Posts Tagged ‘review’

A Review Of Gabriel Knight: Sins Of The Fathers

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

I recently finished the game Gabriel Knight: Sins Of The Fathers, the first game in the Gabriel Knight horror adventure series by Jane Jensen (which is currently a trilogy, but fans are crossing their fingers for a quadrilogy). The game is set in New Orleans, where a series of ritualistic murders have been taking place. You play New Orleans native pulp-novelist and book store owner Gabriel Knight who’s doing research for his next novel. He starts researching the recent murders as they appear to be voodoo-related, as voodoo seems to be the topic of his novel-in-progress. I’m tempted to say the game was fantastic, but I’m afraid I can’t make that statement without a few caveats.

The game starts off great; you explore various areas and talk to various characters, and I soon enough found myself so immersed that I lost track of time. It was such a refreshing experience, playing a game with an engaging story where I wasn’t killing anyone, where I had to jot down notes on a paper sheet, and at least twice I was able to enjoy the game with a hot cup of cocoa while it was raining outside which I highly recommend trying.

The game taught me a fair share about voodoo, and some about New Orleans, and made me want to know more about both! It’s impressive when a game actually manages to teach you something without feeling like a chore, and even presents certain topics so vibrantly that you want to know more. Though it’s a bit of a risk with fact and fiction being mixed, as you may end up taking some of the creative flourishes from the author as actual fact.

The graphics look both dated and great at the same time. I occasionally wished the level of detail would have been better, as it occasionally made it so you couldn’t make out certain things as well as you’d have liked. Most of the music is MIDI synthesized (or at least sounds like it is), and while there’s definitely no bad music it feels held back by the game’s present day technology. Some of the music heard in this game is reprised in the third game in the series, where it sounds absolutely lovely.

But, once you get closer to the end there’s less to explore and very specific things you must do to progress, and it starts getting bogged down by two well-known game design problems of the adventure genre: “bad” puzzles, and having to hunt for the right “pixels” on the screen.

Sometimes you need to click certain items on certain spots on the screen, but said spots can be hard to see (in part due to the “dated graphics”). Sometimes there might be an item you didn’t notice or which you didn’t know you could pick up. Or there will be puzzles for which you don’t feel you’ve been given sufficient information to solve, or which just seem illogical. It doesn’t help that the game has a hand full of different actions you can choose from when interacting with the world as well, including operating, opening, and picking up, which makes the process all the more tedious; I recall becoming frustrated as I’d wasted 15-20 minutes trying to get a drawer to open, but my mistake was that I’d used the wrong action to do so. So to avoid growing frustrated and spending hours trying to figure out what you’ve missed, using a walk through is recommended. I used one several times myself when I got stuck, but generally I tried going through some trial and error before consulting it.

Spot the item that can be picked up.

There are some loose threads at the end, too; certain plot related questions which haven’t been fully answered. It’s nothing that ruins the game or makes the game’s plot seem flawed, just something you wish they could’ve taken the time to explain. I guess it does give a few topics one can discuss and speculate about with other fans of the game, though.

While the game did suffer some towards the end, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’d recommend anyone interested in either horror- or adventure games to give it a look. It also scores some bonus points for casting voice actor Jeff Bennett, although only voicing some minor characters.  I’ll eventually move on to Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within, as I purchased both when GOG.com was having a sale on the entire series, but I think I’ll take a li’l break with other games before moving onto that. I still have a bit of a backlog.

So close...

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The Mountain Goats’ The Life Of The World To Come: The Movie

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

For this year’s Record Store Day – an annual event where artists come together to help support independent record stores – record label 4AD released a limited edition DVD of The Mountain Goats playing through the entirety of their latest album, The Life Of The World To Come. It was filmed by Rian Johnson at John Darnielle’s old school with no audience present aside from the small crew involved. 1500 copies of the DVD were released, and no stores in Norway participated in the event, but thanks to a kind and helpful fellow fan of the band, I was able to get myself a copy.

