Sometime's I've wondered if the term 'gendarmes' (men at arms) is the best label to give to a contingent put there to uphold the Law, but tonight I realised that this term could do nothing to further tarnish a name that for most in France conjures up sentiments deep-rooted in spite and animosity. Indeed, the injustice I witnessed tonight plunges me into a deep questioning of the trust that a people places within its society's law enforcement.

I'm stood at the balcony of my bedroom window that looks out onto a noisy tramline in the northern corner of Montpellier's town centre. There are no trams running until the later hours of this morning and all is quiet, tonight having been the occasion of the city's Fête de la Musique (Montpellier Music Festival) the last of whose live acts concluded its finalé just minutes ago.

It had been a good day. The weather had rained off some of the alternative acts I'd been hoping to see, a selection of punk, trip-hop and ska giving up their rockstar lifestyle and values in favour of popping back home into the safe and dry. Luckily the drizzle had only been short-lived and as the skies had cleared it had seemed a safe bet that the ageold meteorogical moniker 'lightning never strikes twice' would hold for the duration of the proceedings.

But a dark shadow has begun moving this way, heading straight towards the hustle and bustle of the remaining crowds recomposing themselves from the natural high of tonight's entertainment. The sombre shadow casts a veil over their dreamlike state, shattering their illusions and stifling their ecstasy. As the clouds converge on Elysium's beach, the pitch black tide sweeps towards the fervent few who haven't yet fled, tearing them from that place before they are thrown earthward by the long arm of the law, all the while three white trawlers picking up the straggling flotsum and jetsum that slip through the former's fingers.

Gripped to the scene from my window two floors above the fracas, I am among an audience made up of the local neighbourhood and its guests, we who will come to regret the giving and receiving of tonight's invitation. I, like the others watching, have gathered that there is a storm coming, one that begins now with a hail of truncheon blows that rain down upon a non-moving spectator who got too close. The hard reign continues to beat down upon those sure-footed enough to trundle against the gathering momentum of the tide.

We see the lightning strike and stand grounded with a frozen stare, each awaiting his own personal thunder clap to confirm what he hopes he hasn't witnessed, but it wasn't long in coming as outrage chorusses its disgust towards towards the offending party; not the female party-goer but the officer who just practised a crowd control technique we hope he didn't learn in the force.

The tears in his eyes and the disbelief of his voice say everything we want and more as his words waver with uncertainty, seeming to fall on entirely deaf ears. All the while we are dumbfounded but he manages to personify the hatred that is building up in us towards her agressor. He is tired and emotional and his cries are punctuated with anger, the subsiding of which slowly leads to our realisation of the moral implications of the act and to fear and uncertainty.

The other officers fail to acknowledge the blow and the offender returns to his colleagues. His face becomes lost among their ranks and we try to relocate the target of our hatred. But they all look the same and while he has disappeared a hatred has been etched upon our memories.

great piece of literature I must say. The vocab is used is very good and the scenes are described very well. The use of metaphors is also quite good. i wish to see more writing like this. It's a tribute to the english language.

It's actually not a very nice story, the momentum is leading up to something that both shocked and amazed me. Stay t00ned, I'll probs edit it tomoz.

Finished for the most part. I may re-evaluate some word choices and sentence constructions but the content is pretty much complete.

I'll leave the thread for a while to get some constructive crit and general feedback and opinions. After that I'll write up a self-evaluating commentary to give you guys some idea of why I've chosen certain words, themes etc.

I'll try and make it interesting

Crispy, this is a very emotional piece of work. It is very good, one or two small things that need to be edited, but very powerful. I very much like this. The subtext of the standoff, the unspoken thoughts, that lead you to fill in the blanks in your own minds eye are very provoking.

The way you intermix the story and analogies is very good.

Please feel free to write many more stories!!!

I have (points at sig).

I'm also writing a Mod, Citadel Utopia. Here's a sneak peek.

Writing this, too:

---

"the graphics were sub-par, the AI was basic, the movement and control system were sluggish and clunky and there were barely any weapons to choose from... but I freely admit to genuinely liking this game"

This game has been out for quite a while now and I never felt that enthused by what I'd previously heard or seen about it. Admittedly this was most likely due to the fact that I'd seen it reviewed on one of these late-night games programmes; you know, the ones where the presenter-come-narrator sounds like he knows sweet FA about gaming and the video clips look like they've been scrambled together from a five minute demo run and star none other than Player (or at least someone who's never picked up a gamepad in their life). To make it worse they spend half the show giving you a cheat code because, despite the fact that Stephen Hawkins' speech emulator could have gone through the list in a fraction of the time, they still repeat the whole code twice over for the hearing and sight impaired members of the gaming community who somehow manage to overcome their physical handicaps to play computer games but still need a full ten minutes writing/dictation time. Is it too much to ask to just turn on the VCR and record the damn thing?

