Word from the King: In Rainbows Disc 2

What can you possibly have to say to me? Is it that this should be the part where I don my clown suit and talk about revolutionary distribution methods, the slow burn of the music industry's decidedly-poignant Ian Curtis imitation? No, I take it back. I owe EMI nothing and that's true even Still. It's just a delight, isn't it? How I seem to have shunned the suggested clown suit for a much more suitable jester's cap as the years tick by with all the passion of a Panic! cover of Karma Police?

I will not dwell needlessly on the figure-ground dynamic inherent in Ethos - my associate has both sides covered nicely in his discussion of parkour as a channel to forward violence. But rather like the peaceful assassination, the violent parkour, I find the "cover" to be smug and self-justified in the most unbecoming possible manner. Allow me to back up and use a metaphor (a dirtier word than "fuck" in some academic circles, it seems): two men wait in line to seperately seek the counsel of their King. The King is a good man, having come to seat the throne without shedding a drop of blood, yet the men are intimidated: his greatness makes them feel tragically weak, and weakness has always bred cowardice in the hearts of the King's men. The second man sees the first man's success in receiving counsel and, in his turn, approaches the King with an honest request. "Please forgive me, m'lord, but my own request has lost meaning, for my desires -- and, by proxy, my standing in your eyes -- have already been defined by my contemporary. How now can I hope to be seen as worthy at all, let alone deserving of counsel?" The King appears interested, splits some bread in half and tosses the man both halves. "Give one to the man who came before you," the King said, "and ask him as he eats it if he can be sure who defines who." Somewhere, Solomon is quaking, Yorke is smiling, et nous sommes quelques enfants comblés.

The reader of this article -- supposedly also the listener -- is seeking advice from a King. Your options, as they have been handed to me from above, are to either pay $80 or simply download the content. I am certain that the wealthy devout and the and the downloading devout can be placed into the roles of the aforementioned King's men but I do not yet profess to know to which man each is specifically analogous.

I was wrong up above, and I apologize. I am not the King, I am only a man, and I've received Yorke's bread split in two.

I hand you half and deliver my line as instructed. 9.39 (Charmed)

You Used To Be So Amused: An Assassin's Creed Review

I'm going to touch on the concept of ethos (vis a vis my current avocation) before I begin the review proper. Those in search of a numerical score and nothing else can scurry off and perform the scroll-down-dance if they please.

To establish ethos is a labyrinthine affair requiring equal parts logos, pathos, and eye of newt, but as I have no interest in masquerading as a high school English teacher, I'll say this: it's fucking difficult. In a simpler society we find those with ethos to be the proverbial best and brightest—the master architect is the ultimate judge of architecture. But as erudition and its unfortunate sister decadence introduce themselves to a society their seductive whisperings effect a new mindset: ethos belongs to those who claim they have ethos. From this maxim evolves the cesspool of criticism, in which I find myself necessarily mired. I'll refer you to Alexander Pope for a detailed explanation on the unmitigated villainy of critics—he can do it far more eloquently than I, rest assured—but suffice to say that the artist and the critic do not always see eye to eye.

And from here we can transition to the subject of this review: Ubisoft's recent action/adventure (diligent readers who can inform me of a more tragic name for a genre will be well-rewarded) Assassin's Creed. The game has had a tenuous relationship with ethos since its release, most prominently due to the fracas in which Michael “Gabriel” Krahulik fancied himself DFA to IGN's James Murphy. In perhaps the most shining example in recent memory of I know you are, but what am I?, Krahulik alleged that the process of reviewing video games is inaccurate, deceitful, and morally corrupt. Stop me if I'm wrong here, but I believe he even busted out the ol' thesaurus and dropped “pernicious” on us. Tally ho, Gabriel, there be demons afoot!

See, the primary contention here is that gaming journalists, already desperate to scrounge up whatever ethos they can, cast it all aside by shackling themselves to deadlines and playing games in a method wholly exclusive to gaming journalists. Here, Gabriel makes a highly relevant point: why the fuck should you trust us? And if “us” is taken to mean IGN, he has even more of a point. Taking Gabriel's challenge, I played the game first through the “imperceptibly corrupt” IGN method devoid of sidequests and pacing, then through the Gabriel method replete with all the distractions I could ask for. The end result was entirely as expected, culminating in what will be the first of several Beautiful Moments in this review.

