As predicted, yesterday's service for my car (admittedly, one that was about four thousand miles overdue) was expensive. Cheaper than I'd feared, but still the thick-end of a monkey (that's not a euphemism - or not a sexual one, at least - a 'monkey' is £500 in gaming parlance) and the garage wasn't even able to fix the problem of the loss of power from the engine. They did, however, at least manage to identify the problem: one of the lines to the turbo (my car being a turbo diesel) has cracked, most likely due to the recent spate of sustained cold weather, which would at least account for the loss of power from the engine.
Unfortunately, the garage didn't have the part I needed in stock to repair it, so the car's going back in on Monday to have the line replaced and get MOT'ed (watch it EPIC FAIL!), but as if that wasn't enough to place a drain on my meagre financial resources as a student, today as I was pulling in to park my car at work, the front driver's side tyre punctured on me. Fan-bloody-tastic, hey? Though I am grateful that the tyre didn't go on the dual carriageway miles from the middle of nowhere and waited until I'd reached the car park. Still, not the best way to start the day, given that new tyres for my car cost upwards of £100 apiece.
At least I get to drive around on a full-sized replacement tyre, since the advantage of having a decent-sized car of a certain age is that you have a proper spare tyre, not a slimline one you can only do 50mph on (though with the turbo problem, I'm hard pressed to get more than 50 out of my coupé right now) - though even that is an improvement over what you get with some new cars these days - they don't put in a spare at all - all they give you is a puncture repair spray that's good for about 50 miles before it fails again.
I'm hoping that Monday will represent the last of my car-based dramas for the foreseeable future - the last thing I need would be for the cracked turbo line not to be the route of the problem. The alternative is that the particulate filter in the engine might have gone. The difference between the two is that the former costs £25 to fix and the latter costs £250... So with my natural sense of Scottish pessimism, I'm bracing myself for the worst.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Bark: Oh dear
My car's dying. I was due to go on a university trip to the Natural History and Science museums in London today, but when I went to drive to the train station, the warning lights on the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and the car's computer gave me two engine-related warning messages. If that wasn't bad enough, when I actually tried to drive it anyway, it felt like the engine had lost about 50% of its torque and power. It's a 2.2 litre HDI turbo diesel, so it's usually pretty poky, but when I put my foot down this morning almost nothing happened - there's no power from the engine in third gear and above. Not good.
I've got the car in for an emergency service tomorrow morning. I sense this one is going to be expensive...
I've got the car in for an emergency service tomorrow morning. I sense this one is going to be expensive...
Monday, January 18, 2010
Bark: And they say that the education system isn't dumbing down
You may recall that before Christmas I had to write an essay about the place of Science in the National Curriculum. Given that my method of writing the piece took more inspiration from Hunter S. Thompson than Lev Vygotsky, I thought it was a pretty horrible piece of essay writing and thought that I'd have to do a significant re-write when I got it back.
Imagine my surprise then, when I got it back this afternoon and saw it had passed at Masters level. Admittedly, it was a borderline pass and had actually been moderated upwards from HE3 level during the marking process, but despite a few significant flaws (not least the fact it was written entirely in a single 17 hour long sitting) and having passed through the hands of no less than three separate PGCE tutors for marking, it was eventually deemed to be worthy of a Masters level pass.
One of the things we did at the beginning of the course was write down our aspirations for this year - and one of mine was to pass the PGCE at Masters level. Now this actually looks like something that's genuinely achievable. I wouldn't have been too unhappy if it had only had gotten an HE3 pass, but if an essay that I considered to be fairly inadequate for even an HE3 level pass gets a Masters pass... well. Maybe all those years writing game critiques in my spare time weren't wasted after all, and perhaps having high standards of yourself and being a tad overly self-critical is a good thing in this respect. I'll definitely be a bit better organised for my other two essay assignments (one of which is due by the end of the month). Naturally, my first priority is to just pass the course, but a Masters would be nice, especially since the Tories (who now look almost certain to win the next election, later this year) seem determined to make teaching a "brazenly elitist" and "noble" profession...
I think that politicians, particularly my own MP (and Tory Education spokesman, Michael Gove) ought to spend more time in schools, as I happen to think that teaching already is. And I also think that academic excellence and achievement is no real guide as to whether you're going to be a good teacher or not. I know plenty of genuinely brilliant people academically and intellectually who couldn't teach you how to boil an egg. Particularly in terms of Science (my own specialism), academic brilliance doesn't even remotely relate to being able to communicate ideas in a way that is understandable to children - and that is the essence of teaching. I also know people who don't have degrees that would make magnificent teachers, such as one of the curriculum support officers in my last placement school - she had all the necessary subject knowledge and a great rapport with the kids - but since she didn't have a degree, she can't take a PGCE or a GTP to train as a teacher.
