Ntuple Indemnity

I have a number of posts on queue or in mind that are actually of substance, but this is not one of them. In their place, how about a spate of disjointed miscellany, loosely connected by waddling flightless birds:

First, with the addition of Georges Laraque and Gary Roberts to the lineup, the Pittsburgh Penguins are suddenly even more interesting than they were already. I mention them both in connection to something I want to say about Ryan Smyth, which is next. I appreciate seeing someone as entertaining as Laraque on a team I will actually root for of my own volition, and the idea of Roberts on the ice with Sidney Crosby blows my mind. Mind you, to see Laraque in a flaming C would have been downright awesome, but I’m almost inclined to think the citizenry here in Edmonton, which seems to live and die for the Oilers, has taken enough punishment for one day. Or one season.

As for the Oilers? Speaking as someone from Calgary, I like seeing a strong, healthy and respectable Oilers team worthy of a provincial rivalry. Without a heated Battle of Alberta (preferably one that we win), hockey can only be so interesting. I’ve been told from several corners that in terms of tangibles, Edmonton got plenty from the Islanders for Ryan Smyth, and basically came out on top. But in the context of Edmonton’s rotten year in the front office, and Smyth’s intangible value to his team and to the community at large in terms of morale, leadership and institutional memory, I wouldn’t blame a single Oilers fan for quitting on their team. I quit on the Flames, and hockey in general, for a span of about eight years. I can identify, within a reasonable margin of confidence, when the cracks started to show and the Flames started to quit on me: when they traded Al MacInnis to St. Louis.

It’s easy to console oneself with the mentality that such-and-such a superstar who has been with you for over a decade is 31 years old and won’t be improving anyway, but you start eating your words when said player stays on the other team for another decade without too considerable a decline, and they retire his jersey before you do and stick him in management. Meanwhile, back home you develop all these new faces for a couple of years, and the fan base goes, “Who are these guys?” before it makes like a tree and leafs. I don’t know if that will happen with Ryan Smyth, and it almost certainly won’t with the Islanders, but he doesn’t look like a guy on the decline to me. Then again, he’s never been a MacInnis-class player either, though I don’t want to start comparing apples and orangutans.

Not that I expect anybody in this city to really stop caring about their floundering team. Edmonton takes its hockey very, very seriously, even by Canadian standards. We’re talking about a Roch Carrier’s Le Chandail de Hockey magnitude of seriousness. They burn their owners in effigy around here. But in the oil-ridden backwaters of central to northern Alberta, there’s only so much to live for. (That’s what the Prongers found out.)

It’s incredible to me that we’re now over a decade removed from the time when Al MacInnis, Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts were, for all intents and purposes, established franchise players for the Flames. When play resumed after the lockout, all three were still on the ice. Remarkably, one of them still is, and it’s the one we practically lost to injury. An eight-year abandonment and a Stanley Cup run later, I got over it. Go Flames go.

Next: Scientists in China have leveraged the wonders of neuroscience to develop remote-controlled pigeons. My thoughts on carrier pigeons aside (I kind of love them), all I’ll say is this: forty years ago, this would have made for a killer episode of The Avengers.

Next: I’ve come to the conclusion that the Wii remote, turned sideways, is a phenomenal NES-style two-button controller. I’ve been using it as an NES and Genesis pad on the Virtual Console, and with emulated Game Boy titles on my Mac with the assistance of DarwiinRemote. At first, it’s a bit strange to hold a controller that wide when the left side is about half the width of the right, but the D-pad is superb and the 1/2 buttons (mapped to A/B, and horizontally arranged like the NES pad and unlike the Game Boy line) contour like a dream. I’ve been told that these are the same kind of buttons as the ones on the DS Lite. If so, I think I’m upgrading. It’s not just about the buttons, though. The form factor of the Wiimote, in all its lightweight, wireless glory, is such that you don’t grip the controller so much as you let it rest on your fingers and let it become a part of you.

As I was never a Sega man, for good reason – let’s face it, Nintendo won that era handily, even though the sales at the time made it look close – I did miss out on some genuinely terrific games for the Genesis. Well, one, anyway: Gunstar Heroes, the side-scrolling shoot-’em-up to end all side-scrolling shoot-’em-ups. It now resides on my Wii thanks to the Virtual Console service. This is all quite encouraging. In two generations, when Nintendo is still alive and kicking and Sony’s games division has gone under, I fully expect to be downloading and playing PS2 games on my Nintendo system. There are a handful I’ve always wanted to try, though I could never justify purchasing a console from that generation that wasn’t a GameCube.

Would it be impossible for Nintendo to somehow update the Wii firmware so a Nintendo DS could be used as an SNES controller? Given that any sort of DS-to-Wii connection would be over local Wi-Fi and not Bluetooth, I wonder if there are any problems in terms of responsiveness and reliability. Battery consumption really isn’t an issue.

Next: I’ve decided I’m not going to comment on the Oscars until I’ve seen The Departed again, primarily because the first time I saw it, my enthusiasm was deflated somewhat because in some very significant ways, Scorsese’s film fails to escape the shadow of Infernal Affairs. It’s a strong film, but not as good as Andy Lau’s, certainly nowhere near Scorsese’s best, and – upon initial impressions – not nearly as engaging as Babel, which was (in turn) a more intelligent film than last year’s winner, the structurally similar Crash. But I have a feeling that The Departed would improve on repeat viewings.

Okay, I’ll comment on one Oscar. Cars was robbed. Happy Feet was fun and ambitious, but Cars was playing in a different league altogether – Pixar’s league. It reminds me of the hysteria over Shrek when it was the first winner of the Animated Film statuette back in 2001, which only really manifested itself in the box-office performance of the sequel. Don’t get me wrong: Shrek is still the best we’ve seen from DreamWorks apart from their work with Aardman, and is undoubtedly the best of the spoof subgenre. But on repeat viewings, it’s become abundantly clear that its opponent that year, Monsters, Inc., is the finer film by almost every critical metric that should be applied to animation, even if it isn’t as immediately gratifying. Between Cars and Happy Feet, it’s not even that close. The care and attention to character and story design aren’t even comparable.

