SLRC Does Midnight Launches

Every so often I get the urge to go outside. Most of the time, however, I ignore it and go back to working at my PC, but other times I just can't shake that wanderlust and so I need to go somewhere.

On Monday night I certainly went somewhere. Specifically, I went to the official Australian midnight launch of Halo 3: ODST at my own local Westfield. Umm... because Penrith is the Australian Hub of Halo game playing, I can only assume.

I thought my experience at the event was worth some kind of retelling so I wrote it up as a piece for Kotaku AU. If you can stand the wonky back-and-forth between present and past tense I think it's a pretty cool story, and I really did get the feeling of camaraderie with some of the other gamers in line.

I see it like this - if us massive, unrepentant gamer nerds can't be ourselves when we're standing in line with 200 other excitable dudes (and a couple lasses) just like us, then where can we be? I'm totally rockin' for more midnight launches from this experience, if only to meet other strange and wonderful gamers like I did on Monday night.

Gamers are Good People.

Assassins Creed Official Soundtrack - A Review

If you’ve only recently joined SLRC, since the start of the Permanent Death story perhaps, you might not know that SLRC started life as a music and videogame blog. We don’t do reviews very often here at SLRC (conveniently, if you ever wish to see that change, feel free to commission me) but today sees a reprisal of an earlier trend in reviewing the music for a videogames – this time it’s Ubisoft’s 2007 title Assassins Creed that gets a thorough once-over.

As a brief aside, this will be my last post for a few weeks as I’m taking a break and dropping off the grid for a few days. I’ll probably be back in late September or early October and will hopefully be recharged and ready to take on the rest of the Permanent Death saga. Enjoy!

The album sets the tone at the opening, introducing in the first track solo voices singing in Arabic over arab-esque scales, as well as chanting monks drenched in reverb evoking cavernous Middle Ages cathedrals. Vocals are an important part of the sonic palette of the Assassins Creed soundtrack and provide a sonic element that aims to capture the unique historical period of the game.

The listener is treated to sparing splashes of flutes and piano melodies underpinned by Arabic style light drum percussion. The major feature of the track ‘Flight through Jerusalem’ is a lament sung almost operatically, and placed in a middle distance giving the sense of being heard from across a city – perhaps the singer is crying out over the rooftops at dawn or dusk. A Middle Eastern guitar-type instrument and a string section carry much of the underlying harmonic content of the song.

The following few tracks on this admittedly rather short album – totaling up to around 40 minutes of music – re-introduce more traditional orchestral instruments to contrast with their ethnic co-players; timpani, drums, tambourines, string and brass section stabs, all make appearances in the first third of the album.

The aptly named ‘Spirit of Damascus’ piece uses what sounds like a background of giant steel-works percussion and the metallic timbre works is stark contrast to the fore-grounded Middle Eastern guitar. The mix and meeting of uncommonly related instruments as heard here mirrors musically what would have been a ‘cultural melting pot’ in the particular area of the middle east Assassins Creed is set in. The meeting of Christian and Islam; West and East, would have produced both clashes and unique opportunities for art and expression. That, and a lot of fighting, obviously.

The piece trails off, and ends far too quickly for such a beautiful track, with a synth bed that evokes the monkish chants on previous tunes. The following track, ‘Trouble in Jerusalem’ (a much longer piece at 4minutes) reprises the steel-percussion of ‘Damascus’ and adds Bootmen-style stompy percussion. A synthetic almost sub-audible bass acts as a powerful counterpoint to the breathy, cloistered monk-ish whisperings in (presumably) Latin on the track ‘Acre Underworld’. The use of harsh-cuts and sample loops that remind one of a broken record at the beginning gives the track a uniquely ‘electronic’ feel, utilizing an effect that cannot be easily replicated without modern technology. It is also possibly the first most prominent artificial sound on the album, or at the least, the fist piece that leans more towards using artificial and created sounds than organic or acoustic ones.