It seems to me that the Tories are just talking a good talk - everyone loves politicians to talk tough, especially on education - and teachers are almost like bankers in being a demographic group everyone likes to look down upon (unless, of course, you happen to be a teacher). But I think most politicians are actually completely out of touch with reality when it comes to the real issues facing teachers in the classroom. I'd argue that the whole education system has lost sight of the real aims of education. League tables are undoubtedly the worst thing to happen in education in the last decade or so. It puts a pressure on the system to make everything driven entirely by results and minimum grades. What's the point of having a grading system from A*-G if you only want people to get A*-C? (Incidentally, I've had this same discussion about the rating of videogames, too - if you use a 1-10 rating system, then you damn well better use the whole range, not just 6-9, so as to not offend too many fanboys)
The problem of only using the highest grades when marking exams is that it inevitably prevents the very smartest people from standing out from the crowd. This is something that universities constantly complain about - indeed, some even make undergraduates take more rigorous entrance exams, since so many people get the top grades these days. Thirty years ago there wasn't such a social stigma about whether you'd gotten 9 A's or B's at O Level or not - you were just as smart as you are (or not, as the case may be) - and people could actually be properly differentiated in terms of academic ability. Now it's so easy to get an A that there are really no excuses for not getting an A*-C pass - though admittedly, part of this is due to the greater ease of access to information these days. With the advent of the internet, information and knowledge is instantly accessible and ubitquitous - it's only a lack of effort that really stops achievement - you can't use the excuse of not being able to find the information anymore, because you can download the entire sum of human knowledge in seconds on your mobile phone or computer.
This is something I wholeheartedly agree with - I don't consider myself particularly brilliant intellectually, but when I want something, I work damned hard for it. The biggest problem in education these days isn't that teachers aren't good enough - sure there are some bad teachers out there, but on the whole they're the exception, rather than the rule politicians and the media would lead you to believe - the real problem is that information and knowledge is so instantly accessible through modern technology that it's not respected anymore - it's not valued. And I say this as a man who had a 10 year career in IT maintained mostly by my ability to use Google effectively, rather than any intrinsic intellectual brilliance. Well, that's not entirely true - Google doesn't tell you how to analyse and solve problems in a systematic way, and this is one of the things that my education did do a good job of teaching me. But if pupils aren't willing to engage with teaching, because they believe that technology can do all the work for them - and if they can ace all their GCSEs because they've got BBC Bitesize and exam study guides coming out of their ears and their schools just teach to the exams (so that they can maintain their league table rating), is it any wonder that universities and businesses are crying out for people with genuine talent and skills?
In a few years I think we're going to reach a bit of a critical mass in terms of pupils coming out of schools with a straight 9 grade A*-Cs across the board, with the expectation that they're going to be able to get good jobs, who will then find that they're utterly unprepared for the demands of the real world. And in today's global marketplace - where you have countries like India with more graduates than the UK has an entire workforce - whole industries (such as IT) are going to go the way of the manufacturing industries and just disappear from the UK to countries with better trained, better motivated and cheaper workforces.
You might think I'm being melodramatic, but that's the trend I see. After all, last year my own IT team got outsourced to India because they were 70% cheaper and just as well educated (leaving aside the cultural and language barriers that I think will eventually come back to bite Big Business back on its corpulent, corporate arse) than similar people they could employ within the UK.
If you're going to have politicians talk about elitism, then we've got to get rid of the stigma and fear of failure within our education system. All men may (or may not, depending upon your point of view) be created equal - but as the Romans realised, some are more equal than others (primus inter pares, etc). We need to be able to properly differentiate between the absolute elite, the good, the average and the mediocre - by statistical definition, you need to have people above and below average. The current system seeks to create a whole populace that's "above average", which is statistically impossible. What they actually want is an ever increasing standard of what constitutes "average" - that represents a true driving up of standards I can agree with - not just simply having more and more people getting A*-C grades and the actual exams getting less rigorous (Science GCSEs without any Maths in them, for example - I mean, W.T.F.?)
Unfortunately, political expedience requires that standards be seen to be increasing year on year - yet businesses (the people truly at the sharp end, outside of education and politics) keep telling us that the skills gap keeps getting wider and wider. Something has to give sooner or later, but I don't think that the Tories are the people to fix it - at least, not until it's far too late to prevent the inevitable damage to our white-collar industries and economy... As the French say, tant pis...
Imagine my surprise then, when I got it back this afternoon and saw it had passed at Masters level. Admittedly, it was a borderline pass and had actually been moderated upwards from HE3 level during the marking process, but despite a few significant flaws (not least the fact it was written entirely in a single 17 hour long sitting) and having passed through the hands of no less than three separate PGCE tutors for marking, it was eventually deemed to be worthy of a Masters level pass.
One of the things we did at the beginning of the course was write down our aspirations for this year - and one of mine was to pass the PGCE at Masters level. Now this actually looks like something that's genuinely achievable. I wouldn't have been too unhappy if it had only had gotten an HE3 pass, but if an essay that I considered to be fairly inadequate for even an HE3 level pass gets a Masters pass... well. Maybe all those years writing game critiques in my spare time weren't wasted after all, and perhaps having high standards of yourself and being a tad overly self-critical is a good thing in this respect. I'll definitely be a bit better organised for my other two essay assignments (one of which is due by the end of the month). Naturally, my first priority is to just pass the course, but a Masters would be nice, especially since the Tories (who now look almost certain to win the next election, later this year) seem determined to make teaching a "brazenly elitist" and "noble" profession...
