Gig Review: Damnationfest 2012

So it's that time of year again when I can write a review of a metal festival, post it, then link to it in as many places as possible so that a vast array of meatheads can email me and post comments to tell me LOL UR GAY GWAR WER AWESUM etc. Admittedly, Gwar didn't play Damnationfest this year. But you get the general idea.

Note for Damnationfest organisers: get Gwar in for next year. If there isn't any simulated sex onstage between bandmembers and people in penguin costumes, I'm not coming.

As always for a large multi-stage festival, this review comes loaded with the caveat that I am one man who quite enjoys standing or sitting in one spot for some length of time, and so I will be covering a small subsection of the 23 bands that played this year. You want me running around taking copious notes based on two tracks caught from each performer? Fucking pay me.

The festival itself was as well-structured and maintained as ever – set times were adhered to, there was a hefty merchandise and stall area, and the Student Union site allows for a thorough raiding of a small supermarket and bakery when alcohol and crushing noise just aren't enough. This more than makes up for the inevitable navigation nightmare that ensues in tight winding corridors when bands finish and their sweaty herd decides to take a stroll to another stage. Speaking of stages, a return to a larger stage layout from the last time I attended (2010, fact fans) was more than welcome. With The Refectory as the largest stage, sometimes it was even possible to attain breathing space in the audience.

So, music then. I kickstarted my day with the first band available – the brutal and incendiary Ravens Creed, who filter old school metal and thrash through a sludgey funnel to produce riffs so meaty that they bleed on their way out of the speakers. It is bastard heavy stuff, which fills the tight confines of the Eyesore stage in an extremely satisfying fashion. All this and a quick derogatory reference to hipsters before launching into a song titled “Stand Up And Be Cunted”. Recommended.

Ravens Creed

Next I wander along to the The Atrocity Exhibit, who peddle a fairly bog standard approach to crusty grindcore with strong death metal elements. It is technically accomplished stuff and there is, to turn a phrase, nowt wrong wi' it. But there's also nothing to particularly fire my enthusiasm. They come across as lineup-filler to my ears. If the genre is your bag, you might feel differently. Onwards to Hawk Eyes, the openers on the main stage. These guys probably fit comfortably into the post-hardcore bracket. But as discussed on this august site previously, who the fuck doesn't? This is Mike Patton worship at a fairly advanced level, melody and chaos being thrust at the crowd in equal measure. There are haircuts, but obviously some talent behind them. As a Leeds band they are carrying the local banner proudly, and certainly are in possession of a fine example of the Leeds alternative sound. I know what I mean by that. No one else ever seems to. What, you want clarity? Go read a mainstream site. I was tempted to stay and catch some more, but time was against me.

Hang The Bastard

And I was quite glad it was, in the end. It allowed me to catch a good chunk of the elegantly-named Hang The Bastard, who are probably the most polite sludgecore band on the planet. In a genre populated almost exclusively by heavily-bearded men who like to drink heavily and punch their fans in the face, it is refreshing to be addressed from stage in-between tectonic slabs of metal by a chap who speaks to a baying crowd like they are his girlfriend's mum. They do what they do very well – and let's not fool ourselves here, every sludge band on the planet sounds exactly the same. Variations on Eyehategod and Iron Monkey, rinse and repeat. It's a genre that wallows proudly in its influences, and while I usually find that cause for concern I'm happy to make an exception for the likes of Hang The Bastard. They have the requisite number of fat bastards, colossal grooving riffs and glass-in-throat gargling to make me a happy man. Another promising find.

Wodensthrone

Upon removing myself to the Eyesore stage again to see Wodensthrone, I find that in my absence a vast swathe of the attendees have engaged in asexual reproduction to form an impenetrable mass that I can only access via wedging myself between the bar, other stinking humans and a wheelchair access device. This is ridiculously uncomfortable, but I suffer through the incredible pain (probably more than you have ever experienced) to see a fair whack of the set. From my agonising position near the back of a low room with a grooved, curved ceiling and multiple open spaces to either side (detail I will throw in to make any sound engineers reading this bite the back of their hand in terror) most of what I can hear is a muffled cacophony of guitars and distorted keyboards. Using my sensitive and astounding critic powers, I can tell that Wodensthrone are something pretty damn impressive. Atmospheric, melodic black metal played right down the nose. The band themselves are obviously engrossed in their performance, which has a knock-on effect of drawing the audience in despite a relative lack of movement or extroverted energy onstage. Having lost several limbs in my contorted position, I retreat after catching enough of them to ensure they are a quality Jormungandr-bothering enterprise.

Blacklisters

The stage empties out significantly for the next band I catch, Blacklisters. Which is a shame, and probably largely because they fall under the aforementioned category of 'hipster' for the majority of metalheads attending. That's not to say they're not, mind. But if they are, then they are top-notch hipster entertainment. Spasming noise rock that doesn't sound a million miles away from an amped-up Shellac being fed into a woodchipper, the major flaw in a performance more physical than most is that they give off a palpable sense of too-cool-for-this that they get away with primarily because they are fucking good at what they are doing. They're probably a bunch of cunts, but that's kind of alright when their music makes every odd-numbered organ in your body leap twelve feet to the left.

Back to the main stage for Textures, a band I seem to not be able to get behind despite their influences being big favourites of mine. But I think that is largely the problem. It's all second-hand Meshuggah riffs alternated with melodic sections that sound like either Devin Townsend or Alice In Chains, depending on what the band felt like the day they wrote it. And trust me, I realise that sounds awesome. But in execution, it lacks something significant. While as a whole the songs sound polished and slick – which is to their detriment in and of itself – transitions between thundering djent and lofty melody are sudden, awkward and ill-timed. Truly less than the sum of their parts, Textures just come across as a fusion of different derivative elements. I will say this, though – they have a better stage presence as a whole band than any other act over the entire day. Shame about the music.

The next band I attempt to see are Bossk, but it becomes clear that actually getting into the Eyesore stage is more trouble than it is worth and may involve stabbing a good number of people to actually move forward ten or so feet. If I was a less charitable man I might claim that this was down to a great number of local scene pricks hanging out by the bar and talking over the music in a pathetic attempt to accrue points for being there. But I am nothing if not charitable, so let's move on.

Gama Bomb

Gama Bomb take to the stage some time later, and it is clear that they have quite a following for a band halfway up the lineup. I can see why, too. Kind of. They play thrash metal on the punkier end of the spectrum, full of lyrics about zombies and evil and haha what a jolly lark it is to be in a metal band blah blah blah. Which I admit is probably very appealing if you're not me, and therefore crippled by cynicism and pretension. The band themselves are clearly as happy to play as the crowd are to hear them, and almost completely defuse any criticism I might make of them playing derivative mediocre material with a 'comedy' spin (the inverted commas are because to produce successful comedy, you need actual jokes and not just to write songs about daft things) by reading out amusing critiques of them - containing sentiments much the same as what I was thinking while watching - to the audience, and remaining pretty self-aware of their limitations throughout. So well played, Gama Bomb. I didn't particularly like you, but now feel like a bit of a dick for it. Well played.

Primordial

Next up on the main stage are Primordial, who are one of the only bands I have failed to research or listen to before arriving. Yes, I research these things. I'm not some bequiffed and tattooed wanker who thinks their cache as a critic is largely linked to how many bands they can get wasted with and whose copy is littered with basic factual errors about genre and sound. I am a proud unpaid professional and none of you are worthy of kissing my damn feet.

