Miasmata

If you're wondering who built these things, well, tough.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be shipwrecked on a tropical island? Have you ever wondered what that scenario would be like if you had a crippling disease that could only be cured through the use of drugs manufactured from local plantlife while you were hunted by a bizarre monstrosity against whom there was no defence save hiding? If so, then Miasmata may be the game for you. Created by two brothers by the names of Joe and Bob Johnson, Miasmata is a first-person survival experience in which you play as Robert Hughes, who has arrived on the island of Eden seeking the legendary cure for a Plague which has devastated his homeland. On the island you find the ingredients you need for manufacturing the cure as well as the suspiciously deserted research outposts of your scientific colleagues, along with in many cases their brutally murdered corpses, taking a hearty slice of inspiration from, I can only assume, Milton, and Lord of the Flies.

Just like in the travel shows!

The first thing that must be said about Miasmata is that it's an incredibly atmospheric game. Given that it was entirely developed by these two brothers, and the programming was done by one of them, it has graphics to rival the latest big release titles by major game developers, with an astoundingly realistic environment replete with believable topology and foliage. The island of Eden feels absolutely, convincingly real, from its swampy valleys to its shimmering beaches to its bare, ruin-strewn deserts. The limited resources of the team are evident, of course - the textures aren't of the highest resolution, for instance, but the details are nonetheless present. The water and lighting are particularly impressive, from dim dawns to days with a variety of weather from bright sunshine to thundering rain, to moody dusks and finally to realistically dark and impenetrable nights with nothing but moon and stars giving negligible illumination.

The welcoming committee.

As such you must manage your time as you explore Eden looking for the ingredients to make the cure. Robert is sick, and the greatest threat in the game is really from the Plague itself. Mr Hughes cannot run or swim very far, nor climb or descend very steep inclines without the risk of falling. He also needs regular water and sleep. Exerting yourself strenuously in any of these scenarios brings on fever, which without the aid of medicine will steadily diminish Robert's health. As such as one explores the island there are numerous factors to consider: how far it is to the nearest shelter, how well provisioned you are with water and medicine, what time of day it is, and most importantly of all, perhaps, where you are.

This is one of Miasmata's most unique features: its cartographic system. Eden is covered in Moai-esque statues and other landmarks essential for orienteering. There is no persistent position on the map; Robert can only discern his location in relation to at least two landmarks, which also allows him to fill in more of the map, uncovering more features. It is also possible in this way to triangulate the position of other, unknown features so that the map can be filled in elsewhere. This can be a frustrating feature, but it can also be satisfying as you get the hang of discerning your position and get a better grasp of the layout of Eden. It's very easy to get lost, especially at night, and so it's important to keep the map's development consistent.

Run through places like this in terror of a green cat.

Keeping the map up to date is also essential because of the game's focus on exploration. You are guided towards the first couple of plants you need to formulate the cure, but beyond that you are largely left to your own devices to roam the island and discover the remaining ingredients wherever you may. The many existing shelters on the island, where you must seek safe haven in order to sleep, save your game, restock your water and research plants, are also replete with notes to fill out the game's interesting, if subtle, backstory, as well as give you advice on where to go next.

Live like you've always dreamed: in a shack!

This brings about one of the most important elements of the game: research. Robert can hold up to three plant specimens at a time, and bring any of these to a microscope and it may be researched, which reveals what properties the local flora has. This permits you to manufacture weaker and stronger medicines for alleviating fever, as well as temporary and permanent boosts to your strength, stamina and awareness, to help you move further and faster and keep yourself safe, all of which assist in the hunt for the Cure.

Climb pointless staircases.

Many of the ingredients of the Cure, however, are guarded by the Creature, a nightmarish monstrosity resembling a large, greenish, antlered cougar. The Creature cannot be harmed; it cannot even be fought, only distracted, avoided, and fled from. It is fast and deadly, but its behaviour is programmed in an effective way such that if you make eye contact with it you are generally unlikely to be pounced, and fire and other thrown implements will attract its curiosity so that you can hopefully escape. Improvements to Robert's clarity stat greatly assist in this regard, as an indicator appears onscreen when crouching to reveal whether the Creature is near. Fortunately I only encountered the Creature after I had acquired this upgrade, which makes it significantly easier to escape. The Creature is an unsettling enemy which had me clinging to the shoreline, where it is less likely to spawn, for many in-game days so as to avoid it for as long as possible, because the sense of threat in the face of this invincible enemy is real and palpable. There is a genuine and unpleasant feeling of being hunted and regularly in danger, especially in thick woodland and valleys where it is easy to become disoriented and lost.

Come home to a real fire.

There are a few things I might complain about; for instance, some of the temporary boosts seem to have a negligible effect. Additionally, cartography can be confusing and frustrating, especially if you have a limited range of vision - trees in particular easily obstruct distant landmarks. Thirdly, Robert's limited inventory can at times seem needlessly restrictive: you can only carry whatever you can hold in your hand or store in the pockets of your journal. It seems like there's not much justification for the limited inventory. You can't store duplicates of medicine, for instance, or carry additional plants of the same type. The Journal too can be confusing and slow to navigate at times, although generally it's a useful tool. My biggest complaint really would be one that spoils the immersion somewhat: all of the text in the game is in dire need of a proof reader, because it is full of spelling mistakes that either make the flavour text seem amateurish or genuinely confuse pieces of information conveyed about gameplay.

Feel an overwhelming sense of isolation.

Nonetheless, Miasmata is an engrossing game, and I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to try something a bit different. If you have the patience to explore a beautifully realised environment (and marvel at the talent of two developers with no million-dollar studio doing the legwork) and are willing to face your fears and uncover a disquieting mystery about science, politics and the darkness of the human soul, I can heartily recommend Miasmata. It's a unique experience and Eden is one exotic destination I am grateful for having visited.

Hindsight: A 2012 Cinematic Retrospective

With yet another year lost to the grasping hands of the past, it's time for us to take a look back at what we were forced to endure over the last twelve months film-wise in the name of the commercialisation of art, demographic-chasing and culture vandalism, as well as those parts which didn't make us suffer the same way. Without any further ado, let's take a look at:

The Top 5 Overrated Films of 2012

This only includes films which I have actually seen. There were a number of other pictures I was interested in but haven't yet watched including Ted, Looper, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Wreck-It Ralph and Les Miserables.

Ridley Scott's true form.

Honourable Mention: Prometheus

Before it was released I thought Prometheus would be a shoe-in for the list, but it turned out almost everyone else thought this film was crap as well despite how absurdly hyped it was. An indecisive creature which, unlike the Engineer-Black Slime hybrid, was not greater than the sum of its parts, director Ridley Scott seemingly couldn't find the balance between the kind of horror-thriller of Alien and the classic sci-fi questioning of something like Blade Runner. Worth watching mostly for the ever-reliable Michael Fassbender's performance as the android David, poor pacing, moronic and undeveloped characters, a repeatedly stupid plot and a finale which spectacularly failed to maintain the stronger elements of mystery established earlier in the film were its main failings.

