Like It Or Not

Federer’s inexplicable choke

- September 12 -

On the 2011 US Open “Super Saturday” semifinal match between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic I witnessed the most bizarre display of mental weakness from a player many (myself included) consider the greatest ever to have held a tennis racquet.

What was especially dumbfounding about the whole event was the fact that someone who’s been in this position so many times before (that of closing out a tough match), who has been to the final of every grand slam at least 5 times, who has won 16 of them, buckled under the pressure the way a qualifier would.

On the fifth set (let’s ignore his Houdini-like disappearance from the third and fourth), finally serving for the match at 5-3 after a well-won break over the Serb, with 2 match points at 40-15, Roger hit a nice serve down the T off of which Novak was miraculously able to fire a huge winner. Great, 40-30, still match point. Roger misses the first serve, hits a tentative second serve that results in a lengthy rally that Novak ends up winning by a lucky net cord. Deuce. Roger’s thunderous serve deserts him once more, and he hits a second serve. One forehand error from Roger and we’re at break point, ad-out.

At so many of these important points in his career, Roger’s incredibly effective serve has been able to bail him out. This time, maybe from nerves or fatigue or whatever, Roger couldn’t hit a first serve to save his life. First serve into the net. No worries; perhaps we’ll get a rally out of this point and Roger is more than capable of handling it. Unless he double faults. One second service long and Roger had handed Novak the keys to the match in a silver platter. His subsequent collapse in the next three games were a direct result of that brainfart of a service game, with 2 match points, 5-3 up.

I don’t know what was going on in Roger’s head, or how tired he was, or whether he was injured or whatever, but this has got to be one of the worst closing performances of his career, being 2 sets to love up and unable to finish off what should’ve been a straightforward service game.
like many other Fed fans out there, I was heartbroken. Not because he lost (he’s done that before, and I’ve always shrugged it off), but because he let himself down and threw in the towel.

At the age of 30, many say his body is giving out. That’s a load of nonsense. His body’s fine, but his once stalwart mind is broken. If he recovers that mental strength that used to be one of his defining qualities, we may yet see some true Fed magic next year.

- August 28 -

- May 19 -

- May 17 -

- April 16 -

Avatar: I see you!

- December 22 -

Ever since I saw an IMAX 3D screening of Avatar last night I had been trying to put my finger on what was it that made this movie -nay, this experience- so engaging, so appealing, so emotionally arresting. After much deliberation and analysis, I see it now! I see how they did it, and it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s psychology. I’d almost say it’s a trick, if it weren’t for the fact that James Cameron, WETA Digital and Co. have obviously put in an impossibly massive amount of work and love into making this movie.

Now, this is isn’t a review. There are plenty of reviews out there, and you should read those if you haven’t seen the film and need an objective opinion. What follows here is a set of observations that lead me to believe that James Cameron is a genius at what he does and how unfortunate we are that his work is so infrequent.

So where to begin? Psychology of course! We’ve all seen other 3D films. I’ve seen IMAX 3D movies on the Galápagos Islands, the Deep Sea, Dinosaurs, as well as a few Hollywood flicks. In most of these, 3D is often used as a gimmick: You’ve got things flying at your face, stuff popping out of the background that gives you the illusion that you’d be able to touch it, etc. This gimmick gives 3D movies a corny sort of feel to them and thus, ironically detract from the immersion and overall experience.

What makes Avatar amazing is the fact that 3D is unobtrusively embedded into the entire film. You’ll never see a frog leap into your face or objects paraded in front of you to trick children into reaching out to touch them. And this is the first brilliant choice made by Cameron. The natural occurrence of 3D in the entirety of this film, finally, makes you feel like you are actually there.

When you see the heroes running along the jungle, climbing rocks and dangling on shrubbery, the experience isn’t that of watching through a glass; you feel like you’re there with them, following right behind them as they pirouette around on their flying mounts or converse while brushing through glow-in-the-dark foliage. You’re not watching a BBC documentary on the beauty and biodiversity of Pandora: You’re visiting it.

But it’s not only the 3D that creates this illusion. Cameron and his crew have thought up the world of Pandora down to the very last detail. Biologists created a plausible evolutionary scenario in which all life on the planet is intricately related. The creatures were imagined taking in consideration how life on that planet may have evolved. Although completely fictional, everything seems to fit into place. It is, by all means, plausible to have six-legged animals along with sentient 12-foot beings that are equally connected to the environment as these animals are. WETA Digital’s team of magicians created an amazing array of vegetation and animals that go far into the realm of imagination but close enough to remain credible.

All of this helps create an experience that is the closest to “being there” as we’ve ever gotten. This experience does several things: First, it creates an emotional connection between you, the audience and this wonderfully and stunningly beautiful but ultimately fictional world. This emotional connection is the foundation of the experience Cameron aims to create. It makes us feel Jake Sully’s conflict and agree with his decision to go against his own race in order to preserve the integrity of the planet. It makes us, oddly, root for the destruction of the human beings for the salvation of Pandora.

Psychologically speaking, it’s a lot easier to change your persuasion if you have a personal first account of what’s going on. Consider this: In December 2004, when the tsunami killed more than 230,000 people near the Indian Ocean, although it was definitely shocking, I felt nothing. Aside from some pictures of the devastation and news of the huge amount of casualties, there was nothing there to connect me to the actual event; to make me feel its atrocity. If I had been there, though, I’d be singing an entirely different tune: I’d have an emotional correlation with the event and I’d be furious at anyone who dared undermine its immeasurable impact upon my view of the world.

