Gravity: It is not just the law... it is now a major motion picture! *Spoilers*

As usual if you haven't seen the flick and don't want any spoilers you have been warned. 

So, someone finally decided to do a contemporary space movie. Apparently the director has held onto this idea as the special effects technology to properly portray it matured. Apollo 13 is the last time somone really tried to tackle a realistic micro G environment and the useage there was very limited in comparison to what was done here.

What is it: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in space, stuff goes wrong and they try to survive. No Aliens. No Traitor. No robots run amok. No evil coporation. No time travel... no to all the really tired cliche's that riddle almost all movies set in space. FINALLY

The Good:

This is a tour de force of current bad day scenarios facing folks that get shot into orbit. About the only thing they didn't bring into the picture was radiation exposure. For the most part they do not lay them on to thick.... for holywood that is. I think they could have done without the final Chineese station bit, or at least not the de-orbiting bit... more on that later. 

The effects are stunning and represent the first worthwhile use of 3d in my opinion. The depth of field adds a lot to give a better feel of space. Perhaps the highest praise I can add is this is the first movie I have seen in 3d that I think would be less of a movie in 2d. Epic vistas of earth are nothing new but here the earth is shown to great effect and the depth of field makes it something I haven't seen before... and that is damn rare in mainstream entertainment these days. Sign me up for watching this on an Oculus Rift where there would be no annoying 3d glasses crap.

Pacing is damn good. Reading some of the early reviews I expected 2 hours of Bullock screaming and hyperventillating. While there is a good dose of that I can't say it was excessive considering the situations depicted. Many complained no Astronaut would come so unglued. I can only imagine they ignored, or simply didn't catch the whole opening dialog (easy to understand with the visuals) establishing that she wasn't just green, she was primairly there because of her expertise regarding Hubble. To put this in perspective... most astronauts spend years in training before getting a mission. Bullock's character is supposedly up there after 6 months including vacation time. Mission control defers to her on matters of the Hubble. Translation, the mission was such the expert was on location with the absolute bare minimum training required to get her there as opposed to supporting the misssion from the ground (most realisitc situation). I imagine if this were a book you would have had plenty of exposition explaining why this was the case. For a movie you get a couple of lines in the middle of insane visual candy right before a major set piece action sequence. It is a more realistic situation than say Bruce Willis and his drilling buddies going through a montage... but it is in the same vein.

The So So:

For the most part I think I will use this to cover the more egregious goofs. For Holywood, especially for space flicks, this is very minor stuff in the grand scheme of things. Don't take the harping wrong... this movie was done VERY well. I point these particular issue out because I think there were better alternatives.

First up is the 'everything is right here' conjunction of the set pieces. We start off with a Hubble repair mission by a space shuttle. Real enough. But after our bad thing happens and Bullock is tumbling around and asked to call things out she points out ISS and a Chineese station as points of reference. Now Hubble is in an orbit at the outer limits of Shuttle capacity at around 400 miles up. ISS runs at around 200 miles up... so in other words if they were as close as they could possibly be it would be difficult to see ISS. Even if they were in the same orbit they would not maintain relative positions for very long. As it so happens they are not in the same orbital inclinations and any conjunctions would be extremely breif with a closest apporach of a couple hundred miles. The Chineese station would also be in a different inclination. While I suppose it is possible some strange conflux of timing could put them all within a few hundred miles or so of each other, in reality such a conjunction would be very fleeting. I believe it was theoretically possible for a shuttle to divert to station from Hubble. In fact I believe that was a requirement of the last Hubble service mission as a reaction to Columbia... but it was a prohibitive requirement to the point that it is laughable to think an EVA jetpack could be used to match orbits between the two. Great story bit... not so good on the realism. How could it have been made to work? Really couldn't have if the idea was to bridge the orbits with the EVA pack. Even if it had the delta V to make the orbital change the precision needed is on the order of shooting a bullet with a bullet at insane range. How about a shuttle that is depressurized and damaged (ie no comms) but still has a functional OMS ? They could  have used the gimped shuttle unable to survive re-entry to make it over to ISS. Once they got there they could have been unable to dock for any number of reasons... and thus would have had a reasonable situation for Clooney and Bullock to use the MMU pack to make it the 'last mile'. Of course that ruins Clooney's running gag about the EVA record but at a small cost for realism. You still get to have him sacrifice himself on the final translation etc... This also would  have allowed for dealing with more realistic orbits and have them talking about catching ISS on the next orbit and burning at the right time etc... Real stuff... same story. Think Apollo 13 when they had to manually burn to make the return from the moon. I think it would have worked but I'm biased I suppose. 

