FLASH FLOOD: Canabalt

Next up in Escape Artist's cavalcade of free games with which to hasten your soul-crushing working day is Canabalt. Vault from skyscraper to skyscraper at ever faster speeds as the world crumbles like day-old cheescake around you. Windows smash and doves dramatically take to the wing as you speed past, hoping that your next leap of faith doesn't end teeth-first in a block of cement. It's good solid twitch gaming, and exemplary of the 'just one more go' type of gameplay that somehow free internet games can do better than full retail releases. Also includes an adrenaline-pumping soundtrack that sounds kind of German.

Play it...HERE!

Or if you prefer to waste time before work on public transport so you can knuckle down to work when you get in (what, you think you're better than us?), you can buy it for your fancy-pants iPhone, Mr. Hard-Working Lawyer Man.

My highest score for the game is a paltry 2218m, which I'm certain could be beaten by wild chimpanzees mashing the jump button entirely randomly. Please feel free to boast of your score accomplishments in the comments section below. If you get a score higher than me, I can virtually guarantee I will try to beat it and get back to you. 'Dis my house. School yo' self, bitch.

This week's free game brought to you by: Adam Atomic with music by Danny B

IN DEFENSE OF: Deftones, aka The Band That Disappeared

When you listen to an album, you know you’re not just listening to an album, right? You’re listening to an album and processing all the information you know about the people who made it; all the words written about them, all the pictures printed, whatever your friends think of them. For all that we like to claim that it’s all about the music, that’s just not how our brains are wired. When we listen to something by Radiohead, we have to decide whether or not it represents the band “disappearing up their own arses”, which for some people means any record that isn’t a mirror image of OK Computer. When we hear a Madonna track on the radio, we’re aware that something about her public persona makes us want to retch, even though we won’t say anything, because she has spies everywhere. And she’s got muscles in places we didn’t even know existed.

Of course, a band’s story always feeds into our analysis of their work and what it represents in the scheme of things. But listeners – and especially listeners who are paid to write reviews to inform the public – have to remember that the music always comes first, and focussing too much on an artist’s history or place within genres is a distraction which ultimately does the music a disservice.

It all comes down to the importance and impertinence of first impressions, and no first impression if more impertinent than the one lumbered on Deftones, a band that has its origin in the West Coast nu-metal scene but outgrew it so fast that it has become an utter irrelevance to the band’s recent and current work. Nevertheless, those skater-metal, baggy pants, nothing-interesting-to-say associations have consistently dogged the band since the mid-90s and their debut album Adrenaline, and I think it’s this misconception that has led to the band being seemingly abandoned by the wider music press, meaning that one of the metal genre’s finest (and most transcendent) groups is also one of its most ignored.

So why should you pay attention? Well, because Deftones is an all-too-rare example of a band with brains as well as the all-important pair of hairy, pendulous balls. Metal is a genre heaving with testicles, but coherent thought is too often left behind in the frenzied thrust. Over the course of five albums, Deftones have displayed an almost perfect evolutionary arc from the raw aggression of Adrenaline through to the meditative waves of distortion heard on Saturday Night Wrist, a sound that has a lot more in common with My Bloody Valentine and M83 than Metallica.

Deftones are great because within their discography, you’ll find a diversity of emotion that’s sorely lacking from the repertoires of even the mightiest metal colossi. Looking for unbridled rage? Check out the (Grammy Award winning!)crushing sonic and lyrical assault of Elite. Or, for a warm audio bath, try the meandering euphoria of Cherry Waves or the yielding Minerva. Hexagram is loud and direct, but evokes the shared joy of a roaring crowd with a shared purpose.

Special attention should also be paid to Chino Moreno’s vocals, which are miraculous in their diversity and startling in their delivery. Moreno’s throat is as much an instrument as Steph Carpenter’s guitar, servicing the drugged-out lyricism either through angelic melody or freakish caterwaul. I’d also be remiss not to praise, while I’m in full indulgent swing, the counter-intuitive genius of Abe Cunningham’s drumming, which eschews the brutal bombast of typical metal rhythm sections in favour of subtler, rattling patterns that give the band’s expansive guitar sounds room to breathe.

