Human Nature

What does it mean to be human?

Deus Ex: Human Revolution explores the question, but I'm not so sure it comes up with an answer.

Minor Spoilers Ahead!

Philosophical quandaries aside, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (or DE:HR from here on in) is a 2011 cyberpunk prequel to the famous Deus Ex (2000).

I like this game a lot. It's very pretty, the engine is good, the story is more than decent, but what I really like is that it hasn't tried to please everybody. The developers took a few concepts and stuck with them.

Combat is the main part of the game in many ways, and it's both smooth and fun. No complaints there.

Stealth is also fun, and a long standing favorite of mine. All well so far.

Hacking is alright, I suppose. As an every now and then element, it's in fact very good, but when you go through every computer in a news room, it gets very tedious. Not to mention that, once you upgrade your skill to max, and get hacking stealth to max, even the hardest locks are a breeze to crack.

Finally Social. This part is also quite fun, and can make your life considerably easier. But it's the smallest element in the game, and as such is the least important. Unless you're going for a no kill play through.

As a gamer, I like to explore, and here DE:HR falls a little bit on it's face. There are hidden areas, but most levels are rather small, which limits your possibilities a great deal. In fact, Detroit is downright tiny, but it's more than made up by Hengsha (fictional Chinese city) which in turn feels rather big. The rest are mostly different bases and similar locations that you infiltrate.

I suppose one could accuse DE:HR of being linear and “railroady” but that would be pretty unfair, and here's why. The hero, Adam Jensen is a very driven man. When he sets his mind to doing something, it gets done, whether it's helping an old friend or uncovering global conspiracies. Whatever his next goal is, Jensen goes for gold and not for hamburgers. This is not GTA, but man do I wish I could get the size of the GTA cities in this game!

Most missions have many different ways they can be completed, and this is where the options come in, and it's up to you to figure out how to do what needs to be done. If the game was more open, this would probably be much harder to figure out, which would impact on the flow of the game.

The one thing that did disappoint me though, where the boss fights. The first one is the hardest, and once you figure out how to do it, it's not all that hard. Personally I'd be happy if we could leave boss battles where they belong; in the past. But since they keep popping up, I guess I'm the minority. At least in DE:HR they occupy very little of your time.

Finally, I've noticed that Jensen's motive for doing all he does is ambiguous. It could be a sense of duty, or maybe revenge. Or possible love, I don't know. I suppose you have to figure it our for yourself.

If you want a game with a good story, compelling characters and great atmosphere, you can do a lot worse than Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

It's amazing that we're still here.

Today's eccentricity is a somewhat macabre book with the charming title of:

Atrocitology - Humanity's 100 deadliest achievements.

It's written by Matthew White, a self proclaimed atrocitologist who has received praise for his work from amongst others Harvard.

When I leafed through this rather hefty book (669 pages incl. the index), I thought it was going to be heavy going, but I was pleasantly surprised.

In a nutshell, this book goes through the 100 events in recorded history that has claimed the most lives, but only the ones we have inflicted on ourselves. So the Black Death and it's ilk are out, as are all natural disasters. This means it's mostly war, but there are a few other massive cruelties scattered about. Of course there are few bits missing here and there, but in order to make this book, an event has to have a death toll of at least 300.000 people, so that can't be helped.

The Atrocitology is listed in chronological order, rather than by amount of casualties, starting with the Second Persian war (480-479 BCE) and goes all the way up to the Second Congo War (1998-2002). This of course leaves almost 2500 years of nasty behaviour, and an incredible amount of dead people.

So how can such a catalogue of suffering and misery be a good read?

First off, it's the way Mr. White writes. He has a wonderful way of using humour and irony without being disrespectful.

Secondly if you, like me, love history and trivia (and you're preferably a bit morbid) this book will give you a great overview of a large portion of history. The development and destruction of Tribes, Nations and Empires, and how it has influenced the world, even today.

Finally, very few chapters are more than a couple of pages long, and even then, Mr. White doesn't dwell on any details that would upset delicate stomachs. Broad sweeps in other words.

The Atrocitology is a great book, and not one to be overlooked. I learned a tremendous amount from this work, and in the process got a better understanding of not only the history of the world, but also of humanity itself. Very little has changed over the millenia. We're still bastards.