The composer, Jesper Kyd, is a great employer of non-acoustic instrumentation, and electronic instruments and synths alternately shimmer and glisten and stutter throughout the album. The most stand-out use is on the track ‘Access the Animus’, a supremely long piece clocking in at nine minutes and which contains a plethora of razor sharp glass-like samples. Additionally, some kind of synth or sample has been manipulated to sound unnervingly like a leopard or jaguar's roar – appropriate imagery for a piece entitled ‘Access the Animus’ with its title a homonym for “Animism”, a philosophical, religious or spiritual belief common in many non-urbanised, non-westernised civilizations, often accompanied by a reverence for animals (particularly large and powerful ones such as big cats). Admittedly it’s a tenuous connection, but it’s also one I can’t help to make – it really sounds like a jaguar or other big cat to my ear. In addition to being one of the longest pieces, ‘Access the Animus’ also marks the mid-point of the album.

The short piece ‘Dunes of Death’ makes use of metallic percussion and flute or pan-pie sound-alike instruments and also brings back a few splashes of melody on the piano.

A big feature of this album is that many of the towns have specific themes or sound-palettes. For example, Jerusalem-themed tracks almost always employ monks and male choirs, appropriate imagery for the cities strong religious significance to both Christianity and Islam. Compare and contrast with the piece ‘Masyaf in Danger’ which uses none of the same vocal elements, using only a light sprinkling of female synth voices.

The third from last track, ‘Mediation Begins’, has at it’s core Arabic percussion, a steel-stringed Arabic guitar-like instrument, and a melody played on a pipe-flute instrument all sounding so much like a group of street performers. The band fades in and at first the scene could be any of a thousand street corners in the Middle East, however a bed of synth and reverb-soaked synthetic sounds soon appears to underpin the group. The effect, and it is one that is used in many of the pieces, is the juxtaposition of normal surface appearances with underlying tensions and fears – another musical metaphor perhaps for the cultural tensions of the historical period.

‘Meditation of the Assassin’ has almost no organic or instrument sounds. The return of the nearly sub-audible bass from earlier in the album along with ominous whispers and out-of-place, non-harmonic dissonant electronic noises gives the piece a strong sinister feel. The brief appearance of wind chimes is far from reassuring and only further adds to the eeriness of the piece. A quiet Arabic guitar struggles vainly against the overpowering bass towards the middle and end. The final song ‘The Bureau’ is a bit of an anti-climax for an album sprinkled with such a number of great moments.

Overall, the album hangs together quite well, however it is dominated somewhat unflattering by the 9-minute long track ‘Access the Animus’ which, despite covering a variety of rhythmic and instrumental feels throughout its duration, still feels like it drags too long. Add to this the fact that some of the more intriguing pieces are overly short and the album is left feeling lopsided and uneven. It does, thankfully, avoid the common pitfall of other videogame soundtracks and avoids any awkward song transitions or strange stops and starts.

Ultimately, however, if the listener does not have the same level of positive associations with the music generated through playing the actual game of Assassins Creed as I acknowledge I have, I think it would ultimately prove a largely unsatisfying listening experience.

The Assassins Creed Official Soundtrack, is composed by Jesper Kyd and has a running time of 40:37.

Permanent Death, Episode 7: A Mysterious Packet

CIA Special Analyst Perry Gerling was part of the African Attaché, and as such regularly received reports from a number of field operatives. One particular operative was late in reporting and he grew anxious waiting.

After several days of silence, he was about to consider reporting the field agent as missing when a package arrived on his desk in a yellowed envelope. It looked like it had travelled half-way round the world in someone’s back pocket. Inside was a long telegram (2 pages) from his field agent and a series of surveillance photographs.

Gerling pulled out the surveillance photographs and leafed through them.