Moreover, I worry about the impact that the Happy Feet award will have on the decisions that are made at the level of the people with money, the ones who are in the position of treating animation like a business and not a craft. Again, Cartoon Brew is on the money: professional animators have something to fear. The success of a film driven by motion-capture techniques means that the kind of studio bosses who invested in Shrek clones to the point of market oversaturation are, at this very moment, gambling their “development” money on mo-cap.

And why not? From a business perspective, motion-capture provides an Oscar-tested avenue for the budget to be spent on post-production technology that already exists, as opposed to investing in animators, who are trained to sort out all the minutiae in the design and storyboarding process – a pre-production phase that spans several years. If you’re going to greenlight films based on economic forces in a high-stakes nine-figure market, you’re naturally going to be impatient. And in case anybody is still under the illusion that the Oscars don’t matter, consider why it is that the standard idiom in mainstream CG is built on pop-culture references and celebrity voices – material that appeals to the here-and-now, and not built to last. It all goes back to Shrek.

I’m not one to knock motion-capture as a legitimate technique: once animators play with the keyframing and refine the results, the wonders start coming, and there’s no better testament than Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and King Kong in Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Remember that the harbinger of the CG revolution that first reached silver-screen audiences was also a similar live-action proof-of-concept, Jurassic Park. The real danger is when mo-cap is treated as a replacement for animators, which is a problematic strategy born of ignorance. A reliance on mo-cap as a time-saver and cost-saver, as opposed to a highly efficient modelling tool for animators to play with.

Take Happy Feet, for instance. Most of the animation in the film happens at the level of full bodies and, well, feet. When Mumble is confident, he puffs out his chest and struts around on his pair of tappity-tappers. When he’s sad, he hunches over and pitter-patters away. Fair enough. Can you think of a single memorable moment that involved, say, the eyes? Or even the flippers? If you look at a movie like Cars, almost every memorable shot is fundamentally defined by the “eyebrow” lines over the windshield. (I read somewhere that this was precisely why the animators decided to put the eyes in the windshield instead of the established standard of the headlights. It worked.)

Eyes are usually a dead giveaway when it comes to the apparent fluidity or stiffness of an animated character, and in Happy Feet, they’re not even designed to have any expressive power. They’re just there because penguins have eyes. The puppet-like rigidity in that paragon of Uncanny Valley mo-cap films, The Polar Express? It’s in the eyes, which are ostensibly only there because humans have eyes. When motion-capture actually works, like it did with Gollum, you get both natural body movements from your model (in this case, Andy Serkis) and the subtleties of facial expression (in particular, eye movements) from animators using keyframing techniques.

You can still get by without eyes and rely on full-body motion – hopping lamps, anyone? – but not if you have a pair of eyes just sitting on your character’s face waiting to be used.

I would add, on a final note, that motion-capture isn’t nearly as effective for films that are wholly animated as it is for CG elements in live-action movies. The utility of motion-capture, apart from its savings, is to make animated body movements look realistic enough to blend in with live-action ones. In feature animation, it’s not incumbent on anything to look realistic: the first priority is to be expressive, and often, that’s the opposite. (Happy Feet is a strange case in that while it is primarily CG, it does attempt to blend with live-action elements in its enthralling third act.) At the same time, the claim that motion-capture was meant for live-action films is an ironic one: the first major all-CG motion-capture character in live-action features was none other than the infamous Jar Jar Binks. By my account, the primary reason he was so harshly received was his “cartoonish” dynamism and lack of subtlety, which made The Phantom Menace feel like (shock and horror!) an animated film. I get the sense that George Lucas asked Ahmed Best to act like an animated character, and got exactly what he wanted: “Faster, more intense.”

Before I dispense my informed sentiments on Video Games Live, which I caught at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on Monday, let’s get through a few brief notes about film.

As longtime readers know, I make a point of catching the Best of OIAF reel every year when they bring it to the Metro, mostly because I can’t justify going to Ottawa for the festival itself, and a digest is typically sufficient. That said, the 2006 selection was a mild disappointment. In the past two years, the touring programme has shown off films in competition in the various categories, but not necessarily the winners, and I think the decision shows. While some of the shorts exhibited some superb technique and story design – Stefan Mueller’s Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker and Chris Choy’s The Possum being my favourites – they were typically the most conventional of a field that was often almost too avant-garde for me (which is really saying something), or at the very least, heavier than usual on the cruelty dealt to furry little animals.

Oscar nominations are here, and they indicate possibly the most unpredictable race in recent memory. Part of that may be because the Oscars are early enough now that the guilds haven’t reported in yet with their own awards; the picture should be clearer going into awards night. But consider the statistical aberrations. I’m hardly one to mistake correlation for causation, but I do think – judging from this year and the last – that the Academy Awards have become considerably more interesting since they were bumped a month earlier, as the nomination deadline arrives before any consensus congeals on the table.

Glad to see six nominations for Pan’s Labyrinth, my tentative pick for the best film of 2006 (though it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, and I still haven’t seen a few major releases I’ve been meaning to catch, notably Letters from Iwo Jima and Dreamgirls). Nothing at all for The Fountain, which is flat-out ridiculous but not wholly unpredictable, though I would have at least liked to see Clint Mansell show up in the Original Score category. Of the four Best Picture nominees I’ve seen, I would personally give it to Babel. As for who will win, I haven’t the foggiest.

I’m not going to offer any reasoning for the above. No time, no space, no space-time. Just heed my words and go see Pan’s Labyrinth.

Now let’s talk about video game music. It’s been awhile.