But I digress, slightly. Primordial. I had no idea what to expect, which may have been a contributing factor to how impressed I was. Which was very. Highly melodic blackened doom with sub-operatic vocals (that's a compliment, folks) performed like road-hardened veterans. Frontman Alan Averill – yeah, I've done my research now – herded and drove the crowd like a master, splattered with Jackson Pollock corpse paint and unafraid to bellow slightly ridiculous metal banter at the crowd without the slightest sense of irony. Galloping riffs underpinned by atmospheric breakdowns, all wolves and blood red stars and moonlight glinting off blades.

Lovely stuff.

My Dying Bride

So onto My Dying Bride, who I had not been particularly anticipating despite being a big fan. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because I have seen them a number of times before, perhaps because it has been 6 years since they released an album that really impressed me. Either way, by strolling onstage and giving the best performance of the day they left me pleasantly surprised. A newly-shorn Aaron looked like some kind of ascetic hermit as he stalked onstage and writhed around in torment to their definitive brand of gothic doom. I would hope the torment is pretty much faux, after all these years. Otherwise the poor lad must have an awful time of all these immortal unfulfilled desires and eternally lost hopes. Either way, My Dying Bride forced a wonderfully miserable setlist down our throats. Highlights included a three-in-a-row blinder of “Like Gods Of The Sun”, “To Remain Tombless” and “She Is The Dark” that was without a doubt the best twenty minutes I've had in quite some time. No sniggering at the back.

Pig Destroyer

Main stage headliners Electric Wizard emerged a short time later to a psychedelic backdrop and immense rolling feedback that gave way to monolithic riffage. They're quite heavy, quite slow and they like Black Sabbath a fair bit. Not much else needs to be said, really. Especially since I left their set about 15 minutes in (which means I only heard about one-tenth of a song) to go see Pig Destroyer headline the Terrorizer stage. The cerebral grindcore heroes were the main draw of the festival for me, so I arrived there in anticipation despite the lethargy of the teetotal festival-goer and my natural sense of almost complete contempt for everything. When they finally kicked off somewhat late, it quickly became apparent that the sound in the main crowd pit was pretty damn abysmal. So I moved to a higher balcony, where the sound was undoubtedly improved. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the problems with the set. While it sounded better up high, J.R. Hayes vocals were still a muffled croaking mush. I get that in grindcore that is kinda the standard anyway, but it came across as technical rather than stylistic. The band themselves seemed fairly nonplussed at being there, spending most of their time rocking back and forth on their feet and looking at each other. There was little to no crowd interaction, each song was bookended with about two minutes of either silence or keyboard/sampler noise and after the first ten minutes or so there was a noticeable steady bleed of audience members out from the room.

Quite a few of them wearing Pig Destroyer shirts, which is never a good sign.

I am actually still struggling to reconcile what I thought of this gig with the obvious violent bliss many were feeling down in the main pit. There was a veritable tsunami of bodies rolling back and forth down there, and I wonder if from my lofty physical and emotional perch I wasn't getting it. But all I can do is call 'em as I see 'em. And the band seemed as bored as the members of the audience who weren't kicking the shit out of each other. Once a long technical problem halfway through soaked up a lot of set time, the number of tunes that actually got played was pretty pathetic. After accounting for a late start, an early finish, a technical gap in the middle, an unwarranted departure for an encore and healthy amounts of absolute nothing inbetween two-minute long songs, I'd estimate that Pig Destroyer played between twenty and twenty-five minutes of music in a headlining set.

Not good enough. Nowhere near. Especially shortly after having seen Primordial and My Dying Bride, both of whom performed headline-quality sets in standard slots. All this and no “Mapplethorpe Grey” or “Carrion Fairy”. A big fat hefty 'meh' for the my main draw of the festival.

And yet I left feeling thoroughly satisfied. Overall, it represented a fucking solid day of extremely obnoxious music. Chalk another one up for the Damnationfest team. Bring on next year.

Game Review: The Secret World (Five-Day Trial Thoughts)

Format Played: PC

As no doubt all of you out there are aware, it's really difficult to review an MMO. I'm sure you're nodding your heads furiously. Most of you have probably tried your hand at it, since we're in the 21^st century and therefore slaves to pointless technology.

Inevitably the depth and sprawling content of a high-profile MMO cannot be devoured fully without a few months of commitment, and the information that influences your opinions may well be partially or fully obviated the next time an update or expansion kicks in. I'm fairly convinced that writing an MMO review in the first six months of release is utterly pointless, since that seems to be roughly how long it takes for the bugs to be ironed out and the playerbase to settle happily into its routines of grinding, griefing and massively over-reacting on the game forums.

And even when things have settled down, gamechanging expansions can slip into place that make any review useful only as long as it takes for the developer to open up a new game zone where players can play magical alien toasters and thus open up the crafting system to baked products.

With that in mind, here is a pointless two month-in quasi-review of The Secret World. This has been inspired purely by their lovely five day free trial offer, which seems to set no limits whatsoever other than time, and also seems to be hitting the general public early – no doubt brought forward by an apparent low number of initial subscribers and the slow creeping realisation at Funcom that opening up an MMO without a free-to-play model is a shockingly foolish thing to do in the current economic and gaming climate. Especially when your not-quite-AAA game charges more than the likes of World Of Warcraft, EVE and The Lord Of The Rings Online. And especially especially when you release your game in the run-up to the largest clusterfuck of AAA MMO releases in quite some time – with Guild Wars 2,, Warcraft's Mists Of Pandaria and LOTRO's Riders Of Rohan all looming heftily on the horizon like some kind of giant subscriptionless panda on a horse.

It's irrelevant to any review of The Secret World as to what they decide to charge to play it, though. If it is your kind of entertainment then any remotely reasonable price is worth paying, whether it be a subscription or a one-off payment. I have often been baffled at the puzzlement of the more mainstream gamer over people paying monthly for an MMO, before toddling off to town and slapping down £40 for 3-4 hours of modern military shooter action. £10 per hour of entertainment vs. £10 per month of entertainment. Mathematics solves all arbitrary arguments!

I suppose I should actually start talking about the game here, then. With the caveat that I have played 5 days worth of it, reached the second map of the first zone and played around to a minimal degree with different character builds. Prior to downloading it my overriding notions from reading other media were that it had been praised for the setting, the writing of Ragnar Tørnquist and that the classless system had received lots of attention prior to release but not much after the public actually got their hands on it.

In a startling break from the norm, I am here to tell you that the setting and writing are great and the classless system is a little bit lacklustre.

But the setting and writing are really good. Really, really good actually. Good for a video game in general, let alone an MMO, which is a genre often plagued by an overabundance of boar quests and massive spiky shoulderpads. Within The Secret World you play a newly imbued practitioner of the martial magic arts, recruited by one of three covert factions who manage to break free from the conspiracy theory cliché that surround them to become genuinely interesting allegiances in a three-way cold war over who exactly gets to curbstomp evil.

Just an average London home.

There are The Illuminati, somewhat eschewing their usual sinister tendencies to become fun-time fratboy political manipulators. The Templars, who leaven their goody-goody natures with a touch of stuffy class prejudice and lovely old-fashioned fascism. And finally the Dragon, who are arcane chaos mathematicians blending magic with scientific experimentation to discover the best path to the future. All of them have impressively constructed hub cities that bleed atmosphere, especially the Templar launchpad of London which is a skillful blend of London Below, crime drama cliché and Diagon Alley. Although as with the other zones the whole 'secret society' theme is somewhat clouded by the seeming high level of knowledge that everyone outside of the societies possesses about them. It's tough to work up a sufficiently spooky feeling about getting inducted into the centuries-old Templars when they are getting name-checked in the local pub and have massive banners outside their gaff advertising their presence. On the whole though, the environmental design and writing more than makes up for this.