5. The Avengers

Sorry, Cap.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate The Avengers. When I saw it at release I thought that it was a decent film; above average, certainly. Director Joss Whedon, the king of overrated, did a good job making so many main characters work in a film, although the dearth of female heroes and the general tediousness of the main plot lets it down somewhat. It certainly did a good job of making the Hulk an interesting character by focusing on a well-characterised Bruce Banner performed with aplomb by Mark Ruffalo. However the allocation of the majority of character development solely to Iron Man and the simplistic "opening a portal to let aliens in" storyline didn't match the rest of the film's ambition. And seriously, how long did they spend sitting around on the Helicarrier? Joss did make the correct choice of focusing on Captain America significantly, but overall it was just an okay film; it's not as amazing as it is made out to be. C'mon, that Transformers-esque final battle is hardly award-winning material. Tom Hiddleston's performance as Loki is another strong point worth mentioning, but these strengths just aren't consistent. It's decent, but it's nowhere near as good as people say.

Bilbo who?

4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I've already waffled on at length about this film. Suffice to say that while I didn't especially enjoy it at least the critics aren't raving about it. Unnecessarily padded with not enough focus on its title character, incompetent handling of the source material and a dull characterisation of Thorin make the film a rather inadequate offering. I found it surprisingly watchable, and the decision to end the film after the "Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire" Chapter worked better than I expected but it could have maintained this and been an enjoyable two hour film if all the junk with Old Bilbo and Frodo, Radagast and the White Council had been scrapped. Decent performances clash with some unconvincing CGI, excessive landscape establishing shots and the ever-horrible friction between Professor Tolkien's unique prose style and the rather trite stylings of the Boyens-Walsh scriptwriting team.

3. The Amazing Spider-Man

All over your face.

Oh dear. Now don't get me wrong, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man offerings aren't perfect either, primarily let down by Tobey Maguire's overly shy and reserved performance as Peter Parker which tends to make the films drag. Marc Webb's film with Andrew Garfield in the title role goes too far the other way, however, with a relatively cool and aloof Spidey with whom I wouldn't be surprised if an audience struggled to identify. They rather eliminated the main strength of Spider-Man as an everyman hero. And seriously, where's the funny Spidey of the comics? Spider-Man's a funny guy, but this film gave us nothing but the "small knives" joke really. A boring villain in the shape of Rhys Ifans' the Lizard and an Uncle Ben story lacking in poignancy didn't help. The biggest problem with this film, however, is how long and slow it feels. Multiple-tacked on endings which lack dramatic purpose and a general sense of lethargy deprive the film of the energy and emotional pathos Spidey's origin should probably give us. Emma Stone, as ever, does her best as Gwen Stacy, but in general I cannot fathom how this dull and uninspired film with its fairly lame interpretation of the main character managed to please so many.

Because Skyfall sucked so hard, please
enjoy this crude drawing of Connery as Bond.

2. Skyfall

Yawn. This mishandled snooze-fest of an anniversary instalment for the venerable Bond franchise revels in a success which only emphasises how utterly out of touch modern culture is with its heritage. Featuring Daniel Craig seemingly utterly exhausted as a Bond who has jumped from a relative rookie to a worn-out relic, rubbish supporting characters in the shape of a trendy young Moneypenny and Q, a completely excessive focus on Judi Dench's M and a villain with absolutely no motivation, the film struggles from set-piece to set-piece, beginning as almost a weak pastiche of classic Bond and eventually completely losing its way in a boring drawn-out showdown. In its efforts to question Bond's relevance all it manages to do is portray itself as irrelevant and utterly lacking the timelessness of the franchise's classic instalments, and has only been successful because modern audiences have forgotten what makes Bond good or never knew in the first place.

1. The Dark Knight Rises

TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!!!

A terrifically boring film with an insultingly small-minded plot and limited characterisation, this final instalment of Christopher Nolan's otherwise enjoyable Batman series is an overly-long anticlimax which is so defensive about its genre and undecided as to its identity that it becomes totally pointless by about halfway through its excessive runtime. Featuring Tom Hardy wasted in an undeveloped role, typical mediocrity from Anne Hathaway and an overstuffed protagonist conga line of Christian Bale, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, etc the film goes nowhere and achieves nothing which was not already accomplished by its predecessors, succeeding only in giving some limited sense of closure. I believe an undercurrent of discontent does exist regarding this film but the fact that the Rotten Tomatoes review comment system was single-handedly caused to be overhauled by pre-emptive fanboy insanity regarding any mildly negative review of this disappointing film earns it the dubious honour of being my most overrated film of 2012.

Correctly rated films of 2012

It's not to say that these films were necessarily good, just that they were perceived in a way I consider to be reasonable considering my own experience of them. Once again I haven't seen all the films I wanted so a few didn't make this list.

Rare footage of Toby caught on camera.

Honourable Mention: Paranormal Activity 4

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a fan of the Paranormal Activity franchise but I found this film to be something of a let-down. After three films which had developed a sense of mystery surrounding the family of Katie and Kristi and the doomed legacy of their grandmother and a devious demon named Toby, the fourth film restricted us mainly to more slamming doors and a plethora of invisible death scenes which didn't contribute much to the overall plot. Despite some decent performances from a mostly young cast the characters' willingness to throw themselves stupidly into danger and the general lack of direction render this instalment something of a fizzer.

The Woman in Black

"The next Peter Cushing?"

You may notice a bit of a horror trend emerging here, but The Woman in Black was a film I very much enjoyed. A picture from Hammer Productions more or less in the style of their classic features, the pervasive sense of unease and isolation coupled with chillingly sombre performances from Daniel Radcliffe and Ciarán Hinds formed the foundation of a worthy successor to the Edwardian horror dramas of old. Eschewing oodles of gore and frantic action for suspense and the occasional, confronting intrusion of the grotesque (I'm thinking of the lye-drinking incident, for instance) its refreshing reconnection with the styles of the past and a decidedly ambiguous ending render it one of the stronger genuine horror experiences I've encountered in recent years.

There was no way I was going to attempt
to draw Kate Beckinsale. Just pretend
this is "the absence of Bill Nighy"
or something.

Underworld: Awakening

I'm not going to pretend that the Underworld films are anything other than trashy action films, but (with the possible exception of the third one) they deliver exactly what you want: Kate Beckinsale in a tight outfit killing vampires and werewolves in a hilariously over-the-top manner. Thankfully eliminating the boring Michael character the film makes no mistakes about the need to get immediately to the straightforward supernatural massacres and a plot so cliché you could sell it wholesale. It doesn't outstay its welcome whatsoever with an appropriately slim runtime of eighty-eight minutes and serves up a perfectly distilled slice of Underworld entertainment. I'm not saying it was a great film. I'm not even saying it was a good film. But it did what it had to do.

The Cabin in the Woods

"Groovy."

Oh no, more horror! Severely delayed after its 2009 production, I was lucky enough to catch this during an extremely limited Australian release. It suffers, of course, from the same problems as most Joss Whedon productions, which is to say that its self-aware po-mo irony means it has its head about as far up its arse as it can go, but despite its staggering pretentiousness it still manages to be a solid deconstruction of the genre. Earning bonus points for strong allusions to Sam Raimi's timeless Evil Dead franchise, solid performances all-round and an unashamedly "down" ending, it succeeds in questioning where horror is going and how meaningful its modern origins are. It's not brilliant but it didn't horribly offend me so there you go.

