Modern Reviews - Final Fantasy VII Advent Children

The Japanese are immensely better than us at many things the first and most important thing is being completely batshit insane. Rather than being a hinderance this is actually highly beneficial to their creative output.

Today I watched the absolutely gorgeous but completely nonsensical Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It's a feature film sequel to a video game released in 1997 on the PSX (PSone to all your UK fans). The gist of the video game put you in the shoes of the preposterously named Cloud Strife, an androgenous manga-haired blonde mercenary, on a quest to stop the sinister Shinra corporation from draining the planet of energy life force. For all this i remember Final Fantasy VII as being a spectacular game with an environmental slant all set in a dystopian japanese created wonderland in glistening 3D. This was back when 3D was new and crazy.

So it was with some vague nostalgic anticipation that I watched Advent Children today whilst working. Much to my amusement the storyline made absolutely no sense starting with the assumption that you knew what the fuck had been happening immediately before the titles started. I would find it hard to believe even a die hard fan could make sense of the plot or gain any further understanding of the Final Fantasy universe. However, and its a big however, the visuals blew my brains out. I have literally never seen any 3D animation of this quality and beauty. Protagonists clothes flap in the changing breezes, the typically oversized eyes glisten with real depth, and the large building destruction really have a weight to them. Stylistic flourishes tend to lead to insanely over the top concepts... Clouds main weapon is a 5 foot sword made up of at least 6 other swords and probably weighing at least half a tonne and yet he swings it around like an empty wrapping paper tube on Christmas eve. There is also about ten years too much fighting on motorbikes. And you thought there couldn't ever be too much fighting on motorbikes. Akira this is not.

Cloud seems to have changed from my memories of the PSX game from a chirpy plucky hero into the ultimate androgynous emo. It's like the lead singer of My Chemical Romance only more feminine, carrying impractical equipment, and being able to jump 40 feet in the air. Tifa's got bigger jebs though so i guess everything works out.

All in all... if you forget about the plot and the general ridiculousness of the whole thing this is a visually rewarding experience. It's like letting your eyes have sex with the most beautiful and incomprehensibly exotic person whilst they spout random gibberish about 'lifeforce' and 'remnants' and after its all over you cant tell if they're a man or a woman.

It's exactly like that.

The Death of The Designers Republic

The monumental, inspiring, groundbreaking design agency The Designers Republic has closed its doors.

For those of you not half drowning in the design industry as myself The Designers Republic (or tDR) were an award winning internationally reknown agency based in Sheffield who did more in their 23 years of design practice to subvert and challenge the creative norms and progress digital postmodernism than anyone. It all started with Ian Anderson designing record sleeves for Age of Chance based around Russian Constructivism. This was the dawning of the digital design era with Mac platforms springing up at most agencies and Anderson rejected traditionalist approaches in favour of a projection of purely digital aesthetic.

This work continued apace adopting many different visual influences from Japanese culture and corporate branding and re-inventing them through tDR's kaleidescopic digital vision. The resulting work for Pop Will Eat Itself, Warp Records, and Wip3out became an instant success due to its complete leftfield avante garde aesthetic compared to the rest of the design industry. The Designers Republic, in essence, created and sustained its own movement. This is the most important aspect to tDR. It created its completely identifiable signiture style and therefore a brand. People would come to tDR for work that looked like it had been made by The Designers Republic. This is contrary to how most agencies used to work. tDR made the first authentic niche in the design industry, lived in it, and expanded it until it broke.

The Japanese elements to tDR's design work are a prime example of how the process at tDR works. The agency raided Japanese design culture, expanded on the most modern and challenging design practices, exaggerated it, and then repackaged and resold it back to the Japanese. I like to describe this work as 'more Japanese than Japan'. And it is. Its a design characture that is extreme and over the top in all the main Japanese design catagories: Minimalism, detail, composition, reduced palette, and coolness. Its Nihon-Hyperbole.

Unfortunately The Designers Republic became a victim of its own success with work for Coca Cola, Orange, and other large corporations beginning to water down the basic premise of tDR. While the company admirably continued to blaze trails and stamp its own design signature on its output the restrictions of working with larger and more corporate clients had a negative effect on the company. This, combined with a number of financial issues during the recession, caused the Republic to close its doors in January but one has to recognise founding member Ian Andersons heart hadn't exactly been in it for the past couple of years. In a recent interview he suggests he will get back to his roots, back to where The Designers Republic was an outsider and a controversial figure, and back to where all the fun is.

So next time you're looking at a new piece of design work that uses some twisted corporate sloganeering whilst ramming some Japanese styled clean corporate design in your face with some hot pink pantones you'll know the designer is just a pretender to the throne recently abdicated by tDR. The Republic is dead, long live the Republic.