With that rant off my chest, I can tell you that when I saw said review I wasn't impressed. From what I could see the graphics were sub-par, the AI was basic, the movement and control system were sluggish and clunky and there were barely any weapons to choose from. In my experience of having now played this title on the X-Box, all of the above I have found to be true. It may come as a bit of a surprise, then, when I freely admit to genuinely liking this game.

When you play this game you have to make certain concessions to what you might expect from a similarly-themed game. FSW doesn't do variety, it doesn't give the player options and it doesn't allow for distractions from its true objective. The weapon load-out has been stripped down to the essentials, as is the case for the game environment. You'll find nothing here liable to make you stop and marvel at the scenery while you wait for the eyegasms to subside. Upon closer inspection, it shows that not much has been done to build upon the US Army simulator from which it was adapted, but it doesn't really matter. This is a bare-bones, bare-essentials military tutorial designed to drill you in the art of small-scale, guerilla-style warfare; and it follows this briefing to the letter.

You control two squads that make up part of the US contingent of NATO forces sent to rid ex-soviet state Zekistan from ethnic cleanser and local bad boy Mohammed-Jabbour Al Afad. Set some time after the first Iraq (worryingly described in the game by one of your men, Shimenski, as the most fun he's ever had. Ever), you can't help but see the parallels between the streets of Zaffar and those of Saddam's former seat of power, and wonder if this was intended as a mock-up for the return to Bagdad. If it sounds like I'm being overly analytical, it's probably worth me mentioning that political propaganda is abound in Full Spectrum Warrior.

Within a few hours of starting the game you'll realise that the only 'spectrum' in FSW is that which applies to the ethnic and religious representatives of your four-man Alpha and Bravo squads. From Chago 'Iron Man' Mendez to Asher 'Rabbit' Shehadi (labelled on his introduction as the "vegetarian devout Muslim"), every creed and colour are catered for in what comes across as an incredibly underhanded attempt at ab opportunistic US Army video. Would it be a bridge too far to suggest that the captive youth audience that this game sets out to capitalise on falls into the age range that US Army has targeted up until this day as replacements for its dwindling troops in Iraq?

I was in the middle of thanking my lucky stars that my racial attributes had afforded my escape from the advertising op, (there hadn't been any Caucasian, atheist Brits included in the rainbow six shown so far), when in steps Samuel 'Bot' Ota "the Hawaiian, leet-speaking gamer". Finally soomeone had recognised what a valuable asset I could be to America's finest; they had targeted the humble gamer for point-fire propaganda. Thanks, but no thanks, Uncle Sam. But I play the games so I don't have to bite the bullet for big-business black gold bullion.

Not to fear, though, as this isn't a recurring theme, and only features predominantly in the opening sequence. But the various caricatures of your teams do provide a running commentary of the action; the accents and vernaculars only going to reinforce the message on a more subliminal level. For instance, you might catch heat-of-the-moment comments from team members as they down 'zeeks' or come under heavy enemy fire, some of which can be quite explicit at times. By far the worst offender is CS-Kiddie upstart Private Ota, whose rare but priceless catchphrases such as "Let's pwnzor some noobs!" and "But we don't have the leet skills!" more than merit the PG-1337 rating this game deserves.

Joking aside, this very colourful commentary is a good example of how a lack of censorship can have excellent ramifications on the atmosphere of a game. When things are going well you'll hear a spirited hu-ah when your men respond to an order, but when you make a wrong move your boys'll let you know how ****-scared they are to be pinned under enemy fire or how angry they are to be left negligently out in the open without any cover. It's a very honest portrayal of human emotion, one that keeps you on your toes and also puts you under pressure as a commanding officer still wet behind the ears. Naturally, this is all part of the training process.

With an inattention to the superfluous and its focus fixed firmly on the essential, Full Spectrum brings out the warrior within then subsequently shapes his unrefined exterior into a combat-savvy fighting machine. Most games carefully tap away at a player's inadequacy for informed, tactical awareness, gently easing them into more difficult situations. FSW, on the other hand, wants you ready now and it takes to vets and rookies alike with a sledge hammer! The best way to learn is having it banged into you repeatedly until the message is clear, presumably being its philosophy. Anyone with military experience will know just how effective this is.

The game does this via a series of similarly-themed scenarios where the only thing that changes is the positioning of the Tangos and the cover available to your teams. There are a few tutorials to teach you the basics of which techniques to use and when, including movement patterns, firing methodology and type-specific grenade use. But it's not until you begin the actual missions that you're really forced to consider and re-consider your options. Playing on hard difficulty