He wasn't in this film, but here's a picture
of Gromit anyway. Everyone loves Gromit.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Renamed The Pirates! Band of Misfits out here for some reason, this cheery Aardman production continues to uphold Aardman's reputation for good humour, subtlety and top notch voice acting. Featuring particularly worthwhile performances from Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman and David Tennant its hodge-podge stew of classic pirate tropes, Enlightenment-era scientific issues and timeless themes of the value of friendship and fun make it a charming little piece. If I was to criticise anything it would perhaps be the slightly overwrought Queen Victoria character who is a bit of a typical Aardman crazy screaming shrew, and the final action-based showdown not quite living up to the generally situation-based humour of the majority of the film. Nonetheless it's a worthy instalment in Aardman's ongoing film repertoire.

Seven Psychopaths

Walken will appear in anything if he has time.
Even a terrible drawing by me.

Extremely funny, with a terrifically humorous self-awareness and some particularly stellar performances from Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell, this offering from Martin McDonagh is everything that a solid comedy should be. Its interesting story and ridiculously eccentric characters transform the regular cliché of a struggling writer into something memorably hilarious, with some rip-snorting imaginary sequences which blend the line between reality and fantasy in a satisfyingly absurd way. Rife with oodles of violence and profanity, its every over-the-top quality contributes to an amusing and cutting comment on the pitfalls of writing and the utter alienation of modern life.

"...I am the Law. Screw you."

Dredd

Most people when they hear about Judge Dredd unfortunately think about the widely-hated 1995 film starring Sylvester Stallone, which may have been responsible for this great production not getting the full attention it deserved. Featuring a plot which actively avoided being over-ambitious and a memorably stoic and dry performance from the dependable Karl Urban as Dredd himself, it was one of the best action films of the year and far more deserving of success than many of the other dreary comic book blockbusters which emerged in 2012. Its excellent production and effects characterised a ruthlessly violent, utterly debased world with aplomb. For these reasons I shall award it my "best film of 2012" award. *scattered applause*

By the way, The Artist is technically a 2011 film but it's very good too. You probably wouldn't get it, though.

"Proteus"

It's been a big time for Indie games. Several long-awaited titles have recently made their way to release, and the one I've currently been exploring is Proteus. Put simply, Proteus is a game in which you explore a simply-depicted island landscape over the course of four seasons to discover both its environs and, crucially, the accompanying music associated with each element. It is a journey through two landscapes: one visual, the other auditory, and the two are inseparable. Both components are impressionistic, or perhaps more accurately post-impressionistic in nature; the extremely limited detail on the visuals and the suggestive but not prescriptive sounds invite the player to mediate between Proteus and one's experience of the real world. The game also has a certain Romantic bent to it, being involved in most respects with nature and the natural. A small Norse-looking hut, some blackened ruins which are apparently towers, a few rows of weathered headstones and a circle of inscrutable totemic statues are the only artificial presences in Proteus' procedurally-generated environment.

I hope there are theories on the pixel that sticks out.

This leads me to the core concept of the structure of Proteus. Every time you play, the island is different. The actual components are the same, of course, but their arrangement and the composition of the landscape is never identical to a previous experience. Each game of Proteus replicates the same events in a randomised land: you open your eyes on the shore and explore over the course of the day. As the sun sets you pass into night, where gradually fairy-lights gather into a ring which accelerates time the closer you get to it. Stepping into the ring passes you onto the next phase, which is a similar day-night sequence in the following season with different music and events available. The game opens on a bright and fresh Spring which grows into a bold and busy Summer which itself fades to a stately, golden-leafed Autumn before passing finally to a quiet and solemn winter, at the end of which you rise into the sky and close your eyes.

Imagine nice music playing.

Proteus' greatest virtue, arguably, is its soundtrack. Your proximity to objects, the time of day, the season and even your elevation have an effect on what music is played, and everything from standing stones to trees to hopping pixellated animals add something different to that season's theme. I personally found Autumn at dusk to be a particularly enjoyable piece, which is complemented by moving from tree to tree and passing by flowers and stones. The music can become somewhat jumbled if rushed through, and so it's necessary for the Proteus player to take their time and savour the music, because it really is the main "object" of the game; otherwise you're just waiting for time to pass until it ends.

Proteus in the
the Spring.

The simple visuals are evocative of the days of games past, but they have their own unique charm and identity which contributes to the overall sense of reconnection with natural beauty and the simple pleasures of existence. One of the game's primary features, beyond the discovery of music, is unearthing many secrets hidden around the island which are activated at different times. For instance, visiting a grove of large trees with a particularly mighty specimen in the middle will, at the right time, cause a spectral fox or wolf head to peer out at you from behind the trunks, vanishing before you can get too close. Bees in Summer will chase you, increasing your movement speed, and a pair of exotic flying creatures will wend their way through the skies overhead. My personal favourite of these events is upon visiting the totem circle on an Autumn evening. In the Spring and Summer this causes the stars overhead to bulge and throb in a curious fashion, but in Autumn the sky also shifts into a singular red colour with an fittingly unearthly soundtrack, while waiting long enough manifests the appearance of a silhouetted Owl Man who hurries off into the night leaving a trail of stars in his wake. I daresay there are other secrets which I have not yet unearthed, and that is one reason for why I continue to play through Proteus.

A Mediterranean climate?

Proteus is fundamentally a contemplative experience where the player must progress through time from a distinct beginning to an unmistakeable end to achieve its object, and its reflections on the inevitability and indeed the necessity of change and the progression of time are effectively evoked through its simple mechanics as each stage presents to the explorer its auditory and visual stimulus. It is definitely conducive to a meditative and potentially introspective atmosphere in which the player can relax while also being mentally active. The game is, more or less, what each player makes of it and will be rewarding to those who engage their curiosity and desire to explore, but also who wish to consider, speculate and imagine. The game does not make demands; there is no interaction beyond movement, and the seasons before Winter progress at the players' choice, and as such it functions successfully as a catalyst for thought as an alternative to being an end in itself. In this sense it is valuable as an experience beyond its aesthetics, and it is the emotional and intellectual environment in which it places the player as well as the uniquely aesthetic one which has motivated me to play through several times.

"We go by many names..."

There has been some surprisingly fierce debate online as to whether Proteus truly constitutes a game given its simple premise and limited objectives. Labels like "art game" and "interactive experience" have been thrown around to better justify, in the eyes of doubters, the presence of Proteus on the scene. These concerns, however, are I think predicated on grounds which are not necessarily sensible. The issue with Proteus compared to much of what are termed "games" is that a "gamer" might not necessarily play Proteus or find it interesting if they did in the same way that they might not go to see an exhibition of Turner masterpieces at an art gallery; it's operating largely in a different medium to those with which most people playing games have become accustomed, which is to say games focused on story or action which have more in common with the mediums of literature and film.

There must be some Toros in the atmosphere.