This intimate concert is performed by John Darnielle alone, using either the piano or the guitar, with Rachel Ware adding backing vocals on a few songs. The music video released for the album, “Ezekiel 7 And The Permanent Efficacy Of Grace”, is actually taken from this session, and it gives you a good idea of how the rest of the performance is like.

I wasn’t too keen on the band’s latest album, as I stated last year, but I’d heard that some people who weren’t too keen on the studio album actually enjoyed the film. I sort of did enjoy the film more than the album (though it may only be the novelty factor talking), but I didn’t enjoy it that much more. The songs sound roughly the same as on the album, and most of them meld together without any one of them really standing out. I was hoping a few of the songs would sound radically different from their studio counterparts, maybe hoping to find a rocking piano version of “Psalms 40:2″ or to hear any other songs intended written for either the piano or the guitar being performed on the opposite instrument, but no such luck. Throughout the performance John’s vocals sound a bit too loud to go with his gentle piano and guitar playing, whereas Rachel Ware’s backing vocals were, as on the album Heretic Pride, not loud enough, being merely a whisper in the background. Her contribution is a nice addition, though.

The DVD comes with a roughly 30-minute long Q&A session taken from one of the screenings of the film, and it’s pretty enjoyable. John Darnielle comes off as a pretty likable, humble, down-to-Earth guy, and you get to learn a few interesting tidbits. It also comes with a booklet with some information regarding each song performed, what they’re about and how they were conceived, except for “Ezekiel…” which is kept rather enigmatic. Fortunately the packaging on the DVD is better than on the album, and you can handle it with your bare hands without staining it. But unfortunately it is a bit taller and wider than that of a normal DVD cover, so it stands out a bit – worst case scenario, you may not be able to fit it into your dedicated DVD space.

In conclusion, it’s a neat product, definitely worth getting your hands on if you’re a fan. Just a shame about the album.

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Hefner’s We Love The City Re-Issued 2-Disc Version… Deluxe

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

On September 28th 2009 the new double disc reissue version was released of Hefner‘s We Love The City album, an album originally released in 2000. Darren Hayman, the band’s singer-songwriter, hails this as his favourite album from the band’s career, and it was definitely the most commercially successful one.

Personally I’ve always ranked it as my least favourite out of their four albums. That’s not to say I’ve disliked it; I’ve enjoyed it very much, just not to the extent that I’ve enjoyed their other three albums. But having re-listened to it after getting the reissued version, it’s an album that’s definitely stood the test of time, holding up remarkably well. I found myself almost re-discovering the album as I listened through it again, feeling as if I was hearing the songs for only the fourth or fifth time around rather than the fiftieth, although I still knew most of the lyrics by heart. (I was in fact amused, and perhaps a bit proud, when the album’s opening track started playing and I managed to pretty much sing along to the entire thing from start to finish.)

The double disc reissue.

Other than the original twelve-track album, the double disc reissue comes with a plethora of bonus tracks – twenty seven in total. I have expressed some disdain in regards to the reissued double disc Hefner albums; I’ve felt that they’ve stuck too close to the more is better philosophy and have in effect ended up clogging up perfectly good albums with unnecessary demo and rehearsal tracks – which for the most part sound very similar to the studio versions but with lower fidelity – and have in effect detracted from the overall listening experience. I’ve been wishing they could’ve made their reissues more like Billy Bragg’s double disc reissues, which have the original album on the first disc and then a second disc containing a dozen or so extras from various places, a few of which may be demos and alternate takes. In effect, keeping the original album experience fully intact.  The reissued Hefner albums have been difficult to listen to from start to finish.

But I was pleasantly surprised at how well this new reissue worked in terms of the added content; it’s definitely the best overall reissue so far, and whereas the other two almost felt like a chore to get through, this one was mostly enjoyable. Things do slow down when the onslaught of demo tracks hit, but overall the demos are more listenable than they have been with the past releases, at times even genuinely good, and they’re surrounded by more interesting and high-quality tracks than before, this time also including remixes.