This is important (and what makes Avatar brilliant) because the story of Avatar is only so-so. It’s definitely been told before (the easiest references would be Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai). While it was executed quite well, it suffers from several shortcomings, one of them being the not-so-subtle jabs at corporatism and greed, environmental protection messages and preachy ideologies involving native americans. Now, all of these issues exist today and they should be discussed, but not at the expense of good storytelling, which is my main gripe with the movie’s story.

What’s a remarkable achievement for Cameron and everyone involved with this project is that these issues hardly matter in the grand scope of the movie. The experience was so out of this world, so to speak, that you are completely emotionally invested in the characters, the world, and the story. Anything negative about the movie is ignored and/or forgotten, because you were there. You saw those bastards destroy the Na’vi’s home! You witnessed the intricate connection they had with all living things in the planet. You, through the eyes of Jake Sully, if only for a short time, became one of them.

After all was said and done, I had an amazing time visiting Pandora, and towards the end of the movie I was saddened by the thought that, in a few minutes, my brief visit to Pandora would come to an end and movies would never be the same again.

- November 21 -

“Those who demand perfection lead a life full of disappointment.”

- November 20 -

Modern Warfare 2: Or Why the End is Nigh for PC FPS Gaming

- November 18 -

This is a love letter to Infinity Ward. An elegy caused by a number of heartbreaking decisions made for the PC version of their latest installment of the wildly successful Call of Duty series. Since the first CoD, IW has always provided exciting gaming experiences. I have many fond memories of all-night-long multiplayer sessions playing the original PC-only title with my college friends, while pretending to be “programming”.

The expansion to the original game, United Offensive, brought forth some key innovations that made the game immensely enjoyable. Players would gain ranks as they became more experienced in the battlefield, giving them access to certain “perks”, such as the hugely effective satchel charges and artillery strikes (available after a certain number of kills).

Two new versions of the Call of Duty series were released, all with a World War II theme. After years of WWII themed first person shooters, including the Medal of Honor and Brothers In Arms series, the audience became noticeably tired of the genre. IW realized this and made the inspired decision to modernize the Call of Duty series with contemporary weaponry and a cinematic storyline. Thus, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was born.

CoD4: MW brought forth such massive improvements in both the single player and multiplayer experiences that it became Infinity Ward’s most successful title yet. The ranking/leveling system was enhanced and expanded, new, more plentiful perks were introduced, and an important innovation that allowed you to create your own class was introduced, thus allowing every player to have a different combination of weapons and perks. This was the best FPS multiplayer experience I had ever had.

Fast-forward to late 2009, to the release of the much anticipated (an understatement) Modern Warfare 2. When the CoD series was born and made successful on the PC, something happened: IW made a series of crucial decisions regarding the multiplayer aspect of the game. In PC FPS games, there are certain key components that are ubiquitous and have arguably made PC gaming a vastly superior multiplayer experience to that of gaming consoles.

One of these key components is dedicated servers. In the olden days (Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, all the way up to Half-Life), when dedicated servers were far from ubiquity, players would connect to each other in a peer-to-peer fashion: Player1 hosts a game, all other players connect to player1’s game, limited to player1’s connection’s download/upload bandwidth and player1’s computer’s power. This gave player1 a huge advantage over his/her peers, as the host would have zero latency and every other player was subject to (mostly atrocious) lag. Dedicated servers would later fix that problem, as one host in the cloud has a server 24/7 and all players connect to this host, with all players subject to the same or similar lag.

Clans that have dedicated servers for their clan matches are used to a level of control over the rules of the server and the players that play in it. IW severely limited this capability and imposed a limit of 16 concurrent players on any given match. This ruins clan matches, as many clans have much more than 16 players, and they will never be able to have the entire clan play together again.

Another two very important key components are modding and custom mapping. PC FPS games have long had the tradition of having modding and custom mapping tools available to the community. The community’s ability to modify the game and create custom maps adds unprecedented replay value to a game, and allows players to continue enjoying a game well after the original features have overstayed their welcome.

With IW’s decision to remove these key features, they have demonstrated that they no longer care about keeping the PC FPS gaming a superior experience. They have turned their backs on the very community that made their company and their games successful. With the advent of the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii, console gamers have vastly outnumbered the PC gaming community. It’s logical then, that IW would decide to neglect us, as the bulk of their customer base is outside of the PC. Although PC games sales wouldn’t hurt them, so what is the reasoning behind their blatant shunning of the PC gaming community?

The answer is control. By micro-managing every little detail of a game they are able to enforce their own rules, crush piracy and perhaps force the same experience throughout all consoles and the PC. Console games have long been this way, so it isn’t far-fetched to think that the reason there are no modding or mapping tools is for IW/Activision to be able to charge you for any subsequent downloadable content (as it would exclusively come from them), in much the same way it’s done on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

So now that the MW2 experience has been made the same for consoles and the PC, what is the advantage of getting it for the PC? I already own an Xbox 360, why not get it for that instead? The reason why I only play FPSs on the PC is because I don’t like the inferior console experience. So that puts me (and I suppose other PC gamers) in an interesting conundrum: If you buy it for the PC you get the same experience as in a console. But you’re buying it for the PC precisely because it’s a better experience than a console! If it isn’t, and you have to settle for a lesser experience, is it even worth the trouble?

MW2 has already gone on to break sales records for an entertainment title launch. Because of its success, I fear that other companies will jump on the bandwagon and follow IW’s lead on neglecting the PC gaming community. If that is the case, the end is nigh for PC FPS gaming. I’ve made a decision not to buy this game, because, as well done as the game may be, I’d rather not settle for an inferior gaming experience. My decision may well have no meaning, as every one and their dog seems to have already bought it, but I stand by my choice.