Last night’s performance of Video Games Live was the first symphonic video game concert in Alberta. That’s something to be celebrated, because damnit, it’s about time. Live concert performances of video game music have been going on in Japan for a decade and a half; North America didn’t wake up to the phenomenon until two years ago, with the original VGL performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005, followed by the 2006 debut of Play! A Video Game Symphony (a programme that, with only a handful of global playdates in cities that matter, isn’t going to be here anytime soon).

A matter of personal background and credentials: I’ve been following video game music for years now, as an avid collector and occasional contributor to the remix and arrangement “scene,” even if I haven’t gone so far as to do a Lancastrian study that one can find online. I’m really curious as to when Summoning of Spirits is going to be released, because I whipped up a track from Tales of Symphonia that has been sitting around for a year and a half. In many cases, I’m much more familiar with the music than the games themselves – including a few selections on the VGL programme, such as Kingdom Hearts and a number of the Final Fantasy games. (Several numbers, in fact.) I found some of the best games of all time, Chrono Trigger among them, out of musical curiosity.

Suffice to say, I’m into this stuff.

So to cut to the chase, did I find VGL enjoyable? Yes, very much so. Was it some sort of revelatory, religious experience? No, I wouldn’t say that.

If there’s one thing that really separates a concert like VGL from the sort that was circulating in Japan in the early ’90s (and I’m thinking very specifically of the Orchestral Game Concert series), it’s that we’re firmly out of the chiptune era. While many games, Nintendo titles in particular, still store their music as MIDI data to be rendered by the console hardware (not so much to save space as to leave open the possibility of dynamic, algorithmic manipulation of the music to correspond with in-game events), the big-budget heavyweights in today’s game industry deliver orchestrated music fully formed.

Usually, the best of the game soundtracks are easily on par with the best of what is occurring in contemporary cinema. Two of the most interesting film composers of the decade, Harry Gregson-Williams and Michael Giacchino, got off the ground with music to games like the Metal Gear Solid sequels and Medal of Honor, respectively – both of which were represented last night. There really is no longer a significant gap in audio fidelity and the quality of the composition.

At the same time, I wager that tunes such as the theme from Super Mario Bros. are burned into our collective consciousness precisely because they operated so effectively within severe technical constraints. Composers such as Koji Kondo were tasked with making something chirpy and repetitive not only bearable, but outright fun to listen to. In an orchestral setting, these melodies are primarily interesting for how they are expanded and arranged, and what kind of ideas emerge in the overhauled instrumentation. In the case of a medley – a format often necessary for giving a classic game due coverage and introducing variety to melodies designed to be played in neverending loops – one of the defining elements is also the fluidity of the transitions, and how the piece as a whole functions as a unified suite.

VGL was heavy on faithful renditions of music that was orchestrated to begin with. The chiptune era, the epoch that inspires nostalgia, had a relatively minor presence: there was the opening medley of classic arcade tracks, beginning with the bleeps and bloops of Pong; The Legend of Zelda; accompaniment underneath guests invited to play Space Invaders and Frogger onstage; Super Mario Bros.; and a solo piano medley consisting of music from Final Fantasy, both before the switch to recorded audio in VII and after.

The music from the orchestral era, I have no complaints about whatsoever. Seeing the ESO and the Kokopelli Choir performing Christopher Tin’s “Baba Yetu” from Civilization IV made me a very happy man, even if it did remind me of my, my… my problem. In terms of the audio setup, from where I was sitting off in the Left Terrace, there seemed to be a few balance issues between the choir and orchestra. But I’m being picky. Overall, it was a fine selection of fine music, and it was an especial treat to hear the premiere of the music from Jade Empire as a nod to the local boys over at Bioware.

In terms of video game music, I would characterize the chosen titles as part of the recognizable contemporary mainstream. The curious thing is that what constitutes the mainstream in today’s gaming environment is deeply fractured, given the divisions between the three major console manufacturers and even the PC: we no longer live in conditions that would permit the release of a game everybody knows, short of Grand Theft Auto (where all the music is licensed). You could make a case that in the past few years, World of Warcraft and Halo came about as close as you can get to ubiquity nowadays, but that’s still peanuts next to Super Mario Bros.

So while it was neat to see a cute orchestral translation of the arcade era of game music, where the dominant paradigm was to think more in terms of “sound effects” than “soundtracks” per se, I have to register my profound disappointment with the already scarce representation of the 8-bit and 16-bit generations, which are really the heart of nostalgia as far game music is concerned. And my problem is not with the scarcity: the programme covered the major bases – Koji Kondo (Mario and Zelda), Yuji Naka (Sonic), Nobuo Uematsu (early Final Fantasy). My problem is with the orchestration.

I can’t speak for the Sonic the Hedgehog medley, as I haven’t located its source, but the arrangements of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were ripped directly from the ones performed in Japan’s Orchestral Game Concert. This is a bad thing for a number of reasons. First, I think these two particular arrangements are becoming standardized as the orchestral suites representing their respective games, and quite frankly, I don’t think they’re good enough for that to happen.

I don’t mind the Mario suite so much – I’ve always liked the inclusion of the woodblock to punctuate the overworld theme, and while I don’t think much of the transitions or the ending, it’s functional. If you’ve ever downloaded an MP3 file of the orchestral Super Mario Bros. misattributed to the Boston Pops, you’ve heard it.

The Zelda arrangement, however, is one that I’ve never liked. I can think of no other series that has delivered such a wealth of great melodies, and yet this arrangement chooses to dote on the familiar overworld theme (and not very well; I find it to be quite cliché and generally stale). And I’ve heard it often enough in various places over the years that I fear it is legitimately and dangerously close to being the “official” interpretation. If anything, concerts such as Video Games Live and Play! should be opportunities to commission new and inventive orchestral renditions of NES/SNES-era themes and motifs. There are so many talented composers in video games nowadays that would leap at the chance to do it, likely including Koji Kondo himself, that the absence of talent should not at all be an impediment.

