Crash Bandicoot

Crash Bandicoot

Crash Bandicoot celebrated his 20^th anniversary earlier this year. That sounds impressive at first, until you remember he hasn’t had any new games in 8 years, and has therefore spent most of his second decade in retirement. Happily, that is finally changing to commemorate the occasion, with cameo appearances in Uncharted 4 and Skylanders Imaginators (accompanied by Dr Cortex, Aku Aku and even Fake Crash in the latter), and Playstation 4 remakes of the first three games to come next year. I chose to celebrate by going back to the original to see how it holds up today.

Dr Cortex is a scientist, a mental aberration; he’s totally fixated on global domination! He aims to achieve this goal by capturing the animal populace of the archipelago of Australian islands he has taken as his base of operations, and subjecting them to rapid evolution via the Evolvo Ray to form his own private army, hence the creation of out marsupial hero. However, Crash is immediately thrown out for not being evil enough, leaving it up to him to stop Cortex’s plot and rescue his female bandicoot companion Tawna, even if she vanishes from the sequels. Talk about ungrateful! That’s the extent of the plot, which is restricted to a blurb in the manual and an easily missed cutscene that is seen by leaving the game idle on the title screen, but it’s not particularly important. More than anything, it’s an excuse to justify going through the levels, rather than anything with more depth or meaning behind it, and in that respect it does the job.

What this approach does succeed in doing is give the game a sense of going on a great quest. After escaping Cortex Castle, Crash washes up on the beach of N Sanity Island. From there, he starts working his way back to Cortex Castle, and each level represents him getting one step closer to his goal. As Crash progresses, the levels become more dangerous and artificial. The lush jungles of N Sanity Island give way to temple ruins and abandoned bridges of ancient civilisations on Wumpa Island, which are in turn replaced by Cortex’s industrialised castle and laboratory. There may not be much plot in terms of exposition or events, but there is a lot more just from the levels themselves and even the level select map. The game operates on a show, don’t tell policy and it’s quite a novel way of presenting a game’s story. This is something the sequels lost both in letting you choose from 5 levels at a time, and also in having a selection of level themes that connect to the overall game, but don’t offer a sense of progression to each other.

In each level Crash must get from one end to the other, navigating pits and hazards, and using his spin attack to break boxes and defeat enemies. Crash’s only abilities to achieve this are a jump and spin attack, which means the game can be picked up and understood instantly, and everything you need to do is intuitive. The boxes are a good inclusion, as they fill up the levels, giving you something to do while going through each level, and trying to break them all is compulsive. There are different kinds of boxes that each serve a particular purpose, and these are similarly intuitive, including regular boxes, bouncy boxes to use for extra height, TNT boxes that will kill Crash if spun into and can only be opened safely by jumping on and getting to a safe distance, and so on. As well as being satisfying to break, the layout of the boxes also provides mini puzzles throughout the levels, trying to figure out how to break them all to maximise the content payout and without dying or rendering some boxes unobtainable. The puzzles are particularly prevalent in the bonus levels, which offer prizes such as the ability to save your progress, a horde of extra lives or keys to unlock secret levels. To avoid repetition or monotony, there are occasional levels that offer alternative challenges such as boulder chases, a ride on the back of a warthog, or using masks to light up a pitch black castle.

On the other hand, there are some flaws with the game. A lot of things about this game were changed in the sequels, and most of these changes were for the better, so their absence here is missed. Crash’s newer abilities like the belly flop, slide and double jump speed up Crash’s movements and make him more agile with more movement options, so their absence here makes Crash feel more heavy and limited. Crash’s heaviness is also applied to his existing abilities, most notably in that spinning in the air sometimes carries his momentum slightly after he lands, but sometimes doesn’t. In some cases, this can result in jumping onto a small platform and spinning to break a box on there or to spin away an airborne enemy, then have the momentum carry Crash off the edge despite your attempts to counter it.