Review - Grand Theft Auto 4

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past four years scrabbling about in the muck, excreting mud, and eating rotten larvae you should be fairly familiar with the juggernaut of Grand Theft Auto. Since GTA3 Rockstar basically invented the sandbox game and much mouth drooling anticipation lay in store for the new generation GTA4. This possibility of epic faildom really had me worried before the games release but in the world of game development games generally get better the more numbers they have behind them.

GTA4 does not disappoint. Rockstar have managed to create what is generally heralded as a masterpiece game. Giving you free reign of Liberty City, a chopped up version of new york, you really have to explore the environment yourself to truly comprehend the vast and intricate work done here. It's a fantastically believable environment and genuinely mind boggling.

You're alter ego in Liberty land is polish dishwasher Niko Belic no doubt straight off the boat from Britain where he ran an unsuccessful brick laying company. Actually he's an ex-soldier who's been convinced to sneak into the US of A by his cousin in search of a better life and a spot of extremely cold served revenge. This adds some credibility to his absolute knowledge of armaments, explosives, and helicopter piloting. NO REALLY. The title sequence is interjected with this grand entrance into Liberty harbour where your barely cognisent cousin picks you up. Much in the same way as all the other GTA games you start with nothing, get introduced to people, and begin building an empire of hookers and blow. Or money and guns. Unlike the other GTA games the main character, Niko, is entirely cynical and reluctant to become this money hoarding killer which added more depth to the experience. There are a number of moral decisions to make which generally involve who will die and who wont in much the same way as Bioshock. It's always satisfying to shoot a pleading victim in the face. Like most other sandbox games you lurch around from mission to mission to complete the game and gain upgraded weapons and much like other sandbox games there is a slew of irritating collection and delivery side quests.

Outside of this the world of Liberty City is your oyster. Slimy and smelling of fish. You can, and a friend of mine did, stand in front of a magazine booth throwing tin cans at the owners head. For 24 hours game time. He also spent at least 6 hours in real time trying to land a helicopter and jump into the rotorblades. This was eventually achieved to much lulz and satisfyingly flung us over a number of nearby buildings. Dead.

There are a number of new introductions from a slightly crappy cover system to TV channels, pigeons, video games... much joy to be had.

There's much to do in Liberty City from strip clubs to burger eating. Stealing cars to shooting pigeons. I would have liked to more intereactivity with non-standard game elements such as building interiors or perhaps a few special roaming characters from the radio or TV channels.

There is an incredible level of detail to the game not just environmentally but also in the ample destruction that you can wreck. There's not much i can fault GTA4 on. It's a must have title and worth every penny or whatever local equivalent you use.

Let the rampage begin.

Review - Bioshock

A fifties dystopian society gone wrong? Steam hydrolic powered apartment complex? Maniacal medical experiments, twisted artistic creations, and mind control? If you answered an emphatic 'yes please!' to these questions then there is a lot in Bioshock that you will love. You'll probably have to grow a healthy appreciation for getting a drill smashed into your face by a hulking ogre creature in a deep sea diving outfit called, worryingly, 'Big Daddy'.

References to 70's British wrestlers aside Bioshock has a lot to offer. The haunting underwater world of Rapture contains many murky delights for the intrepid adventurer. The haunting twisted locations will stick with you for quite some time and the jerky movements in the shadows might add an extra level of frisson when the power next goes out in your apartment.

There is a strong literary and philosophical theme to Bioshock which is highly commendable. Squatting down in a puddle listening to the echoing rants of an insane photographer really struck me as a moment to be cherished. Its much to the credit of the developers and the game's System Shock pedigree that so much content was put into the game from believably insane philosophers to authentic looking future 50's art and architecture. The art deco atmosphere of excess has been exaggerated to an extreme and often estranged degree.

Much has been made of Bioshock's 'Ecological A.I' which supposedly makes the 'inhabitants have interesting and consequential relationships with one another that impact your gameplay experience' but this only really boils down to one moral choice made by the player throughout the game. This influences how tough the game is for the player but not much else. The write up on the box asks 'do you exploit the innocent survivors of Rapture...or save them' but ultimately this is not in the full extent of your choices. It's a direction that games should definitely move towards but the movement here towards genuine head scratching decision making falls short by quite a long way. Another structural shortcoming shows itself in the save system. Player death is not penalised whatsoever merely relocating, but importantly not resetting, you to a save location previously past. This means that you can trounce around the game hitting people with a wrench for great justice but ultimately a severe lack of lulz. All tension and pant-wettingly scary moments are also negated by this feature and I think its a great shame that the game is made so easy by this design decision.

This game is excellent and it seems that not very many compromises have been made from the artistic vision through to the production. There are many uncomfortable relationships and revelations to sink your teeth into and its well worth the money. It wont change your life but will twist your imagination. There is no delicious cake but much delicious loli.