Under Review
This week: An iPhone game, U2’s latest triumph, The Decemberists, Live Nude Girl, and Meat Boy.
By Campus Progress
April 3, 2009
Get your zombie on. (Courtesy mikamobile)VIDEO GAME
Zombieville USA
iPhone/iPod Touch
Released: February 15, 2009
Recently Apple has been touting the iPhone and iPod Touch as viable gaming platforms, and for good reason. In terms of computing horsepower, the iPhone surpasses the Nintendo DS and is a worthy competitor to Sony’s PSP. However, when it comes to games—the part that matters—the iPhone is seriously lacking.
That’s not to say that there aren’t any games available for the iPhone (there are literally thousands), but that most of them are more accurately described as diversions than full-fledged games. Zombieville USA, a simple arcade shooter which debuted earlier this year, isn’t any different; the game mostly consists of you moving your character (who, judging by his looks, is either a farmer or a trucker) across a zombie-infested town, killing any ghouls you encounter along the way, and collecting as much cash and ammo as possible. At the end of each level, you’re offered the opportunity to either buy larger, more destructive weapons (I’m a fan of the chain gun, myself) or replenish your health, which tends to get sapped rather quickly by the undead hordes.
Where Zombieville stands out, though, is in its presentation. The game’s simplicity is balanced out by its brightly colored environments and impressively animated characters (it bears a striking resemblance to 2004’s Alien Hominid). Weapons smoke, zombies shuffle, and each time you release one from its undead suffering, it leaves behind a satisfying splash of cartoon gore. Like most iPhone games, Zombieville USA has a long way to go before it can stand up to comparable games on the DS or the PSP, but considering its price ($1.99), it’s one of the best diversions available for the platform.
8 out of 10 shotgun shells
-Jamelle Bouie
This album sounds a lot better than it looks. (Courtesy Interscope Records)MUSIC
U2
No Line on the Horizon
Interscope Records
Released March 10, 2009
The new U2 album does not suck. There, I said it. Despite “Get On Your Boots,” an unbearable first single—call it cruel, but even in our current economic times, whomever is responsible for wasting Bono’s voice by having him urge people to “get on their sexy boots” and other similar such nonsense should immediately be fired—No Line on the Horizon is a subtle, often stunning addition to the band’s catalog. There’s real musical growth here, but the group doesn’t forget about the epic melodies that have long been its bread and butter.
One track, “Moment of Surrender,” is the best of both worlds. It’s seven and a half minutes of nearly inscrutable lyrics about faith, doubt, and redemption, centered around a soaring chorus that will stick in your head long after you take your headphones off. But this isn’t “With or Without You” redux. The band, not to mention the production team at work, add layer upon layer of sound to give the track an experimental, electronic sheen.
That’s perhaps the only memorable song on this album. Instead, what emerges is a kind of standout sound that remains consistent throughout. “Unknown Caller” and “Breathe” aren’t so much about anything in particular as they are about the music itself. And that’s to U2’s advantage. Their last effort, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, was dragged down by narrative pretensions. On Horizon, when Bono stretches out every syllable in the word “magnificent,” he’s only describing the band playing behind him. With good reason.
9 out of 10 earnest rock stars
-Ethan Porter
Rock we love. (Courtesy Capitol Records)MUSIC
The Decemberists
The Hazards of Love
Capitol Records
Released: March 24, 2009
The Decemberists have always been a dense, even baroque, band, so it was only matter of time before they finally made a concept album. Previous releases, like the 20-minute EP opera The Tain and the three-act tragedy interspersed throughout The Crane Wife flirted with the form, but The Hazards of Love is their first full-on attempt. Unsurprisingly, it’s as complex and intelligent as anything they’ve ever done before.
The story, such as it were, is little more than a collection of old Brit-folk tropes and conventions tied together by the thinnest of threads—but the story isn’t really the point. The atmosphere is what really sells this album, with Colin Meloy wailing in his characteristic thesaurus-friendly prose about forest queens and abducted maidens. The guest vocals help: Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond lends her brassy pipes to a couple tracks, as does the ethereal Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond. The two tracks on which they appear represent the musical high points of the album.
The backing band is in top form as well. Many Decemberists fans (myself included) were disappointed by the prog-rock turn the band took on The Crain Wife, and The Hazards of Love makes it clear that it’s here to stay. But this time, they’ve truly made the sound their own; they’re far more focused and confident. Just listen to the snarling strut of “The Rake’s Song,” or the pounding, almost metal, head banger’s delight that opens “The Queen’s Rebuke/The Crossing.” Did anyone out there listen to the Decemberists’ debut album and ever think that they would one day rock out?
8 out of 10 dog-eared 19th-century Penny Dreadfuls
-Ned Resnikoff
Not as dirty as the title sounds. (Courtesy University of Arkansas Press)BOOK
Live Nude Girl
University of Arkansas Press
Released: February 2009
In Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object, art model Kathleen Rooney wants to tell the world that she is different than your average Playboy pin-up subject or stripper spinning on a pole. Although all of these professions tend toward objectification, Rooney distinguishes herself: she is an object of art, not a sexual object. The only problem is that, in Rooney’s world, the line between the two is thin. When she insists repeatedly that allowing a man to pose her in embarrassing ways is not objectification, it seems that Rooney doth protest too much.
As a whole, however, Live Nude Girl is a well-researched study of the evolution of the model, and Rooney offers a surprisingly highbrow appraisal of the past and present of the profession. She argues that the definition of words like “exploitive” and “pornographic” depend on the photographer’s motivation and the viewer’s response.
In the book, some of Rooney’s friends accuse her of promoting harmful stereotypes about women under the guise of empowerment. When she says that one of the art teachers for whom she posed saw her merely as “a thing, or maybe a creature of a slightly lower order that he needed to show up and behave so he could get his work done,” without any real criticism of his view, it starts to become clear that her friends may be right.
8 out of 10 nipples
-Caroline Hagood
Meatboy. Yum. (Courtesy newgrounds.com)VIDEO GAME
Meat Boy
Flash-enabled Web Browsers
Released: October 5, 2008
At some point during your time playing the Flash-based platformer Meat Boy—maybe the instant when you completely lose track of the world beyond your computer, or perhaps when you realize that “just one more try” has become hours of frantic, arthritis-inducing keyboard finger jamming—you’ll ask yourself some nettlesome questions: Why do I like this game? What was the developer smoking? And am I really spending this much time helping an anthropomorphic meatball rescue a love interest made of Band-Aids?
It’s best to set these questions aside, because Meat Boy, despite its humble origins and original-NES production values, is a paragon of brilliant game design. The ingeniously fiendish levels tiptoe the difficulty/frustration line perfectly, to the point where you will find yourself trying (and failing) to beat a level 50 times, taking a break to remind yourself what fresh air tastes like, and, as you stand outside, thinking of nothing else but hunching back over your computer to again attempt to guide Meat Boy to safety.
That’s not to say that the game is flawless. The controls are a bit loose given the level of precision jumping required (when airborne, Meat Boy picks up momentum far too quickly, though this may be by design), and I have yet to find a downloadable version of the game, which forces me to play it from my browser. Meat Boy is also pretty short, despite its difficulty. But fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how much you value your time—a vibrant user community has sprung up and created new levels for the game, 70 of which Meat Boy’s developers have already released as a map pack. So no matter times you get Meat Boy sliced in half by saw blades, melted by magma, or dissolved by salt, there will always be new ways for you to punish him.
9 out of 10 hours spent procrastinating by playing bizarre video games
-Jesse Singal
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