- Stay tuned -

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the lack of activity lately; lots of stuff in the works, but lack of time unfortunately. 

For you see, I am currently hard at work on a project designed to help me get my foot in the door for a permanent position with a magazine.  Early days yet, but this has to be my primary concern at the moment.

Updates as I get the time at this stage,

- Tim

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (by Pandemic, published by EA) is a game that has been a rather long time coming. The original Mercs was a sleeper hit on the Playstation 2 and Xbox systems, combining a free-roaming, GTA-esque world with a military theme and the ability to call in airstrikes; in short, it rocked quite hard.

First announced back when Mercs was still a hot topic, World in Flames sort of dropped off the radar for a while, with nothing more than the occasional screenshot or trailer to let people know that the game was still in development.  After more than three years wait, Mercenaries 2 has finally dropped into a marketplace that has seen quite a glut of open-world, ‘emergent’ games in recent times.  So how does it fair now that there are next-gen consoles, spiffing graphics, and the vast shadow cast by GTAIV?

Short answer: Not well.

Things get off to a disarmingly good start in Mercs 2, with the tutorial mission serving as an introduction to the storyline, the exotic new location (dreary North Korea has been left behind for sunny Venezuela), and of course the game mechanics.  A bunch of airstrikes and dead locals later, and the game gives you a cutscene or two and releases you into the main game with two simple goals: hunt down your crafty opponents, and get rich doing it.

The first thing that is immediately noticeable about World in Flames is the fact that the somewhat long development time hasn’t hurt environmental detail too much.  Venturing into Venezuela is a visually impressive experience, with tropical vistas, swaying palm trees, towering cities, and gorgeous sunsets over pristine lakes greeting the player at every turn; it is amazingly easy to lose huge swathes of time just travelling around enjoying the different landscapes, which Pandemic have obviously spent a huge amount of time crafting.

Unfortunately the visuals are not quite so impressive when it comes to the rest of the game.  Character models are clunky looking; factional soldiers and civilians are all cast from the same two or three bland and simple moulds; low-res textures show up surprisingly frequently, as does the dreaded ‘2D bush of death’; and clipping is a regular problem, with enemies often standing inside each other.  Despite technically looking more up to date in terms of bells-and-whistles, World in Flames unfortunately seems to have more in common visually with its predecessor than a modern game; no one was expecting a BioShock or UT3 level of detail, but graphics and art-style that equal other games in the “giant open world” genre (there’s GTAIV again) would have been nice.  Pop-in is also fairly noticeable, particularly when flying or travelling by boat.

The audio in World in Flames is, to be brutally honest about it, little short of terrible.  Don’t get me wrong, the basic gunfire and car engine noises are fine, but the positives pale in significance when compared to the horror that is the voice acting.  Barring Mattias Nilsson (who is awesome), just about every piece of dialogue by every character feels phony and forced; it may not be quite at the shoddy level of Smackdown versus Raw 2008, but wincing every time a player character, villain, supporting character, or even a random civilian in the street talks is just not on in this day and age.

Compounding this problem is the fact that the same dialogue will be repeated over and over and over again ad nauseam; prepare to listen to Fiona telling you that she “might be able to offer you a few suggestions!” in her husky Aussie accent every single time you leave your base of operations, accept a mission, or simply spend two more minutes playing the game after the last time she said it.  Other dialogue is the same; witty comments made by the player character after killing an enemy are turned into fingernails down the blackboard when you’ve killed your thousandth enemy and are still hearing the exact same line.  It is also worth noting that the subtitles during cutscenes rarely matches, or are synced up to, the spoken dialogue; even better, characters will often cut other characters off inappropriately before the sentence is finished in a way that feels more like a timing glitch, rather than some attempt at putting drama into the conversations.

After all that negativity, I can thankfully say that the game is actually fun to play…well, somewhat at least.  This is essentially the original Mercenaries with almost no changes bar a lowering of difficulty and the addition of a grappling hook to facilitate hijacking helicopters in midair.  Characters run around carrying two weapons plus assorted explosives, can steal vehicles ranging from motorbikes to boats (new addition, you can swim now too!) to tanks, and can order a variety of supplies and airstrikes through their PDA.

