Why Arn't more games musicals?

Yes, yes, i missed my last deadline, 2018 round up pushed back to next time, meh. That happens when you live a high octane life like mine, somewhere in between racing classic cars down in the south of France and picking up a cheese and onion slice at Gregg's it must have slipped my mind. Taking time out from a busy schedule can make all the difference when developing a video game, a few years ago the assassin's creed series did so much to my total nonchalance as i’ve not played any of their games since or before black flag.

Wow that actually neatly set up what i could talk about today, shame i spoiled it by pointing that out, but hey can i really blame me? Let's spend the next paragraph discussing the issue with needlessly verbose prose. This is getting a bit much.

Ass creed, haha, ass. Assassin creed, haha, double ass! Creed is 2015 sports drama and successor to the much beloved rocky franchise. In which, the son of rocky’s rival is taught to be a real good phili boxer by ya boy rocky. Brawling is a very limited element in black flag, the game is much more focused on pirate songs, and why not?

Immersion is all about the construction of a version of reality that streamlines the experience. Fortunately an entire genre of film is devoted to going this via music, the aptly named musical has been a staple of film ever since les miserables was released in 2012 but some ‘historians’ claim it was even earlier as live music has been used an accompaniment to film before the use of synchronised recorded audio but this was before Hugh jackman started acting so can it be really be called a musical? This review is starting to show a few red flags, huehuehue.

Okay it’s three hours later and i got tied up trying to help a canal boat but ultimately skipped out because of more pressing matters, this. I suppose given that many a fierce pirate has died running a ground this can at least be written of a somewhat related tangential spurt. My point is that assassins creed: black flag isn’t just a Ac game with some boat stuff tacked on, it’s also the first game which is a explicitly a musical! There are plenty of games with good soundtracks integrated into the story, transistor i’m looking at you, yes yes take a bow.

But there is no music in the cut-scenes and the assassin parts of the game, so how can it be considered a musical. This is quite true but the cut-scones aren't the game, they’re bits that break up the game, like raisins, and secondly the assassins (still giggling about that btw) is entirely boring and tedious and i don’t like it and it’s repetitive and i’ve even done this very same joke before but better when it was fresher and it’s completely unchanged from previous versions so why?

So with two thirds of the game discarded as tripe, tripe of the blandest most congealed sort, that leaves the extended adventures of a pirate and his crew plundering, looting and otherwise rumming it up in the Caribbean. Yes, you play as a pirate in the Caribbean but it’s about as fun as the first film and not the sequels but we don’t get zombie skeleton pirates and why not? I’m serious, copyright infringement aside i hold that the game could be made better by leaning in and going full camp with it’s premise.

The ever shifting sea lanes means enemy brigs can creep on up you mid battle and change the tide, (GET IT? ) in a heartbeat. So too will pirate hunters give a slow burn of anxiety as they chase you across the map drawing ever closer forcing you to ask: “do you fear death jack sparrow.” Shoot the ship, board the ship, loot the ship, be in bed by 8pm. A pirate's life for me.

Back to the previous point. This being: the game is a musical. Whenever you’re not in combat your crew is belting out hearty sea shanties, the use of diegetic music is rare in video games and rarer still is it’s fluid integration into setting. I know it seems a petty point to praise a game on and that the music isn’t even linked to stages in the story like that one time they did it in read dead and i felt all sad and stuff, but credit where it is due.

Also taking the idea of camping it up, turning this into assassins creed: treasure island (the Muppet version) would have made this an immediate 10/10. This does beg several questions such as why am i praising a game for what i envision it could have been? Would long john silver get his own musical number? YES! And why i am asking so many questions today. Well to tell you the truth, i’m not sure, maybe it’s just habit?

I give this game a ‘shiver my timbers’ out a ‘leave her johnny leave her’

Dead games and pop classics: the struggle for life in the face of modernity.

I just deleted the first paragraph of this review.

Life for rent, released in 2003, was the second album by singer songwriter and mythical queen of Carthage: Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong; performs under the stage name Dido, thank goodness. Unlike fable 3 the album can still be bought by in digital format and is still a classic of the 2000’s. With songs like ‘thank you’ and ‘white flag’ becoming the soundtrack for wine drunk mothers everywhere, and as a result to their children as well.