Other changes include gems being significantly harder to get in this game than the sequels. Gems are obtained by finishing a level and breaking every box. In this first game, there is the additional condition that this must be done without dying, as the boxes respawn if Crash dies. In the sequels, broken boxes stay broken after each checkpoint is reached, and the amount of boxes obtained and in the level is counted at the in the second game, and as Crash progresses in the third. In this game, Crash is instead shown at the end of a level how many boxes were missed, so there’s less of an idea how many boxes there are. The bonus levels are also oddly done, with the need to collect three tokens to access them, and these also being the only way to save your progress. The sequels made these more straightforward with just a platform to jump on and access the bonus level, and letting you save at any time.

The difficulty starts off simple enough, but it starts to get harder towards the end of the first island, and keeps increasing from there, being pretty hard by the end. There are occasional difficulty spikes in some levels, most notably Sunset Vista and Slippery Climb, which are interesting in that Sunset Vista is the longest level and one of the hardest, but it was originally going to be even longer and harder. Slippery Climb is the hardest level in the game, and there was going to be an even harder version named Stormy Ascent that was fully finished, but was cut for being too difficult. The linear progression can get you stuck particularly later on as the difficulty gets ratcheted up, and the system from the sequels lets you choose from five levels, so that if you get stuck, at least there are four other levels to choose from, and backtracking to earlier levels is easier because of the layout, whereas in this game, Crash has to backtrack all across the islands to replay a level. The bosses are significantly easier, with only the final battle against Cortex himself offering a challenge. There are two bosses in particular that have safe zones where Crash can stay without the boss hitting them until they become vulnerable, at which point Crash can hit them then go back to his safe zone.

Stormy Ascent remains accessible via hacking and it looks like we dodged a bullet. Maybe it could be a secret level or downloadable content in the remake?

I remembered this first game being significantly weaker than the sequels and not holding up very well as a result, but my memory had been playing tricks on me, as the game is a lot better than I remember it being. It is certainly not as good as the sequels, but it’s definitely still worth a go.

Graphics: 7      They hold up surprisingly well, although they’re more jagged and subdued than the sequels.

Sounds: 6         Amateur hour voice acting. Music is more in the form of background ambience than tracks you’ll be humming when not playing, though there are exceptions (Hog Wild, please stand up.)

Gameplay: 7  Intuitive pick up and play fun, if rather simple.

Lifespan: 6       The same length as usual, though you could get stuck thanks to the linear progression.

Overall: The original Crash Bandicoot is really showing its age today, and it’s definitely the weakest of the original trilogy, but despite that, it holds up better than my memories of it would suggest.   7/10

I am Death

I am Death

Well, that’s certainly ominous!

Fictional police officers can’t move for serial killers, and this particularly unpleasant fellow calls himself Death, taunting the police with messages at each of his crime scenes, being so incredibly thorough that he leaves no clues, witnesses or anything else that he doesn’t intend to leave behind, while also abducting a young boy and torturing him on the side. It’s up to detective Robert Hunter to catch this sick SOB before too many people make a one-way trip to the morgue.

This book unfortunately has several problems with it. First, Robert Hunter himself is a blank canvas, a conduit through which the plot is advanced rather than a character in his own right. The closest he comes to having a personality or character details is that he suffers from insomnia, which is a convenience as the book doesn’t have to stop for him to go to bed more than anything, and showing a caring attitude with some practical advice towards a depressed witness so they can go outside and start to fight their anxiety.

Second is the villain, the unimaginatively named Death. His character is as stock as Hunter, but at least he actually has a character. His character is to be as horrible as is humanly possible. He’s established as an irredeemable monster within the first 30 pages, (and is even referred to as such by other characters) and he only gets worse from there with his abuse of the boy he kidnapped and gruesome murder methods. The grisly detail in which the murders are described is excessive to the point that on a few occasions I started to feel nauseous and had to put the book down to get some air. It could just be me, since I am rather squeamish as far as medical matters go, which the first kill revolves around, but nevertheless, this is definitely not a book I would recommend for the faint of heart. While reading, the thought occurred to me that hopefully author Chris Carter sticks to writing about serial killers – if he ever starts to try out his ideas in real life, we’ll be in big trouble. Come to think of it, a murder mystery author becoming a real life killer using the methods from their books to kill their victims would be a pretty good idea for a story, but I digress.

