Let's Play...

Oh, the perils of watching someone else play through a videogame on YouTube.

There's something to be said for playing a game yourself, and certainly the experience is going to be very different... but the Let's Play phenomenon allows you to sit back and see the game in its distilled form - what is the experience really like underneath the flash presentation?

Lately, I've been watching a playthrough of LA Noire, the big, new, open-world experience being peddled under the Rockstar Games brand. As someone who was alive when games first made the transition from 3.5" floppy disc to CD, giving rise to the much-maligned (though often not without reason) 'interactive movie', there are many superficial similarities. Whereas the old IM format might try to include some form of point-and-click 'adventure' interface for getting from scene to scene, LA Noire lets you walk, run or drive (not even necessarily a police car - commandeering a civilian vehicle 'unlocks' it for future use) in fully-explorable 3D.

Now, sure, watching someone else play, you only get to explore the areas they choose to explore, and if they follow the case from A to B, you're not going to see much of Team Bondi's recreation of 1947 Los Angeles - just the billboards and cars and fashions that the player is passing by (and frequently not even noticing - so often I get frustrated by the background details that are ignored in LPs, even though I don't notice everything myself when I play. The experience is diminished, in short, because you can only truly appreciate the effort that has gone into making this living, breathing city by playing the game yourself...

...But, then, surely this begs the question of how important this 'living, breathing' background really is to the experience, considering how many players are likely to miss most of it - be it through ignorance or disinterest - while playing the game? So much more so if the core game is just a case of searching for clues, asking the right questions, and treating NPCs with the appropriate level of suspicion.

In all honesty, entertained as I am by the various LA Noire Let's Plays, it feels like I'm watching a jazzed up version of Phoenix Wright, rather than a new, immersive, movie-like experience. The faces are more expressive than the anime-stylings of Capcom's courtroom drama, but I can't help thinking the could have saved themselves an awful lot of money (and possibly time and effort) by making LA Noire a more old-school interactive movie. Cut out the cost of mo-cap, facial mapping, and sorting out that massive 3D city, and invest instead in a few period costumes, pre-rendered backdrops and greenscreening. Then, let the actors act, rather than creating these 'uncanny valley' digital avatars that are brilliant in many ways, and yet still not quite right-looking. The faces are amazing to view - though it does seem occasionally that the features (eyes, nose, mouth) have been enlarged within the facial area, leading to a slightly alien look where the mouth is too near the chin, and the eyes are too near the sides of the face - but the arms and hands are still like those of a puppet. Mo-cap reads from the outside of the model/actor, and those readings are treated as being the internal, skeletal joints, rather than being transferred directly to the outer areas, so the movements aren't as natural as they should be.

Storywise, it's pretty good - broken down into (fairly simple) cases where, if you have the right evidence and adopt the right attitude to your suspects, it's all pretty cut-and-dried, but there are some interesting throwaway bits of background detail, such as the protagonist's WWII flashback, where he asks his team to ponder "what would we do if another country denied us the gas to run our cars?" Political statement? In a videogame? Surely not!

And then, something like Metal Gear Solid 4 appears all to frequently to be about 3 minutes of gameplay between movies of 10 minutes or more. Nowhere near as engaging as the old MSX/Gameboy Color overhead-view originals. They may look more convincing, and Snake may have a few more impressive moves in his repertoire, but it's like the game experience is being slowly eroded by the 'movie-like' experience. I will always prefer the former to the latter.

On a related note, Penny Arcade recently linked to this video of Jane McGonigal, on the merits of gamers... an interesting dissertation, to be sure, but I can't help thinking that too many gamers are too strongly rooted to their couches to actually put the theory into practice... though it's a similar concept to that which is explored in the anime series/movies Eden of the East: Create a system by which the problem-solvers have a forum in which they can offer and discuss solutions to problems, and problems will be solved.