Oh yes. The writing. I have not had the pleasure of playing a game written by Tørnquist before, but my hopes weren't high. The kind of writing that is favoured by the average gamer (let alone MMO convert) is not my kind of writing, and usually involves protagonists called Wolf Hawkenblade or something. So I was hugely surprised when his characters started off on dry, amusing and Whedon-esque pop culture-heavy monologues that I was actually interested in hearing. They manage to pull you into the game, provoke a few giggles and build a slimy horror atmosphere all at the same time. The Secret World had the potential to be a very po-faced place, and the characters you meet and their witty opinions on the awful things happening around them help to ease you in smoothly. Though there is in fact a character called Wolf. Oh well. I'll let you off, Funcom.

In fact, the excellence in execution of a seemingly incongruous blend of humour and horror in a darker-than-real-life setting initially made me feel like I was playing Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines as an MMO. That's a hell of a compliment.

It's just a shame that there is no way for you to actually interact with said characters other than listening to their opening quest or cutscene monologues and clicking on them for extra flavour speech. Your trusty avatar remains stoic and mute throughout, which while no doubt cutting down on the problems engendered by introducing actual roleplaying into an MMO (as seen in The Old Republic, where a brave attempt by Bioware results in little-to-no actual consequence on personality, quests or plot) does also leave you oddly disconnected from the supposed conversation. Even a stock male/female character voice without any dialogue choice might have helped with this. Though if any MMO was screaming out for actual roleplaying and plot choice, it would be this one.

The campest swift travel in town.

The (secret) world itself is bloated with detail and exceptional mood-setting touches. In-jokes for horror and pop culture afficionados abound. Lore pickups are strewn across the landscape and deliver information to you about areas, history and factions piece by piece until you have the whole sordid story. The first zone proper is set in what can charitably be called a Lovecraft pastiche, an island town off the coast of Maine called – ahem – Kingsmouth. A fog has rolled in off the ocean and brought with it horrible aquatic monsters that go about converting the inhabitants into rabid zombies. All three factions promptly send their operatives into the ensuing survivalist warzone, and before long you are gallivanting around town wasting the undead and their fishy chums. It has been said elsewhere that later zones are not as engaging as the first, and given how superb this first one is I am not surprised. And it's lucky that it is a pleasure to navigate, because swift travel is extremely limited. You're going to be running around. A lot.

Solomon Island, and Kingsmouth itself in particular, is swarming with a beautifully blended mish-mash of traditional and 21^st century-horror that leaves no bones unturned. Lovecraft fish monsters? Check. Resurrected cultists of unclear and unsavoury nature? Check. Weird new age religionists of uncertain motive? Check. Historical mass graves indicating some appalling past the town would rather forget? Check. Witch trials, mining fires, animated scrap golems, mud monsters, supernatural serial killers, haunted woods, kids fighting the forces of evil from a secret treehouse, Native American burial grounds, Men In Black, portals to hell, sinister occult mercenaries and remote-controlled plane perverts. All this and a pair of dogs called Tango and Cash. There is so much going on that the nuance and overall plot could very easily get lost amidst several seasons of The X-Files happening at once, and it really is a huge tribute to the writing team and designers that focus remains in firm control for a gamer who pays sufficient attention.

This is strongly aided by the design decision to severely limit the number of quests that can be carried out at once to the main story mission, one main mission, one group mission and three side missions. These probably require some clarification in and of themselves. The main story mission seems to be identical across all three factions, and is tied in to resolving the dark events happening across the zone in general. Main missions are split across the regular smack-up-the-mobs fare of typical MMOs, sabotage missions that incorporate stealth and escort mechanics and investigation missions that provide a cerebral challenge. There are also infrequent main missions delivered straight to you by a faction member when you manage to rank up within said faction, providing a minor sense of narrative difference between the three. Side missions are picked up from environmental objects and often contain a short but flavourful story unto themselves, rarely straying into the straight collect-'em-up mentality of MMO quest filler.

Main missions in general are handled via a set of progressive tiers capped with reporting back in to your faction via a text hand-in that removes the need to return to the NPC who gave you it in the first place. This, in combination with the mission limit, makes sure that you focus on the progression of one story and keeps your character flowing in one direction with no need for backtracking – which fits right in with the atmospheric, story-telling strengths of the game. However, this also means that missions often end with no sense of resolution regarding the bloke or gal who handed over the mission to you in the first place. Are they pleased with what has happened? Horrified? Strangely aroused? You'll never know, which is a shame given how well they are rounded out in their mission-granting monologues. Also, if you want to pick up a follow-up mission from them (albeit they only stock one or two missions in total, though most are repeatable should you wish to indulge in grinding) you will have to head back to them anyway.

Many players, enjoying a transport hub & chatting in random abbreviations.

The tier system means that even combat-heavy missions have a sense of story to them, and this is exacerbated for the investigation missions where your lateral thinking and puzzling abilities will genuinely be put to the test. If you're after a bit of mindless clicking producing that sweet endorphin high, these are not for you. They variously include object puzzles, scavenger hunts, scrutinising in-game images for details, hunting for real-life information and trawling fake faction sites set up by Funcom for the purposes of secreting data in amongst flavour information. It's all very fourth-wall destroying, and an utterly fantastic notion that seems so simple as to be obvious in our world of viral marketing nonsense. Some of these are tricky stuff, and I don't mind telling you that I was stumped to the point of Googling for spoilers on more than one occasion. Each time I regretted not just giving it more thought.

A contrast to the superb investigation missions are the frankly half-implemented sabotage missions, which commit the cardinal sin of introducing stealth mechanics into a game that has not been designed with them in mind. Negotiating laser grids, security cameras and such often proves to be raw luck combined with trial and error rather than skill and execution. This is made more frustrating by the one strike and dead mentality that pervades them, with rooms blowing up once you make a single mistake. That doesn't seem like effective planning for a monstrous secret society to me. Contracting and rebuilding costs alone would put them perpetually in the red.

As a whole the game seems to put a great focus on solo play – in the opening area of the Solomon Island zone there was a grand total of one group dungeon (the only type of group mission, as far as I can see), and open enemy tapping ensures that if you help out someone being smacked around by a huge crab monster you are liable to receive thanks rather than be screamed at for losing them valuable XP. There's an ongoing wrangle over this solo-friendly trend within MMOs, and one that I can see both sides of. But for something as immersive as The Secret World, it feels more appropriate than in many other games. Indeed, a strong argument could be made that this would actually have made a much better solo or co-op game than an MMO. If a similar non-MMO followup was made, I would certainly snap it up without question.

So what do we have so far? Great world and story-telling plus an intriguing mission system that just about edges past the line of its own flaws to feel refreshing and engaging. That pretty much leaves character building and combat. Which is where we start to falter and wheeze, carrying the weight of more than a decade of MMO convention.

