Sand, Sun and... um, yeah. A Review of the Jedi Consular Story: Part 6

We are now half-way through the first chapter of the Jedi Consular's class story. Your Jedi is travelling through the galaxy in his or her flash spaceship with a growing crew of companions on a daring mission to ... do something with various crazy Jedi Masters. The latest stop on this odyssey is quite possibly the most iconic world in the entire Star Wars Universe. In Knights of the Old Republic, Tatooine was extremely well-realized, rendered beautifully in all of its arid, blinding desolation.  Now SWTOR  has revisited the game and given us a more detailed, larger and richer version of the same. If you don't have a speeder, now really is the time to get one because Tatooine is huge. Actually, I got mine by Taris  because that was huge too.

The main planet mission for Tatooine is one of my favourites. It has a great plot, memorable and likeable characters and nice continuity with KOTOR.  Soon after  you leave the spaceport you are contacted by a mysterious man who refuses to give details until you meet with him. Soon you find yourself drafted by Republic Intelligence to track down a secret installation left behind by the Czerka corporation.  You run around trying to stay one step ahead of a really creepy Czerka executive eventually finding something left behind by the Rakata Infinite Empire!

I really liked Czerka in the KOTOR games. They weren't quite Weyland-Yutani or Cyberdyne, but as evil corporations go, they're quite fun.  Also making a welcome appearance are the Rakata. I liked their incorporation into the Star Wars Universe through KOTOR.  I really dig the notion that the Infinite Empire had the Force figured out long before the Jedi and the Sith ever came along.

The class mission involves tracking down a sort of Jedi anthropologist who's been living amongst the Sand People. As a result of this mysterious plague, he's gone a little nuts and is trying to create an army out them. He basically wants to model the Republic on his notion of who the Sand People are. Your main contact here is a likeable character named Rowan who used to work with the Jedi you're looking for. He's almost companion material. The idea of the anthropologist 'going native' is fairly cool and there are shades of  Heart of Darkness in this part of the class story-line. I do feel that the planet mission about Czerka overshadows the class mission somewhat.

Once you're done here, it's time to visit a certain doomed world.

Damsel? Yes. Distressed? No. A review of the Consular Story Part 5.5

Between Planet Sexy and Tunisia, we get a bit of a detour. You receive a distress call from a Republic vessel named the Carida. It has been commandeered and its crew terrorized  by one of its passengers: a fairly powerful padawan. There's a lot of airlock action here, the crazy padawan blows a poor engineer out into space for kicks. Then she blows herself out of the airlock!

Notable in this mission is your first encounter with Lord Vivicar. The name has come up here and there as the entity behind the plague. His end of the conversation amounts to standard villain dialogue where he shows contempt for you and the Jedi, taunts you about Master Yuon and rants that you'll never stop his dastardly plan.

Playing it Darkside, he does point out that you haven't been using the shielding technique on the afflicted Masters you've found so far. At this point you can respond with something defensive about how you had no choice but to kill the poor buggers.  Like I said before, the Darkside Consular is all about justifying their awfulness. This stems from a sense of superiority to everyone else because no one else is in a position to know what's best!

But as for the very pertinent question that Vivicar asks (abut how you've obviously fallen), that's the only time anyone actually asks about Darkside choices! The main villain of  Chapter 1 has more to say about your transgressions than the Jedi Council! I'll get to this issue in more detail when I reach the end of chapter 1. Until then, it's off to the mother of all dust bowls...

"Some days I think I could go insane..."

Everything But

The Girl:

Walking Wounded

If one record defines my adolescence, it's this one. Walking Wounded is one of my essential albums and literally chronicles my life in the mid-90's. Released a the year after their hit Missing took over the world, Walking Wounded signalled a shift in the duo's sound from the mostly acoustic Amplified Heart to a more electronic sensibility.  What did not change was their affinity for intelligent, perceptive pop music with depth.

I was sixteen when I listened to this album and it was a big part of the playlist for my young adulthood. It was my first experience of strongly identifying with a collection of songs. Connecting to this LP, I finally understood what people older than me meant when they talked about an album defining a period of time in their lives.

Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn cover a wide range with Walking wounded. The title track was the first single off the album and a brave choice at the time. Liquid drum'n bass propels a haunting refrain by Tracey's plaintive voice. This song was my introduction to the concept of left-field pop music and the possibilities thereof. The album closes with a fresh, crystalline remix by experimental musician Omni Trio.

"Wrong", the second single, is a classic house track lamenting one's own mistakes and begging for absolution. When you hurt someone badly enough, you're connected to them forever. Todd Terry is brought back to remix this giving it a fuller sound and a similar beat to his immortal rework of "Missing". Notably, this is the only song on the album where Ben Watt contributes any vocals.