That is, however, one of the great values of games - that they can operate within multiple media to achieve different effects. There may be little challenge beyond discovering the various events of the island, but the same can be said of engaging narrative-focused games like To the Moon where finding significant items was mostly a mechanic for keeping the interesting story going along. They may not follow all conventional game structures but they are no less valuable for that fact, and in many ways are more focused as a result. I don't believe that Proteus and work of its ilk should be ostracised from the medium of games purely because of unconventionalities; they simply serve to challenge the usual modes of expression found in other titles. On the other hand, Proteus is not an experience which everyone will appreciate, because it engages with other media and culture which is alien and irrelevant to many people, and some would struggle to justify even its modest price tag. Bearing its simplicity in mind, however, it should be rewarding to those of a certain sensibility and open eyes and ears.

"Antichamber"

3D stairs are just one example of this game's insane
bending of reality

Now I'm not the kind of person who is in the habit of describing anything as a "masterpiece" or, worse still, a tour de force. That's lucky, because Antichamber is neither of those things. What it is, however, is an interesting Indie Game to which I can give something of a recommendation. I came across Antichamber on its release day simply by perusing the Steam Specials, as I am wont to do, and there it was at a mild discount. I was intrigued, I must admit, by its core premise - the use of a virtual environment to simulate as if it were real certain ideas which only occur through visual trickery in real life. This was similar to what initially attracted me to Portal as well, and the two games are reminiscent of each other, being visually austere first person puzzle experiences with simple mechanics and limited story elements. I did a quick spot of research and it appeared from other players that this was indeed the case. It was for this reason, therefore, that I jumped on the bandwagon. I'm fairly sure the fact that it's an Indie game cancels that out. Anyway, allow me explain, if you will, the premise of the game. Antichamber is a first person puzzler which takes place in a surreal environment requiring the employment of unconventional logic. That doesn't explain very well, so let me elucidate by example.

What I said upon examining many puzzles.

You are in a corridor. Before you are two staircases, one leading up and the other down. The environment is identifiable because one staircase is illuminated in blue, the other in red. You take the down staircase to a new corridor, turn a corner, and find before you the same two staircases exactly as they were before you went down. You go up instead, turn a corner, and once again you are in the same place. With no other alternative you turn around and retreat down the corridor which granted you access to said stairs. You are now in an entirely different area. That is the kind of premise around which Antichamber is based. It is reminiscent of the artwork of MC Escher, for instance.

Paranoia and mortality: two of this game's
cheery themes.

Some reviewers have described the game as "non-Euclidean", but given that the game doesn't really involve geometry on non-planar surfaces that's rather misleading. A better term might be extra-dimensional; within the world of Antichamber it is possible for two different objects to exist in the same space, only accessible through different means. There is a certain element suggestive of quantum indeterminacy to many of the puzzles as well, which is to say that things change based not on what you do but how you observe your environment. You enter a red room. There is a window in the middle of the room through which a blue room is visible, although walking all the way around the window reveals nothing but red room. You approach the window until you can see nothing but the blue room. You step back, and you are now in the blue room. This is another example of the interesting way in which Antichamber simulates the realisation of what would otherwise be visual trickery, based on the premise that simply observing something does not mean that it is actually there and vice-versa. Walls and floors give way to emptiness. Bridges appear under your feet only when you actually walk on them. Flights of stairs remain in existence only as long as you are looking at them, and so on.

What I said upon "solving" many puzzles.

Many of those most impressive and satisfying experiences in Antichamber occur purely through this visual aspect, in which the player solves puzzles and progresses through this maze entirely through the selective and considered act of observation. It plays upon what we imagine could be if what we saw and what actually existed didn't correspond based on reliable physical laws. It's best experienced, or at least observed, and there are enough demonstrative videos online. Regardless, in this way it's an intriguing game based on these aspects alone.

One of the game's many brain-teasers based on
additive colour models.

Like Portal, however, much of the gameplay in Antichamber is predicated on the employment of a special gun, in this case a block gun. Blocks are needed to fill certain gaps in the environment with various effects, usually for opening doors to let you progress. There are four levels of gun with any relevance. The first, the blue gun, lets you pick up blocks, store them, and place them. The green gun allows the placing of green blocks which, when placed as a perimeter, will fill the space between with more green blocks, allowing you to produce more when you don't have enough. It also allows you to dissolve blocks rhythmically if  the right block in the chain is removed at the right time. The third gun, Mister Yellow, allows blocks to be dragged snake-like from place to place through selecting one block and choosing its destination. Any blocks touching it will follow along. The final main gun, Big Red, allows blocks to be slurped up and then extruded anywhere in multiplying quantities, allowing large amounts to be produced en masse and permitting the filling of various holes, if you'll pardon the expression. Using each gun to access the next gun is the core of main progression through the game.

Maybe the game's entirely set on a Holodeck!
I'd better post a long theory rant on a forum!

If this whole block malarkey sounds somewhat unappealing compared to all the extra-dimensional Escher fun then I don't blame you. The block manipulation can be extremely frustrating, and given that the game provides absolutely no kind of tutorial it's a matter of trial, error, practice and observation to determine the specifics of how the various guns function. For instance, which block in a green set must you store to make the rest dissolve? How do you accurately make the yellow blocks follow a path? These are things it can be painstaking to discern, and I must admit that not in absolutely every circumstance did I have the forbearance to do so. Often solutions can be frustratingly simple once discovered, but they can also be satisfying when all the pieces fall into place. I found myself having more patience for exploration than I do in most games of its ilk. There were, however, times when I solved a puzzle and felt unsure if I'd solved it in the way the game developer had really intended, and other times when I had to look up solutions because certain actions were required for which there were absolutely no apparent clues: for instance, a puzzle where apparently moving through a block-dissolving field at a certain moment cleared another block-dissolving field so that blocks could be snaked through. It's times like these when even the game's own highly context-specific logic is put to the test that the game occasionally feels like it's lacking something. This is compounded by the fact that the game has virtually no learning curve by virtue of the fact that it's relatively open; you can forge ahead in multiple paths from the outset, and find tasks which are very easy and ones which are difficult or impossible with the starting equipment immediately. While some early puzzles require block guns that are only available late in the game, some late puzzles are surprisingly unambitious basic physics puzzles requiring repeated jumping on a moving platform to gain enough momentum. At times the game can be bizarrely inconsistent, which is either part of its bizarre nature or a symptom of its core idea permitting themselves to be stretched only so far.

Self-explanatory.

This is compensated for by the map system. At any time in the game pressing the Escape key will return you to a hub room with a map which allows you to select which puzzle you want to go to. The map's not very easy to follow, especially given that the connections which link one puzzle to another are themselves often unconventional, but each room on the map comes with a strong visual cue to remind you what puzzle may be found. Clicking on said room will instantly transport you there. It's worth remembering, however, that this resets the puzzle you were just in and removes any blocks you might have been storing. The game autosaves every time you unearth a new puzzle, however, so there's not too great a need for repetition. You just need to remember not to press Escape thinking you're going to bring up a pause menu or something if you don't want to lose all your blocks or progress through a puzzle. The hub room also collects the pithy clues and charming accompanying drawings which occur generally at the end of each puzzle with some reflective statement upon what just occurred. It's one of the game's main teases that these do not occur earlier, because some of them make what needs to be done rather obvious after you've been scratching your head for ten minutes trying to figure out what the hell you're even meant to do, let alone how to do it.

