Play This Game: Dark Souls

Dark Souls is the best console game to be released this generation (in my opinion, which is correct), and one of my favourites of all time . Every single aspect of this game is near flawless, and in a sea of derivative, unimaginative, laughably lame mainstream games it stands head and shoulders above everything else. It's challenging, emotional, immersive, addictive, beautiful, and completely amazing. Why should you play it?

1) The high level of difficulty.

Dark Souls is not for children. If you're a typical Call of Duty playing, Nickelback listening, Transformers watching douchebag, then don't even think about playing this game, because a) you're not worthy, b) you'll most likely ragequit early on and c) I hate you. Dark Souls is for people who want a challenge, want to die a lot and actually THINK for once in a video game. Right on the back of the game it says "PREPARE TO DIE" in huge letters, and you're going to. A lot. Hundreds of times most likely. In my 400 hours of playtime, I've died hundreds of times, probably thousands. But the thing about Dark Souls is that every death is a lesson. When you die, you learn about hazards in the environments, the attack patterns of enemies, what they're resistant to or weak against, when to charge and when to be careful, etc etc etc. This is one of the greatest successes of Dark Souls. It defies the modern conventions that games have (d)evolved to. There's no mini-map on your screen telling you where to go, no arrow giving you directions, very few tips and free items. The only advice you're gonna get is the messages that other people playing online leave behind to help you, and a lot of those are made by trolls that just want to mess with you. Dark Souls does not hold your hand in the slightest, and that's one of the reasons playing it is so satisfying. When you figure out how to open a shortcut you previously couldn't get to, or beat a ridiculously hard boss (which are common in Dark Souls, the bosses are insane) or even just make it to the next save point you feel amazing. So many times in this game I've found myself holding my breath without realizing it, and then when I finally make it to safety I let out a sigh of relief and feel awesome because I just did something really difficult and I feel good about it. Sure, it's really hard. Most of the enemies can kill you in seconds, regardless of your gear. But when you finish the game you have an amazing feeling of accomplishment that very few games can give, you feel like you actually DID something.

2) Atmosphere/Immersion.

Atmosphere is something that a lot of games miss the mark on. It's that immersion factor, the way a game can drag you right in, to the point where there is nothing but the game and your attention is totally consumed. Because of the aforementioned difficulty, Dark Souls requires that much more concentration to play (also because you can't even pause the game). You won't be able to play it while texting, you won't want music on, and playing it drunk is probably a bad idea too, although I've heard of some cool Dark Souls drinking games. Since the game autosaves constantly, everything you do is final. There are no do-overs. You can't load up your previous save and try whatever it was you were doing again like in Skyrim. This made me play really carefully, and care about what I was doing. Constantly assessing risk and strategically planning your battles is a key to success in this game, and since you play the game with your mind you are so much more immersed and invested in the game. You have to read the enemies and know your surroundings everywhere, because the game developers did an amazing job here. They set up traps, put enemies in the most inconvenient spaces and made incredibly difficult levels to traverse, because they hate us all and don't want us to beat the game (notice I said beat, there's a difference between beating a game and finishing one). So when you do finally destroy the final boss and beat Dark Souls, you feel totally badass. I remember the first time I beat it, I was strutting around the house like I owned the place and wasn't a loser living in his parents' basement until he finished college and finds a job, it felt awesome.

In addition to this, the atmosphere in the game is enough to creep anyone out. The world you're in is completely bleak and hopeless. Everyone there is depressed, and everyone else wants to kill you. The areas you go through in the game are dark and dreary, devoid of sunlight and filled with murderous creatures that sometimes come out of nowhere. Some of the levels are riddled with traps, others are dark, hopeless labyrinths. The mood of Dark Souls is incredibly depressing, and after playing for a while you certainly feel its effect on your psyche. It's not a happy game, and when you become hopelessly addicted to it you get fully immersed in this nightmarish world, never to return until you turn off the game, which you won't want to do because you're hooked.