It was clear that Singh was regularly getting his hands dirty, but as to whether he was still on-the-job was another matter. He grabbed a pen and a pad from his top drawer and scribbled a note for a return message. "Maintain distance and surveillance. END OF TELEGRAM." He wondered whether Washington would notice the expenses being racked up by his special surveillance project but he Gerling thought it was worth the risk. Washington still didn't know that Singh had - potentially, he was quick to add to no one in particular - gone rogue. He looked over a few more of the photos.

Yes it was going to be worth the extra hassle of justifying the diverted resources if it mean he could give a definitive answer to Washington. Singh would show his hand sooner or later, he knew that much from experience.

"This just won't do." He said, tossing aside the photographs and rocking back in his chair. At this rate, he considered, he was likely to get a posting back Stateside some time around the turn of the next decade.

At least one agent was still taking orders.

Permanent Death, Interstitial: Suicide

I have a confession to make. I’m considering suicide.

No, not in real life, don’t be ridiculous, I have everything to live for. But I must admit that after however many times through Far Cry 2 that it’s been I’m struggling to come up with the will to keep playing, much less to feverishly muster the kind of creative energy necessary to whip an oddly paced and narratively boring experience into something worthy of your attention. (Because you’re worth it)

It’s weird, though, to think about killing oneself. How does one go about doing so? I’ll admit that my mind on occasion wandered, somewhat morbidly, to considering what would happen if I jumped in front of that rapidly approaching train. Or if I climbed over that railing and began the lengthy plunge to the ground from a great height. Or if I just let my car drift across the lane and into the path of that oncoming truck.

It’s a kind of morbid fascination that I think we all share – and one that sees its most common outworking in the rubbernecking we do when we drive past that fatal accident on the highway. We drive slow and stare because we are imagining that it is out body lying twisted and crushed in the metal, bleeding to death. We wonder what that would feel like. What it will look like when it’s all over – does it really go dark and quiet like Hollywood would have us believe?

In Far Cry 2, I know exactly how it will look – The Face of Death is a menu screen. I have the benefit of knowing what it look’s like in advance, and that it is a real let down. I sincerely hope with all my might that the real thing is much more eventful.

One way in which Far Cry 2 actually is like real life is that I have no idea how it will happen, however in contemplating my virtual ‘suicide’ it has made me realise that it is entirely within my power to avoid the same fate as Nels. By deliberately choosing to make it an awesomely spectacular moment of singular glory and brio I could avoid the ignoble end of death-via-automobile. I’m not sure I could bear that ending after investing as much of my time as I have in this strange exercise. But unless I want to off myself I guess I’m stuck leaving myself open to the possibility.

Okay, you can relax now. I’m not going to kill off Qurbani Singh without reason. Even if that would suit the story better.

An Open Letter To Nels Anderson; or, Morality Needs to F*** Right Off

Note from the author: I recently read a post by Nels Anderson on ‘Moral Development’ which has some comments on how different conceptions of morality can apply to games. I was distracted the first time I started reading it, and ended up deviating away to the Wikipedia page to read about ‘Kohlberg’s stages of moral development’. I finally went back to read the rest of the post weeks later and it got me so fired up in the passionate sense that I started writing a comment before realising that it would benefit from being posted here as an open letter instead. So here’s my response to Nel’s post:

…plumbing the depths… ‘who the fuck are these people?’… Neo-Nazi’s of the Fourth Reich… deep in the Kalahari… the Continued Survival of The American Dream…

Dear Nels,

I started writing this because I wanted to say to you that I thought your post about moral development in games was a fascinating read and I wanted to thank you for bringing it to our collective attention.

My fingers were rattling with a heat and fury, and I greatly desired to fire-off a vitriolic screed about very, very many games in some kind of Press Release from ‘The Institute of Freak Power Gaming’ saying how positively Neolithic it is that any game feature an incarnation of the dreaded good<–>evil slider system. But that wasn’t going to be enough. No, my friend, the situation calls for going much, much, deeper.

If a game is a conversation between the player and the developer, who the fuck are these people to tell me that I’m “evil” or “good” based upon… what? Their own standards for good behaviour… or maybe some arbitrary guidelines about proper conduct? In the immortal words of the pissed-off, progressively liberal Oz hip-hop collective know to the police as ‘The Herd’; “Fuck that!”

