The hazel-eyed monster

Gore Vidal had it pegged when he said: “Every time a friend succeeds a piece of me dies.” At the moment a large part of my ego is circling the drain, thanks to the glorious success of a friend.

Said compadre is DW Wilson, who recently became the youngest winner of the BBC’s National Short Story Award, helping himself to some critical acclaim and a very tidy cash prize. While I’m here I’ll plug his book Once You Break A Knuckle, which is available on Amazon.com and will see a UK publication soon.

DW is certainly deserving of his award. His short story, The Dead Roads, is a perfectly crafted tale of love and youth and adventure with a smidgen of betrayal thrown in, all set in the richly painted and somewhat bizarre backwoods landscape of DW’s native Canada. It’s about as good a short story as you’ll read; it’s a proper tale, full of big things and ass-kicking, none of the navel-gazing nonsense that clogs up my Granta subscription. Although seriously, go read Granta. There’s some good shit in there.

So I suspect I’d be jealous of DW even if he hadn’t won a big slice of pie, because he’s written a short story I could only dream of penning. The success of The Dead Roads ought to be measured on how good it is, not how much it is worth. And it’s plenty good enough to get jealous over.

I pondered briefly why DW’s success would cut me so close. I mean, plenty of other people I know are successful, and most of them are young. Some people I don’t know have levels of success I can only goggle over, and they hardly keep me awake at night. It could be the cash DW has deservedly won, but lottery winners have all the money they could dream of and I don’t mind. If I did I’d be out there egging their mansions, the lucky buggers.

Partly it’s because DW is successful in what I might petulantly call my field: he’s a writer, and I want to be a writer (anyone who tells you just writing things is enough to make you one is sadly deluded, and probably as broke as I am). He’s doing the thing that I want to be doing, and doing it well; better, probably, than I ever will.

But there are thousands of successful writers, and I manage to keep my jealousy in check. If I met, say, Pat Barker I’d probably gush over her work, rather than seethe and plot her downfall (that’s right DW, watch every shadow from now on). I know plenty of writers personally and many (most) are as talented or more talented than I, and I have perfectly cordial relations with them. What is it about this piece of news that makes me boil with envy? (apart from the money thing, that’s obvious).

The answer is because DW earned it. Straight up. His work ethic is something I should seek to emulate, and he put a lot of labour into that story. It shows. It shows in the silky sharp cadence of every sentence. It shows in his indiscriminate verbing, that makes it sound as if the narrator were sat in the next seat to you. It shows in his funny, sweet dialogue, that makes me nostalgic for a place I’ve never been and experiences I never had. It’s a work of art, of craft, and it damn well got that way because DW spends hours staring at his laptop every day, making sure it turns out like that.

That’s the problem, that’s where the jealousy comes from. I ought to be doing it that way, and I’m not. The work ethic, the dedication, the sheer toil that leads to success is on display in front of me and I’m not taking the hint because I’m lazy, or bolshy, or unsure, or whatever feeble adjective I feel like justifying it with.

That’s why I’m not really jealous of lottery winners. They didn’t do anything to earn their prize. And if they won it by chance, then so can I, maybe. It could be you. It won’t, but it could. I don’t have to do anything to be in with a shot.

So I’m not really jealous of DW’s prize, the recognition or the money. I’m not even really jealous of the story, I’m just grateful I had the chance to read it. It’s the reward, not the prize, that’s ripping me wide open. The reward for diligence and hard work and talent. The reward that I might deserve if I could only show those same qualities. I’m jealous of what he’s doing, not what he’s done.

Now I just need to make myself do the same.

High Culture + Low Culture = THE Culture.

A combination of circumstances has left me without internet this week (this post comes from a Cafe Nero near you), a deprivation I might normally have relished with monkish pride (escape from social networking, more time to read, get outside in the sunshine etc etc) had I not been looking for employment. It turns out that looking for work is rather challenging without access to the web.

As the days go by I have noticed other, even more trivial endeavours hobbled by my lack of internet. I don’t know when any social events are occurring, for instance (Facebook does my calendar for me). Simple meals have become more challenging as I rack my brain for measurements and cooking times. I feel a little disconnected from the world (I can’t get Radio 4 on the laptop anymore). Several times I have left investigating a minor piece of information (phone numbers, cinema listings, directions to a bar) until the last minute, confident that I would be able to discover each fact with only the briefest of searches, remembering far too late that I can’t just jump online to find out, and here is the thing, I honestly don’t know how else to find out.

How do I find out cinema times without the internet? Is there a number you can call? And how do I find out what that number is? Do I just ask people in the street until one of them has it? Or do I go and ask the neighbours? If someone gives me an address how do I find it? My girlfriend doesn’t have a map of London in her house; she just has old issues of Heat I pretend I don’t read when she’s at work.

I’m not completely stymied. There is free wifi at several bars and cafes in the local area (which is a good thing, else you might not be reading this). My trip to Cafe Nero has become a daily pilgrimage, partly because they let you grossly abuse their loyalty card system. (“I would like eight of your cheapest green teas, please. And now for my free drink, I would like an extra-large hot fudge sundae macchiato with extra cream, another shot of espresso, and a dash of any particularly interesting syrups you’ve got back there.”)

