up a full sized army before attacking.
The flaws, if I were forced to look at them,[ftn] would be the balance between the races. While the game is complex and each unit has its own strengths and weaknesses, some of the abilities and units are unbalanced. Most of the problems were fixed up with the 1.1 patch but some remain. Only including four races is disappointing too, but there are mod tools available so there should be more races eventually.
Finally, the best bit of the game: The start up video by Blur Studios. It’s an impressive piece of animation. It’d make a great movie or series. For those who haven’t seen it, it is available on their website.
Relic, true to their usual form, has made a great game, using the existing setting of 40k well. I love seeing all the units come to life. If you have a computer that can run DoW,[ftn] it’s definitely worth a look.
The apocalyptic visions of tsunami damage are fostering a sort of quiet sadness in me. After terrorist attacks, there’s a level of anger involved, but this time there’s nothing to say, nothing to do, except help people. It feels creepy to be thinking “how much can I give and still have money for an iMac?” But it’s better than avoiding such thoughts by not giving any, I suppose. It’s easy to be selfish towards such large numbers. It turns out credit card rewards points can be turned into World Vision donations, so I’ve done that already.
My apologies for the lack of updates around here. I blame Andy for saying he would put up some reviews and then not doing anything. In my mind, I thought “Well, that’s Grapefruit sorted for a while, I’ll put my reviews up after Andy’s, spread things out a bit.”
Alright, not much of an excuse. I’ve got an I ♥ Huckabees review in the works too, so perhaps that will materialise. And I fully intend to get back to Firefly reviewing.
I can’t wait to get to 2005. It looks quite exciting. Entertainment wise — Knights of the Old Republic II, Doctor Who, Serenity, Star Wars III — and real life will start to get a bit more interesting too, given my imminent university finishing. And, of course, my iMac should come to me this year some time, too.
But moving back to entertainment — what’s everyone’s best and worst of 2004? Feel free to list them in the columns below. Or make them into an article for Grapefruit. Or, y’know, neither… Excuse me while I eat a roast dinner.
Sequels are so much easier to deal with as a movie-goer than normal movies. They add another useful question to the usual screening list one can use. Consider these:
Now, if you answered “No” to any of those questions, this film might not be for you. But if not, this movie is great fun. Personally, I find Brad Pitt a very cool guy. I know there are some people out there irritated, but frankly, if I woke up one day as Brad Pitt I really wouldn’t mind at all. He has an excellent dry delivery for all manner of irony, which I envy terribly. He and Clooney have an excellent chemistry, always coming across as good friends. With both of them on the screen at the same time, it’s almost an overload of cool.
Luckily, there’s also Matt Damon’s rather nerdier Linus, who is possibly the best character in the film. He asks for a “more central role” this time, and gets it. His awkward attempts to be as cool as his two comrades — and pathetic sucking up to them — are great fun to watch. And then there’s Miss Zeta Jones, who is sexier than I’ve seen her since The Mask of Zorro. And with an excellent character to boot — by equal measures canny and innocent. The rest of the eleven… well, they don’t really get much to do, which is a bit of a shame.
The film starts off with Andy Garcia’s villainous Terry Benedict threatening each of the eleven menacingly (but with a shade of impotence, as all villains who have previously had their arses handed to them inevitably acquire). The group are forced to run off to find themselves some quick cash. But as they seek the best jobs they can find, someone is watching their every move, and manipulating them…
It sounds intriguing, does it not? Well, it is. The movie is funny, slick, entertaining and sexy. There’s great dialogue, there’s some good introductory thieving, and there’s hint after hint of something clever and cool going on in the background. What’s Ocean’s cunning plan going to be this time, the audience is thinking to themselves. And grinning in anticipation. “I can’t wait for the big heist,” they’re saying, and rubbing their hands with glee. “There’s twelve of them this time, they’re going to do something really clever.” But there’s something I have to tell you. I don’t normally give spoilers when reviewing films, but this one’s important. You really don’t want to go into the film not knowing this.
But it’s your choice.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I’ll begin.
THERE IS NO HEIST. The twist involves eleven people causing a distraction and stealing something from one guy. That’s what it all builds up to. The majority of the film is no set-up to anything. The good guys don’t actually turn out to have done anything clever — they just had better information.
I’m not saying the film isn’t great fun. It is. But if you’re expecting a heist movie, cast those assumptions aside. Focus on the romance, and the funny dialogue. Ignore the stupid frenchman and his lame breakdancing. Enjoy the ride. Even with the benefit of time, I still think having a sequel to Ocean’s 11 and not including any clever twist or heist is a big mistake, but clearly that wasn’t what they wanted. It’s possible it’s all some big joke that I don’t get. If this is the case, someone should explain it to me post-haste.
Merry Christmas, everybody! Here follows a list of all my received gifts…
More results added as they come. I’d hoped for the Complete Yes, Minister boxed set, but unfortunately Mum got the first two seasons individually instead. This is what happens when you let other people by your presents. It looks like the boxed set is in short supply currently, so I’ll have to wait. I was shocked at the childish urge I had to throw the cases across the room and throw a temper tantrum. Christmas indeed makes us kids again.
Okay, I take back everything negative I said about Christmas! Because I finally found the true meaning of it: And no, its none of that goody-two shoes crap you hear about the Gift of Giving. It’s PRESENTS! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, presents. I love presents!
And being a teacher at this time of year rocks! I have gotten so many freakin’ awesome presents. And none of those little jars with candy or mugs that say #1 Teacher. I mean gift certificates to the mall and the coffee shop, CDs of artists I love, cool body and bath kits, and so much more.
And the kids are so darn happy to give me stuff. It’s great. They love watching me open the gifts. And making me wear the bows and ribbon from the gift. But I don’t mind that. Ah, what a wonderful holiday!
I knew it! I knew it! I was wandering around Halo 2, and for once, a marine survived with me. She kept saying encouraging things, and I thought to myself — You sound like Donna from That 70’s Show. So then I looked at her. Hang on, you look like Donna from That 70’s Show.
I checked the cast, and I have indeed been fighting alongside Laura Prepon, Donna from That 70’s Show. And I’ve gotten her killed a lot. I feel really bad now. Interestingly, Topher Grace was in my dream last night. Things should definitely be the other way around.
I’ve been playing X-Men: Legends as well, which started off a bit slow but has turned out to be a great dungeon crawler (if I’ve got my terminology right) which improves with more people. With four, it’ll rock. No silly AIs controlling the valiant X-Men.
This week, the Grapefruit music reviewer and I continued our ongoing squash tournament. Due no doubt to him returning from an injury, I managed to defeat him for the first time… ever. This is a momentus achievement. The dancing girls and champagne, it seems, didn’t make it there in time, but I’m sure they had a good excuse.
Ben Browder apparently has been signed on as a regular cast member for season 9.
I’m not sure how I feel about seeing him play a character other than John — but the fact that Claudia Black is supposedly set to reprise her season 8 role for about five episodes might make it too tempting.
My adsl was down this week. It was horrific. I never want to speak of that dark time again.
On the up side, I did get a couple of reviews written while I was isolated from the world in the dank room with only a madman calling himself my brother for company. Ha ha. I showed him. He’s the mad one not I. Not I indeed. He he. All by myself.