We Own The Night

From the previews I thought that We Own The Night was going to be the story of two brothers who end up as enemies in the war on drugs. But that’s not really what it is. It’s more the story of two divided brothers reluctantly coming together in the face of tragedy; basically a tale of the bond of family winning over everything else. And watching the preview again now I probably should have picked up on that, but it’s hard to process all that information in a short time period.

It’s a good thing, because the plot is far more interesting this way. Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg play brothers who are headed in opposite directions. Wahlberg’s character is following the footsteps of their father (played by Robert Duvall) as a police officer, while Phoenix’s character is partying hard as a club manager and is slowly getting involved in the drug culture. In a lesser movie, Phoenix’s character would be on path to become some villain who slowly loses his humanity and the ability to understand the harm he’s causing. But this ain’t that movie. Instead he goes through the painful process of abandoning the life he had built for himself when he sees harm come to his brother and father.

It’s all about family and duty. The two brothers don’t get along at all. But even if in adult life you don’t connect with your sibling that doesn’t mean you can undo the childhood you shared. That bond, even if unintended or undesired, is strong. Phoenix’s character throws away everything to protect his family, but he doesn’t do it through some noble sense of martyrdom. He doesn’t go through some heartfelt transformation and emerge sunshine and rainbows. He’s conflicted the whole time. He loses the life he wanted, and he’s pretty miserable afterwards.

It’s complicated. I came in expecting something less subtle than what I got, so I was pleasantly surprised.

More Tabula Rasa

You can currently get Tabula Rasa dirt cheap on Amazon. If you were on the fence but didn’t want to plop down the money for the initial purchase it should be a no brainer now.

I’m definitely still enjoying it. I’m currently at level 35, which means I’ve made my final class selection (Grenadier) and have had a few levels to play around with it. I don’t have a flamethrower, but I do have a cryogenic disperser (or as I call it, “The Popsicle Maker”), which is equally awesome. That combined with rockets, chainguns, and some area of effect based Logos abilities makes me obscenely good at taking down large squads of enemies. I’m currently working on tracking down the Logos to unlock my class’ signature Concussion Wave ability.

The development team is doing a great job of regularly making improvements to the game. The latest update made holding a crazy combo even more compelling and added some great rewards for attacking/defending control points. I hope they’re able to keep up this agile development pace, because they have some really cool ideas in the pipeline. Tabula Rasa has a lot to teach the MMO genre at large, so I thought I’d compile a list of its strengths and weaknesses.

Things Tabula Rasa could teach other MMOs:

• Quick Travel: Less time wasted due to instant and free travel between waypoints. Better connectivity due to multiple waypoints per zone
• Play-Style Flexibility: Less rigid about grouping because instances scale to squad size
• Feels Heroic: Multiple enemies instead of single targets that take a long time to kill. You are stronger than most individual targets, so you feel like a bad ass.
• Risk: Incentive to play aggressively due to combo XP modifiers
• Dynamic Environments: Control points provide a constantly moving PVE target. A mix of allied and enemy NPCs dropping in randomly creates a real warzone feeling.
• Achievements: Per zone rewards for various accomplishments (Targets of Opportunity). Logos provide exploration oriented goals.
• Informed Decisions: The most important decision for your character (class) is made after you’ve already had time to play and figure out what you like and don’t.
• Don’t Make Me Start Over: Cloning lets you branch your character to try something different without having to start over from scratch
• Levels Are Less Important: Less rigidness in the level strata means you can take on enemies well above your level. There’s still a point beyond which you’re screwed, but it’s not as tight of a level band as WoW or LotRO.
• Informal Cooperation: Kill credit is shared even if you’re not in a squad, provoking more impromptu grouping
• Share: Built-in support for sharing resources between your characters
• Unlockables: The hybrid races are only available after completing quests, making them somewhat of a prestige item.
• Community: Regular and frank Feedback Fridays let you know what the development team is up to
• Development: Small updates with a short development cycle

Things Tabula Rasa could learn from other MMOs:

• Casual Play: Rest XP bonus rewards you for having self control
• Items Have Value: Interesting rewards for running instances (especially since instances are available for all play styles now). The lack of soulbound items in Tabula Rasa makes getting gear a little too easy (and thus less rewarding)
• Epic Boss Battles: Interesting scripted encounters that make you poo your pants
• Customization: Any shortcomings in WoW’s user interface can be overcome with UI mods. Empowering the community to do work for you is a good thing.
• More Locales: There are currently two planets in Tabula Rasa, with each planet having multiple zones. Unfortunately this only really amounts to two different palettes. It’s sad when a game with interstellar possibilities has less variety than Middle Earth.