But my reliance on the internet is worrying, not to mention debilitating. Every day I go to Cafe Nero and trawl Guardian jobs and Milkround and Indeed.com looking for work, like the good little graduate I am. But I don’t look up every piece of information I might conceivably need in a day. So then when I get home I am baffled by a seemingly innocuous question. I didn’t think I really used the internet much, and now I find I can’t get by without it.

I’m not the only one in this predicament, obviously. As a society we have moved away from what might be termed ‘fundamental knowledge:’ that which allows us to cook things from basic ingredients, to fix things when they break, where to find regular and multiple sources of information, so that if one is unavailable we are not completely foxed.

If I were a Daily Mail columnist I might at this point bemoan the above fact, confess my yearning for a simpler time when everyone knew how to make an apple pie from scratch, use a mangle, ride a horse to work or some such nonsense. Stuff that, frankly. I’d quite like to know how to make an apple pie, but I don’t want to frickin’ memorise it. I’d just rather look it up, thanks.

There are two reasons why people seem to know less about their fundamental processes. The first is the centralization of, and easy access to, all sorts of information. We don’t need to know off-hand how to get engine oil out of cotton trousers any more than we need to memorise the cinema listings in the paper in case we feel like going in the week. The information is right there online waiting for us. It feels like a new development but it’s not, really. It’s simply a more egalitarian arrangement. In days gone by rich people might have the sum of all human knowledge kicking around in their library, if they were bothered to look. Several of the more traditional (read: bigoted) politicians and aristocrats of the later 19th century worried what free access to libraries might do to the minds of the working class. They phrased their arguments as concern over the brain capacity of the poor, as if learning French or classics might make them forget to how to use a hammer, but what they were really panicking about was the idea that extra knowledge might awaken the working class to how well and truly they were being stiffed by their supposed betters. The emancipatory effect of common access to knowledge is one of the main arguments used at the moment by those trying to defend our libraries against the public service cuts of the current austerity government. But the public’s current access to information via the internet must have those old lords and ministers spinning in their graves. While the information available on the internet might be of lower edited quality than that found in the average library, it’s certainly more pernicious; just ask China. (Don’t bother, they don’t write back. I’ve tried).

The information provides emancipation is indirectly related to the second reason why we have less basic knowledge: the emancipation of women from the home.

Let’s face it, when anyone harks back to the days when we knew how to tailor our own clothes and cook from scratch and all that stuff, they mean when women knew how to do it. For at least the last couple of centuries the employment routine of men hasn’t really changed: wake up, perform basic ablutions, eat, go to work, come home, go to pub, eat, perform basic ablutions, sleep. That’s it. Men have never known how to make apple pies and sew on buttons because the women did it all for them. If we’ve forgotten these simple pieces of knowledge as a society it’s because women have forgotten them, and women have forgotten them because they’ve got better things to be doing.

Why should anyone need to devote themselves to basic pieces of knowledge when it is all readily available for them? Why bother with memorising how to cook or clean or fix things except for convenience’s sake: unless you decide you want to. The rest of the time you can just look it up, and save your time for doing things you want to do.

Let’s forget about an apocalypse or something equally dramatic. Let’s assume we get the Star Trek future where humanity keeps progressing, solving its own problems and social ills and eventually devoting itself to knowledge and ethical pleasure. You think Captain Kirk has a fucking clue how to make an apple pie? He probably doesn’t even lace his own shoes; he’s too busy discovering energy fields and banging space babes.

We don’t need to get by without the internet when it’s doing such a good job for us. It’s supposed to be a time saver, and used properly it really is. That other methods for doing things may have fallen by the wayside is disconcerting but shouldn’t necessarily concern us. It’s a bugger that most graduate jobs are posted online if you don’t have internet access, but I can see how it’s the most convenient method for everyone involved. The solution is to make sure that everyone has access to the internet, so that everyone can take advantage of meritocratic information transfer.

The only downside is this: when information is so readily available, how do we separate what is trivial from what is meaningful?

In days gone by the stuff you had to learn to get through the day was necessary, but trivial. You don’t glory in the knowledge of how to mop a floor. The other stuff, the bits you had to find out for yourself, were what was recognised as important. That these scales have reversed themselves somewhat is a sign of the time we live in. But meaningful information is the same as it ever was: information that improves the life and intellect of its discoverer, either emotionally or physically. I’d bet you’re a damn sight more likely to remember how to make an apple pie if you get some sort of pleasure from doing it. It’s easy to get high and mighty about types of culture, but if an encyclopaedic knowledge of TOWIE makes you the envy of your friends and makes you beam with pride than to hell with anyone who might tell you it’s not worthwhile.

We aren’t taught to learn from the internet, though. Older people scoff at the idea that schools might have classes dedicated to how to use the internet, but that strikes me as very short-sighted. Surely people deserve to know how to make the most of the greatest human development in years? Information is now easy to get at. People are only just beginning to realise that, I think. It’s why the internet has spent the best part of a decade languishing in an intellectual doldrums of pornography and funny cats. But think about how many people use Wikipedia every day. You think that, a hundred years ago, those people would have used a regular encyclopaedia so voraciously? Or that they might own one at all?

