Vexing Vampire Viewing: A look at Twilight.

There are as many types of vampire as there are disease; some are virulent and deadly, and some just make you walk funny and avoid fruit. – Terry Pratchett

 

I am assuming that if you are a man, and have at least some female contact, you will have no doubt heard of a popular little movie series that seems to be all the rage at the current moment called the Twilight Saga. This is a pretty big ass assumption (heh heh, ass assumption, heh). You could be, for all I know, an asexual trogolodyte who lives on a cave on Mars with your hands over ears, but it’s no matter, as I’m gonna tell you all about it anyway. Recently my girlfriend, gawd bless ‘er, made me sit through all these films, and I have a few thoughts – and not all of them negative, so any fans, please don’t spit liquid lava  from your bowels at me.

This is a bunch of flicks with a very high female demographic. And it really goes through all the ages. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing a film in a theatre (which will be remedied this week) but apparently you could teeny boppers sitting next to middle aged married harridans who are just as in to it as they are.

Now, I’m sure there’s many ladies out there who don’t like these films at all. Certainly feminists out there have decried the series, but there’s far more women who’ll just say they’re bad films, along with a HELL TON of men (Twishite, anyone?), but it seems that you’re just as likely to see men in a cinema watching it these days as women, whether they enjoy the emotional lengths of the film or if they just like a good ol’ vampire flick.

I won’t bore you all with the full details of the story, because ; a) It’s boring for me to write. b) it’s a simple enough flick. Basically, a teenage tart pretentiously named Bella moves into a new town, falls in love with Edward Cullen, a young man, who is paler than UHT milk, Bella discovers Edward and his folks enjoy a little bit too much of the Red Stuff but don’t go for humans, various fights with nasty vampires, edward fucks off, bella strings along a native american werewolf called Jacob yadda yadda yadda.

Now these do work at times as Vampire films. The trio of ‘bad vampires’ who attack the Cullens in the first film are effective. The one who captures harlot Bella is a scary motherfucker who gets a kind of brutal death for film watched by teenyboppers. Dude gets chucked into a fire. How cool is that?  Also, british actor Michael Sheen as the the head of the Vampire Mafia dudes in Italy just about steals all of New Moon. Here, in a film frought with tedious and painful dialogue, is a rare glimpse of the old menace of the true ‘Gothic Vampire’. It’s worth seeing alone for this bit. Sheen is a creepy motherfucker. Even if he has to co-star alongside the ever annoying Dakota Fanning and her stupid dumb big eyes.

Even the fight scene between Cullens + Werewolves Vs Bad Vamp Army in Eclipse works relatively well, even if it reveals that Vampires seem to have the chemical consistancy – and are comprised of – Ice. If they had only said that at the start, I could have offered them a lend of my mother’s boyfriend’s sun lamp. Then they could have pulled out the deck chairs and watch the villains melt in the same manner of the Witch from the Wizard of OZ (one of the best film villains ever. Don’t agree? You know where the address bar is!).

You could pick on Twilight in a Nerdy way for how it butchers the Vampire and Werewolf, I guess. The whole ‘twinkling in the sunlight’, to how vampires can quite easily live without human blood. We all know that Vampires grow weak/go insane without blood,  and that the Werewolf transformation should be long and painful. But then, the monster aspect is just a gimmick to this series, something to add a bit of Gothicness to what essentially is a romance tale of doomed lovers, for which it works well.

That’s not to say there is downside to the non monster bits. The constant chats between bella and Jacob are dull as fuck. Jacob is just so boring. Ok girls, you may like his body, but he’s more boring than my high school maths teacher,going on about imprints and his native americaness and having his chest out. His long chats take up about 70%of New Moon and 50% of Eclipse, and all he while the harlot Bella is just stringing him along because she loves attention.

Bella, oh Bella, you big bimbo, you. I just don’t get her. She’s not a good role model. From the start she becomes totally 100% dependent on Edward, and is a complete douche to anyone else. She is a douche to her Dad (arguably one of the more humourous and empathetic characters), she is a douche to her human friends, and as mentioned, to boring old Jacob. Noone else registers to her except Jacob, and my my how she wants to be his slave. She’s also bafflingly fixated with becoming a Vampire; she constantly begs Edward to change her into a soulless freak, as she is so terrified of ageing. She evidently hasn’t realised the implications of watching all the people you love die, which is far worse IMO.