Moveable boxes: a radical innovation in game design.

I know that I've been mollycoddled by modern games with their hand-holding tutorials, so I really can't complain too much. Antichamber is a fairly unique experience and one which is worth having. The game's simple aesthetics can be a little bland at times, but they generally limit the amount of confusion in an already confusing environment. This was possibly not the decision most complementary to the game's surreal elements but it gets the job done and makes the game visually unique which does contribute to what makes it compelling, and it is also compensated for somewhat by the game's surreal soundtrack, which is mostly composed of nature noises for an intriguing contrast between clinical, artifical environments and very organic audio. I reached the end (although I certainly haven't completed every puzzle) in six hours according to Steam, so it's a fun way to kill a bit of time. In these days of cutscene-heavy, repetitious-of-gameplay and fundamentally samey big name FPS, RPG and RTS titles I always enjoy something that I actually want to resume playing after I've tried it once. The "gimmicks" of Indie Games, which is to say their innovations, are what keep me coming back where more mainstream titles haven't, and for that I do approve of Antichamber. If you want an interesting and different experience, but one which appeals very fundamentally to certain human spatial and visual fantasies, then by all means give it a go. Otherwise, check out some videos of it, and then buy it, because they'll probably make you want to play it so you can experience it for yourself.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

An Unexpected Journey twenty minutes in.

Anyone who knows me knows that I like The Hobbit. It's arguably my favourite novel, and I've been known to assert, facetiously or otherwise, that it is the pinnacle of human literature. The works of J.R.R. Tolkien are one of my lasting passions, one of the few things about which I'm not cynical and derogatory, and I have a great deal of affection for them. Does that mean that I like the film adaptations? No! Of course not; what are they beyond being pale imitations of a source material which cannot be conveyed with any kind of accuracy through anything other than literature? The film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings are visually detailed but thematically shallow renditions of a vastly complex text dumbed down and generalised for an audience which only wants more and more of the same thing. They must be some of the most stupendously overrated films in existence. It was for these reasons that upon learning that Peter Jackson was making a film of The Hobbit I was suitably concerned.

One thing needs to be established first: The Hobbit should have been made before The Lord of the Rings. The plot of The Lord of the Rings ultimately owes too much to The Hobbit for its dramatic integrity to be fully realised alone; instead we get a version of the original turned into a prequel based on the film version of the text which is actually the sequel. This, the need to re-dress The Hobbit as a prequel to the films of The Lord of the Rings, is one of the main issues with the film, as well as its plot being tortured over three films instead of at the most two.

Ian Holm upon learning what happens to his face.

As such the film begins with a long-winded voice over. We appropriately start with Bilbo, but it's the older Bilbo from the time of The Lord of the Rings played by Ian Holm with some extremely distracting CG work on his face to presumably make him look less old. Seriously? We know Ian Holm's old; he can't look that much older than he did back in the late 90s or early 2000s when the earlier films were made, and even if he does, who cares? This is, however, representative of the overuse of a good deal of unnecessary CGI in the film. I suppose they really shot themselves in the foot by casting an old actor to play Bilbo in the earlier films anyway. Remember how Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring muses that Bilbo hasn't aged a day even though he visibly has between the opening monologue and the beginning of the action? Why did they do that? He's meant to have not aged between 50 and 111 anyway, so why bother casting an older actor to play the role rather than just using makeup later when necessary? Again a consequence of not doing The Hobbit first.

An Unexpected Journey forty minutes in.

So old Bilbo delivers this long-winded monologue about the Lonely Mountain and the Dwarves and how it was taken by the dragon, Smaug. I can't stand big abstract monologues for the sake of doing a story dump. It annoys me in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring and it annoys me here; it's just lazy storytelling designed to sucker people in by giving them some action early rather than delaying our gratification. Dale and Erebor look nice enough even if Erebor's interior is a bit of an excessive CGI extravaganza which stretches disbelief to the limit. I was impressed also by their maintenance of the Thrór-Thráin-Thorin family tree. We're only teased, somewhat effectively I suppose, with hints of the dragon. I'll give a comprehensive account of major changes from the real storyline of the source material at the end but they begin here.

"You are aware that I am not really a wizard?"

Once Bilbo's rather heavy-handedly established the goal of the forthcoming mission we return to Bag End for a conversation between Bilbo and Frodo. While Ian Holm and Elijah Wood seem to have assumed these old identities from a decade ago without difficulty it doesn't really excuse the fact that the whole scene is, really, quite pointless and mostly seems to exist to pad the film out. In my opinion the entire sequence should have been cut and we should have started with our true beginning, young Bilbo smoking outside Bag End and meeting Gandalf. This scene is more or less adapted in a straightforward fashion in terms of dialogue and action from the novel. What a coincidence that it's an example of one of the strongest scenes in the film! Professor Tolkien's own dialogue always sounds better. We follow this with the unexpected party and the introduction of the Dwarves.

Ever since they were first revealed I haven't been able to help but feel that the Dwarves are a little overdesigned and the film didn't change my opinion. I understand perfectly that they wanted to make them distinguishable, but wouldn't the differently-coloured hoods have helped with that? We get the "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates" song, which is nice, although the general rowdiness and crudity of the Dwarves is a bit of a tired cliché, incidentally one which is at odds with Professor Tolkien's depiction of them as a bunch of stuffy middle-aged men, which I think could have been more interesting. It certainly would have been a more effective contrast to the flashback scenes of battle and war depicting the Dwarves in their wrath. That being said the Dwarves are generally likeable and sympathetic; an especially good job is done with Balin, as well as Fili and Kili despite the fact that they've obviously been done up to keep the girls interested.

An Unexpected Journey sixty minutes in.

One thing I might quibble about is the pronunciation of some of the Dwarves' names. These names are Old Norse in origin and derive from the Dvergatal or Dwarves' List in the Old Norse poem Völuspá. Óin and Glóin's names therefore according to the transcription of Old Norse Icelandic should be pronounced something like "Owin" and "Glowin", but in the film they're pronounced to rhyme with "coin" as if the accented o and the i were a single diphthong in modern English pronunciation. Now the BBC pronounced these names correctly in their radio adaptations of Professor Tolkien's work. It's surprising that, for all their efforts to pronounce Elvish somewhat correctly and so forth such a basic mistake was made in this film. Similarly the names of Thorin's father, Thráin, and his cousin, Dáin, should be pronounced something like "Thraa-in" and "Daa-in", but in this they're pronounced again as diphthongs to rhyme with "stain". It's a disappointing oversimplification, albeit one which ought only to be noticeable to Old Norse scholars.

"This big!"

This leads us to Thorin. In my opinion the characterisation of Thorin and his story arc is one of the film's more serious weaknesses. Thorin is transformed from this rather pompous, self-important and greedy but ultimately good character from the novel into a sort of proto-Aragorn, grim, dark and brooding, who steals focus and attention from Bilbo. The Dwarves seem to dread his arrival; instead of a humorous entrance with Bombur falling on top of him in the front hall he turns up after all the other Dwarves and in comparison to pretty much all of them is strikingly noble. Some of the members of the company, particularly Balin, Dwalin, Óin and Glóin really feel like Dwarves; stocky and solid types, bearded and weathered, and to me they were the ones who most strongly captured the feeling of Professor Tolkien's own characterisation, albeit still rather exaggerated.