I’m not a huge fan of Martin Leung’s piano arrangements of Mario and Final Fantasy, which were performed last night by his sister Lee Ann. I admire them for their accessibility, and from his videos I can tell that he has the technical gifts as a performer to conduct his position as one of video game music’s foremost ambassadors (and his sister has every bit of that classical musician’s discipline, even if she exhibited brief flashes of rhythmic sloppiness; as someone completely undisciplined who also indulges in rhythmic sloppiness, I’m one to talk). I don’t think he’s a terrific arranger, though: with the Mario series, he often opts for displacing the MIDI onto the keys, and with properties like Final Fantasy where there’s a little more invention, the hit-and-miss Final Fantasy Piano Collections were there a decade ago.

It’s like whenever I hear lounge pianists take on Henry Mancini or Andrew Lloyd Webber: they demonstrate a predilection for fanciful flourishes and grand arpeggiating cadenzas to make everything sound oh-so-romantic, and they’re all people who have clearly graduated from the rites of passage commonly associated with the name “Franz Liszt.” And that has made them virtuosic performers, but what separates them from bona fide composers in the standard Romantic repertoire is this: a decided absence of depth and interest when it comes to harmony. Amidst all the fireworks and legerdemain, it’s easy to overlook the harmonic complexity of the great European composers. Even we jazz people like to think that our fourth voicings and modal substitutions over Richard Rodgers are so inventive and hip, but for the most part we’re just lifting from Debussy with one hand and the blues with the other. It’s still an improvement on the easy-listenin’ aesthetic of sitting on major and minor triads and leaving it at that.

But these are the back-in-my-day gripes of a grizzled vet, after all, and I’m sure it’s all really cool if you’ve never heard acoustic performances of classic video game music before. It was probably neat for me too, the first time. I can’t quite remember. People seem to tip me better when, after a few drinks, I stop being professional and start treating the piano as a party trick (i.e. play video game music). If you’re not used to it, it might just be novel.

I haven’t commented much on the VGL production itself, with the smoke and coloured lights and onscreen video game footage and what have you. In most cases I don’t think it was particularly necessary, and perhaps it was even a distraction, but where it really shone was in the arcade-era games, where the music really doesn’t stand on its own (when it isn’t outright plagiarized from the Romantics, which it often was back in the day), and is only effective in juxtaposition with the images. Maybe it was the selection of the images themselves: virtually every scrap of footage predating the rise of the PlayStation was inherently in-game footage, whereas afterwards, the focus was on full-motion video introductions. (Let’s face it: Civilization IV may be hard, hard crack, but it’s not exactly stimulating to watch somebody else play.)

As a project to demonstrate to everyone just how much video game music has evolved, and how fertile a ground it is for film-quality scores today, I would call Video Games Live a wild success. And perhaps that’s consistent with their objectives to move game music towards a certain mass appeal, objectives you can read about in the FAQ on the VGL website. It’s an admirable task, and given VGL’s splash in the mainstream press, the producers are well on their way to achieving it. I may sound rather critical, but in general, it was an excellent programme with some great music that can be enjoyed whether you’ve played the games or not. I do think the retro elements, in particular the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, were given short shrift in terms of quality and quantity; again, it might just be a matter of perspective.

I’m not necessarily inclined to see the show again when it hits Calgary next November. (For one thing, what equivalent does Calgary have to the Kokopelli Choir? Cowtown may be the better city, but if anyone were to make a case defending Edmonton, said choir would be one of the chief exhibits.) But I wouldn’t discourage anyone from seeing it, not by a long shot. Video Games Live is a worthwhile experience, and a positive step towards establishing mainstream recognition of where game music is today. The potential benefits are immense: every musician or budding composer-arranger who develops an interest in game music is a valuable addition to the community. But first, they need to know that the community is there. I could go on and on with analogies to the tremendous impact that Stefan Fatsis’ book Word Freak had on competitive Scrabble, but I’ve tread that ground many a time before. Take my word for it: the principles at work are the same.

I finished The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess almost two weeks ago. I logged a solid 57 hours without reference to any external source of information. Since then, I have added almost another 10 hours roaming Hyrule and discovering new things I’d completely bypassed, even though I’d thought myself quite thorough. I am now two pieces short of all twenty hearts, and not even close to finishing the two major collection quests.

I finished Zelda, but I did not complete it. I’ve only ever “completed” The Wind Waker – and by that, I mean not only the standard four bottles and twenty hearts, but every bonus chart, underwater treasure chest (including the bogus one from the auction that only yields one rupee), observation platform, secret cave, submarine and Nintendo Gallery figurine. The Gallery quest requires you to play through the game twice. I got the Hero’s Mask on my second run, prior to which I didn’t know it existed. So, yes: I completed it. (Okay, so I didn’t get the Tingle Statues, but I did plug in the GBA long enough to get a snapshot of Knuckle on Tingle Island. Surely that counts for something.)

I’ve been meaning to write a review, though it took me awhile to balance the desire to not spoil anything for the general readership, which I’d wholeheartedly recommend grab a Wii (once possible) and play the game, against the compulsion to give the game the thorough assessment it deserves. The latter would be directed towards audiences that have not only completed Twilight Princess, but have an extensive familiarity with the Zelda series as it currently stands.

Let’s make a stab at some postgame impressions, then, and see where they go.

To be honest, finishing the game was a deflating experience. For two weeks, it had a monopoly over everything that could be considered “free time” in my schedule, which obviously excludes watching televised coverage of party leadership races. I’d taken my time and kept a relatively steady pace for someone swallowing the game in eight-hour chunks – a bit of time in the fishing hole every now and then, perhaps. And then I rushed straight through the last three dungeons and the thrill of the superb, superb final battle.

That was it?

