Some blogs never die

Alright, my dear non-existent readers, it's been a while. You see, on the one hand, I've been busy, and on the other hand, I just didn't want to say a thing. Well, today I decided that there are certain words I should wright on subjects that've been taking my attention for the last months. Maybe, I will find time to make a full entries on some of them, however, now I will just quickly throw at you some headlines and give some thoughts.

First of all, Avengers came out in April, and I must confess, but I just couldn't get nor first, neither second film. Somehow, movies so big couldn't present something very memorable, or give the atmosphere. Just a bunch of guys kicking asses of bunch of aliens/robots/insert correct answer. Yet I don't give my hopes on Ant-man (In ghettos it will be released as "Ain't-man"), as more stand-alone Marvel products such as Guardians of the Galaxy or Daredevil tend to be artistic success.

As we are on the subject of Netflix's Marvel's Stan Lee's own Daredevil™ all rights reserved (more jokes here), maybe it is not the best thing you've ever seen, but it really shows progress in terms of portraying Russians (now half of them speaks fluent Russian!) and messing up love lines. However, the thing is very decent. I enjoyed watching it, but the pacing seems uneven as it is suddenly rockets in the last episode, which makes all trials and tribulations of the titular hero look somehow empty and meaningless. And the way villains were going down reminds me of a Guy Ritchie movie.

I regularly watch a number of TV shows, and I don't want or have nothing to say about most of them, except that Game of Thrones is spoiling them. Well, not directly, of course, but certain manner of (more or less) sudden death of leading characters is making it's way into more and more series. As for the Game of Thrones itself, I surprisingly find it very faded and boring in comparison to it's first two seasons. The episode eight was an example of what we (I, at least) do want to see, but the rest of the season can be described as "meh". However, it seems like the next one will shake things up a little, so not all hope is lost.

If you want an example of a good series or miniseries to pleasantly waste your precious time, never look further BBC's Original Drama section, as you might find the finest arguments proving that TV series are, in fact, a form of art. Second season of Broadchurch is good example of well done character- and story-driven narrative. Other aspects are highlighting the overall show's superiority, but that's not really the most outstanding thing I've encountered for the past months and, possibly, my most favorite experience for the whole year in terms of television. That is "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel", a miniseries adaptation of Susanna Clark's book of the same name. To describe my satisfaction I just say that the only it's flaw is it's shortness, as I can't stop craving for more.

"What, you don't do anything but sit on your ass and watch some series and movies?", you might ask. Well, of course not. I also sit on my ass and play videogames on my PC! The news from this sphere are not so exciting, but some things have to be said. For example, me and my friend almost finished playing Divinity: Original Sin. We started about half a year ago, but we played 70 hours or so, and we didn't touch it for a couple of months, but, you know, it's good to be playing TBS RPG in COOP.

Payday 2 is releasing a heist every two months, and they don't seem to be stopping or releasing Payday 3 anytime soon. So now I sometimes stream some ridiculous attempts to do stealth with randoms on my twitch channel. Why I'm mentioning this? Well, not because I'm promoting myself (duh). GTA V was released on PC! You've waited for so long, and it was nice to play campaign again, but if you want to play online, you've got to wait some more. Much more. And heists... Let's say, "Payday" made heists look better and more interesting. Well, not Golden Grin Casino, but others.

At first, I was really cautious about Witcher 3. Now, in short, I have more than 55 hours played and I'm waiting for DLCs to play again with attention to every sidequest, not the main story solely.

Batman: Arkham Knight also was released. On my low-end PC it ran pretty fine, so I could enjoy playing it. I threw in jail everyone, except damn Riddler, but then they broke broken PC version even further and I started experiencing crash after crash. Yet, I really got much to say about it and I don't want to spoil my own pleasure.

Finally, music. I guess I never talked much about music in this blog. But what is there really to say? Well, Muse issued new album, very fine one, reminds me much about Black Holes and Revelations. They came in Russia during tour to present it on the Park Live festival. Glorious concert it was, but I was really surprised by another band called Triggerfinger. Go listen their tracks now, they are very good.

Game view - Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - 10 hours of Ultra-Violence

In the world where the word "Cinematic" has become a defining quality of games, it always good to see games with accent on gameplay, atmosphere and certain style. That's why I so fond of small game studios and publisher - unlike the big names, they're providing products made with love and without crap like "Next-gen visual OMFG look at those graphics so realistic we are just dropping every other aspect altogether". It is especially pleasing to find something with old school values - so was the first Hotline Miami with pixel visuals, quick reaction tempo and perfect soundtrack to get into the killing mood. Despite lacking the plot as it is, with pieces of story here and there, the gory game is totally worth playing and even replaying, as the way to pass the level varies in dependence of the mask you are choosing. Long story short, 10/10, oh my.

