How I Evaluate in General

Today, I was thinking and thought I’d share “how” I think with you all. I don’t think that it’s a phenomenal method by any means. I just thought it’d be an interesting topic for today. So how do I think? I make two assumptions.

1. Humans are rational actors
2. Information can be shared

Let’s cover some definitions real quick.

What is a “Rational Actor”?

I’m pretty sure I use the definition we used in my economics classes. A rational actor is a being who makes decisions they believe are in their best interested based on the information they have at hand. For example, at the First Battle of Savo Island, VADM Mikawa was presented with an opportunity after his fleet’s overwhelming success in the battle. Does he attack the transports at Savo Island or does he leave. He decides to leave. Why?

1. The charts necessary to safely navigate the archipelago had been destroyed in the battle.
2. Attacking means that he would be returning to base in the morning, so he would have to deal with allied CV aircraft harassment the whole way back.

What he didn’t know was that the CVs he was concerned about had already left the AO. He is quoted as saying had he known he could attack the transports safely, of course he would’ve done that. But he made his decision based on the information he had at hand.

What is “Information”?

Information is any statement someone believes to be true. Information can be shared means that these “facts” (they need not necessarily be true, only believed to be true) can be distributed.

Pitfalls

Of course, this isn’t a perfect framework. “Best interest” is fairly loosely defined since it can span over seconds or over decades. We just say let that come out in the wash. Humans aren’t always rational actors. And the things you believe to be true, need not necessarily be true. That said, I think despite this it’ll again, all come out in the wash. In the worst case scenarios I assume:

1. Actions made by groups of people that don’t lead to successful outcomes have a basis in something and we can find value in that something.
2. Actions made by groups of people that lead to successful outcomes will eventually outnumber those made by unsuccessful people due to spread of information.

So for (1), let’s suppose we saw a bunch of people jumping off of a bridge. My basic assumption is that there’s probably a good reason that everyone’s jumping off of the bridge and it may be beneficial for me to do so as well. At worst, even if jumping off of the bridge isn’t the best idea, there was something that made so many people think that jumping off the bridge was their best option. And figuring out what that something is is its own value. (2) is obviously just an appeal to law of large number analogues. Of course the largest pitfall of course is my base assumption that information can be shared. Which means in an illiberal society in which information is suppressed (Nope, not even the United States is safe) there will be a breaking point for my evaluation methods.

General Conclusion

But this brings us to my general conclusion which is that people trend to do what is most beneficial for them. Talk is cheap but people vote with their feet. Information of success is shared, so people will trend to do what is most successful. Which means if you see people fleeing a city en masse like rats off a ship, then something in that city is no bueno. If you see a lot of streamers popping up doing the same thing, that particular thing must be successful. But I also extend this even further. If the most stable countries are democratic, then democracy must be the most successful means of running a country. If a company no longer sells a certain product, it’s not a successful product. If an algorithm is most commonly written a certain way, that way must be the best for some reason or another.

Basically, again, behavior tends towards what’s most successful. Next time you see a company, a country, an organization engaging in what you think is unhealthy or even predatory, remember that it’s likely the result of a number of observations and shared information. It’s done because it works and it’s what works best as far as we know. I often complain about how ubiquitous clicker games are on the play store but the reason they’re so ubiquitous is because they’re easy to make and they’re successful. I VEHEMENTLY despise early access and pre-order because it’s often done in predatory manner but the reason it’s done is because it works. I get so worked up about gamers letting companies engage in bad releases because “it’s release day, it’s expected to be a little wonky” when back in my day you got what the company shipped and you couldn’t patch it. So if it was bad, it was bad, and you told everyone it was bad. Stop excusing bad behavior Jesus fucking Christ. But eh, don’t hate the player, hate the game. But I think that’s everything from me. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Helltaker

Steam Page

Oh lord, where do I begin. Helltaker is a short puzzle game consisting of 10 levels, culminating in a boss fight with an extra stage if you guys wanted something extra. You can push rocks, you can punch demons. Your goal is to get to the demoness waifu at the back and she starts hiding behind locked doors very quickly. When you do get there you need to pass a pass-fail one question quiz and if you fail, gotta do it again. But it’s a puzzle so it’s not like the solution changes within the same stage. 

Helltaker has a delightful sense of humor that makes no bones about its premise. Yup, Helltaker is a guy that went into hell to get demon waifus. No, he’s not ashamed of it, and he shouldn’t be. My mans an absolute chad. How many guys tell you they’d go through hell for you? You think they’d do it? My mans did it 10 times. To be fair, the demon waifus are hella cute. Oh yeah, there’s an angel there somewhere for… some reason. Says she’s doing research but we know what you’re really doin 😉

The puzzles aren’t terribly complex. You can step, you can push, and you can punch. That’s it. You don’t need to learn any combos, just figure out what to push where to get to the waifu. The music is an absolute banger. Normally I’d get pissed off if the same track looped for hours but during my playthrough while I noticed the loop, I didn’t particularly mind. 

