Mafia II, District 9...and swearing and censorship in movies and games.

This is something that has bugged me for a while. Swearing in both videogames and movies seems to be steadily heading towards dropping f-bombs every second word.

Personally, I have nothing against  violence and/or swears when it would typically be appropriate, but sometimes I find the sheer volume of excessive gore and cursing just turns me off of a film or game entirely.

Take District 9 (which I will review shortly). I really enjoyed that film, though I felt the action-heavy big robot scene dragged on a bit and felt tacked on.

The one single thing in the whole film that grated for me was the cursing - sometimes justified (I'd be swearing too if someone wanted to cut my arm off), but by the end of the film, where one of the bad guys was inserting obscenities into every sentence, it felt a little strained.

Can't the bad guy just say "Then just kill him." rather than "Then just ****ing kill him."?

Or "I'm going to kill you." rather than "I'm going to ****ing kill you."?

Or "How do I open this thing?!" instead of "How do I ****ing open this ****ing thing?! ****!"

>_> <_<

There were also plenty of gory body explosions that were a little gratuitous, but performed more to give a sense of power than out of mean-spirited sadism - no problem with that.

Then similarly in the videogame world, I was recently playing the Mafia II demo and I've gone on to purchase the game new, something I generally don't do. However the demo was very impressive and the first game had a fantastic story. Despite playing more curse-heavy games like The Getaway (every second word in that game is literally an F-bomb, ridiculous) I was still struck by the level of cursing in the game.

Now, take a scene from the demo - you ("Vito") and your Mafia colleagues (Joe and Henry) have to assassinate some kind of mob boss as he shows up to a whiskey distillery. Things go wrong and his workers are able to drag him inside as you ambush his car, leading to a long gunfight and the distillery catching fire.

During this exchange many swears are dropped, mostly by Joe, who is easily the most foul-mouthed of the lot. He screams curses and bellows furied insults as bullets spark off of the car he's crouched behind. It all feels justified and very intense.

Then, after taking out the enemies, he calls on you to kick a door open. "You first Vito, you're the ****ing war hero."

Hmm, little unneccessary maybe, but he's a coarse guy, so it makes sense.

Inside the distillery there's more swearing. Eventually the target is reached, and there is a cutscene that is both violent and swear-filled, but with good reason - the cornered boss begs pitifully, then sneakily wounds his would-be killer before finally being shot. It manages to be very uncomfortable viewing for all the right reasons, and Vito's expression flickers uncertainly as it plays out before him.

Unfortunately, this is followed by Joe literally swearing at everything that happens afterwards, however mundane, as if the dialogue writers gave up with their adjectives. I dawdle for a moment as he carries the wounded man...

"What the **** are you doing Vito?" is my reward for slowing down for two seconds to grab a Tommy Gun - even though Joe isn't actually moving himself at the time either.

Outside, I bump into a pedestrian and he barely stumbles. "Watch where you're ****ing going!"

Then I apparently drive too slow in the car (though I'm not being chased). "You drive like my ****ing grandmother!"

The list goes on, leaving a distinctly District 9-esque vibe of "was that one really neccessary?"

The short of it? I think both swearing and violence can be used very effectively to convey mature and thought-provoking messages, but I think care has to be taken not to cheapen the impact by throwing in lazy swears every five minutes. If anything I think that really detracts from immersion and any kind of meaning being conveyed.


* On a related note, Mafia II's collectable items are apparently made up of 50's Playboy pin-ups. Really I have no idea what they were thinking - it seems laughably tacked on and, as a gaming website put it, apparently put in to make sure to alienate the female audience.

There are no GTA-style prostitutes in the game and Vito can't fist-fight women due to his own personal morals (though he's free to shoot them and run them over...)

Of course the silly side content apparently had to be put in just to make sure that girls can't just enjoy the story like guys can after all...and guys can't share the game with their partner or families without feeling uncomfortable.

Very lame "collectables", 'nuff said ¬_¬

Review: The Hills Have Eyes

So nothing else was on TV last night and I watched this from around halfway to the end.

Unfortunately the film had two things that always drive me crazy in horror films - psycho mutant hillbillies and utterly dumb characters.

Mutant hillbillies actually rank lower on my originality scale than zombies. At least zombies are menacing and their origins are generally not explained. Their properties and actions can be changed to suit a different type of story.

Mutant hillbillies are even more predictable - you just know that they'll live in some crappy shack, and they'll eat tourists, etc. etc.What's worse is they seem to be in about a third of all recent horror films.

Now, at about halfway in the film looked like it had some promise. Then the characters suddenly went into full-on idiot mode.

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Let me pose some questions and see what you would pick in a mutant hillbilly situation, compared to the characters in this film.