At the end of the day though, Twilight is a success because it grasps it’s core demographic and markets the dark, forbidden romance they want. And it does t reasonably well. It actually is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Well, a wooden one anyway.

A Song for Lya

As always, spoiler warnings. The tale has been about since 1976, so suck it.

There are stories that you read for comfort and pleasure and to wind away a rainy day or when you just can’t be bothered to get off your lazy arse and do something. There are stories than enlighten you and make you address an issue in a new light that you haven’t seen before. And then there are the ones that have you hooked on the series, and the others you dip in and out of, usually when vacating the contents of your bowels. (sorry for all the bum references, folks)

Then there are the ones that will make you sit down and read them in a single sitting, drawing you in and you know you’ll constantly think about for days on end. You’ll think about the characters and events over and over again, when you’re in the shower, walking to work, in the middle of conversation or in general when you should be focusing on other priorities other than over analysing a piece of fiction.

They haunt you.

A Song for Lya is one of these stories.

Don’t believe any timestamp or whatnot tells you on here, I’m currently writing this at 2AM GMT, having  just finished reading this novella by George RR Martin. I’m very tired, but I know I have to write about this now or the moment of creativity will be long, long gone.

This short 50 – 60 page novella (which I am reading as part of his ‘Dreamsongs’ short story anthology) has to be the first tale that truly showcases Martin’s developing skill at writing multi layered characters and dialogue, whilst also dealing with two topics which are more or less at the core of the human condition; Love and human loneliness.

For those of you who do not already know Martin, you’ve probably heard of the hut wrenchingly,  eye poppingly, shove it on a stick and call it bling popular HBO fantasy character drama Game of Thrones. Well, Martin wrote the equally testicle bustingly popular book series it is based on (A Song of Ice and Fire)  and he’s no Dan Brown either; I’m not afraid to admit he’s gor one of the most exciting and elegant writing styles I have ever seen, and is a master of character development, intrigue, and interwoven subplots. It’s no wonder that TIME magazine called our friendly bearded roly poly writer ‘The American Tolkien’. Though as much as I love our old pipe smokin’ fantasy godfather, Martin has a better grip on pacing than Tolkien, and his stories do without page upon page upon page of poems and Tom Bombadil.

Hey-ho-a-merry-ho indeed.

Anyway, ASFL is Sci-Fi, but if that puts you off or makes you think that SF cannot explore deep subjects or have a valid point to make, then I pity you deeply. The story involves what seems to be a planet happily colonised by Humans, who live content lives with the indigenous alien population, the Shkeen. The Shkeen are a race that are physically and mentally similar to humans, but have been in a sort of bizarre cultural stagnation, having not made any technological progress or evolution in tens of thousands of years. Furthermore, the alien’s religion involves ‘joining’ at a certain age with a parasitic organism called a ‘Greeshka’ which allows them to feel euphoria and great love for all creatures along with hinted telepathic abilities. These abilities allow them to link to each other, and feel ‘love’ for everyone on an intense, passionate level. Finally, after a decade they commit suicide by allowing themselves to be absorbed by a mature Greeshka – and it is the afterlife that this Greeshka helps the aliens lead to that is the crux of the tale.

Thrust into the story are two human telepaths, Robb and Lyanna, who called on by the human administrator to investigate as to why humans themselves are seemingly converting to this bizarre alien cult.

The two characters of Robb and Lyanna are very deep, layered individuals who stand out a lot from any of the others of Martin’s previous work, and are good indications of things to come. The two being psychics and lovers have a far deeper understanding of each other than any other non psychic couple can have, with Lya being able to read whole minds and Robb being able to read emotions. This should be able to put them at an advantage, but it seems to be also put a metaphorical gulf between them. From the moment they arrive on the planet and when they first mentally read those aliens going off to commit suicide, they begin to realise that ‘the afterlife’ for these aliens and human converts is some sort of mass/hive mind, and all those in it are in a state of euphoric love. Lyabegins to be tormented by her supposed loneliness. She comes to the conclusion that although Robb loves her, he can never love her on the same level as the aliens and human ‘joined’ do for her. She also feels increasingly isolated as although she can read Robb’s mind and fully understand him, he can never fully understand her.

This says a lot about the whole human condition. How well do we know our partners, our loves? Robb and Lya are psychic, but they still feel the gulf. In reality, us mere mortals have only ‘touching and words’ to show our love for one another. Is it truly possible to ever really know a person? Or are we all just islands?