I rely on the internet for all my information. But it’s about so much more than cinema timings and Google maps. I didn’t realise how flippin’ useful the whole thing was until it was taken away. So I’m taking more time to read, to go outside in the sunshine. But as soon as I get my internets back, I’m going to go and learn something.

Dead Space 2

Is a shark attack survivor lucky because they got to live, or unlucky to be attacked in the first place? This question might have crossed engineer Isaac Clarke’s mind when he wakes up in the middle of another necromorph outbreak, this time on ‘The Sprawl,’ a huge space station orbiting one of Saturn’s moons, three years after his first nightmare on the mining ship Ishimura.
The player might wonder what has been happening with Isaac over the last three years, and the game neatly averts this by making sure Isaac doesn’t remember either. He’s been kept on mental lockdown by the inevitable sinister government forces and therefore both Isaac and player will find their experience in Dead Space 2 following on directly from the end of the previous game.

That’s not all the follows directly on because Dead Space 2 is fundamentally Dead Space: Episode 2. The first game’s basic mechanics are expanded on hugely but hardly anything new of note has been added. Most of the weapons return, as do telekinetic and stasis manipulation and zero-g environments. Isaac’s suit now allows him to fly about in zero-g (an ability he apparently forgot about in the previous outing) and this allows some interesting multi-level exploration, while the stasis and telekinetic powers are used occasionally for puzzles but are now mostly necessary parts of combat. As in his first adventure, Isaac also spends a lot of time repairing broken systems and travelling on trams (apparently the 26th Century’s regular form of mass transit).

That Dead Space 2 is a direct update is not necessarily a fatal flaw because what the game does it does very well. Combat is tense and exciting and the weapons are satisfyingly meaty with plenty of opportunity for customisation. The enemy range is a little bland with only a few new types appearing, but these new opponents are well designed and introduced in exciting ways. The damaged space station conveys a damaged fragility with constant explosions and breakages. Windows can occasionally be shot out leaving a desperate scramble to lower the seals and stop Isaac from shooting off into space (it's also a good way to clear a room of enemies). There’s a tangible sense of danger from all around and this adds to what Dead Space 2 does best of all: atmosphere.

The game’s lack of a HUD makes for an immersive experience, as do the multiple layers of narrative: text and audio logs dotted about the rooms give insight into the well-created and well-explored background involving sinister religious movements and government shenanigans. The voice acting is excellent and the audio cues and score are creepily energising: screams and metallic clanks punctuate your exploration, and the space station has a variety of environments which all have nice audio details. The puzzles, while a little bland and simplistic, are all well conceived within the game-world. Isaac fixes or reprograms things for relatively well explained reasons. It certainly beats Resident Evil’s ‘place random item in convenient slot’ dynamic.

The game uses perhaps too many dirty tricks in trying to ramp up the suspense (Isaac tramps through far too many children’s bedrooms, for example), and this tries to hide Dead Space 2’s primary flaw: it’s not very scary (always a minor bugger for a horror game).

Partly this is the fault of the plotting, which in the middle section is extremely slow. It also owes something to Isaac’s re-invention as a talkie hero; he is now a bit too sarcastic and unflustered, nothing like the anonymous and helpless engineer from the first game. Gravel-voiced and laconic, he’s too badass to seem truly vulnerable. In the end, though, Dead Space 2’s failure to be frightening stems from the basic running of the game itself.


The weapons are all perhaps a little too effective in defeating necromorphs and though ammo is often scarce the ability to telekinetically hurl torn-off limbs means you never really run dry (a gimmick the game makes laboriously sure you know about).The enemies themselves are too numerous and ultimately too squishy to be terrifying; the fear diminishes each time you see and defeat them and you will be doing that a lot. The game is at its most terrifying in the very early sections where Isaac is disorientated, unarmed and on the run. The ability to fight back so effectively saps some of the suspense: this is Aliens rather than Alien or Event Horizon. Finally the plodding nature of the level design means that fatigue and repetition set in during the middle third, and it is this repetition that kills the fear.

At first glance Dead Space’s multiplayer might be accused of cribbing from Left 4 Dead’s online notes but the difference in play styles is enough to save it from cries of plagerism. Although the set-up is the same (humans versus monsters, with humans comparatively durable but less manoeuvrable and with fewer respawns), the difference between L4D’s smooth first-person flee-fest and Dead Space’s slightly clunky third-person view, with its focus on dismemberment, keeps the experience feeling fresh. It requires teamwork enough to breed some sense of achievement and has enough unlockables to stave off repetition. Like the single-player game it’s hardly revolutionary but competent and diverting enough that fans will probably keep a decent community going for a long time.

It would be a little unfair to criticise Visceral Games for their choice in essentially updating the first game, seeing as for the most part they have done very well. Newcomers to the series will find probably the most competent over-the-shoulder third person shooter available. Fans of Dead Space will probably find enough new content to keep them involved (although are unlikely to find the game particularly challenging except on high difficulties). It seems as if Visceral have listened hard to the reviews of the first game and then done their best to address the criticisms. It is their decision to avoid trying anything new that handicaps Dead Space 2, leaving a fantastically polished experience that lacks true terror. In engineer parlance: the first Dead Space was hardly broke, and this is about as fixed as it’s going to get.