I think that politicians, particularly my own MP (and Tory Education spokesman, Michael Gove) ought to spend more time in schools, as I happen to think that teaching already is. And I also think that academic excellence and achievement is no real guide as to whether you're going to be a good teacher or not. I know plenty of genuinely brilliant people academically and intellectually who couldn't teach you how to boil an egg. Particularly in terms of Science (my own specialism), academic brilliance doesn't even remotely relate to being able to communicate ideas in a way that is understandable to children - and that is the essence of teaching. I also know people who don't have degrees that would make magnificent teachers, such as one of the curriculum support officers in my last placement school - she had all the necessary subject knowledge and a great rapport with the kids - but since she didn't have a degree, she can't take a PGCE or a GTP to train as a teacher.
It seems to me that the Tories are just talking a good talk - everyone loves politicians to talk tough, especially on education - and teachers are almost like bankers in being a demographic group everyone likes to look down upon (unless, of course, you happen to be a teacher). But I think most politicians are actually completely out of touch with reality when it comes to the real issues facing teachers in the classroom. I'd argue that the whole education system has lost sight of the real aims of education. League tables are undoubtedly the worst thing to happen in education in the last decade or so. It puts a pressure on the system to make everything driven entirely by results and minimum grades. What's the point of having a grading system from A*-G if you only want people to get A*-C? (Incidentally, I've had this same discussion about the rating of videogames, too - if you use a 1-10 rating system, then you damn well better use the whole range, not just 6-9, so as to not offend too many fanboys)
The problem of only using the highest grades when marking exams is that it inevitably prevents the very smartest people from standing out from the crowd. This is something that universities constantly complain about - indeed, some even make undergraduates take more rigorous entrance exams, since so many people get the top grades these days. Thirty years ago there wasn't such a social stigma about whether you'd gotten 9 A's or B's at O Level or not - you were just as smart as you are (or not, as the case may be) - and people could actually be properly differentiated in terms of academic ability. Now it's so easy to get an A that there are really no excuses for not getting an A*-C pass - though admittedly, part of this is due to the greater ease of access to information these days. With the advent of the internet, information and knowledge is instantly accessible and ubitquitous - it's only a lack of effort that really stops achievement - you can't use the excuse of not being able to find the information anymore, because you can download the entire sum of human knowledge in seconds on your mobile phone or computer.
I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work; and I still think there is an eminently important difference. (Charles Darwin)
This is something I wholeheartedly agree with - I don't consider myself particularly brilliant intellectually, but when I want something, I work damned hard for it. The biggest problem in education these days isn't that teachers aren't good enough - sure there are some bad teachers out there, but on the whole they're the exception, rather than the rule politicians and the media would lead you to believe - the real problem is that information and knowledge is so instantly accessible through modern technology that it's not respected anymore - it's not valued. And I say this as a man who had a 10 year career in IT maintained mostly by my ability to use Google effectively, rather than any intrinsic intellectual brilliance. Well, that's not entirely true - Google doesn't tell you how to analyse and solve problems in a systematic way, and this is one of the things that my education did do a good job of teaching me. But if pupils aren't willing to engage with teaching, because they believe that technology can do all the work for them - and if they can ace all their GCSEs because they've got BBC Bitesize and exam study guides coming out of their ears and their schools just teach to the exams (so that they can maintain their league table rating), is it any wonder that universities and businesses are crying out for people with genuine talent and skills?
In a few years I think we're going to reach a bit of a critical mass in terms of pupils coming out of schools with a straight 9 grade A*-Cs across the board, with the expectation that they're going to be able to get good jobs, who will then find that they're utterly unprepared for the demands of the real world. And in today's global marketplace - where you have countries like India with more graduates than the UK has an entire workforce - whole industries (such as IT) are going to go the way of the manufacturing industries and just disappear from the UK to countries with better trained, better motivated and cheaper workforces.
You might think I'm being melodramatic, but that's the trend I see. After all, last year my own IT team got outsourced to India because they were 70% cheaper and just as well educated (leaving aside the cultural and language barriers that I think will eventually come back to bite Big Business back on its corpulent, corporate arse) than similar people they could employ within the UK.
If you're going to have politicians talk about elitism, then we've got to get rid of the stigma and fear of failure within our education system. All men may (or may not, depending upon your point of view) be created equal - but as the Romans realised, some are more equal than others (primus inter pares, etc). We need to be able to properly differentiate between the absolute elite, the good, the average and the mediocre - by statistical definition, you need to have people above and below average. The current system seeks to create a whole populace that's "above average", which is statistically impossible. What they actually want is an ever increasing standard of what constitutes "average" - that represents a true driving up of standards I can agree with - not just simply having more and more people getting A*-C grades and the actual exams getting less rigorous (Science GCSEs without any Maths in them, for example - I mean, W.T.F.?)
Unfortunately, political expedience requires that standards be seen to be increasing year on year - yet businesses (the people truly at the sharp end, outside of education and politics) keep telling us that the skills gap keeps getting wider and wider. Something has to give sooner or later, but I don't think that the Tories are the people to fix it - at least, not until it's far too late to prevent the inevitable damage to our white-collar industries and economy... As the French say, tant pis...
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Byte: Scariest. Game. Ever.
About bloody time this turned up on Steam.