Obviously this reflects a lot of the situation that Martin was currently in at that point of time of his life; apparantly he was in heavily passionate relationship, but the woman left him for his best friend. It’s more than understandable to recognise some of these themes coming through in the work; indeed, some of the passages read as if it is him simply getting his thoughts down on the paper.

Lya ultimately disappears and submits herself to the Greeshka, becoming one with this supposed ‘mass mind’. She then appears to Robb in a dream, urging him to surrender himself and join her by her side so they can be together again.

The whole passage in which this occurs is a hauntingly sad eulogy to losing a lost one. Even if it’s a dream, Robb almost seems to be having a metaphorical debate within himself about whether to commit this suicide and join her. It’s a thought that has no doubt crossed the minds of many of the recently bereaved and certainly is still resonating with this writer.

Robb ultimately tells dream Lya ‘no’ and that he won’t join her and surrender himself, even if that possibly means nothing but darkness and oblivion and loneliness when he dies. He then proceeds to contradict EVERYTHING he says in the dream the next day with administrator, before forcing himself to leave the planet before he ‘joins’ Lya.

The final section is interesting in that Robb debates to himself as to whether it would be possible for mankind to achieve some other form of ‘oneness’ with their fellow man, whilst retaining their individuality. He notes his main resistance to joining has been his sense of self, something he recognises as being very strong in colder characters like the administrator. The poor guy thinks men have a dual nature of both craving love and keeping it back, unlike the aliens who desire it all the time.  Although he thinks oneness and individulity could be somehow possible and mankind could find some way, he doesn’t come to any solid conclusions, and is left in the arms of another woman – just to soften the surrounding darkness.

We’ll never know if Robb finds his third way, or if he’ll one day return to join with Lya…

This is a tragic, and poignantly sad and beautiful tale that truly deserves more credit and recognition than it has. It’s the point where Martin establishes himself as a true heavyweight, and a deeply romantic writer in the speculative fiction field. It doesn’t take prisoners when dealing with subjects such as loneliness and the human condition. My short summary cannot in any way possible do it justice; I recommend you to read it, you’ll be a bit sad, and feel a bit wiser, but you’ll never be disappointed.

 

 

Well I’m Back!

I’ve finally returned to this blog after a month’s sojourn; yes! I’m SORRY! I’ve been rather busy and so on with work experience and just scraping enough money together to try and live on non processed food. I seriously don’t want to turn into some sort of human experiment at replicating Jabba the fucking Hutt.

Anyway, I’ve been doing some very productive work experience at a local newspaper, so hopefully that’s my foot in the door there. That’s the way it is with the media industry, the job pool for journalism shallower than the baby play pool at your local fungal infection ridden swimming centre. But my view is keep positive, keep trying and stay on the action plan. I’m also considering other methods of further education, maybe teaching. Although I like kids a lot, I would certainly need to work on my paitience….my girlfriend certainly knows how to wind me up faster than a jack in a box -_- love her though.  Seriously, when I’m annoyed I blow fumes bigger than Thomas the Tank Engiene after the Fat Controller got him a spicy lamb madras on curry night, but it isn’t anything that can’t be worked on I guess.  FUUUUUU!!!!

In other news, I finished reading George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (well, all  current installments anyway). Arguably, it’s one of the best book series I’ve ever read. It combines epic dark fantasy with deep character drama, and well, if you haven’t heard of it, and I assume if you’re hear you have, you’re really missing out. Still need to work through the very good TV show as well though, and I must do it it quick as WINTER IS COMING. I’ll get an article or two out on it soon.

I really want to keep this blog alive. Most blogs die after a month of semi regular use, and I don’t want that to happen as it’s a good way to practice feature writing. I certainly enjoy writing, so I’ve tried to minimise distractions around me now so as to focus solely upon it.

Next up: a lookback on one of the best animated films ever: The Iron Giant. :’) If those three words don’t get you brimming with nostalgia, you’re a fucked up souless fuckwit of a human being, with little more emotions than a poached egg served with slightly burnt beans.

Peace out folks.