In an attempt to stop the ease with which you could just nuke the crap out of everything in the first game, the airstrikes have been toned back somewhat in Mercs 2.  Due to running as an independent in this game, it is up to the player to find and hire both a chopper pilot and a jet pilot, and it is also up to you to keep them fuelled up by stealing handy tanks of black gold spread throughout oil-rich Venezuela.  To make things even more challenging, the various airstrikes and supplies must first be bought from the various factions in person (or found littering the landscape), encouraging you to be prepared before going into battle.

This mechanic has a two-fold effect: firstly it does help to prevent the (oh so fun) airstrike spam of the first game, making you want to be more surgical with what you use so as to preserve your oil supply; this is a great idea overall, as it puts an emphasis on using pinpoint attacks that don’t use as much oil (such as the artillery or anti-tank strikes), rather than just using the same giant bomb over and over again.

The big problem with the execution of this new game mechanic is the fact that Pandemic have also seen fit to spread SAM sites, Anti-air missile troopers, and Jammers just about everywhere, meaning that an attack on a base will often require an infiltration of the enemy base to eliminate numerous enemies before you can even order in most strikes.  When this is compounded by the fact that the vast majority of the airstrikes are called by throwing a close proximity smoke grenade, you soon realise that you’ve just broken into the enemy base and destroyed those SAMs just so you could drop smoke, spend money and oil, and run back the way you came.

Which brings us to our second of the effects that the new airstrike mechanic has; somewhere in the midst of breaking into the enemy base and wiping out half the soldiers trying to knock out the anti-air support, you realise that it’s probably just easier to kill the rest of the soldiers yourself, especially considering that there are health packs scattered everywhere and your hp regenerates at a prodigious rate anyway.  The airstrikes, which are easily the coolest thing in the franchise (and look terrific to boot), are thus rendered fairly superfluous.  In fact, I barely called upon them at all throughout the game unless it was demanded of me by the storyline; a Tank and some C4 were usually far more effective.

Other aspects of the game have also failed to live up their potential as well.  A good job has been done not presenting any of the factions as obvious good guys in World in Flames; unlike the original, players are free to go up against the UN-like Allied Nations if they so choose, and all the factions have their own goals and rivalries that naturally cause problems for you as you try to juggle everyone’s happiness whilst also making as much cash as possible.

The problem here is that the factions are simply not as fleshed out as they were in the original game.  Whereas the first Mercs gave you a few factions with obvious leaders, each with their own goals and personalities, World in Flames tend to bounce you from person to person within a faction with no exposition or explanation as to who they are or why they are fighting.  The UP faction early in the game feels fairly fleshed out, with a nicely amoral feel to them, but the Guerrillas (for example) lack any character beyond “we are Marxists, fight the power!”

Individual ’story’ missions have also been significantly reduced, instead replaced by generic capture the outpost missions, races, VIP escort missions, and other filler that don’t even have a storyline explanation for occurring beyond a lust for power by each faction; even the awesome ‘Deck of 52′ core mechanic from the first game – in which you were required to hunt down enemies that corresponded to a playing card, and kill or capture them (with the goal of eventually going after the Aces) – has been watered down to basic missions for each faction involving capturing a certain number of High Value Targets (HVTs), most of whom are ridiculously easy to get hold of, for basic monetary rewards (as well as unlockables).   Remembering some of the awesome missions and card captures, or even the briefings from Mercs 1 (complete with the ability to sneakily understand what was being said in other languages if you were the right character in the right situation)and then realising they are gone in favour of generic missions and bland dialogue is simply not a fair trade.

What few important missions there are tend to be on the easy side, but are still decent for all of that.  Having the game always occur on the same (very large) map versus the original’s approach of splitting the game world in half and having certain missions happen ‘off-map’, has both good and bad points; the good being the sense of freedom offered by flying across the entire landscape in a helicopter, the bad being the ability to finish the last mission of the game in under five minutes in said helicopter – especially when three of those minutes were spent flying there.

I also feel that I have to mention the sheer amount of bugs that have made it into this game.  Mercenaries 2 feels like it could have used another three months in Quality Assurance, as it is impossible to play for any length of time without coming across something that just makes you shake your head in wonder as this game being released to the public in its current state.  Here are a few that I had the pleasure of coming across in the couple of weeks I’ve been playing: save games randomly disappearing; missions not registering as having been completed; airstrikes, supply drops, and ordered vehicles failing to materialise, but still costing oil and money; ordered vehicles arriving but then subsequently fading from existence; falling through the map on no less than four occasions; and captured HVTs shooting up into the air and floating twenty metres off the ground where they are (obviously) unable to be captured, but where they are also rendered completely impervious to harm, thus making the HVT mission impossible to complete.