This release is actually so full of bonus tracks that they neglected to include four of the B-sides which were on two of the singles released in conjunction with the original album. I’m guessing these will then appear on the next, and final, reissued album from the band. Not quite ideal, as it would be better to have all of the B-sides from one album release – and thus one era – in one place rather than two, and it certainly won’t help make their next reissued album any more of a cohesive listening experience. A better solution would’ve been to simply remove a few of the less interesting demo tracks; there are a total of eleven demos to be found here, and removing Between four and six of them should’ve made enough room for the missing B-sides.

The idea of these reissues, from what I’ve gathered, is threefold. First of all, after Darren Hayman’s legal battles with Hefner‘s record label Too Pure, he now owns the right to the band’s music and wants to make it readily available again. Secondly, to make it easy for consumers to get a hold of all the music Hefner has released, not having to pay big money to get a hold of the slightly more obscure stuff, like singles and EPs. And thirdly, including previously unreleased recordings – which seem to be the demos – to make it interesting for fans who already have all the band’s releases. And now they only have one reissue left in which to compile the rest of Hefner‘s non-album material. So here’s what they’ve skipped so far:

  • “You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone” (2:40) from The Hymn For The Cigarettes
  • “Milkmaids” (3:59) from The Greedy Ugly People CD1
  • “Kate Cleaver’s House” (3:03) from The Greedy Ugly People CD1 single
  • “Everything Is Falling Apart” (4:51) from The Greedy Ugly People CD2
  • “Don’t Give Up On Us Baby” (4:18) from The Greedy Ugly People CD2 single
  • “To Hide A Little Thought” (3:03) from I Took Her Love For Granted and Boxing Hefner
  • “The Science Fiction” (4:32) from Boxing Hefner
  • “Twisting Mary’s Arm” (5:03) from Boxing Hefner
  • “Mary Lee” (3:03) from Boxing Hefner
  • “Nobody Knows” (2:19) from Revelations!
  • “Dragnet For Jesus” (2:53) from Revelations!
  • “He Got Better Things For You” (3:24) from Revelations!
  • “Turkle Dove” (3:02) from Revelations!

That’s over fifty minutes worth of music. This is all material prior to 2001, when they released their final album.

There’s also the band’s very first release, a cassette tape EP called The Devotion Chamber from 1996, but which Darren has doubts as to whether or not should be included in Hefner‘s discography as it’s mostly a solo affair. The release has four tracks, recorded on a four track, all of which, except for one, have been re-recorded and released on the band’s proper albums.  I’ve never heard this release, so the tracks in question may actually have already been included on the reissues; there are several tracks marked “4 track” among the extra tracks on the reissues, and three of these are indeed the same songs as from the band’s semi-debut – but are they the same recordings? As for the fourth track, “You’ve Been Prayed For”, it may have been included on the band’s compilation Catfight!, but again it’s not clear if it’s the actual recording from The Devotion Chamber, or if it’s a different recording of the same song; the otherwise informative booklet that came with the compilation doesn’t make it clear, and the reissues themselves are all booklet-less.

There was also a mystery as to whether the version of “China Crisis” included on this reissue, listed as only “4-Track Demo”, was the same as on the London split EP, but then I noticed that on iTunes this track is listed as “4-Track ‘London EP’ Version” instead, thus solving the mystery. I guess the line between a demo and a version is a thin one. And of course, strange that the description should be different on the two versions.

Anyway, there’s a lot of music they need to squeeze onto the final reissue if they are to reach the goal of having all their previously released music easily available, both music from the final album’s era (two album singles, two remix singles, and one EP) and the music they’ve skipped so far. Will this leave much room for demo tracks? While I’ve generally not enjoyed these and felt that they’ve clogged up the listening experience, this is the album for which I’m the most interested in hearing the demos; most of the studio songs are of the retro electronica variety, and so I’m curious if any of the demos were done acoustically, which would be interesting to hear. But will they have room for them this time around? Guess we’ll have to see.