I played this a ridiculous amount when it came out. I never did conquer the singleplayer mode - since it's apocalyptically tough - but I had so much fun with the Stranded map in the skirmish mode that it's almost criminal. I used to just stick on the God mode, chuck myself down the shaft leading to the arena at the bottom, run like hell to the Marine outpost and then just slaughter aliens for hours on end. I remember trying that level 'honestly' a few times - very rarely did I make it to the outpost with all the good weapons in it. The first time I did make it, I was so relieved that I had gotten there intact that it took me a few seconds to realise that while the output may have sealable doors, it didn't have windows. Of course, by the time I realised this, there was an alien on the ceiling above me, about to take a great big CHOMP out of my head.
Skirmish mode was always best to play as a Marine, though. It's freaking impossible as a Predator, as you just run out of ammunition for the speargun and energy for your other weapons so quickly. Being a Predator in the singleplayer campaign, though. Damn, that's fun. You've got all the vision modes and sound effects from the film and you really feel like a huge baddass alien. Well, you would if you didn't spend most of your time cowering in a dark corner waiting for your energy to recharge all the time... That said though, playing as a Predator did blow my socks off, mainly because it was one of the first game I played where you could zoom in your view on enemies. I used to take pride in one shot kills with the speargun that would pin the heads of marines onto the wall, leaving them glowing brightly against the dull metal in the thermal vision mode. Again, it does get ridiculously hard when you start fighting aliens, basically because it throws too many enemies at you simultaneously and you run out of energy too quickly, even if you're really careful with the way you use the plasma pistol - energy management as a Predator is the biggest challenge in the game, I think.
Speaking of challenges... playing as an alien is probably one of the most disorienting experiences I've had in a videogame. It's like trying to correct a flat spin in an aeroplane with your eyes closed. The aliens are just so damn FAST, and the way you run across walls and ceilings like they were the floor is just insane. Speed is life for an alien - you can't play like in a normal FPS, because you're just so fragile and the only way for you to replenish your health is for you to make a HEAD CHOMP (Best done on scientists, for obvious reasons - though props to you if you can manage it on an alert marine or predator).
The thing I love best about Aliens vs. Predator is that it's one game, but it gives you three very different experiences. In the same way that some people argue Thief is a roleplaying game (that is, you have to act as Garrett would act to succeed in the game), AvP is similar: you have to play each role (Marine, Predator or Alien) as if you were genuinely in their head. Marines need to be ultra-paranoid because the entire world is out to make them their lunch and their only defense is their high tech array of weaponry. Predators also need to play to their strengths - ambush from stealth and try not to get outnumbered or surrounded - if they want to be assured of victory. And Aliens need to just run like hell, stay on the ceilings and walls and CHOMP-CHOMP-CHOMP their way to supremacy. Playing as an alien is probably the most rewarding, when you get used to the fish-eye-lens-o-vision and the ludicrous speed, but whichever role you choose, one thing is certain. This game will scare the pants off of you.
I played this a ridiculous amount when it came out. I never did conquer the singleplayer mode - since it's apocalyptically tough - but I had so much fun with the Stranded map in the skirmish mode that it's almost criminal. I used to just stick on the God mode, chuck myself down the shaft leading to the arena at the bottom, run like hell to the Marine outpost and then just slaughter aliens for hours on end. I remember trying that level 'honestly' a few times - very rarely did I make it to the outpost with all the good weapons in it. The first time I did make it, I was so relieved that I had gotten there intact that it took me a few seconds to realise that while the output may have sealable doors, it didn't have windows. Of course, by the time I realised this, there was an alien on the ceiling above me, about to take a great big CHOMP out of my head.
Skirmish mode was always best to play as a Marine, though. It's freaking impossible as a Predator, as you just run out of ammunition for the speargun and energy for your other weapons so quickly. Being a Predator in the singleplayer campaign, though. Damn, that's fun. You've got all the vision modes and sound effects from the film and you really feel like a huge baddass alien. Well, you would if you didn't spend most of your time cowering in a dark corner waiting for your energy to recharge all the time... That said though, playing as a Predator did blow my socks off, mainly because it was one of the first game I played where you could zoom in your view on enemies. I used to take pride in one shot kills with the speargun that would pin the heads of marines onto the wall, leaving them glowing brightly against the dull metal in the thermal vision mode. Again, it does get ridiculously hard when you start fighting aliens, basically because it throws too many enemies at you simultaneously and you run out of energy too quickly, even if you're really careful with the way you use the plasma pistol - energy management as a Predator is the biggest challenge in the game, I think.
Speaking of challenges... playing as an alien is probably one of the most disorienting experiences I've had in a videogame. It's like trying to correct a flat spin in an aeroplane with your eyes closed. The aliens are just so damn FAST, and the way you run across walls and ceilings like they were the floor is just insane. Speed is life for an alien - you can't play like in a normal FPS, because you're just so fragile and the only way for you to replenish your health is for you to make a HEAD CHOMP (Best done on scientists, for obvious reasons - though props to you if you can manage it on an alert marine or predator).