Co-operative schmoperative.

One of the best things about finishing a draft of the book (especially since I’m probably never going to make any money off of it, so I need to take the positives where I can), is that I can start playing games again relatively guilt free. I’m pretty stoked that this freedom coincides neatly with the release of Gears of War 3 on the Xbox. Normally I’m not one for threequels, either as a concept or a portmanteau, but the Gears series holds sentimental value for me beyond the fact you get a chainsaw attached to the bottom of your gun. (Gunsaw. Now that’s a wordwhich. I mean portmanteau.)

Gears is a co-op game, and I’ve played through the first two with my long-suffering and now sadly ex-housemate Joe (I moved out, he didn’t die). The games themselves are fun to play (gunsaw!) but I enjoyed them primarily because it was a diverting and occasionally hilarious bonding experience. I sincerely hope Joe feels the same way – it won’t be nearly as fun playing it without him – but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s dreading the experience. You see, I’m a terrible co-op player.

When it comes to Gears I have a specific condition known as ‘chainsaw blindness.’ If I’ve got the gunsaw, I feel like I really ought to use it, and the satisfaction of slicing a big monster into chunky salsa is much greater than just plugging him full of bullets from across the room. The satisfaction is roughly the same each time, which means I feel compelled to do it to every enemy I see. The only problem is that in a game designed almost completely around taking cover behind things and shooting at other things, wandering around the room waving your gunsaw (still not getting tired of that) at monsters tends to get you shot. A lot. And that means your co-op buddy has to bring you back to life. A lot. Or get swarmed by bad guys you were supposed to be helping with and dying himself. A lot. Which sends you back to the next checkpoint. A lot.

Joe, saint that he is, mostly suffers this in silence. He also kindly ignores my tendency to throw explosives at his feet, when I begin personal vendettas with specific bad guys at the expense of everything else, my shameless thieving of all the good weapons and ammo, and my categorical refusal to snipe people even when the game demands it (“but it’s booooring!”).

I also play co-op games with my youngest brother, whose patience (perhaps correctly) is far more limited. We therefore tend to play the sort of hack-everyone-to-pieces fighty games that don’t really require a huge amount of teamwork bar you being on the same screen. Rather than a pairing of valiant heroes fighting side by side, we operate as two desperate individuals fighting against impossible odds... several feet apart from one another. We’ve made an executive decision to stay away from co-op shooters (his preferred name for ‘chainsaw blindness’ is ‘Joshua being a dick’).

I’ve also been known to deliberately sabotage team efforts for the sake of humour. Which is fine if everyone else finds it funny, but as I have what might charitably be described as an individual sense of humour, it’s really only me that sees the funny side. Imagine my joy when I discovered that in Little Big Planet one could grab onto the other players as well as ledges and buttons and suchlike. It looks like I’m not going to make that leap! And now neither are you, because I’m clinging on to your shins!

This problem with co-operation stems not from competitiveness (I get it world, I suck at stuff), but from what might be termed ‘fun-blindness.’ In that, I’m blind to everything that isn’t fun. Fun for me. The most important guy in the equation. Pick that thing up! Hold that checkpoint! Leave me that medkit! Pass me the ball! Um... sorry, can’t hear you over my GUNSAW! Wait, we’re dead again? Shit, sorry mate. It happens in real life too: I’m that guy that runs backwards and forwards in the penalty box, demanding the ball, even though you know, the referee knows, everyone knows that the opposition goalie has a better chance of finding the net than he has.

It’s not that I’m ignoring other people’s needs, I’m just... not exactly paying attention to them. Which is weird, because I much prefer co-op games to anything else. And it’s a bit of a shame because when I can be forced to concentrate I can be a useful team player, both in sport and in video games. I have all the basic skills, I just need to be reminded to deploy them in a way that actually benefits... anyone at all. That’s when the whole thing gets more rewarding, because it’s about group achievement as well as individuality, and when it comes to individual achievement in video games you can really do that all by your onesie.

Joe’s got it figured. He uses me as what he generously calls a ‘diversion,’ but perhaps might be better described as ‘bait.’ We (and when I say ‘we’ I of course mean ‘he’), beat the final boss in the original Gears with a sublime headshot, while I crouched behind a barrel, out of ammo, blindly dry-firing my pistol and muttering “dontkillmedontkillmedontkillme.”

We shared the credit equally, because that’s the kind of guy he is. I can’t wait to play it again.

Stone Junction

Stone Junction by Jim Dodge

Stone Junction invites counter-culture comparisons, singing as it does a flipside requiem for everything beautiful that came out of American subculture, from the Wild West to the present day, but paying special homage to the hit-the-road-and-don’t-stop freneticism of the Beat Generation and the spirit-quest-or-die narcotic prose of the late sixties and seventies. So: Stone Junction is like every amazing war story you ever heard, at every amazing party you ever went to, from every hip cat that you ached, just ached, to be like, and of whom you never saw the dark side to taint the beauty of everything you thought you learned. Stone Junction reminds you that the world keeps going and going everywhere you look, that “the mind is the shadow of the light that it seeks,” and that there are enough road warriors, Boy Poets and mountain visionaries out there for you to stumble across one if you keep travelling hard and fast enough.