It was announced just at the tail end of last year that Deftones’ as-yet-untitled sixth album will be released on April 27 (at least in the States). This comes after a tumultuous couple of years for the band following a near-fatal car crash that left bassist Chi Cheng in a coma from which he has still not fully recovered, and the tossing away of virtually a whole album’s worth of material (called Eros) as it was deemed unreflective of Deftones circa 2010 (the band are still planning on releasing it at some point). The band have brought on ex-Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega as a full-time replacement for Cheng as he attempts to recover from his injuries.

So here’s to Chi Cheng’s speedy recovery and album number six; hopefully it’ll be as defiantly uncompromising as all their other releases, and hopefully someone will listen to it.

IMPECCABLE - Cinematic careers that can't be pecked

The perfect career. The unachievable dream; the sirens calling from the rocky shoreline. The law of averages seems to suggest a 100 per cent hit-rate can’t be done. Even cinema’s mecha-titans have movies that weigh heavy on their conscience – Spielberg has that Crystal Skull nonsense; Raimi probably still wakes up at night weeping over turning Spiderman 3 into a musical comedy, and studio bullying meant that David Fincher’s Alien³ left us wondering what might have been, and why they had to put the 3 all the way up there.

Of course it can’t be done. But it’s a quixotic exercise in futility that is inherently noble. So here’s a list of some of the very select group who have made a great start or gotten pretty damn close, which usually means they’re too early in their career to have been tempted into shovelling crap for the Hollywood dollar or they’re too young to have died inside and stopped caring. In any case, a clean(ish) score card is a rare and impressive feat; long may their winning streaks continue.

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

When a director is five features into their career, they’ve usually produced enough material to have revealed the strengths and weaknesses that they’ll be trying to harness or minimise throughout their career. Well, after writing and directing five uniformly excellent films, Paul Thomas Anderson’s weaknesses are nowhere to be found. His unflinching style is distinctive but is always restrained enough to serve the narrative. He shares Todd Solondz’s fascination with the inner workings of desperate characters but with less of the soul-destroying pessimism. He’s a prodigious talent when it comes to both marshalling huge ensembles (Magnolia) and directing towering central performances (There Will Be Blood). With each consecutive film, Anderson has grown from an indie upstart to a bold, fully-formed auteur. It’s clear that the man always had vision, but he’s also got the craft to back up his art. Of the American indie outsiders who came to dominate the American arthouse scene in the 90s (Tarantino, David O Russell, Bryan Singer etc), Paul Thomas Anderson is at the front of the pack, a spot he shares with very few.

Impeccable-est moment: The dry heat and simmering misanthropy of There Will Be Blood marks the culmination of PTA’s advancing skill. Running a close second is the homage to a real TV ad fail that he made with Philip Seymour Hoffman for Punch-Drunk Love – here’s the original and here’s PTA’s version.

SOFIA COPPOLA

Sure, no one likes to admit that daddy’s little dynastic princess is any good, and yes, she kind of ruined The Godfather Part III (with a lot of help from dad). But when it comes to writing and directing her own features, Coppola is beyond reproach. The Virgin Suicides is one of the most startlingly assured debuts of the last twenty years, smothered in mystery, tragedy, and half-recalled adolescent memories. From there, Coppola has marked herself as an unparalleled aesthete, moving effortlessly from the Lost In Translation’s Tokyo nightscape to the gilded splendour of Versailles as seen in the much-misunderestimated Marie Antoinette. But that’s not to say she’s an empty painter of pretty pictures – far from it. She’s an absolutely masterful writer and director of women, allowing, as so few Hollywood films do, female characters to be alluring yet damaged; confused and alone; brave but soulless. In short, she writes women as they should be written, but so rarely are. 2010 will see Coppola return with Somewhere, in which we’ll see if her intuition for female leads also applies to men, as Stephen Dorff plays an excessive Hollywood waster holed up at the Chateau Marmont hotel who is forced to make adjustments after the arrival of his 11 year-old daughter. Apparently, Jackass’ Chris Pontius will co-star, which makes me excited and terrified at the same time.

