WikiLeaking away

In case you weren’t already aware, last week the freedom of information activist group known as WikiLeaks released onto their website 250,000 diplomatic cables.

These transmissions reveal the US position on global issues, from Iran’s nuclear programme to members of the Royal Family and the performance of Britain’s politicians. Although their website was initially brought down as the documents were released, The Guardian and The New York Times (as well as several other high-profile newspapers) were provided with access to the documents.

Unsurprisingly, the US government has come out guns blazing, criticising WikiLeaks’ actions on account that they “put people’s lives in danger, threaten our national security and undermine our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.” Some US politicians have even called for WikiLeaks to be labelled as a terrorist organisation (and its leader Julian Assange to be “hunted down like Bin Laden”), which is frankly ridiculous.

WikiLeaks’ aim is not to destroy America, but to (in their own words) “bring important news and information to the public” – damaging the state far more than the country. However, the anger expressed by the US administration is entirely understandable. Unfortunately for them, there’s not much they can do about it – and in many ways it’s their own fault.

Unbelievably, around five million users are able to access the US internal Internet system, SIPRNet – including Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst who stowed the data on a CD-RW labelled ‘Lady Gaga’. Manning, in a leaked instant messaging conversation, said, “Information should be free... it belongs in the public domain.” While perhaps a contemptuous claim, when the US allow access of confidential information to so many of their staff it is somewhat inevitable that a disillusioned staff member is going to attempt to leak it.

Furthermore, in the 21st century the means to distribute such information are plentiful – and once leaked, can never be fully erased from the Internet. With that in mind, it is entirely acceptable for the press to cover these documents in depth. Manning and WikiLeaks were committed to releasing this information one way or another – is it not better that the information is dissected by experienced professionals rather than oft-hysterical bloggers and tweeters? The Guardian’s coverage, for one thing, has been carried out very professionally in co-operation with the government and in consideration of UK libel laws that prevent publication of many of the cables.

This is, of course, not WikiLeaks’ first release by far. They’ve previously leaked documents on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as a report on police killings in Kenya, and a now-notorious video of two journalists being gunned down by over-enthusiastic pilots in Baghdad.

What WikiLeaks does is undoubtedly highly illegal, but is leaking highly classified information acceptable if it is in the public interest?
Well, it’s a mixed bag. Though the revelation that US ambassadors have been ordered to spy on UN diplomats is shocking, is it so necessary to reveal that Prince Andrew “arrogantly branded Americans as being ignorant of geography, and [thought] that anorexia sufferers needed to cure themselves”?

Definitions of the “public interest” may vary, but many of the cables revealed seem to be in the interest of the gossip-hungry press alone. Though of course much of the press have criticised WikiLeaks’ actions some have come out in support of the organisation, claiming that their actions are necessary since the mainstream press are so afraid to release sensitive information.

There is a commonly held belief that journalists should constantly be attacking the establishment and the status quo – breaking laws as they see fit in the pursuit of truth. This is, of course, hardly ever the case. The reality is that if The Guardian had stolen this information themselves there would be little doubt over the legality of publishing the cables. In fact, they would never even attempt such a stunt for fear of legal consequences, no matter what dark secrets may be uncovered in the process.

What of the leakers, then? A commitment to freedom of information is admirable, and it’s important to occasionally unveil what the government gets up to, warts and all. I personally salute WikiLeaks for their courage: the world’s governments deserve constant scrutiny, and if the press are bound by legal issues then it’s up to the public to investigate their rulers themselves.

Originally published in The Courier on 6th December, 2010

Happy Birthday Mario!

This year, Nintendo’s Mario series of video games celebrates its 25th birthday, as well as the retention of worldwide popularity. The brainchild of Japanese designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario occupies a position in popular culture usually reserved for iconic pop stars and long-running TV series. And with 222 million games sold over the last quarter-decade, its commercial success certainly can’t be disputed.

So why is Mario so popular? His distinctive red cap, blue overalls and moustache may have been born out of the technical limitations of 80s games consoles (his Italian nationality comes from the fact that he has a moustache - no, seriously) but as a blank avatar for the player to project themselves onto, he is peerless.

Mario's USP has always been exploring the joy of movement, allowing players to navigate intricately-designed spatial challenges with a character who feels like an extension of your own body. Mario’s original name was simply "Jumpman", and for good reason - in later games, his cries of "yahoo!" with every leap are positively infectious. Not to mention Mario's colourful supporting cast - Luigi, Bowser, dinosaur-thing Yoshi - who despite their paper-thin characterisation have become as iconic as the star himself.

Most, however, know Mario et al best from the most popular of the (seemingly endless) spin-offs: Mario Kart, which has provided both hours of knockabout fun and an antithesis to boring driving simulators like Gran Turismo. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn't flinch at the sight of that dreaded blue shell.