None of these bugs and glitches are game breaking as such, but that doesn’t mean that World in Flames wasn’t released broken. The fact is that a commercial product should never be released in such a state, and certainly shouldn’t require a patch on the day of release; unfortunately, that was the case here.  I imagine this is more of an EA thing (they publish Mercs 2) than a Pandemic issue, as a similar lack of completeness was seen with EA’s Army of Two, with much the same result.

Reading back over what I have written here, I just realised that it comes across like I pretty much hate this game; I don’t at all.  In fact, I have had quite a bit of fun with Mercenaries 2: World in Flames by just experimenting with this huge, war-torn sandbox that Pandemic and EA have provided to us.  There is little in gaming to compare with the feeling of dropping a nuclear missile on a fortified position and watching as the cloud of dust whipped up in the ensuing explosion blocks out the sun, or detonating explosives that completely destroy an oilrig as you jump off the edge and hijack an enemy helicopter in midair.  The problem is that almost all of the really jaw-dropping, “This is AWESOME!” moments in Mercenaries 2 are completely overshadowed by the constant glitches, terrible AI, horrible voice acting, and thoughts of what could have been.

It is this last point, knowing that the there was so much potential here, that makes such an otherwise average action game feel so tragic; when the sequel to a much-loved game feels inferior in almost every way, it’s time for some serious questions to be asked, especially considering how much time has passed since Playground of Destruction was first released.

Maybe Pandemic will get it right in Mercenaries 3: Auckland Assault.  Now that would be awesome.    

Graphics: 7/10 (The world looks phenomenal; the inhabitants? not so much.)

Sound: 3/10 (Basic sounds are fine, voice acting and repetitiveness is tantamount to aural assault with intent to drive insane)

Gameplay: 5/10 (The great bits are so great that they serve to highlight just how average-to-poor the rest of the game is; jacking a copter in midair, whilst awesome, is little compensation for bugs, bland missions and story, and overall bad design.)

Longevity: 7/10 (Stupidly easy to finish, but the sheer variety on offer and the sandbox nature make it possible to just muck around in the world, killing things and starting wars; in fact, this is probably the strongest aspect of the game.)

Overall: 5.5/10 (This game should have been so much better than it turned out to be. Even if all the bugs were fixed tomorrow, the game itself is still startlingly average when compared to its predecessor, and is in many ways a step back.  If my PS2 still worked I would play the original over this any day of the week, and that is about as damning a criticism as I can offer. 

World in Flames can be fun in patches, and even somewhat satisfying, but it never quite rises to a level above mediocrity.)

-Tim Sweeney

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Image Gallery (Courtesy of IGN)

Funny how everything seems to come out at once, hey?  I’m sorry for the delays in getting some of the promised reviews done, but I have just been tasked with reviewing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning for GamingSA.com.

Being a rather epic MMORPG, and with myself having rather limited time to get the review done, it’s meant that my other game playing habits need to wait a little…so Force Unleashed, Mercs 2, etc are getting the shaft a bit while I work on grinding my way to some higher content in WAR. Hard life, honestly.

Not to worry though, there will be some stuff tomorrow, and I’ll probably do some articles over the weekend to make up for my slack period.

Cheers,

- Tim Sweeney

Sometimes you sit down to a closed beta for a game and feel as though you are the most special person in the world; here you are, playing this great game months before release, and it all seems to be working really well and is a hell of a lot of fun.

This was not one of those times.

After receiving my beta key for Red Alert 3, I proceeded to use the recommended FilePlanet software to download the just-under-a-gigabyte game; it then promptly corrupted.  I downloaded it again, and once more after that, always getting the same error.  Jumping onto the official forums revealed that there had been some people having issues with the installer and Vista Ultimate, so I was forced to try something else.  Unfortunately, the repeated downloads and attempted installs were enough to cap me for the month, which somewhat defeated the purpose of playtesting a multiplayer beta.

Finally September rolled around, and with it the realisation that I would have to find and download patches manually as well due to the updater ALSO hating my PC.  As you might imagine, my opinion of the game at this stage had been more than a little tarnished, even though I hadn’t even made it as far as the main menu yet!