The Slender Man

As the old saying goes, there's nothing new under the sun, but every so often you run into something that's, if not new, then at least fresh.

On today's menu is the Slender Man.

What's particularly interesting about the Slender Man mythos, it's that it's completely made up. In fact, it was created for a contest on the website Something Awful, back in 2009, by user name Victor Surge. I find the fact that we know this intriguing, since most scary things tend to be attributed to some ancient evil, or at the very least they're claimed to be true. Not so with Slender Man, but that doesn't mean he's any less creepy.

Slender Mans popularity spread fairly quickly, particularly thanks to the web series Marble Hornets, which is a brilliant documentary style show about a young man trying to unravel the mystery surrounding him, with the Slender Man taking center stage in the story. What I find really brilliant about the Marble Hornets story is how the main character Alex uploads everything he films and finds to Youtube, thereby making you, the viewer, a part of the story. All in all, an awesome story, well worth watching by all fans of Horror. In fact, I'd go so far as to say there are a few professionals who could learn a thing or two from Marble Hornets.

If passive viewing isn't you thing, there is also a game called simply Slender, in which you have to find a certain amount of pages before Slender Man finds you. I believe it's freely available online. No doubt Google can help you find it.

So what's the deal? Why is a tall, skinny faceless weirdo so creepy? I would say it's a clever (or accidental) combination of the following factors:

• Relatability. It's a humanoid and intelligent figure, as opposed by say the Blob.
• Vulnerability. Yours to be specific. Simply approaching him is very dangerous.
• Mystery. Nothing is explained. No background, no motive.

These well used elements are put to good use, and again shows that's it's less about what you do and more how you do it.

The forces of Evil needs a strategy consultant.

Warning: The following post contains spoilers for two movies that are over thirty years old, so if you haven't seen them by now, too bad.

Inspired by last weeks post, I decided to re-visit the two original Omen films. That's when it struck me: the forces of Satan are incredibly inept at planning!

The entire point of the first Omen, and partly the second one as well, is to ensure that Damien is placed in a position of temporal power. After all, it's no good having the Antichrist work in a roman pizzeria his whole life. His adopted father is Robert Thorn, the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, who is a personal friend of the President. The Thorn family is also stupidly wealthy, so all in all, a good choice for the son of Satan, right?

So what does the forces of darkness do? They kill anyone who stands in the way of their plans in the most over the top, and suspicious manner possible, usually involving a raven or a rottweiler. And not just people who are in the way either. They work very hard to kill as many people as possible. Maybe there's some kind of murder quota they have to fill?

The nanny hangs her self in full view of an entire party just so that the next nanny can be a servant of darkness. Why not just get the old nanny fired, or run her over with a bus? We have seen they can do that with empty trains.

They kill Damiens mother, Katherine Thorn, driving Robert over the edge. In the final climax, the police shoots Robert only seconds before he would have killed Damien. And killed him properly at that.

It seems they do everything they can to expose the truth about Damien, for some unknown reason, instead of keeping him a secret.

In Damien: Omen II, the forces of evil have become a bit more subtle, but they are still jumping the gun, if not the shark.

What are the expecting to accomplish by killing everyone (again) when Damien is still so incredibly young? There is no way he can seize control of either Thorn Industries or gain any political power when he's just thirteen. All they are in fact doing is making him stand out and make people notice him for no reason. Particularly when all the people who know the truth are rambling, shouting religious lunatics, that no one takes seriously anyway. They keep barging in on people, yelling about accepting Christ it to their hearts, not that it helps, since they are immediately murdered. The sole reason they gain any credibility is because of the strange happenings surrounding Damien in the first place.

One could argue that they are working hard to ensure that Damien is surrounded by loyal advisers, but he's the Antichrist! How are they going to deny him anything, when they kill anyone he feels any respect for? Remember, Damien finds out who he is when he's thirteen years old. A teenager from a rich family can be a hand full as it is, without being the son of the devil as well.

Much smarter to keep him in the stable home he had, and once he's ready, unleash his power, right?

Don't get me wrong, I love these movies, but the staggering stupidity of the plan is sometimes a bit much.

Oh, and one final thing. Don't ever name your kid Damien. What else can you expect to happen?