Much was made of the classless and level-less system of character progression before release, but both of these prove pretty much to be non-starters. A character progresses via building of Skill and Ability points through an experience bar, picking up chunks of the tasty XP stuff via killing nasties, completing missions and gathering achievements and lore. This is traditional levelling up without a number attached to it, which only serves to confuse. Tagging missions with 'normal', 'hard' and 'very hard' based on your current ability and skill levels is all well and good, but it lacks nuance. If my invisible levels matter, I would much rather know exactly where I stand and what is expected for someone entering into a mission before I pick it up. Due to the nature of the ability system, levelling certainly matters less than in other MMOs – but it is still a big deal, and when something is a big deal in a game I want it to be as clear and transparent as possible.

The Ability Wheel, in all its wheel-like glory. 

Skills in The Secret World are possibly the most futile and uninteresting character progression system I have ever encountered, based primarily around very small incremental increases to your damage and survivability while also allowing you to equip better gear. Both are something that are just done for you upon achieving another level in most MMOs, and here assigning them just feels like dull busywork. Abilities are slightly better and come loaded into an ability wheel that is divided down via a choice of nine weapons (a mix of ranged and melee weapons and magic styles) that your character can diversify into. At any one point you can carry two weapons and thus utilise abilities from their wheel spokes, but if you are prepared to do some switching around then your actual ability choices are completely unlimited. Character decks are provided for guidelines on how to build effective character builds, but as pseudo-classes they remain open.

At any one time you can have 7 active abilities (i.e. combat attacks and buffs/heals) and 7 passive abilities (augmenting combat attacks and buffs) out, though these can again be switched at any time out of combat. All of this has the potential to lead to a fantastic and versatile combat/grouping system, but for several problems. The first is that the holy trinity of tank, healer and DPS is still there in full force. You can branch out into some element of crowd control or debuffer but the limited number of abilities you can utilise at one time makes you a one- or two-trick pony. Your role in a group (or your solo play technique) will largely be defined by the abilities you choose to stack, and while it is good that a player feels like they are defining their build themselves it would be very easy to construct a broken character or an ineffectual ability deck. This is easily remedied through free restacking, but it still jars that value judgements have to be made between abilities that on first glance appear broadly similar.

I suppose that smacks of laziness, but the abilities my primary character gained upon a few days of progression really didn't seem all that different. I was just hitting nasties with my hammer in a slightly different animation, with no sense of change or power increase. A couple of abilities I had to wade through on secondary spokes seemed actively worse than my starting ones, and many others differed only in about 8 points worth of damage per hit against foes running up to 4/3k in health points. It was all a choice between hit 'em, hit 'em slightly harder and hit' em less hard but get a protective buff for 8 seconds. That is even less interesting to play than it is to read.

Smacking fish monsters with glowing magic mining picks - surprisingly dull.

All this is exaggerated by the fact that while it is obvious Funcom were going for a more action-based combat than your average MMO (limited ability decks, dodgeable telegraphed enemy attacks, chunky brightly-coloured ability icons), in execution it provides a hell of a grind. It is a genre blend that others have attempted recently - DC Universe Online springs to mind - and it is most definitely yet to be perfected. The majority of mobs take a good 30 seconds to a minute to bash through solo by rotating between two or three attacks, and you inevitably find yourself weaving around the ones you don't have to engage within an hour of starting play. Given the effort that has gone into engaging the player in the rest of the game, this is highly disappointing. On the occasions when you fight a whole bunch of weaker opponents the combat becomes much more acceptable – enemies go down faster, the usually more visually impressive AOE damage abilities become appropriate and the combat as a whole often resolves itself quicker. And considering that the strengths of the game lie in exploration and atmosphere, there are a hell of a lot of areas that are so swamped with mobs that you stand no chance of strolling through them solo without a lot of careful fighting or frustrating dying.

Speaking of dying, are we really still using the whole navigate-back-to-your-body-as-a-ghost thing in 2012? Really, are we? Astonishing.

There are various other bits and pieces to round out the typical MMO roster of features, but from limited play they don't seem to offer anything new. Item augmentation and crafting, guilds (termed cabals here), achievements for killing 100 of a thing, limited PvP and suchlike. I'm fine with these things, but from what I saw they don't rock my boat enough to go into any detail here. Gear is limited to talismans and weapons, and seems less numerous than in many similar games, with only 7 talisman slots at my character's paltry current level. Appearance is based on outfit rather than gear itself, which makes for a pleasant change and is appropriate to the setting. Information on gear, stats, how to pick up lovely new outfits and the wardrobe itself are both poorly explained by a help system that is by turns very useful and massively useless. 

In addition, the build is still buggy from launch. I encountered two in partiular more than once – the tendency for a doorway or object spawn to simply no-show, thus stalling you on a mission tier with no easily apparent option to quit the whole mission and start again. Even when transplanting with a new main mission and thus 'pausing' the bugged one, when unpausing I was still stuck on the bugged tier. I am sure a workaround exists, but given my limited time I simply moved on. In a way more frustrating is the tendency for mini-bosses to dash off a short distance and reset to full health, sometimes dependent on your moving outside a poorly demarcated area and sometimes just seemingly at random. It is somewhat churlish to complain about non-gamebreaking bugs in a game as unbelievably complex as an MMO, but two months after launch these are major items that should not be cropping up so frequently.

So that's my five days with The Secret World, more or less. It is an odd and uneven gaming experience, but also one with unique strengths for the genre. I suspect it'll be a game that builds an extremely loyal and setting-obsessed fanbase (of which I may well end up one, being a sucker for story and atmosphere), especially if the less appealing quirks are smoothed out via tweaks, expansions and a well-executed free-to-play system. That might be optimistic, given the recent flurry of unhappy news regarding its ongoing development from Funcom. Still, in these days of photocopying Warcraft into different IPs, The Secret World is to be applauded for providing something genuinely different. If you're after a solo-friendly MMO that will spin a great yarn for you in a brilliantly detailed environment, this may be for you. Although ironically, given the focus on solo play, you might get the best out of the game by duo-ing up with a friend. That way you can chew through the endless mobs with due haste while arguing over which ancient occult tome you have just Googled holds the clue to finding the forbidden labyrinth of the fish-people. And I actually can't imagine a better way to spend a Saturday night than that.  

A Week Called Bastard – Episode 2

Since there was general approval of the first entry in this landmark series of bitterness and despair, the powers that be at Bastard Towers have decided to make this a weekly series. If this strikes you as inherently wrong or actually criminal, please write to your MP/senator/feudal overlord.

* * * * *

It has been a funny old week for the Republican party. Not only have they seemingly been trying to one-up each other over who can make the most inappropriate comments about rape, but their National Convention turned out to make headlines more for Clint Eastwood being out-debated by an empty chair than anything said by Romney or his cohorts.

But the Republicans are easy targets, when has The Bastard ever picked on easy targets? Well, all the time. It really is a lot of fun. But crucially, John Walker has already said what I wanted to say in a much more erudite manner than I could.

So instead, let's pick on some other rich white meat. You may not have heard of Gina Rinehart, but she can buy you. And your family. And your family's close personal friends and pets. She is the world's wealthiest woman, and a couple of days ago she delivered some handy advice for those less well-off than herself.

"If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain... Do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working... There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire."

That's right, you filthy proles. The reason you're poor is because all your money goes into your revolting habits, or into having friends. If only you'd put your nose to the grindstone you'd make enough money to dictate ludicrous opinions to the public and be the victim of mockery on isolated monkey blogs like this one. It was Gina's hard work that got her where she was today. If by 'hard work' we mean 'being born the heir to an Australian mining magnate'. But let's not do down that achievement in and of itself.