Question 1: A group of mutants have kidnapped your baby and killed most of your family. You eventually find the kid, guarded by a bald, nasty looking woman in a chair. You have a baseball bat. Do you:

A: Sneak up behind the murderous kidnapper and beat her to death before sneaking out with the baby?
B: Sneak to the baby, pick her up (leaving you unable to use the bat), and then try to sneak out?

Question 2: You have a pistol with one magazine left. An unarmed crazy bloke is running towards you. Do you:

A: Take careful aim and shoot the guy dead?
B: Run away screaming while firing all of your bullets inaccurately over your shoulder?

Question 3: You are fighting a huge guy with a big axe. Eventually you stab him with the broken remains of your bat. Do you:

A: Keep hitting him with anything nearby until he's dead?
B: Stare for thirty seconds while he slowly pulls the splinters out and then starts walking towards you?

Question 4: A hillbilly comes very close to killing you in a fist fight, leaving you badly injured. You grab a shotgun when he's distracted, hit him three times in the face, and then shoot him twice in the chest. Do you:

A: Walk over to the body, pump the rest of your shells into it, and then throw it off of the nearby cliff for good measure?

B: Walk over to the body, smile, drop the loaded shotgun next to it, and then act horrified when he gets up and grabs it?

C: Wish someone in Hollywood could come up with a single original idea and stop watching shit like this?

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If you answered A to the questions you're a normal, sensible human being. If you answered B you've got a guaranteed place in the movie making business, and would be a great infuriating horror protaganist.

If you answered A to all of them and then C on Q4 as well, I am very much in agreement with you.

Final Rating:

I'm giving this film 1/5 for descending into the land of extremely lame cliche.
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Supermarkets

Have you ever noticed that supermarkets seem to be a kind of congregation area for people who enjoy making life frustrating? Sometimes I'm convinced that there is some elaborate conspiracy that shoppers and staff alike are in on. They all communicate with each other to make buying some simple items a mind-numbing chore.

Now, to be fair, the majority of the time you'll go into a supermarket and staff will be friendly, professional and pleasant to ask for assistance if you need it. My beef most certainly doesn't lie with these people, and to them I raise a salute.

No, my irritation lies with those like the Aisle Juggernauts, as I'm now going to start calling them. They'll shove a cart right down the aisle in an unswerving line and nearly take your foot off without so much as an apology. If they're having a bad day you'll get a dirty look as if it's your fault that you couldn't phase through the wall to escape them.

Then there's the Boasting Bloke, who is by no means restricted to the supermarket staff profession, but is especially annoying here.

At one point I was in Tesco's to buy milk, newspaper, bread. Boring stuff. That was when I noticed the shelf was blockaded by three guys and a staff cart, two of whom were listening to the Boasting Bloke.

As I stood a few paces away, staring at the milk as if my sheer concentration would cause the group to melt, Boasting Bloke continued to witter on smugly.

"Yeah, so then we went for drinks at blah, and I said blah, and then we all blahdeeblah'd! Hahaha! Yeh, yeh, you know it. And then I was like, blah, I can do that! And then I met her at the bar, and blah-"

At this point I muttered "'Scuse me." to no effect. Concluding that manners were apparently a foreign language in this aisle, I came back right at the end of the shopping list, only to find the prat still rambling on about his great night down the brain donor's clinic pub.

Disturbingly, I found myself  subconsciously sizing up how to best deliver a fatal overhead smash with the crispy French baguette resting in the trolley, but decided against it.

Fortunately the situation eventually resolved itself when an elderly guy practically rugby tackled him out of the way.

Finally for staff, there is the Amateur Juggler. There is a guy like this down my local mini store who just can't seem to resist performing advanced theatrics with food as he puts it through the scanner.

It's not enough to just scan it, he has to spin it round in one hand, slide it through upside down, perform keepy-uppies and eventually reverse header it into the bag. This is combined with a total lack of sense in regard to the fragility of the items.

Maybe it's a squishy cake that he zips through the scanner and slamdunks into the bag? Or perhaps a pack of biscuits that he decides to hurl the jar of marmelade on top of?

Then there are the other customers. I won't go too far into that, this post is already long so lets break it down into brief little classes:

- Mr/Mrs. Vacant - Baked Beans are apparently so wondrous that they deserve being stared at for fifteen minutes...but not before they've blocked the whole aisle with their trolley.

- Which Sandwich? - Lunch is a matter of grave importance for this shopper, who instead of just browsing, will continually lift up various items, stare at them, and put them down. This continues for around five minutes, with the offender always picking up the sandwich you want just as you lunge towards it.


Then there are the new self-service checkouts, which berate you in sudden loud harsh voices if you look at them the wrong way. Lack of a proper queuing system also means that queue places are usually assigned via gladiatorial combat.

Do you have your own shopping hates? Feel free to comment them, I'm sure I've missed quite a few!

That awful situation...

Blood Bowl, despite using dice, is a game that ultimately you influence with how skilled you are. How well can you position your players to force your opponent to do things he doesn't want to? Have you marked the right guys on the opposing team to stop them just dodging away? And so on.