Louie

Multiplex Misadventures: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

“I don’t think we need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It’s like, how many have there been? We get it. It was grim. Move on. No, I’m doing it because I’ve noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, [you’re] guaranteed an Oscar. I’ve been nominated four times—never won. The whole world is going, ‘Why hasn’t Winslet won one?’ That’s it. That’s why I’m doing it. Schindler’s bloodyList. The Pianist. Oscars coming out of their ass!” – Kate Winslet playing herself, Extras

Holocaust films are a very popular subject for the big shots in Hollywood, and there has been a steady stream of such films over the past 25 years. There doesn’t seem to have been that many of them till the 80’s/90’s, probably out of a sense of respect for the surviviors, but the arrival of Schindler’s list in the 1990s seems to have opened the floodgates somewhat.

Many take a highly cynical approach to these films; there’s a well known belief that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who run the Oscars, get a raging hard on for tough films full of human hardship and where the actors play roles that are very difficult or completely different to themselves.In short, it’s what they call ‘Oscar Bait’ – a film deliberately made to seduce academy members.

This is the view of the complete cynic of course, and I try to be as balanced as possible. There is no doubt ample evidence of Oscar Bait; Forrest Gump, for instance. Philadelphia. Rain Man. Both good films in themselves, but both director and principal actor where out to seduce the Academy and be seen as great actors. Tom Hanks is a case in point, for chrissakes; Ok, he did a few serious films before Philadelphia, but he used to be more well known for all those low knuckle comedy flicks and playing goofballs, such as in Bachelor Party and Big. The above quote is by Kate Winslet in the Sitcom Extras; she went on to do The Reader…..where she played a former Death Camp guard.

I wanted to take a look at a film that can fit this category on first glance but in reality is something else. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is was a modestly successful independent film by BBC and Heydey films.  It did quite well at the big screen and has a decent rating on  IMDB, but was noticeably forgotton about during award season, except for winning a few independent accolades.

It stars the talented young Asa Butterfield as Bruno, the wide eyed 8 year old idealist with a bright nature, whose father Ralf ( the fantastic as ever David Thewlis) just happens to be a senior SS man. At the start of the film, the family (with Vera Farmiga as mother Elsa and Amber Beattie as daughter and sister Gretel) are celebrating Ralf’s promotion and new assignment. The children have no idea what they are being moved to, especially Bruno. He’s labouring under the impression that his father is ‘helping farmers’.

Indeed, the film makes much of the innocence of children, rather than the misery of the camps themselves. When Bruno makes friends with Schmuel across the Camp fence, he innocently asks why they all wear pyjamas, not knowing they are uniforms.  He also seems to think that the people beyond the fence must be having fun, though Shmuel soon dispels these beliefs, and brings Bruno’s whole world into doubt. The two’s fellowship deepens after Bruno allows Shmuel to be beaten, only to apologise and be instantly forgiven by Shmuel.

Bruno is no idiot however, and like most little boys he values friends above all else. He refuses to believe the teachings of his bigoted nazi tutor, as as he learns that the ‘farmers’ are imprisoned jews, he notices they are nothing like the crude caricatures the tutor paints. His sister Gretel is more gullible, and begins falling in love with the Nazi ideal to impress her father’s handsome yet clearly psychopathic deputy. She still remains a good natured person, however.

Bruno becomes increasingly dissilusioned with his father after he lets his angered deputy beat the kindly prisoner Pavel to death. In the next scene, Bruno spies a propoganda film of the camp his father and other officers are watching, and promptly believes it all as truth; it is both touching and bittersweet.

Eventually the mother Elsa cannot live with her conscience regarding the camp, and Rolf decides to send the children away. This leads Shmuel and Bruno to lament leaving each other, and Shmuel talks of how his father has ‘dissappeared’. Bruno decides to sneak into the camp to help Shmuel…….

SPOILERS

The finale of this film is harrowing as it is masterful. You feel yourself begging Bruno not to enter the camp, and then the guilt washes over you as you feel sorry for all those inside. The scene where the two boys are holding hands in the gas chamber is a testament to the spirit that children have towards their friends, and the Human Spirit in general (if you get what I mean).

Some have criticised this film for belittling the Holocaust to become a tragedy of some German nazi family. But the Holocaust is equally a tragedy of Germany as it is to the Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, the captured Russians, slavs and poles. The search of the family for Bruno is prophetic and Germany’s horror and soul search after the post war realisation of what they had become had set in. It was a tragedy of the world.

This is a thoughtful film with a fantastic cast. I can’t recommend enough Asa Butterfield as Bruno, or David Thewlis as Rolf, a family man skilled in double think who orchestrates the death of thousands.