The boss fight(s) step away from the original premise of puzzle pushing but I’m not too bothered by that since it only does it twice and I assume only because the creators couldn’t figure out how to make an intense puzzle satisfying? It’s OK though these are the hardest parts of the game since you can’t sit there and puzzle it out, taking your time to think. You’ve gotta memorize the patterns and go, go, go. 

There’s really not much else to go into. The game is free, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, the music is great, the humor is great, and the characters are great. Definitely recommend. 

Video of my playthrough can be found here. That’s pretty much it. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Seraph

Steam Page

Seraph is a short run and gun game focusing on mobility and skill usage. Here’s the quick lore rundown so if you don’t like spoilers, just look at my thumbs down rating and call it at that. I’ll also note that I can’t guarantee that this is 100% the “true lore” since there are logs I never read but I’m not replaying the game just to get those so come at me bro. 

Seraph is a being who is borrowing the body of a woman named Talia. The borrow period was intended to be 48 hours but let’s just say someone overstayed their welcome. The goal was to assassinate some person we’re told is evil. Unfortunately, Talia ruined the plan, alerting a group called “The Faith” who captured Seraph and Talia and imprisoned them on a ship that is meant to never be seen by most of the world. They do this with the intent to research Seraph and it seems some of their research bore fruit since they got some kind of medicinal stuff from it. This boat sails for three years and then… we don’t know what happens next. Seraph allegedly calls in some Daemons and they slaughter the guards permitting Seraph to escape. 

Seraph began this mission without permission from God so she’s told that He’s abandoned it. Seraph is tempted by Guide (who is later discovered to be the game’s equivalent to Satan) to abandon God fully and join Satan in ruling the Earth. Whether you join Satan or not is up to you. 

Clearly there’s meant to be a lot of religious references here. Seraph is never going home, so everything it does is meaningless if it plans to return to Heaven. Satan offers an alternative where if you’re stuck on Earth no matter what, does it really matter what you do? Do you strike your conscience if there’s no reward to be found at the end of the tunnel? 

That’s probably the best case I can make for the “Question” of the game’s story. However there’s really not a whole lot in the game that reinforces this question and these themes. The game is surprisingly short, having only 2 boss battles. The story dumps for Seraph happen only at the beginning and end of each level. And there were what, 20-25 levels? Something like that. 

The game is a run and gun platformer with crystals you can use to enhance your abilities. You have a dash that provides iframes, you have miracles you can use to help clear enemies. For each stage, you need to beat a minor boss and move to the next stage. Sometimes you have to like a wave defense sorta thing instead but it’s the same, only in this case the boss is the portal-ish crystal. There’s a difficulty scaling which I never figured out how it increased but I’m sure it’s important for something. Aiming is done automatically (thank God) so all you need to do is focus on your positioning. 

I do not like the movement in this game. Jumps were clunky and there were many times where I did not get my second jump when I felt like I should. I suspect it’s timer based not touch-floor based. The blink is also clunky to me. Controlling your jumps, blinks, and midair movement is just so clunky that I pretty much always felt like I was fighting the controls to get my character where I wanted them.

Map design isn’t the best either. The clunky movement could be a bit more forgivable if the levels were a bit more open so you have a bit more leeway on the clunkiness but many of the levels have various barriers around you. You can shoot through floors and thank Christ you can or the game could’ve been a lot more annoying. One of the worst things for me is how from a design view holes and platforms aren’t readily apparent. Sure, since the holes in the floor or ceiling are consistent per stage it won’t take much time to figure it out but I think floors and holes should not disappear into the background the way they do in this game. 

I said earlier that it’s a run and gun and that’s really all it is. Your pistols have infinite ammo, you fire them when you see enemies and you hold that fire button down until all enemies are gone. See a boss? Switch to your secondary weapon (SMG for me) and you blink through their attacks or you use your repel skill if you still have it equipped. Minor bosses can be really trivial and many of them are depending on the room you wind up fighting them in. It was as simple as reading the attack and blinking backwards and forwards through them. Even the final boss took me a mere 4-5 tries and I’m not going to say that I was any good. Was still using low level gear. 

Some other minor notes: It seems that the game was designed to be replayed as after you beat the boss you can NG+. Though after making my choice I didn’t see any kind of indication that it mattered. No immediate cutscene, no post-credits cutscene. Did any of this make a difference? Maybe I gotta find all the lore bits for that but that involves playing through the some 20-25 levels at least once more completely and then a little more if the achievement for 50 means “all of them”. There’s also Twitch integration stuff which I was unable to test because that sorta thing requires an existing audience to put in commands. Also I refuse to use Twitch. 

