Meewella | Fragments

The Life of P

Month: November 2007

Following The Assassin’s Creed

Assassin's CreedI hope the Americans among you had a wonderful day yesterday celebrating the mass genocide of the indigenous people or whatever it is one does on Thanksgiving. With Bioware’s new opus Mass Effect intent on drawing all my time, I had been hoping that Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft Montreal would turn out to be terrible so I would not have to buy it. It looked like a collection of excellent ideas that could not possibly brought together to form a coherent whole. Unfortunately this was not to be. While Halo may grab the mainstream press for its sheer financial clout, this is one of those few experiences that instills gamers with a desire to talk to everyone about it, whether they are into games or not.

Assassin's CreedThe player takes on the role of Altair, an assassin in the Holy Land during the crusades, uncovering a conspiracy while taking out those profiting from the corruption surrounding the war. It is telling of the modern climate that the opening credits state that the developers come from a variety of backgrounds and faiths, given the obvious allusions to a Muslim-Christian war throughout. Altair is essentially a non-religious lone wolf, stalking through cities with an animalistic gait. The mood of the piece is best encapsulated in this trailer featuring UNKLE’s Lonely Soul.

AltairThe medieval world is brought to life in stunning detail with huge cities (Acre, Dasmascus and Jerusalem are all recreated) bustling with people going about their lives. Its best feature is the free running and climbing ability which lets Altair scale virtually any building, ascending high towers to survey the city below. The swordplay is simple but nuanced, adding new layers over time and feels surprisingly authentic for the time. Generally think Hitman meets Prince of Persia.

Reviewers are somewhat split with the complaint that too much of the experience is repetitious with bland identical gameplay in every city for the lightweight “investigation” before each major assassination. Gabe at Penny Arcade highlights that this is partly a symptom of the reviewers’ mentality, playing the game as a job so hurtling through to finish. Assassin’s Creed is very much the sort of game that requires a slower approach to soak in the atmosphere. While gazing at the ornate architectural detail of a Jerusalem temple I felt like a foreign businessman wishing I had more time for tourism. And then I remembered this was a game and I could do what I liked. While collecting randomly located flags seems a little tired, some of the best fun to be had is while climbing up and exploring the cities from the rooftops.

The chief criticism remains valid, however, that the developers have essentially created an incredible sandbox but forgotten to give the player quite enough toys with which to play. I am sure the space opera of Mass Effect will draw me away from Assassin’s Creed as soon as it arrives, but this is a game I will be happy to return to with such a beautiful historic world and a compelling conspiracy unfolding.

Second Life, Second Time

Neil and Roger interview at the Hollywood BowlSecond Life is a virtual world that falls well outside the “game” descriptor. It is better viewed as a platform for communication and expression, very much symbolising the virtues of the web itself. With a working economy, some have taken things further and the virtual real estate market has proved highly lucrative. I created a Second Life for myself a few years ago but was not particularly impressed by my first foray. Control felt clunky and unresponsive and the whole experience was plagued by lag rendering it almost unusable. When Neil Gaiman mentioned that an interview promoting Beowulf would be his first time in Second Life, it seemed like an ideal opportunity to give it another go. The whole idea is rather fitting, after all, for a film that seeks to take the concept of digital actors to a whole a new level.

Phoenix NowhereSo last Thursday I hopped back in, quickly spruced up my avatar and found my way to the Hollywood Bowl where on Saturday the interview would be broadcast live (from the private Beowulf Island before a few VIP guests). Today I was able to experience one of the truest attempts at fusion of the real and virtual: a virtual interview of a real writer and director (Roger Avery) discussing their real film, broadcast to a virtual auditorium of virtual avatars being controlled real people. Confused yet? While fun, this was very much a novelty. Far from seamless, this was very much inferior to the alternative of a direct webcast interview which would have offered much better video quality without continuous drops. On the other hand, had that been the case, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to watch it.