"Only how many lines each?"

Thorin by contrast doesn't really feel like a Dwarf at all, much like his nephews Fili and Kili. I almost feel like this image of a "handsome Dwarf" is a contradiction in terms because despite the strength of characterisation they just feel like short Men. There is something of that indefinable "Dwarvishness" which is captured in, say, Balin, which isn't in Thorin, who looks like something out of a magazine and acts like every other boring anti-hero for the last thirty years. Instead of being a character whose outward grouchiness and greed conceals the soft harp-playing smoke-ring-blowing core he's an angsty warrior-king who's constantly chewing out anyone who second-guesses him: Bilbo, Fili and Kili, even Gandalf. It gets a bit boring after a while and just makes Thorin seem like a cookie-cutter anti-hero bad boy from the worn out Hollywood mould. He is of course given something more in his backstory. Now he, not Dáin, fought Azog at the gates of Moria; apparently Azog swore to "wipe out Durin's line", although it's never explained why. It's also never explained who Durin is, actually. Over the course of the first third of the film we receive two major Dwarf flashbacks and it really does seem a bit like too much. This causes us to become more and more distracted from Bilbo.

"Mr Bilbo, where are you off to?"
"I think my career might finally be taking off!"

Speaking of which, let's get back to Bilbo. Martin Freeman does a good job as our titular Hobbit, appearing suitably bewildered and bewuthered as it were. I do feel somewhat that his typical bemused sense of resignation at the absurdity of existence does somewhat grate with the characterisation of Bilbo, however, as a comfortable stay-at-home type having his eyes opened to the outside world. He often feels too world-weary already. He's good enough at seeming painfully middle-class and awkward when applicable as the adventure continues, although some of the times where he's openly hostile to the Dwarves invading his house or openly refuses the "call to adventure" in very strong terms don't always gel especially plausibly with the depiction of him being forced to abandon his reluctant, avoidant, passive-aggressive tendencies and embrace his "Tookish side". This is the problem which occurs when the film starts to deviate too drastically from Professor Tolkien's original narrative for the sake of padding or elaboration; eventually the original story they're following and the embellishments simply don't cooperate.

Speaking of embellishments, once we're finally out of the Shire these come to the fore and the sense of disconnectedness really begins. The first incident is in Balin's (somewhat altered from the source) account of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs and the Battle of Azanulbizar outside the gates of Moria, which I've already mentioned. By this point we're getting relentless amounts of Thorin, and Bilbo's starting to fall by the wayside. Following this we have another deviation to Radagast the Brown.

"The fourth series was definitely going to be the best."

A lot of apologists for this film have made the argument that the padding can't be criticised because it derives from Professor Tolkien's own work, particularly the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings. While this is to an extent true of the Battle of Azanulbizar flashback it's totally untrue of the Radagast the Brown diversion, which is completely spun out of whole cloth. The entire sequence of events with Radagast is another element which should have been completely omitted. Radagast is a typical Sylvester McCoy performance which is employed for some cheap laughs and a bit of side-plot development while giving an unsubtle and inaccurate acknowledgement to fans of the books. He bumbles around, cures a hedgehog, gets bothered by some spiders and goes to Dol Guldur. Later, after the incident with the trolls, he turns up to lead some hunting Orcs on a wild goose chase in a rather bizarre sequence where he seems to drive his rabbit-drawn sled around and around in circles while the Dwarves run on foot to Rivendell. Despite the fact that at some points he seems to be no more than a hundred feet away from the Dwarves the Orcs never seem to notice that their real quarry is right there. This is another sequence which could have been omitted, but it's time to get back to the Trolls.

After many hours of travelling they finally
got to Chapter 2.

The episode with the Trolls was a strong moment in the film; I felt that the Trolls were, with some reservations about the high-pitched squeaky one, well-portrayed and performed. While it was a shame that they changed the way the Trolls were defeated that's again a consequence of the three-film choice. One of the major tipping points of the novel is the stage at which Gandalf leaves Thorin and Company; he can no longer be the one who turns up and saves everybody, and as such Bilbo has to step up to becoming effectively the leader. By torturing the tale out over three films, however, we don't even get that far, so we have to accelerate Bilbo's development a little bit. The part where he distracts the Trolls was a little odd but at least it fit with the general idea of keeping them occupied until the sun came up. One thing I might note is the inherent ridiculousness of this entire episode. The Hobbit is a very episodic novel, and events don't begin to interrelate until late in the plot. The Troll affair is basically a silly incident where three giant cockneys truss up the Dwarves and get tricked into having an argument. While they did a good enough job in the film to use the Troll incident to imply the waxing of Sauron's strength it didn't exactly fit very well with the overall tone. Seeing Richard Armitage, serious as can be, tied up in a sack at the mercy of three big computer generated lads from the East End came across as even more ridiculous than it already is. This film puts itself in a difficult position by trying too hard to reconcile the more childlike tone and story structure of its source with the gravitas of its literary sequel and its own pretensions of legitimacy. It was one of several moments in the film that had me feeling vaguely unsettled. There's too much inconsistency.

Peter Jackson's house.

After the aforementioned chase with Radagast and his bizarre rabbit sled we get to Rivendell. Despite my complaints about the tone up until this point I was finding the film more or less enjoyable, Radagast bits aside. It was during this segment however that I found the film frustrating. Much of the action is taken up with a meeting of the White Council, or Council of the Wise, composed of Saruman, Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond. Galadriel gets a bizarre moment where she seems to rotate on a Lazy Susan concealed beneath her dress. Saruman waffles on about the Dwarves and Gandalf and Galadriel have one of their telepathic conversations. I found this whole scene to be totally long-winded and unnecessary, just a fan-pleasing effort to bring back Galadriel and Saruman and serving little real purpose. The Council appears to oppose the Quest for no good reason and the whole thing is such a general waste of time that Bilbo and the Dwarves head off without even bothering to wait for Gandalf to catch up (I realise this was turned into a plot point, I'm being facetious). We're given some poorly-explained Necromancer side-plot that they could have made infinitely simpler for themselves and drastically improved the pacing and flow of the story if they'd simply followed what Professor Tolkien actually wrote. Radagast, incidentally, disappears with no explanation and isn't seen again.

Who are you again?

What frustrated me about this whole sequence, besides weird things like the Elves being vegetarians and stuff, was that we got to see so little of Bilbo. Besides Elrond reading Thorin's map we don't get to see Bilbo's wonder at the House of the Elves or his sense of discovering an amazing new place and so on. It's all glossed over for boring White Council exposition. I might as well also mention at this point that we're additionally getting cutaways involving these Orcs hunting Thorin. Why are they hunting Thorin? Who knows really. Azog wants to kill Thorin for cutting off his hand I guess. It's just more time wasting that could have been deleted, and more of a distraction from Bilbo. Who's story is this? What's going on?

One of the many harmless escapades
encountered by our heroes.

