MICRO-REVIEW: MIITOMO

Pic made in-game. If this doesn't sell you Miitomo, I don't know what will.

I am a gaming omnivore. With the desperation of a thirsty alcoholic, I clamor for more and more diversions from life’s metronome, while facetiously demanding that these be awesome for free, and readily available. Anything can be a game, really, and any game can be fun. Even among cheap and dirty paper-bagged malt beers, one finds shining stars, and Miitomo resonates as one such guilty pleasure. Nintendo’s new cartoon avatar-oriented social networking game provides laughter without wit, fun without skill, and breadth without depth - and I play it every day. On account creation, Miitomo requests access to your phone's camera (to snap pictures for cute-ification into Mii-form) and preexisting Facebook & Twitter accounts (to import friendlists of friend-Mii's). From there on out, it's pretty much show & tell. 

Allow me to explain Miitomo's elaborate info-economy by way of flowchart.

Imagine all your real-life friends as immortal tamagotchi’s: they dawdle; they chirp; they change, insignificantly, over time; and they don’t die if you forget to feed them. Now swirl in a Balderdash of personal questions and a bottlenecked daily clothes-shopping economy, and you have Miitomo. There is a Gabe Newell quote somewhere about industrializing the playerbase, drafting them into the game design production chain. Miitomo champions this attitude, as it does little else than translate your and your friends’ wardrobe choices and quiz responses into something bobble-headedly pleasant. But, you know what? For such a nefarious sham, it does this so well. Miitomo proves to me that a video-game needn’t challenge skills, command attention, nor broaden the imagination to delight. Sometimes it is enough for a game just to keep you company on a long busride home. And hey, who would've thought you'd be able to hear completely unfiltered profanity coming out of Nintendo toons?

Miitomo: Nintendo's Zen of daily-dose cuteness. On iOS & Android. Twenty minutes a day, for a week and a half so far.

REVIEW: FIREWATCH

TITLE Firewatch

PLATFORM PC/Mac/PS4

EVADE GISMO RATING *INTERACTIVE MOVIE* 2-4.5 hour playthrough / Story progression / Light decision trees

--------------------

Everyone who's played it knows that the funnest part of Dungeons & Dragons (or should I say Wizards and Wyverns?) is character creation. Filling in the crucial details, like the number of serrations in your flaming bastard sword, and ignoring the unimportant ones, like your childhood pets and criminal record, is the foundation of a reflexive gameplay experience. It answers the question, Who do I wanna be for this next little while? Who am I willing to be stuck with? Firewatch doesn't reach for pie-in-the-sky thematics or hard moral lessons. Instead, it commits its brief duration to deeply developing the relationship between Henry and Delilah, two fire lookouts on the run from their own lives in the scenic Yellowstone Park wilderness of 1988.

The game even starts with a character creation screen, of a sort. But instead of tallying up Pickpocket and Garroting skills from some monolithic pool of abstract values, it's more like digesting regrets. We're given unnarrated text summarizing Henry's life and marriage leading up to the events of the game, and you fill in gaps in the story with your own choices, effecting dialogue and relationship options later on in the game. The text is broken up with brief segments of footage and gameplay of Henry as he treks into the park for the first time, as if he himself is reflecting on how he came to be here, just we are are making decisions about it. It sounds dry but plays out like the most heart-wrenching Mad Lib of all time. Then he (We? I?) get to the lookout tower... and meet the delightful, devious, and disembodied Deliliah. Ohh, Delilah.

These photos aren't really screenshots; I took them all on a Fun-saver found by Henry in-game.

Many games take character relationships for granted, allowing conversation to merely act as a vessel for exposition, comedy, or other bullet-point character moments. The president's daughter follows the hardened cop around like a stray animal, or the local survivor gives orders to the wayward explorer through a one-way radio only. In such games, character relationships behave more like incidental by-products of that bolted-on mess we refer to as "the story". It is hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of a game's "story" being separable from all its other elements, because as players we experience only the whole. Yet nowadays it's often obvious that narrative, exposition, and other "fluff" has been developed by a completely separate department than the rest of the game. How many booklets have we all flipped through, how many wildlife info-tags, how many abruptly-ending handwritten letters skimmed for a quest marker and ignored? More often than not, the relationship between your loosely-defined, semi-player-determined character, and everyone else, feels more like an obstacle (oh so much skipped dialogue) to the real game - the riding, sniping, plundering, profiting - than something that makes you more part of it.

A relationship is what results from two characters deliberately interacting. It is a meaningfully interactive experience, but one perhaps too delicate to compete with the antic violence that typifies video-games. Firewatch thrives on the little nuances of getting to know a stranger, and getting to be known by them. The awkward pauses, white lies, and collaborations. The unexpected commonalities. The stupid jokes. Most of the game is keeping banter up with Delilah, talking and listening as you photograph the landscape, huck empty beer cans around, follow mysterious clues. But Delilah will frequently chime in with a quip or question on the radio, and every time she does, a HUD timer starts ticking down the time left to respond. I thought of this as the "window of relevance" and I can kinda see it in the corner of my eye when talking to people in real-life, too. At times I'd get distracted gazing at the landscape or reading pulp mystery synopses, and miss my chance to respond to Delilah on the walkie-talkie, or just ignore what she said completely. Other times, she'd ask me something difficult and I'd either scramble for one of three all-too-revealing replies, or stammer the L-Shift key until it was too late.  Firewatch was sage enough to let those dropped threads of conversation just... trail off, and the way these silences form a space between the principal characters is engaging.