These technical difficulties were not enough to distract me from my duties, however, and in the end I was glad I stuck with it; sure, there are definite issues with the Red Alert 3 beta, and it doesn’t feel as polished as, say, the Dawn of War beta did before release, but this game nonetheless looks like it is going to be the goods.  Let’s talk about why.

The biggest change for the campy, alternate-timeline RTS is the introduction of a brand new team to play as (no, Yuri’s faction in RA2 does not count), the Japanese ‘Empire of the Rising Sun’.  Where the Allies use interesting technology seemingly inspired by 60s spy and sci-fi movies, and the Soviet Union are just big and scary, the Empire is every Saturday morning anime cartoon come to life, with mecha transformers, lasers, and even some samurai swords.

The other big change to the game (although it is more of an expansion on an existing concept) is the addition of a large naval element.  Besides the obvious naval vessels, many units are amphibious, and indeed whole bases can be built above the waves; this is often necessary in fact, as resources are spread fairly evenly over land and sea.  This focus on rapidly shifting from water to land has the potential to lead to some really exciting battles, although during the beta this has not really been the case (more below).

Red Alert 3 Gameplay Footage

The most noticeable thing when you first start up the game is that the graphics, despite technically being quite similar to Tiberium Wars, look very exaggerated and cartoony.  Bright colours and oversaturation are the norm here, and this combined with the highly amusing unit design (armoured bears!) leads to a unique looking game, not to mention one that is remarkably gorgeous to look at.  The fact that Frank Klepacki is back onboard providing music just makes the presentation of Red Alert 3 that much sweeter.

In terms of balance, the three sides feel remarkably close to each other (although this is again hard to judge in the beta, really see below), with the Allies having clever, combined-arms units and a superior air force, while the Russians have brute force and a powerful offensive navy, and the Japanese have units with multiple functions (a boat that transforms into a plane on the ‘fly’ [oh ho ho ho!], for example) which make them the ‘jack of all trades’ team that can adapt very rapidly to different situations.

But now we have reached the aforementioned ‘below’.  The Red Alert 3 Beta has been, unfortunately, rather poorly structured, simply due to the fact that the two included maps are really very small in size.  This, especially when combined with the unfortunate ‘tank-rush’ nature of the C&C series (I love it, but it doesn’t make getting into multiplayer against more experienced players easy), means that games rarely go long enough for advanced units to be used effectively; in fact, most of the games I played in were won or lost with under a dozen units on the field, and these were often low tech.

When combined with the complete lack of bots or any ability to practice and get to know the different teams, it is really quite difficult to judge the balance of the teams, or get into the sorts of tactical usage and micromanagement that you need in big games; knowing that Unit X works very well with Unit Y against Unit Z becomes kind of irrelevant when Units Y and Z are Tier 3, and are thus never encountered.

The good news is that in the few games I managed to organise where we held off attacking each other to explore the options a bit, the different sides felt remarkably entertaining to use, with no side being a clear and overwhelming winner (although I  have found the Empire and Russia give me the most wins so far, even though I like the Allies best).  The fact that practically every unit has an alternate ability leads to a degree of micromanagement that manages to be fun, but never gets to the annoying stage of some other RTS games.  The pretty graphics and camp design also means that getting to see all your units and structures is quite awesome, and the battles are really quite spectacular to look at.

The main faults I have found with the Red Alert 3 beta have mostly been due to some technical issues and a few poor testing choices by EA; the fact that Gamespy is notoriously buggy and laggy didn’t help matters either.  When the little niggly problems were bypassed, Red Alert 3 was certainly a fun game, and should be a must buy for RTS fans when it is released at the end of October.  The beta is coming to a close next week, so if I encounter anything mind-blowing I will amend this preview accordingly.

- Tim Sweeney

Red Alert 3 Image Gallery (courtesy IGN)

Gaming – when compared to the other ‘arts’ at least – is still perceived as a somewhat immature medium; somewhat correctly in my opinion.  This is partly due to age of course; from literature to theatre; poetry to cinema; all of them have had a great deal of time to establish their import to society in a variety of ways.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been many important games, but these have mostly been important from a technical or gameplay perspective; think Mario 64 revolutionising platform games, for example, and you’ll be on track to see where I’m going with that point.