"Single" puts the 'down' in down-tempo. Quite possibly one of my most consistently favoured songs throughout my life, I may very well keep listening to it forever. The percussion sounds like an off-kilter heartbeat. A morose saxophone sample pops in and out just to remind us that this is, indeed, meant to be as gloomy as it sounds. The organ and strings set the standard for 'atmospheric' as far as I'm concerned. "Good Cop/Bad Cop" is my personal anthem; so much so, that I hesitate to review it. Suffice it to say that it's really, really good. A nice mid-tempo track reeling with angst and despair, it's the song I most identify with n the world. As with "Single", the strings are a strong element, this time emotive rather than oneric.


"Before Today" gives us some more drum and bass. But  instead of the drama and angst of "Walking Wounded", we get a cheeky ultimatum to an uncooperative lover. While not exactly happy, it offers a more cheerful interruption to the more depressive entries on the album. "Big Deal" is an unforgiving break-beat driven song chastising someone for wallowing in their problems. Tracey Thorn's delicately intimate vocals take on a bit of a sting here and one can't help but feel a little defensive."Flipside" gives us a drowsy bit of hip-hop with daydreamy lyrics.

"Mirrorball" is a nicely layered narrative song that reads like the diary of a crazy person. The acoustic guitar and Rhodes piano ground the electronic elements of the song. "Heart Remains a Child" has a similar vibe to "Mirrorball" but treads more relationship-y ground. It's a song whose point of view has lost all dignity to infatuation.

Revisiting this album is always a treat for me. While it's true that Everything but the Girl tend to make melancholy music, I find their sad songs comforting.  While most of the world might know them through the Todd Terry Remix of "Missing", I highly recommend looking at its immediate aftermath. Walking Wounded is a great snapshot of what was great about left-of-centre pop in the 90s. 

"...to live or die by your sword and your wits.", Phantasy Star III

Generations of Doom:

When I was a kid, I owned a Sega Megadrive console and only owned a few games. One in particular became my obsession. I played it through over and over again without ever getting sick of it.  

As an adult, when I started to look this game up online, I was somewhat taken aback by how unpopular it seemed to be. Ultimately I figured that it was because I'd never played the other games in the series, to which this game has an only indirect connection. 

I loved it for its complex narrative, its character design and its well-realized milieu. The main conceit of the game is that it plays out over three generations, each one having a slightly different story play out as a result. Only two games can be saved at a time, so one has to replay the game from the beginning at least once.

I find that having your own head-cannon is necessary for Phantasy Star III (PS3) since the script is, to put it mildly, somewhat underwritten. That wasn't a problem for me because the story gave my imagination enough to chew on. I won't lie to you, there are a few problems and the game takes forever to get you from point A to point B. But I personally feel that the good outweighs the bad.

One of those good things is the soundtrack. There are a few duds here and there that get old after the second time you hear them (like some of the fight scene music). But a lot of the music in this game is awesome especially considering that this is a 16-bit console game form the 90's.

The real draw here is the generational gimmick. At the end of the first and second generations the protagonist has to choose between two women. The protagonist of the next generation will resemble his mother and carry on with the story.  PS3's overarching plot is mostly the same story from different angles building up to a confrontation with the same main villain. The coda is different for each of the four end-game protagonists. I especially love the 'road not taken' aspect of this game and if a bit more care had been taken with it's development it might have a better reputation. 

A wonderful site devoted to this underrated classic can be found here.

It's off to Planet Sexy! A review of the Jedi Consular Story Part 5

Nar Shaddaa is one of the more memorable worlds of Star Wars' expanded universe. Deliciously Noir, the environment combines bright neon colours with dark shadowy  depths. That juxtaposition of the fun exciting nightlife with sinister sleaze makes Nar Shadda stand out from most other planets you'll see in the Old Republic.

Neither Republic nor Imperial, the "smugglers' moon" is controlled by the Hutts. That's right, the same species that gave us Jabba the Hutt in the movies. I guess there's a certain amount of hand-waving here as to the basis of their power and I'm sure there's some obscure bit of lore somewhere explaining it all away that's not even cannon. For the purposes of SWTOR, we're going to just go with the Hutt Cartel being a neutral power in the cold war between the Republic and the Empire.