Think of the strain and pure graft involved in Gina's hard-won race as a sperm, grinding its way relentlessly toward her mother's precious egg as Lang Hancock grunted and thrust his hips – the sweat on his brow unconsciously echoing the sweat on the brows of workers worldwide, all of whom were united in saluting this tribute to their labours.

If The Bastard were a lazy writer, he might ignore this obvious humourous parallel to the working classes and instead comment on the basic misunderstanding of capitalism that is inherent in the claim that anyone can become a millionaire. Or perhaps point out the utter vapidity Gina displayed upon blaming “socialist” policies for the gap between rich and poor. Those scheming socialists, always looking to line the pockets of the rich. And if The Bastard were gratuitously offensive as well as lazy, he might also state that someone who looks like Gina might want to keep their nose out of social policy, lest their influence bring about criminal punishment via carbonite freezing and excessive public consumption of weird frog-things from steaming water bowls.

Otherwise she might be the first into the Sarlacc pit when the revolution comes.

* * * * *

It wasn't too long after the last AWCB was posted that the world learned of the death of Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on a celestial body other than our own planet. This seemed particularly poignant given the rush of information flowing to us from the Curiosity rover, trundling over the surface of Mars since August 6^th of this year.

Now, I'm sure you'll forgive me if I turn off the funny for a bit. Would you kindly watch this video. It won't take you long. 

Back? Ok. Now. That is footage so awesome that it actually makes me feel weird. My stomach turns, I go light-headed, I genuinely tear up. Video of something we have created landing on another planet. It's so beyond all of my experiences. And yours. And every other person on Earth. It is far, far more important than anything you or I will ever do with our lives.

And the craziest thing about it is that so many of us will glance at it and go "Meh, whatever." News regarding the Curiosity rover is humming by quietly under the radar. Sure, it pops up on TV or in the newspapers now and then if something deemed significant happens. But if humanity had any sense of perspective whatsoever this would be front page, headline news every single day and everyone would be watching it while screaming in inarticulate joy over what we have accomplished.

Newsreaders should be weeping with ecstasy as they describe how we have defied the very laws of physics in order to transmit images of an alien world back to a bunch of gibbering apes who somehow managed to get a functional machine to a planet that is an average of 225 million kilometres away. And we have done this successfully four times. FOUR TIMES.

Watch the footage linked earlier and celebrate. It is mankind landing on another planet. It is science-fiction made flesh. The future is now – we are living it, aimlessly unaware in a parade of celebrity gossip websites and reality TV atrocities. But as you celebrate, you also need to mourn. Not only for the loss of Neil Armstrong, a man who reputedly would tell awful jokes about his voyage to the Moon and follow the awkward laughter with an offhand “Well, I guess you had to be there.”, but for the loss of wonder and ambition in the human race over the last 40 years. Sure, we have problems here we need to fix. Whole heaps of them. Our own house needs to be set into order before we can go traipsing around the solar system with abandon. But surely, if there were one thing that could focus our efforts on a single unified point, it would be exploration beyond our own planet. It is the last great adventure, and the notion that it is one that humanity will embark upon seems to be slowly becoming one of naïveté and futile grasping at straws.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

                                                   -  Neil Armstrong

* * * * *

I have a habit of saying stupid, bizarre or callous things on an almost daily basis. Sometimes these observations hurt no one, but occasionally they are leapt upon as an example of how I am an awful human being.

Example. Earlier this week I attempted to hold court on how I am appreciative of the ability to spell words properly, going so far as to suggest that I may run for power on a platform of criminalising text speak outside of texts and extra apostrophes on signs. Only in Britain, naturally. We might be the only country capable of ignoring moral principles for abstract grammatical values on a day-to-day basis. But in the end I struggled to find a bleeding-heart liberal way I could say that I think that people who can't spell should be slaughtered like pigs.

I know, right? You'd think that would fit right into Guardian columnist rhetoric. I should clarify that I don't think I'm better than people who can't spell, per se. I just think they're utter failures as human beings and should be isolated or destroyed to avoid contaminating the rest of us. In the New Spelling Republic, terror would come by night to drag ppl screaming from theyre homes as illiterate sign-writers swung from lamp-posts nearby. Kaputtegrammatiknacht.

I should point out that dyslexics and people with similar learning disabilities would get pardons, and just have to be put into special camps or something. I'm not a monster, after all!

Sadly, this moderate and well-thought out political treatise incurred some ire. Several hours later, I realised that in reference to this someone I don't know had referred to me as a “bored middle class special snowflake”. Embarrassingly, this was after I had already replied to him with a good-natured but badly-worded pun about a lawnmower that could write novels. I felt that to follow it up with a late rejoinder would not only be futile but also a denial of the basic facts:

1. I am bored.
   - This week I went through my junk email in an effort to amuse myself with randomly generated titles. I was delighted to discover that Anne Hathaway wanted to meet up for a 'garter strip fuck'. I have replied, but so far nothing. Fully expecting to be able to write a piece for next week's episode on my sexually deviant experiences with Catwoman.
   
   
2. I am middle class.
   - Shortly after my brutal and uncalled-for tirade against the grammatically-challenged, I complained on various social media sites about how many bowlfuls of muesli I got out of a box vs. how many were advertised as being in said box. Even typing that I can feel my hair tightening into a rich boy 'fro and my name transmogrifying into Rory spelled Ruiraigh.
   
   
3. And I am definitely a fucking special snowflake.
   - No argument required here.

My only real defence against this is that my spiteful hatred of pretty much everything is incurred entirely from other people acting even more appallingly than I do.

Last night, as I walked home from the corner shop I was privileged enough to be accompanied on my road by a couple of lads who were performing extremely loud shrieks in an effort to do “an impression of a girl being raped”. They are another fucking species. I swear, they must be. I am physically uncomfortable sharing their DNA.

These moments are almost always poetically timed to run alongside personal ruminations that I should tone down my misanthropy. So thankyou, grotesquely abhorrent chaps. You have played a part in restoring my lack of faith in humanity, which in turn will keep my writing as vibrant and bile-driven as ever.

* * * * *

As mentioned above, I am bored. A lot of the time. This is partly to do with my current state of employment (that is to say, none), but also to do with the ineffable air of jaded cool I willingly radiate at all times.

It is difficult to keep entertained when unemployed – there is only so long one can get laughs from saying things like DESPAIR and FUTILITY over and over again in a dull monotone to a series of blank, empty walls. That's more of a social activity, anyway.

So to liven up the dullness of another day spent at home writing half-truths on job application forms and telling my cat that with great meowing comes great responsibility, I fell down my stairs. I didn't plan to do so, you understand. If I had then I'd have spent the summer at Edinburgh Fringe with a unique and painful form of performance art. Awards and late-night BBC3 comedy specials would lay glittering in my future.

There wasn't even any preamble. I was walking down the stairs, then I was suddenly on my arse bouncing down. I didn't black out or anything exciting like that. It was like a glitch in The Matrix, and also The Matrix hates me. If nothing else, it gave me the brand new emotion of experiencing embarrassment despite there being no one else there to point and laugh. An odd existential shame. First I was born into a hateful, uncaring world. And now this. This torment. There is no God. But if there was, He would be standing over my prone, sore form saying “What a PRICK.” and making politically incorrect belming noises.

I was effectively hobbled for about 24 hours with a nagging pain in one foot that left me unable to do any of the things I never do anyway. And since I listened to some Limp Bizkit of my own free will yesterday, I'm fairly sure I suffered some minor head trauma. The whole experience did jar me enough that shortly afterwards I mistakenly picked up bathroom surface cleaner instead of mouthwash. Realising my mistake before ingesting it may have itself have been an error, since at least with the former I could have had an exciting afternoon at the hospital.