Games that make an impact due to story, dialogue, character, or simple artistic merit, however, are a little more thin on the ground; Deus Ex, Torment, possibly the other games I discussed in my Games as Art article (shameless plug?) would qualify, but even these are of arguable artistic merit when compared to similar examples from other mediums.

That rather longwinded introduction brings us to Braid.  Many people would have heard of this game; the 2D platformer with the time-control mechanic, hand-painted graphics, and supposedly pretentious storyline.  This is the ‘simple’ platformer made by an indie developer that nonetheless cost a huge amount of cash to create (we’re talking in the hundreds of thousands).  Braid is all of this, but it is also something more: it is important.

In fact, it may just be the most important game to ever see commercial release.

Exaggeration? Hyperbole? You would have to play it to make that judgement I guess.  The worst part is that, beyond describing the beautifully presented, multi-layered, and carefully crafted narrative as a beautifully presented, multi-layered, and carefully crafted narrative, there is basically nothing I can say to convince you without spoiling what makes the game so special.  All I can say is that the plot is delivered in a beautiful, storybook-like fashion with an amazing twist, only for there to be far more subtext and layers for those that wish to look for them, to the point that there are twists within twists that make you question…well that would be telling.  Some my find it pretentious; I found it very interesting, at times confusing, and also rather sad.

Beyond the amazing story, every other aspect of this game is also presented in a phenomenally gorgeous way.  The visuals are truly stunning to see, with the painted look making for a very unique and fairytale-esque feel; anyone that thinks good graphics are determined solely by the amount of normal-mapped polygons being pushed around should look at this to understand the true meaning of ‘art style’ in a game.

Sound effects in the game are relatively minimal, but suit the atmosphere perfectly, and the musical score is hauntingly beautiful, especially when you take into account the effect that reversing, slowing, or speeding up time can have on it.

Speaking of which, the time manipulation in this game goes way beyond the kind of thing seen in the Prince of Persia series, and in many ways matches the complexity and jaw-dropping awesomeness of the puzzles in Portal.  While initially nothing more than a way to reverse death or redo puzzles, time powers soon begin to alter from world to world in Braid; you may come across items and enemies that are unaffected by your time reversing abilities, for example, or reach a world where time stands still when you do, advancing or reversing depending on which direction you move.

As soon as you’ve mastered one new facet of time manipulation, another is thrown at you, forcing you to constantly work out your brain in ways that it wouldn’t often get used (unless you frequently travel back through time I suppose).  The puzzles manage to perfectly straddle the line between frustration and achievement, and the seemingly impossible will often just ‘click’ into place in a way that leaves you with a warm sense of accomplishment; if it doesn’t, you are always free to move onto another puzzle and tackle things in the order you want to.

Braid is a game that, quite simply, lives up to the hype.  The look is unique and gorgeous, the story multi-layered and surprisingly engaging, and the gameplay is fiendishly complex but never punishing.  Most importantly, Braid is a game which achieves maturity through a clever narrative and intelligent gameplay, not excessive swearing and exposed tits.   It may be short, the mechanics and story may confound some, but this game is absolutely worth the points on Xbox Live.

So spend a little money, enjoy some amazing gameplay, help support independent game development, and enjoy a game that achieves something truly unique in gaming; what have you got to lose?

Rating: 10/10 (Braid is one of those games that is going to lead to some contentious reviews, with the game being called ‘pretentious’ by some and ‘incredible’ by others.  Even if you agree that the story might not be your cup of tea (you’re doing yourself a disservice, incidentally), this is a game worth owning purely for the amazing craftsmanship; from the time mechanics to the charming visuals, from the musical score to the fiendish puzzles; and most especially for the mature, engaging story, you owe it to yourself to buy this game.)

- Tim Sweeney

Braid Image Gallery

I believe I have just come across my biggest challenge as a writer to date: reviewing Braid.  I am actually finding it so difficult to get the right ideas down that the 500-odd word document have been sitting here for a couple of days, and I’m still having to work diligently at it (I have like 3 other things on hold at the moment as well, time issues still abound unfortunately) just to try and get it to meet my standards.  Since this is taking longer than I had hoped, and since I swore to myself that I would knock the Braid review out before moving onto the other reviews, I thought it might be interesting to put up a short article on just why I am finding this to be such a challenge, and to also maybe give an insight into the review process as I experience it.

