Beckett is disturbingly enjoyable. It’s filled with elements that would normally make one squirm; and some probably will. Its narrative is a melancholic, yet insightful tale. Characters are depicted as inanimate objects, giving the player a unique way of visualising them in their minds - recalling their own memories in order to try and build a bigger picture of the object they see represented as a person on screen.
The game uses photographs from the real world in order to construct "Borough" - the fictional city within the game. At first glance the idea of using real world photographs to create a 3D virtual world may seem rather grotesque. With Beckett, however, the game is stylised and created in such a way that the technique actually works in the game's favour. Its language is foul and macabre, exploring various different themes throughout its timeline. The Borough is revealed to the player as a city where "Yellow piss flows in wandering channels among those creamy pockmarks spat from decaying mouths." There is a dark humour which often surfaces throughout the game in various forms. Witty references and downright vulgar character conversations will leave you smirking in an other-wise bleak world.
The dialogue used within the game is dark, vivid and often paired with images and editing effects which enhance their impact even more. Existentialism, memory and death are all explored in various different ways throughout the game, with visual effects and editing are used to enhance the impact of the games language and themes on the player even more. Memorable and rhythmic audio tracks are another way that Beckett absorbs the player into Beckett’s story even more. The tracks are often combined with vibrant, distorted visual effects, creating an even eerier atmosphere which the player feels constantly throughout the game.
Website: https://tsebeckett.blog/
About the reviewer
Stuart Vivers is a Junior Interactive Designer at the Glasgow based studio, ISO Design. He recently graduated from Abertay University where he studied game design. His work focuses on conveying history through video games and he enjoys games that are a little bit different than usual. www.stuartvivers.com
Prince Charming is Christopher Logue’s memoir, covering a period of time from his childhood and adolescence on the south coast of England in the 1930s to the swinging London of the mid 1960s. By the end of the book he has already achieved success as a poet. Interestingly, it tells the origins of his acclaimed versions of Homer’s Iliad, sections of which he published throughout most of his life.
The title Prince Charming is ironic, for Logue presents himself as anything but nice. Rarely can there have been autobiographical writing that shows its author in such a relentless way to be awkward and peevish. So, why bother with him? Well, there is an honesty to be admired, vulnerability behind the prickliness, and many entertaining episodes. He was also part of fascinating and important literary and cultural movements.
In the early 1950s, he moved to Paris and was involved with other expat writers. His own activity became centred on the magazine Merlin. Its editor, and his closest friend at the time, was the Scottish author Alexander Trocchi, later to produce the cult novels Young Adam and Cain’s Book. From an older generation, Samuel Beckett makes memorable cameo appearances. This is just before the global fame of Waiting for Godot, but Beckett, it seems, always had the aura of greatness.
In the mid 50s, Logue returned to London and became known, with poems published by the Times Literary Supplement and broadcast by BBC Radio. He was, though, never establishment and, as one of the founders of CND, served a term in an open prison. He recounts a wide cultural scene that included Lindsay Anderson and the Free Cinema movement, Kenneth Tynan and the ground-breaking Royal Court Theatre, and much more.
I knew Logue slightly, and arranged his visit to De Montfort University in 2001. At a pub on New Walk, I said to him that I didn’t think I could write a memoir as open as Prince Charming. He replied there was no point writing autobiography unless it was honest.
About the reviewer
Robert Richardson is a visual artist and writer. His work is included in Artists’ Postcards: A Compendium (edited by Jeremy Cooper, published by Reaktion Books, London). He is also the co-editor, with William Pratt, of Homage to Imagism (AMS Press, New York).