It also led to the discovery that my phone will repeatedly auto-correct 'limp' to 'limo', which speaks volumes of the disconnect between my fetid existence and the hip media lifestyle my iPhone thinks I have.

* * * * *

Out-of-context Bastard Quote Of The Week

“New-wave dogsploitation to the max.”

A Week Called Bastard – Episode 1

So, it's time to experiment with a new weekly blog/commentary style writing format. Snippets of personal and newsworthy observations, compiled in my own inimitable style of verve and bitter misanthropy. This springs from two main driving factors – a lack of funds to buy new reviewable media and a desire to fill your screens with the kind of fetid nonsense I ramble about on social networking sites. I am anticipating either total disinterest or rabid internet applause followed by a promising career in slagging everyone and everything off professionally. Reviews and other articles will continue to appear when resources allow. But let's see how this goes, Bastard-fans! Feedback, as always, appeciated.

* * * * *

The only thing worse than howling into the void on Twitter, as most people below the rank of Z-list celebrity are, is when your despairing cries are picked up by undesirables. As the spambots slowly become more discriminating and build towards inevitable horrifying sentience, the issue of whether a random question addressed to you is from a pile of recursive code or an idiot human being is a troubling one. Often I have to actually hop onto their profile to determine whether I should report them, block them or abuse them. The more advanced 'bots are now typically filling their feed with a mixture of randomly generic Twitter posts of the “OMG I went out & got so drunk you guys LOL” variety, semi-relevant links to currently trending internet memes and the actual purposeful targeted links through to whatever awful spam they have been constructed to promote in the first place.

Worryingly, this random compilation is perilously close to what your average Twitter user posts. As much as six months ago I had no problems whatsoever distinguishing between a cretin and a spambot, but more and more I find myself agonising over my choice of social antagonism. It is not so much the humanlike behaviour of 'bots that worries me, as the 'botlike behaviour of what are nominally members of my own species. Social media hipsters are the accursed bastard hybrid of mindless microblog fucktard tedium, meme-inspired humour nothingness and unwitting advertising billboard vacuity. Perhaps it is time the spam-constructing supervillains of the world plugged them directly into service. Racks of human servers with bad haircuts and dubstep-infected iPods twitching in the softly-lit darkness as they notice someone referencing a trendy dead celebrity who desperately needs to know how to mourn them via a specialised trendy dead celebrity mourning product, designed by a sub-Apple new media clown with an amazing newbuild office overlooking San Francisco bay.

Still, in the glowing online paradise that is 2012 it's not only advertising code that flings unwanted attention my way. There is a growing tendency for employers to recruit social media specialists to not only promote their company/agency/party but also participate in sometimes-relevant online discussions as and where they find them. I'm not slamming this in and of itself – some of my friends make a living off it.

But one can't help but feel that it is getting out of hand when receiving a targeted message enquiring about the current conversation from a BNP social media expert when referring to the red M&M from the tedious television advertising campaign as a “racist cannibal mass murdering BNP voter and Holocaust denier”. I am delighted to know that I live in a world where proposing that a sentient hard shelled chocolate treat is a fascist monster receives a tentative communiqué from a group of real-life fascist wannabes. However, I am disheartened that the cretins exist in the first place, and that they have decided that Twitter is an excellent vector for their message of national pride and reactionary race hatred. So I suppose it balances out in the end.

* * * * *

Oh, Todd Akin. You so crazy. Striking me dumb is an impressive achievement, but when you make comments like the following then there's not much in the way of a punchline that can be delivered:

“Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

I mean, he's already done my job for me. It's one long punchline at the expense of the entire human race. Millennia of scientific and social progress, gunned down with relish by this man being an elected representative of one of the most powerful nations on the planet. Ha! Ha! HAHAHAHA.

My favourite bit is “But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something.” Yes. Let's throw those awkward facts and millions of horrifically offended rape victims, biologists and empathetic human beings a bone, just to satiate the loony left. Let's just assume, for a moment, that women don't have magical rape defence powers, or that they misfired on one tragic occasion. Let us throw ourselves into that fantasy for a moment. What an awful world that would be, where people are forced into impossible choices by the immoral acts of others. How lucky we are not to live in that world, and to instead live a life of privilege, prep schools and rich white guy politics that makes impossible choices easy for us.

Coincidentally, another example of an impossible choice due to an immoral act might be backstreet abortions vs. unwanted pregnancy, because of anti-abortion legislation proposed by people seemingly incapable of divorcing blustering intangible rhetoric from real-life facts.

However, the actual issue here is that because of all the trauma around the use of the term 'legitimate rape' throughout the week, I felt that I had to change an observation that a shop-window display looked like 'patriotic rape ninjas' into 'patriotic molestation ninjas'. Which doesn't trip off the tongue nearly as well, and is the true tragedy resulting from Akin's bizarre ramblings. Damn you, Akin. Goddamn you.

* * * * *

I thought I had unlocked a terrifying thought for my generational peers when realising that the prevalence of retro '90s nights for students (the current batch having been born around 1994) means that we are probably only a couple of years away from seeing badly photocopied posters for retro noughties nights. Noughties? 00's? It can't be retro naughties nights, that is something else entirely - afro wigs, parachute pants, Friends haircuts and carkeys in a bowl on the table.

Imagine my horror when informed that such nights already exist in London. Age-based angst and Northern Outrage (a condition best typified by the phrase “Well, they would have that in that there London”) aplenty. It's a clear sign of escalation. I fully expect that by 2015 there will be retro nights exploring the amazing and timeless music of December 2014, which if pop chart escalation also accelerates will just be the sound of Simon Cowell vomiting into a glitter-festooned bucket.

* * * * *

In my private life I like to fantasise about random strangers being truly awful to me, so I can complain about them later to my friends. It makes for a rich inner life. But inevitably such fantasies come to an end when I either realise that this would make me an even worse person, or when a random stranger is merely bizarre or pathetic rather than awful. So thankyou, creepy 10am drunk, for knocking sense into me with your rolled-up newspaper inbetween repeated statements that it is a nice morning. You live your hideous sham of a life so that my own hideous sham might become slightly more genuine.

These individuals, though they don't know it, are fodder for people like me attempting to amuse others through the medium of self-indulgent hyperbolic bloggery. Even an exhausting trip back from the vet whilst carrying an overweight cat in a huge box designed for dogs becomes worthwhile when confronted with unexpected enquiries from a young woman standing in the doorway of her house, seemingly unaware of the small boy stood next to her and masturbating leisurely while gazing at said cat.

I'm not sure what part of this unsettled me the most. Answering queries about the health of my beloved pet while confronted with such an unfamiliar scenario? The growing painful ache in my arms impeding my usual unflappable social veneer? That the young woman was obviously so used to her child masturbating in public that it no longer registered? Or the sheer inappropriate and un-British nature of the very concept of public masturbation? I decided later that it definitely wasn't the latter, since I wouldn't have been unduly shaken if the young woman had been the one blithely playing with herself in front of me. Though given the presence of the boy, I might have questioned her parenting techniques.