In fact, there's really very little to do. The gameworld is a cluster of objective locations, obstacle-littered corridors, and photo-ops. You can walk, climb, rappel, inspect, and talk to Delilah. You can check your map & compass - and I mean literally check your map - your character's hands reach down for it, and you must hold it up in front of yourself and figure out where you're going and how to get there. Like a normal person and not some weird, abstract, information-compressing navigational robot. The clever twist of Firewatch is that it legitimately manages to make these sparse interactive processes tense through simple obscurity. As much as you come to like (or loathe) Delilah, your interactions are restricted to two-way radio and there is no one else to talk to. Meeting new people can be nerve-wracking at best, but roll that up with professional responsibility, mysterious assaults, and natural disaster, and the tension is palpable. Henry and Delilah's relationship could be implanted into, say, downtown Vancouver and the characters would be just as likeable -- and yet the remoteness and interdependence of the relationship would lose its significance, as they'd be living in a sea of people, of relationships. The story's entrenched solitude works as a subtle nod to who the player is in relation to the game: ultimately, a lone escapist. Like Henry, I think we all come "out here" to forget the very real problems we struggle with, preferring to sit back and watch the fires rather than really fight them. Firewatch knows it is a brief respite from the bigger problems in its players' lives, and respects that boundary between what ultimately matters: Real Life, and what doesn't: Video-games.  It doesn't exhaust you with a shopping-list of facetious so-called "Achievements"; the branching dialogue, ultimately, tends to loop back to the conversation trailhead; and it doesn't suffocate you with opportunities and growing numbers and the flux of other mechanics that turn engrossing games into toxic addictions. Firewatch keeps its trajectory linear in order to convey something to each player about how people yearn to connect and to confess. While it's refreshing that the game is so bare, the environments really lack in some areas. Glancing from my map to landscape and back again often had me mired in a tangle of invisible walls, clipping shrubbery, and awkward reticule targeting. While this may have, to a degree, been part of the Henry-is-a-noob experience prescribed by the game, it also telegraphs a design weakness in Firewatch. You can get stuck, but you can't truly get lost, because there are so few places to go.

I am sure people will balk at the price/duration ratio, but you can't fault Firewatch for being nothing it didn't aspire to be. It's not an open-world adventure; it's not a wilderness survival simulator; it's not a smarmy non-game, either. It breaks new ground in what games can be about. It tickles and teases and convinces you, briefly, that you are somebody else, and cleverly throws everyone's identity into doubt. If nothing else, Firewatch is the best, most dynamic voice-acted character development you'll ever hear for $20. Check below for spoilers regarding my response to the game's climax, twist, and ending.

--------------------

P.S. - If you enjoyed Firewatch, I strongly recommend Gods Will Be Watching: a blockier, gamier take on persona, decision, and intelligent, light-handed meta-narrative.

--------------------

SPOILERS !!

As the story progresses, mysterious events suggest you and Delilah are being targeted by somebody in the wilderness. Your tower gets raided, the phone line is cut, and once you find a written transcript of your recent, private radio conversations with Delilah, you get  knocked out by an unseen assailant, steal an axe, and Rambo into a suspicious, fenced-off research station. You discover notes among elaborate monitoring equipment suggesting that you, Delilah, and others are the unwilling subjects in a sophisticated social experiment, and everyone is a suspect. This second act of the game is where it really shines; late afternoon dips down to dusk just as you break through the fence, and every step is fraught with uncertainty. Henry goes from stir-crazy to paranoid out of fear for his life, plastering the windows of his lookout with notes, questions, and clues, and questioning his very sanity.

However, Firewatch takes a bit of a Scooby-Doo twist, deflating all of the tension with a "The Old Groundskeeper Did It!" that feels clammy and abrupt. Delilah never called it inwhen a 'Nam vet and his son working your same lookout tower went missing years ago. It turns out they retreated into the wilderness to live, the boy died in a cave, and old Ned Goodwin went bonkers and fabricated all of the tension in order to signal-jam the observations of Henry & Delilah, and scare them off from his life of lonesome guilt.

My first reaction was confusion and disappointment; if you've played the game, you'll know what I mean. Firewatch pulls no punches in casually terrifying Henry. With every turn, the problem seems more and more elaborate. I think we all expected to find a UFO or a sprawling underground base, or a Truman Show-esque ceiling-tile-sky reveal. What's delivered may seem a little pedestrian; but I think that's the point. I think the buildup was all about what was going on in Henry and Delilah's minds; they wanted to believe there was an elaborate conspiracy against them, a problem so great that it would not only bring the two of them together, but eclipse the woes of the outside world entirely. We, too, were just as eager as the characters to believe that there was more to this story than meets the eye; and we were just as disappointed to be met with plain, smooth, old reality.