Unfortunately if your game is going to be a run and gun you need the running and gunning to be satisfying and I’m sorry to say that level design and controls make this a no for me. The story simply falls flat, there’s nothing that makes the characters stand out. It’s a little too bland for me. 

Videos for my playthrough may be found at:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2

That’s it from me, thanks for reading. 

Artemis Hunt 

Misconceptions in Media Criticisms

This is one I have to grapple with a lot. Now I’ve stopped doing video and movie reviews because I don’t have the time and I’ve been developing my art/Japanese skills. But I’m still fairly active on social media and I still voice my opinion on particular pieces of media that I’m familiar with. The obvious example is Star Wars. I get pretty hard pushback which eventually comes down to “That’s just like, your opinion man”. So let’s all take a breather and go through the common misconceptions of quality in media.

Money != Quality

I can’t believe we have to go through this but here we go. The amount of money spent and earned by a particular piece of media is not an indication of whether it is of high quality. I’m going to use games for this example but in general the principle applies.

The amount of money earned by a game is determined by the number of copies it sells. The amount of copies it sells is based on many things, but let’s just use advertising. Obviously reviews matter but you need to sell copies to get reviews (or at least you’re SUPPOSED to purchase and play the game before reviewing) so we’ll discount them for the example. Once you purchase the game, you typically don’t refund it if you’re dissatisfied (for most people it’s too much of a hassle or a used game cannot be refunded for full value, yadda yadda). So now that you’ve purchased the game you’re stuck with it like it or not. So assuming two games A and B of different qualities sell the same number of copies for the same price through the same distributor, they will earn the same amount of money despite being of different qualities. Q.E.D.

Consensus!= Quality

I get this one the most. If a lot of people like something then surely it’s good right? Now there is some basis for this kind of argument. If a lot of people enjoy The Godfather, a lot of people enjoy The Lord of the Rings, a lot of people enjoy Game of Thrones. If a lot of people like these things, then surely there’s something in there. Even if people don’t know what it is, you can understand that there’s something which provides this quality. Ironically, this is why reboots/remakes/references often fail. Because they tried to emulate that thing people liked but misunderstood what that thing was.

The simplest example could be Legend of Korra. Korra is Katara if they turned the aggression up to 11. Katara was always fairly gentle and motherly. It’s her main trait. This is why when she does go full BAMF, it’s so effective. Korra on the other hand is always going full BAMF. She doesn’t seem to understand what it is to be gentle and the writing for the show in general doesn’t attempt to create the gap. The beauty is in the gap and how it’s evoked.

Anyway, back on topic. You don’t need to know how to create fire or what fire is to understand that it’s warm and it can cook your food. So this argument that a lot of people liked or even the reverse argument, that because a lot of people dislike a piece of media that the media is good or bad. What it means is that some number of people believe that the media is good or bad. How did they reach this conclusion. The devil is in the details. We’ll talk more about that later.

Reviews as a metric

A lot of people like to use reviews on their favorite websites as a meter for whether a movie is good or bad. This has several problem. The first is obviously that review bombing is a thing and even if you and I highly suspect that a review is part of a review bomb, it’s not fair to attribute reviews to a review bomb. Lots of people give a movie 10/10 because it pleases their political vision and a lot of people give a movie 1/10 because it flies in the face of their political vision. There are obvious cases of course (“1 Star because your director supported China”) but there are not so obvious cases (“1 star because you censored the movie to please China”). The distinction comes from the fact that media should be evaluated with the only piece of consideration being the media itself.

Anyway, in my view, using reviews to gauge whether media is good or bad is not a good metric anyway because the only way you can use this metric is if someone else has consumed the media and applied their own personal metrics to the media. It is my view that (again) media should be evaluated on their own merits, not the merits that someone else has ascribed to them. I should be able to evaluate the quality of media after consuming it myself and requiring no other information.

Outside Material

We’re seeing a lot of stuff here from my Star Wars debates but this is important to talk about because it comes up with anime reviews and game reviews as well. That is, the idea of a particular canon being required to appreciate the media “properly”. To sum it up briefly, the idea that you need to consume media outside the media under consideration to give it a “proper” rating. “You have to read the light novel to appreciate the movie” is an example of this. “This was explained in the novel”. I believe this argument is fundamentally flawed because this media is not always accessible and it’s not like the media says “Please consume this other thing before consuming this media”. It’s sometimes implied, in the way of prequel/sequel relationships. But what do you do if there is no clear way of understanding what’s a prequel and what’s a sequel? Star Wars: A New Hope was originally released without a number. Today we know it as Episode IV but what if it’s found 1000000000 years from now by alien archaeologists and they decide to watch it only to find later that there’s a Star Wars Episode I. Now they’re confused. “This one has no number, this one has the number I. Which one should be viewed first?” Even worse, should a completely different media be required.