Second Life definitely feels more impressive now than on my last visit, but there are clearly still a lot of issues to be resolved. It is perhaps unfair to judge it since the client does not yet officially support Vista, and some bugs (including crashing to the desktop on occasion) may be due to this incompatibility. Moving to a virtual art gallery, for example, the sluggishness and low visual quality seems markedly inferior to a web gallery, yet the ability to have a “live” musician playing at the event does add a certain charm. I certainly won’t become a regular user at the moment, but I have a feeling I will be frequently popping in for short trips to check things out.

NOD32: now with added pretty

NOD32 v3.0I have previously praised NOD32 as an antivirus solution. However I have always been hesitant to recommend it generally because its modular design resulted in a convoluted, complex interface. With today’s new release that has all changed. Its new intuitive menu design means now everyone can experience one of the favourites of the tech savvy crowd for its low resource usage but strong protection.

One of the other nice things about their sales model is that once you purchase a subscription, not only does it give you access to virus definition updates (and these are incredibly fresh, with new updates often more than once a day) it also lets you upgrade the software itself to any new releases for free. I was happy to dump the Norton bohemoth over a year ago and with NOD32 going from strength to strength I’m certainly not looking back.

Meredith Kercher, 1985-2007

MeredithBy now you have probably come across the story of the British student murdered in Italy. You may not know that Meredith was a friend of mine from back home in Croydon, and her death has left me shocked. How this could happen to such a sweet, cheerful girl is utterly beyond comprehension, but I sincerely hope she is at peace and my thoughts and prayers are with her family. I also hope that those who may have known her are not finding out through reading this — it is far from the ideal medium — but do feel free to leave your own thoughts and memories.

I met Mez through friends at Old Palace school and she was part of the crowd we regularly hung out and partied with. She was incredibly relaxed and easy to talk to, but above all I remember her cheerfulness. She struck me as an incredibly upbeat person, and I always picture her smiling. Her smile was infectious and she never failed to improve the mood of everyone around her. We were not closely in touch while she was at uni, but she seemed in her prime: bright, beautiful and very much loved as evidenced by the litany of posts in tribute on her Facebook page*. For her life to be tragically cut short in such a senseless act is utterly devastating to all who knew her. We are struggling to come to terms with what has happened to our friend. I feel so lucky to have known her.

* I have chosen not to link to her profile since I have been informed that journalists have been contacting people through Facebook trying to get information. Meredith’s family have requested people do not speak to journalists as they would like privacy to grieve.

Rising Star(dust)

It suddenly dawned on me that, after plugging Stardust repeatedly over the last year, I haven’t actually raved about it here since seeing it. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading this and go and book tickets. It’s one of those magical films that ought to serve all genders, ages and tastes equally.

The reason I have been following it closely is, of course, that the story was penned by Neil Gaiman. Like the book it remains anapologetically (modern) fairy tale, though Matthew Vaughn’s direction grounds the visuals in realism, with superb subtle flourishes such as the way Claire Danes’ Yvaine seems to glow and wane according to her mood. Indeed Vaughn’s involvement is what originally filled me with hope for the project, since selecting the director of Layer Cake, such a drastically different film, meant he must love the source material and the studio felt he was perfect for it so would presumably leave him alone.

The cast is sublime. Claire Danes is wonderful in her portrayal of the star, while casting a newcomer, Charlie Cox, as Tristran was vital in many ways to allow his character to naturally emerge and bloom during the story. The names alone in the supporting cast are phenomenal, but chief among them are a deliciously evil Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert de Niro’s Captain Shakespeare. Although loosely based on the pirate captain from the book, Neil Gaiman said it best, “I know I didn’t write a pirate captain performing a can-can in drag”. So departures from the original story are very evident, but in every case they work well in translating the story to the big screen so even purists would be hard pressed to complain.

So this isn’t supposed to be a review as such, just me urging everyone to go and see the film because you really will enjoy it. Like Pixar fare, there really is something for everyone, though this wasn’t written primarily for children (Gaiman wrote the original as a fairy tale for adults, though the film is very much a PG). I fear that much of the advertising is designed to appeal more to girls (to the tune of a new Take That song, no less — though worryingly I actually quite like it) or else will fall into the weird grey area where no one thinks it is really their sort of movie. I promise it is, just give it a go.

"Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has."

(CC) BY-NC 2004-2023 Priyan Meewella

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