See, upon finishing a game of this scale after familiarizing yourself with every known nook and cranny (with a plethora of unknowns remaining), it’s easy to look back and say, well, wasn’t that a lot smaller and shorter than I expected. What a letdown. And then you notice the omissions. No Magic Meter? Octoroks? Moblins? Great Fairies? Gallery-esque monster of a side quest? Post-completion save file with hidden bonuses in the second playthrough? I was wrong about one of these, but what a letdown nonetheless.

What I’m saying is that it’s very easy to underrate this game. After exploring some more and finding out just how much I missed along my beeline to the final boss, and watching someone else play through the first half of the game (which really does feel like a lifetime ago), I have renewed an appreciation for Twilight Princess that almost – just almost – slid into disillusionment.

This is an incredible game. Compelling. Magnetic. I’m a very thorough player, and it’s telling that I rushed to the end, just dying to see the big finish.

Is it better than Ocarina of Time? Yes.

Is it the best of the Zelda series? In some respects, perhaps. (Notice how this was a separate question.)

Is it flawless? No.

For the sake of elaboration, we here enter the realm of Nintendo geekery. That means specifics, and moreover, spoilers. I’m not going to discuss the story – in my opinion, the hallmark of the Zelda series is that the way the player progresses through the game is the story – but I will name specific locales, elements and items. I wouldn’t have wanted to read this before I played the game: ergo, spoilers.

So, what matters in a Zelda game? Off the top of my head: dungeons, overworld exploration, items, optional quests, minigames, bosses, enemy design, the general environment of the game (people, places and things, if you will), and my personal speciality, the music.

Dungeons: What impressed me most about the dungeons was how functional they seemed. There was a certain logic to their design, in that most of the obstacles displayed an implicit reason for existing beyond just waiting to be solved by a swordsman in a green tunic. The Lakebed Temple’s slides, mills and gears are a suitable exemplar, as are the magnets in the Goron Mines and the entirety of the Snowpeak Ruins. This isn’t saying that I dislike abstract environments, but on the whole, I’m very satisfied that the dungeons are architecturally coherent, in addition to their typical property of being thematically coherent.

There aren’t any puzzles that I would call outright hard, but I don’t think I’ve ever been outright stumped by a Zelda game. I think the tasks that confront the player in a typical Zelda dungeon fall into four classes: problems of mechanics (speed, timing, aim), problems of observation (which items you should use, where you can use them, what you can interact with, and where you can go), problems of logic (blocks and switches), and problems of combat.

To be honest… none of them were really a challenge. Observation, maybe – I’m thinking of the City in the Sky ceiling switch – and it might actually be because of the lack of a free third-person camera in the Wii version, something I worried about going into the game. The absence of a free camera doesn’t outright impede anything, but it might be responsible. Combat was a piece of cake, but fun. I did wish that Hyrule Castle had more in the way of actual puzzles, and wasn’t so exclusively combat-heavy, but to each his own. As for logic, I can see how some people might have trouble with the ice block puzzles and the statues guarding the Master Sword, though I didn’t. They’re not overly hard, nor are they easy in a way that makes them less than fun. Like the Water Temple in Ocarina, they’re not difficult, just lengthy without being repetitive.

Complaints? Hyrule Castle was too combat-heavy. The Twilight Palace thinned out after retrieving the two Sols in the palace wings; it deserved at least a miniboss and a unique item, not two mini-minibosses and a temporary upgrade. City in the Sky was so spacious and dependent on Clawshot mechanics that at times, it felt devoid of enemies. The late dungeons are the weakest, but the boss battles were appropriate compensation.

Regardless of their ease, I think the Twilight Princess dungeons are almost all among the best of the 3D Zeldas. It’s their scope and their variety. There are a lot of moments that hearken back to other games’ dungeons and improve upon them – Poe-hunting in the Arbiter’s Grounds, controlling statues in the Temple of Time – but little repetition within this game itself, from one dungeon to the next.

Best dungeon? I’m going to have to go with the Snowpeak Ruins, which really captured the spirit of the entire game.

Overworld exploration: It’s the biggest one yet, though it feels small once you get to know it well, and big again once you realize you didn’t know it well at all. Because you are constrained to certain boundaries and tracts of land, there isn’t the same illusion of total exploratory freedom as that of The Wind Waker. That has been replaced by an illusion of density, that there’s something worth checking out at every turn: it’s a trade-off, but it works. At the same time, however, there’s ample space for so much more.

The secret caves are the best yet in variety and scope – easily equivalent to the Bottom of the Well in Ocarina or the Ghost Ship in Wind Waker – though too many of the rewards are monetary and therefore unnecessary, because there aren’t any extortionary fairy-man cartographers squeezing you for thousands in cash. Remarkably, I didn’t discover the Cave of Ordeals until after I finished the game, in spite of the fact that I repaired the Eldin Bridge, leaving the cave in plain sight. It’s an improvement over its predecessor, the Savage Labyrinth, though some of the rooms were made considerably easier by the fact that you could snipe away from the ledge before diving into the heat of battle.

Items: These are probably a clue as to the relative weakness of the last two or three dungeons. The Double Clawshots probably would have been more fun if I hadn’t expected to see them the entire game. The Spinner, Ball and Chain and Dominion Rod are interesting in that they made their respective dungeons worthwhile, but seem to be of little relevance afterwards. While this is true of the Dominion Rod, which could have benefited from there simply being more statues in the overworld left unmarked, it speaks to the thoroughness of the game’s design that while you’re rarely required to use the Spinner or the Ball and Chain, their effects were often taken into consideration. For instance, using the Spinner protects you from fall damage and lets you coast right over the collapsing blocks in the City in the Sky.

Bomb Arrows and Water Bombs were marvelous: I only wish there were more arrow combos aside from Bombs and the Hawkeye. Speaking of which, I think the Hawkeye didn’t quite make it through the GameCube-to-Wii transition. Maybe it’s for stability’s sake, but it doesn’t make much sense to pan with the stick and aim with the remote, only to put on the Hawkeye and suddenly aim entirely with the stick.