Ultimately, while media can be appreciated differently if one has related knowledge, it shouldn’t be a requirement to consume and it shouldn’t be a primary factor in evaluation. I did something like this in my Minoria review (and only now do I realize I never posted it here) in that I analyzed Minoria as a stand-alone work but I did make a comparison to related media.

How should we evaluate media?

We need to establish an objective metric. Now hold on, before you go raging on your keyboard let’s talk for a moment. When I say objective here, I’m referring to a series of standards applied to media. Yes, reviews are my opinion but they can be objective in that I’ve applied a series of criteria to the media and “stayed within the rules” while evaluating them. Certainly one should be careful to choose an appropriate metric when applying it to particular media. If the focus of a game is the action, I tend to be more generous when giving it the thumbs up/thumbs down if the story is of poor quality because it’s not the focus on the media.

So you need to establish a series of criteria. This is where everything goes downhill when discussing things online. It is simply the truth that different people use different criteria and different people apply their criteria with a different weight. So when you’re discussing things online with someone who disagrees with you, you’re not really trying to get them to agree with you because the same data point can be a plus in your criteria and a minus in theirs at the same time. No, your objective is to get them to change their criteria and understand why your criteria is a better one for evaluating media.

How do you do this? Honestly, I don’t know. I am still trying to figure it out myself. Because this is where we run into the next big issue:

Criticism != Personal Attacks

In my opinion, this is probably the biggest one. Something I need you to understand and to get everyone to understand is that criticism of something you like isn’t a personal attack on you. It is imperative that you understand this. It is perfectly acceptable to like media that is bad. This is kind of the point of “So bad it’s good”. The idea that a media is so awful that one can enjoy not only in spite of this poor quality but due to this poor quality is the point.

I have a confession. I love Pacific Rim. I’ve always loved giant robots and seeing them come to life on the screen was big for me. But the movie has several inconsistencies. Some things just don’t make sense. The Chinese triplets control a mech with 3 arms because there are 3 people inside but generally the mech moves a corresponding body part. Since none of the triplets have a third arm, how do they control the third arm? It’s not explained in the movie, it’s taken as fact and sure, that’s OK. But it’s a glaring flaw in the face of how all other mechs in the movie seem to operate. I’m going to enjoy the movie anyway, because cool giant robot punching cool giant monsters is still really fucking cool.

If someone says to me, “Pacific Rim is a bad movie and here’s why” I wouldn’t feel personally attacked. “Oh, I enjoyed something with inconsistent writing, I guess I’m a moron”. I might disagree if they said using a container as brass knuckles wasn’t really cool but being cool is one of those things everyone has a different taste for. In terms of criteria, it would fall under “spectacle” and typically I don’t say media is good on terms of “spectacle” alone. In fact I’ve often said that despite all of the spectacle a media can be fairly hollow, and that if you want something more than spectacle, find a different title.

We really need to understand some common ground here. If someone says something you like is bad and then lists reasons of why and your only response is “Well, I liked it” that’s not a refutation. Your objective (if you want to change their mind) has to be to either refute their argument or convince them to change their criteria. In my experience, this has proven to be fairly difficult.

I guess the short version is: You’re allowed to like whatever you want to like. You liking (or disliking) something doesn’t make it a good or bad piece of media. Anyway, I guess that’s all I had to say. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition

Steam

Not sure why ‘Windows Edition’ is important but whatever, it’s in the title on Steam.

Don’t think that this is going to be a habit or anything. I just happen to have had some extra time because I finished my certification courses and I’m waiting for the certificate to come in the mail.

I want to preface this review by saying I absolutely hate JRPGs. I hate the grind, I hate the backtracking, I (generally) hate turn-based combat, I hate the lack of good story, I hate the cliched characters. I just hate JRPGs. I’ve started several Final Fantasies, I’ve only finished one. That is to say, I’ve only finished Final Fantasy VI. Because I got sucked into the stories and the characters. Outside of that, I really couldn’t find myself getting attached to characters in any of the other ones I’ve tried.

This game is fantastic. It manages to avoid most of the major pitfalls that come with JRPGs. Taking place in a 3D world definitely plays to the game’s credit. It’s easy to get lost in the scenery while you’re traveling throughout the world. The Backstreet Boys also keep things interesting with their little dialogues and being able to listen to music from the other Final Fantasy games (and NieR… for some reason) really passes the time. Best part is, you don’t even have to suffer the drive if you’re traveling to parking spots or towns. Just fast travel. The grind is still there but relatively tolerable because the combat is actually fun even if simple and repetitive. When it works, it feels very fluid and you feel like a total hero flying from monster to monster. When it doesn’t work, the real monster is the camera trying to film you through 10 meters of foliage or through a wall. This didn’t happen often enough to me to really be annoying though. The characters are great. I found myself really appreciating the characters. I think this game gets by by having the characters fully developed before you really interact with them. They already exist and you don’t have to create them and the story doesn’t have to bend to meet your personal choices. And honestly? This Band of Brothers is just really cool. The way they interact and rely on each other really makes you feel like these characters have a history together. They’re all pretty likeable as long as you don’t look too hard at the story.