But what about the second one? Actually, changes are huge, so let's get into it step by step.

This time, we have quite a number of protagonists. And, yes, now there's a plot! A lot of dialogues! Though we're lucking masks this time, now variety is provided by individual perks of each character. There's even one who allows you NOT to kill enemies to pass the level, although you're still have to knock them out. On the other hand, it really narrows a list of strategies to use. And though plot is seemingly moves in some direction, it doesn't lead to any certain ending. Some storylines are cut in the middle, some look very unnecessary. The plot is mostly the set of stories, and we almost never see them cross or merge with each other. Game feels short and unfinished

Soundtrack, very important part of the first game, now became much bigger (49 tracks!). The music is faster, the melodies have progressions, so these a not just 2-3 parts cycling during 3 min. However, they don't give the mood now, and they're not so memorable. I can't remember a single tune already, however it's been only a few hours since I finished playing, meanwhile the tracks from the first game are in my memory for good.

I should mention level design as well. There are a lot of open spaces now, and I mean A LOT. With little places to hide. Though it increases difficulty, I consider this move cheap and don't like it, as it really leads to exploiting covers and AI.

However, all the main things are still there: hundreds of corpses, blood all over the place, quick and reflexive gameplay. Increased number of weapon (including machinegun, sniper rifle and flamethrower), unique perks like shooting from two hands or even playing as two character at once provide a rare opportunity to unleash an inner animal and get drown into pure digital violence. 8/10, go play it.

All the fallen TV series

What a cruel world we are living in. Everyone is so desperate to get on top, many of others are falling down into the oblivion. It is Darwinism, as you can call it, but how does the brightest and best are appearing between unsuccessful ones? Why so many awesome TV shows are getting canceled, while some truly despicable are still running?

Oh, Firefly! I guess only the laziest haven't praised your episodes and mourned your short life, so I better move on, cause I don't really have much to add.

Oh, The Cape! In dark times before superheroes were mainstream you gave us what Arrow and Flash are giving us now - entertainment! Original, fresh and underestimated, the world wasn't ready for your spectacular story and great cast, and the voices of geeks was not loud enough to keep your on the air. Rest in peace, you magnificent TV comic book we didn't deserve.

Oh, Flashforward! You've been called overcomplicated and silly and not intresting, but you are none of it. All the intersected plot lines and the general Sci-Fi component was promising. You were the son of Lost, but bigger and more philosophical with the promise of the adequate finale at one point in the future. Such a shame it was to see your fall from the cliff you were hanging from, taking all the answers along with you. May you rest in peace.

Oh, Almost Human! So young and so promising, you were another sci-fi show, this time shining on us with an Asimov light. Laying ground for a very huge story, introducing such a marvelous ideas, you yet couldn't convince the world and the producers to keep you running. Such a sad, sad story of another geek joy descend. I will miss your body-cop-robot jokes and futuristic atmosphere with a hint of reflecting of modern moral and problems. Rest in peace.

Movie view - "Gone girl": be gone and stay gone!

Best movie of the year, they said. You will like it, they said. It's a mind FCK, they said, but eventually you'll understand how it is great, they said.

Well, no. Bullshit. "Gone girl" is not a good movie, it's not better than "Interstellar" and it's way worse than "Guardians of the Galaxy".

Maybe, the main problem is wrong format - it appears, that creators (and Fincher himself) wanted it to be a TV mini serial, but none of the cable networks bought it. Well, it's their loss, they should've, it would be a great one. Instead we got pretty boring film with speed up here and their, and it feels raw and unfinished.

Maybe, it's shallowness of some characters. The detective lady is interesting, but is underdeveloped and not presented much. She expresses certain doubt about events, but her mood swing in the middle can be explained only by her periods. All this could be solved by making a mini serial, as I said. Ben Affleck's wife, although is presented as cold hearted bitch and ingenious criminal mastermind, makes the stupidest choices and mistakes (it's about time to be emotional while playing golf after escaping from abusive husband and being unemotional through the movie!)

The plot itself if not very satisfying and looks strange at places, despite general quality of main idea. For example, the damn lawyer came and said: "We go to the police and telling them about barn and your mistress (stupid word for lover in affair)",  and a couple days later BAM! it hits them in their own backs and the lawyer looks surprised. Well why is that, you dumb fuck? You didn't expect this? Well, you predicted it earlier, didn't you? This crap is not why you are being payed $100k! Shit, this movie enrages me!