3)The absolutely brilliant multiplayer/co-op

Dark Souls' multiplayer is like nothing else on the video game market today. There's no invites, no lobbies, no matchmaking. There's just the game world, and whoever gets brought into or comes into it. When you're running around dying, killing, looting and dying more, you can randomly get invaded by other players. This person comes into your world as a red phantom, and basically hunts you down and tries to kill you. You either win or die. There are also clan-like groups known as covenants that you can join that give you special abilities and advantages in the PvP system, which spice things up a lot. Being invaded is scary. When it happens, your heart skips a beat and you wonder who it is, what kind of character they have, how good they are etc. There are hundreds of weapons in Dark Souls that you can upgrade and create, and they all handle differently than others. Finding a weapon that you like and are comfortable with is key to being good at PvP. Some people are incredibly good and kill you easily, but most of the time it's a pretty fair fight since you're always around the same level. Defeating an invader or hunting someone down and killing them is very satisfying, adding to the gratification Dark Souls offers to those who take on the challenge. 

Even more fun is the co-op. When someone wants to help another player out, they leave a sign on the ground. This appears in the worlds of other players and they can summon the other player as a white phantom to help them get through the level or finish the boss off. Helping people out is awesome, and certain boss fights are really insane to do alone, so the co-op is a welcome addition to the bleak, depressing atmosphere of the game. Hooking up with a friend and running through the levels quickly is incredibly fun.

I could write pages and pages about Dark Souls because I truly believe that it is one of the best games to come out in recent memory, but it's better to experience it yourself than read about it on some stupid blog. So I encourage you, give Dark Souls a try if you're brave enough. It's coming out for PC soon with new content, so everyone, console and PC gamers alike, can experience this amazing game.

There Will Be Blood: An Analysis/Essay

I'm really lazy right now, so instead of actually writing something I'll post an essay I wrote last year for an elective Film Criticism course I took. My teacher liked it and gave it a 90 so it must be decent at the very  least. I had to keep it short because there was a word limit,so there's not nearly as much in here as I would have liked, but whatever. If you haven't seen the movie it probably won't make sense, and if you haven't seen the movie you should stop reading here and go watch it because it's a goddamn masterpiece. Anyways, here:

Religion and Capitalism: A Formula For Disaster

Ideological Themes in There Will Be Blood

A bleak, unforgiving landscape. A geyser of fire spewing out of the earth, like an explosion from hell itself. These are just a few examples of the striking images that occupy the screen in Paul Thomas Anderson's meditative, dramatic epic There Will Be Blood. The film documents the experiences of oil entrepreneur Daniel Plainview, from his rise to prominence to his descent into madness and alcoholism. Daniel encounters several problems and obstacles in his pursuit of oil and financial success, including personal injury, corporate rivalry, and the interference of and conflict with religion, which is one of the main ideological subtexts of the film. This collision between capitalism and religion manifests itself in There Will Be Blood in the visual and implied symbolism shown, the actions of the main characters (specifically Daniel) and the general descent into madness that is experienced by both sides of the conflict. There Will Be Blood contrasts religion and capitalism, and portrays extremism in both sides of the conflict. Daniel Plainview is a very business-like, profit orientated man who has no place in his life for religion and is clearly focused on one goal above all else: finding oil, building an empire and making money. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Plainview is immaculate, his character has been described as “a great oversized monster who hates all men, and therefore himself” (Ebert, 2008). On the other end of the spectrum is Eli Sunday, a preacher and inhabitant of the land that Daniel eventually buys to develop and drill for oil. He is extremely devoted to his religion, and right from the beginning he is cautious of Daniel and his motives for coming to Little Boston and buying the land. The contention between them is a classic example of stubbornness, an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, and throughout the film it snowballs from initial co-operation to a violent showdown at the end, resulting in Daniel brutally murdering Eli. This suggests that capitalism and religion do not mix together well and it is unlikely that they can peacefully coexist.