Which I guess brings me to what I believe is the game’s biggest flaw. The story. While there’s an advantage to having the characters developed before the game, there isn’t as much of an advantage of having the lore developed before the game. This game seems to assume some level of background knowledge to the lore and I have no idea where any of this comes from. I want to lose myself in this game, in the story, but it feels like there are so many pieces that were chopped out and I have no idea where to find them. Granted, I am still looking around the map for little things to read, but I dunno. Something about this presentation rubs me the wrong way. Another major flaw would be its load times and the last (and this one annoyed me for a few before I found a workaround) is that the game would often crash my computer. Not crash to desktop, literally crash my computer.

The open-world setting works well with the character because without a sense of direction it really just feels like the Fantastic Four being the Fantastic Four. Really. I just really like the camaraderie of these guys and playing the game is just bros being bros. In my view, the game is really relaxing. Just pick a direction and go there. Eventually I’d get overleveled and decide maybe it’s time to do the story but then I realized that the story is super short. This has to be one of the shorter Final Fantasy games because it feels like it just flew by. Or maybe time flies when you’re having fun? Who knows.

Either way, I really do commend Final Fantasy XV for being a great game and I do recommend it to people. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse

Steam

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse picks up where Risky’s Revenge left off, with Shantae still effectively human. The town is getting bulldozed by its Mayor, Ammo Baron (yes, he’s still Mayor) and you decide to stop him. Unfortunately, this is effectively rebellion, so you get a court summons. While under house arrest, you uncover a lead into the revival of the Pirate King and decide to stop it. Who cares about court summons, amirite?

I’ll say outright that Pirate’s Curse is better than Risky’s Revenge. It maintains the quirky design and pleasing aesthetic of the first game.  It decided to go full 2D this time though, so that’s an improvement in my books. The movement feels so much more fluid and the movement options unlocked throughout the game feel better. You get a glide, a dash, and an extra triple jump… which you lose… in the final boss fight… because design decisions.

What I find most amusing is that this game sorta solves the problems of Risky’s Revenge while also adopting some problems that the old problem solved. The backtracking is less insufferable. Might be level design making it a bit more enjoyable to go through them. Luckily the backtracking is mitigated in Pirate mode (unlocked after beating the game once). Honestly, what might have fixed it for me in backtracking might be the addition of a new item called “Pirate’s Flare” which is effectively an escape rope. Tired of a map’s BS? Get out of the labyrinth and flare back to base. Speaking of items, they’ve rebalanced the items to be less broken and now none of them are required to unlock certain areas. Health drops regularly (if you’re killing enemies) and you can use these drops whenever you like instead of immediately.

There are few things more frustrating than entering a screen only to get knocked back because instant dash enemy. Yet here we are. Insufferable stealth section and the climb to the final boss is a series of spike traps that exist purely to try my patience. No enemies. Just spikes. And lord save you if you game ogre there because the save point is not between spike hells but rather at the beginning and at the end. Bring all of the potions.

Let’s talk about the final boss fight. Now in Risky’s Revenge, I didn’t really dock points for the game taking away all of your transformations because they weren’t really used for combat. The time required to dance for them took away from the pacing anyway. However, in this game, most of your upgrades are movement upgrades. Which means you don’t pause to use them and you’ve been using them the entire game. And they were instrumental in spike pit hell because each puzzle room was set up to utilize a specific upgrade. So by the time you’ve gotten to the boss, you’re pretty used to using them like, all the time. You get to use them for phase 1 of the boss. Then the boss takes them away. Then you have to deal with phase 2 with limited movement. Then phase 3 which is phase 2 with some extra patterns. And phase 4 which can be cancer because it’s not the same kind of combat you had been doing all game.

Look, the final boss is a test. A test on all of the skills we’ve obtained up until now. You don’t teach us all of the math required to do the exam and then give us a stinkin’ psychology exam instead of a math exam. That’s completely unfair to the player

But when the game works, it works. Pirate Mode (again, unlocked after playing through the game one) is a great replay option if you’re into that sorta thing. The game is legitimately enjoyable and the characters are as delightful as ever. I’m going to give this game a pass, but not by much. Be prepared. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Aho Girl

Aho Girl is about a girl who is totally fucking retarded. The show is totally fucking retarded. Yet I can’t stop watching it. What am I doing with my life.