This book does not simply rely, however, on the fast-burning sentiment of rock-and-roll and the stories that it births. Dodge’s writing is breathless, direct and profane, but always beautifully balanced and candid. The multiple shifts in voice and cadence are handled effortlessly, allowing the reader to flit between psychological and spiritual discussion, punchy, stichomythic and occasionally deliberately puerile dialogue, and roustabout description without ever feeling dislocated or lost. Jenny Raine cocks a laconic eyebrow at such changes (“Am I to take this radical change in diction and voice as an indication of candour?”), but Dodge does a good job of letting his characters speak for him without making them puppets (it takes nearly 400 pages to elicit that remark, although it has doubtless been on the reader’s mind a good deal longer). We are taught without being talked down to, kept at a breakneck pace without being pushed, always understanding without needing our hands held. One wonders if there is a story or subject Dodge cannot make his prose fit, such is the ease with which he turns myriad styles and tones to his own usage.   

In his occasional protagonist Daniel Pearse, Jim Dodge has created the ultimate literary subversive: born to the world’s most self-aware teenage tearaway, taught from birth by a ludicrously varied but sublimely drawn and rounded range of magicians, thieves, terrorists and gamblers, Daniel is finally imbued with the spiritual self-actualization to vanish from the material trappings of the universe (this is less a spoiler than one might imagine). That Daniel’s characterization does not vanish with his physical form is testament both to Dodge’s boisterous but sensitive prose, and to the care and time taken to establish Daniel’s development as a shaman and as a man. Daniel appears on the page as a newborn and leaves it as only a young man and the time in between is examined thoroughly, sometimes at the expense of pacing. Dodge seems to have so many stories to tell, so many inflammatory rebels with which to dazzle us, that the central narrative of Daniel’s development seems to sometimes lack momentum. This is not to say that Daniel’s story is not fascinating, bizarre, hilarious and occasionally very sad, only that the subcast of dreamers and prophets around which Dodge hangs his narrative are sometimes too big for the story to hold.

In fact, it seems like perhaps the story itself is too big for the spine to contain. The pacing of the central narrative – lugubrious elsewhere – increases dramatically after Daniel’s spectacular theft of the book’s MacGuffin. The cast of glittering outlaws keeps getting bigger but by now it seems that there is simply not enough time to explore these characters with the same depth and affection Dodge has devoted to those that preceded them. Comparatively minor characters from the books early stages – for example the drug-addled but sense-talking hedonist Mott – elicit more pagetime than some of the key players in the book, among them the seemingly significant but underused escapee Jenny Raine. The savage Debritto is introduced too late to be a truly useful villain (a reader needs time to build the inverted affection for a baddie that will make their eventual destruction cathartic), and even the magnificently damaged revolutionary Volta’s presence is somewhat staccato.

Stone Junction asks big, important questions, and seems like it might deliver the answers in a manner that will stick with you always, but in the end it seems that there is just too much for Dodge to address. Daniel’s bizarre sexual peccadillo is humorously explored but never explained, and his eventual fate is just obtuse enough to leave the reader frustrated: something important has happened, something we want to understand but are unable. Stone Junction feels like it is making a promise, a promise to reveal something fundamental, and while what the reader takes away spiritually from the novel is certainly not Jim Dodge’s responsibility, his caginess in regards to certain important events is sure to leave many bewildered, if not necessarily dissatisfied.  

     

Stone Junction is a sublimely written, incredibly compelling and fantastically imaginative novel. Its only flaw is that it fails to quite deliver on its sense of scale, and when a book is talking primarily about the way we perceive reality and our own place and happiness within it is difficult to begrudge Dodge this. To finish with a final nonconformist comparison, Stone Junction is like the drug-related vision quests and realisations it contains: while you are reading you get the sense of something larger than yourself, a sense of understanding beyond yourself, but when the comedown hits that understanding fades, leaving a memory that is too fragmented to be communicated.

Red Dead Redemption

There are a few occasions during Red Dead Redemption where Rockstar achieve what could be argued to be the point of computer games in general: the complete and total immersion of the player in the setting. Desperately rounding up stampeding cattle during a thunderstorm, turning down a hooker’s advance as you confidently stroll into a seedy saloon, honky-tonk piano in the background, even loading a save point to find the player character – scarred and gravel voiced John Marston – kicking apart his campfire and tossing aside his cigarette as the sunrise sets a pastel sky afire. It is these moments that demonstrate the love and research Rockstar have put into Red Dead Redemption, and what elevates a solidly created sandbox offering into the realm of classic.

Red Dead Redemption has been both marketed and reviewed as Grand Theft Auto in the Wild West and the comparisons are so obvious that Rockstar haven’t bothered to hide them, and have in fact borrowed elements wholesale from the GTA series. The sandbox set-up is a mirror of GTA’s, with mission hubs separated by comparatively sparse areas requiring player travel. The two games are so close in terms of style that the player HUD is actually a copy of GTA’s, with the compass and map showing mission start-points, side quests and shops, and the world map being divided into sections which are locked off until story missions are completed. The system of crime and punishment is essentially the same, with players accumulating more ‘Wanted’ stars (and being chased by progressively more dogged law-enforcement) based on their level of skulduggery and violence.  