The thing I love best about Aliens vs. Predator is that it's one game, but it gives you three very different experiences. In the same way that some people argue Thief is a roleplaying game (that is, you have to act as Garrett would act to succeed in the game), AvP is similar: you have to play each role (Marine, Predator or Alien) as if you were genuinely in their head. Marines need to be ultra-paranoid because the entire world is out to make them their lunch and their only defense is their high tech array of weaponry. Predators also need to play to their strengths - ambush from stealth and try not to get outnumbered or surrounded - if they want to be assured of victory. And Aliens need to just run like hell, stay on the ceilings and walls and CHOMP-CHOMP-CHOMP their way to supremacy. Playing as an alien is probably the most rewarding, when you get used to the fish-eye-lens-o-vision and the ludicrous speed, but whichever role you choose, one thing is certain. This game will scare the pants off of you.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Bark/Byte: Okay, bored of the snow now
Yesterday I was supposed to go to Wimbledon College for a training day on post-16 teaching. Unfortunately, that plan got totally wiped out by the two inches of snow that fell onto the snow and ice still covering the car park outside my flat from last week. I made it all of 30 feet before needing to dig myself out. 'Fuck that for a game of soldiers' thinks I, and promptly went back to bed.
This morning the car park's still resembles more of an ice rink than a road, but at least the main roads are clearing up, thanks to some timely rain. It would be nice if the snow would thaw so that I can actually get out of my flat, because the cupboards are getting perilously bare.
At least I was able to buy a replacement graphics card on Monday night, along with 4GB's worth of RAM upgrade. So now my aging PC has a bit of a new lease of life. The new graphics card isn't spectacular by any means (a GeForce GTS 250 w/ 512MB), but it's better than what I originally had in there (a GeForce 8800 GTS w/320MB) and now I've got 6GB of RAM in the box rather than 2GB, Windows 7 is nips along rather nicely indeed. The loading times in Dragon Age Origins are very noticeably shorter and the game looks a bit prettier, too. I'll have to reinstall Crysis or something to give it a really good workout, but things like Mass Effect run as smooth as melted butter.
WARNING: HUUUUUUGE SPOILERS FOR DRAGON AGE FOLLOW!
I didn't actually post what I thought about Dragon Age, now that I've actually completed it. I guess I was a little too hacked off about my graphics card dying on me.
The short version: Yeah, it's really bloody good.
The long version: Yyyyyeeeeeaaaaahhhhh,,,,, iiiiittttt'''''sssss rrrrreeeeeaaaaalllllyyyyy bbbbbllllloooooooooodddddyyyyy gggggooooooooooddddd.....
No, just kidding. Firstly, the story: It's typical BioWare - get the four MacGuffins and then have a big dust up at the end. Nothing new there, then. But at least the execution is nicely done. It may not be a new story, but it is a story well-told.
Next, the characterisation: very good indeed, overall.
Alistair is probably my favourite character in the party. He's got some great lines and I especially like the skit where he claims he was raised by dogs. My lady mage ended up being really cruel to him, by not only making him marry Queen Anora after he'd fallen in love with my mage, but also by making him sleep with Morrigan before The Big Final Battle with the archdemon so that no Warden had to sacrifice themself when killing the archdemon.
Morrigan being in the party only really made sense at that point, and while I thought it was a nice twist to the story, I think it would have been been better to have had another, more immediate reason for her joining the party than Flemeth going "there's a good girl, piss off with them". Still, Morrigan's a nice enough character and good to keep around when you're playing if only for the banter she has with Alistair and Sten while you're out and about exploring.
The Dog: utterly pointless, except as a meat shield in the final battle at the gates. Alistair doesn't take it very well if you tell him to sling his hook, though. Perhaps he really was raised by dogs...
Leliana: she's probably my favourite of the romantic interests, mainly because I am attracted to slightly crazy French women. AND IN THE GAME! Ahem. There is a great line you can have with her when she talks about her 'vision' from the Maker, which goes "Okay, I believe this is the part where I back away slowly." She takes it quite well, considering. In gameplay terms, she's also a must if you're playing a Warrior or a Mage, as otherwise you can't open chests (not that there's usually anything worthwhile in them, but still) and if you give her a load of the dual-wielding talents, she can easily out-do Alistair in terms of damage per second.
Sten: A bit dull and boring, really. First time around I left him in the cage to get eaten by Darkspawn. The second time around I wished I'd left him in the cage. The only reason to have him around is if you want to play with two NPC warriors in the party, though his snarky, flirtly banter with Morrigan is quite amusing.
Morrigan: So are you going to continue staring at me as if I am covered in eels?
Sten: Eels would be something.
Morrigan: Prudery! How charming. I expected paranoia. This is much better. I prefer to be stared at lustfully, if at all.
Sten: Keep trying, then.
Morrigan: Oh? Then shall I demonstrate an act or two? And you may tell me hot or cold?
Sten: I'll save time. Cold.
Morrigan: (Chuckles) You are a tease.
Wynne: I like Wynne. If you give her Arcane Warrior as her second class specialisation, she rocks. Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer is *the* class combination to go for as a Mage player character as well. She's also got quite a good character backstory as well and is quite interesting to chat to in the camp. I tended to pick her over Morrigan when I wanted an extra Mage in my party to go with my PC mage, because of her healing talents. Also, Petrify + Stonefist = Instant Dead Enemy. Very fucking handy in battles with lots of mobs. One of the best spell combinations out there. I just wished it worked on those gorram Revenants.
