Records
somehow. It is worth highlighting though; you could be lacking without it.
Mylo. as the name obviously suggests. is from north of Scotland and has brought his love of 70s junk. 80s funk and jacking 903 French house to bear on one long player. Yes. the spectre of Daft Punk looms large on Mylo's debut but as painfully familiar as some of the shining moments here are. they amount to a well- constructed. accessible and often inspired record.
To follow his rhetoric and destroy rock'n'roll seems a bit churlish when there‘s a power of dancing and feeling fine to be done.
(Mark Robertson)
JAE
HENRY HEY TRIO
Watershed
(Sirocco Music) nee
Iowa—born pianist Henry Hey has been working as musical director for Rod Stewart. but we shouldn't hold that against him. He is a considerable jazz talent. and there is no sense of compromise in the music on this disc. His approach suggests a sharp awareness of a broad spectrum of jazz piano history. including the romanticism of Bill Evans and the percussive invention of Keith Jarrett. but he is very much his own man, and is carving out his own niche. Release of this finely crafted disc was delayed by the collapse of a major British jazz distributor earlier this year. but is worth discovering now that it is here.
(Kenny Mathieson)
games@|ist.co.uk
' XBOX
THIEF: DEADLY DOWS
LSHA
=@¢BHP~°
Has there been a cull of British actors recently?
3 Are they suddenly an
endangered species? Did the Screen Actors
Guild of America hire a 2 team of hitmen to wipe
out their RP-speaking UK colleagues? For there can be no other reason to use American
accents in Thief: Dead/y i Shadows. a game set in
a pseudo-medieval city where the language is
. rough. cod
Shakespeare. Every single line of dialogue jars. slapping you square in the face and nearly.
oh so nearly. doth it
' bring ruination upon the virtuous game that coucheth it.
Luckily Thief: DS is a
. strong enough creation
to handle this setback. Following the further nefarious adventures of
Garrett as he sneaks around a kind of Dark
Age cyberpunk city. it is still full of surprisingly fresh ideas. Take his bow. for example. There is the obvious deadly
: function but. thanks to a 3 variety of imaginative
arrows. it becomes the
answer to many puzzles.
Need to cross a floor silently? Use a moss
arrow to give it a soft Q carpet. Want to create a
dark corner to hide in? Use a water arrow to extinguish that torch. It is pleasing to finish a mission and realise you used the bow a number of times yet killed no
one.
It is this fluid mix of function and style that
i makes Thief: 08 such a joy. The hide—in-the-
98 THE LIST 8—22 Jul 2004
shadow feature works so much better here
' than in any other game
(yes. even Splinter Cell) partly because the enemy Al is better but also because the setting
and the character make
it feel more believable. And speaking of AI. it is nothing short of excellent with guards reacting exactly as you would expect. yet never breaking the carefully crafted atmosphere. For stealth aficionados this is the purest and best sneakathon available on
any system. For
everyone else. this is a fantastically evocative puzzle game that looks simply stunning. And verily that may be COunteth as naught but the truth. y'all.
XBOX BREAKDOWN (Electronic Arts) 00
Was it a conscious decision. do you think? Some game designer thinks: 'I know. let‘s do away with all the fighting and puzzles and stuff that makes games fun. I have an idea about a new way to present the game. all first person
and claustrophobic and
that; who needs anything else? Let‘s just have lots of corridors. Lots and lots of bland. bland corridors to meander down. And
when you have . meandered down one you can meander down . another or meander up the first one again.
‘Not that there will be a
Samuel Fishefl Dine on thine own heart sirrah!
choice because I'll make
it linear and restrictive.
so the choice of corridor
to meander has already
matter much because all the corridors to meander
been made. But it won't
will look the same. Hmmm. maybe I'll stick
; in some fighting after all, ’ but only hand-to-hand
mind. so the innovative first person feels all claustrophobic and that. And it will look great. Yes. for a bunch of
corridors and a few fights. it'll look great. All
claustrophobic and that.‘ Do you think that was the thought?
SPECTRUM
WARRIOR
(THO) see.
No one seems to be able to talk about Full
Spectrum Warrior
without mentioning that it was developed to aid the training of US Army troops. See? There it's mentioned again. Anyway. what it was
initially designed for is
irrelevant. It is sold as a game. to be played as a
game. on a games console. So let's look at
it as a game. There is a serious of deadly street-
based missions that
your squad of four
: soldiers must attempt. g with you as the commander. But there's
no aiming and shooting here for you. restricted as you are to bawling
out orders and watching ' how your men carry them out.
The Al of the men is excellent. though not perfect. and they react
both to orders and
5 developing situations as a believable. cohesive
i fireteam. Which makes
Full Spectrum Warrior a beautifully animated puzzle game. a
brainteaser in urban ; camouflage. There is
simply nothing like it on
the Xbox at the moment and for a tense workout of the grey matter you
could do no better. (lain Davidson)
Rental) 000
dvd@list.co.uk
ROMANTIC COMEDY ALEX & EMMA (12) 92min
(Warner Home Video DVD Retail. DVD & VHS
Exactly why this fluffy artefact went straight to DVD in the UK isn't hard to divine; it‘s neither manipulative enough for the lowest common
mere 1.920 hours. intrepid Inspector Fix (Peter Ustinov) follows close behind in the name of a suspicious case of mistaken
' identity. Despite its
matinee feel. this film has an unforgivably sluggish pace. Brosnan lacks charisma but he shines when next to Eric Idle. whose Passpartout appears to have blundered in from the set of Mind Your Language. Bankrupt of
any aesthetic merit. this
unexciting. unfunny adaptation of Jules Verne's tale even makes
. the forthcoming Steve
denominatOr market. nor
punchy enough to appeal to the more thoughtful cineaste. Its director. Rob Reiner. gave us When Harry Met Sally - which is pretty
much romcom‘s Acme -
so he draws fine
performances from Luke Wilson (as romantic novelist Alex Sheldon. who has 30 days to write a full manuscript in order to service gambling debts) and Kate Hudson (the stenographer he hires. and the object(s) of his affections in the novel's
{ film-within-a-film world).
As a treatise on writing it is hardly in the
: Adaptations league. but
it is occasionally a fun — if slightly laboured — romp. Extras include
Coogan/Jackie Chan remake look like essential viewing. Extras are minimal. although
included is a collection
of production ‘trivia‘.
. whose abysmal spelling 3 only reinforces the
sloppiness endemic of
this release.
(Dave Martin) HUMOROUS HORROR
: THE CAT AND
commentary from Reiner '
and Wilson. (David Pollock)
ADAPTATION AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
(PG) 266min
3 (MIA DVD rental/retail)
When eccentric English gentleman Phileas Fogg (Pierce Brosnan) accepts a wager to traverse the globe in a
THE CANARY (15) 90min (Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD retail) .0
MCAT$CANARY
An unnecessary remake of Paul Leni's original creepy comedy in which
six cousins gather on a dark and stormy night in
1934 to witness the
reading of a will
recorded on film 20
: years before. One will
; inherit the house and
i family fortune. but only on the condition that
they are of 30und mind
and body. Thus a rickety.
zero budget stage is set
. for a den of intrigue.
suspicion and murder
wrung from a cast of i varying charms and I topped with the most
woefully camp cameo from Edward Fox. Poor
film stock and editing on ' the cheap (director Radley Metzger's oeuvre
was mostly porn) conspire to smother an