What saves RDR from being a cowboy clone is the simple fact that the western genre actually lends itself to the outlaw sandbox mechanic far better than GTA ever did. The morality system in the game is a perfect fit for the Wild West, if only because there is a compelling reason to gun down individuals while remaining on the side of angels. If you want to be bad you can be bad, and if you want to be good, you can still shoot people in good conscience, something that the cops and robbers setting of the GTA games has attempted but never really realised. Rockstar’s Wild West is both a generous one: covering big-sky plains, stunning deserts mesas and pine-covered mountains, and a sensitive one. The game’s late 19^th century setting allows Rockstar full access to about every Wild West trope while also allowing them to explore the end of an American era and the development of a modern nation. The GTA games have become more emotionally developed and aware – the plight of Nico Bellic in GTA 4 is a far more difficult and ambiguous than that of San Andreas’ CJ – and Red Dead Redemption is a fitting continuation.  

The open-world setting itself is even better than GTA’s – swapping cars for horses and crowded streets for open ground makes travel far more interesting, and makes the environment itself the real star of the game. Although the option to fast travel returns (this time by stagecoach), players are much more likely to find themselves riding from mission to mission on horseback. This is partly because of the spectacular visuals: no longer hemmed in by buildings and traffic the player is treated to stunning vistas and dynamic weather, but mostly because exploration now provides more content. As well as a bevy of collection and hunting based subquests, John Marston will encounter a myriad of people in need. Many of these are ‘Stranger’ missions: subquests that provide entertaining, morbid and often hilarious glances into Rockstar’s version of the old west, but there are also constant real-time occurrences. Robberies, horse thefts, rustling and beatings occur throughout the world and it is up to the player to decide whether they want in or not. All this creates a setting that is more obviously alive than any of Rockstar’s previous offerings.

The gameplay mechanics themselves are solid. Not since Spider-Man 2 has locomotion been so enjoyable and Rockstar have cleaned up the shooting and cover mechanics of GTA 4 to provide competent and exciting gunplay. This is necessary because you’ll be doing a lot of shooting in Red Dead Redemption: Rockstar’s version of the old west is sparsely populated, but John Marston will still gun down a ludicrous number of opponents during the game. Several story missions involve gunfights with scores of foes and it is here that Red Dead Redemption reveals a slight lack of storytelling and focus. Like previous Rockstar games the story missions almost all involve riding to a location, murdering everyone in sight and then moving on. While enjoyable the sheer repetition weighs down the game and robs narrative significance from Marston’s quest to track down his former gang-mates and secure the release of his family: aside from a diverting time spent assisting a Mexican rebellion you spend the entire game searching for particular individuals, gunning down mooks on the way, and it often feels like Rockstar were stuck for a compelling way to tell this story, or for a more interesting way of structuring the missions. In fact, it is the story tasks away from gunfights that are the most compelling: rounding up cattle, discouraging rustlers and robbers, roping and taming steers, in short, actually being a cowboy. These missions are woefully few and although they make a welcome return towards the end of the game it is the lack of variety in mission content that is Red Dead Redemption’s biggest flaw.    

 That said, the missions are presented with Rockstar’s usual polish. The voice acting is superb, the cutscenes are atmospheric and well-staged (though occasionally buggy and prone to clipping) and the character design and modelling is memorable. John Marston is the perfect cowboy hero: gruff and violent, but laconic and witty enough to be worth liking. Rockstar’s off-kilter sense of humour returns and the authentic and sardonic scripting is a joy to hear.

Although its popularity in print and on film has waned, it is perhaps a little surprising that the western genre is underrepresented in video games. Considering the ease with which the setting lends itself to shooting games in particular one might expect a glut of cowboy inspired shoot-em-ups, jostling for space amongst the military and sci-fi offerings that clog the shelves. But there have been only a few games set in the old west released in the last decade, and of those released it has been mostly third-person, sandbox affairs that have been best received. Rockstar’s previous offering (and spiritual prequel) Red Dead Revolver was linear but atmospheric and competent enough as a shooter, and Neversoft’s Gun – certainly the most similar title to Red Dead Redemption – was well received. But it is the sheer scope and depth of a game like Red Dead Redemption that demonstrates the difficulty of playing with the western: any attempt to represent the genre without the love and diligence shown by Rockstar Games is doomed to fall far short, and there are enough mediocre, by-the-book shooters on the shelves without adding poorly contrived cowboy games.     

Next step by next step

I return, moderately triumphant.

Actually, I got back to England half way through July, but I had some extra tasks to be getting along with. First and foremost among these was convincing a very pretty young woman I'd been romancing (ineptly) since Christmas to be my actual, all-the-time, meet-the-parents, hold-hands girlfriend. I will forgive you your scepticism, as I was similarly pessimistic about my chances of success. I would like to take this opportunity, therefore, to pat myself on the back and give you, dear reader, a jolly good raspberry, because said femme is now my (already regretful) GF. So there.

I also needed to graduate from my Masters, the academic component of which finished over a year ago. But my parents wanted to see my walk the walk, and since they financed the whole thing both financially and emotionally, I thought it only fair that they get to see me dress up like a gay wizard and stumble across the stage clutching at my mortarboard.

