Kieron Gillen’s Workblog

Lost Planet

Seriously, who in the localisation department thought “Wayne” was a good name for the hero? You can only assume deliberate sabotage.

Random question: Is there anyone else apart from the Japanese still doing 10 minute cut-scenes showing abstractly exciting action and terrible fucking plots which you have to sit and drum your fingers through? I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head, but I admit I’m not trying particularly hard.

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Unless you mean unskippable, I could hazard Gears of War. Although they weren’t that long (well, unless you look at it in relation to the length of the game…)

For some reason, Gear’s don’t seem as obviously, hilariously long in my head. It may help that - gasp - they’re actually better done than Lost Planet’s.

Few other titles of that budget have similarly distressed me with their cut-scenes — which is saying something given the universally piss-poor standards of dialogue. Not even the frat-boy whoops the Cole Train made me want to hurl the disc out the window as much as Lost Planet’s voice talent.

Oy. I just don’t understand how the many millions of dollars thrown at these projects can so consistently fail to acquire actors who comprehend the most basic details of human inflection.

Hope you had a good time at your book launch. Thanks for the invite - I should have taken you up on your kind offer as I ended up sitting on a train until about 10.30 and missing the film. Karma in action, no doubt.

Mart

is this that game that was a horrid console port and asked me to press the ‘A’ button on my PC in the demo?

In the current climate, that doesn’t cut it down much.

But it’s certainly one of the culprits.

i have not played lost planet but i find it difficult to imagine anything worse than gears of war’s plot, dialogue or tedious, incomprehensible unskippable cut-scenes.

maybe i have no imagination.

maybe that imagination has been ruined by shitty videogames like gears of war.

Gears of War’s had a redeeming cheery aura of constant Homoeroticism.

Like 300, only with more clothes. Real men battle in tiny pants.

Is it wrong that I enjoy Gears of War’s dialogue?

In a fashionably ironic way, of course. But I’m just playing through it now (yay new 360!) and although there’s not quite as much homoeroticism as I was hoping for, the dialogue still has that “hilariously b-movie bad” quality to it.

Martin: Great Western in action, more like.

Nothing has cutscenes like Lost Planet. But I actually started to enjoy its ludicrous, manga-style obsession with constantly reinforcing the hero’s importance and constantly screaming his name out.

“Wayne!!!” “Where’s Wayne?!!?” “Your Father! Wayne!!!” “WAYYYNNNEEE!!”

And so on.

Also, is Gears of War being ironic? I just finished it the other day, and I almost died laughing when it was revealed that it *actually* has an “ex pro-baller” as one of your squad.

It’s always worth remembering that MAX PAYNE 1 was a serious yet laughable attempt at Noir and MAX PAYNE 2 was an ironic attempt at Noir.

I suspect when there’s a GoW2, it’ll be more conscious.

…And I preferred Max Payne 1 to 2.

What does that say about me?

Really? I thought both Max Paynes were trying to be ironic. Two is more explicit perhaps.

Several Indian “action” movies that I have seen could be described with the words you use for those cut-scenes. Words like “abstract” and “terrible”.

No, seriously, I see a connection.

Personally I think most games walka fine line between “we are being ironic” and “we are just shit writers.” I don’t expect Tolstoy, but I do expect a character who isn’t just a slack jawed wisecracking sexist retard as a hero. At least half life had a hero who could actually string a sentence together, rather than just oiling his biceps and flirting like that dolt in far cry.

[…] rock-bottom hideous that the fact they were so in this didn’t bother me as much as it did other reviewers. As I say in the conclusion, that 70% is good for right now, but come August and Bioshock, you can […]

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Lost Planet

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