Third, the book abuses end-of-chapter cliffhangers to the point of annoyance. Numerous chapters, particularly later on, end with characters saying something to the effect of “You’ll want to see this,” “I have some information for you,” or “Holy shit!” You don’t find out what prompted this response for 2 or 3 chapters, and more often than not, the result wasn’t interesting enough to leave it on a cliffhanger before resolving it. For an exaggerated idea, here’s an example:

Chapter 1: I got hungry, so I went to make lunch. There was nothing in the fridge.

Chapter 2: There was no food there because it’s Wednesday and that’s when I do the weekly shop. I reached for a pen and paper to write a shopping list. They weren’t where I left them.

Chapter 3: The pen and paper were slightly to the left of where I thought they were.

And so on. This abuse means that the cliffhangers soon lose all meaning.

Finally, there’s a big twist at the end regarding the killer’s identity and their motives which turns the whole story on its head. However, this is completely unsatisfying because there’s no foreshadowing of the twist, as it relies entirely on information that is completely unknown to the reader until the killer reveals it in an exposition dump during the climax. There isn’t even a hint as to its nature, so there’s nothing to pick up on that might end up being important later, thus denying the reader the opportunity for some speculation or prediction, which is honestly the most fun in these things. The killer is a minor character from early on, which is usually a shocker, but it doesn’t have any impact here, because said character was both completely unremarkable and not a suspect in the case. They weren’t even suspicious in the sense that they were above suspicion, therefore they must be involved somehow.

Worse, the nature of the twist means we’re asked to sympathise with the killer in the final 20 pages, after they’ve spent the previous 380 pages doing unspeakable things because they have an excuse for why they turned out the way they did. Even as the killer dies (there was no way they were taking this perp in alive), it’s a win for the killer because they die on their terms, having proven their point against the police and won their game. Just to add insult to injury, Hunter and his colleagues don’t celebrate the fact they’ve made the streets safe again, for about 12 seconds before some other nutjob with a God complex crawls out of the woodwork, instead they bemoan his passing. To this I say no! None of that! Shame on you. The killer had long crossed the line of human decency before the book had even started, you don’t get to come back from that and have their death treated as redemption while the police say “Alas poor villain.”

He is Death, but I am Jack’s growing disdain.

Hunger Games Retrospective

Hunger Games Retrospective

I meant to do this sooner, but I forgot. Never mind, though, since I’m doing it now. Recently, I used the Hunger Games simulator to generate a Hunger Game, then wrote a story based around the results. I must admit that I’m quite pleased with the results. It presented a fun challenge, and having to write around situations that I had no control over, forming a narrative through them, provided a unique writing exercise. I would recommend doing it yourself if you’re interested. I might do another one sometime in the future, and I already have rosters planned for when the time comes.

I feel that I was fortunate here in that the random generator was on my side for the most part, giving me scenarios that made it easy to have a continuous plot and character relationships, as opposed to a series of vignettes. These included:

·         President Snow being the last to die: Considering the prologue in which he became a tribute against his will at the last minute, Snow being the final tribute to die was the best possible outcome for the story. There’s something poetic about this frail old man with no particular abilities outlasting a rogue’s gallery of killers and ne’er-do-wells, all far more capable than him, only to trip at the final hurdle, to another ordinary person that he considered an ally to boot. It would have been a bit of an anti-climax for Snow to die early after being set up as one of the main protagonists at the start, so I’m lucky that didn’t happen.

