Godhood, Sure Ain't All It's Cracked Up To Be

 Remember how when you were a kid you'd smush ants by the dozen, pull the wings off flies and generally demonstrate sociopath like tendencies which disturbed your parents no end? Well, thankfully the game industry sure does, providing us with a never ending stream of fantastical ways to kill, maim and otherwise destroy our way across a plethora of worlds, time periods and fantastical settings. And arguably the greatest genre for those daemons of the insect world is the RTS, where one can literally play god. Bringing entire continents to heel, raising cities and courting the death of thousands at a whim they really allow us to play with our inner despot. You'll never find Democracy: The Game sitting on your shelf, I can tell you that much (I have recently learned there is a game called Democracy, I stand chastened). Now, Black and White sought to open up the idea of simple god hood, of good and evil. It was all very moral and didn't reward the player all that well if he or she were more devilishly inclined. In Black and White Two the record has been set straight, you can be evil yet still build a beautiful city or be good and indulge in a little murder and pillage. It is an extremely well designed piece of software. That does not mean however, that it is a good game.

Point and click, damn being a soldier is easy.

 You see Black and White has always had the habit of promising more than it can deliver. The freedom exalted so much in the original never really materialised in my view.  Don't get me wrong it was an interesting premise but it wasn't as revolutionary as it was made out to be. Quite frankly I found it a little dull, call me a philistine, but it just didn't grab me by the throat and make me take notice. Much of that I felt was due to a singular lack of control, that my godliness was dependent too much on simple influence. I'm a god after all, surely I have the right to choose exactly how much I want to interfere with the little ants I call worshippers. So in Black and White 2 this was tweaked somewhat, now you can make your followers into the conversion war machine you've always wanted. An unstoppable hoard chanting your name and burning the heretics! But there is one slight problem in all of this rabble rousing. The game mechanics themselves. They're shit.

I was going to come up with a long winded and exceptional metaphor to fully help you comprehend how bad they are, but then I thought plain English did the job better. From lacking a drag selection function to having no upgrade system the entire set up feels flawed. If anything it feels like an RTS's for dummies. This is justified by your being a god, not a general on the battlefield like say, in Medieval Total War. Instead it just comes across as amateurish, the hefty number of units you can command becoming a burden as you have to select them one at a time. There is just too much micro management with too few controls to do the job. This is then compounded by an inferior AI that behaves in a manner one would expect from the original Age of Empires, for when a city or town is defended by a god a couple of units and a catapult really ain't going to cut it. There is no feeling that you can lose so the game lacks any sense of gravitas. It puts paid to the grand ideal of god hood by making it into a chore that has to be done, not a desperate struggle for ascension.

Impressive?  Imagine building dozens.  I was a weary god by the end of it all. 

If you're a more peaceable sort you can convert through awing the surrounding settlements with your mighty city building. I actually quite enjoyed this facet of the game, for there are plenty of different buildings to construct and how you decide to build your city has an effect on the happiness of your people. Are you going to build them beautiful villas or squalid huts, enough of which together will form depressing slums. Also, there's nothing like a good torture pit to vent your frustrations, it's all very satisfying. It can however become a little much, your godly abilities being judged on how much your people like that new temple you just built, rather than how much they worship you in it. Also, taking over the map through conversion alone is a ball ache and becomes repetitive all too quickly, forcing you to rely on your men at arms. I imagine this was the point, to force you to choose exactly how dedicated you are to one path or another, but the game seems intent on pushing you into the grey area and punishing you for making a definite choice.

So pretty, but not much else besides.

The devil is in the details, for while Lionhead Studios did a fair job with the graphical presentation, it is pretty to be sure, they failed miserably in the menu design department. It's little niggling things like having to scroll through each building to find what you want or having to construct each building in turn, it's all a bit irritating, especially when you're building the thousandth house. I have to say that that the only menu attachments I found genuinely effective were those relating to your creature, your avatar on earth. You can select him to be a builder one moment or a warrior the next, with the warning that leaving him under these commands for too long will turn him into a mindless automaton. It's perhaps the one facet of the game were the simplicity of it actually enhances the experience, instead of feeling like the Sims Do Godhood. It just feels patronising at times, that in trying to make the game accessible Lionhead also made it repetitive and stupid.

  So to conclude, Black and White 2 is not a seminal moment in gaming history. It's too casual and lacks true depth, for while it may entertain on a basic, pick up and play level, it doesn't immerse one in what it is to be a god. At the most it's an RTS with a few gimmicks. I will admit that the moral system is effectively developed, however the game mechanics, the two facets of war or awe don't mesh as well as they should. You can't play this game as a do-gooder because it becomes plain dull, while the combat mechanics are none existent. There's no strategy other than who has more men, materials, or in the players case, godly abilities. Excellent for defence, but poor at range. You can't even aim properly, something I find wholly unforgivable. So if you'd like a casual outing as a micro managing deity with all the abilities of a city foreman, be my guest. Otherwise chuck it in a draw and play a proper RTS, as this sure ain't it.

Avengers Assemble! Quickly Now, No Dallying!

"Oh Great One, I have sinned against you!"