The asymmetry...

Oh, and a minor annoyance with this reissue is that they’ve made the sleeve a bit taller than it were on the two previous reissue releases. I’m always a bit annoyed when authors or musicians do this, suddenly releasing a product which breaks from their the trend of their previous packaging, unless there’s a good reason for it or if it looks better, as it detracts from the aesthetics of your collection. Worst case scenario, if the artist suddenly decides to go for some crazy over-sized sleeve, it may not even fit into your designated area for CDs (as is the case with Radiohead‘s I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings and Jonathan Richman’s Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love). Fortunately this one isn’t quite big enough to make it an issue.

I’ll leave you with a few choice Hefner tracks which all indirectly from their We Love The City album. First there’s a remix of “The Greedy Ugly People” by Baxendale, which can be found on this reissue. Then there’s the song “Don’t Go”, one of my favourite songs by the band, from a radio session. Apparently there’s a Hefner radio session compilation in the works too, so I’m curious if this will be included there. I’d love to hear the rest of this session, as this version is really good, and it sounds like the band’s having fun playing it. And finally, there’s “The Day That Thatcher Dies” from a more recent radio session with only Darren and Jack Hayter (aka. 50% Of Hefner). I’ve never liked this song much, but this slow version is pretty decent!

Hefner – “The Greedy Ugly People” (Baxendale Remix)

Hefner – “Don’t Go” (Session)

Darren & Jack – “The Day That Thatcher Dies” (Session)

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Juletide Specials ’09

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Christmas, or Jul as we call it here, is a time for giving, for receiving, for good food and good company, for peace among men, and for Christmas specials – films or televised features about or otherwise made for this festive holiday season. Here are a few of the ones I watched this past Jul which I hadn’t previously seen.

Joyeux Noël, which is French for “Merry Christmas”. Not the most original title for a Christmas film. While its director is French, there’s also a fair amount of German and English spoken throughout the film; I’m not sure if any one language is spoken substantially more than any of the other two. The film is about the Christmas truce during the first world war, in which the soldiers of all three waring sides – France, Germany, and Great Britain – decided to call a truce and celebrate Christmas together. This was done spontaneously, without any orders or plans, and it much annoyed the higher-ups within each of the countries – soldiers aren’t supposed to decide to suddenly stop shooting each other to sing Christmas carols! Arguably one of the most beautiful events in mankind’s history.

The film was good. It had great music, it looked good, and it was an enjoyable experience. It was perhaps a bit melodramatic, a bit too in-your-face with its message at the end, the characters were maybe a bit one-dimensional, and it seems to simplify the actual historical event and go for cinematicness rather than historical accuracy. For example, the movie makes it out to be one special event that took place at this one place at this one time, but our friend Wikipedia (see link above) informs us that a Christmas truce happened between other soldiers elsewhere as well, and that it happened two years in a row. And were any of the characters in the film based on real life people? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t. Still, it’s an entertaining, at times moving film, based around an actual historical event.

Den Første Snøen, or The First Snow Of Winter as it’s called in its original English (or Irish, to be more precise) version. I’d briefly seen clips of this on TV, and when I saw it on sale for 60 NOK I figured I’d pick it up. It seemed like it could be a heartwarming piece of media, perfect for Jul. I was also pleased that this version had both Norwegian and English audio, which was a selling point for me. The story is about a duck who’s been left behind by his family as they flew south, and who has to manage to survive through winter on his own. Sounds like a great premise, ripe for drama. But then, after he’s spent what seems like only a day, tops two days, on his own, the snow has melted and his family has returned! Wait, what?

A good premise that fails to deliver. I think it could’ve worked well as a TV-series, following in the footsteps of such other great animal epics as The Animals Of Farthing Wood and Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, but instead turns into a fairly forgetful feature which is over before it’s really had the chance to start.

From the back cover of the Norwegian DVD release.

Also, I had expected it to last approximately 60 minutes, as advertised on the back cover of the DVD, but it only lasted approximately 30 minutes. That really surprised me. I’m guessing what they did was to count the running time of the English dub and the Norwegian dub combined. Which is the first time I’ve ever seen done. The back of the cover also outright lies about what subtitles are available; they advertise that it has subtitles in four different languages, but it actually has no subtitles at all. Another slight mix-up on the back is the logo they use to illustrate that the DVD has 2.0 sound, as they instead use the logo used for 5.1 sound; see both logos here.  This is probably the most messed up back cover of a DVD I’ve seen yet: it stretches the truth, it outright lies, and it mixes things up.

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. One of the lesser known Jim Henson productions, based on a children’s book by the same name. Emmet is a young otter trying to make ends meet together with his mother, having a rough time after his father died. They get by by both doing  odd jobs for the other town folks. Then, they learn of a local talent competition where first prize is fifty dollars cash. Wanting to surprise the other with a fancy gift for Christmas, they enter the competition separately, hoping to win.  It features several original songs by musician Paul Williams, who also did the songs for The Muppet Movie and the other Jim Henson Juletide feature, The Muppet Christmas Carol.

This was a surprisingly dreary feature, what with Emmet and his mother living in poverty and the deceased father often referenced. It also felt surprisingly un-Christmassy considering it has Christmas right in its name, with a generally bleak colour scheme and no bright Christmas decorations to be seen anywhere. (Though admittedly, none of the three features referenced here are the most typical Christmas specials, and the colour schemes are pretty bleak through all of them.) But it was very good. You felt for the characters, and they seemed believable, not to mention being genuinely good and caring folks. The songs were also good, though a few of them sort of blended together. But particularly one got stuck in my mind.

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

After doing some research on the film, I’ve learned that the version of this feature that’s being sold is an edited version. In the original un-edited version, Kermit T. Frog of The Muppets served as a narrator. From what I could gather, Disney owns the rights to Kermit as a character, and the feature was being released by another company, so due to rights issues Kermit had to be removed from the released product. But it also appears that some other scenes have seen some minor edits, some lines removed, which I’m not quite sure why; presumably to make it more kiddie friendly? It’s a real shame though, tampering with an old finished feature like this. The version I saw was unfortunately the edited one.

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Getting Wet With BioShock

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

I recently finished the critically acclaimed video game BioShock on my PC, which currently holds an impressive score of 96 over at Metacritic. So my expectations were high coming into it; the setting seemed intriguing, and I’d heard good things about the art style and narrative. Unlike FEAR, a game I burned myself out on last year (and of which you can read my rash and opinionated review of here), this wouldn’t be just another FPS game.

Bioshock Anime

You play Jack, a – as in FEAR – mute and generally identity-less protagonist, and you find yourself trapped in the remnants of an attempted underwater utopia dubbed Rapture. Rapture was built on the philosophy of controversial semi-philosopher Ayn Rand, in the guise of the fictitious entrepreneur Andrew Ryan, the game’s main antagonist. You must fight your way through the ruins of this failed society and make your way to the surface world, and in so doing will also learn more of how exactly Rapture fell. The main enemies in the game are citizens of Rapture who’ve fallen victim to addictive gene modification and in the process lost their sanity slash humanity.

You can kill things by using several different weapons, as well as modifying your own genes (as the mad citizens have done) to get access to some more extraordinary powers, though the wrench – the first weapon you get in the game – turns out to be one of the most efficient and reliable weapons to use.

Bioshock - Wrench

The narrative in the game is mainly brought to you by stumbling over audio diaries made by different citizens of Rapture, though usually these are from citizens with important roles and some authority, people who’ve worked behind the scenes of Rapture, as opposed to everyday citizens. Now and then you’ll also be witness to past events being reenacted by ghostly figures, though these occur (unfortunately) very rarely. The third main way in which the narrative is brought to you is through your two-way radio, which some still-alive figures of Rapture use to communicate with you.

Unfortunately, I ended up being rather disappointed with this game.

As I kept playing it, it started to seem more and more like just another FPS game, albeit with a story and setting that’s a bit more interesting than the standards in the genre. You basically play the game by making it from point A to point B – with some backtracking and hidden or optional locations thrown in – and killing everything that stands in your way. But as an FPS game, it feels a li’l clunky. The long range weapons aren’t always quite right; if you’re behind some sort of bars and shooting someone on the other side in-between the bars  it doesn’t always work, even if there’s a big gap and you have a clear shot. And the aiming can generally feel a bit off in general. So if you want a fast-paced and precise FPS game, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.

I’d expected the story to be more engrossing, but in the end I felt it was hidden under a few too many dead bodies. (Which occasionally wave at you.) Too much time seemed to pass between each narrative piece, with the space between each such piece being filled up with wrenching a few dozen enemies to death. The enemies also re-spawn, and I’m a bit of a slow player; I like to take in the sights and make sure I haven’t missed anything. This might’ve meant I had to fight more enemies than the average player making his or her way through the game, with more enemies re-spawning due to me taking my time, and in effect creating a greater distance between each narrative piece than was intended by the developers.

And as with FEAR, I never really felt very connected with the character I was playing; you never hear him talk and you don’t find out too much about his background or who he is as a person. Therefore I was never able to care much about him, and some of the narrative events which were supposed to be dramatic and suspenseful left me cold. As the game progressed and I had wrenched my way through a few hundred enemies or so, I eventually started amusing myself by pretending I was Batman, and that I had come to kill every last survivor of Rapture using a wrench. Which is sort of how the game plays like: you go around killing everything with a wrench. And that’s totally what Batman would do, right? Or perhaps Jack also became crazy from modifying his own genes, and came to believe himself to be Batman who’s on a crazy mission to cleanse the filth from Rapture using a wrench.

"I've got hooks, motherfucker!"

"I've got hooks, motherfucker!"

And the game’s ending was fairly disappointing. After putting several hours into the game, I was treated to a brief cinematic which showed me a future for Jack which seemed somewhat… creepy and unbelievable, given what I had experienced through the game. For the record, there are two and a half different endings; two bad ones (which are more or less identical, only with different vocal performances), and a good one. I got the good one.

The game isn’t bad though, but it doesn’t really do anything particularly well either. If you want a good FPS game, there are other games out there that are better than this. If you want a game with a good story or characters, there are also other, better games out there. But if you want both at once, plus the remains of an attempted underwater utopia,  this might be one of the best deals you can get. Why this game got as much praise as it did from the critics is beyond me, but at least Mike Doolittle from GameCritics.com seems to share and express some of my own sentiments in his review of the game:

BioShock is not a revolutionary game, or even a particularly innovative one; by the time I reached the end, I felt as though I had played a rather standard and predictable first-person shooter.

There are also plans of making the game into a film, which I’m mildly optimistic about. The story and setting are genuinely interesting, and tackling them in a more traditionally narrative art form might help bring them out. Though of course, the history of video game movie adaptations isn’t exactly a proud one.

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The Mountain Goats’ The Life Of The World To Come

Friday, October 30th, 2009

As The Mountain Goats is one of my favourite bands (Hefner is still the favourite band), I of course had to acquire a copy of their new album, The Life Of The World To Come, which was released early this October. Unfortunately, as with the band’s two previous studio albums, I was left unexcited.

Mountain Goats - The Life Of The World To Come

The Life Of The World To Come

A problem with The Life Of The World To Come seems to be that the songs sort of blend into one another, with few melodies or arrangements that really hit you over the head and steal your keys. I’m not sure if there’s a single song on the album I’d call bad, but given the context of the album none of the songs really get to stand out either, except maybe “Psalms 40:2″ – the only song on the album which could possibly be characterized as loud and rocking, and with no piano in sight. Doesn’t exactly help that all the songs have their names taken after a bible verse either, further aiding them in their blendage. I’m also a wee bit annoyed that the album supports what I believe is a very wrong stereotype, namely that the piano is a gentle instrument preferably used for slow contemplative songs and not an instrument you can rock out on.

Oh, and another problem with the album is that it uses the glossy kind of digipak cover which easily gets fingerprint stains when you handle it. That’s no good.  Fortunately I have a pair of nylon gloves at the ready for whenever I want to handle this or any other albums using glossy digipak.

Mountain Goats - Life Of The World In Flux

Life Of The World In Flux

If you bought your album through Rough Trade, you’d also get a bonus CD containing Life Of The World In Flux, which is a collection of demos recorded for the album. What’s been said about the album pretty much goes for this collection as well, as these slightly rougher and more sparse versions of the songs are still performed in more or less the same manner as the studio versions. It does feature some songs not on the album though – four, in fact – but they’re pretty much more of the same; they’re not bad, but given the context, they’re forgettable. Listening through it for the first time I actually didn’t notice that it featured any song which were not on the album, except for the song “Matthew 11:14-19″.

Leaving you now with a sample song from each of the two CDs, the only two songs I mentioned by name in this entry.

The Mountain Goats – “Psalms 40:2″

The Mountain Goats – “Matthew 11:14-19″

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Review Of The Day

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

So I was reading up on the anime series Mariaholic to see if it would be worth giving a look, when I stumbled over this fine review of said series:

DUDE WHAT THE F!@# IS THIS S#@! I THINK ITS JUST A BUNCH OF C#@P I DIDNT ENJOY IT AT ALL

I think I may still give it a look though, just in case.

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Darren Hayman & The Wave Pictures Rockin’ It In “Madrid”

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

Darren Hayman’s productivity over the last few years has been mentioned more than once in this blog, and he apparently isn’t letting up anytime soon. He just released a live concert recording of himself  performing with the band The Wave Pictures as his back-up band, recorded 2007 in Madrid, Spain – descriptively titled Madrid. According to the official webpages (here), it is primarily available for downloading through iTunes or other similar services, but it’s equally available on CD for low price through the hefnet webshop. No information on whether or not the CD version is a limited edition release or not.

Darren Hayman & The Wave Pictures - "Madrid"
My hard copy of the release arrived by mail last week, and I figured I’d try listening to it like I used to listen to the classic Hefner albums: in bed at night with headphones. Perhaps to recapture some of the magic. Now, the obvious weakness with this method of listening is the danger of falling asleep. (Which I actually did, just before the last song was over.) Still, it also allows you to get more intimate with the music than you may in other contexts, as there’s just you and the music and no other factors to disturb you.

The set starts with Darren apologising for his vocals being a bit croaky, and it might show on a few songs; the louder and “screechier” parts of “The Weight Of The Stars” and “How Can I Be Certain” definitely feels a bit off (perhaps enough to elicit the odd blush), but it might be that Darren simply isn’t able to perform these tunes as he has in the past (the voice changes and matures as one ages, after all, for better or for worse), or that they’re better suited to a studio environment than being performed live.

The set list contains twelve songs, six of which are Hefner songs, five of which are Darren Hayman solo songs, and the remaining song belonging to Darren’s sadly short lived electronica duo The French. The most surprising song to me was “How Can I Be Certain”, mentioned above, which is from the 2006 two-disc collection of unreleased Hefner / Darren Hayman recordings Catfight!, and one of my favourite ones from said collection. I looked forward to hearing it performed live, but as mentioned his voice didn’t hold up that well through it. He also bashes his own lyrics in said song, which is always a bit awkward for fans.

The highlight of the disc for me was definitely “Genesis Rock”, a rockin’ unreleased song about the 8th man on the moon, James Irwin. When introducing the song it’s mentioned that it’s written as part of a planned concept album about all the twelve astronauts who’ve walked on the moon. However, this recording is from 2007, and since then he’s released three non-astronaut albums. So one may wonder whether the project has been shelved, or if it’s still in progress.