Zevran: Just kill him, because he's fucking useless when you get him. A rogue that can't open chests? Just fuck off.
Oghren: Again, not much reason for having him around. He's no better than Sten and if you're playing a Warrior class, other than the part in Orzammar where you're forced to have him in your party, there's no real reason to have him in your party at all, other than to fill up the numbers in the secondary battle at Denerim Gate in the final showdown. I think he's mainly there to provide a bit of comic relief, particularly with his obsession about Wynne's gravity-defying bosom.
Loghain: He's the "secret" NPC you can recruit into your party as a Grey Warden after you spank him at the Landsmeet, but I didn't actually recruit him myself on the one playthrough I've completed - mainly because I didn't want to lose Alistair from the party. I may recruit him on a subsequent playthrough with a male character, just so I could annoy him by marrying his daughter, Anora.
The game does suffer from the traditionaly BioWare failing of having too many NPCs - if you're going to give us that many options, at least give us the option of having five or six characters in the party at a time when you're out in the big wide world. If Baldur's Gate III ever does get made, I will spit teeth and fire if you can't have six people in the party at a time. You need that many to have a proper balance in the party, but at least Dragon Age does one thing rather spectacularly right... Mages.
Holy crap, Dragon Age's Mages are viable from Level 1 and can genuinely spank just about anything from the get-go if you know how to play them properly and pick the right spells. It's no coincidence that my party for the final battle was made up of my Mage (Spirit Healer/Arcane Warrior, specialising in Primal spells), Morrigan (Shapeshifter/Arcane Warrior, specialising in Entropy spells) and Wynne (Spirit Healer/Arcane Warrior, specialising in Creation spells), along with Alistair as resident mage defender and meat shield. I can't imagine trying to play something like Baldur's Gate I or II with a party primarily composed of mages - you'd get cut to pieces. But in Dragon Age, mages are truly a force to reckoned with. If you don't target enemy spellcasters first in fights you generally regret it, too (or end up using gallons of health potions). Fireball is one of the most satisfying spells I've ever seen in a videogame RPG, though I wouldn't recommend using it if you've got friendly fire on. Which brings me neatly to the subject of the difficulty level - I can't really think of any reason (other than willy waving) of why you'd want to play on anything other than Easy. Easy, in my extensive experience of other BioWare RPGs, is equivalent to Normal difficulty - and since I don't really have time these days to be replaying parts of a 50+ hour epic again and again, I'm quite happy to leave the difficulty slider where it is for my subsequent playthroughs.
I think it's possibly an exaggeration to say it's the best traditional style RPG of the noughties (as some have claimed). I'd say that Knights of the Old Republic edges it - I can't see myself replaying this as much as I've replayed KotOR and some features of Dragon Age are a little retrograde if you compare them to Mass Effect, but it's certainly one of my favourite games from 2009. The fact that I actually stuck the game out to the end quite happily is one of the biggest endorsements I can give any game - since I don't actually do that for the vast majority of titles that I buy. However, I would encourage BioWare to treat their audience in a slightly more adult manner. If you're going to put sex into a game and show it, actually show it. Most women don't have sex still wearing their bra and knickers. And my toes were certainly curling when I saw my NPC's "happy face" when they were taking a roll in the hay with Leliana and Morrigan. I've not seen sex scenes that cringe-worthy since, well, the Watchmen film. Brrr. Since the esteemed Ron Jeremy (seemingly the highest authority on videogames these days) outed violent videogames as being "worse than porn" this week, the industry might as well live up to its reputation and put in some proper sex to go with its violence. If you're going to splatter your game with so much gore that it earns an 18 rating away, why shy away from putting in nipples?
I've always thought it was ludicrous that you could blow people's heads off in videogames as if it was the most natural thing in the world, but a naked nipple was the END OF THE CIVILISED WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. Obviously, a lot of this has to do with America retailers such as Wal-Mart refusing to stock products if they're too out there in the puritan stakes, but that's what localisation is for, right?
This morning the car park's still resembles more of an ice rink than a road, but at least the main roads are clearing up, thanks to some timely rain. It would be nice if the snow would thaw so that I can actually get out of my flat, because the cupboards are getting perilously bare.
At least I was able to buy a replacement graphics card on Monday night, along with 4GB's worth of RAM upgrade. So now my aging PC has a bit of a new lease of life. The new graphics card isn't spectacular by any means (a GeForce GTS 250 w/ 512MB), but it's better than what I originally had in there (a GeForce 8800 GTS w/320MB) and now I've got 6GB of RAM in the box rather than 2GB, Windows 7 is nips along rather nicely indeed. The loading times in Dragon Age Origins are very noticeably shorter and the game looks a bit prettier, too. I'll have to reinstall Crysis or something to give it a really good workout, but things like Mass Effect run as smooth as melted butter.
WARNING: HUUUUUUGE SPOILERS FOR DRAGON AGE FOLLOW!
I didn't actually post what I thought about Dragon Age, now that I've actually completed it. I guess I was a little too hacked off about my graphics card dying on me.
