BP’s Tears In Rain

Vi sobre (500) Days of Summer numa vinheta na TV a cabo e gostei da premissa. Alguns dias depois recebo uma recomendação no melhor estilo “assista-o, você verá como a coisa realmente acontece”. Não sou chegado em filmes desse gênero, mas finalmente apareceu um com o qual eu me identifiquei profundamente. Isso ocorreu logo nas primeiras cenas e continuou até o fim, seja através da trilha sonora, seja nos pequenos detalhes de comportamento que Tom (nice guy) e Summer (girl of dreams)  demonstram.

Esqueça os contos de fada – o filme não é uma comédia romântica que termina com “foram felizes para sempre”. Também não é um drama de final miserável. Arrisco-me a dizer que é apenas a vida como ela é: os altos, os baixos e as surpresas que o amanhã nos reserva quando o assunto é relacionamento. Um tapa na cara? Provavelmente.

Os filme todo tem gostinho de “já passei por isso antes”. Destaque para o momento em que Tom vai a uma festa no apartamento de Summer: a tela é dividida com as suas expectativas e a nua (e crua) realidade. Caracas! Nem preciso revirar o meu passado pra encontrar uma situação semelhante. São tantos os momentos onde a ficção se mistura com experiências próprias que eu poderia montar uma trilha de audio fazendo comentários.

Talvez seja por causa da minha bagagem emocional, mas não consigo lembrar de nenhum outro filme do gênero que faz tanto sentido (embora ele retrate as escolhas sem sentido que as pessoas fazem). Relacionamentos são assim: aparentemente simples, profundamente complicados. Se os dois não estão em sintonia fica difícil.

Ah! Momento de cultura cinematográfica inútil: um dos cenários é aquele mesmo prédio onde ocorre o climax de Blade Runner, o Bradbury Building, em L.A. Eu notei de cara, óbvio :)

Cool, ahm?! É uma curiosa coincidência num filme recheado de familiaridades e “lembranças”.

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Em plena era de MSN e Skype, realmente tem que ser muito tonto ansioso pra gastar descontroladamente com torpedos. E olha que nem uso Twitter. Lá se vai uma grana que poderia ter sido usada para algo mais útil, como Left 4 Dead 2.

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Terça-feira, 10 de novembro de 2009: o blecaute fecha a noite com chave de ouro. Valeu a pena esperar. Keep on rolling! Roll with the changes!

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Well, I spent this last week playing the fabulous, marvelous, 2009 game-of-the-year (by anticipation) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. All the hype is justified. That’s a game you have to play at least once in your life. While all the levels are somehow cool and wonderful, the game features an stage were you are aboard of a train going from Nepal to Tibet.

The experience is spectacular, the visual is jaw dropping and the action is amazing! You even have an Hind - that badass Russian copter - blowing up the carts in an desperate attempt to kill you. It’s simply breathtaking!

And you know what more? I think that’s the first time I ever see a train stage where you don’t travel on a straight line. Uncharted’s train goes right, left, up and down. It travels through jungle, a tunnel and mountains covered with snow. Each part of the travel, however, is a closed circuit and you can notice the repetition after a few minutes if you just stand there, watching it – and believe me, you will want to stop playing to see.

That “WOW” feeling that this stage gave reminded me of some other (older) 3D games that also featured some kind of action aboard of a train in movement.  If Uncharted 2 has the most impressive train stage ever (until 2009 at least), the games below certainly preceded its coolness and somehow managed to stay on my mind.

- Blood (1997)
The Phantom Express is the third level of the first episode in Blood – a gory funny crazy game (made by the cool Monolith studio) where you control Caleb - a sarcastic anti-hero with a “strong bent towards sadism”.

The game uses the same engine as Duke Nukem 3D, so it was very limited, but with the right tricks developers pushed 2.5D to the extreme. Oh boy, I miss those days. Your objective here is simply to stop the train and kill everyone in your way.

- No One Lives Forever (2000)
The NOLF series is one of my favorites. Monolith strikes again with an intelligent game, mixing action, stealth, great humor and memorable characters (please Monolith, give us a new game already).

While the train stage on NOLF doesn’t have really remarkable visuals, it’s humorous dialogue deservers a mention. Here, Cate Archer needs to locate an agent and then find H.A.R.M.’s engineer.

- Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004)
If there’s one level where Pandora Tomorrow really shines, it is the third stage (again). Sam Fisher invades an high speed train going from Paris to Nice. He needs to go undetected like a ninja, keeping the low profile while setting up high your adrenaline.

You crawl underneath it, go inside, and even must avoid being hit by incoming trains while hanging outside. It’s really amazing, and it must be one of my favorite missions of all the Splinter Cell games. No doubt about it, Uncharted 2 must have taken some hints from this one.

- Gears of War (2006)
The last stage of this bloody epic (pun) game has you aboard of a train that is carrying a bomb which is humanity’s last hope of defeating the enemy. Unfortunately, the train is already infested with them.

There’s no doubt that Uncharted gameplay (or at least part of it) was based on Gears (that while wasn’t the first game to introduce the cover system; it’s the one who perfected it). Find cover, shoot, advance, cover again. Amazing graphics, great speed, nice action and soundtrack. It’s a shame that I still didn’t had the chance to play the sequel.

And that concludes my post. I know there must be dozens of other good levels with trains, especially on the consoles that I have never played (between the Saturn and the PSP/PS3, I’ve been playing only on PC). There’s also the case of trains featured on multiplayer games, which is the case of Unreal Tournament and it’s assault map High Speed. That, however, is stuff for another post, some other time… right now the only thing I want to do is go back to Uncharted. Yup, it is that good!

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