We know better than them, Nels. We know that in the real world there are no rules like this – the rules are what we write them to be, and doubly so for a made up simulation running on a computer! I don’t mean this in a neo-Nazi, Fourth Reich kind of way, but in a passionate anarchistic, newly enlightened devotee of ‘Kohlberg and his stages’ sense. Count me among the greats in my newly acquired desire to reach Kohlbergian enlightenment.

It takes some seriously sick and twisted fishhead logic to try and apply contemporary morality as reflected in our western legal system to a post-nuclear-winter future; a future that has been blown back to the stone ages, yet remains conveniently modern in it’s application of morality.

Have these people never seen The Gods Must Be Crazy? Even the idea of theft as crime or some kind of associated ‘negative action’ is contemporary! When your community has got shit-all to live on and you’re eating the scum that grows on the walls of your cave, you don’t really have anything worth stealing. Morality? What the fuck is that – they’re too busy trying to stay alive to give a damn about some ‘Karma points’ bullshit.

When that kid got hit on the head by the coke-bottle in the middle of the Kalahari, he had no idea he was about to witness the birth of theft in his tribe. When some crunched-on by middle-management Bethsoft code-monkey programmed in the bits that say a coke bottle can be ‘owned’ by a Non Player Character, some Deity higher up the food chain knew that they were inventing the concept of theft on a global scale. Did they even consider the idea that theft in this society would be different from our own? “Possession is 9/10ths of the Law” is the old saying, and I consider the Wasteland the perfect place to institute that final 1/10^th. Theft is abstract and Bethesda codified it in ones and zeroes.

I haven’t actually played Zeno Clash, but it sounds like the antidote to this kind of straight-faced craziness – at least it wears it’s weirdness openly. I wager it’s one of the few sensible and serious games to say “Morality means whatever you want it to”. One of the others is Far Cry 2. Does Zeno Clash give you ‘negative Karma’ for kneeing people in the face? Does Far Cry 2 slap us on the wrist when we’re defoliating swaths of the jungle for personal gain and a return on investment that includes safe-house upgrades? Hocking know’s we’re no fools – we are no babes in swaddling cloth to be told “bad boy!” and given a slap on the wrist for being caught with our hands in the proverbial cookie jar. And we are well able to tell that we are doing some seriously weird things and unnatural things in the name of Continued Survival and The American Dream.

You an me Nels, we need to show these Neanderthal’s that these “Karmic” games are the truly strange and the people who make them are more twisted than Richard Nixon’s underpants on August 9, 1979. We need to start our version of Fight Club. Rather than fighting in basements and parking lots we’re fighting on the blogs and the podcasts. Hit me Nels – hard as you can! Let us fish-punch the good & the bad out the glass windows on the thirty-third floor of whatever building these atavistic bastards call Their Office. If they want to keep making games for the man-children with neck-beards and mushroom kingdom tattoos then We Are Going To Have Something To Say about it.

Yours Sincerely As Always,

Ben.

P.S. I am coming to Vancouver one day. Get the beers ready – we are going hunting.

Permanent Death, Interstitial - Music on Mute

While chatting to some of my blogger friends the other day, some happened to mention that they liked to play Far Cry 2 without the music – either for added realism or some other reason. Since I’m experimenting already with permanent death, I thought I’d give it a shot and see how it changes the experience. I can now confirm that it is… different.

I had always enjoyed the music for Far Cry 2, but even I must admit that after hundreds of hours of exposure to it my ear had grown weary and stopped noticing it. However, as soon as I turned it off the lack was entirely apparent and I realised just how much I had relied on the music to provide much of the game’s pacing.