One of the most effective ways that a film can convey a message to the viewer is to use visual symbolism to communicate. To the discerning audience it can speak volumes about the intent of the movie and the themes that it is trying to explore or express. In There Will Be Blood, symbolism is used to draw attention to the conflict between Daniel and Eli, and the conflict between religion and capitalism happening beneath the surface. This symbolism is evident in the names of the characters in the film. Daniel Plainview is “a representative figure, a man of his times” (Mapping Contemporary Cinema, 2007). As his surname implies, he has a very realist, plain view of the world and is representative of capitalism, the desire for money and little else. On the other end of the spectrum is Eli Sunday, whose last name can be associated with his religion in the fact that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, or day of rest. There are some striking shots that visually foreshadow what is to come in the film, such as when Daniel strikes oil in Little Boston. The geyser of oil becomes ignited and a spew of fire comes out of the ground, burning the giant oil derrick that Plainview constructed to drill with and injuring his son H.W. Daniel sits down and watched the giant, flaming oil derrick snap and fall to the ground, symbolizing a “breaking point”. This is shortly before the relationship between Daniel and Eli turns sour, from tolerance to violence and conflict. Another symbol that is prevalent throughout the entire movie is that of baptism. When Eli confronts Daniel and demands that he give him the money that Daniel had earlier promised to donate to his church, Daniel physically attacks and beats him, eventually throwing him into a puddle of oil and mud, and rubbing it all over his face and body. Later on, Daniel gets baptized at Eli's church in exchange for more land from an old man who previously refused to sell his lot. Eli takes this opportunity to get revenge on Daniel for his humiliation, slapping him repeatedly and making him admit that he is a sinner and has abandoned his child. Finally, when Eli comes to visit Daniel in his mansion at the end of the film their final confrontation ends with Daniel beating Eli to death with a bowling pin, a symbolic baptism of blood and Daniel's victory over his nemesis. These symbolic circumstances are very effective in Anderson's film to demonstrate the underlying theme of the movie, the battle that takes place between business and religion.

The conflict between capitalism and religion is also manifested in the actions of the main characters of the film, specifically Daniel Plainview. He is the embodiment of business, a man who “regets nothing, pities nothing, and when he falls down a mineshaft and cruelly breaks his leg, he hauls himself back up to the top and starts again” (Ebert, 2008). To him there is no other goal worth striving for other than money. When attempting to persuade investors to give him a lease on some land to drill, he claims that he is “a family man” and that his son is his motivation for his life's work. But later on when his adopted son H.W is deafened after being hit by a geyser and attempts to burn down their house out of frustration, Daniel has him sent away to boarding school rather than trying to take care of the child himself. When the incident happens and H.W loses his hearing, Daniel quickly leaves him and seems more excited about his oil strike than he is worried about his own son being injured. He later on disowns H.W when he is grown up and decides to go to Mexico and start his own oil company, saying that he is now his rival and enemy. Daniel is corrupted by money and only cares about becoming rich, and this drives him to alcoholism and madness later on in life. He despises religion, which is the cause of his conflict with Eli. When a man offers Daniel permission to build a pipeline through his land in exchange for him getting baptized and joining the church, Daniel offers him a large sum of money instead, because he is loath to be associated with Christianity. Earlier on in the film Daniel witnesses Eli exorcising an “arthritis demon” from the hands of an elderly woman in the congregation. He is amused, calling it “one goddamn hell of a show”. Daniel sees religion in a very mocking, sarcastic way and has no belief in a specific higher power, saying early on in the film that he belongs to no church and “enjoys all faiths”. This outlook is one of the main differences between Daniel and Eli and further demonstrates how opposite they are to each other, and how religion and business collide in this film.

One of the ways Paul Thomas Anderson illustrates the theme of capitalism versus religion in There Will Be Blood is through the gradual descent into madness and insanity that the main characters experience throughout the film. After Daniel Plainview strikes oil and his son loses his hearing, his sanity seems to go downward from there on. He becomes violent towards Eli specifically, beating him and throwing him into a puddle of oil, humiliating him publicly. After this, Eli loses his temper on his own family, assaulting his father and calling him “a stupid father to a stupid son”. Later on, Daniel meets a man who claims to be his long lost brother. Although suspicious of him at first, Daniel gives him a job and welcomes him as a business partner. A while after this however, Daniel grows doubtful of his legitimacy and finds out that he is not his brother, but a man pretending to be his sibling. Daniel reacts by killing the man and burying him in a shallow grave. This is something that the Daniel that we see at the beginning of the film would never have done. He claimed to be a “family man” and that his family was just as important to him as his business. By the end of the film Daniel has become the polar opposite of what he once claimed to be, becoming a reclusive alcoholic. He even disowns his son H.W and calls him a bastard child when he tells him that he is moving to Mexico to start his own oil company. Finally, Daniel completes his descent into insanity in the film's dramatic climax, where he confronts Eli Sunday for the final time and ends up bludgeoning him to death with a bowling pin. This gradual disintegration of Daniel's sanity illustrates the results of the combination of capitalism and religion: death.