On another note about the interface, the Fishing Rod desperately needed an in-game explanation at the beginning of the game, where it is required. The item selection screen tells you how bobber fishing works, but the manual only concerns lure fishing, which could be misleading. There’s no other mention of how to fish with the bobber anywhere else.

On yet another note about the interface, the item selection wheel was an excellent idea, though the concealment of the number of usable items remain would have worked even better if there were more (or, indeed, any) secret items to be found.

Optional quests: This is one area where the game seemed lacking. Aside from secret areas like the Cave of Ordeals, there just wasn’t much to do. Magic Armor was a nice reward for the game’s big money quest, which there’s a certain impulse to perform because the reward is in plain sight, though it’s not obvious how much you have to spend. The Golden Bug and Poe collection quests are a challenge, but also probably the biggest impediment to truly completing the game. I’m not sure what I prefer: being required to find all 60 Poes in the game world, which means you’re not allowed to skip any, or something along the lines of Joy Pendants in Wind Waker, which enemies drop from time to time (albeit too abundantly when it came to, say, King’s Crests). The absence of a trading quest similar to how you obtain the Biggoron Sword in Ocarina was felt. What else is there? Hot Springwater delivery? Is that it?

At the same time, I think many of these deficiencies are made up for by the variety in the main quest itself, whether it be collecting Tears of Light or my personal favourite, the thrilling carriage escort sequence. It isn’t the activities themselves that disappoint, but the game’s overall linearity.

Oh, and call me spoiled on Wind Waker, The Minish Cap and to a lesser extent, Navi’s presence in Ocarina, but I really wanted to see every enemy in the game named and shamed. If there’s a better way to do it than as a figurine gallery, fine, but do it.

Minigames: Absolutely fantastic. Fishing, flying up Zora’s River and sailing back down, snowboarding, the rupee sink that is Rollgoal – there’s so much to play, and it’s all worth playing. Occasionally frustrating, sure, but only because I kept going back for high scores. If Twilight Princess is the best of the series in any one aspect, this is it. That said, I was stunned at the absence of a sumo-wrestling game where you work your way up successively tougher opponents. It seemed like an obvious choice to me, but sumo wrestling completely disappears after the Goron Mines.

Bosses: In general, far too easy, but fun to play and fun to watch. Never mind that Stallord barely hurts you at all: coasting around on the Spinner is great. And they kept getting better: Argorok and Zant weren’t difficult, but they were dynamic, and in a very rewarding way. What also struck me was the outstanding quality of the minibosses guarding each dungeon’s special item. Maybe it was because these battles – like the Ball and Chain Soldier and the Darknut in the Temple of Time – were often more combat-oriented, and didn’t practically end as soon as you figure out the (often obvious) strategy. It’s probably also the variety of what you get to face, which is evident right from the beginning, when you fight the boomerang-throwing monkey in the Forest Temple.

That said, the bosses could have been more aggressive. Some of them, like Morpheel and to a lesser extent, Stallord, sit back and wait patiently for you to make a move. The battles do escalate as you get a few hits in, but often not in a way that deals more damage. Like the other 3D games, the hint system (here, Midna) is all too eager to hold your hand and show you what to do after very little time (which really isn’t necessary), and I do wish there was a way to turn it off. But I suppose there are kids playing this too.

As for the final battle (by which I mean each of its separate phases put together), I have never seen better in a Zelda game. A novel combination of the 3D battles that have come before it and exciting new material that plays to the strengths of what makes Twilight Princess unique, its greatest moments were every time you saw what you got to do next. I really don’t know how they’re going to top this.

Enemy design: (Here, I mean both function and aesthetics.) Hit and miss, I’d say. Hits: Gorons, Beamos, axe-wielding Armos, variously-armoured Lizalfos, the Snowpeak ice knights, Freezards, two-phase Darknuts. (Notice how so many of these are mechanical, metallic or otherwise solid.) I was impressed by how many elements from the 2D games finally made it: aside from the close-quarters miniboss battle with the Ball and Chain Soldier, we finally have enemy archers, and the desert is full of sandworms leaping all over the place (which we’d previously only seen in the Molgera battle in Wind Waker). Also, the Twilight Palace provides the most inventive use of Wallmaster-like disembodied hands I’ve seen to date: they serve a purpose and pose a threat.

Misses: I primarily miss the life and expressiveness that Wind Waker‘s cartoon stylings brought to the classic Zelda enemies. Stalfos are back to being generic skeleton warriors. The ChuChus, if that’s what those slugs full of Chu Jelly were supposed to be, were inert little blobs, quite unlike the ones that sprung to life in the previous game. I don’t think it’s a graphical problem, just an stylistic one: the Bokoblins, for instance, are no less dynamic than the ones in Wind Waker as far as interesting foot soldiers go. But I do get the impression that there’s very little way to make creatures like the last game’s pop-up ChuChus and drooling Moblins work in a grittier, more “realistic” aesthetic like what Twilight Princess offers. Because of that, I hope the Zelda series moves towards a stylistic compromise similar to what you see with the Twilight Beasts, which are reminiscent of the cel-shading technique (mostly because their textural uniformity reacts the same way to the lighting model). Or, for that matter, the battle with Zant.

Obvious omissions include Octoroks, Moblins and Wizzrobes. I miss them slightly less if only because Lizalfos and Zant Heads are functional replacements, if not as lively.

I suppose this is my way of saying that Wind Waker is the better-looking game, but that’s not to discredit Twilight Princess for a vast rogues’ gallery that keeps the combat fresh. If anything, the Cave of Ordeals is a reminder of these strengths.