When you get close to enemies, even if you don’t know they are there, the music often adds a layer of tension to the mix and if you’re experienced at playing the game you will probably pick up on this subtle change and prepare yourself. With the music gone, being ambushed can become truly a surprise…

The first time this happened to me, it was indeed a surprise - but it was also less tense than it would have been with the addition of music. I was unconsciously waiting for it to ramp up and provide me with an emotional guide as to how I should be acting and responding. Lacking this musical signpost, I spent a lot of the early time in an emotional plateau – never feeling particularly bothered by the enemy soldiers.

I became more brazen – I found myself charging through the middle of a series of checkpoints in pursuit of a weapons convoy and was hit by a sudden fear. I was apprehended by a feeling that I had dangerously over-stretched myself and that I could be only seconds from death.

I came away from the encounter unscathed, but the tempo of the Far Cry 2 experience had changed. I started ramping my concentration levels up and down much faster– snapping from the baseline ‘pseudo-boredom’ of driving through beautiful scenery, to full-on attention which would then be paid to the effort of staying alive. Or perhaps that was what I was already doing when I had the music on and it just became more transparent without the music.

I suspect not – for without music to tell me that the fight wasn’t over, I had to judge for myself. and it subsequently felt like I entered a great many more discreet conflicts. In one instance I had just finished clearing a camp of soldiers and was searching around for some diamonds, when more turned up and I had to break off the search, bare seconds passing between the first and second encounter. If the music was there, it might well have stayed at that same level across the whole period because it often takes a reasonable period of time to 'calm down'.

Whatever the case may be, I’m still convinced that the people responsible for the music of Far Cry 2 have done a singularly excellent job in creating a score, and implementing a system, that has held up for a hundred hours or more, in my case. If I keep it off for a little bit longer I hope Jeff Wesevich won’t take it personally.

Permanent Death, Episode 6 - Return of the Dead

Qurbani Sing slouched onto the camp bed with a groan. Turning his face toward his companion, he paused before sighing. “How in the hell did I end up here, friend?” he asked.

The friend was Hakim Echebbi, a thirty-something Algerian man who looked like he could more than handle himself in a scrap – just so long as he doesn’t have to do too much running. A stint in the Navy as a naval counter-terrorist expert gave Echebbi a hardness of spirit that it seemed his body was fighting not to betray, the first signs being a slight paunchiness around the middle.

“I have no idea how you came to this place, Sikh,” he says drily, before continuing in a more light-hearted tone, “But here I am minding my own business – running a nice little operation in fact – when all of a sudden I hear everything has blow up in the north.” He turns to face Sigh and says with a wry smile. “And now it’s all ballsed up. I guess I really do have nothing better to do than save your sorry behind.” Standing up and crossing the room he leans on a weapons crate. “So why don’t you tell me how you got from… wherever you were before here, I suppose.”

Sing sat up in the canvas stretcher bed and tried to recall how he came to be in this house, on the side of a cliff in the middle of a jungle.

“It was sunny and hot when I left Sefapane – Greaves paid me to go meet some guy and help him get a boat-load of the Jackal’s guns into town. The idea was that we didn’t wan the APR and UFLL boys to stop killing each other long enough to turn on the rest of us.”

“Smart plan,” Hakim added.

“I know, right? What kind of stupid idea is that?” He laughed. “Anyway, I got to the boat and you’ll never guess who the captain is – Andre Hipolite!”

“No fuckin’ way!” Hakim interjects, astonished, “I thought that guy was dead!”

“Me too”, Qurbani replies before continuing. “So there we are, just the two of us and enough guns for, well, more than enough to ensure this war keeps on for years. And we’ve barely gone 100 metres when soldiers appear from out of nowhere – I didn’t even figure out whose side they were on. Then all of a sudden I’m seeing mortar smoke on the roof of the barge and all around there this whistling, rushing noise.

“I look up and I’m staring at a rocket heading right for me –so I’m pretty certain I’m dead, right? I mean, there’s no way the barge can survive more than a couple of rounds from a mortar and this rocket. But it does, yet each time we're hit the engine blows and I’ve got to stop shooting at these bastards swarming around us in attack boats to grab a wrench and some tape and patch the bloody thing up.