Some films are oscar bait; some make a genuine point.

Helios is Calling; A look at Deus Ex and Human Revolution

People have been singing the praises of of Eidos Montreal’s latest release, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and there have been legions upon legions of fanboys gushing and squealing their delight until the point of mass hysteria and the caniptions. There is much to be said for the game indeed both gameplay wise and graphically; however what really impressed me was the sheer dedication that the Eidos Montreal team had to the original installment’s legacy.

Let’s rewind things a little. I remember playing the first Deus Ex a little after everyone else; I was around 14 and I had the PS2 port. It is a fine enough port in it’s own right, though some will no doubt scream heathen and claim that the true experience is the original PC version. However to me I think this matters little as the PS2 port follows the PC version perfectly and has little alterations, except in means of interface.

I remember being enraptured with the vivid Cyberpunk universe that Deus Ex created; a world where, to paraphrase Human Revolution, it wasn’t the end of the world, but you could see it from there.

The developers had taken their plot from all the best conspiracies, albeit with a pinch of salt. The world is decaying in the 2050s, people are dying by the score of the Grey Death, which (SPOILERS) turns out to be a laboratory virus used to trim down the world populationby a shadowy cabal who run the earth. Your character JC is part of the UN’s anti terrorist task force, itself the muscle unit of this cabal.

It didn’t just deal with men in the shadows out to get you and find what sort of brand of glue you like the best though. The game also brought up questions of the advance of technology, with people ‘augmenting’ themselves with nanotechnology and also the concept of the ‘singularity’ – an AI so intelligent it would outstrip its own creators in intelligence. In the end, in the bowls of Area 51 (with those horrid Grey aliens I’m still scared of which try to probe you) you are given three choices; do you let humanity free of its shackles, enslave them, or transcend beyond your human form?

Gameplay wise, I was a noob when this first came out and I would just shoot at everything in sight like an ADD kid doing paintball. Had no patience for the stealth approach, but it was perfectly acceptable to complete the game in such a way, and deserves praise for allowing you to do so. The graphics have not aged well, though. People look hopelessly robotic. And the less said of the voice acting the better. Anyone who remembers the accents of chinese and french characters in the first game, knows exactly of the sheer audio purgatory of which I am talking about. This doesn’t detract from the fact that Deus Ex was and remains one of the best PC ever released.

Now onto the new game. (I’ll skip Invisible War; never played it, by all accounts a let down and it lost the cyberpunk edge that the original had)  Suffice to say, this prequel lives up to it’s predecessors. In fact, it homages them. It’s so amazing as it was made by an entirely different team of people, and even more so since Eidos is now owned by Square Enix, who are more famous for making rigid japanese RPGs. There is not a hinting of dumbing down for the console audience whatsoever; the plot is a puzzle that takes a long time to decipher, and there is plenty of background reading in game, if you’re that way inclined.

The plot is now in 2027, 25 years or so before the first Deus Ex, where mechanical augmentations are the rage and there are forces out to put an end to it if possible.  It’s a prequel, so there isn’t just nods from to the original – it ties perfectly to it, especially with a great post credits scene of the big bad from the first game. The main character, Adam Jensen is a brilliantly conflicted hero. The developers clearly loved their material and resisted the urge to bastardise it.

The genius of Human Revolution is in it’s gameplay. The closest thing I can liken it too is Star Wars. Ok, not in setting and plot, but in creation – Star Wars took so many influences (Samurai movies, Flash Gordon, Westerns, Fantasy) jumbled them all up, and added a new twist on it that resonated with people. HR does the same thing with it’s gameplay. It can be played as an FPS. Or you could go for a Gears of War style third person cover combat system. Or you can sneak about like Solid Snake. The Item screen is even like Resident Evil!

Human Revolution is a tour de force, and is so close to the original games that it bodes well for Thief 4. You’re missing out if you don’t have it.

Square Eyed Sunday: Six Feet Under

Six Feet Under is an Alan Ball (director of American Beauty HBO show that began in the states in 2001 and came to an emotional end in 2005. I discovered this show typically years after everyone else did, as an idiotic 17 year in 2006/2007. Suffice to say, it’s bloody brilliant and well worth your time, and I know for a fact that I desperately need to rewatch this series again. It’s 63 episodes of superb comedy drama, going from being as gut wrenchingly funny as to make your eyeballs sweetly bleed to being truly affecting.