Occasionally though, luck decides that you're screwed utterly either way. Like the time I lost one of the best players I've had to a single pitiful Goblin.

The match was going well, I was hammering the Goblins 1-0 as expected, and a few had been carted off the field, Badly Hurt (the least serious injury type, with no permanent effect).

I eased back in the chair, grinning as my team, the Shadowstain Slaughterers, advanced unstoppably down the wing with the ball. The Goblins were crippled by the stupidity of their Trolls, who refused to do anything they were told, instead choosing to stand in the middle of the pitch picking their noses for around 3/4 of the game.

At the time my best player (whose name, sadly, I forget...I named him myself :( ) was a Chaos Warrior who had levelled up in a previous match. His dice roll on levelling (double 6's, a 1/36 chance) was particularly awesome, and he was able to get + 1 in Strength, one of the most coveted and rare level up rewards possible.

As a result, his already above average strength was boosted to crazy levels. He was the only Chaos Warrior in the whole league to have a Strength of 5, equal to my Minotaur and the stupid Trolls I was against now.

The Minotaur on my team (Zarnkrak Limbpeeler, who is currently the only Blood Bowl star to have his own breakfast cereal! Check out the ad on the right - http://www.sturmvonstahl.info/ ) had been the only casualty this match, taken out by the Goblin Chainsaw shortly before I got half my team to stamp on him with the predictable result.

The injury hadn't been severe, but I thought, hey, I've got the nasty guy off the pitch, may as well use my doc and get the Mino back for giggles.

It was then that it happened.

The STR 5 Warrior hit a Goblin, getting to roll 3 dice (the maximum you can get) against him. It was virtually guaranteed that the Goblin was going down.

I looked in horror at the result -

[Both Down] + [Both Down] + [Both Down]

With no rerolls left, I would have to take this crappy outcome.

Right, I thought, stay calm. You have high armour, the Goblin will probably get squished. Bang, both players are on the floor, and my turn ends. My armour held.

Next turn, the Goblin stands up (he wasn't hurt) and kicks my Warrior while he's on the floor, with absolutely no-one else helping him. I almost laugh, and then my I noticed that it actually broke my armour. Injury roll is 10 on the dice...so that means a casualty. Casualty result? DEAD.

I believe that my scream was heard in Africa at that point, and my sobs rocked the foundations of the house.

The referee sent the little green git off, but it was no consolation to my best player, who lay motionless in the dugout, face down in the mud, a giant glowing white skull icon hovering mercilessly over his head.

Next turn I scored and won the game 2-0...which felt a little hollow. Even worse was the knowledge that I'd wasted my healer on the Minotaur, and so I may as well have killed the Warrior myself.

Let's do a quick analysis of the chance of that horrible injury happening, shall we?

First, the chance of getting triple dice all saying Both Down is 1/216.

Next, the chance that a lone Goblin would break my armour with no help by kicking me while I was down is 1/6. (surprisingly high!).

The chance that the injury would be so serious is also 1/6.

The probability that the injury would be death is 1/6.

So if my maths is correct (which it my not be, but whatever :D), this leads to a final chance of 2.14 x10^-4.

And the cruellest irony of all? If I hadn't given him +1 STR, I would have given him Block - a skill that means a player isn't knocked down on a Both Down result...

I do take a kind of masochistic pleasure from having experienced such an event though. It always raises an eyebrow when I tell my opponents that I fear tiny Goblins above all others!

Also, to break up all this text, enjoy a nice screenie of Zarnkrak Limbpeeler as he is today, Claws and Tentacles included:

He just wants a hug. Honestly.

Last match he fought with a rival Minotaur and eventually gave it a Broken Neck (though it was very, very tense and Zarnkrak nearly went down a couple of turns later...but that's another story!).

Welcome to the blog!

Smashed Collar Bone.

A bizarre and perhaps even nonsensical title? Or a term that inspires dismay and despair and serves as a useful metaphor for luck's most inspired bad turns? Perhaps even a phrase that brings a big grin to your face at your good fortune?

That all depends on whether you've ever played Blood Bowl!

Throughout the life of this blog (I.E. however long I remember it exists) I'll be posting up a weird mix of general observations of life in the UK, current events (with my opinions) and Blood Bowl experiences (both amusing and soul-crushing).

"But wait a minute", you might be thinking, "What's this 'Blood Bowl' that this talented and incredibly handsome bloke keeps going on about? Can I eat out of it?"

That's probably for a later post. Let's just say that it's a darkly humourous strategy game set in a universe where knee-high Goblins with dangerously out of control chainsaws brawl with 8 foot tall hulking great evil doom-knights. Who have mutated tentacles. Oh, and all this happens on a sports pitch, in front of a crowd even more aggressive than the players!

Yes, it's an unusual game. Let's hope it breathes that same spirit into the blog!