Impeccable-est moment: Lost In Translation is seductive from peachy prologue to enigmatic end. Never has a film about emptiness and nothing been so consistently engaging.

JUDD APATOW

Judd Apatow is a pie-fingerer. No doubt about it; you heard it here first. After the breakout success of his debut feature The 40 Year-Old Virgin, the writer/director/producer has spread himself thinner than a lonely guff wafting around the Grand Canyon. The result? While he’s produced some excellent comedies in the last few years (Superbad, Pineapple Express), he’s also lent his name to some unbelievable cinematic excretions (Fun with Dick and Jane, Walk Hard). So why’s he on this impeccable careers list? Well, because when he gets fully involved in a project as writer and director, that’s about as solid a stamp of quality as you can get. The 40 Year-Old Virgin is arguably the very best in the zany improvised high concept comedy subgenre (yes, even better than Anchorman); Knocked Up kept the funnies coming but with an added injection of emotional subtext and grounding in reality. Funny People marks a real step forward for Apatow, pushing the drama component to his dramedy cocktail even further and eschewing the nigh-inevitable neat happy ending in favour of a genuinely insightful look at the desperation and emotional neediness that swirls around the stand-up comedy circuit. Just as Sofia Coppola is an expert writer of women, Apatow’s strength lies in depicting various shades of boys, men and man-boys struggling to interact with the world in a meaningful way. It’ll be interesting to see what direction he takes for his first movie of the next decade, but one thing’s for sure – if he puts his heart into it, I’ll watch it.

Impeccable-est moment: If I don’t mention Undeclared and Freaks & Geeks I’ll lose all credibility as a card-carrying internet opinionista, but truthfully, Apatow’s finest moment came when harnessing collective comedy experiences and in-depth knowledge of fame and its effects to help craft Adam Sandler’s self-referential, career-defying turn as sad, aging funnyman George Simmons in Funny People.

WES ANDERSON

When two films as good as The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited are described as your period of creative malaise, you know you’re in a good place. You’re in a good place because the products of your “creative malaise” are better than 99 per cent of other movies, and all your critics are just jealous of your stupendous talent. Seriously though, Wes Anderson movies leave themselves open to cynicism because they are defined by the stately visual style and dialogue affectations that have always been hallmarks of his work. But Anderson’s movies are such a rarity in an industry that has always preferred to overstatement over subtext that each feature, even those that might be remembered as minor additions to his body of work, feels refreshing and unusual. And while his style might seem to take precedent over traditional narrative, Anderson’s characters are always complex, sympathetic and engaging. Especially when they have daddy issues, which 84 per cent of them do.

Impeccable-est moment: Fantastic Mr. Fox was so charming it almost burst my ventricles, but I’m going to be predictable and pick The Royal Tenenbaums as the most elegant implementation of everything that makes Anderson great: music, casting, dialogue and camera dynamism all combine to create one big swirling vortex of daddy issues. Who raised this guy, the devil?

TERENCE MALICK

You’re probably going to read a lot of gushing superlatives concerning Terence Malick on this blog, so I’ll try to keep it short. With four films in nearly as many decades, Malick takes his time. It shows. He was a Harvard and Oxford-educated philosophy professor before moving into film, and his movies toss away traditional narrative and focus on delivering mood and unspoken thought through staggeringly beautiful images and painstakingly considered performance. His films are the perfect example of what movies can accomplish that no other medium can. His next film, The Tree Of Life, may well see release this year, which would mean two Malick films in the space of five years. Truly, we live in an age of wonders.