And you know, the worst point of all this madness is the ending. Yes, we all know that the bitch is crazy and you should keep as far from her as possible and her place is in jail, but no. She won, outsmarted everyone. You can cry about it under the table and deal with it. So much bullshit, I can't even express this.

Haven't been so outraged about good idea performed bad since I watched "In time", but at least nobody praises the latter.

Well, I can't deny brilliant soundtrack and good visuals. Main idea is also magnificent. Too bad it so poorly performed.

At least I know why Affleck looks so miserable on this picture from "Batman vs Superman". I hope it won't suck that much!

Game view - WoW: Warlords of Draenor

You can call me the child of Cataclysm, as I started playing World of Warcraft at spring of 2011, soon after add-on was released. Though I was skeptical before, the game grew on me very fast. I liked the atmosphere, the quests (especially reworked ones for low level; story line in the Silverpine Forest still is my favorite). The stories were immersive, the graphic was pretty and instances were interesting and challenging. Overall, game was good despite all the whine and outdated Burning Crusade peace of content. At first my attempts in raiding in 4.0-4.1 weren't very successful, but everything changed in 4.2 when we started killing hardmodes and I was a proud raidleader. Unfortunately, thing didn't go as planned, and Dragon Soul wasn't closed totally in HM, and I had to make a break until Mists of Pandaria, which didn't work for me. However, Siege of Orgrimmar is a decent conclusion for add-on.

A couple of weeks ago me and my friend found out that Warlords are released, and decided to come back into the game after more than a year. We successfully gained the high level, visited instances, and now I'm ready to express my opinion on it.

Sound and vision

I didn't dig Pandaria mostly because of how it looked and how it sounded. All this curves, patterns and other Asian forms are really over complicated, my brain got tired of seeing all this very quickly. Locations was very bland and unsatisfying, I had no desire to explore them in search of beautiful views. The only exception here is the Kun-Lai Summit, somehow giving this sense of wonder and discovery with its magnificent mountains. I'm not that much against eastern music, but it started to annoy me at some point. And don't let me hear again those monkeys screams, just don't.

Luckily, level designers managed to do their job properly this time. The landscapes are so amazing, you will try to climb higher just to admire what you see around. The models of NPCs and buildings are pretty, armor is fitting. The only location that looks bland is, contrary to the Pands, is snowy one, but it compensated with beautiful music you will hear that. Wonderful. Also, there are much more cutscenes of cinematographic quality thought the quests, and even some starring you and your party in instance, making events more intense. I have to add a complaint about to much voice overs in the starting part of content, but closer to the 100 level it almost gone. Don't like when people doing so much reading for me.

I must mention here, that Blizzard made a huge peace of work before releasing the new add-on. It is really impressive what they managed to achieve with engine that more than 10 years old. The game looks very decent for nowadays, with it's own unique style. And renewed character models are looking marvelous, keeping the spirit of the old one I spent so much time with, and this warms my heart.

Quests and leveling

I guess, it was fun. But nothing really special here and there, and I didn't feel enough development in characters we meet. Firstly, there was story with Duratan and his brother, we see them as two orcs with different views on their tribe and how to rule it, but it doesn't go anywhere. Then we meet Laughing Skull orcs, and we hear nothing about them after that and so on. Such legendary characters like Garrosh, Ner'zuhl, Thrall and Garona presented very poorley, if even presented. My favorite boss from Cataclysm, Cho'gall, is just another NPC to kill. Pathetic job here. All joy of meeting familiar faces and places is totally destroyed.

Important feature presented is Garrison, and it has a lot of flaws. My main issue is that it finally kills almost dead interaction between players. There could be no one but you on the server and you wouldn't tell the difference cause everyone is sitting in his garrison! Here he can gain all needed resources, find a party and create needed equipment with zero interaction with other people. It even allows you to have an NPC as a follower in the world, so you can do everything you need, including daily quest, solo. It should've been at least a guild place, to create the feeling of unity. It would've made sense for all this useless monuments they offer you to have: to remind you and your friends and newly members about how great you are. But what we have now is just BLLSHT!

Gameplay and instances

The most important part in my opinion. I can't say that gameplay changed much, but it was simplified. A lot of features either has been erased or became passive. But I still find it very intuitive and the thing which is simple to learn but hard to master. Dungeons are much closer to cataclysmic, but still not that hard (I will never forget the need to tell the tactic on every boss in Grim Batol, while in Warlords everything can be killed without breaking much sweat). But designs are good, there's much variety of instances, every one is unique. Grimrail Depot is my favorite so far, and I would gladly see something like this in the future. However, I'm yet to see raids, and I'm looking for it with excitement.