There Will Be Blood is a strikingly philosophical film on several levels. It offers an intimate portrait of a businessman pushed to his limit by the opposition he faces, and the ultimate breakdown that results in his conflict. Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as entrepreneur Daniel Plainview is nothing less than legendary, and he does a spectacular job of portraying this complex character. There Will Be Blood effectively explores the themes of capitalism and religion in America, and what happens when those two forces collide and conflict with each other. As the movie shows, the results are grim. When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, there will be blood.

Just Watched: eXistenZ (1999)

If you enjoy video games, or consider yourself a gamer, watch this film.

For real, this movie appealed to the incurable video game addict in me a hundred times more than the awful video game "adaptation" movies that Hollywood pukes out every year. Directed by the brilliant (and Canadian) David Cronenberg, this is an intense study of a possible future of video games and the effects a person's immersion in them can have. Basically, games have progressed to completely realistic virtual reality. People get small holes called bioports surgically embedded into their lower backs, which allow them to plug into "gamepods" which are basically weird looking sacks of flesh that are apparently biologically engineered and grown from DNA, something like that. The player is connected via a tube that looks a heck of a lot like an umbilical cord, and is brought into a fully realistic virtual world. eXistenZ's plot centers around a game designer and her bodyguard (apparently) who are on the run because video game haters called "realists"  want to kill her and stuff. This eventually leads to them entering the video game she created and chaos ensues, plot twists happen, and I become too lazy to summarize it all because I'm tired and ruining the ending(s) of this movie would be a dick move. Just watch it for yourself.

What I really want to talk about is the treatment of the subject matter. Cronenberg's attention to detail in the game world here is perfect, but if you're not a person who regularly plays games you're unlikely to notice. The characters programmed into the game appear as real people, but their mannerisms and the way they behave gives them away as constructs of the virtual reality. If waiting for a player to say the right line of dialogue or figure something out that they are supposed to do, they'll stand there looking around, silently blinking, waiting for something to happen for them to react to, just like the NPCs (Non Player Characters) in the video games of today. They have pre-programmed dialogue that they use to react when given the proper trigger, and their facial expressions serve as a reminder that they are really nothing but lines of code. 

The people playing the game also had characteristics that are common in video game protagonists, and after a while I began to see them as characters, and not actual people. In the movie it is explained that people playing the VR games get "game urges", inclinations in their mind that strongly tell them to do something, actions that elicit responses from NPCs and lead to discoveries that further the plot. It's really convincing, and watching it reminds me of video games I've played where a hint, or a phrase pops up onscreen and you immediately know what to do. In addition to this, there's a fairly linear plotline (for a while, everything goes to hell eventually) where the players receive objectives through dialogue and must complete them on their own, like in every game ever where the guy is like "hey, go do this, it's your quest" and you do it to find out what happens next. The narrative is structured like a video game, and that aspect of the movie is extremely well done. Cronenberg is either a gamer or he really did his homework on this one.

eXistenZ also stays true to Cronenberg's style, his "body horror" genre of movies. This deals with augmentation, degradation and transformation of the human body. It bears parallels to his other film Videodrome, where the main character grows a weird slot in his chest where he can put videotapes. In eXistenZ however, the characters stick an umbilical cord in their backs and go into a video game world in a Matrix-esque (ehhhh, maybe more like Inception now that I think of it) transcendence of reality. And that is another theme that is also explored in Videodrome. Man's interaction with technology, his reliance on it for entertainment. Where does it end? Will we eventually be able to alter reality so much that we can't tell what's real and what isn't? Is that a bad thing? What moral and ethical rules apply in a virtual game world? I guess we'll have to wait until science catches up with David Cronenberg to find out.