·         Negating Dio’s weakness: As a vampire, Dio wouldn’t have been able to do much in the daytime scenes, and I would have had to keep coming up with ways for him to stay in shelter if he was to contribute. Fortunately, teaming up with Amanda Waller on the first day gave me an opportunity to write out that weakness via the containment suit Waller gave him, allowing Dio to play a more active role. This leads perfectly onto the next point…

·         The Suicide Squad: Amanda Waller got her own little subplot where she went on a recruitment drive for a Suicide Squad in the arena, and gathering intel on the other tributes in the process. Her control of the other tributes, disposing of them once they had outlived their usefulness, scored her the final two kills of the games, and the title of Champion. She even got to detonate a head bomb once Xigbar proved to be unsuitable for the Squad, having his own agenda.

·         Freddy VS Jason 2: I will admit, this one was a bit of a cheat. The simulator text said that Freddy, Jason, Needles Kane and the Giant Chicken formed a suicide pact. After seeing that Freddy and Jason were involved, I couldn’t just do as the text said, and the result was the big action setpiece of Part 3 that killed all four characters involved. Any of those four committing suicide would be out of character, but Freddy and Jason in particular provided the perfect opportunity for a rematch, with the other two getting brought in later.

·         Dio’s Road Roller: No appearance from Dio Brando would have been complete without a reference to the iconic scene where he crushes Jotaro under a steamroller and starts pummelling it violently, trapping Jotaro underneath. I could have left a steamroller lying around from the arena’s construction, but using the Sweet Tooth van instead allowed me to bring back something that had already been introduced, particularly since its driver had died by this point in the story. This writing technique is known as Chekhov’s Gun, fact fans.

·         Friends on the Other Side: Part 2 had a lot of bloodshed thanks to Dr Facilier summoning his Friends on the Other Side, with around half the surviving roster from Part 1 being killed off. This was poison gas in the simulator, but I changed it after seeing that Dr Facilier was dying in this scene, allowing the opportunity to recreate his death scene from The Princess and the Frog. This would also be a bit more exciting than writing 15 variations of “Character dies from inhaling poison gas.”

·         Actually a Doombot: Even though he didn’t win, Doctor Doom still survived the Hunger Games because he didn’t compete and sent a Doombot to compete for him. I would have had this reveal regardless of when Doom died, but it worked particularly well when Doom ended up being a jobber who was only there as cannon fodder which would have been rather disappointing for such a grandiose, bombastic character. Now for a bit of what could have been – If Doctor Doom had won, Doom would have been killed by the 2^nd place finisher, only for the real Doom to appear, reveal that the Doom the 2^nd place finisher killed was actually a Doombot, then kill them to win the games.

·         One, two, Freddy’s coming for you: Like Dio, Freddy was another character whose full potential was dependent on the time of day. I was very happy therefore, to see Freddy kill Luke Atmey at night, allowing me to write a scene where Freddy killed someone in their dreams.

·         Inconceivable! Vizzini’s death was another one that let me pay homage to the character’s source material. The simulation text dictated that “Needles Kane, Vizzini and Wario get into an argument. Needles gets the last word by killing the other two.” Vizzini is more of an intellectual than a physical bruiser. (In The Princess Bride, he had Inigo Montoya and Fezzik to provide the brawn for him). Him getting into an argument instead of an action scene let me show off Vizzini’s cunning by recreating his scheme with the iocane powder, which worked this time as Wario isn’t nearly as smart as the Dread Pirate Roberts. I also enjoyed having Needles steal Vizzini’s moment of glory by killing him from behind as Vizzini was bragging to the poisoned Wario “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!”

·         Saboteur T1000: That shape-shifting power was fun! It also let me do a bit of messing with the character’s heads, playing them against each other or leading them into traps. Killing him off near the end was tough, though. I think I could have come up with a better death scene for it (It sure is convenient that there is now a lava moat around the edge for you to fall into, huh?)

There were a couple things that happened that I wasn’t hugely happy about, and these are those.