I won't give any mark to the add-on, because I don't want to. At the moment my opinion is positive, but I can't be sure that I will enjoy it for any long time and even pay for another month. I more willing to try Overwatch, that's for sure.

Movie view - Interstellar (or Interholar?)

I'll just put it up front - 8/10. Not the Inception, not the Kubrick, but it's still Nolan brothers and it is still great movie and you absolutely should watch it. Now let's break it down into it's positive and negative moments.

Nolan is the greatest director alive and at work. Put these words into frame and hang it above your desk or make a screensaver out of it, but don't you dare to forget it or argue with it. There's no other man who can make regular people, nerds and others piss themselves with the same movie. I know that he is not ideal, but who is? I just glad that he is good enough. He bravely opens new movie frontiers like an amateur art house artist but he do it professionally and Hollywood approves his works. His brother, Jonathan, is always supports him in every step, as well as he is the one who must be thanked for creation of Person of Interest series, so bless you both.

The film starts with Nolan's favorite flash-forward scene. In this case, it's a fragment of documentary... and if you saw at least one trailer, you momentarily know how film will ends. Yeah, like starving people in the future have time, reason and possibility to make a documentary of how humanity have been extincting for all these years. It's kinda minors a tension, you know. As a matter of fact, the whole first part of a movie is a little off for me. There are quite dull dialogs, like the one McConaighey has with his father-in-law on the porch, as they don't even seem to be talking about the same thing, there are just epic speeches by both of them. It's more of monologs. Some of scenes are just comedic, and the others are lacking of purpose. For example, the cornfield chase, which I remembered only after looking into the OST and finding there a track of the same name. And surprisingly, no one seem to remember it at first, as this one is so unnecessary. You can easily cut it off and lose nothing, as all ideas of it are expressed better in other scenes.

You can get really bored by the time the heroes leave Earth, but it is worth the waiting. As soon as spaceship lifts off, shit get's real. I got so immerse, I actually lost a count of time, and it really could have been 23 years and I could've perceive them as one hour. Visuals are great, science is presented interestingly, story goes in right pace, all plot turns are smartly innuended and perfectly performed later. However, some aspects still provoke certain questions. Like, what was the purpose of the beard guy? He just died on this waves planet, and they seem to neglect the fact that he was onboard in the first place. Also, mad Matt Damon character is kinda badly presented, as he doesn't seem to be this mad and irrational as he should've be to perform such actions and still he does. Also my personal complaint, as a Kerbal Space Program player, is lacking of time-space coordinates throughout this section, as we never clearly get how planets are placed respectively to each other and the black hole, as well as it never mentioned how long exactly did it take for them to move between them.

And here we go into the last part as film goes into the black hole. Though I felt like movie is acting like I'm a kindergarten kid who can't add two and two, I must say that it was very clever making and explaining of timeloop. And I can't express my nerdgasm by viewing the projection of 5-dimensional space into our regular 4-dimensions, it was just incredible. Real satisfaction. And I completely don't mind, as I find it called in the internet, the 'Doctor Who' ending, cause this film and it's heroes totally deserved one.

So, that what I think about it. As I said, movie is great, and all holywars are proving it further, as no insegnificant thing can cause it. If you are willing, I can join a "physics death battle" in the comments in case there will be one, as there are a lot to discuss in very angry manner. But make sure you saw the film first.

P.S. If you didn't get it, I called the movie 'Interholar' because they not travel from star to star but from wormHOLE to blackHOLE (HA!)

Beware the Russian: Почему я не считаю троллирование искусством

It's only the second post (discount the introduction) and I already have to use Russian instead of Engrish. I'm a big supporter of globalisation and I propose unity between all the people on this damned planet. Also I hoped to cover bigger audience, and since I'm aiming to write about not-very-popular things, it is reasonable to do it in some widely used language (which is English, if you didn't figured it yet). However, I'm Russian and living in this Magnificent Land of Eternal Greatness, Home to Glorious Putin, may his reign be at least entertaining, and I encounter some events in media, which I can discuss only in my native, as I'm mostly addressing the author and other Russian audience. And I'm too lazy to translate all this shit, so use Google or something.

Glory to the Russian Federation! Da!

Итак, сегодня в рубрике BtR (клево звучит) я буду обсуждать эту статью. Для начала, прочитайте её, не спеша, вдумчиво. После первого прочтения вы можете почувствовать ЯРОСТЬ, однако успокойте свои чувства и прочитайте её еще раз.

Я не мог обойти эту тему, потому что вопрос о том, являются ли видеоигры искусством, волновал меня довольно давно. Какого же было мое удивление, когда я обнаружил, что статья-то в общем совсем не об этом. Она скорее описывает игровое сообщество (комьюнити).