Second up is the super debris field. This provided the big bad 'thing' that could never really be prepared for. The catalyst is that the Russians blow up their own sattelite in orbit and that the debris of that explosion causes a chain reaction of other sattelites being hit and thus creating a bigger and bigger debris field.  The threat of this is realistic enough.... even the idea of a nation shooting down their own sattelite (China and the US both did it a few years back). In fact the basic idea here is real enough... just not the timescale or manner in which it is depicted occuring in.  A pretty common Holywood conciet. In reality such a debris field would not remain so concentrated. Newton's first law at work would keep the cloud expanding. Still dangerous and there is a strong theory about a critical level of space debris after which such collisions would lead to a level of debris making space flight far more dangerous. That aside, the most egregious mistake here was the idea of the comm sats being knocked out by the same event that leads to the destruction of the shuttle. Comm sats in general, and particularly those used for space communications for NASA, are in geo syncronous orbit. The escalating debris field is used as an excuse to cut communications from the ground in addition to destroying the shuttle. This is particularly absurd as geo sync orbit is some 22k miles away from earth where our story is taking place at 300 or so miles up. An event at one orbital plane would not significantly impact what is happening in the other.  All in all I think they would have done better just to have severed comm with the ground based on the destruction of the shuttle's comm system. The astronaut EVA comm system is a short range UHF system that relys on the shuttle/ISS comm links for relay to the ground. In short they are walkie talkies, not sattelite cell phones. Killing the shuttle's comm system is more realistic, and creates the same effect. As for the short fuse of the escalating situation.... don't have the first call saying it isn't an issue. Have the initial event cause the emergency evac and problem. That leaves you having to think about how you then escalate the situation into an immediate issue for ISS. But the idea that the initial event could impact both ISS and shuttle in Hubble's orbit is a lot less far fectched than the idea of taking out geo sync comm sats just minutes after the initial event in a low earth orbit. 

The low altitude of the Chineese station. It adds the final bit of drama on getting down from space but it is patently absurd and the flimsiest bit of the movie. I suppose they went there instead of going back to the debris field as a threat to keep Bullock moving to avoid repetition. Or perhaps it was just more dramatic. I won't even go into the fire extinguisher and silly soyuz separation sequence while in the middle of re-entry non-sense. Certainly makes for a good yarn though. Alternative? Avoid the Chinese station to begin with.

The spare Soyuz at ISS. This one is a bit of nitpick but as I know a bit about ISS ops (pays my bills actually) I have to point out there has never been or is there likely to ever be a situation where there would be a 'surplus' capacity of Soyuz seats in an ISS evacuation scenario. If the crew of ISS successfully evacuated there would not be a Soyuz left. A more realistic and really crazy Hollywood style solution to this would have been to make use of a SpaceX dragon capsule. Musk designed them with the idea of them being man rated. They are pressurized and designed to return and be re-useable. That is a possibility just begging for a Mgyver solution that gets a crewmemeber back safely in a semi realistic manner. Honestly the idea of using an EVA suit inside a dragon to return to earth is far more reaslitic than not one, but two man rated vehicles being left in orbit at two unmanned stations.

Lastly... nobody trained for space would float by a fire of any size without re-acting to it. Related... the soyuz hatch opened inwards to station and the fire depicted is massive. Look up the Apollo 1 disaster details. Air pressure would have skyrocketed and opening the hatch would likely have been impossible. The fire didn't have to be so showy to be dramatic. And it could still have provided ample reason for why ISS wasn't a suitable safe haven.