Of course, 6 years has gone past since that emotional finale (I won’t explain the last scene; anyone who has seen it knows and anyone who hasn’t needs to see it) and the show is becoming in danger of being overshadowed by other current award winning dramas. Of course, it received a lot of praise in its day and award nominations, but SFU remains in my opinion Alan Ball’s best and most original work .

The show revolves around the Fisher family and their friends and lovers, who own a mortuary in LA. Now I know what you’re probably thinkingif you’ve never seen it; “Oh joy, This sounds as fun as defecating as razor blades”. Indeed, the family have to deal with the  But bear with me! Yes, the show revolves around death; it starts showing a death of a random person at the beginning of every episode (in humourous and not so humourous ways) but it treats Death in a respectful and often funny way that hammers down the point that yes,  we all die, but we must truly appreciate life.

The show has a top notch cast; there is the excellent Peter Krause as the older brother Nate, Michael C. Hall in his pre-Dexter days as the younger brother and closet homosexual David, Frances Conroy as the mother, and the superb Rachael Griffiths as Nate’s manic girlfirend Brenda.

A great plot device was the imaginary ‘exchanges’ characters would have with the deceased. They wern’t really talking to the dead; rather, it was an ingenious means of showing the internal monologue going on within the character. Intially it was a bit disorientating but It was a truly original idea and I haven’t seen anything like it since.

The character development in SFU was top notch. We got to see many of the characters develop and become more rounded people over the course of the show, without certain aspects of characters become more ridiculous or exagerrated (a process called flanderisation). We got to see David come to deal with his nature, Ruth branch out of her shell and Claire (and Brenda, for that matter) mature into better people. And of course there was Nate, who has to deal with a mountain of seal shit whilst being struck by a dibilitating illness.

It isn’t perfect, however. The show was admittedly best in the first season, when it had the perfect mix of drama and comedy, and when Nate and Brenda were relatively happy and a pretty good duo. It got slightly ponderous in the third season with Nate married to that Hippie woman he didn’t really love, but man did they make him feel bad for not loving her. Some feel it jumped the shark with the imfamous ‘paintball’ episode,  or the Season 4 plot arc of David’s carjacking. That may be, but it all came towards a highly emotional and satisfying conclusion.

SFU is a unique, beautiful show and my words cannot do it enough justice. It remains one of the best shows of the nineties thorugh a combination of great writing, surrealist humour and hard truths about life. I implore everyone to see it and give it the time of day. There are far far worse things to be watching….

In the mean time, enjoy this;

This week….

An article on Deus Ex: Human Revolution and my take Six Feet Under, the best TV show of the previous decade…….

This week I have mostly been listening to Killing Joke, and my Girlfriend doing rubbish accents. ahem.

Life with Carpal Tunnel: ‘Thief’

This dude is Garrett. What a taffer.

For my first post I’d like to try and keep things in a positive mood, despite the temptation to rant and complain about everything in sight like a lot of bloggers. I’m pretty bad for complaining on a day to day basis; my girlfriend could tell you all about that freely. I’d rather you’d think I was a friendly sort of fellow than some bitter troglodyte hissing at the sun from behind his bedroom curtain.

Anyway, I thought I’d start my video game perspective, ‘Life with Carpal Tunnel’ with Thief, by Looking Glass Studios, with the

Looking Glass is now defunct, which is an absolute shame as I firmly believe that if they were more profitable and had more support from their main publisher, Eidos, they’d still be one of the best developers today. Because the Thief series was at the time truly unique and has a lasting legacy even now.

These games come generally under the label of ‘stealth’ or ‘sneak-em-up’. This is a genre that is consumed and dominated by games such as the great Metal Gear Solid series and the definitely not-so-great Splinter Cell series. These games have largely set the tone for this genre, with games being generally very modern and technical and not having a lot of punishment for the player for breaking stealth.

Not so with Thief. What needs to be remembered is that the first game came out long before Splinter Cell and only two months after MGS, and in my opinion Thief was more of a revelation for me than the assorted escapades of Solid Snake and co.

The first thing you notice about Thief is that it looks like Doom and the various other first person shooter games that were ever so popular in the 1990’s – but if you play this game like an FPS you’re in for a surprise. One of the few memories i have of being 9 or 10 was trying to charge and kill every guard in sight, and being slain in about 3 hits from them. The impression was left fairly quickly that I had to take a more subtle approach, and not throw myself at every enemy begging to be turned into sliced salami.