Impeccable-est moment: It’s too soul-destroying to pick between his four features (Badlands, Days Of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World), so let’s zoom in. Never has the horror and unnatural violation of industrialised warfare been better dramatised than in The Thin Red Line’s haunting cutaways – a dead Japanese soldier’s staring face, half buried in mud; an injured bird writhing in the oily sand. Compare the war scenes with the movie’s unforgettable opening montage of a Melanesian tribe’s idyllic existence and you get a pretty clear picture of Malick’s opinion on mankind and its natural place in the world.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Shane Meadows, Andrea Arnold, Mel Gibson, Nick Broomfield, David Simon, Paul Greengrass, Edgar Wright, Spike Jonze, Park Chan-wook, Stanley Kubrick, Hayao Miyazaki, Pedro Almodovar, Brad Bird, John Hughes, Akira Kurosawa, Rian Johnson

FLASH FLOOD: Every Day The Same Dream

Adding to the massive list of supposedly regular features that is rapidly building an intimidating backlog in my bewildered mind, I'll be trying to give a weekly update on the free browser-based games that deserve to steal some of your precious minutes and speed your gentle boat ride to the grave.

I'm starting off with a weird one. Every Day The Same Dream replays the same depressing day of an office drone seeking escape from his humdrum, monochrome existence. Admittedly, we need another satire on wage slavery and white-collar depression about as much as we need Lindsay Lohan back on our screens (Lohan in India, anyone?), but a worker looking for control in a ruthlessly controlled environment has interesting connections with players exploring a game world. Also, the music is bang-on, creating an industrialised, lyrical atmosphere.

Give it a few minutes, and don't give up. You'd be forgiven for assuming that it was simply an endless, infinite loop commenting on the drudgery of the rat race, but there is an ending. Listen to the old lady in the lift and you'll find it. I just can't guarantee it'll be a happy one.

PLAY IT: HERE!

SOURCE: I found this, like a lot of other Flash games, at 1UP's excellent free game blog, Freeloader.

Scrawls from around the web

I've put a couple of pieces online, conveniently located at a couple of choice word emporiums.

Have a gander at my review of the mostly very good new album by OK Go at BBC Music - click here

Or scoff at my thoughts on 3-D and all that guff in Issue #27 of the Geekazoid! blog, located at London-ers.com - click here

MASS EFFECT 2: JUST THE FACTS, JACK

In Europe, January 29 is the day Mass Effect 2 steals our lives and forces us to quit our jobs, divorce our spouses and start having sex with our Xbox disc trays. All signs so far point to exciting improvements across the board and a solid evolution of the BioWare formula. In order to purge myself of the hysteria that overtakes my brain and crotch every time I think about the game, I’ve decided the best course of action is to compile all the known facts about ME2’s new features (minus the spoilery story reveals) so that the two-week wait feels just a little more bearable. So I present to you everything I know about the upcoming RPG, henceforth to be referred to as Mass Effect 2: Massive Erection.

Just to get you started, here's a link to the game's ludicrously awesome cinematic trailer.

THE STORY

Some sites have posted articles giving away specific plot details from the opening minutes of the game, which are apparently explosive and far-reaching. I’ve studiously avoided such articles, wanting to actually play the game myself rather than experience it vicariously through the words of a lucky games writer.

I must limit myself, therefore, to the basic premise of the game, such as might be printed on the back of the box. So, while Commander Shepard and crew have saved the known galaxy from annihilation at the hands of genocidal space-squid flesh harvesters the Reapers, two years have passed, and there’s a new game afoot. Entire human colonies are quietly being abducted by a mysterious force of insectoid freakbags called the Collectors, and Shepard must recruit a new team from the darkest corners of space in order to get to the bottom of things. He/she must also collaborate with Cerberus, a shady pro-human organisation headed up by the Illusive Man (voiced by Martin Sheen, which makes me damp with excitement), in order to get shit done. BioWare is pushing the idea of Shepard’s quest being somewhat of a suicide mission, with the main portion of the game being preparing the Commander and his squad for a final showdown with a very real possibility of permanent death, so expect darker themes and the constant spectre of your own mortality this time around.

LINKS TO MASS EFFECT 1

Players can transfer any character they used in Mass Effect 1 to the new game, although you’re still free to change appearance and class before you start ME2. But then what’s the point, right? Shepard’s class will be reset to level one, presumably so BioWare can implement all the class changes they have planned.

