Darksiders

Played on Xbox360

Before playing Darksiders, I had already heard a lot of press about how the game is just one big Zelda rip off. It is accused of unabashedly stealing mechanics from that franchise and others. And you know what, that’s no lie. But I fail to see how it’s a problem. The Zelda games are almost uniformly excellent. And there really aren’t many other games that attempt that gameplay style. So really, there’s low supply and high demand for Zelda-style games, and something like Darksiders should be perfectly welcome. I mean, were people really upset when Shadow Complex blatantly cribbed from Metroid? I’m glad the gaming industry isn’t as crazy about patents as the rest of the software world - it prevents the culture from stagnating.

When the cell shaded art style for Wind Waker got unveiled apparently a ton of fans were mortified. They wanted some more realistically rendered adult Link. Personally I loved the light hearted cartoon style of Wind Waker. But if some people were still holding out for a grittier, more “adult” Link, then they have it in Darksiders… and then some. Darksiders takes place in a world where angels and demons are battling it out over a post-apocalyptic Earth. You play as War, one of the four horsemen, standing in the middle trying to keep both sides in line through extreme violence. It’s like if Link started rampaging around making demonic pacts and cutting people’s head’s off. Instead of, you know, occasionally harassing chickens.

That theme may not align to your typical Zelda game, but the mechanics are all familiar. You get a boomerang and a hookshot; you’ll romp through dungeons with chests, puzzles, and keys; and at the end there will be an epic boss battle with some pattern you need to learn that involves the fancy tool you just found. It’s undeniably the same design. But it’s all executed very well.

Truth be told, I think I preferred it to Twilight Princess. The visuals are obviously of a higher fidelity, but there are also a lot of surprisingly inspired environments. The controls are tight and responsive (at least compared to my regrettable experience of playing Twilight Princess on the Wii instead of the Gamecube). And overall the game is just that much more streamlined, with a manageable length (which for me is a positive characteristic these days). Overall Darksiders was a nice little game that took a beloved pattern and repeated it. It totally scratched the right itch, so if you’ve been feeling the need for a classic Zelda romp, then give Darksiders a spin.

Read My Face

It amazes me how much we communicate to each other with just our faces. With all the fine muscles behind them faces can be extremely expressive, so it’s not the capability that amazes me. It’s the accuracy with which its interpreted. Fundamentally, we rarely see our own faces. We even more rarely see them while they’re delivering all these subtle emotional cues. It blows my mind that we operate at this level where I can nonverbally make some facial contortion to represent a rather nuanced emotion and that someone else can understand that.

We never took facial communication classes where we all sat in front of mirrors practicing our vocabulary. No, we learned this all in the wild. And we started pretty young. It’s never been intuitive to me that babies learn the complexities of speech long before they learn to not poo themselves. But they’re picking up and delivering facial cues well before they start babbling. So really the language of the face is the first mode of communication we learn. This stuff is deeply ingrained in us.

Since we can’t see ourselves, all of this has to be learned by making a face and judging reactions. Maybe we will just invent some combination of muscle contractions that seem to represent our inner state, but it’s more likely that we’re copying a face that we’ve someone else make. Which, since we can’t see ourselves and judge the success rate, could have hilariously bad execution.

There are some smiles that are cold, forced, and unbelievable; there are others that are delightfully contagious. Some of this may have to with aptitude, but a lot of it has to do with the honesty of the emotions behind what’s being presented. I’m sure that the good actors spend an absurd amount of time in front of a mirror learning how to lie with their face (so either they had raw talent, or they’re just narcissistic?).

I wonder sometimes how well I filter what I’m feeling inside to what my face is projecting outside. I don’t know of course because you can see it and I can’t. If I’m feeling something powerful, can I repress it? If there’s something I dislike, my instincts tell me to make a foul face. If it’s something small, my cultural filters kick in and I can prevent the emotion from making it my face and being inappropriate. But if the emotion is stronger it becomes more and more difficult to not wear that on my face. And if it’s strong enough, there’s no stopping it. If I feel love, how can that not be read in the details big and small written all over my face? Even my eyes alone are going to carry a message that clear. But with the whole face in concert? For something that big you’re going to get communication on all open channels.

Love is obviously an emotion that we rarely have a reason to repress, but there are plenty of things that we do need to keep from making it to the surface. There are all sorts of things flying through our heads, and every one of them shouldn’t vent out through the face. Well, unless you want to look like the crazy person that you are on the inside. So it is that we’ve all developed a controlled path from emotion to facial communication; we all have filters, conscious or unconscious. We have some knowledge of our facial vocabulary and are making decisions about which faces to put forth based on proven effectiveness and relevance to the situation.

Although our potential vocabulary is large, it’s always being refined by the reaction we see in other people. When we make a face, we’re looking for the reaction face in other people. If we perceive that reaction to be positive, we’re more likely to use that face in the future. Or maybe their positive reaction causes us to return a positive reaction, and it all cycles until we’re just standing their grinning like idiots.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. The topic just completely fascinates me. How much of myself is projected with completely subconscious imprecise facial communication? How accurate is what I put out there? Can everything I’m thinking be plainly read on my face? I really have no clue how well I communicate what I’m feeling, or how well I conceal the thoughts and emotions I don’t want other people to see. I can know what I’m saying, because I also have ears. But I have no idea what my face is telling you.

:/

Thirst

Sourcing off the same list that I got Let the Right One In, I added Thirst to my Netflix queue. This time the origin is Korean instead of Scandinavian, so it’s another subtitled vampire movie. Turns out not all of the best vampire movies out there come from America, go figure.

Outside of the fact that I’ve had to read, there were no real other similarities between the movies. Let the Right One In was very down to earth, but Thirst is a bit more crazy. It’s a textbook recommendation to do some more background work before you decide to turn your loved one into a vampire. The end result is one character who’s overwhelmed with the guilt of their affliction, and another who’s drunk with power. A recipe for disaster (with disaster having proven correlation to entertainment value).

And it’s a love story, of course. Why is that all vampire stories are love stories? I’m not complaining, it’s just odd that there’s such a strong association. Maybe it’s an exploration of our love-inspired promises to be together forever. When you have to deal with real forever then it gets more complicated. Or maybe its that we just find all this blood lust somehow erotic. I’m sure there’s a long discussion to be had just on that, but I’m off-topic now.

So Thirst is the love story between a priest accidentally turned vampire and an oppressed but not-so-innocent girl. It’s one of those stories that is at its core familiar to you, but at the same time unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Just enough off axis to keep me guessing. The movie also has a nice escalation to it. There’s a steady ramping up from the mundane to the supernatural that fits nicely with the progression of the characters. The end moments are particularly charming.

If I had to rank my recent forays into foreign vampire films I’d put Let the Right One In slightly higher. Maybe its just this Norwegian blood of mine, but I really connected to that movie’s pacing. It’s a simple story with a truly drab setting, but that all made it so much more real for me. But that’s just a slight preference, because Thirst is also definitely worth a spin. Unfortunately I think I’ve run out of vampire movies on my list. Maybe it’s time I bumped True Blood up in the queue?