Carnivàle

I recently finished the second season of Carnivàle, which since the show didn’t get renewed means I’ve watched the entirety of the series. Really puts a damper on that planned six season story arc. The show took an aggravatingly snail-like pace to unravel the primary storyline, to the point where I just stopped caring. There’s a personified agent of evil, his counter agent of good, and lots of tension… but they don’t end up in the same place until the very end of that second season. There are shows out there that string mystery along successfully, but this isn’t one of them.

I didn’t stick with watching the show for two seasons because of the story; I did it for the setting. Carnivàle follows a traveling circus in the depression era dustbowl, and completely nails that dirty, desolate, freaky atmosphere. It’s got one of the best title sequences ever. The costume design is also especially noteworthy; it takes talent to make me lust after a haggard three-piece suit that’s been worn every day and drug all over middle America. Everything fits together to create a unique atmosphere that lets you completely forget the meandering plot.

The primary protagonist, Ben Hawkins, isn’t really likeable. But he’s not explicitly unlikable either… he’s just kinda… there. He squints, he whines, but mainly he just putts about while having a hard time understanding the world he’s caught up in. His antagonist, Brother Justin the preacher, is clearly the stronger character, but your feelings about him get all confused in trying to figure out where his sister fits in. Is she the root of his evil or is she a victim? From episode to episode her tact varies wildly. The writers set up Ben and Justin on a Good vs. Evil storyline but then muddle the characters in an effort to make them feel more complicated. The end result is that you just don’t care what happens to them.

To be fair, it’s only the main plotline that’s unsatisfying. The stories of the secondary characters are far more interesting. It helps that their arcs are introduced and resolved in a timely fashion. They also get less wrapped up in the series’ uneven mysticism. I’m all for the supernatural, but I was never really able to figure out how this world worked. There’s obviously some stuff afoot, but too many ideas are introduced and not enough are explored.

Carnivàle is a good series to sit back and watch if you don’t want to think too hard. Unforgettable scenery, great costumes, interesting characters, unsatisfying plot. I wouldn’t recommend the whole pie but it is worth tasting a slice.

Jet Li's Fearless

When it comes to martial arts, Jet Li’s Fearless delivers, but everything else is just blah, blah, blah. I realize that these movies aren’t really about the plot… but is it that hard to make it engaging? Fearless is the story of a prodigy’s reckless youth, the (self-inflicted) tragedy that causes him to go into exile and think hard about his life, and then his return with transcending maturity and eventual martyrdom. In no way does the younger character feel connected to the older one. It might be me applying Western expectations to an Eastern story, but I like to see a character grow instead of be replaced. We’re an individualist culture, and like to see the soul of a character persist through a transformation. Jet Li’s character’s change isn’t properly explained. It’s like you take trauma followed by a breath of fresh air and out pops perfection. Formula for success. Maybe I just demand a few more flaws from my hero characters.

Anyway, Jet Li kicks butt ‘n stuff, and it’s all very pretty. No nearly as pretty as Hero or Crouching Tiger, but still pretty. The film was marketed as being Jet Li’s last epic martial arts film, which made me very confused when I recently saw ads on a bus for The Forbidden Kingdom with Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Not that I’m complaining: that sounds like a great idea. It could be spectacularly awful (the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of a teenage boy… again?), but the match-up will no doubt be incredible.

Anyway, you won’t be wasting your time with Fearless; it’s entertaining. But it left me feeling a little empty.

Beautiful Katamari

Played on Xbox360

If you’ve played one Katamari game, you’ve played them all. There have been some small variations on the core formula, but it hasn’t strayed too far from “roll up stuff and get big.” Which is good, because that simple thing is so entertaining. If you’ve spent a lot of hours on the PS2 Katamari games, there’s not much new to play around with in Beautiful Katamari on the Xbox 360. But if you’ve never experienced the joy of rolling up huge balls of crap, Beautiful Katamari delivers. You’ll grow from the size of a penny to be bigger than the sun, all while listening to crazy J-Pop.

Every time you roll into another size class it’s an epic moment. It’s like leveling up in an RPG and going back to squash all the baddies that gave you trouble before. It’s extremely entertaining the first time, but after you’ve seen the whole progression it does lose a little of its bite. And unfortunately you can only get so big before there’s no more content in the game for you to roll up. Actually, the more I think about it the more I realize that Katamari is an RPG.

I really enjoyed Beautiful Katamari, but I can’t help but be a bit disappointed. I’m ready for something new. Later in Beautiful Katamari you find yourself rolling up all these famous monuments from different civilizations, like Egypt or China. It’d be really fun to start out in different locales like that. They can’t really raise the size limit anymore (you’re already sucking up black holes by the end), so they way to improve the game is to add variety in the existing spectrum. Although… it could be possible to take it smaller. I could totally see Katamari at the molecular level… or cellular like Innerspace or Osmosis Jones… or rolling on the surface of a dog picking up fleas and hairs. Really, the game writes itself. Picking up sumo wrestlers is fun and all, but I think this series is ready for a scenery change.