Aho Girl is a short anime (I think every episode is like 15 minutes). It’s a collection of short little stories (5-10 minutes apiece) and they’re all dumb. The characters are all degenerates (except Sayaka, you’re an angel).

Akutsu is a violent domestic abuser in his early years thanks to his experiences with Yoshiko. Yoshiko (‘Aho girl’) is a retard with a magical ability to make everything around her get dumber. Sayaka is a pure angel that has no reason to be in this anime. Yoshiko’s mother is a degenerate who (on screen!?!?!!!) admitted to effectively raping Yoshiko’s father. Oppai Incho (yeah, who remembers her name anyway?) is a delusional stalker. There’s some delinquent that also suffers from stupidity. Oh, and I guess Akutsu’s sister also has that curse. And there’s a dog that is pretty much a bro? Dog’s cool I guess. His name actually is Dog. Guess whose pet he is.

There isn’t an overarching story. It’s just the lives of these people. This anime being short is actually a point in its favour because it’s so bad that you can’t get attached to characters (except Sayaka, and she only sticks out because she’s normal) but it’s also so bad that you have to watch it. Also, the opening theme is extremely catchy. It’s like this rap that at one point goes all opera and then becomes a rap again.

I guess this anime subscribes to the ‘Family Guy’ approach to comedy. Hit the audience with something mildly amusing, and then move the attention to something else mildly amusing. Since you never have too much time to stew on how stupid what you’re laughing at is, it’s good enough to keep you amused for the 15 minutes.

Overall, I’d say watch it. It’s so bad it’s good. Thanks for reading.

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

I wanted to love this movie. I did, truly. I guess you already know how the rest of this review goes but do try to stay with me here, I’m not just a crying fanboy. While I drafted this with minimal spoilers, there still are spoilers ahead so consider this your spoiler warning.

So Ghost in the Shell is a manga from the late eighties, a movie from the mid-nineties, and an anime from the early 2000’s. This franchise has been through a lot, and I’ve been a fan of it for a very long time. The 1995 movie, while slow-paced, is an excellent work of art that conveys the messages that it wants to convey quite clearly. The Major, Batou, and Aramaki are some of my favourite characters from manga. The Major has this playful nature, Batou… is the butt(ou) of several jokes, and Aramaki is a sly fox that you can’t help but admire. Togusa representing the stubborn, older generation. Most of the other members had augmentations that made their job easier (Saitou’s vision, for example). Others augment themselves for fun (Borma’s liver augmentation). I guess the point that I’m trying to get across is that Ghost in the Shell represented a crossroads in our future where all of these types of people coexisted. We weren’t all cyborgs and we aren’t all humans. And the characters are all so relatable, it’s hard for me to pick ones that I don’t like. Even in the older movie, it was incredibly difficult for me to dislike the Puppetmaster, rather I disliked some of his actions (the poor man with false memories).

Maybe this one was a little close to home, and I shouldn’t have gone in because of that. Let’s talk about what I liked about the movie first.

The movie is visually appealing. I can almost see the future with holographic advertisements the size of skyscrapers already. While I see the payphones on the side of the street disappearing (sorry 1995) I can see the idea of more robots in the service industry. Hell, Japan, in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympics is already constructing hotels run by robots dinosaurs. ROBOT DINOSAURS! Come on man! ROBOT FRICKIN DINOSAURS! There are some great special effects, however I believe the movie failed to capitalize on the 3D. Especially the scenes where The Major is getting painted back to normal, mesmerized me every time.

The acting is fantastic. ScarJo knows how to play her character (most of the time) and there were some great scenes where you could really see how her movements felt robotic, like it wasn’t a natural human body. In the source material The Major is a little more playful, which is what I liked about it, but eh, new adaptation, different direction. I’m not terribly bothered because what ScarJo did do, she did well.

Before I move on, I do want to take a moment to address the whitewashing controversy. Anyone that complains about it doesn’t understand the source material. The Major’s origins are notoriously mysterious (within source material, which this movie dodged for the most part). And I think that anyone that complains about the whitewashing doesn’t quite get the point. See, the major is effectively a human inside a machine and (I believe) the point that Shirow was trying to make with the character of The Major was that none of the external features really matter (and this is very effectively demonstrated in the 1995 movie). Quite simply, there’s nothing in the source material (that I recall) that makes The Major “Motoko”. In fact, there’s nothing that really makes The Major female. Sure, the exoskeleton appears female, but it could have easily been male. The Major itself could easily be ‘male’ (if we’re going by original personality) but again, that doesn’t matter. That’s the point of The Major.