Environment: I appreciate how the NPCs preserve a lot of the genuine quirkiness of the Zelda series, and that the more “realistic” look of Twilight Princess does not preclude a few indulgences in caricature. As with the enemies, this works for some characters (Midna, Rusl, Barnes) more than others (Telma, Agitha, the Lake Hylia cannon guy). The landscaping and architecture are exquisite throughout, though as a world in decay, Hyrule Field naturally feels a bit dull and dry. Since you spend most of your time there, it’s tempting to say that the game lacks colour, though Snowpeak, the Faron Woods, and the Twilight Realm prove otherwise.

The most beautiful part of the game is the Sacred Grove, which I think demonstrates what I mean by an ideal stylistic compromise for the Zelda series: the trees and crumbling structures are intricate, the lighting makes the whole place downright painterly, but cartoonish enemies (Skull Kid and his puppets) don’t feel out of place at all. It’s full of life and colour without being overly abstract, and it’s built to last.

Music: Ha! That’s a whole other post.

Verdict: We now return to the question of whether this is the best Zelda to date. My answer would be, not at the exclusion of the other ones. It doesn’t make any game obsolete, though it goes a long way towards doing almost everything Ocarina of Time did, but better. Not the whole way, but a long way. I still think the 3D Zeldas have yet to live up to A Link to the Past in terms of puzzles, secret items and other elements, but Twilight Princess is a step forward. The dungeons don’t supercede everything that has already been done; Wind Waker still has its cooperative dungeons to recommend it, even if Twilight Princess incorporated most of its innovations, like controlling statues and working against the wind. I can’t say how it compares to Majora’s Mask, which I haven’t played, and I’m not going to bother drawing comparisons to the other 2D Zeldas.

This was a really long post. I suspect it was time better spent fishing and playing Rollgoal. And telling people to see The Fountain, which I’m tempted to call the best film of 2006, though I’m reluctant to jump the gun on such a judgment until I see it again, a careful reluctance that also applies to the more publicly acclaimed Babel.

A few disconnected notes from recent weeks:

Prior to last weekend’s Vanier Cup, the top prize in CIS “football”, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix ran an article on the players permanently affixed to the bench (“‘Redshirts’ key to Green and White”, 22 November 2006). I mention this primarily because they interviewed my elementary-school partner-in-crime Russell Webb, who is now at the end of a five-year career sitting on the bench for the Huskies, but also because I can’t help but notice that Star Trek terminology has entered the general lexicon.

Wikipedia tells me that the use of the term redshirt has a distinct etymology in the context of college sports, since red is a common scrimmage jersey colour, but I don’t buy that. I think that has at least been absorbed, if not superceded, by the more familiar meaning that refers to the junior ensigns on the Enterprise who serve as dutiful away-mission cannon-fodder.

Next: Cartoon Brew recently linked to a post on the five lamest Charlie Brown cartoons. #3 is a Cheerios commercial (and a link to a special about leukemia), and #5 is a Family Guy clip as uninspired as the rest of that show has been in recent seasons. They are new to me. Not only do I remember the other three, I own them. Yes, that includes the disco-fever Snoopy of It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown. Hey, it was catchy at the time. In my defence, I would say that I do consider Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Come Home to be rather good; believe it or not, the melodrama works. (The latter is legendary in its own right for the “No Dogs Allowed” sign and accompanying jingle.)

Next: I am six dungeons into Twilight Princess, and at the gates of the seventh; naturally, this comes directly at the expense of my academic work (and so, for that matter, does the act of confessing that in writing). I am astounded by this game’s continued ability to surprise at every turn. You see a pit you cannot traverse, and you think you’re going to pick up some Hover Boots. Nope! You see a block of ice in your way, and you think you’re going to pick up a Fire Rod. Nope! The surprise, though, is that what you actually do obtain is a lot more fun. Aesthetically, I still prefer most of the enemy designs from The Wind Waker, but that’s neither here nor there. More on this some other time; I don’t expect I’ll be shutting up about Zelda anytime soon.

Next: While I have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to current cinema, and while I have a lot of elaboration to do on all of the below (if only I had the time), I want to offer a few brief, undefended impressions. I’ve only seen each of these once, and opinions may change.

Death of a President: Technically and logistically interesting, but surprisingly tame. There is nothing controversial about this movie. Speculative history doesn’t work if you don’t take any risks. No, the assassination of George W. Bush is not, in itself, enough of a risk.

Babel: In recent years we’ve seen the popular emergence of ensemble films consisting of parallel stories connected only by thematic material and trifles of cause and effect. Traffic was nominated for Best Picture in 2000, and while I admired it, I found the actual parallel storylines to be weak in isolation. Crash won Best Picture in 2005, and while it was both engaging and fun, the thematic material was often much too overt and heavy-handed to make an effective statement on racism. I would argue that Babel is a better film than both of these, and perhaps the best film I’ve seen in this ensemble format, precisely because it is strong on both accounts. I will be returning to this movie, and unless I was fooled by first impressions, I think it should be a legitimate contender this year.

Flushed Away: To paraphrase a scene from the film – “amusing”, and by that, I mean “diverting”. There’s a lot of classic Aardman irony that begs to come out in this film, and a lot of their stop-motion character designs survive the translation to CG (watch the exaggerated mouth movements and how they sync with the dialogue). However, I think the pace of the action is often much too frantic, and it’s really quite inexcusable to have so much forgettable licensed music obscure the score by Harry Gregson-Williams, one of the most interesting film composers of the past decade and such an integral part of Chicken Run. I may come to think better of this film in time, but I do think that despite its strengths, it doesn’t distinguish itself from the Great CG Cesspool of 2006 as effectively as I’d hoped.

Borat: Occasionally hilarious in the tradition of “informed silliness” pioneered by the Monty Python troupe. That said, this movie runs into the same problem as Rowan Atkinson’s Bean did back in 1998: it fails to situate its disconnected sketches within a narrative good enough to justify its feature-length running time. The Pamela Anderson business simply doesn’t cut it, and I do wish it was there as more than just a middling excuse for a frame story. Also, in the odd moments when the jokes are misfires, there’s an awkward dead space in Cohen’s timing where laughter is supposed to be, and it’s very obvious. I speculate that the larger the audience you’re in, the less often you will see this happen.