The short version: Yeah, it's really bloody good.
The long version: Yyyyyeeeeeaaaaahhhhh,,,,, iiiiittttt'''''sssss rrrrreeeeeaaaaalllllyyyyy bbbbbllllloooooooooodddddyyyyy gggggooooooooooddddd.....
No, just kidding. Firstly, the story: It's typical BioWare - get the four MacGuffins and then have a big dust up at the end. Nothing new there, then. But at least the execution is nicely done. It may not be a new story, but it is a story well-told.
Next, the characterisation: very good indeed, overall.
Alistair is probably my favourite character in the party. He's got some great lines and I especially like the skit where he claims he was raised by dogs. My lady mage ended up being really cruel to him, by not only making him marry Queen Anora after he'd fallen in love with my mage, but also by making him sleep with Morrigan before The Big Final Battle with the archdemon so that no Warden had to sacrifice themself when killing the archdemon.
Morrigan being in the party only really made sense at that point, and while I thought it was a nice twist to the story, I think it would have been been better to have had another, more immediate reason for her joining the party than Flemeth going "there's a good girl, piss off with them". Still, Morrigan's a nice enough character and good to keep around when you're playing if only for the banter she has with Alistair and Sten while you're out and about exploring.
The Dog: utterly pointless, except as a meat shield in the final battle at the gates. Alistair doesn't take it very well if you tell him to sling his hook, though. Perhaps he really was raised by dogs...
Leliana: she's probably my favourite of the romantic interests, mainly because I am attracted to slightly crazy French women. AND IN THE GAME! Ahem. There is a great line you can have with her when she talks about her 'vision' from the Maker, which goes "Okay, I believe this is the part where I back away slowly." She takes it quite well, considering. In gameplay terms, she's also a must if you're playing a Warrior or a Mage, as otherwise you can't open chests (not that there's usually anything worthwhile in them, but still) and if you give her a load of the dual-wielding talents, she can easily out-do Alistair in terms of damage per second.
Sten: A bit dull and boring, really. First time around I left him in the cage to get eaten by Darkspawn. The second time around I wished I'd left him in the cage. The only reason to have him around is if you want to play with two NPC warriors in the party, though his snarky, flirtly banter with Morrigan is quite amusing.
Morrigan: So are you going to continue staring at me as if I am covered in eels?
Sten: Eels would be something.
Morrigan: Prudery! How charming. I expected paranoia. This is much better. I prefer to be stared at lustfully, if at all.
Sten: Keep trying, then.
Morrigan: Oh? Then shall I demonstrate an act or two? And you may tell me hot or cold?
Sten: I'll save time. Cold.
Morrigan: (Chuckles) You are a tease.
Wynne: I like Wynne. If you give her Arcane Warrior as her second class specialisation, she rocks. Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer is *the* class combination to go for as a Mage player character as well. She's also got quite a good character backstory as well and is quite interesting to chat to in the camp. I tended to pick her over Morrigan when I wanted an extra Mage in my party to go with my PC mage, because of her healing talents. Also, Petrify + Stonefist = Instant Dead Enemy. Very fucking handy in battles with lots of mobs. One of the best spell combinations out there. I just wished it worked on those gorram Revenants.
Zevran: Just kill him, because he's fucking useless when you get him. A rogue that can't open chests? Just fuck off.
Oghren: Again, not much reason for having him around. He's no better than Sten and if you're playing a Warrior class, other than the part in Orzammar where you're forced to have him in your party, there's no real reason to have him in your party at all, other than to fill up the numbers in the secondary battle at Denerim Gate in the final showdown. I think he's mainly there to provide a bit of comic relief, particularly with his obsession about Wynne's gravity-defying bosom.
Loghain: He's the "secret" NPC you can recruit into your party as a Grey Warden after you spank him at the Landsmeet, but I didn't actually recruit him myself on the one playthrough I've completed - mainly because I didn't want to lose Alistair from the party. I may recruit him on a subsequent playthrough with a male character, just so I could annoy him by marrying his daughter, Anora.
The game does suffer from the traditionaly BioWare failing of having too many NPCs - if you're going to give us that many options, at least give us the option of having five or six characters in the party at a time when you're out in the big wide world. If Baldur's Gate III ever does get made, I will spit teeth and fire if you can't have six people in the party at a time. You need that many to have a proper balance in the party, but at least Dragon Age does one thing rather spectacularly right... Mages.
Holy crap, Dragon Age's Mages are viable from Level 1 and can genuinely spank just about anything from the get-go if you know how to play them properly and pick the right spells. It's no coincidence that my party for the final battle was made up of my Mage (Spirit Healer/Arcane Warrior, specialising in Primal spells), Morrigan (Shapeshifter/Arcane Warrior, specialising in Entropy spells) and Wynne (Spirit Healer/Arcane Warrior, specialising in Creation spells), along with Alistair as resident mage defender and meat shield. I can't imagine trying to play something like Baldur's Gate I or II with a party primarily composed of mages - you'd get cut to pieces. But in Dragon Age, mages are truly a force to reckoned with. If you don't target enemy spellcasters first in fights you generally regret it, too (or end up using gallons of health potions). Fireball is one of the most satisfying spells I've ever seen in a videogame RPG, though I wouldn't recommend using it if you've got friendly fire on. Which brings me neatly to the subject of the difficulty level - I can't really think of any reason (other than willy waving) of why you'd want to play on anything other than Easy. Easy, in my extensive experience of other BioWare RPGs, is equivalent to Normal difficulty - and since I don't really have time these days to be replaying parts of a 50+ hour epic again and again, I'm quite happy to leave the difficulty slider where it is for my subsequent playthroughs.