I don’t know where they found Batou (Pilou Asbaek) but he was perfect. I don’t think they could have picked a better Batou. Christ I loved his Batou. He just seemed so buff! Kuze (Michael Pitt) exaggerated the little robotic flairs of The Major. I’m not sure how much of that was CG, but the line delivery was spot on. He really played himself off as the villain we could all sympathize with even if corporates didn’t turn into assholes.

There are some notable exceptions to the excellent acting. Togusa’s character (Chin Han) had like two lines the entire movie and they were delivered in such a way that I felt like it detracted from how naive the Togusa of old seemed to be. But this isn’t just nostalgia bait, he gave the line so quickly and so flatly “I am a human, and I will always be 100% human” that I felt like the line was wasted. I also don’t like exposition that way, especially when that line served no purpose for the entire movie.

I do wonder why Aramaki spoke Japanese for the entire movie. He clearly understood English, as everyone else spoke in English and the others clearly understood Japanese (maybe they had a translator in their ear or something). But with what little screen-time he had, he did exude badass. And while we’re on the topic of Japanese, why was Hanka always pronounced as hay-n-ka? Should’ve been pronounced Ha-n-ka and every time they pronounced it incorrectly I would cringe. Sounds weird when you read and hear Japanese most of the time.

Okay, let’s talk about what I didn’t like. Everything else.

I don’t think this is really “Ghost in the Shell”. The original Ghost in the Shell discussed several existential themes regarding humanity and what it means as we merge man and machine. It also addressed how these things would impact our day-to-day lives, and how these things could be abused by corporations and governments. It’s not like the source material lacked things to really discuss. And I don’t feel like I got much of that out of this movie. I feel like it was sorta just mentioned, and then we moved on so we could get to the action scenes. The action scenes weren’t terrible, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not really what I paid for. Other scenes didn’t seem to connect too well if you ask me. I feel like we may have been shown a series of loosely connected stories, which is kind of what the manga did… but I don’t think that a movie should be doing that sort of thing.

The language (Ghost, Shell) seemed very forced every time they were used, to the point where I feel like it would’ve been more natural to use ‘soul’ instead of ‘ghost’ every time they mentioned it. But this is due to line delivery, in the source material ghost is used so matter-of-factly that it doesn’t really leave an impact. But the doctor says “But the important part of you, your humanity, your ghost, is still there” is practically romantic so the language doesn’t seem to fit the line.

They ripped a scene straight out of I, Robot (a beloved favourite of mine), and I, Robot did it better.

My biggest complaint might be the Motoko subplot. It gets introduced about twenty minutes before the end of the movie and is resolved like five minutes after it’s introduced. And quite honestly, I don’t mind its inclusion at all. I have several problems about how it was included. First – why is the effective introduction of the subplot at the END of the movie, rather than towards the beginning? I feel like it would’ve been more effective had it been placed much earlier, perhaps right before the bar scene. And the extra irony about that scene is despite everyone complaining that ScarJo isn’t Japanese, the way they characterized Motoko’s mother looked distinctly Chinese. Just saiyan. The second thing is how very little we have to go on. There’s a glitch that The Major continues to see and it’s really the only thing she has to go on and The Major sort of just accepts that she’s Motoko but I personally don’t feel that the audience has enough information to come to that conclusion. The pieces of evidence she has are the memories of the burning building, watching her allies get kidnapped, and the name she was told by the Chinese lady. Sure, it’s “confirmed” by Kuze but I don’t think he should’ve had the information to make that conclusion either.

Long story short, I believe the movie failed to deliver on its source material, and just became another Hollywood action movie. Which I find depressing because of my attachment to the source material, but that’s fine. I would not recommend this movie. The pacing seems poor and the scenes incoherent. While there is some beautiful imagery, I don’t think that there’s enough of a movie here, let alone Ghost in the Shell. Thanks for reading

Artemis Hunt

Super Impossible Road

Steam Page

I write this review as the game is still in Early Access. I say that not because I plan to go easy on the game or something, just as a heads up to those that will consider buying the game. I’ve always maintained that “Early Access” is not an excuse for how good or bad a game is. Once you put it on the marketplace, you’re fair game… in my opinion.

Super Impossible Road is a racing game. There’s really not much to say about racing games in general. You control a ball. You can modify your ball to have the stats that you want it to have but let’s be real here, does anyone ever care enough to min-max perfectly? If you do, please send me a message, I need to know what’s going on in your head.

The tracks have gates on them which fill up your boost bar. Using boost makes your ball go a little faster (obviously). Where this game differs from other racing games that I’ve played is that you can jump off the track to “cheat” your way to finish line faster. That’s why the game’s tagline “Winning is cheating”. Now you can’t just jump off the track and free fall to the finish line for victory. The game would be too easy in that case. Upon leaving the track, you have five seconds to return to the track. If you fail to touch the track in that time, you will automatically respawn at the last boost gate you touched. Which means that you have to be really careful about deciding when to ‘cheat’. Otherwise you may waste up to five seconds. If you see the writing on the wall that you’re not going to make it, you can force respawn early.