The Avengers. They're all Marvel legends in their own right, titans of the comic book age. So when I heard that they were all coming to the big screen in one action packed outing, I naturally recoiled, burned, afraid. Here was the potential for disaster, the moment that the entire comic book film industry came crashing to the ground. A cluster fuck, if you will. Such fears were allayed slightly by the announcement of the venerable Joss Whedon helming the project, being a worshipper of his Buffy and Firefly universes, but still it seemed a tad like madness. Surely it would fail. So many title characters simply couldn't play nicely together, not without taking a serious personality clipping in the process, defeating the entire purpose of the movie. It could have become Iron Man 3 And Friends, or Captain America And Some Other Guys, but in a shock turn, it didn't. Suffice as to say I have had to say many a hail Mary to Whedon's alter for the past few hours. My devotion has been reaffirmed. But how has this been achieved I hear you wonder? Has our trusty reviewer taken a blow to the head, is he now living in a Lucas denial as following Star Wars Episode One? I must disabuse you of that notion. I am in fact of sound nerd mind and body. Whedon just did it. With a slick script and character balancing he has delivered a fine addition to the annals of the comic book movie. Let me tell you how.

Prepare for snarkiness.

Firstly, he made the Avengers a team. It sounds simple, perhaps nigh on "duh" territory, but it could easily just have been a group of superheroes sharing screen time. No links, no witty banter, just a bunch of overcharged egos beating the crap out of this or that. Whedon was a solid choice for this singular reason, all of his stories involve multiple characters who are all people in their own right. There are no hangers on. Just look at Firefly, I dare you to find a character you can't relate to. So while each of the Avengers has been around long before his ministrations, whether it be in movie or comic book form, they weren't necessarily going to work well together. That isn't to say there were no stand out performances, characters who seemed a little more prominent than the rest. For me, it was Iron Man, Mr. Tony Stark himself. I'm inclined to think this was more through the force of his personality than a conscious choice by Whedon himself, although I could be wrong. There is something irresistible about that billionaire, playboy philanthropist that I can't quite pin down. Watching him jest with Thor and Captain America near gave me a head rush, while his relationship with Bruce Banner is the stuff that fine cinema is made of. They're both similar in their own ways, loose cannons with varying degrees of control. This is all aided by the tightness of the script, with very few lines being wasted on asinine dialogue, much as was the case with that other film-freight-chain-franchise, Transformers. Time isn't wasted trying to make the characters funny, they just behave as they should and the humour feels natural. Even a slapstick moment involving Thor, The Hulk and his meaty green fist didn't feel forced, the entire theatre erupting into laughter.

There is one area in which the film seems to lag, although maybe necessarily, and that's in the story department. It draws heavily from the previous Thor outing and as such is a little confusing at the beginning, as we are bombarded with objects and places such as the Tesseract, Asgard, S.H.I.E.L.D and Loki. In fairness this all comes together pretty quickly, but it is a little off putting if you don't know the previous back story. It's all basic stuff when we get a little further in, Loki is leading an army of extremely angry aliens to conquer the earth and it's up to the Avengers to stop him. It ain't a head scratcher, but as I mentioned, perhaps there was no choice. With so many characters vying for development and screen time it was probably for the best that the story was kept to it's bear bones. The film would have ended up feeling slightly overloaded, instead dragging rather than entertaining us through it's two hours thirty of a runtime. Maybe we'll see something a little more intricate in the next installment, assuming that the many millions it has made already warrant a sequel.

Mark Ruffalo has left the building.

Of the assembled cast, Robert Downey Junior and Mark Ruffalo really steal the show. Banner enjoys a jittery quality that echoes Jekyll and Hyde as he tries to control the beast within. For as he says himself "I'm always angry." He surpasses Edward Norton's portrayal in the Incredible Hulk, although I admit that could just be down to personal preference, delivering a far more unstable character.  Meanwhile, Junior is his usual swaggering self, collectively aggravating every member of the team while displaying his textbook Tony Stark brilliance. Watching the sparks fly between him and Captain America was one of the highlights of the movie for me, one man standing for all that is good and pure, the other an arrogant, irresponsible playboy. In all the entire cast delivered, while not Oscar worthy performances, a knock above the rest, making sure that any potential silliness stays on the sidelines. Badly acted superheroes look all the more ridiculous when they come into contact with reality after all. No man in real life would wear a costume as bright and tight as Captain America's oh-so homo erotic get up.

Didn't give me goosebumps, good enough though.

Moving on, I am going to give a nod to the special effects, even if it is a little redundant. They're nothing we haven't seen before, but they're impressive. Manhattan burns in style, the explosions are top notch and the alien spacecraft pew pew to perfection. I may sound exceptionally jaded, but until they perfect holographic technology I'm not going to give them a thumbs up, especially given their obsession with the "3D experience." So to conclude, Avengers Assemble is a near perfect example of big budget blockbusters getting things right. Well developed characters, quick dialogue and explosions to boot are hallmarks of Whedon's directing and writing styles, as they should be throughout Hollywood. Without him, I honestly believe the premise would never have gotten off the ground. Comic books movies are scrupulously analysed by fans and have suffered their wrath on a number of occasions, remember The Fantastic Four and it's dire sequel? Handing the film to a sci-fi, geek veteran was really the only choice the studio had. So go and see Avengers Assemble, feed Marvels money machine and the corporate oligarchy, because at the end of the day, it's more than worth it.