Which leads me, strangely, to a movie I saw on TV last week, Noel Clarke's epic Kidulthood. It was a brilliant film, but very uncomfortable viewing, considering the characters were all supposed to be in the region of 15 years of age. I'd imagine the intention was to show the folly of the lifestyles explored, but I can imagine a lot of viewers, living similar lifestyles, might be very dismissive of this message. "It only went like that for them because they're all pussies... that'd never happen to me", sort of thing. It was very strange to see such an honest expression of the idea that some of these kids don't really have a problem with authority as much as they believe it's expected that they should... so they play the part, and eventually that character becomes them, to the detriment of their potential as individuals.

None of them are sympathetic characters - most of them are irredeemable morons - but even for the two characters who realise the error of their ways, there's no happy ending. Much as it undermines whatever message the movie might have had, it's a terribly real finale. Considering Clarke followed it up with Adulthood, following the later fortunes of one of the characters from the first movie, I wonder if both films would have been better off as TV miniseries... Sure, there would have been a bit more padding, but Kidulthood would have been rather more believable if it had been presented as the events of a week or so, rather than one day. Adulthood is on sometime this week, and I'm seriously considering watching it, even though I don't expect to enjoy it, in the traditional sense.

In real-life news, my sister and niece came to town over the weekend, though their appointment at Great Ormond Street was cancelled at the last minute. Kate is more delightful every time I see her - gradually learning to form something approaching a full sentence, even if I am having trouble understanding some of her words. My ears currently struggle to discern a difference between the word "granddad" and "doughnut", but perhaps that's just my subconscious letting me know I want some doughnuts.

Most amusingly, she calls my grandmother - her great grandmother - "big grandma", despite the fact that she's only about the same height as Kate's mother, significantly shorter than her grandmother. Maybe it's just a case of using 'big' as a synonym of 'great'.

Many years ago, I had a meal with an old schoolfriend and her young son (she was in the market for a new boyfriend/father to her child, and I suspect she felt that I might be in the running even though I very definitely did not), and she remarked at one point that there is nothing in the world as magical as the sound of a child's laughter, and I was reminded of this statement while visiting Kate. Listening to her giggle away as I pulled funny faces was quite therapeutic. And it's always nice to hear someone acknowledge that I'm funny (not so much if it's not intentional, though...) even if they have only just turned 2.

After lunch, she wanted "up, cuddle" and her uncle dutifully complied, carrying her back into the lounge as her mother began preparations for driving home. I'd like to say I kept her out of mischief, but feel that I would be remiss in my duties as Uncle were I to do so.

And, after the utterly grim trip to Swindon for her birthday last weekend, it was nice to be reminded that I am a memorable figure in her life - she knows me by name, and can even recognise me in pictures from several years ago, where my hair is different (read: less grey) and I have a goatee.

On the subject of last weekend... It served as another reminder of how strange a match my sister has made. When she and I were growing up, we didn't tend to have big family get-togethers for birthdays, including not just grandparents but uncles and cousins. Partly this is because our family just isn't as large, and wasn't necessarily always on such good terms... but I can understand why Kate gets 'present fatigue' when faced with her maternal grandparents and uncle, her paternal grandparents and uncle, their brothers, sisters, miscellaneous offspring, old university friends and random people who (supposedly) I met at my sister's wedding.

The worst part was that the older kids had nothing to do. There was an inflatable paddling pool, filled with plastic balls, and a small slide set up in the garden for Kate and any other kids her size, but at least two of the boys were too large and too old - though that didn't stop them trying - and other entertainments should have been made available for them. My brother in law has several computers and a Wii which could have been loaded up with games to keep them quietly(ish) occupied... but no thought was given to that and, I hear, Mark barely makes use of his Wii. Next time, I think I shall bring along some games and get something organised for that angle.

In other news, my BotCon 2011 set arrived, and it is awesome... QC seems much improved on previous years, particularly considering the TF: Animated line had pretty diabolical QC at the best of time. This year's comic is excellent, too... better story than some, though it still felt a little underdeveloped. The end is brilliant, though, and hopefully sets the scene for revisiting this continuity in future.