·         Bakura and Alduin dying early: This is the major one, and it’s a perfect example of the risk that comes from writing a story from events I have no control over. Bakura and Alduin were built up to be major characters early on, by virtue of teaming up with President Snow, who was one of the main characters. Alduin in particular ended up being a surprise favourite character of mine, since I got a fair bit of mileage out of using Brainwashed Good Alduin as comic relief. Therefore, it was disappointing to see them both go out early in the arena event. On the plus side, I do think I was able to salvage their early prominence by working their deaths into President Snow’s character development, and having the Millennium Ring come back as a MacGuffin that several characters fought over later on.

·         Venom the Wimp: Of all the characters in this game, I think Venom is the one who comes off worst. I feel like I overdid Venom’s fire weakness, having it come up in all of his scenes, and he didn’t get any cool scenes to balance them out. Jagi was similarly pitiful, but he’s both a much weaker character than Venom, being pitiful fits him since he’s underhanded and sneaky, preferring to avoid fair fights whenever possible, and he was portrayed sympathetically in his death scene, so I don’t feel bad for portraying him the way I did.

·         Character balance: Some characters didn’t get much flavour text, particularly early on. In a sense, the premise makes this difficult – in a last man standing contest, someone has to die early otherwise the contest wouldn’t progress, and 36 characters is a lot to have to balance. This got easier as time went on – more characters had flavour text or appearances in the narrative in Part 3, and by Part 4, all the remaining tributes had a defined personality, relationships to other characters and a role in the plot. Nevertheless, I do think I could have done a better job in this regard. I choose to see this as a learning experience, and I hope to do better next time.

And finally- Scenes I’d have liked to see. These are a few ideas for how certain characters would have interacted had the story allowed for it.

·         A dragon battle between Alduin and Maleficent, with a terrified Ripto caught in the middle.

·         Joker, Kefka and Needles Kane form the Insane Clown Posse (I got two of them together in the story, but I’d have liked to complete the set) but then Joker steals Kefka’s magic and becomes Emperor Joker.

·         Bakura uses the Ring of Destruction trap card to give Amanda Waller a taste of her own medicine.

·         A hunting contest between Predator and Gaston. After all, no one hunts like Gaston!

·         An alliance of feathered fiends between the Giant Chicken and Lord Shen.

Ghost Ship (2002)

Ghost Ship (2002)

Is it safe to come out now? Nobody got mad at me, so I guess it is… (Lowers flame shield)

WHAT IN THE NAME OF SWEET MERCIFUL POSEIDON IS THAT?!? (Raises flame shield again)

Sorry, I just got spooked solid by a spooky sailing skeleton. You’ll want to be ready if you venture further. Just to be safe, I’ll put some cute kittens here as a buffer. Consider this your one and only SPOOK WARNING. See the capitals? It's like I'm shouting this, so you have no excuse for not seeing it.

Now that you’re sufficiently cutened up, here’s today’s blog.

Spooky sailing skeletons send shivers down your spine!

Release Date: October 25, 2002

The film blows its load early with a flashback scene where partygoers on a cruise ship get sliced in half with a razor wire deployed by an unknown assailant, who seems to be a homicidal version of Billy Zane’s character in Titanic – in other words, Billy Zane’s character in Titanic.

In the present day, (or 2002 at least. It was present at the time the film was made, but now contemporary would be a better term) a crew of ocean salvagers are tipped off to the location of the now abandoned ship from the prologue by Ferryman, who is astonishingly appropriately named for his line of work. Only the respective casts of Horrid Henry and Ace Attorney have names that are more on the nose. The salvagers take Ferryman with them to the ship where they find that it contains spooky ghost girl Violet Baudelaire (The actress went on to play Violet Baudelaire in the film adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Seriously, look it up), a whole load of dead bodies in a locked room, and not cut in half at that, and most importantly, boxes full of gold (Bullion, not Aztec or Chocolate.) The crew plan to take the gold and go home, but their savviness counts for nothing when their boat is destroyed in an explosion, leaving the surviving crew with no choice but to repair the ghost ship and get home using it.