Similarly, any major plot decisions made in the first game will carry over into the second. Did you kill Urdnot Wrex? If so, he ain’t coming back, Jack. Did you save Kaidan or Ashley? I hope you saved Ashley, otherwise you’ll have to put up with more of the blandest character in sci-fi history. I’m particularly excited about whether the Rachni, whose queen I saved after she promised to start a colony under the principles of peace and tolerance, will come back to rape me and my human compassion.

CHANGES TO CHARACTER CLASSES

The six classes from ME1 (Soldier, Engineer, Adept and combinations of those three) all appear to be returning for the second instalment, although all are substantially tweaked to make them more tactile and immediate. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the major upgrades:

1. Soldier: Access to all weapons; unique ‘combat mastery’ talent; access to all special ammo types; two new active skills – Concussive Shot(single shot which knocks an enemy off their feet) and Adrenaline Rush (fancy bullet time)

2. Vanguard (Soldier/Adept): Short-range specialist; great with shotgun; unique power – Biotic Rush (charge attack which propels Shepard across open ground to slam into enemies); access to some special ammo; access to most aggressive biotics

3. Engineer: Can summon combat drone to attack enemies; hack enemy AI; Five offensive tech powers including Incinerate and Cryo-freeze; Class Talent – Tech Mastery (bonuses to negotiation, tech power recharge and health)

4. Infiltrator (Soldier/Engineer): Tactical Cloak stealth power; Operative power(slows time and increases weapon damage – great for lining up sniper rifle headshots); can hack enemy AI; Incinerate power

5. Sentinel (Engineer/Adept): Access to biotic and tech powers; Tech Armour power boosts personal shields; Class Talent – Defender (increase to negotiation, health and power recharge speed)

6. Adept: Access to all biotic powers; can now use any armour and expanded weapon skills; ability to evolve biotics once maxed-out – evolutions will affect gameplay use of biotics rather than simply upping damage

NEW CHARACTERS

In the interests of keeping things fresh, BioWare have tossed out many of the companions from the original, in favour of a new gang of violent reprobates to discover and make sweet love to. Based on promotional videos I’ve watched, there’s space for ten characters to join your death squad. The emphasis seems to be on recruiting various hard nuts with nothing to lose and massive sets of steely testicles. The new characters presented are, by-and-large, more extreme personalities who will almost certainly elicit more of an emotional response from players than the first game’s wet blanket parade. Reportedly, a key part of the core gameplay is earning the loyalty and trust of your teammates to ensure as many as possible survive the final onslaught, so prepare to delve deep into their scarred psyches. To my knowledge, six of the ten characters have been revealed, five of whom are all-new. Here they are:

Subject Zero: A human female who has been subjected to scientific experiments, super-charging her biotic powers as well as warping her personality, making her fiery/mental in the Sarah Connor sense. She’s covered in tattoos representing her favourite kills, and her time spent in a cult has left her with a deficiency of hair. At some point in the game, she may slam Shepard into a wall and bone him into submission. Subject Zero's intro trailer

Samara: An Asari biotic user, Samara is a member of the Justicar, a sort of Asari armed police force, but with more murder. She clearly brooks no bullshit, seems to see matters in black and white (not in a racist way), and is definitely of the shoot now, don’t bother asking questions school of policing. From hints released so far, it seems she’ll be tough to recruit, but fiercely loyal once she does enter the fold. Samara's intro trailer

Grunt: A Krogan who just likes to fight, just like the Krogan from the first game. Prediction: he’ll be the dullest character, but you’ll want him around as a bullet sponge. The clue's in the name, really. Grunt's intro trailer

Miranda: A human female, probably a Sentinel class, Miranda joins your squad through Cerberus and the Illusive Man, so her loyalty will clearly be called into question at some point. Seems ruthless and driven. Definitely a potential candidate for the ‘Ultimate Betrayer 2009’ award. Miranda's intro trailer