Finally, I had to finish my book. Remember that? The thing I was talking about in my very first post, all that time ago? Well I'm as surprised as you are, but I finished the bloody thing. At just over 80,000 words it's what is known in the publishing trade as a 'short book,' but hopefully when I get some feedback it will get a little longer.

The only problem is that now I've finished the trip (did you look at the tumblr? You really should, I never thought windfarms could be so beautiful), and got the certificate, and finished the book, and most importantly won the girl (although I better do some shaping up and flying right in that regard from now on), is that I have to get a J-O-B.

I can hear you lamenting on my behalf, internet, and I thank you for it. My time from now on will be filled with formulating interesting and coherent answers to the question: "why do you want to work here?" I cannot, of course, let slip the true answer, that I don't want to work there, or anywhere, except in the coffee shop writing fiction, or possibly lying around in my pants playing Dead Space 2 on my father's flat-screen TV (a task to which I am no doubt suited, but am unlikely to find financial remuneration for).

Since writing is the only thing I'm particularly good at, it makes sense to seek employment in some sector that might benefit from my skills, and not drive me to immediate and violent suicide. So before I move to London to seek my fortune, and as I wait on feedback for the book (and begin the slow and lonely toil of editing and changing a skimpy, poorly-plotted piece of speculative fiction into something people might actually pay for), I'm going to start looking for copywriting positions, either freelance or part-time. Most employers will rightly be looking for examples of people's work before considering paying for it, and this website is the primary writing platform I have, which means three things for this blog:

1. I'm going to have to start using fewer parenthesis, and probably shorter sentences too. I'll keep splitting infinitives, because screw you, that's why.

2. I'm probably going to have to start proof-reading what I write, instead of just half-heartedly gabbling away while I watch Nicktoons.

3. I'm going to have to start reformatting some of the posts I create to fit with the copywriting positions I'm applying for.

What that means in basic terms is that I'm going to be broadening the scope of Verbal Slapstick, at least in the short term, and also attempting a much more regular update schedule, possibly as often as once or twice a week. Whether this is a positive development if up to you (it's certainly going to appear on your Facebook feed a lot more), and the same goes for the change in content. I'm going to start doing more reviews, mostly albums, books and video games (because they're the only things I know anything about), and mostly older texts at that (because until I have a job I have no money, and new games are prohibitively expensive).

So in short: Verbal Slapstick: Coming to a cover-letter near you. If you have anything you'd particularly like me to talk about or review do email me at verbalslapstick@gmail.com, and if you think the writing stinks, let me know why.

Interlude: America

So, on Monday I'm off to the States for 90 days. I may blog, if something funny happens, but probably not. Any readers I'm yet to alienate with my repeat absence will no doubt be used to this sort of abandonment.  I'll be back in mid-summer, armed to the teeth with personal disasters and witty (ish) aphorisms.

I WILL, however, be running a photoblog while I'm over there. For this I've jumped ship to tumblr for a while (sorry Blogger, I'll be back, I promise). It's called "A Bad Land for Gods" and you can find it here or at www.abadlandforgods.tumblr.com.

Thanks for everyone that reads this or stumbles upon it, and I'll see you all on the other side.

Well DUH. (A toast-related semi-epiphany)

The other day I had... well, I suppose that epiphany is too strong a word, considering what it actually involved. I'll just tell the story, but I'd ask you to refrain from judging me until I get to the point.

I was making cheese on toast, and I was toasting the bread in the toaster before putting it under the grill (seriously, what's going on with people that don't do that? I asked for cheese on toast, not cheese on bread). The toast popped up and I saw that, as always, there was a narrow strip at the top of the slice that hadn't properly toasted: a white avenue of imperfection on my road to cheese paradise. I bemoaned this fact to my father, and asked aloud why they don't make toasters deep enough to fit the whole slice of bread in.

My father gave me a look that I have come to recognise from my friends and family. It is a complicated expression, driven by mixed emotions. It contains genuine surprise, a soupçon of mirth, a ripple of pained symnpathy for my enduring idiocy and, perhaps, a tiny element of pride: not really in me, but in the fact that they themselves are responsible for my cheerful existence despite my own obvious shortcomings.

"Why don't you," he said, "just put the bread in sideways?"

I think that I stared a moment in utter incomprehension. I think maybe I even opened my mouth to chastise the old man for saying something so ludicrous. Then the concept had time to percolate, and my mouth fell open again, this time in surprise, in awe.

Why don't I just put the bread in sideways?

I would ask you to hold off judging me for just a moment more and consider the following: I had just had a problem solved that would otherwise have followed me my entire life. Let's face it, I was never going to buy a toaster that was deep enough to fit the whole slice (in retrospect, probably because they don't exist). I was going to have to put up with that niggle till the day I died, and here it was solved. Grateful? I felt tuppin' indebted. It was too late for that particular slice, but I had the rest of my life to get it right.

Fine, go ahead. Why didn't you think of that before. Well, I don't bloody know, do I? I'm not, y'know, an idiot. Well, not completely, anyway. It seems like the sort of thing I ought to have figured out myself, but there I was catching flies in my mouth in my own kitchen (at 24 years old).

So judge me if you like, I probably deserve it. But ask yourself this question: what minor irritations in your life have solutions that you never considered? If this toast thing has shown me anything it's that a problem shared can be a problem solved, for good.

I'm not saying it's going to work on much more than the orientation of your bread products. My insomnia isn't going to have a 2 second solution, for example. But that isn't going to stop me seeking a further help, if I can't figure it out on my own. And I'm not going to keep putting up with minor irritations if I think someone might be able to provide an answer. Hell, if this toast fiasco has taught me anything it's that I have no reason to be proud about such things: I'm clearly not firing on all cylinders when it comes to fixing small miseries.

Better cheese on toast means a better existence generally. It's a damn good start. 

Interlude: musings on video games, in lieu of thinking

Work on the book has stepped up, and there's another post that I've been thinking about but can't get into words yet. This will have to do in the meantime.

Time for a stark admission: I suck at Dragon Age: Origins. 

Well, I suppose it isn't that bad. I haven't broken any laws. My mum won't mind. My video game prowess is unlikely to come up in a job interview (although that might be the best job ever!).

I'm still a little bothered by it, though. Video games used to be a hobby, and even though less and less of my life is given over to playing them (they waste valuable fretting time), I'd still hoped that the skills I honed over the last two decades might last a little longer than they seem to. I had assumed that playing games would be just like riding a bike, and that after even a long absence I might pick up the controller and resume with similar success.

There are two problems with this. First: I'm terrible at riding bicycles. Seriously. I'm like Mr. Bean; a danger to myself and others. So while it makes a good analogy in principle, there's no direct comparison to be drawn. In fact, I can't think of a single skill I have that hasn't noticeably atrophied through disuse.

Second: video games can often rely on dexterity and muscle memory. These things need constant work-outs if they are to remain effective. The less you play, the less your body remembers, and the slower your reaction time. The slower your reaction time, the more likely it is that you get shot, or exploded, or fall down a bottomless pit, or in my case get constantly lapped by my brother's fiancée on flippin' Sega All-Stars Racing. (Sonic the Hedgehog can run at the speed of sound! Why does he even need a car? And since when were girls allowed to be good at computer games?)

So I might console myself with these facts, except that Dragon Age: Origins is very much a role-playing game and doesn't require much dexterity to play it. It might pretend to be an action game because the combat is in real-time, but it's still very much a case of: see enemy, click 'attack,' watch them fight until one falls over, repeat. I really shouldn't be having this much trouble simply because I'm out of practice.

I haven't made things easy for myself, admittedly. Seeing as my gaming skills were a little rusty it would have made sense to make myself a tank-like dwarven warrior with a big axe, that I could just point at the bad guys and then forget about till the battle was done.

Well, I thought, stuff that. And so I made myself a stylish but rather effeminate-looking elf, and sank all my status points into making him extra suave and smart (I read on the internet that you get to sleep with other characters if you're charming enough, and so I felt the need to prioritise). The result? Well, he is super charming, and during the conversation segments of the game he does very well. It's just on the battlefield he's kind of... squishy. I've never spent such a long time in a game lying on the floor.

I'm not helped by the friendly A.I, which obviously subscribes to the 'conkers' form of military organisation. They aren't very good at being stealthy. Or healing themselves. Or getting out the way of my arrows. Or not shooting me in the back of the head with a stream of eldritch fire after I'd specifically pointed out the mook I wanted immolated. Our main strategy is to all run up to the same guy, crowd around him and swing wildly until either he dies, we die, or our mage sets us all on fire again.

It could be argued that there is an element of strategy that I'm failing to grasp. I'm sure I could be directing my troops in battle in a manner more conducive to victory. The thing is... I can't be bothered. I no longer seek to be challenged just for the sake of it. Winning the fighting is not a reward in itself, and so I don't want to have to go through with it over and over again.

I'm playing the game partly because I like the character interaction and the story is quite compelling. The main reason is that the sarky, misanthropic witch on my team is voiced by Claudia Black and so if there's any chance of sleeping with her then I'm all for it (once she stops repeatedly setting me on fire).

It's just about fun. In fact I've ended up lowering the difficulty level, first from hard (such arrogance) to normal, then normal to (shudder) casual.

I'm now a casual video game player, and I'm not really bothered about it. The sting to my pride lasted all of about four seconds. Now my team of adventurers can set one another on fire with impunity. I'm really only completing the fighting parts so I can get back to seducing Claudia Black (it isn't going well, although my feckless bisexual thief is giving me the eye. Decisions, decisions).

I've been thinking recently about how many of my other past-times seem to be falling by the wayside. If my thirteen-year-old self could look at me now he'd probably shake his head in disgust, then annihilate me at Street Fighter. 

Is it that I seek to be challenged less? That's a scary thought: that way lies apathy, atrophy, nothingness. I don't think that's how I feel.  I can't be bothered to save my squishy elf in a video game because my squishy elf is my break from reality. The more complicated my life gets (and, tellingly, the more empathic I attempt to be), the more I seek structured reward in my past-times. When I was younger, I would have banged my head against the wall with Dragon Age just for the sake of it. It was a game, that was how you played. Now... I need more than that. I need, in this case at least, to have a shot at shagging Claudia Black. I'm worried that the next game I play isn't going to be able to compete with that. I fear my Xbox has lean times ahead.