The Substatic Monthly: March
Everything I've been up to in what seems like the busiest month of the year
I’ve had an exhausting month. Between work and multiple social trips to London, I’ve found myself low on time and bereft of coin and as such from a media standpoint this has been a bit of a lean month. Nevertheless I did watch, play and listen to a number of interesting things, so let’s talk about them.
GAMES
Triangle Strategy
I went into Square Enix's spiritual homage to Final Fantasy Tactics not knowing what it really was (an extremely lavish visual novel masquerading as a strategy RPG) and as a result I was disappointed at first, but I quickly realised that what the game actually does, it does incredibly well. A compelling central story built up through many dramatic moments as well as quieter stand alone skits, built upon this central choice-making mechanic The Scales of Conviction that so often asks you to consider the worse, but more noble option. I've still not finished this game due to how bastard hard some of the fights are but I am determined to keep playing, if for nothing else to see to the end the many great crises of House Wolfort, an army dealt the worst hand in history. Friends, it’s extremely good.
WarioWare Gold
There's a simple pleasure in executing a single thing perfectly. In all mediums sometimes we have absolutely lightning bolt ideas that, as their namesake suggests, cannot exist outside of the moment. It's why Vine was so brilliant a platform for creativity and why it's successor feels agonising to watch at times. The WarioWare series at its heart has no central thesis, it's not a game so much as it's a platform for a thousand silly little ideas and this 3DS iteration brilliantly uses the console's myriad features to great effect. The whole presentation is silly but perfect for what it’s trying to achieve and the rapid pace of each minigame means that you don’t even have time to be annoyed with yourself should you fail. A wonderful little game.
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
A profoundly baffling idea that is executed well enough but just did not resonate at all with me. A prequel of sorts to the original Final Fantasy, the game takes you on a whirlwind tour of all the staple FF archetypes through it’s landscapes, familiar foes and remixes of classic Uematsu tunes. There’s a lot here to love, which is a real shame that I really did not like it at all, mostly due to how lacking the story is. As much as I know folk love him, Jack Garland is the worst written Final Fantasy protagonist by a country mile, a bizarre walking contradiction that wouldn’t look out of place in a Tommy Wiseau movie. It didn’t charm me. Your mileage may vary. Probably don’t play it on easy, because I’m sure that didn’t help.
FILMS
John Wick 4
John Wick 4 is the stupidest film i’ve seen in a very long time, and I mean that both as a compliment and an insult. Covering a lot of the ground that Chapter 3 already did, it feels like an apt conclusion to a trilogy that started with Chapter 2, escalating the action and the scope without ever really increasing the stakes and pushing John ever further away from that first film that really captured my heart all those years ago.
I guess it’s what I grew up with, as a child eating incredibly well on straight to DVD action thrillers, this legacy resonates well in the original. These sequels on the other hand feel more in tune with martial arts comedies, and some serious anime undertones and if that’s what you love then Chapter 4 really is the one for you.
It’s a lot of fun, it didn’t feel like a drag despite the run time, the new cast were really good and there’s an excellent falling-down-stairs bit that made me laugh a lot.
Three Thousand Years of Longing
George Miller, well known for seminal post apocalyptic crash 'em ups and dancing penguins, shows the breadth of his directorial abilities in this wonderfully touching fable of love, yearning and the most cuckolded Djinn in history. It's a big story told small, two strangers sharing a moment of intense intimacy while also ruminating on the root desires of all of humanity, in turn falling desperately in love with one another. A brilliant two-step of Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton that feels like a perfectly natural pairing I never would have though to suggest until I saw it. It doesn't quite nail the landing, the third act is a little sloppy, it’s hard to conclude something so expansive with so little time, but what is there is captivating, cute and brilliantly presented.
Mad Max
Despite being a massive fan of Fury Road, I had never seen any of the original Mad Max films. Watching the 1979 original I was incredibly surprised to find not a vicious post apocalyptic battle epic but rather a slow-burn crime thriller set in a world that really has no interest in explaining itself. Eminent shithead Mel Gibson is in fine form as the titular Max Rockatansky, but it’s a softer performance than I was expecting, he’s essentially playing the straight man here when facing off a vicious biker gang of scenery chewing drama queens. The film has a bizarre structure, things that normally would have been set up in the first ten minutes are left to languish for almost the entire run time. It's an idea that maybe made more sense in 1979 than it does in 2023 but I can't say I hate it. A grateful education, if nothing else.
MUSIC
Quest for Fire - Skrillex
Skrillex was my entry point into dubstep and the wider EDM genre, but he’s also an artist I discovered during a particularly bad period of my life. I hadn’t really kept up with his comings and goings since previous album Recess and was hesitant to jump back in for a number of reasons. What I loved about tunes like Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites was that there was an element of Sonny Moore’s own past within it, those little emo touches that reminded us of his past life as the front man of From First to Last. Some of that legacy remains in Quest for Fire but it’s an album very much informed by genre staples more than this reflective element found in past work. It’s good, but I don’t think it’s particularly memorable, and that’s not a good sign.
Cracker Island - Gorillaz
I have very little to say about this album other than I like it a lot, and it has loads of ear worms. Not massively familiar with Gorillaz beyond their really famous stuff and that one Flimsy Steve tweet that does the rounds every couple of months, but it’s funky cool stuff. I did spend an inordinant amount of time thinking Damon Albarn was singing ‘they taught themselves to be a Cow’ in the title track’s chorus, however.
Sawayama - Rina Sawayama
Yes I did immediately look up everything I could find out about Rina Sawayama following her great performance in John Wick 4. I didn’t know who she was at all so was delighted to find out that not only a total badass on screen, she was also a very prolific musician, and my word what bangers these tunes all are. Described as a musical chameleon, her work invokes the best pop-punk tropes with touches of Rock in there for good measure. This is a great album. I’m so annoyed I didn’t know about it before now.
BOOKS (that’s right, baby! Tom’s reading again)
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part One: Phantom Blood
Having just finished the animated adaptation of Stone Ocean, I figured now would be as good a time as any to start *really* getting into manga, and I decided to start with Hirohiko Araki’s original fable of good vs evil. A comic book quite literally as old as I am, it’s been fascinating going back to the start and seeing how drastically Araki’s style began to form and evolve even from the first few chapters. I know Phantom Blood isn’t anyones favourite but I have a soft spot, if nothing else, for its brevity and the earnestness of its characters. Dio Brando would go on to be a nightmarish presence throughout the series but here in his original undiluted form as the ultimate hater turned vampire king is incredibly compelling drama. I had a great time reading this.