The crew start getting killed one by one until the ghost of the ship’s captain explains the backstory to the leader of the salvagers, who promptly goes mad and tries to kill the Final Girl when he starts being haunted by the ghost of the crew member killed in the explosion earlier. Ferryman knocks him out and locks him in the brig. Meanwhile, Violet Baudelaire explains the story to the Final Girl. It turns out Ferryman was behind it all, having taken the gold onto the ghost ship, convinced the crew to kill the passengers and then let their greed kill each other, thus trapping the souls of everyone on the ship until he has enough to send them all to Hell. Since then, he’s been luring more crews to the ghost ship to get the gold and killed them too. Fun fact, I saw this twist coming in the first five minutes as soon as the character’s name was given, but dismissed it fearing a repeat of 12 Rounds, where I anticipated an entire elaborate plot involving modern-day equivalents of the 12 labours of Hercules and the story of Persephone and Hades, then ended up disappointed when this didn’t happen, the film was far more straight-forward than that, and I had merely latched onto a meaningless background sign.

I sure hope somebody picks up the phone... 

Now that the jig is up, Ferryman quickly kills the rest of the crew, leaving the Final Girl for last. He tries to convince her to leave him alone, but she sacrifices herself to sink the ship and let the lost souls move on, though Violet Baudelaire thanks her by helping her escape safely. Adrift at sea, the Final Girl is found by a passing cruise ship, taken aboard and returned to dry land, but as she is loaded into an ambulance, she sees that not all the souls were saved. Ferryman reappears, loading the cursed gold onto the saviour ship with the help of the damned deceased salvagers. Effectively, the whole thing kicks off again, on a new ship with a more modern build and not rusty and decaying, meaning it’ll be much harder to blow up in the sequel that was never considered anyway so why am I even worrying about this. Nice job breaking it hero.

Disappointingly, Ghost Ship is not a scary film, and I say this as someone who is normally a great big sissy when it comes to horror films. Despite the ghost ship being suitably ominous and decayed (the set design is a comparative strength of the film), an extended sequence of the characters exploring the ship before things go bump in the night somehow doesn’t build tension, possibly because of the film’s short length (82 minutes, not including the credits). When they come (at around the 50 minute mark), the scares are pretty tame too, mostly relying on gore that quickly loses its effect. The origin of the ghost ship could have been terrifying, but it doesn’t dwell enough on the atrocities committed by the crew in their greed for the cursed gold, moving from one shot to the next too quickly for them to have much impact, and the ill-fitting rawk music that plays during the scene dilutes it further. On the plus side, there are no volume wrenching scare chords or obnoxious jump scares artificially telegraphing to the audience that this is the part where you’re supposed to be scared, which is much appreciated.

After the gruesome opening, gore hounds will be disappointed that there isn’t anything comparable to that in the rest of the film, possibly thanks to the small cast and no nameless extras to act as cannon fodder. The second flashback isn’t as elaborate despite having the prologue as part of it, and that was really the best opportunity to try topping it. The opening scene sets the bar high, but not in a good way, as everything else is disappointing in comparison.

On another note, the original script for the film sounds much more interesting and scary than the final product. The first half is largely the same, with the main changes coming in the second half. Ferryman and the supernatural stuff is mostly gone (Mostly, since Violet Baudelaire remains), and the crew instead fight among each other over the treasure, with each one going mad and plotting to kill the others so that they could have the gold for themselves. This version would have ended with the Final Girl again being the sole survivor, choosing to flee the sinking ship with Violet Baudelaire’s help. The captain (who survives longer in this version, instead of being the third to die, outlasted by Ferryman and the comic relief duo) would have taken the gold now that he was the only person who wanted it, but the extra weight meant he would have been too slow to escape and gone down with the ship. Essentially, it would have been The Shining at sea.

In conclusion, Ghost Ship is a little bit ship. You’re clever, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

3/10

You know what the worst part is? The spooky sailing skeleton is on the poster. It’s on the DVD box art. It’s even in the trailer. But at no point does it appear in the actual film. I got spooked solid by that bony buoyant bastard for nothing!