So... to re-cap. In an alternate reality where I was the technical consultant for this movie I would have the opening sequence unaltered except for having the initial event causing direct danger to the repair mission. In the initial debris incident the shuttle would have been largely incapacitated, dead crew etc... and no comm. But the core flight functions and OMS (orbital manouevering system) would have been intact. Clooney retrieves Bullock and Clooney gets shuttle from Hubbles Orbit to ISS orbit. Once there ISS has been abanndoned and struck by debris. It suffered some, but not as much damage as shuttle, Comunications with the ground are out, solar panels are not providing power, battery power is running out. Clooney is unable to dock the shuttle with station for any number of reasons forcing them to translate from shuttle to station by using the MMU (jetpack). Something goes wrong and Clooney is lost leaving Bullock to do her unassisted station EVA. There is no Soyuz left, damaged or otherwise. Once inside she fights off issues with the stations encounter with the debris field... puts out a fire etc... realizes there are no options at station for getting home. IE it isn't going to work as a life boat and she still does not have comm with the ground. So she still gives up and has her dog howling conversation via HAM radio and hallucination etc... But her revelation is not using the Soyuz soft landing jets to perform an orbital maneuver, but realizing the Dragon module still attached to station is designed to surive re-entry, it just does not have a life support system. Then she uses her supposed computer skills established in the opening to hacking the Dragon module to initiate a reuturn sequence with her inside it using a space suit for life support. No change to the ending other than substituting the dragon for the splash down in place of the Shenzou.

This is by no means making the movie hyper realistic, just gets it a fair amount closer to plausible. But as I said, in the grand scheme of movie magic nonsense this one is pretty tolerable as is. 

The bad: 

Nothing super awful... The Milf scene with Bullock shucking her suit in a few seconds was pretty out there but certainly made for a nice visual. Cheesecake shot vs reality... Yeah we know which way Holywood is going with that one. To be fair it was a powerful image and I did not get the sense it was there just for titillation. And if the worst I have to complain is getting to oggle Bullock in her undies I hope that helps you appreciate just how good I think this flick is.

Conclusion: 

This one will be one I own when it comes out. It is worth the price of admission. 

The Last of Us: Review (Spoilers Galore)

If you didn't catch it in the title, I aim to talk about many different areas of the game and give away key points of the story. If that is something you care about stop now.

Anyway... so the game world is somewhat alight with a critical love for this game. I liked it... a lot. But I have problem with listing this game as something 'different'. In my first complete run through I killed just over 500 people and considering the story line and the vibe on the game prior to release I just didn't like it. They could have done something pretty special here and I think they (Naughty Dog) may have pulled their punches a bit and stuck with the successful formula they established with the Nathan Drake Uncharted series.

So first off the good:

The art is incredible. 7 Years of work with the PS3 by Naughty Dog is shown off to good effect. The environments and characters look pretty awesome, just wish they were not so linear in nature but more on that later.

The character control is adequate. It rarely feels 'clunky' but overall your interaction with the environment is pretty limited. But considering how many great games have been generally ruined by awful character control this is definitely an achievement. The one stand out here to me is the 'listen' mode. The ability of the character to sit and give you a basic idea of where MOBs are in the immediate vicinity that are making noise is very effective and not much is given away as you only have relative location information in the 'see through walls' nature, you can't actually determine structures etc... in this mode. Ultimately I think it is underutilized.

The Story is engaging... if you like Walking Dead or any post apocalyptic story line Zombie based or otherwise you will find a LOT to like here. It is not a black and white morality tail nor is it completely bereft of a compass. The distinction between the good guys and bad guys here (as pointed out in countless professional reviews) is pretty damn fuzzy. Basically the whole story is a series of escalations of this point. I will dissect the process in a bit more detail down below... last warning regarding spoilers.

The Sound is VERY well done. Between environmental noise and sound track cues there is rarely anything sounding out of place. The infected in enclosed spaces are genuinely freaky. Turn out the lights and turn up the volume!

The So So:

Ammunition and Melee breakage. Ok, its a game and I get game 'mechanics'. But this is an area they really broke with the idea of 'you are there'. Enemies that are holding a gun more often than not fail to drop a weapon or ammo. I never heard an enemy go 'click' on an empty chamber and give up shooting and they are definitely playing by 'spray and pray' once they have you in sight. If you want ammo to be scarce then dammit make it scarce for everyone. To add insult to injury they added this notion of melee tools with 'expirations' based on the number of hits you put it through. A 2x4 breaks in 4 hits, a lead pipe breaks in 6 etc... The 2x4 I could be down with experiencing a random splintering, even a wooden baseball bat. But a lead pipe? Used on flesh and blood? Really? A machete that breaks? An Axe? In part this was to promote the crafting, you could essentially keep a melee weapon going by modding it, using the mod and re-modding it but it cost valuable supplies to do so. Also for the edge weapons like the machete and axe they were insta kills without modification so the limited uses was a way of limiting your ability to just hack your way to a full ammo belt. Finally... infected dropping ammo? Really? not to mention towards the end of my play through it seemed the infected were generally much more likely to drop ammo than say a soldier/hunter. As a game mechanic this s a well established way of getting things done, but here where so much effort was made with the storyline it presents a constant break with the idea of you are in the story as opposed to playing a 'game'. I put it here in the so so because as a game mechanic it generally works. It isn't like this is Doom with glowing ammo packs spinning around. Just wish they had gone a bit more 'Fallout' style on this where if someone had a weapon visible and you killed them it would be there on their corpse and animals/non gun wielding mobs dropped appropriate items rather than ammo.