Anyway we finally get to the Misty Mountains. Can you believe this is only the fourth chapter of the novel? I was surprised at the inclusion of the stone giants, although I found the scene to be faintly ridiculous. The giants have a huge fight in which the Dwarves miraculously survive landslides and geological calamities which seem to recur frequently for the remainder of the film. Bilbo gets caught hanging off a cliff and Thorin gets annoyed at him, after which he tries to sneak off and leave. This seems to echo the "Go home, Sam" debacle which was shoehorned into the film version of The Return of the King (it has no precendent in the novel) and which further muddies Bilbo's characterisation. First Thorin's insulting him in Bag End (with a line Glóin delivers in the novel, incidentally, and gets reprimanded for by Gandalf; no such friendly support here), then he's helping the Dwarves with the Trolls, now Thorin hates him again. It's all over the place and inserted simply to exaggerate the sense of drama. Then it's down to Goblin Town.

"Hello Possums!"

This is the point where I started to feel like the film was really getting bogged down. Bilbo gets separated from the gang so that we can hasten to the Riddles in the Dark sequence, but the rest is just a CGI assault on the eyes where not entirely convincing Goblins ruled over by a motion capture Barry Humphries generally arse about. Gandalf shows up and there's a big chase, not just down a tunnel but with scaffolding and bridges and bizarre Mr Magoo esque moments with swinging beams and more falling down steep slopes. Is this a film or the log flume ride? It'd mostly be fine if it wasn't for the fact that we've already had a crazy chase sequence earlier with the unnecessary Radagast sled silliness, and even still it's a bit over the top. The film is so breathlessly desperate to be spectacular it starts to become tiring, like a drunk guy who gets a big laugh on one joke and so won't stop repeating it even when no one finds it funny anymore. The Great Goblin jumps up onto a bridge at the end like the second stage of a boss fight from a video game and is swiftly dispatched by Gandalf. Lots of this film feels like a game, really - intense chases and bursts of violence punctuated by cutscenes. The pacing is really all over the shop.

"A trilogy? Seriously?"

Where this suffers in particular is the interconnection of this sequence with the Riddles in the Dark. This is one of the strongest points of the film. I'm not a huge fan of Andy Serkis' Gollum; I find him too "cute" and funny despite all his creepiness. I'd prefer it if he was more seemingly ancient and wretched and sinister. I did like the employment of the shining eyes, however. Nonetheless the Riddle game was done well for a sequence which is essentially two people trying to outwit each other; it was conveyed visually with surprising effectiveness, but intercutting it with the Goblin Town events disrupts the pacing and the sense of anxiety and torturous uncertainty. Bilbo may have lost sight of Gandalf and the Dwarves but we haven't, so we lose our sense of his total isolation with this murderous villain. This also badly disrupts his escape from Gollum's cave and discovery of the powers of the One Ring, although the point at which he stops himself from killing Gollum is an effectively realised moment.

"Arr! Set sail for the Lonely Mountain!"

All that remains is the warg attack in the woods. For a start, Azog looks like crap. I thought his CGI body was very unconvincing and that the design used for him was dull. Giving Thorin a nemesis only confuses his motivations anyway. What is also bizarre is when Thorin strides out ready to confront Azog and gets completely owned, requiring Bilbo to save the day. I often didn't understand what they were trying to convey with Thorin; at times they seemed to be presenting him as this troubled but worthy leader, and at others he just looked like an incompetent idiot. There's also the ludicrous fakeout where he appears to be dead and then just blinks and gets up unharmed. His eventual acceptance of Bilbo is fairly heartwarming but it overemphasises the development for Thorin rather than Bilbo, who seems to change his mind about ditching the Quest once again for no particular reason. It's much more effective, I feel, in the original novel when Bilbo repeatedly calls the Dwarves out when they're being selfish and blaming him for their problems and reflects his increasing strength of character which simply isn't something we get here.

Blue Elvish Steel

All in all the film's an adequate adventure yarn but it's simply too long and when it tries to extrapolate the backstory in order to pad things out it unnecessarily mangles it and overcomplicates things. There isn't enough focus on the titular character, Bilbo - too much is given to Thorin and too much screentime is wasted on the White Council - and the general sense of pacing is off, from fight to fight and chase to chase interrupted by awkward exposition dumps which don't even accurately reflect Professor Tolkien's delicate story structure. The mood swings wildly from the facetious and absurd to the melodramatic and while the performances are generally strong they're made to follow unambitious Hollywood templates which make the entire story seem stale and inconsequential. We could have received a refreshing fish-out-of-water type tale of an isolated individual rediscovering himself with a supporting cast of grumbling associates. This could have been layered over a darker backdrop if necessary to hint at what we know to be coming in The Lord of the Rings rather than giving it a fanfare and making us forget about the rest of what's going on. Too much of the film reflects the need to drag things out over three instalments: extra chases and fights, made up and inconsistent characterisation, and badly paced scenes that should simply have been abandoned. Its excessive length and inconsistency are items of disappointing evidence for the dangers of corporate greed. Cut Old Bilbo and Frodo, most of the White Council material, Radagast in his entirety, and Azog, and have the explanation of the Dwarves' backstory slowly revealed over the course of things and you'd have a good adventure fantasy. It could even have still ended as early as it did in the novel's sequence of events and nonetheless been a perfectly fine adaptation with a two hour runtime; it's not like it was split into a trilogy and the first film only goes for eighty minutes or something, it's two and three quarter hours long! If they've got as much material as they claim and were really intent on a trilogy then surely rendering the story as, say, three two-hour films would be easy; couldn't they have cut some of this junk out? As it is it's only an adequate piece of cinema which struggles to decide what its plot and character focus is with some iffy special effects and a rather fatuous representation of the source material. It's primarily worth it for Bilbo; so much else should, like Mr. Baggins' pocket-handkerchiefs, have been left at home.

Me when someone claims the films are accurate to the books.

Story Notes - Some major changes from the Real Story and the Original Text

1. The Arkenstone - This wasn't taken by Thrór as a sign of his "divine right to rule"; that would sit very uneasily with Professor Tolkien's view of the role of providence. The Elves also didn't pay homage to the Dwarves. Incidentally, I don't know what the deal is with Thranduil's weird head tilt. The Elves didn't ditch the Dwarves when the dragon attacked, either; Thranduil's halls in Mirkwood were several days' march away and they had virtually nothing to do with the Dwarves. The actual enmity between the Elves and the Dwarves dated back to the First Age when the Dwarves of Nogrod sacked Doriath in Beleriand, where Thranduil lived, and stole one of the Silmarils; it had nothing to do with Thorin's people, the Dwarves of Durin's House. There was only a general uneasiness and distrust; neither side considered the other to be their enemy. The Elves of Thranduil of course had absolutely nothing to do with the Elves of Rivendell, which makes Thorin's antipathy for the household of Elrond even more inexplicable.

2. The Dwarves - in the novel while they are presented as doughty fighters in the early events they're mostly unarmed and ill-prepared for combat. They're also less distinguishable. Thorin is the leader, Balin is old, Fili and Kili are young, Bombur is fat and Dori is strong, but that's about it.