The significance of Nar Shaddaa in story terms for the consular is that you meet your second companion character!  Tharan Cedrax is a flirtatious scientist with an almost too healthy self-esteem. He's actually an old friend of your quest-giver, Mater Syo Bakarn.  In game terms, Tharan is a healing companion with some ranged damage and crowd control ability (in the form of his holographic girlfriend Holiday dancing in front of a target to stun it). Unlike Qyzen Fess, he doesn't need subtitles.  Despite his associations with the Jedi, he's just not that into the Force. He loves knowledge for its own sake even if it's ethically so-so and he's not self-conscious about  avoiding danger.  Your character has a lot of options when it comes to dealing with Tharan as part of your crew. I certainly enjoying having him tag along.

The Jedi Master you're looking for is  messing with Nar Shaddaa's status quo. He's formed a gang out of a variety of misfits, controlling their minds through the Force. You need to stop what he's doing because if the Hutts get wind of the gang's ties to the Jedi, they might ally with the Empire. Luckily your new friend Tharan can help you out with his inventions.  One personal highlight for me is when you have to go into a section of the moon controlled by the Empire. You have to impersonate a Sith Lord. Nolan North does a great job with the Sith 'accent'. If you're playing Dark side like I did, the scene provides some pleasant irony for your fallen Jedi!

Again, I played this Dark side so instead of using the healing ritual I just killed the Jedi Master. It's sort of justified by how dangerous he was and how he could easily have upset the Galactic balance of power in the Empire's favour.

Now that we're done with Planet Sexy, it's off to Tunisia... I mean, Tatooine.

"That was all it took my dear..."

Mutya Keisha Siobhan 

One Touch, the Sugababes

Girl groups have been around for generations now. There's something universally appealing about  three to five young women harmonizing about love and heartbreak. The main genre associated with girl groups is pop music. And it's not just any old pop music, but the most saccharine, contrived and manufactured type of pop.

Enter one of my favourite exceptions to the above rule: the Sugababes.  In the year 2000, three London girls debuted their very first single: "Overload". Later on that year, their debut album One Touch came out. It is a work that has only grown better with time. Eclectic, mature and effortlessly cool, I've yet to find its like in any other girl group debut.

I find that the best pop music has something else going on. It's a little difficult at first, refusing to yield anything of itself until I've heard it several times.  It tends to be the kind of song that holds up nicely years or even decades later. One Touch is full of those kinds of songs.  Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy made a powerfully soulful combination.

It is astounding to me that this album was co-written by people so young. It feels like peeking into the diary of a teenage girl; but a teenage girl with depth.  At times full of attitude and at others  wistful melancholy, One Touch captures the ephemeral nature of growing up. It's a collection of moments when one realizes that the world isn't what it seemed and that one will never be the same.

"Overload" really is in a class of it's own as far as Brit-pop is concerned. I consider it to be the definition of Sugababes: their sound, their vibe, their identity. In the context of the kind of pop music we were getting in 2000 on both sides of the Atlantic, the song was like  a breath of fresh air in a coffin. "Overload" gave us this amazing blend of  chill vocals, electric guitar and amazing beats that was a good deal more alternative than what you would expect from a trio of girls in their mid-teens. It's mid-tempo which, time would go on to show, is where the Sugababes shine.

"New Year" is my favourite Holidays song. It describes the sorrow of running into an ex. soft and sweet on the surface, it betrays a depth of hurt that always makes me wince by the second verse. It's the musical equivalent of crying softly in the bathroom at a party so that no one else can hear. Again, the girls' youth comes into play here; the song is clearly from the perspective of someone going through this for the first time.

"Run For Cover" is just a little more heartbreak. As someone who's struggled against depression, I find it to be an apt description of what that feels like. Specifically, it recalls the shame and reluctance to talk about it that makes depression go undiagnosed so often. Keisha Buchanan supplies the lion's share of vocals here and she delivers them with beautiful fragility.

The title track "One Touch" is an interesting take on first love. Directly addressing a parental figure, the song's point of view defends her first relationship. A very relaxed down-tempo allows the girls to fill each bar of the song with richly layered harmonies making for a cool pleasurable listen.

The rest of the album continues to please. "One Foot In" and "Promises" chastise a two-faced paramour. "Look at me" again addresses a parental figure about the fear of growing up.  'Lush Life' is a moody, atmospheric bit of hip-hop that keeps its grit all these years later. "Just Let it Go" treads familiar ground for a girl-group, reassuring a friend that the latest ex isn't worth it.

Later iterations of the Sugababes had their charms and virtues, not to mention their fair share of great tunes. But with each departure of an original member, something essential was lost. It is an understatement to say that these three are magical together. Now, 13 years after One Touch, the girls have reformed under the name of MutyaKeishaSiobhan. Listen to their first single "Flatline"