The tracks can be fairly complex. At this time, while there are only three ‘tracks’, the tracks are procedurally generated so it’s like having an infinite number of tracks? There’s also a daily track where you can compete with people across the world for the top score.

The game is aesthetically appealing (to me) with that ‘Tron’ feel. I’m not the biggest fan of EDM so there’s only one or two soundtracks that I like but it definitely matches the feel of the game. Excellent job.

While the game does have multiplayer, it seems it only has local multiplayer. Perhaps they will change that as it is still in early access. You can still have CPU racers and you can even race against your ghost. So it has some rudimentary tools.

Anyway, at the time of writing, the game is priced at $12. While I do like the game for what it does, I don’t think it’s worth $12 yet. Do it if you want to support the creators but other than that, I’d wait for it to go on sale or something for $5 or $6. I’m not the biggest fan of racing games so I won’t dump too many hours into it, but in my opinion, it does look promising. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Re: Zero

This one has been in the queue for a while because I’m always late to the party but really because it has impressive plot. I mean, look at that plot.

No, not everything I do can be motivated by cute anime girls, gimme a break (Seriously though, Rem best girl).

A lot of people have hyped this one and I figured with cute battle maids, it can’t be all that bad, right? Right.

So Re: Zero tells the story of a useless idiot that for some reason is called to a fantasy world. He expects the whole protagonist thing where you’re ‘The chosen one’ but finds out that he’s totally fucking useless. His only power seems to be to return to a very specific point in time every time he dies with all of the knowledge of the life he had before. I know there’s source material that I haven’t read, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that his power is to rewind time but rather to send his consciousness back in time. It is through repeatedly dying that Subaru solves the various problems that come his way.

Subaru is the inversion (yep, gonna have to use that word again) of the typical video game (not saying that this is a game) protagonist. Comparing Subaru to SAO’s Kirito or Log Horizon’s Shiroe, he’s useless. He’s closer to Kazuma from my recent KonoSuba review. His only talent (and it’s a damn good one to be quite frank) is his ability to send his consciousness back in time (I swear that has to be his real ability despite openings suggesting otherwise). Because it allows him to navigate ‘Dead Ends’ similar to the quickload function in my visual novels.

This sort of power is kind of a mess to deal with because it’s so easy to make it seem like a deus ex machina device and in reality it kind of is. What I like about the way it’s executed here is that Subaru has to die first. And it might seem terrible but I think that’s the most important part. In other series this power might be activated like a ‘Get out of jail free card’ but Subaru actually has to experience the full death in order for this power to activate. Which can be excruciating because it can take a while to die.

Unfortunately when your character can return to a save point, it can make relationships between characters difficult to effectively establish because you’re playing with cause and effect. What this means is that you have to rely more on character interaction itself.Not saying that it’s a bad thing, just that it’s something to consider and all things considered I believe Re: Zero effectively executes this. And I do like how the various tragedies that happen to Subaru turn him from this otaku that was happy to find himself in the magical world into this man that has died several times and quite frankly doesn’t want to deal with this bullshit anymore. And the transformation is effectively communicated because you can easily see the intermediate steps, very well done.

My main complaint with the show is motivation and plot. Quite frankly, there isn’t any. At the end of the second season I find myself asking ‘What was the point of all that. What have I learned’. And I don’t think I’ve learned anything. So it feels like everything was pointless. Now you could point to the Royal selection process and say ‘Aha! That was the plot you nimwit’ to which I’m going to have to say ‘No, no it is not’. You are confusing ‘backdrop’ with ‘plot’ Understandable, yes, but they’re not the same thing. The backdrop is something that may set things in motion and continuously acts from behind the scenes. The plot is our reason for moving forward and quite frankly, there isn’t anything. Nothing feels natural.Most of all, Subaru’s feelings for not-best-girl. Subaru says he’s motivated by Emilia’s smile and whatnot but something weird happens and it gets to the point where what was once sweet and charming becomes downright deluded and creepy. And there are things he says that make me cringe. Jesus Christ dude.

Okay, maybe I’m being unfair to Emilia because Rem is just everything I need in a woman and also because her character is probably the most fleshed out one of the main cast post-resets. But the amount of character in the characters is remarkably tiny. We only really get development of Rem. I’ll also remind you that Rem probably has one of the most beautiful, heartfelt confessions in anime history and her character is also great and Subaru still turns her down. SUBARU. WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING.

Overall, a very beautiful anime with some epic music. While the anime wasn’t as great as I was led to believe, I definitely enjoyed watching it even if it didn’t really make any sense. If another season comes out, I’ll probably watch it. Those are my thoughts, thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt