Love

Not that kind of love, unfortunately. I feel i am hardly broad-thinking enough for a post on that subject. perhaps when I am older, and more experienced. No, this is a quick peek at Love, the game I mentioned yesterday and one I have happily been following. The debut trailer has recently been released, and for a display of pre-alpha footage it looks remarkably impressive. What Love reminds me of is a game like Darwinia or Ico - a project with the specific aim in mind of putting off as high a percentage of its potential audience as possible. By distilling them, it gains the appreciation it seeks, and therefore attains whatever cult status its tribe deem worthy. Such games are rare – they have to be – but if i were to slight it for overambition or auterism I would be doing myself a disservice. (How would I have lasted the past four days without Braid, I wonder?) I can’t claim to know any more of the title than what i have read on Kotaku and wherever they link to, but for a game expected in 2010 such dripping of information are to be expected.

Braid

Okay, Braid. I mean, Braid. I mean, damn.

I suppose it’s time for a revelation: the only thing I’m any good at critiquing effectively is film. For some reason, I just can’t get under the skin of literature, art or music. Those, I fail at, and fail miserably. The best I could do, I suppose, would be along the lines of a book report such as those completed and handed in by primary school pupils. It would be higher-quality than those, I hope, with the kind of insight a child of eleven would miss but an well-read man of eighteen would notice. However, the two would be worth about the same when it came down to how much they were worth. As I’ve made as clear as necessary, a review needs to spark some debate, needs to teach the audience something they would not necessarily see otherwise. A though I had not stumbled across when actually writing my Critiquing essays was this: A reader should find cause to return to a review after they have seen the object in question. It should raise points and then implicitly invite the audience’s opinion on the points raised. It’s practically a duty. Otherwise, where is the point of keeping the review after you have seen the film? And something I’ve noticed when it comes to the best reviews is that they become intrinsically linked to the film. I cannot think of Revenge of the Sith or Sex and the City without bringing to mind Anthony Lane’s thoughts on the subject, and nor can I remember Mass Effect without Edge Magazine’s brilliant dissection of why it wasn’t quite perfect.

Anyway. A final thought on reviewing before I actually get down to a review. Well, not strictly a review, more a simple discussion, a brief analysis on an incomplete subject. There are two reasons for this: one, the game in question, Braid, I have not yet completed and am not likely to anytime soon, given the wonderful difficulty of the game. Two, anyone who claims to be able to sum up Braid, with all its dimensions and complexities hiding behind a veil of deceptive simplicity, is a fool. Braid cannot be encapsulated so easily.

By way of introduction, Braid is a 2D platform/puzzle game (emphasis on the ‘puzzle’ there, as the platforming element is so deliberately simple that anybody and their grandparents could complete that aspect) released on the Xbox 360 Marketplace to universal acclaim and not high enough sales figures. Gaming sites such as Penny Arcade and Zero Punctuation have berated the general public enough on the subject, and Braid has turned into something of a slow boiler: a game whose sales figures never top the board but perennially stays on there, its reputation keeping it afloat. Metacritic has decided it is in the top ten 360 games yet released and its creator is likely to give a keynote address on how to make short cheap games good at next year’s Game Developer’s Conference. Not bad for a game which cost $180,000 (as compared to Metal Gear Solid 4’s $20,000,000-odd) and had a development team who could share a single bed (hypothetically; I’m not saying they did). Braid, in short, is a game worthy of the attention of just about anyone who believes in gaming as an art form in its infancy, and I’m so ‘with’ that movement I may as well be its drummer boy. Braid, alongside Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and Portal, is one of the most compelling examples of recent years that gaming can be more than a mere skills-challenging diversion and instead be something which gets under your skin and makes you think differently. After all, it’s you doing things. It shouldn’t be an impossible goal for a game to cause you to become emotionally vested. While this may not be Braid’s aim – the story, fascinatingly and cynically  philosophical as it is, is entirely separate from the gameplay – it doesn’t stop the attachment being there.

Braid takes time-manipulation mechanics – its ‘thing’; every game must have a ‘thing’ beyond the obligatories – and, ironically, simplifies them. Prince of Persia only did half the job, if this is to be counted. It’s strength is that every puzzle, nearly all of them bordering on undoable given the amount of lateral thinking not merely required but demanded with a gauntleted fist slammed down upon the table, can be solved with the powers you have at the start. Braid is not progressive, but it teaches the player to be, as harder puzzles are thrown into the mix with extra complications added at every turn. Still, you use the same powers you have always had to progress, which displays a level design of such imagination it nearly tops Super Mario Galaxy, a game whose levels I believed impassable. You are the one who advances, not your character. You are the one who learns to think through the game’s barriers, to align your thoughts and read it in a way you never would have expected necessary, toddling through the first few stages. The graphics are handpainted - handpainted - and instantly place themselves next to Team Fortress 2 and as-yet-unreleased Korean MMO Love in challenging for the title of Most Beautiful Game Ever Released, and the score is simply perfect. There isn’t a better word for it. For a game about a man running along rewinding time and collecting puzzle pieces, a lot depends on the score, and Braid has, several times, almost made me tear up. Which isn’t something I’m used to doing. This game is art, and anyone who insists on denying that simply hasn’t played it. I can tell you that for a certainty.

Once I’ve completed the game (and am a little more awake) I plan to take the story and its presentation apart and see how it works as an example of a video game narrative. It’s more intelligent than your average game story, and at this early stage (I’ve only read through about half of it) it seems oddly unnerving, as though you know you’ll be tripped up before the end. Braid is too smart to be a simple ’save-the-princess’ escapade. There’s something at work, and given I have it on good authority that Braid’s ending is revelatory, I have something to look forward to.

 

A critical post, part three.

So I’ve already declared somewhat on what Critics might best want to focus on, as well as where the line in the sand is drawn regarding a Critic and just someone offering an opinion. Now, well, I believe a differentiation needs to be made. A distillation, one could say. Even when one has worked out who are the Critics, we still need to answer the most important question of them all: why on earth should I listen to this person? And this, well, this is where it gets personal.

However, not personal so much in the ‘I hate this writer and I hope his family burns to death’ sense. That’s not conducive to a proper view of the subject (not even if the self-important pomp refuses to accept that Fight Club is, in fact, brilliant, and not self-pity for aggrieved children of the nineties). It’s getting down to differentiating individual reviewers, and this can be described as an almost noble cause given it shows the utmost respect for reviewers as individual with their own likes, dislikes, feelings and insanities regarding whatever their chosen subject happens to be. It is also a massive aid when assigning blame, something which is utterly magical if you really want to start a slanging match. I’ll get on to that later.

Part one of this blogged symposium dealt with what, ideally, Critics should address (on the subject of film because that’s my subject, though much of it is universal).  Let’s run with that. I’m not going to turn this into a list of who to listen to and who not to because more than either of the other two this subject is entirely personal, and giving a comprehensive list of who to avoid would defeat the whole purpose of naming my blog a ‘Proposal’. But pare the subject down: what does one want from a review? The two factors are ‘to inform’ and ‘to entertain’ (‘to criticise’ is a category for with one use, and I hate categories like that), and the skill of reviewing is finding something of a balance. We have the stereotypical ‘checklist’ approach, which is too inform-heavy; reading Empire magazine today I noticed an awful lot of this and it has the reviews reading almost like plot summaries. This doesn’t help the reader. Apart from anything, the reviewer is telling them things they will find out for themselves when they actually go to see the film: spoilers come in more shapes and forms than merely revealing the twist. These reviews feel like an incomplete journey planner, a satnav system which takes you three quarters of the way and then leaves you to work out the rest of the route. this might work when you need to find your way across town but it doesn’t work for a film, because it assumes that everything worth watching in a film occurs within the final section, and one can’t make that claim of the medium because it is completely wrong. As an example, the vast majority of Saving Private Ryan reviews I’ve read have had me banging my fist on the table because they’ve mentioned the brilliant few seconds where a bullet pings off a soldier’s helmet, he removes it with an astounded, elated smile, and you know how that particular scene ends. Why would you mention something like that in a review? Some films contain gems, sparkling little treasures which you are entranced by and take delight in. It’s like the pencil trick in The Dark Knight, or Tom Cruise’s role in Tropic Thunder: unexpected pleasures. And a reviewer who ruins these cannot be forgiven because he has absolutely no clue about what the audience require. He thinks that a review is a collection of facts with a (not even necessarily linked) opinion tacked on the end, and everything is fair game provided the ‘final twist’ (if the film has one) is left to secrecy. And you can’t really avoid these. Identifying which critics to avoid is trial and error, which is a shame, but after a while one identifys the right ones.

And these, well, these people you listen to, for the simple reason that they know how to judge a review. Take the film as a whole: does it achieve its aims? Is there anything noteworthy? How does it make the audience feel? Is it worth any attention? And then look a bit deeper: the themes, the influences, the shake-ups. How does it use film? And, of course, make it entertaining. Make it a conversation with the reader; don’t alienate them, but talk directly to them, why they should/should not take an interest in your subject, be it anything from antiques to restaurants. To pull out an example of someone other than Anthony Lane, I’ll take Yahtzee, the game critic who has more or less redefined ‘internet phenomenon’ with his Zero Punctuation reviews which can basically be described as irreverently faulting games for thing you probably would have noticed but never complained about had you played it before watching the review. While being absolutely mind-drainingly hilarious, which I think is the impulse attraction. And being very yellow. I can’t sum up Zero Punctuation in such a meagre set of sentences as I love it too much, but it’s strength is in never bothering with traditional review spiel and simply working to death the gameplay and story modes. He takes delight in isolating the pointless, always views things in the context of the genre (something I view as essential) and has no problem with using the most inventive metaphors to get the point across. Example: in explaining how the emo characterisation ruined the otherwise-excellent Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, he declared: “Never stick your dick in a pudding. It can still be good pudding and you can spend all day explaining that to people but nobody’s going to want to eat it because you stuck your dick in it!” There’s a piercing mentality to such reviews as these, in being able to simply give the points straightforwardly and in an entertaining way.

It should be adopted. Don’t listen to hype. Reward what needs rewarding. If you want to give something the benefit of the doubt, do so, and if one aspect ruined the entire experience for you, say so. And whatever you say, make sure it is backed up logically. Life isn’t balanced and neither should reflections on life be so. Very few Critics manage this, but people such as Yahtzee, Anthony Lane and Jerry Holkins manage it with aplomb. I suppose it’s a matter of searching them out, really: reviewers who, after you’ve seen the film or played the game or listened to the album or whatever, you think, ‘Yeah, I can see why they said that.’ Then we have a Critic who manages to open the minds on his or her readers. It’s a tricky subject, criticism, but some are well worth listening to because they do genuinely know what they are talking about and they don’t patronise their audience – they make them think.

And a final note? If reviewing, never be afraid to use the word ‘boring’. Something can be boring just the same as it can be funny, provided there’s a reason, and the phrase ‘”Boring” is a word used by boring people’ is simply wrong. That phrase implies that one must be interested in anything, which negates the whole beauty of human preference. Keep an open mind, certainly, try to like things. It does one well. But never feel as though finding something boring, if you’ve given it a chance, makes you small-minded. Because it doesn’t. The problem there is the filmmaker’s, and pretending something is interesting when its not benefits absolutely no-one.

A critical post, part two.

Can’t let the subject die. Hell, I’m a critic. It would be unfair of me to let the subject die.   

When someone critics something, they place themselves in an interesting position. Simply by offering up their opinion they enter a new state of being: one who has voiced themselves and has therefore categorised themself. Their thoughts on the subject at hand have now been cemented in the minds of those around them. One could bring up the inherently true old phrase ‘Actions speak louder than words’ and shout it at me whilst I continue on my line of reasoning regarding the sheer weight someone’s words carry, except it can’t be applied in this situation. Short of blowing up a film studio or marching into Parliament to shout down a bill ready in the wings to be passed, critics in whatever station must limit themselves to their eloquence. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that, we understand. As is my opinion on most walks of life: it is better to be limited, because then you learn to explore all possible possibilities with what you have in front of you. And for one to be a critic worthy of the attention of the audience, one must certainly learn to do their best with the tools at their disposal. Therefore, a separation must be made: how does one distinguish between a critic and a Critic?

As has been said, both earlier on here and in the previous post on the subject, it stems from the ability to look deeper into a piece of art and unearth something notable. All a critic has to do is plonk down an opinion on a given matter, and this becomes a criticism by definition. But then, hundreds of things are things by definition that I would accept only with a sense of satire surrounding proceedings, like accepting a plateful of mashed raw carrots and broccoli as food. Technically, it’s food – and it might even be good for you (which it is), but you’re never going to eat it because, frankly, you’ve got better things to do, better things to sample. A review which doesn’t bother to explore is like this: it’s still edible, and some people might like it, but it’s never going to be noteworthy, and, from as possible an objective stand point as one can reach on this subject, there will always be better. In the grand scheme of things it can be ignored. One could argue that at a push someone would happy consume a plate of mashed-up raw carrots and broccoli but that stems from biological necessity rather than any particular desire to do so. Reviewers don’t even have that. No-one needs to read what they write. If someone doesn’t like a particular article, it matters not how much blood has been wept in the creation of it, because they will put it aside and it will be erased from their minds.

So, while a critic is consigned to a shrunken audience, a Critic must dress up his work. At must be both eloquent yet engaging, able to capture the imagination and remain lodged in there like the smell of a class-borne banquet. Except, of course, this is not all dressing. It must combine the best of nouvelle cuisine and hearty, home-made fare (or whatever the polarities are today).  There must be something indelible about them, because otherwise one might as well stop any person in the street and ask them for an unnecessary, most-likely-uninformed declaration. So it needs to be stylish and gripping, yet contain some sort of content which made it worth reading. Which is, well, which is where one can narrow down the Critics.

It’s almost unfair, when one takes a step back. The simple requirement that, in order to be a Critic, one must be a good writer. Take (once again) Anthony Lane. He may be the best film critic working at the moment – albeit he does sometimes embody the archetypal ‘film snob’, brushing off anything irreverent and giving undue heed to anything worthy – but he would be brilliant in any fundamentally subjective field because he’s such a good writer. A political commentary, a short story, an advertisement for ladies’ deodorant: the man could make anything interesting. And that’s shared with many other Critics – the guiding, smirking prose washing over the subject matter and laying it bare, grafting it down to the bones, and letting the audience see all there is to be seen. Writing is, after all, an art form. So one might ask: “What Darwinian system are you forming wherein only those with a talent for prose can Critique and expect to have notice taken of them?” To which I would reply: good writing is not so elusive as it is easy to make out. In the same way that if one loves a subject at school they almost instantly improve in it, if one loves a topic for analysis their musings on the subject would automatically make worthy reading material. Because that’s the other thing that defines a Critic: the genuine feeling behind every paragraph. The head and the heart have been combined; not in a sentimental, sappy way, but showing that what the writer is writing he has though about deeply, mused upon, and is now ready to have it cemented in type. If anything, this should actually take priority over any verbal dexterity – you can be a good writer whilst still being a hopeless Critic. Writing from something thought over and enjoyed, however, is open and all-encompassing, especially if measured. A calm, thoughtful, logical, genuine dissection of something the writer clearly cares about: tell me a time when one of these has been less than worth your time.

If one writes, they have an automatic duty to their readers – otherwise, they degenerate into auteurs, writing for themselves and beneath the contempt of everyone else the moment they try to advertise. That duty is fluid, depending on the subject and the context. Voicing your opinion brings its own set: whether it is your intention or not, you’ll be judged as a Critic, and you’ll be expected to show you are worth noticing. People enjoy criticising critics, after all; it makes them feel more assured of themselves, the smug knowledge that the person declaring them to be in the wrong might actually be themself in the wrong.

 

I’ve enjoyed this, so far. There’s still plenty to be mulled over, so I believe a third post on the subject to round it off is in order. Possibly one the big question: why should one listen to Critics anyway. Let’s see if I can make sense of a thoroughly unanswerable question.

A critical post, part one.

As a preliminary note, this entry is not, in fact, designed to be critical of anyone or anything. Except perhaps myself. And a few other people, but it’ll all be very out-in-the-open and clear that if I want to tear into someone, I will. And because I won’t, I don’t want to.

I was wondering on critics and criticism today, and after a while my thoughts honed in on the crux of the matter: just how seriously does one take critics? I mean, are they not people more fortunate than you, in that they are paid for giving opinions which surely are of no more merit or value than your own? It’s inconsiderate. It’s absurd. In the realm of the subjective, how can one person be right, because that would mean, in simple terms, than another could be wrong. Critics appear to be arrogant by design, for it is only when thinking yourself right, rather than in favour of something, that one transverses the bounds of opinion and enters the objective, where he or she is free to comment on the undeniable state of whatever they are viewing: ‘good’, ‘not good’; ‘important’, ‘unimportant’. States of being, delivered with a finality which seems undeniable. Which one might describe as a masterly illusion, given the subject matter which critics view is never, by definition, set in stone. Fluid and interchangeable are the words generally used to describe reactions to art, film, music, games, food and everything else which I like to simply call ‘art’ because I see film as the modern equivalent to Fine Art. (Or, at least, good films are.) But then, in the course of the day, we have people espousing their opinions on these very things and making a concise living out of them. If it seems anything, it simply seems unfair, and unavoidable.

I’m a critic myself, though in the democratic sense. I’m not paid for my work, nor am I writing to any real end. I don’t have any inherent bias, and I’m not under any obligation to write for anyone except myself. My reviews are never informative; they were once described by a friend of mine as more analyses than reviews as if the person had not yet seen the film they would not have a clue about what I was saying. That comment was given about a year ago and therefore my reviews are slightly more encompassing, but I still write for myself and, well, I’ve seen the film. There’s no reason for me to explain it again. (This is likely to change, however, now that I’m writing them for two other people as well.) But there was a line brought up in a recent article on Jezebel which stated that in reading a review you learn much more about the critic him (or perhaps her) self. Mine are generally in this category: you read them, you learn about me and my outlook on life. The wouldn’t be classified with reviews from Empire magazine, they’d be classed with postings from the Empire blog. It’s what I do, it’s what I’m comfortable with. It’s highly and unashamedly opinionated, and never attempts to tell the audience otherwise. And this is where I feel we can draw the line with professional critics. And I think it’s indicated by the stars.

The favourite for critics is to have stars at the end of every review, generally out of five. Almost universally these reviews consist of three things: one, a plot summary; two, reasons why no-one should watch or enjoy the film; and three, a summary for everyone on too tight a schedule to read the entire review. These are boring. Seriously, how much love can you take when all the writer is doing, as far as the audience is concerned, is ticking boxes off a list with one hand whilst typing with the other. It’s almost obnoxious in its lack of passion; films are meant to stir us, to make us feel different coming out from what we did when going in, and any competent review/er should have exactly the same effect. And yet they don’t, and they never will so long as they feel as though they are being factory-produced to a grasping editor’s standard. And yet this here leads on to another, considerable, problem: how does one combine giving reviewers the freedom they ought to have with some sort of concentration, as everything within a magazine should have some restraints on it. And here’s where the other sort of critiquing comes in.

Exemplified by such titans of the movie scene as the impassable Anthony Lane, these reviews are naked. They are full-on. They refuse to limit themselves within the confines of inherent bias and a need to please someone. They tell the audience what they thought and why. They do not tell the audience to believe this without question, nor to they state they have the last word. This is quite different to persuading the audience one way or another (reviews, after all, must contain an element of recommendation), nor does it forbid the sheer denouncing of a film if the writer feels justified – heaven knows these critics do that all the time. It simply means bearing in mind the subjectivity of critics and therefore taking them in a different direction. None of the two-star-or-three-star nonsense blighting so much film journalism. No here’s-the-plot-here’s-the-acting-here’s-the-script-I’ve-run-out-of-things-to-say tedium. With this mindset one can dig deeper, eke out the hidden themes and interesting comments the films makes and, most importantly, what any given film brings to cinema. How can/will it affect the medium? Critics such as Anthony Lane, David Edelstein and Anthony Quinn pull this off with an enviable aplomb, able to take apart a film and scan it for anything of note with the precision of a Harley Street surgeon. I see genius at work when I read their writings.

So here we come to a partition of Criticism. Above anything else, a review should be focused. It should not feel like a lecture to the audience, nor should it feel like one throwing out random, disjointed, unlinked opinions like someone trapped inside a postal sorter, throwing envelopes at pigeonholes with accuracy but no pattern. A review should not tell the audience what they should think but what they are likely to think, and if not that it should inform them of what they will not think, thereby broadening there minds to some smaller degree. A review should be prioritised: not just what the work in question does but what the sum of its parts contributes to. What does it all mean? What is the effect on the viewer? Does it do anything of note, and if not, why not? What holds it back? All these factors contribute to the review being just as much a work of art as what it addresses, as reviews should be. After all, reviewing something implies the reflection, the meditation upon it, and anyone who is familiar with the works of Marcus Aurelius will know that meditations can certainly attain the status of ‘art’. Simply telling people in inadequate. You need to dig a little bit deeper.

This is a subject I will refer back to in the future, as it is certainly something I bear strong feelings towards and have spent a lot of time thinking over. Maybe my next one will be what qualifies someone to be a critic in lieu of actual genuine qualifications. It’ll sleep on it.