Revelation the First: Fuck IGN

Assassin's Creed is a masterful execution of a concept that wavers from hackneyed to revolutionary, often within the span of a single sword stroke. Sebastien Foucan would be proud of the game's breathtaking yet largely faithful acrobatics sequences, to the extent that you could pretend the rest of the game did not exist and simply focus on them. It would be an empty sort of bliss, however, as the game's true focus—the titular assassinations—are what separate the game from Prince of Persia IV: Here, Have Some More Whistles and Bells. The assassin's art is a dangerous and often poetic one, and though Assassin's Creed's learning curve often drew the attention away from the poetry, it never buried it. Alexander Pope as well would have to admit a grudging respect for the game. Yet I say grudging—and I say it emphatically—because only half a the story has yet been told. Prepare yourself once more, noble reader.

Revelation the Second: Fuck Gabriel

To carry the rose-tinted standard into heroic battle into a faceless behemoth as Gabriel did is not only misguided and naïve, it's pernicious. Rebellion for the sake of rebellion leads us down dangerous paths, which end in our purported hero becoming some ivory hybrid of Che Guevara and Clark Gable. Assassin's Creed is a game that, much like its protagonist Altair, specializes in imperceptibly corrupt schools of deception. The much-lauded sidequests devolve into hackneyed repetition, and the artificial intelligence only keeps disbelief suspended if you're already in the mindset where all flaws can be eloquently justified. I spoke earlier of the game nobly differentiating itself from Prince of Persia, but where does confirmation bias draw the line in the sand between homage and highway robbery? Gabriel can claim that he is neither a Christ nor a philanthropist, but frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. Which brings me to my final point.

Revelation the Third: Fuck Ethos

Ironic, isn't it, that a game so conceptually steeped in ethos—parkour, my good man! The game features parkour in a central role!—is the one to bring the facade of ethos down like a house of cards? I propose, from my experiences with this game, that ethos is an invalid concept. I enjoyed it not because of the mortality play that evolved around it, not because of Sebastien Foucan and Alexander Pope, and certainly not because of the game's amusingly pretentious meta-story concerning spaceships and memories and so forth. I enjoyed it because parkour and assassinations are as viable a combination as Scott Pilgrim and alcohol (your suggestions are greatly appreciated, Kieron). Thus when I score this game, you should trust me not because I'm a reviewer but because I'm correct. This game is in all ways deserving of an 8, but I'm going to dock it a hundredth of a point because my ethos lets me do so. 7.99

In Review: Crysis

I remember when they were just tricks. "First Person Shooters" were exercises in finding high concept in vaudeville until somewhere in the dark recesses of 1995: a man sat down and saw that the box could actually be rendered. In finding a 2D map with a "height" variable was no longer the necessary form, he became enthusiastic -- perhaps too enthusiastic for the sake of his determined concept, for Quake would turn out to take function from form. It was a raw, visceral exercise in premature genre work. The player moved from box to box, whether those boxes took the form of gothic cathedrals or the sky itself became less relevant as the sense of actual motion began to sink in. Some players vomited with dizziness, others with joy. Carmack sat in his Ferrari while a smile slowly crossed his face.

Quake is not "best-in-genre" by any means, but its watermark is stamped firmly and invariably into the faces of its successors. When I bore witness to the first true vista of Crysis (necessarily reminiscent of the game's dark uncle, Far Cry), the potential sense of pure giddiness was beaten down by the realization that I was standing in a massive fucking box that someone was able to make only because his computer was more capable than Mr. Carmack's. Crysis, though, has the opportunity to be free of Quake's chains, despite being essentially an expansion pack to the Beautiful Game: I'm used to being in a box now and Crytek knows it. It's what's inside that will count.

I step into the open, consciously aware of the box. Somewhere in my head there's a derisive laugh: "Here we go again!" I shoot at some foliage out of sheer spite, as if hoping that the explicitly-encouraged behavior would somehow damage the game into changing my way of thinking. The leaves move in response to the shots: I stop, staring at their now-gentle swaying in disbelief. I walk up to the leaves, cutting through two layers of genre abstraction and attempting to touch the foliage with what I am told is my "body". Again, a response. Not the perfect response, we can never look for the perfect response, it won't come anytime soon: but it was the sort of response that makes one stop thinking about the box. Crysis, it seems, had set me up. The joke was on me for thinking I couldn't be impressed again. I slowly remove my hand from Alt-F4 position where it had hovered since the title screen. I was in this for the long run.

I have for you here my thoughts and score, but I will need to guide you back 11 years to the Beautiful Game one final time. Quake held 3-Dimensionality in its womb next to the "high concept from vaudeville" motto of Doom but the former was too monumental: it consumed its brother and was born alone. The same can be said of Crysis: its desire to transcend its constraints is lovably earnest but not without victims. Strap yourselves in, kids, you're in for an ultimately rather basic ride through a lenient professor's genre-by-the-numbers lecture. What matters is that the tools are present such that plenty of daydreaming can be done. 9.13 (Charmed)