Говоря «видеоигры — это искусство», геймеры просто самоутверждаются. Для них это маркер «свой — чужой»: важно не то, чтобы видеоигры действительно стали искусством, а чтобы общество восприняло хобби геймеров всерьез.

 Ну, я даже не знаю с чего начать.

Давайте опустим тонкие моменты того, что же является искусством, а что нет. Вот вам утверждение: "Ничто не портит артиста так, как его фанаты". Я не берусь утверждать авторство и точность цитаты, но мысль вы должны были понять.  И с большой долей уверенности я утверждаю, что какой бы вид искусства вы не взяли, будь то музыка, фильмы, или картины, но вам удастся найти такую прослойку поклонников какого-то артиста (художника, режиссера), которая будет с пеной у рта и угрожая вашим жизням на грани религиозного фанатизма доказывать, что вы ОЧЕНЬ сильно заблуждаетесь. Однако, означает ли это, что такие искусства следует перестать признавать как таковые? Или надо выкинуть из этой категории только те, чьи культисты наиболее агрессивны?

Не следует забывать, что видеоигры - это относительно молодое явление. Оно полно экспериментов, полно открытий, которые были сделаны и еще предстоит сделать. Я не буду давать какую-то объективную оценку творениям Д. Кейджа (хотя, в свое время, мне понравился Fahrenheit, хотя концовочка, откровенно, так себе), но называть то, что он делает, пограничным творением? Это все еще процесс, включающий в себя взаимодействие пользователя с интерфейсом и получение результата этого взаимодействия на видеоустройстве, то есть видеоигра. Да, она с уклоном в кинематографичность, но это всего лишь очередной эксперимент.

Очень странным выглядит упоминание Wargame. При всем желании их выставить как безотвественных разработчиков, получилось скорее наоборот, что добавляет только путанницы. Достаточно всего один раз запустить игру, чтобы увидеть, что никакой политики там и в помине нет, а от Второй Мировой Войны - только боевые машины и антураж карт, на которых проходят бои. Да и сами машины и карты не несут никаких скрытых намеков, честно представляя все стороны конфликта. А бонусы к 70-летия снятия блокады - ну, а вы давно пытались выяснить у школьников конкретную дату данного события? Или вообще, знают ли они о таком событии? Тут скорее следует благодарность выписывать за просвещение.

Под конец автор заявляет следующее:

Геймеры же изо всех сил пытаются увести игры как от либерального дискурса (в видеоиграх слишком много сексизма), так и от консервативного (в видеоиграх слишком много насилия), что как раз и нивелирует их как искусство, вырывает из общего культурного контекста, в который они так долго стремились попасть.

На дворе 2014 год. И игры давно являются частью этого контекста. Даже не 10 лет, а намного больше. И обилие насилия и сексизма скорее заталкивает их в этот контекст еще сильнее. В том же кинематографе полно насилия, в музыке полно сексизма, и всегда найдутся индивидуумы, которые назовут вас кем угодно, если вы будете совать свой нос в эти вопросы. Проблема с играми еще и в том, что, в то время как феминистки и консерваторы борются против этих явлений, они не предлагают ничего взамен. Прелесть же виртуального мира и заключается в почти неограниченной вседозволенности в пределах конкретно взятой песочницы. А если вы боитесь за нежную психику маленьких детей из 7 класса, то для того и существуют возрастные рейтинги, на которые следует смотреть родителям, в конце концов, это их отвественность.

Под конец, я, пожалуй, предложу вам еще раз внимательно прочитать статью. А потом посмотреть на заголовок поста. Да, если подумать о всем выше сказанном еще раз, то автор статьи - всего лишь тролль. Он говорит о том, что игровое сообщество неадекватно реагирует на критику в свой адрес, в результате чего игровое сообщество неадекватно среагировало на критику в свой адрес. Он отказывается признавать игры искусством из-за того, что игроки бесятся от того, что игры не признают искусством. Браво, маэстро. Особенно весело это смотрится на фоне недавнего видео из "Вечернего Урганта". Почему-то чувства обиженных феминисток и консерваторов есть кому защитить, а над откровенным унижением "гиков" на собственном КомикКоне и Игромире принято смеяться. Неудивительно, что они считают, что их не воспринимают всерьез, а школьники так вообще на угрозы переходят.

Таким образом, единственный плюс всей этой статьи заключется в том, что она подняла правильную тему, хоть и неправильным образом. В заключении хочу напомнить всем вам, что объективная реальность существует в независимости от того, считаем ли мы её таковой, или нет. Ну, и не забывайте не кормить троллей.