3. The Battle of Azanulbizar - it wasn't to reclaim Moria. Thrór, crazed after the loss of Erebor, went to Moria with only a servant, Nár, and there was decapitated by Azog the Orc who had taken rulership of the abandoned Dwarf mansions. Thráin and Thorin waged a long war with the Orcs of the Misty Mountains for revenge. In the end they confronted the Orcs at the gates of Moria and Dáin Ironfoot, Thorin's cousin, slew Azog, but the Dwarves could not reclaim their ancestral halls because despite their victory over the Orcs the Balrog of Morgoth still lurked inside, an enemy they had never had the strength to best. Incidentally this entire sequence was reserved for the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings and is only mentioned very much in passing in The Hobbit.

4. Durin - He was one of the first seven (yes, seven) Dwarves, and the original ancestor of Thorin and his family. He established Khazad-dûm (later known as Moria) in the Misty Mountains during the First Age, and many of his successors were so like him in appearance that they too were named Durin. It was Durin VI in the Third Age who was slain by the Balrog; a year later Moria was lost to that demon.

5. Radagast the Brown - Radagast appears exactly once in the entire storyline. During the events of The Fellowship of the Ring Saruman gave him a message that he requested Gandalf's presence at Isengard. Radagast delivered the message and promised to send whatever other news he could via his animal friends. It was because of this that Gwaihir the Windlord, one of the Great Eagles, was able to rescue Gandalf from the pinnacle of Orthanc. Radagast is mentioned but unseen in The Hobbit. That's it. That's everything Radagast does. According to everything published Radagast had absolutely nothing to do with the investigations into Dol Guldur and the Necromancer; these were entirely conducted by Gandalf prior to the events of The Hobbit. There isn't even any evidence that Radagast was a member of the White Council.

6. The chase sequence - The events in which the Dwarves are pursued from the Trolls' cave to Rivendell is entirely an invention of the film. In the novel the Dwarves have a completely peaceful journey from the Trollshaws to Rivendell.

7. The Trolls - in the novel it's Gandalf who keeps the Trolls distracted by impersonating each of them from a safe distance in order to prolong their argument.

8. The White Council - this was indeed composed of Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel and Elrond, as well as Círdan the Shipwright, who is omitted in this film; he certainly has the smallest role in the text. It's worth noting in this sequence of the film that Saruman argues that Sauron was destroyed. This is inconsistent with the source material because the Wizards (or "Istari" to employ the Elvish term Saruman correctly uses in the film) were deliberately sent to Middle-earth by the Valar to oppose the will of Sauron. The Council knew Sauron was still active in Middle-earth, they simply for a long time didn't know where or what he was up to. Saruman never argued that Sauron had been destroyed; he definitely still considered him a threat. He simply, and falsely, argued that the One Ring had been irrecoverably lost because he desired to find it for himself, and delayed the attack on Dol Guldur in the hope that the Ring would reveal itself if its master was given time to regain his strength. By the time of The Hobbit the Council was already completely aware that Sauron was the lord of Dol Guldur. It's worth noting that when The Hobbit was written Professor Tolkien hadn't even invented Saruman or even Galadriel, whom he later retconned to play a fairly significant background role in The Silmarillion. The Council did not oppose the Quest for Erebor even slightly, and indeed had nothing to do with it whatsoever; Gandalf was really pulling a lot of strings. The Council didn't meet while Thorin and Company were at Rivendell (they didn't even always meet there, they also convened at Caras Galadhon and Isengard) and Gandalf accompanied Bilbo and the Dwarves from Rivendell without obstruction.

9. The Morgul Blade - no such incident ever occurred. The Witch-King of Angmar did indeed destroy the North Kingdom, Arnor, sister-kingdom of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings. This occurred much earlier in the Third Age. However, he was never sealed into a tomb or anything of the sort. The Witch-King of Angmar was the Lord of the Nazgûl, Captain of the Ringwraiths, and had never died. He was given one of the Nine Rings of Men by Sauron during the Second Age and gradually faded until he became a Wraith. He had no tomb because he was undead; his life was indefinitely prolonged by the Ring, even though his body faded away. After Sauron's defeat at the end of the Second Age he went into hiding with his master; later in the Third Age he took control of the evil realm of Angmar in the North and used it to destroy Arnor. Afterwards Angmar was defeated by an army from Gondor and the Elves of Rivendell and the Grey Havens. After this the Lord of the Nazgûl went South and conquered the city of Minas Ithil in Gondor, which became the city of Minas Morgul from which he began harassing Gondor (Arnor no longer being a problem) and preparing Mordor for the return of Sauron. He was never in a tomb, he never had anything personally to do with Dol Guldur or Mirkwood and he didn't die until Éowyn and Merry slew him in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields during the War of the Ring. How could he have a "Morgul Blade" if he was sealed away in tombs, not off ruling over Minas Morgul, the namesake of said blades?

10. Goblin Town - Professor Tolkien uses this segment to give a brief diversion about the technological advances of the Goblins, suggestive of his recurring theme of the dangers of progress for its own sake, especially in the areas of industry and weapons. For some reason the Goblin-Town of the film is a ramshackle cavern full of troglodytes; a disappointing case of point missed for the sake of spectacle in my opinion.

It's also worth mentioning that Bilbo was present with the Dwarves during their encounter with the Great Goblin and was only separated from them and met Gollum later during the escape.

11. Azog - as I mentioned above, by the time of The Hobbit Azog was dead; the rulership of the Orcs of the Mountains had passed to Bolg, his son. There's certainly no plot involving him hunting down Thorin or meetings on Weathertop or anything of the sort. Incidentally Bolg was quite heavily played up in the promotional material for the film and then failed to appear, which suggests to me that his role and Azog's were probably altered rather dramatically quite late in the day.

12. Thráin's Key - Gandalf was given the key and the map by Thráin, Thorin's father, in Dol Guldur while he was there seeking the identity of the tower's ruler. Thráin had been imprisoned there by Sauron who captured him to recover the last of the Seven Rings of the Dwarves. This eventually gave Gandalf the impetus he needed to get the Quest in motion; as the film mentions, it was important to prevent Smaug from being a weapon in Sauron's hands. The film never has Gandalf account for how he acquired the key, and so we are needlessly presented with Radagast investigating Dol Guldur when this could easily and more accurately have occurred through Gandalf.

13. The Necromancer - He was discovered to be Sauron by Gandalf some time before the events of The Hobbit. While Sauron operated under the guise of the "Necromancer of Dol Guldur" he was never perceived as someone who literally raised the dead (which is largely impossible according to the metaphysics of the story). Professor Tolkien rather chose the term for its more general connotations of an "evil sorcerer". In the film Saruman suggests that the Necromancer might be a merely "human" enemy. The term "human" is never used within the stories. The mortals are called Men and the immortals are Elves. Elves and Men (including Hobbits) could both be considered "human". The Necromancer is also accused of using "black magic" by Radagast and the White Council. "Magic" is essentially a meaningless term in Middle-earth; ignorant folk used it to describe those powers and arts employed by Elves, Wizards and the Enemy which were beyond their comprehension. It's certainly not a term members of the Wise would have used among themselves. A very minor point I know, but Galadriel makes an issue of it in the book so why can't I?

An Unexpected Journey two hours and forty-five minutes in.