When i downloaded life for rent i was pleased to see i was not required to connect to an online store that no longer existed as a poorly thought out form of DRM. nor did i have to seek out a website, through the forums, to get a patch that essentially cracked the album by dido: life for rent, that i bought years ago and legally own, (well not really the digital media provider owns it but whatever.)

I recently decided, after years of objecting to it, that i sort of liked Life for rent and that it’s peak tracks do have a certain resonance, especially when wine drunk. The same cannot be said for fable 3, a dead game that killed it's studio and had it’s support collapse years ago and really wasn’t that good to begin with but that at the time i thought was fun.

In fable the third, you start a revolution to take the throne from your brother. Only a revolution implies a change in the state of governance. This, strictly speaking, is a military backed coup by a series counter-industrialist aristocrats, justified by the supposition of the protagonists status as an ubermensch. In life for rent the primary change of power is the codification of one’s inner vulnerability into a thing of artistic beauty by the singer. Not only i am allowed to feel my vulnerabilities but knowing that the shared experience can be a source of strength.

The simplistic gameplay nonetheless feels clumsy and unpolished with connectivity between the elements mismatched at least. Basic at best. Enemies often stand next to explosive barrels, positioned to make the encounter as trivial as possible highlighting their status as things to be crushed under the ubermensch boot and undermining my ability to empathise. Far from trivial life for rent feels like a sense of craft, care and pathos was put into each track, well produced with excellent interplay of vocal and instrumental performances the album maintains a tonal consistency without becoming samey.

The Hobbes, no silly not Thomas Hobbes, although i am here to talk about the monopolisation of force; namely by the protagonist. A short ways into the game you encounter a group of cave dwelling sentients called the hobbes: essentially fat goblins, the character accompanying you levels repeated foul racist accusations deriding their intellect, despite their having a full established civilisation with social stratification, tactics and the integrated use of magic. This reads as some genuinely shocking colonialist bollocks, or it would that was the intent; instead the subjugation and marginalisation of sapient species is played for jokes. Fantasy has stumbled into racially charged elements in the past, like the orcs in middle earth being described as similar the the Mongolian peoples but the ability to overlook it again with the hind sights takes a certain kind of contextual blindness.

If you want clarity of vision and a realisation of its subject matter, look no further than 'Life for rent' by dido. Topics around the everyday struggle for life and love make each track as relatable as it is breathtaking. The struggle to get by is highlighted by the exemplar of the insecurity renting property brings to the tenants life and the extension of that that relationship to other facets. A social commentary that is meaningful and subtle that would undermine in elegance many current pop tracks aiming to do likewise.

On the subject of rent, fable 3 tasks one, once on the throne with ruling and making decisions to decide between arbitrary good and evils to raise the funds to fight and external evil. The solution however is to buy all the property in the country and collect the rents to pay for the coming war. The image of the all powerful external enemy has often been used to justify fascist doctrine in the past, so it’s no surprise to see it here. But seeing the supposed heroic thing is the economic subjection by a seizure of others own security, makes me wonder if perhaps the developers would have been better of listening to life for rent by dido during the design stage.

In the song ‘here with me’ dido puts forward an understanding of the personal costs of love and the reconciliation of self with one's desired partner. ‘Life for rent’ muses on the transitory ephemeral elements of life in modernity. Fable three tries to justify that seizure and subjection of foreign peoples in its second act, in a section that comes close, well more like closer, to understanding the troubles of colonialism but then just defaults to praising you for #bigdecisions. The near-parody epitome of moral decision making.

A degree of self awareness would have gone so far to improving this work especially with it’s comedic edge. A total contrast the the pleasant, but not over overbearing thoughtfulness we see in the must listen hit album: life for rent by Dido. both deal in the life in the industrialised world, guess which i prefer?

The game doesn’t have horses even, wtf is with that? The DLC on G2a costs more than the game did when it was on sale, that’s limited availability for you.