The irony in the situation is that though children publicly masturbating is indeed somewhat un-British, I felt compelled to stay and answer a number of questions in this situation purely from my British sense of unquestioning politeness. And afterwards, my main concern about the incident was that since I had effectively placed a cat in front of a masturbating child I may have inadvertently provoked him to become a furry in later life. As the chaos theoreticians tell us – in Tokyo a butterfly flaps its wings, and years later a masturbating child in York posts LiveJournal images of himself as Swift-tail The Fox while dry humping accountants in badger costumes.

* * * * *

Right, so the Prince Harry naked photos. Let's get the obvious out of the way first. They are flung round the world by mostly American media sites and news agencies, resulting in a raging (but also fairly dull) debate within the UK over whether UK-based newspapers and other parasites should publish them. Finally, The Sun decides to do so with squeaking claims that since they're already available online, there's no point in not doing so – and furthermore, it's their journalistic responsibility to do so since there's public interest.

If they're already available online, there is no point in publishing them either. They're already there. People can see them if they want them. In publishing them you are giving your public nothing new, just wallowing in dirt like the filthy dogs you are. Well done.

You have a journalistic responsibility to report news, not to give the public what you think they want – which usually translates as whatever will sell the most units. Though in all honesty, I don't know why I even bother writing this. The most cursory correlation of UK tabloids against the concept of 'journalistic responsibility' would drive the average discerning human into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter that would only relent when the lungs finally collapsed, sucking the diaphragm inwards in a splintering bloody implosion that could only come as blessed sweet release. We are, apparently, lucky to live in a world where newspapers like The Sun are pioneers in the crusade for our moral right to see some rich twat's bum.

Besides, this is ignoring the real problem with the photos. They were apparently taken while P-Harry and assorted guffawing chums were playing strip billiards. Strip. Billiards. BILLIARDS. Fucking billiards. Fuck me. Christ. Billiards.

Fucking STRIP BILLIARDS.

I can't communicate in mere words how much hypocritical class-driven rage that concept grants me.

A personal message from me to Mr P. Harry follows.

* * * * *

Let's end this futile charade of blogging experimentation with some things I learned from the erudite and learned master than is television last night. There was a show narrated by Idris Elba (who is a DJ, apparently – the glory of bit-parts in shit overrated sci-fi like Prometheus is thankfully a second career) entitled How Clubbing Changed The World, consisting of a compilation of voted-for-by-the-idiot-public ways in which, er, clubbing changed the world. I gained these gems of infinite knowledge:

1. I can pretty much listen to 'Blind Faith' by Chase & Status on repeat forever. The functioning non-lizard half of my brain tells me it was probably only featured in the show once, but I likely replaced any music I didn't approve of with it – especially since the entire visual aesthetic was basically a version of the video spun out for hours.

2. Idris Elba seems much cooler when he is an extradimensional Norse deity. To be fair, this probably applies to everyone.

3. I really wasted my time being a nerd in the '90s. I should have been out at clubs and raves and Ibiza and bangin' choons and shit like that. I feel like I missed out on an Experience, or at the very least on meeting lots of women with low standards and vast quantities of mind-altering substances.

4. Daft Punk seem to be viewed as true musical visionaries. I always thought of them as annoying squelchy bleep twats in futuristic motorcycle helmets. Huh.

5. Lots of burnt-out DJs seem to think that ecstasy has created a utopian classless society in the UK. It is possible that taking so much E has melted their brains to the point where everything they now experience is like a constant loop of D:Ream playing along to Tony Blair's disembodied smiling face, glowing a soft soothing yellow and tossing them the occasional cheeky wink or seductive lick of the lips. For evidence that the UK is not a classless society, please observe the widening statistical gap between rich and poor and also the concept of FUCKING STRIP BILLIARDS.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Well, this is going to be an interesting review to write. These days most movies come packaged in an excitingly huge and shiny cardboard box made of reconstituted hype and nonsense, but it’s rare for genuine expectation to find itself saddled to a blockbuster superhero flick. Everyone is usually too jaded, too flooded with media and too brutalised by box office turds to set their expectations very high even when all the signs are positive. That’s why no one was particularly surprised when the likes of Prometheus or Avatar hit home with very mixed receptions. Disappointing is the new black, and as an audience our current default setting is one of post-modern cynicism.

The Dark Knight Rises hype machine beat all that off with a nail-studded stick. I don’t know anyone who was intending to see this at the cinema that wasn’t looking forward to it with a feverish enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism. Admittedly, I know a lot of nerds. But I maintain that the general feeling was that this was going to be something special, a superhero movie that stood a chance of eclipsing its predecessors and wrapping the Nolan Batman trilogy into a neat little best-ever-cape-series package.

Well, it has done the latter. There’s no disputing that between them, these three films summarise the story of Batman into an extremely satisfying  tale with multiple distinct character arcs, loaded with subtext and imagery that make them some of the only movies capable of hitting the brain as hard as they hit the guts. In many ways The Dark Knight Rises is closer to a sequel to Batman Begins that the second film was – it carries over a lot of similar themes, as well as offering a continuation of that original narrative that I will desperately try not to spoilerise within this review.

What it has not done is step up the trilogy’s game. Now, should that be a criticism? Honestly, I don’t know. But when the second film in a series aces the first (which was already pretty firmly the best film of its genre ever made), one can’t help but feel some mild disappointment when the third film pulls back to quality of Batman Begins. Is The Dark Knight Rises good? Undoubtedly. Is it worth seeing, and worthy of being the conclusion of the Christian Bale as Batman saga? Oh yes.

But if what follows seems to have an excess of negative spin on it, now you know why.

We return to Gotham eight years after the devastating events of The Dark Knight, and immediately are thrown into an environment both familiar and alien. This is the Gotham and the characters we have seen before, but swaddled in inertia and neutered by past decisions. This inertia spills out onto the screen, to the point where the film feels like it takes a good hour to get up and running. It’s definitely a slow burn rather than an immediate cackling blaze of fury – albeit a slow burn that eventually rolls into an intensity that is as uncomfortable as it is adrenalising.

As with the previous films (and most of Nolan’s work in general), the ensemble performances are off the chart for something which is nominally a summer blockbuster. More than ever before, Bale’s Batman shines as a man broken into the shape of fear and justice by events beyond his control. Tom Hardy proves to be an inspired choice for Bane, an immediate fusion of cerebral and physical intimidation whose cold and clinical voice terrifies without ever raising itself above a barely-audible mechanical whisper. Anne Hathaway is also surprisingly effective as Selina Kyle (the name ‘Catwoman’ never actually escaping past anyone’s lips), languidly providing the manipulative not-quite-amoral slink that is required for the role. And it’s difficult to over-exaggerate just how refreshing it is to see a portrayal of the character outside the seminal 1990’s animated series who isn’t just defined by her sexual overtones. Into both , the writers have introduced a 99%-er sensibility that makes it difficult not to agree with their aims, even when decrying their methods.

The mostly unsung heroes of the trilogy have, however, always been Michael Caine’s Alfred and Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon. Both continue to turn in powerful and subtle performances, though Oldman has much less to do in Dark Knight Rises than he has previously. Alfred, on the other hand, proves to be the furiously beating emotional heart of this final third. It makes for less of the easy humour and comradely banter that marked the relationship between Wayne and his primary father figure before, but leads to some genuinely devastating emotional moments. This will be the only superhero film of the year you might shed a tear for.