Why, you may ask (assuming you aren’t a random spam bot or something), is reviewing Braid so difficult? This game is something of a landmark for gaming in terms of importance to the industry; note that I’m saying this irrespective of how it plays, in case anyone assumes I’m giving it a good review and doesn’t bother reading it when it is up ;). The problem is that it is almost impossible to discuss what it is that makes Braid important without spoiling the entire experience for the people that you are reviewing the game for.

The conundrum in this kind of situation for a journalist (more properly a critic in this case) is that your natural desire to describe just what it is that makes something good, bad, boring, important, or whatever the case may be, is constantly at war with the job requirement (as well as the basic human decency aspect of it) of not spoiling the experience for everyone else, especially when you often have access to advance copies of games, movies, or what have you.

As a game player I want to share my experiences with everyone in detail, to get discussions going on about what I saw and how I felt, and the beauty of the internet is that it’s easy to do this if you so wish.  As a critic, however, if I do this (and I really do try to avoid spoilers) I am severely compromising my own integrity, as well as going out of my way to piss off anyone that is interested in actually playing the game.

Reviews in any entertainment medium should, in my opinion, have a mixture of critic and fan in them; you can’t be so purposely vague as to leave the reader thinking that the article is basically a waste of time, but going into so much fanboy detail that you start spoiling things is both alienating to readers, and downright lazy to boot. 

This is what makes the review of Braid so challenging: everything in the game is intrinsically tied into an amazing central concept (or two, or three, no spoilers), and this makes discussing even some basic gameplay elements difficult without ruining what makes it special. 

Who could have known that finding the right words to describe what should be a dumb little Live Arcade game would have been my biggest challenge yet?  Not that I’m worried; I could post up what I have now if I really wanted to, but I try to push myself to deliver articles that meet what I think they should be.

I’d like to think that those of you who read my stuff agree that the extra effort (and time) is worth it.  I’d also like to think that my not being a bastard earns me bonus points as well.

- The Ranting Wombat

Hey all, just a quick update on what I have coming up in the next few days:

- Review of Braid (XBLA)

- Review of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (360)

- Review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (360)

- Review of Sins of a Solar Empire (PC)

- Preview of the Red Alert 3 Online Beta (PC)…assuming I can get it working in 64-bit Vista.

As you can see, things are going to be gameriffic around the Lair.  Stay tuned!

- Tim Sweeney

It is hard to believe that a tale of professional murderers trapped in the fairytale city of Bruges could be a true morality tale, never mind a darkly hilarious one; but In Bruges (written and directed by Martin McDonagh) manages to straddle the lines between comedy, thriller, and drama with an aplomb that has seen the film deservedly earn almost universal praise from critics and the movie-going public alike.

Bruges is a fairytale city in the true Brothers Grimm sense of the word; a dark, brooding, medieval city in Belgium whose grim cobblestoned streets, imposing turreted houses, and fittingly depressing weather (admittedly this equally applies to the other, non-medieval parts of Belgium as well) doesn’t seem to deter the tourists from flocking in from around the world to see this living relic of the past.

Into this eerily beautiful location enter two professional assassins: new kid Ray (Colin Farrell, in perhaps the role of his career), an Irishman with an affable and charming personality that fails to hide a very short fuse; and Ken (played ably by Brendan Gleeson), a middle-aged Englishman who has taken Ray under his wing.  The two men have been sent to Bruges by their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) to lay low after a botched job in London; to reveal more of the plot would spoil things, but suffice to say that it is very well thought out and paced beautifully, and will have you wrapped up in it until the end.

The dialogue is riotously entertaining, with the interchanges between Ray and Ken, Ray and Harry, and basically Ray and everyone else usually being very funny, if not outright hilarious.  Farrell manages the exact right combination between being a smartarse and sounding absolutely sincere in the outrageous things he says, and his charm manages to make his character far more sympathetic and likeable than a morally ambiguous hitman really should be.  Gleeson, Fiennes, and indeed the entire supporting cast also play their roles very well, and Fiennes in particular is almost unrecognisable in his swear-a-minute turn as the boss.

The other aspects of this film are just as accomplished as the very witty dialogue.  As mentioned previously, Bruges is so amazing that it is almost a character in its own right, and the dark and shadowy town really fits the equally dark and shadowy subject matter.  The musical score also matches the mood and setting very well, consisting as it does entirely of sparse piano that helps lend a sombre air to the film in between all the hilarious dialogue and strange situations.

