On the bright side I've had a bit of an epiphany regarding the art of blogging. As far as I can tell no one wants to read a ten page essay on fourteen different books per month, so it's probably better to either break it down into weekly segements or whittle it down to the best of a bad bunch. Those are your two options. VOTE NOW!
Ok poll closed, I voted yea to both since it's inevitably going to be easier on your eyes and my hands. From now on: more regular updates about not so very much. Except not today, since I need to catch up on all the Decemberage that I've missed. Well, some of it.
Kicking off then, the film that's currently burned onto everyone's retinas in 3d!
I have dreams about Avatar. Sometimes they're wet dreams. Most of the time they're psychodellic trips into a universe where societies function with either utopian synchronicity or downright bastardness. No in between. No middle ground. You're either a giant azure hippie or a mechanical tyrant. It's actually a tough choice when you think about it.
What annoyed me about Avatar (and don't get me wrong, my eyes were in a constant state of orgasm the entire time) was the sheer preachiness of it all. Not just the fact that the all-consuming capitalist army tossers were consciously exploiting the pretty blue people. Not just the fact that the pretty blue people were a thinly veiled allegory for every single victim of imperialism from the days of the British Empire right up to the Iraq war with a fair few allusions to Vietnam thrown in for good measure. No I don't mind any of that: it just reconfirms my original suspicions that the real world is built around the sort of cut and dried morality you might find in a Famous Five novel. What really annoyed me... what really left me feeling disappointed... what really... what really got my goat... Ok well I don't really know what annoyed me about Avatar. It's very hard to pinpoint anything specific in a film so uncompromisingly enjoyable that a stony-faced Victorian schoolmaster would have trouble keeping a straight face. Perhaps it was the fact that all the preachiness didn't seem to be aimed at anyone in particular. While the film had all the makings of a manipultive political agenda, I'm not really sure what the agenda actually was. What does Cameron actually want from us? Should we be planting trees? Researching liberating if ultimately trippy cyberpunk technology? Halting our invasions of countries full of blue indigenese? No, he wants us to buy a pair of 3d glasses, throw them away and buy another pair. And we all know what our glasses are made from. Cheap plastic made with cheap oil made with cheap foreign labor. You hypocritte Cameron, you pointless, self-aggrandising hypocritte.
Perhaps Avatar 2 will be different. I foresee a cast of bad guys named after oil corporations travelling to Pandora (recently renamed 'Nam.2) aboard a giant floating spacecraft version of the Vatican City in an attempt to hook the locals on heroine and convince them to pursue careers in Neo-Christian porn. Just to make it all that more realistic some of the Na'vi actually go along with it, leading to moral dilemmas of an unthinkable magnitude. Does Jake Sully fight against these turncoat space-whores in an attempt to preserve his newfound way of life or does he let bygones be bygones and top himself there and then? I can picture it now, armies of zealous pterodactyl-riding junkies defending their rights to live life by their own rules while a resurrected Richard Dawkins shows up with an array of Greenpeace atheists whose annoyance towards everything and anything proves the deciding factor in .
Obviously I'm joking. Everyone knows that Dawkins doesn't need to be resurrected. He's immortal, he just doesn't want anyone to find out. Anyway, you can brand the US Army as baby-murdering imperialist pigs all you want, but criticise religion? Never.
Well Assassin's Creed 2 would appear to argue otherwise.
To cut a long story short, you have to kill the Pope. Well you're supposed to, except after brutally murdering hundreds upon hundreds of people in your quest to exact revenge upon your family's killers, your character decides to wimp out. Years of relentless bloodletting rendered moot. 'I guess killing you won't bring my family back.' Sure it's never to late for forgiveness, but Ezio takes it a bit far. It's not noble when the one person you don't mindlessly slaughter turns out to be the one person who really deserves it.
Ezio himself is a freerunning renaissance dickwad if ever there was one. In between climbing impossible buildings to find opportunities to pose, Ezio spends his time emoing it up batman style, nicking Venetian gondalas like a kid who's played too much GTA and justifying his vigilanteism by arguing that most of his victims are slightly bigger arseholes than him. Arguable Ezio. Very arguable.
Perhaps I just didn't understand what was really going on. As far as the storyline goes, it's like Dan Brown and an Italian phrasebook have gone back and time and decided to start killing people. The Templars are definitely the bad guys, I'm just not sure why. I think it's because they assassinate people. Which is also your main occupation... Maybe I should have played Assassin's Creed 1 first.
On the bright side the gameplay was quite enjoyable. As with all great games your character is effectively a regenerating jumping machine with infinite stamina and a sleepless body clock. Fall from a thousand feet and you'll end up miraculously landing in a bale of hay, but run into someone at ground level and you'll probably fall over. Just nod your head and accept it. It's fun. Except when you convince yourself that it's a good idea to collect all of something. There's 66 Viewpoints for example, tall structures to masturbate over in HD. Get one and there's a bit of text saying 'Viewpoints Synchronised 1/66.' Awesome, something to collect! Collect all 66 and... nothing happens. No gamer points. No cutscene. No nothing. I'm talking hours if not days of hopping, skipping and jumping all for the pleasant feeling of NOTHING. If you can't appreciate the severity of such a betrayal I suggest you go outside and throw your 360 (or PS3) at a slab of concrete full force. There's a bunch of diamonds inside. Honest.
Oh yeah. Spoilers above.
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