One thing did relieve me about the ending, though: I think if I'd actually seen an awkwardly rendered, physical Delilah in front of me, I would have killed myself. Good move, Campo Santo. Good move.

STAR WARS: UNSPOILED

As a fan It's practically impossible not to get excited for another Star Wars movie. With Lucas finally locked away in hybernation we can finally get on with telling a story with some sense and cohesion....right?!  Sometimes barricading your feelings against a steel reinforced wall of objectivity is the only available option. Hype is a disease that must be exterminated on site and without mercy, it served us in our younger days just fine, we called it hope but allowing it into a conscious mind now is a death sentence for any film or property 'carrie-ing' the thing around. Attempting to avoid this hype was a tall order. Every other post in the past week has been a review, a meme or a hype post from a friend. The biggest question is this: how do you get excited about something with out getting too excited about something?

It sounds dramatic. When something is loved so intensely by so many how can it not be.

Last night Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released. Millions of cloaked nerds attended  sold out shows across the country and we were right there among them. The movie felt very familiar, which was a good thing, but something felt like it was missing. 

Spoiler free thoughts below.

From the trailers we extrapolated some information. The young newcomer dressed like a stormtrooper was in fact a stormtrooper. One aspect of the plot that felt difficult to digest was that this trooper just snapped out of his mind-trick and fucked off. Really!? So the troopers aren't clones? So who are they?  Individuals who seem to think the empire is an awesome place to work i suppose. There was a line from Kylo Ren  to the General stating: You should have used a clone army, much more loyal." Or something of that ilk. So would this Finn character be the only exception, the only sheep ever to have turned black....yes i realize the symbolism here; its pretty much fed to the audience. A white storm trooper who emancipates himself from the 'slavers'. Removing his 'mask' to reveal a young black character. It wasn't wrong for them to add this to the plot, the problem is we as an audience have been conditioned to believe stormtroopers are a means to an end. They look cool and say shit sometimes and that's it. This excerpt from 'Wookeepedia' explains it.  

"As the clones' accelerated aging process began causing their physical skills and abilities to deteriorate, they were replaced by non-clone volunteers and conscripts. Nonetheless, several clone troopers would remain in service to the Galactic Empire."

Ah, ok. Its a hodgepodge then. Films are much like video games, and a film series more so. You have to lead the audience or gamer by the hand for a bit and show them the world and develop the dialogue to fill in the spaces. When you teach a 'participator' something within the world you've invented for years then simply change it, it feels cheap and nonsensical. To begin a new Trilogy of a beloved franchise with fanatical fans with this stormtrooper story is an interesting choice. Guess mofuckers love stormtroopers.

At the mercy of the reader this comparison could seem like a bit of a dick move but hear it out. The world of Star Trek is fully realized. The advantage of Star Trek is they had episodically contained stories and a hell of a lot more time to explore their ideas. Star Wars has had a battle with storylines from the beginning. The lore is there but there but its burried in off shoot novel series, comics, games and cartoons. So there  has been very little screen time to explore them further,  we give the franchise a bit of a 'free pass' with a lot of things that Star Trek would never be allowed to get away with. This is a theme with Star Wars and something that many of us unconsciously abide by. What then has to be done is to 'show' the movie. To use all the visual elements to help tell the story without dialogue. This could turn ugly if investigated further so well just move on to the cool stuff..

The coolest and most badass part of the movie by far is Kylo Ren. The first moment he began to speak you could sense everyone in the audience  holding their collective breaths hoping he hadn't suffered from 'Bane syndrome' but he hadn't. Thankfully that virus was contained within the Milkyway Galaxy. This Sith will certainly end up being a fan favorite. His voice is perfectly done, his costume is instantly as iconic as his lightsaber. He is definitely the most emotionally conflicted and juvenile villain to come along in quite a while, which works very well and gives the antagonist a great amount of depth and by the end of the film his transition is clear. 

Approaching this series from another (JJ Abrams) perspective seems all too easy. The world is built, the characters are established. Its not hard to imagine the round table creative conversations surrounding this next trilogy. "Just give the audience what they want" or "Yeah, whatever you did before...do that again but newer." must have been  popular phrases. And that's what we got. Keeping it safe with the first installment was a very good move the more its considered,  but the fan service was overwhelming and almost too much to take. So many things that have happened already have miraculously happened again. Like watching any comedy sequel. "Well that was funny so lets do the exact same thing again, it'll be great." Not so much.

Simply put, Evade Gismo had a great time watching The Force Awakens. At the very least it an excellent setup for the follow-up films. What felt like it was missing from this film was an individual identity. But maybe that was the point. 

We will have a no holds bared 'VENT' and 'SPOILER FILLED' version of the Force Awakens review during the holidays. In the mean time, do your best to enjoy your families company and have a drink on us!