The only remote criticism that can be aimed at the film – and this is reaching – is that some parts of the film could perhaps flow a little quicker than they do; but this ‘downtime’ (as it were) helps to reinforce the fact that, even with the quirky and dark humour, In Bruges is by no means a real comedy.  When all the layers of fun and weirdness are stripped away, the story told by this film is actually quite tragic, and it is to the credit of McDonagh and his cast that they can entertain the viewer and make them laugh uproariously even while telling a very human story about very human failings and a search for redemption (or just an end to the pain) against a backdrop that is visually and morally about as grey as you can get.

I rate In Bruges:  9/10 (Equal parts wit, humour, darkness, and moral ambiguity, In Bruges is the sort of film that comes along rarely, and it is rarer still for it to be as well-made and enjoyable as this.  Perhaps it will not be to everybody’s taste, but anybody that enjoys good cinema owes it to themselves to give it a try.)

- Tim Sweeney

The idea of a medical show structured like a detective mystery (or, to be more direct and slightly insulting: like CSI) at first sounds odd; but then if you stop and think about it, one of the biggest unknowns to humanity in many ways is, in fact, the human body, particularly in terms of some of the bizarre illnesses that manage to infect people remarkably frequently.  With this concept of a medical homage to Sherlock Holmes in mind, House has managed to differentiate itself quite substantially from other recent television offerings – medical and otherwise.

Each episode of this show operates like that of a typical cop show or mystery: a self-contained plot, usually revolving around the sudden onset of an unknown illness in a soon-to-be-patient, is supported by the ongoing look into the lives of the various characters, their relationships, and the evolution of each of them as they come under the influence of (and butt heads with) House. After the mysteriously ill patient arrives, it is then up to House and his team to race against time trying to cure them, inevitably arguing and jostling with each other along the way.  It is a simple concept, but the simple ones usually turn out the best.

The first (and most inspired) step in creating such a unique series was the inspired casting of British comedic actor Hugh Laurie in the role of the titular Doctor Gregory House – a diagnostic medicine expert whose savant-like ability to solve medical mysteries is topped only by his abrasive personality, gigantic ego, and complete disregard for social norms like manners or rules.  Those who are aware of Laurie’s prior work as a bumbling buffoon in comedy series Blackadder, or his work alongside Stephen Fry in Fry and Laurie, may well be surprised at how well he takes on a much more serious role, albeit one that still requires a great deal of (incredibly caustic) comedic timing.

This is the role of Laurie’s career, and really shows the sort of acting range that he possesses; the fact all his dialogue is done in a foreign accent only increases your respect for his abilities.  Laurie’s phenomenal acting is ably backed up by a strong supporting cast, with Omar Epps (as Dr Foreman), Lisa Edelstein (Hospital Administrator Lisa Cuddy), and Robert Sean Edward (as House’s best friend, Dr Wilson) consistently standing out with their performances as House’s colleagues; Jennifer Morrison and Australian Jesse Spencer (Doctors Cameron and Chase respectively) are the other main stars of the show, and do not quite reach the heady performing heights of their colleagues in this first season, but are nonetheless solid in their roles as members of House’s diagnostic team.

Despite the possibility for the episodes of this show to become samey, each mystery manages to be quite different to the last, and even more common illnesses often occur in strange and unique circumstances.  The prevention of déjà vu is also aided by the fact that the personal lives and relationships of the main characters are touched on just enough to add substance and developing characterisations to each episode, but rarely feel forced or as though they are cluttering up the central plot.

The first season of House is simply a quality TV mystery, wrapped up in the trappings of medicine, drama, and some comedy.  The themes are mature, often dealing with psychological issues, drug abuse, and various other darker subject matters, and yet the whole show hangs together with a sense of humour and suspense that matches the best comedies and thrillers on TV.  Unlike many of its contemporaries, House is not a show solely for the medical nuts; in fact, this really should be compulsory viewing for anyone who just likes good TV.

I rate House – Season 1: 8/10 (A clever and enthralling show that goes beyond the typical scope and trappings of a medical drama by bringing in elements of mystery and characters that are not cardboard cut-outs.  Well worth watching.)

- Tim Sweeney