Darren Hayman & The Wave Pictures – “Genesis Rock”

All in all the live CD – the third live CD in Darren’s discography – was a pleasant enough listening experience for an old fan. It’s not perfect (and there’s some mobile phone interference audible in the quieter parts), but given the low price and some decent performances I’m definitely happy with it. I’m not sure how often I’ll listen to these songs individually though, but it definitely works as a complete CD.

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A Review Of F.E.A.R.

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

You’re a faceless, nameless, mute grunt who’s a part of the First Encounter Assault Recon, or FEAR for short, sent off to stop telepathic cannibal Paxton Fettel who’s taken control of an army of clone soldiers. Sounds promising enough. In your search for Paxton you make your way from the start of a level to the end of a level, with a number of gunfights standing between you and your destination, mixed with a hand full of spookiness.

FEAR - The Fear Squad

There are different missions for the different levels, such as locating an office or a person, but the missions never really affect the gameplay; all you do is make your way forward, shooting everything that stands in your way, and trying to not pee your pants whenever something spooky happens. The story of the game is told through messages on answering machines, data on computers, occasional radio broadcasts, occasional encounters with other characters, and information screens inbetween levels. Unfortunately each piece of story information is brief and uninspired, so I found it difficult getting a clear view of the bigger picture.

The super clone soldiers don’t appear to be that super either, never really showing any remarkable talents compared to some of the non-super non-clone soldiers I’ve tackled in other games. Eventually I started getting confused as to whether I was fighting super clone soldiers or not, as the enemies now and then change costumes, and some of them appeared to be part of the security team for a building I was invading. Were these super clone soldiers? Were they being telepathically controlled? Or were they just hard-working Americans trying to keep their evil boss’s building safe from nameless, faceless, mute gun-totting madmen like myself?

Fear - Ouch

"Nailed to the wall by your knee, huh? Not so super now, are ya?"

One of the highlights of the game was to me when I stumbled over a semi-secret room (more like a room that could easily be overlooked rather than a secret room) in one of the later levels, where I found a radio that started playing a pop song in Japanese. I managed to record some of the song, but the quality is not the best, the music from the radio being mixed in with the ambient music of the game. You can give it a listen here. The chorus is somewhat amusing, which I believe is: I know we can make it together.

As a first-person-shooter the game works well enough, but as a horror or story driven game it leaves a lot to be desired. As I was mainly looking for the latter I ended up feeling rather disappointed, and eventually even frustrated, wanting to get finished with the darn game so I could move on to other things. The endless gunfights were beginning to take their toll, and being a “meticulous gamer” I’m guessing they took longer for me than they do for others on average as I often re-played scenes several times to see if I couldn’t get through them without losing as much health or ammunition. The gunfights are generally fun, but it just got a bit too much after a while.

Fear - Gunfight

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, known for his humorous illustrated video reviews Zero Punctuation, sums up my general feelings for the game well in his review of the game’s expansion pack, Perseus Mandate:

FEAR was an endless parade of identical gun fights broken up by the occasional slightly harder gun fights [...] Every now and again FEAR remembers it wants to be a horror game too, and makes the lights flicker or throws down a random blood stain [...] FEAR doesn’t mesh horror and action as well as, say, Condemned does. The transition between prolonged horror sections and bouts of tactical combat occur with an almost audible clunk.

The game Condemned was actually developed by the same company and released just about two months after FEAR. I played through it a while back, and it was a pretty enjoyable experience. It definitely did mix the action and horror a lot better than FEAR, and it’s a lot more story driven and overall scarier as well (it might actually be the scariest and most unsettling game I’ve played thus far, but playing through the last level of it with a fever might have affected my overall judgment of it as a whole). A couple of the levels do drag on a bit, with a few too many action scenes, but it doesn’t really come close to FEAR.

FEAR did actually startle and scare me though, especially whenever I’d play it at night with lights turned off and with headphones on, and one of the game’s strong points is definitely the audio. But in the end, I was ultimately left feeling unsatisfied with the game. But I’m glad that it’s finally over…

… or IS IT?!


Fear - Alma

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