Casino Royale: I can’t praise this film enough. I haven’t seen all twenty-one Bond films, but I am ready to declare this one the best. It is certainly the closest to the Ian Fleming ideal, and without a doubt, exactly the kind of Bond film I’ve wanted to see for years. As trepidatious as I was of the substitution of poker for baccarat, when the baccarat scenes in the book were probably the most electric card-playing passages I’ve read in any novel, the execution is superb. I may write a more thorough post on Casino Royale at some point, because there’s just so much to applaud.

Next: nationhood. Maybe. It’s an infuriating issue exacerbated by the wild stupidity in this country in the past few weeks. I know this blog is predominantly apolitical, unlike those of my compatriots in the immediate vicinity (Dan Arnold, for instance), but poke a sleeping dragon in the eye with sharp enough a stick and he’s bound to wake. Or, as J.K. Rowling would put it, draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.

Boy, am I glad the Wii launched the weekend before last, on one of the warmer days of the month, and not in the past few days. At the time of this writing, Edmonton is reading thirty below, though The Weather Network is telling me that it “feels like” -40°C, accounting for humidity, wind chill factor, and assorted metereological voodoo in n other variables. If you were to seat yourself outside the downtown location of a major electronics store under these conditions for all of fifteen minutes, you would probably die.

I realize that this is an interesting problem from a game-theoretic perspective, kind of like the optimization problem of picking the grapes in the vineyard before the winter freeze, but with the adversarial element of a known-unknown set of competing rational actors. (Please keepeth to thyselves the snide remarks about the rationality of queuing overnight for a video game console launch.)

Let’s say you know the upper and lower bounds on the number of units your selected location is receiving. From prowling Internet bulletin boards, you have a rough estimate of the median time that other campers are planning to depart (in your city or otherwise), and plan to beat them by at least two hours, knowing full well that they will probably beat themselves by one. You make a safe assumption that everybody taking this seriously has access to at least the same information. You also have to account for the possibility that the compatriots ahead of you may be joined by line-jumping friends in the window of opportunity that precedes the assignment of claim tickets before the shop opens, which is only partially offset by the mutual effort in the line to self-regulate a first-come-first-serve order. So far, so good – we have the normal circumstances under which you plan for a product launch where supply is limited.

The goal is to determine the expected payoff that correlates to the number of hours waited, and shoot for the maximum reward. Successfully acquiring a unit is the only positive figure in the reward equation. The costs: lost time, lost sleep, and (in the case of having to buy your way up the line) lost money.

But here in Edmonton, one has to account for another factor: an infinite loss if you pass a certain critical point where you wait too long – i.e. freezing to death, or at least losing a couple of limbs (which isn’t too conducive to playing the Wii, now is it). If the Wii had launched this week instead, that critical point would be so close to the store’s opening – even closer than the lead time claim-ticket distribution – that the entire scenario collapses on itself.

Like I said, it’s an interesting problem, and probably worth investigating in the realm of the hypothetical. However, when you are a participant in the proceedings, curiosity yields to the greater interest of getting your own grubby hands on a unit.

Back to reality, then: I did acquire a Wii when it launched on the 19th of November, along with the prepackaged Wii Sports (which I have yet to play) and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (which has spawned a 40-hour save file that speaks for itself). I visited the location twice – 9:30pm the night before, when the store closed and nobody was in line, and again at midnight when the line was two strong – before joining the queue in roughly the tenth position at 2:30am, and staying there until the store’s 10am opening. It was, by the numbers, not that cold – probably no chillier than the negative single digits, with the morning sunrise projected to vault us above the freezing point – but I was bundled up for much colder climes, and still shivering me timbers. Sitting down for hours can do that to you, especially near the beginning, when nobody has lined up behind you, but the wind just happens to be launching a rear assault in your direction.

There was a competing strategy for staying warm, and it began with a bottle of Captain Morgan.

Meet Sean. (Initial position: fifth in line. Final position: stone drunk.) As you can tell from his overcoat and scarf, Sean is a classy guy – by all accounts, an Advanced Placement student with a talent in chemistry and an interest in pursuing political science, whose dad dropped him off at 1am (so I’m told) with a rickety wooden fold-up chair and a “Good luck, son.”

Well, even Classy Guys get into the rum from time to time. For Sean, it just happened to be the first time. He was impervious to the cold all night, safely isolated from his senses. Then again, it may have had something to do with his running laps around the parking lot, falling flat on his face, getting back up, and running some more. Or walking back in forth in straight lines to prove it could be done. Or punching himself in the gut to demonstrate that he wasn’t about to heave anytime soon.

I’ve linked to a few brief clips above, and they fail to capture the young gentleman’s sheer endurance. The life of the party, he entertained us with his antics for six straight hours. The rest of us may not have been toasty, but we were by no means bored. Sean was a veritable community-builder. I dub him Sean the Social Lubricant, Catalyst of Camaraderie, C.G. (Classy Guy).

Even in his impaired state, Sean was well aware of the latent irony in demolishing the floodgates of repression and plunging into vice while lining up for a Nintendo product, a symbol of childhood innocence if I ever saw one. I’m trying to think of a comparable circumstance. I suppose it would be at least as funny if this coming-of-age moment occurred in, say, the line for a new Harry Potter book, but I can’t come up with anything else.

As for whether or not Twilight Princess is really as downright legendary as the ragtag cabal of online game critics suggest? Yes, yes, an orgasmic yes. Maybe in time I will come to hold it in lesser regard, depending on just how badly it has permanently hijacked my education in its very first week in my household, but even that would be a credit to its unbelievable variety and capacity to invent within the confines of a familiar interface and storytelling formula.

Details to come. Now, back to the fishing hole on the banks of Zora’s River.