“I’ve eaten enough lead to make a paperweight by now, but at least the engine’s running so I try and get to the front of the ship to see if I can’t take out the rocketeer. I didn’t see the incoming rocket until the last second so I barely had time to duck out of the way, but in the process I hurt myself pretty bad.

“I scrambled up to the top of the deck and crouched around behind the bridge – I was barely hanging on by a thread. I think something must have landed on my hand in the explosion because the little finger on my left hand was at this weird angle and I had to snap it back into place.

“I managed to pop a syrette with my good hand and that made me feel a little better. Somehow we managed to fight the rest off and got the barge into the port. My left hand is never going to be the same again. In town I talked to Doctor Obua – you were there, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember, but what’d he tell you? I was too busy watching the street – you should have seen the soldiers move when they heard they were all getting new AK’s and PKM’s! It was like those civilians when the aid workers were handing out travel passes.” Hakim chuckled to himself at the irony of the reversal.

Singh continued. “Ostensibly I was there to warn him about the weapons, but when he sees that I’ve got malaria the Doctor says to me, in his thick accent, ‘You must know that medicine is in short supply, but there are other altruists like yourself. If you return here when it is calm I would be happy to introduce you.’ I nearly laughed – me, an altruist?!”

“Hahaha, that’s pretty crazy,” Hakim adds, “was he serious, do you think? Didn’t he hear about what you did to that priest up north, bailing on him like that?”

“I don’t know – shit all news came out of the north after all.” Qurbani shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t have time to ask because that was just as the fight was breaking out and you were pushing me out the back door.”

“Yeah, again, sorry about that mate. Couldn’t be helped – if they found you in there with us we were all dead.”

For a moment no one spoke and the silence stretched awkwardly.

“It’s okay.” Qurbani offered. “I would have done the same. Good thing I heard about that shortcut over the north wall though – if I had to run through the middle of town I don’t think I would have made it.”

“Yeah I stacked those crates up against that low roof just for this kind of situation. Glad you made use of them.” Hakim relaxed.

“Me too. I made it out to the river just north of Soleo, so who do you think just then decides to ring me up and tell me he's in trouble?”

“I think I can guess.” Hakim suggests.

Qurbani nods and continues, “So Andre says he’s now being chased in the barge. The idiot probably planned to keep it and re-sell it rather than scuttle it in the lake like he damn well should have. So now he’s being chased all the way down to the Marina and he decides that I’m the person to go to for help. Well, I figured I might as well try despite the fact that he might be dead by the time I get there.

“But when I did, the tough guy was still alive and putting up a bit of a fight. There were about 15 guys trying to get onto that bridge, but Andre kept firing out through the front window. He couldn’t have had many rounds left though – he was chewing through them like candy.

“So I took some of them out from afar and cleaned up his mess. He was grateful and told me he was just going to scuttle the barge after all so it was all a bit of a waste, in the end. Still, the man was grateful and he owes me now.”

“That could be useful – supposedly he’s got a lot of contacts, Andre.” Hakim suggested. “Maybe he’ll be able to give you a lead on the Jackal?”

“Maybe. I left the Marina pretty much straight away after that and headed up here. I needed somewhere safe to rest and recover. Which reminds me – how did you even find me out here?” Qurbani asked, intrigued.

“It was pretty easy, man – I went to Mike’s at the Marina and they said you’d just left. From there, I followed the sounds of gunfire and the trail of bodies. Hell - you’re not that hard to find y’know.”

Qurbani laughed. “Right you are, friend. I should be more careful in future.”

“Don’t worry about it. I got your back for now – you rest up.” Hakim paced over to the door. “I’ll be around if you get into any trouble, ok?”

“Thanks, Echebbi. Here’s to never having to see each other - ever again.” Qurbani took a swig from a nearby water bottle as Hakim departed the safe house, whistling as he went.