Stealth. This is where I think the pulled the most punches. Many areas really do not have a good stealth solution. The game forces you into firefights requiring high ammo expenditure and hand to hand desperation moves despite having very stealthy story elements. The steal aspect rarely comes to the fore with a couple of exceptions. Where it works it is enjoyable. But there were many times I found it very frustrating not having a real option. A lot of this had to do with checkpoint based linear 'levels'. I am keeping this in so so because again the mechanics make for pretty solid 'last stand' encounters. Just seems in way to many cases that is the only solution.

The Bad:

Lack of options. Everywhere I went I spent the time to explore every nook and cranny... especially postmortem after a failed stealth attempt bloodbath to see if I just missed an option. Did not find one so I think I faced pretty close to the minimum number of shootout situations. Many force you to kill all enemies to trigger the advancement... same thing marred the Uncharted games as good as they are. I didn't find all the goodies in the first run through but I found better than 75%. By comparison my first run through on stuff like Tomb Raider rarely nets more than 25% of the hidden items.

Same problem I have with the Walking Dead I have with the behavior in this game. Multiple times you are in areas that get over run by 'just one unlocked door' or something similar. Yet as you go through doors and barricades that you could leave blocked behind you they are left open with no option for you to choose otherwise.

Linear tunnel levels. They looked great... really great. But the 3rd time I was forced through some funky only one path unblocked option through a massive tumbled/decayed building it got old... and there were a LOT of those kinds of environments. Bills Town could have been much more open ended on the options, especially with some smart usage of the map ideas. Some of the best sequences had the most open areas. Ellie's fight with the Hunter community while caring for Joel was probably one of the better sequences and hinted strongly at what this game (or a future Naughty Dog Title) could have been. Another good example was the Sniper level.

And last... surprise... the Story. You may be wondering, how can the story be both good and bad. Well as a story it is awesome. And it is very well told, and like the Uncharted series it plays damn near like a movie. I am honestly looking forward to sitting down and doing a play through all the cinematics with the 'play all' option. Unfortunately as with most cases where the story is so well told and so well voice acted etc.... there are no branches. The story advances along its path and the only real option seems to be whether or not you engage your various companions and Ellie in optional side dialog as you move along.  So is there really a moral quandary if all you are doing is executing the steps to trigger the cut scenes? The story is powerful and it is ugly in a good way. But you take no active role in determining how it plays out. Tess will Die, Bill will not, The Man and his younger brother will die, Ellie gets taken by the hunters, You tell Tommy to go back to his wife, and lastly when you get to the end of that long hall Joel will choose Ellie over the possibility of a cure and end the tale with a Lie. I'd like the book. But this is where games have the chance to build you paths through these kinds of morality questions.

Suggestions:

If you want to make Ammo rare then be prepared to make shooting rare period. Don't make me get shot at like everyone I face is strapped on par with Arnold in an 80's Action flick and then after I kill them have 2 bullets to salvage and no gun. And this was on Normal. I presume this un-logical divergence in ammo supply and enemies ready to unload at you only gets worse the higher you go. Stealth, Melee and forcing your opponents out of ammo with stuff like bottle tosses etc... could have been a very welcome change from the typical shooter mechanic. But it isn't a well paved road.

If you are going to have a bottle/brick throwing mechanic do not litter your world with bottles you can't throw. For some reason you could only chuck brown bottles. I mean seriously... you couldn't enable holding any debris of roughly a given size?

Do not have melee equipment have such a pre-determined scheduled breakage... Why exactly is an axe going to break because I swing it at someone 6 times? I'd rather see melee get less effective than have this idiotic mechanic in there.