The craftsmanship of the Mario games has meant they have stood the test of time, and are still receiving lavish critical praise and selling by the bucket-load. Stuffed full of imagination, tightly-designed levels and endless surprises, it’s difficult to overestimate the influence they have had on video games as an art-form.

The 1985 classic Super Mario Bros. was the beginning of shift from arcades into living rooms, with large and colourful graphics that - though difficult to believe now - looked like a cartoon come to life, spawning a variety of imitators (most notably Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog). In 1997, Super Mario 64 demonstrated what games could do with a third dimension, which in turn influenced another generation of 3D Mario rip-offs such as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon.

The imitators will long be forgotten - but Mario games continue to thrill both children and adults alike.

Originally published in The Courier on the 8th November 2010.

Review: Superman Red Son

I make no secret of my hate of superhero comics. Not comics in general - I love comics - but specifically the type popularised by Marvel and DC, the type Joe Average will think of if you mention the word "comic" to him. Sure, they're great fun for kids, but when graphic novel sections of bookshops become dominated by characters in silly outfits fighting each other, it's no surprise no-one takes the artform seriously.

Anyway, the only types of superhero stories I enjoy are those in which a talented author purposefully plays with genre conventions, such as in Alan Moore's work, or re-interprets the "mythos" of a classic characters such as in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

Superman: Red Son falls into the latter category, re-imagining the Man of Steel as a Russian-born communist who turns the tide of the cold war for Soviet Russia. Much praise has been lavished upon Mark Millar for not portraying the Soviets and Stalin as evil villains - but honestly, in this day and age shouldn't this be seen as an expectation rather than a breakthrough? Millar never goes as far as to actually explore communism's ins-and-outs, simply allowing Superman to tell the reader how committed he is to the cause. (Again: is this really cutting-edge stuff for the US? Have they not got over their Red Fear yet? Then again, this is the country that considers Obama a socialist.)

To his credit, Millar cleverly subverts the cold war arms race: instead of stockpiling nuclear deterrents, the US produces a series of supervillains to fights Superman. (We never actually get to see any of these fights, although presumably they'd play out like in any other Superman comic.) Superman's arch-nemesis is, as in the regular comics, super-genius Lex Luthor, who is introduced playing fourteen simultaneous games of chess while reading Machiavelli's Il Principe during a coffee break - when Mark Millar writes super-geniuses, he doesn't do half-measures. The rest of the cast are re-imagined - well, to an extent - DC characters: Wonder Woman, Batman, Lois Lane, Brainiac and the Green Lantern. The best of the lot is the Russian anarchist Batman who attempts to bring down Superman's communist state.

Unfortunately, Millar loses any pretence of exploring complicated political issues by the halfway point and instead goes for some obvious moralising about the downsides of oppressive totalitarian regimes and obligatory mindless fight scenes between superheroes. Its epic pretensions are far beyond the depth of the story and the ending (which is either "OMG GENIUS" or entirely pointless depending on what side of twelve years old you are) reads like bad fanfiction.

Let's be honest: Red Son is an attention-grabbing stunt of a book with only a couple of good ideas to its name. While a decent read, it's painted with such broad strokes that it relapses into the very hyperbole that "groundbreaking" graphic novels such as these are supposed to be subverting.

"Fear 2: Project Origin" review

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (or, as humans might refer to it, "Fear 2") is not a game of subtleties, as you can probably gather from its title. Fear 2's aim is to scare you, and you play it if you want to be scared - perhaps not the most noble of ambitions, nor a particularly original one, but regardless one it set flat-out to achieve.

Well, actually that's not quite true. The true meat of the gameplay consists of a fairly bland first-person shooter that can't quite decide if it's Call of Duty or Halo. The identikit grunts (quite literally - most enemies are "replicas", a mindless army of clones distinguishable from the earlier human enemies only by their powerful weapons) are fairly satisfying to fight, but the most exciting variations they present are "guy with flamethrower" and "guy with a really big machine gun".

While the logic of featuring such a large quantity of mindless gunplay in a game marketed as a scary experience is questionable, the shooting at least contrasts well with the genuinely scary bits. Monolith pulls out all the stops, with claustrophobic dreamlands and bizarre graphical effects heaped on top of one another. While used sparingly, the infrequent visits from Alma Wade (the "icon-but-only-because-they-ripped-off-the Ring" cover star and very angry poltergeist) become predictable: the screen will turn orange and/or you'll see a swing in a field, and/or Alma will engage the player in a brief thumb war before being shaken off (yet again) with a simple QTE. The secret to great horror, someone once said, is the same as comedy: never repeat yourself. There's a good reason why, in "The Shining", those twins and the disgusting old woman only appear once.

That said, fights with supernatural enemies are tense, horrible affairs that successfully remove the feeling of empowerment the game's ridiculous arsenal provides, with masterful pacing that makes their initial reveals genuinely scary. Yet for all it gets right in these sections, it takes it all back with mounted turret set-pieces and, astonishingly, a handful of opportunities to pilot a giant mech suit.