Cast aside, Dark Knight Rises runs a genuine risk of losing its way on several occasions through the lengthy running time. Incorporating multiple character threads throughout (though unlike The Dark Knight, always keeping Batman front and centre), sometimes these people seem to be revolving around each other rather than genuinely connecting. That isn’t the case across the board, and it’s not enough that you fail to care about them at all. But as an example, try as I might I couldn’t build up much empathy for new guy Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s earnest cop. As the film strolled onward, this left me in an awkward half-engaged posture due to the eventual importance of the role he plays. These are good characters in bad situations but often there’s just nothing to hook me in within this part of the trilogy. That’s less important for the characters who have jumped aboard two films ago, but when Nolan puts the onus on the newbies (of which there are quite a few), the ground just doesn’t seem solid. Perhaps it’s because almost everything within the film is a gamechanger.

It really, really is.

If Batman Begins was the taut origin story and The Dark Knight was the Heat-style hero vs. villain character study, then The Dark Knight Rises is the epic disaster movie. There is awe here with a capital A. Certain setpieces will make your jaw drop and your heart race, no two ways about it. This can partly be laid at the door of the cinematography, which is superb. Every single shot has been crisply assembled to be pitched at the audience in just the right way to deliver.

But when so much sweeping change is thrown at you right off the bat, it’s hard to keep up. You have no time to become invested into a status quo before it is twisted and turned around. Said twists are never illogical Shyamalan-style cheats, but there is an over-reliance on MacGuffins and flinging the surprises/dramatic changes at you faster than a speeding bullet. How’s that for crossover DC referencing, folks?

Speaking of DC referencing – if you are a comic book geek like me, there is much here to love. In the same way that Ledger’s Joker unconsciously took elements of most of the Clown Prince Of Crime’s portrayals from the last 30 or so years and melded them together into a horrifically joyous whole, Nolan rams picture-perfect versions of Catwoman and Bane onto the screen for your enjoyment. It’s especially satisfying given they’ve been done so very, very wrong before now. And if you are familiar with the definitive Batman/Bane story arc from the latter’s first appearances, a confrontation halfway through will be extremely gratifying. That’s veering dangerously close to spoiler right there. But only if you’re a massive Batman nerd, in which case you’ve probably already seen it. So that’s ok.

This has rambled on too long already.

So, The Dark Knight Rises. Has it arrived like a swooping bat-shaped thing from the darkness to save us from the generic bilge that infests the summer blockbuster release schedule? Yes. Has it upped the ante from the superb dynamics of The Dark Knight and set the bar still higher for the trilogy’s swansong? Not really, no.

Does that actually matter? Mileage may vary. For me, no. The Batman trilogy created by Nolan & co. is best viewed as one coherent whole, and as a conclusion to that whole this film does the job – and does it very well. It is a film that makes you feel and think and want to punch bad guys all at the same time, while wrapped comfortably around themes that capture the public zeitgeist with an almost impossibly casual ease. Any disappointment I had while walking out of the cinema felt like it was essentially my fault for being a curmudgeonly overanalysing prick. When that’s internalised rather than being shouted at me by other people, it must be a sign of something. If this third part of Nolan’s Batman feels to me like a weak link in the chain when viewed in isolation, it is still one that makes the chain stronger.

Movie Review: Prometheus

Unusually, the internet seems to have been somewhat coy about Prometheus in terms of spoilers. The trailers and previews were castigated for giving away too much plot, too many setpieces, too much of Noomi Rapace's perma-shocked expression.

In a token effort to honour that, I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. But that's going to be difficult,because trying to explain why something is an absolute unholy mess the first thing you need is precise examples.

And Prometheus is a mess. Oh, it really is.

So. A pick n' mix team of scientists, space pilot types and corporate manipulators go on a three year voyage to a distant moon in order to meet some mysterious aliens they think are potentially responsible for creating life on Earth. Or just humans. It's not too specific, really. They get there, mild disaster ensues, things happen in a randomly selected order. The whole thing is a sort-of-prequel to the Alien franchise, inasmuch as it is supposedly set a fair way before it and has events tangentally linked to the first discovery of the xenomorph by the crew of the Nostromo.

CGI is thrown at the viewer with enthusiasm, in an unsurprising move for a sci-fi movie in 2012. Said CGI is pretty well put together, and visually is a striking mix between the visuals of the Alien trilogy (shut up, it's a trilogy - the latest three films were horrible cheese hallucinations I had) and somewhat generic-but-pretty sci-fi fare. It suffers slightly from the Star-Wars-prequels-syndrome of looking like technology is much further along years before the events of the original movies, but given that (a) we're a long way from the audience expectations of 1979, and (b) the ship in Alien was meant to be a crappy tug and not a top class scientific research vessel - I don't mind too much. There are far bigger holes to plug. Not to mention that nowadays, being impressed by CGI is such a standard sensation that I have become immune to its charms.

The film as a whole tries to balance on a knife-edge between a slow philosophical sci-fi musing, and a faster-paced sci-fi horror. It desperately fails at this. Not because of any innate problem with this fusion - far from it, other films have managed this capably. Sunshine springs to mind. It fails because it has very little internal consistency, the characters are mostly blank nothings and the writing is shockingly poor given the pretensions at high concept and the proven talents of Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof.

Characters will be terrified and fleeing for their lives one moment, and the next giggling and trying to make friends with an alien snake creature. They will be having high-minded discussions of the creation of mankind, and segue awkwardly into a relationship argument. A technological MacGuffin is examined by Rapace's tabula rasa archaeologist lead - she is amazed to have seen one, since only 12 have ever been made. Shortly after this she operates it competently without any hesitation or need for training. These last two examples are also linked to another problem, one of long-range telegraphing that disrupts the flow for the viewer with astonishing clumsiness. The relationship argument is an obvious lead-in to a plot twist that is resolved utilising the MacGuffin, and then virtually thrown away without comment by any other character. The crew just revolve around each other without caring about life, death or any sense of planning through what is fundamentally the most important scientific mission in human history. You get the sense they're making it up as they go along, which in turn makes you feel Ridley Scott and the writers were doing the same thing.

If this were a pure schlock sci-fi horror, that wouldn't matter. It also wouldn't matter that the inevitable alien (though not Alien) nastyness that emerges doesn't seem to behave or operate under any sense of internal logic. Are they monsters? Do they turn people into monsters? Or into themselves, via any method that is contrived in order to put the cast into a hazardous situation? Oh, all of the above. Unfortunately, when you have pretensions of philosophising and more serious sci-fi these things jar harshly with your suspension of disbelief. Individually these are all nitpicking elements that nerds like me throw out with a snorting sneer, but unfortunately in the case of Prometheus they pile on top of each other until all you're left with is lots of almost-but-not-quite Alien trilogy referencing and a ship full of scientists and blue collar workers who all look like underwear models. There are quite a few extra frustrations I am leaving out of this review, for the sake of spoilerisation and the boredom you would feel from reading the offshoots from my mighty Organ Of Cynicism.

So, anything decent in the whole turgid junk pile? Well, as I said before it looks nice. The opening scene is superb, mysterious and beautifully shot - but that probably just contributes to the eventual disappointment of the rest of the film. Michael Fassbender is excellent as the morally dubious android David, pushing his performance head and shoulders out of the dross surrounding him to become the finest camp robot in cinema since C-3PO. But other than that, Prometheus badly fails to live up to its promise. Ridley Scott can direct much better than this. Damon Lindelof can write much better than this. Most of the cast can act much better than this.

And while I appreciate the notion of expanding an established universe into an odd sideways direction, the creative team have really shot themselves in the foot by linking themselves to superior cinematic efforts.

D-, guys. Must try harder.