Add some critical branch points to the story. This one didn't need the mess of options like Fall out had. But some branches leading to keeping Tess alive, Getting Tommy killed or his wife, Happy ending solution for The Brothers rather than the mercy kill & suicide and of course... the biggie, do you choose Ellie's life over the possibility of a cure? A three way answer at that critical juncture could have been pretty Epic. Get to the ER, have the Doctor plead with you and give you your first chance to choose... Kill the Dr. and Take Ellie, Kill yourself because you couldn't live with letting it happen? Go down to the encounter with Marlene perhaps with a different set of choices. Kill her and continue with Ellie, Get her to agree to ask Ellie for her choice before making a decision? Get to the last scene and choose to Tell Ellie the decision you made for her or to give her the Lie. Naughty Dog could have taken some pages out of the Mass Effect playbook here, or Fall Out, or plenty of other options. Rather than a 'conversation dialog choice' I would suggest this branching mechanic could have been provided by a 'Pull the trigger' or Choose to interact (Ear icon used for optional conversations). IE shoot the doctor or choose to listen. Shoot Marlene or choose to listen.

Conclusion:

If you are a game nut you already have it right? If not it is worth the price of admission. If it pops up on used/classics cut rates and you haven't played it this one is a no-brainer. They only drawback from my perspective is this is basically a kickass movie with average move along mechanics in an outstandingly rendered game world. Re-play to me is pretty limited. I understand the online is a bit different but that aspect of games rarely interests me these days. I hope in a future effort Naughty Dog will be a bit more willing to break a bit more with the established action interaction formulas in search of mechanics that work to enhance the story telling rather than work against it or are at best neutral.

Google Glass

How does the concept of growing acceptance of government surveillance and common negative reactions to Google glass mesh? I mean really. One of the growing stories from Boston is the perception regarding the surveillance cameras. While they certainly did not prevent the event there is little denying that the pervasive series of government and private cameras played a key role in swiftly identifying the suspects involved. While it is a controversial topic it is a technology with widespread support.

So why the outcry over the supposed lack of privacy due to Google's new 'glass'? Reading through the same news sources you would come to two different conclusions regarding Glass and Surveillance technologies even though at their heart they are both about ubiquitous  cameras in public. One seems to have begrudging and even ardent supporters while the other has many going... well its cool... But. And the But is privacy.

I suppose the problem is the personal nature of an individual taking a picture or video vs a company/agency doing so. But the possible consequences are essentially the same. IE someone can track and irrevocably prove your guilt/embarrassment if they have access.

In theory Google glass is something of a wet dream for surveillance schemes. Imagine the Boston bombing in this manner. A large percentage of the folks are wearing glass in place of smart phones/video cameras etc... to capture the event for their personal use. Pictures are stored on Googles servers. Minutes after the bomb google or government agency of your desire is querying time stamps of all pictures\video against time, location and direction of pointing and soon a chronological series of images of the point of the explosion is captured from numerous angles. Tracking back through time it becomes less well covered. But as more information becomes apparent like when the bag appeared and who was present they begin tracking all movement of individuals in the area looking for the next link... All people with backpacks matching color/size etc... looking to link someone with a bag before and without a bag after. One team begins back tracking as far as possible while the next team is moving forward looking for the trail of the perpetrator.

It is all a bit Minority Report. But... it is something a technology like glass and permanent connections to a cloud service like Google could make a reality. If you are ok with permanent camera installations what is the big deal about people walking around with permanently connected cameras?

Personally I am not a huge fan of surveillance by governments. I am not a huge fan of people experiencing by photography... IE the act of taking so many pictures you are never actually there because you just spend your whole time taking pictures. It is like you are trying to take it with you without even actually enjoying it while you are there. But a lot of that problem is due to the interface with the device. The idea of having something like Glass taking a time lapse of something I am doing so that I can later browse through it and select some to remember the event by is actually pretty appealing to me. And of course it is that concept of a device perpetually recording everything I see which causes such a stir. Logically (which I admit has little to do with this concern) there should be effectively no difference in common public areas between the possibility that at any given point you are being recorded by someone shooting a camera from somewhere and knowing that everyone is recording all the time. Realistically it makes a difference because that is how we are wired. "Might be recorded" is not the same as "Are being recorded". And the assumption for a Cellphone falls to one side while the assumption for someone wearing Glass seems to fall to the other. It will be very interesting to see where the technology goes from here.