The player character is quite obviously about to become mincemeat; the orb at the bottom is the light gem.

Fortunately for the player, the first game, Thief: The Dark Project is helpful in that it quickly allows you to get to grip with how to play in the Tutorial; it’s all based around the ingenious use of the light gem at the bottom of the players screen, which shows how visible you are. Using it you could easily find the shadows to avoid being detected and sneak past the bad doodz to your objective. However there were also other obstacles to watch out for, such as tiles, metal and noisy surfaces that would give away your position (though I never understood why Garrett never just wore slippers or something). These could be avoided via an inventive array of items and googaws at your exposal, such as moss arrows and rope arrows to get over them.

Not a good image but it shows how light and dark work so well in Thief.

Anyway, I suppose I should tell you a bit more about what it’s about, and I’m very happy too because the developers of Thief have made an impressive setting and a great of characters. The player character and ‘Thief’ himself is Garrett, a wisecracking master sneak who will often come out with an entertaining jibe or twenty as you play along. Garrett lives in a fictional fantasy metropolis simply called the city; a city where there is steam technology and electricity but where culture, politics, weapons and fashion are distinctly medieval. Garrett has been trained from birth by an enigmatic order called the ‘Keepers’, who seek to balance order and chaos in the world. However Garrett is more concerned with his own greedy little self and decides to strike out on his own, eventually seeking a mysterious artifact called the ‘Eye’ for some creepy chap called Constantine….

I suppose that’s enough exposition of the first game. Thief : The Dark Project is an excellent game for purely its setting alone. The noirish world of Thief was so completely original to me, and ranks on a par with George RR Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ universe for interestingnessnessness.  I was completely engrossed in a stunning grimey world caught between SteamPunk and the Middle Ages. The First person viewpoint and the wealth of books and scrolls to read only improved the immersiveness; and ‘Immersive’ is one of the defining adjectives most fans would describe of these games. The by far outdated graphics don’t even matter.

I have to admit, I was a whiney kid when I played the first game, and sometimes the immersive nature is too much. Thief 1 was a very scary game. From the second mission it had you battling undead religious zealots and zombies from the world go, and the less said of the level ‘The Haunted Catherdral’ the better. A darkened church full of murderous undead religious fanatics is a recurring nightmare for me and still has me jumping out of bed and running to mummy from time (ok, not really, but it was scary).

Abandon hope.

Responding to these Criticisms, the developers decided with the sequel to make missions more based around typical Thief activity than tomb raiding and monster battling. The eventual sequel, Thief 2: The Metal Age was an improvement upon the original if you ask me, although the graphics were largely identical (not that it mattered). They greatly expanded the maps and the areas that you were allowed to burgle, adding a whole new feeling of freedom to the games. This culminated in the epic level ‘Life of the Party’, which had you darting across rooftops to the ememy’s tower, raiding houses along the way. It’s far better than how I described it.

Thief 2 also had you battling a mad as fucking batshit maniac priest and his followers, the Mechanists as they sought to impress a technological future on everyone else. The mad as fucking batshit maniac priest,  Karras, is one of the best villains i’ve seen in a videogame. Thief 2 is well worth the 5 bucks it goes for nowadays (and if you can get it working).

Karras. a fucking douche

After looking glass another developer made a new game on another game engine called Thief: Deadly Shadows. Although it has some terrific levels, such as the stunningly atmospheric Widow Moira’s Mansion and the Cradle (gulp!), it was let down by the truly awful city sections which were just a hassle (and should have been great), odd characted models and sub par voice acting. There is one particulatly irritating female shopkeep called black eye bessy or something who i want to strangle with a sock. Also there is a genuine consensus it was ‘dumbed down’ for console players and the story was mediocre. Worth a try though.

It looks as if Thief 4 is in development by yet another developer subdivision of Eidos, and it looks like its in Third person and looks like Assassin’s Creed. All I can hope for is that it will capture some of the magic of the original.

Welcome all!

Hi there, and welcome to my new blog!

I’m a recent journalism graduate – i know! No chance of a job! But i’ve got a few things going and I figured I would pursue my dreams regardless of a lack of jobs about.

I’m chiefly interested in pop culture, films, music, games and doing reviews. I hope to have a few things up soon.

Stay tuned!

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