The bar for horror games' stories was set high by Bioshock, which knew that the sight of a society cannibalising itself is far scarier than freaks jumping out the walls. Fear 2 tells a superficially similar story of science gone too far and how "we make our own monsters", but it's cliched and predictable to the point of self parody. Your team, meanwhile, consist of a bunch of characters so paper-thin it's a surprise they don't just float away in a gentle breeze, and who either provide the player with meaningless objectives ("Get to the nurse's office! Meet up with Snake Fist! Save Corporal Keegan!" - why are these necessary when the player is travelling through glorified corridors, anyway?), or just die occasionally throughout the story. It's a bad sign when the most memorable line in your game is "You're like free pizza in an anime convention!"

This isn't a bad game by any means: if you're looking for a dark, atmospheric and sometimes scary shooter, Fear 2 fills all of the criteria. It is, though, a success only if you switch your brain off beforehand.

Uninteresting Times

I've been neglecting this blog recently, and I apologise a bit, but not much because I've been doing writing in many (two) places around the interwebs.

Firstly, I did a gloomy piece on 4 Color Rebellion entitled The Death of Music Games, which was perhaps a little extreme in its conclusion but definitely reflects how I feel about the music game scene at the moment. I've got to say, having followed that site for quite a while it seems quite special to see my work posted on it!

Meanwhile, my friend Ben and I have started a music blog, Quiff Pro 'Fro. (I wish I could say I came up with that name, but it was his idea.) I've just posted a couple of rants, and I'm quite proud of the latest one attacking the Drums.

Oh yeah, and I have two game recommendations, both for XBox 360: Aah Little Atlantis and Along Came A Spider. I'll review them in full later, but for now go buy them, they're only a quid each!

"Some people think I'm bonkers..."

Rudeboy, don’t watch that
Cause if it’s arms-house, I’ll rock that
And if it’s on top, you know I got that
Come through with a big baseball bat

Like blood, don’t make me get old-school
Blood, don’t make me get old-school
Blood, don’t make me get old-school
Blood, don’t make me get old-school

I don't think there's many people that would label these lyrics as typical listening of middle-class white kids. But we live in a cosmopolitan musical world these days where Jay-Z can headline the biggest music festival in the country, and so I was definitely not expecting the expressions I got from my friends when I put the Dizze Rascal track "Pussyole" on.

Maybe a few years back, when we used to make fun of Lethal Bizzle's "Pow", it would be understandable. Most commercial hip-hop, even relatively restrained british grime, is mindless boasting over stolen samples, and for a long time I assumed that Dizzee Rascal was similar.

What turned me onto him initially was that string of commercial hits he's had over the last year - Bonkers, Holiday et al. Shallow fun? Well, yes. But Bonkers is perfect in its simplicity: its small number of lyrics means punters will have remembered it entirely within a handful of listens, and there is a darkness in lines like "I let sanity give me the slip".

that girl's from school, that girl's from college
that girl gives brains, that girl gives knowledge

Then I stumbled across "I Luv U". Dizzee's first hit (although by now pretty much buried by his later successes), "I Luv U" is dark, abrasive and unmistakably urban. At ten years old, it's dated as badly as most electronic music of its era but is still phenomenal. Sure, some might dismiss Dizzee's lyrics as "chavvy" in both content and slang, but its message is an important one. And are such lyrics significantly better than that of your average guitar-rock band?

My point, then, is that people shouldn't feel the need to restrict their musical tastes by class or anything. Should Dizzee Rascal be a guilty pleasure for me, a middle class white kid? Don't be ridiculous. Even back in 2007, he was collaborating with Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen, who are as "white" as you can get. Those who can't accept hip-hop - and grime - as part of mainstream entertainment to be enjoyed by anyone needs to fix up and look sharp. (Geddit?)

E3 excitement

One of my favourite weeks of the year is the Electronic Entertainment Expo - E3 for short - in which pretty much every new video game and games console is announced. This year has been one of the best in recent memory, particularly due to the announcement of this little baby.

It may look like a regular Nintendo DS with a slightly wider screen, but the killer feature of the console is impossible to demonstrate on a computer screen. Basically, it can produce 3D images without glasses.

Now, I'll be the first to dismiss 3D as a passing fad within the movie industry, but in the case of video games it makes perfect sense. Navigating a three-dimensional world onscreen can sometimes be pretty difficult without depth perception. Of course, it could all be rubbish (although hands-on reports are fairly raving), but it'll be impossible to tell until the damn thing finally comes out!

Certainly, one thing's for sure: with Paper Mario, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter IV, Kid Icarus and remakes of Ocarina of Time and Starfox 64 already announced, it'll have an absolutely stunning software lineup.

Some other awesome announcements: a motion-plus Wii Zelda, a new 2D Rayman game and the fantastic-looking Scott Pilgrim game.