Thane: Clearly the coolest character revealed so far, Thane is of the Drell race (think Hellboy’s Abe Sapien). He’s described as a ‘warrior monk’, but is clearly the badass assassin of the group. Apparently he used to take contracts for pay, but now chooses targets based on his own moral and philosophical compass. So he’s a serial killer, basically. Thane's intro trailer

Tali: Mild-mannered Quarian Tali is back from the first game, hopefully with a personality upgrade. Since ME1, she has rejoined the Migrant Fleet and is now a respected member of Quarian society. Her rejoining Shepard’s squad seems to be linked somehow into the player’s early discovery of the Collectors and their schemes. She may end up being more of an exposition vendor than a character, but we’ll see. Tali's intro trailer

NOTE: Some videos show Shepard teaming up with Garrus, the Turian from ME1, but whether Garrus will be permanently available as a squadmate is unconfirmed.

OTHER FEATURES & IMPROVEMENTS

· Mass Effect 2 takes up a lot of disc space, so will be spread over two discs. We’ve been promised that there will be no constant disc-swapping, as the disc change will happen at one single predetermined point in the game.

· One of the strongest complaints about the first Mass Effect was the repetitive exploration sections, filled with empty planets and unsatisfying driving sections. Well, steps have been taken to fix these problems. Players will now be more actively involved in planetary exploration, with planet scanning transformed from a button press into a minigame, and BioWare promise a host of diverse, beautiful and engaging galactic locales. And that Mako shit-can has apparently been scrapped in favour of a vehicle that actually drives like it has real wheels. One can only hope.

· Watch any of the promotional gameplay videos and it should be instantly obvious that ME2’s graphics represent a serious upgrade from the original game. Reports indicate that frame rate remains silky smooth throughout, and texture pop-in has been eliminated. So expect much more fluid combat, with the shooting sections of the game much more comparable to dedicated third-person action experiences like Gears Of War. As an example, in the first game Shepard had 2 animations when moving into cover – in ME2 there are over 200 cover animations. Boom, I just blew your mind.

· The conversation system worked well in Mass Effect, but it shared the somewhat stiff camera perspectives with other story-driven RPGs (Fallout 3, Oblivion). BioWare have drawn attention to ME2’s more dynamic camera angles during key conversations, but it remains to be seen if this only applies to a select few scenes.

· The voice cast is pretty incredible. I’ve already mentioned Martin Sheen, but the game also features the voices of such sci-fi luminaries as Carrie-Ann Moss (The Matrix, duh), Tricia Helfer and Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica), Adam Baldwin (Firefly and Serenity) and Michael Dorn (Star Trek: TNG). Seth Green and Keith David also reprise their roles as Joker and Admiral Anderson respectively.

· Mass Effect’s score was a vital key to the game’s space opera atmosphere, so it’s good news that BioWare have re-teamed with original composer Jack Wall.

· Finally, BioWare have heroically responded to players’ understandable frustration with the bewildering lack of fish tanks in the original game. Shepard’s personal quarters now come with an enormous fish tank which can be populated with various aquatic life-forms as they are collected throughout the game. An angling minigame remains infuriatingly unconfirmed.

And there you have it; the sum of my knowledge on Mass Effect 2: Massive Erection. The sickening irony of it all is that my 360 recently died (for the second time) and it’s unlikely that Microsoft will have been returned it to me by the end of the month, so I’ll probably have to make do with crying and staring intensely at the box art for a week or so before I get to start my own intergalactic fish collection. Damn you, universe!

PO-FACED ESSAYS #1: Cinema and gaming - a bridge too far?

Sometimes I disgust myself. Mainly when I say or write anything remotely serious. Nevertheless, I occasionally feel the need to make a point without reverting to dick jokes as a pathetic safety blanket. With this in mind, whenever I feel the urge to actually think about a topic on anything but the shallowest level (note that my interpretation of deep thinking mostly involves looking stuff up on Wikipedia), I've decided to plonk it into a series called Po-Faced Essays, thus discrediting and mocking myself before I begin and eliminating the need to commit ritual seppuku (looked that up on Wikipedia) just after posting. Enjoy! Or don't, whatever. I don't even know you, man.

CINEMA & GAMING - A BRIDGE TOO FAR?

The relationship between the games industry and Hollywood has been marching resolutely onwards ever since developers have been able to immerse players in lifelike virtual realities. Movie studios have attempted to translate Ms Croft’s elegant leaps, Resident Evil’s creeping menace and Prince of Persia’s time-bending dramatics – to name but a few – into coherent blockbuster narratives. For their part, developers have for years been pilfering from cinema’s mise en scène to add meaning and structure to the rattle of gunfire.

But is it a relationship that exploits the innate strengths of two forms of entertainment which speak to users in fundamentally different ways? Although film and games share the ultimate goal of immersion, the methods employed to achieve this end share little common ground. A cinematic protagonist is predominantly created to be a relatable presence, whereas gamers are usually expected to inhabit and breathe life into a blank husk. In the words of id’s John Carmack, whose masterpiece Doom was adapted into a woeful movie in 2005, “there was never a name for the Doom marine because it’s supposed to be YOU.” This credo has served as a template for the likes of the Half-Life and Halo franchises, in which protagonists are intentionally underdeveloped in order to give players a sense of authorship.

Of course, this isn’t an option in film, where scenes follow a prescribed route and audiences demand that characters stand up to the scrutiny of an outside observer. Thus, movie characters based on in-game avatars inevitably suffer from an emptiness that is actively encouraged in most game experiences.
Similarly, the terrible track record of games released as licensed movie tie-ins can partly be explained by developers being lumbered with having to replicate (or pay homage to) cinematic set-pieces, leaving them little time to craft an experience that exploits the choice and active participation that’s exclusive to interactive entertainment.

The cut-scene is another obvious bugbear that has been criticised by many (including game nut Steven Spielberg) for being a technique artlessly shoehorned into games as an easy method of delivering exposition, which compromise immersion to indulge developers’ unattained cinematic ambitions. Metal Gear Solid 4’s hours of cut-scenes may have been gold dust to the franchise’s diehard fan base, but many objective observers noted the frustration of being unceremoniously yanked from the masterful gameplay to sit through another 20 minutes of dialogue. In an interactive medium, having to choose between not experiencing the story in its entirety and spending a large proportion of the game passively observing it unfold seems like an unacceptable dilemma.

This is far from an argument to sideline story in favour of pure gameplay; it's an argument for the games industry to make more effort to incorporate narrative into gameplay. As the game industry and the customer base that it services matures, story-based games are able to convey atmosphere and push events forward without wresting the controller from players’ hands. The disturbing history of Bioshock’s Rapture is all the more memorable because players have heard it relayed to them through crackling cassette recordings, seen it daubed ominously on the walls, and lived through the bloody aftermath. Bioware’s Mass Effect is dotted with dense reams of dialogue, but keeps players immersed by giving them an intimate control of the way the conversations – and the story – play out.

Do cinema and games have anything to teach each other? Of course. Developers who are deft enough can use great movies as yardsticks for tone and structure, but must beware that gameplay and story are properly integrated into a cogent and playable whole. Developer Naughty Dog recently displayed such lightness of touch with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which blended brief cut-scenes and scripted moments with the spectacular core gameplay with astonishing seamlessness. It must be noted, however that it was most effective when revealing incidental detail and backstory within the gameplay, as evidenced by conversations with Chloe or Elena during the game’s quiet exploratory moments. The key for Naughty Dog was in evoking the spirit of classic adventure movies without forgetting that creating a satisfying game features its own unique set of criteria for success.

Just as Hollywood’s habitual raiding of game licenses speaks of an industry bereft of ideas, game developers’ persistent use of distinctly cinematic convention suggests a medium lacking in confidence in its own abilities. Although the relationship between film and games may have borne some fruit, it’s hard to escape the feeling that an exciting dalliance may have become an unhealthy obsession that brings out the worst in both parties. The key to a sustainable and rewarding friendship between the two forms might just be to loosen the reins and take a look around. Maybe even see other people.