I think it's possibly an exaggeration to say it's the best traditional style RPG of the noughties (as some have claimed). I'd say that Knights of the Old Republic edges it - I can't see myself replaying this as much as I've replayed KotOR and some features of Dragon Age are a little retrograde if you compare them to Mass Effect, but it's certainly one of my favourite games from 2009. The fact that I actually stuck the game out to the end quite happily is one of the biggest endorsements I can give any game - since I don't actually do that for the vast majority of titles that I buy. However, I would encourage BioWare to treat their audience in a slightly more adult manner. If you're going to put sex into a game and show it, actually show it. Most women don't have sex still wearing their bra and knickers. And my toes were certainly curling when I saw my NPC's "happy face" when they were taking a roll in the hay with Leliana and Morrigan. I've not seen sex scenes that cringe-worthy since, well, the Watchmen film. Brrr. Since the esteemed Ron Jeremy (seemingly the highest authority on videogames these days) outed violent videogames as being "worse than porn" this week, the industry might as well live up to its reputation and put in some proper sex to go with its violence. If you're going to splatter your game with so much gore that it earns an 18 rating away, why shy away from putting in nipples?
I've always thought it was ludicrous that you could blow people's heads off in videogames as if it was the most natural thing in the world, but a naked nipple was the END OF THE CIVILISED WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. Obviously, a lot of this has to do with America retailers such as Wal-Mart refusing to stock products if they're too out there in the puritan stakes, but that's what localisation is for, right?
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Byte: The Archdemon Killed My PC
Well, I'm glad that my PC decided that it would allow me to complete Dragon Age before it killed my graphics card. No sooner had I read through the post-battle blurb and tried to load one of my other characters, my GPU decided that it had had enough and croaked.
Talk about a Blight... Sigh. On the bright side, I needed an upgrade anyway.
Talk about a Blight... Sigh. On the bright side, I needed an upgrade anyway.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Bark: Snowed In
I'm still stuck at home, thanks to the roads being caked in about an inch of ice - I didn't fancy writing off my car trying to get to university today. Better not to risk it and hope for better weather next week.
So in the meantime, here's a lovely satellite photo from NASA (via the BBC) of the whole of the UK dusted in snow.
So in the meantime, here's a lovely satellite photo from NASA (via the BBC) of the whole of the UK dusted in snow.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Bark: Winter like they used to make
I took a little wander today in the snow before lunchtime and took a few photos. By goodness, a little dusting of snow can really make things look gorgeous. And with crystal blue skies, the quality of the light was amazing - I think I got a few really nice shots.
You can see the full set here.
You can see the full set here.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Bark: Snow like they used to make
Now, this is proper snow. It's been coming down since about 6pm last night and it's still going strong. There was five inches on the ground first thing this morning and we're up to about eight inches now, with no end in sight. Given the connuptions that an inch and a half of snow threw Surrey into last February, the likelihood of me taking the car out on a seventy mile round trip to university was rather low. I didn't fancy ending up like one of those poor slobs who got caught on the A3 past Hindhead last night.
I might wander out later with my camera to get some photographic evidence of the snow to stick up on my Flickr site later, because it does look pretty stunning.
I might wander out later with my camera to get some photographic evidence of the snow to stick up on my Flickr site later, because it does look pretty stunning.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Byte: It's not a skirt!
I have to add a late entry onto my list of my favourite games of 2009.
While I was spending a very pleasant Christmas in Alsace getting quite merry on some very good French wine and eating some very excellent food, I also managed to devote some time writing 16,000 words of a fantasy short-story/possible novella, spent quite obscene amounts of money buying a set of gaming headphones to replace the ones paid for by my Devils Advocate piece for PCG six or seven years ago (has it really been that long?) and devoted several afternoons to plundering dungeons in an unashamed Diablo-esque grind-a-thon.
I am, of course, talking about Torchlight. It strikes me as a bit of a cross between the much-maligned Space Siege (which was maligned not least by me) and the much-fabled ZangbandTK, the staple indie game of the long-defunct State forum for many a month. Torchlight, however, manages to be more accessible than ZangbandTK (not to mention a whole lot better looking, to boot) and about a million times more polished than Space Siege (though to be fair, the story is no less cliched and the voice acting is no less stilted, either).
However, unlike Space Siege, Torchlight is touched in places by genius, not least the ability to send off your pet back to town with a full inventory so that you don't need to stop crawling the dungeon for loot and mobs to kill. There's also a WoW influence in the loot grading system (perhaps not surprising, given that a lot of the design team are ex-Blizzard) and the shared loot chest back in the town of Torchlight itself is another stroke of inspiration, allowing you to spread out the best loot between your characters. Obviously, with my chronic alt-o-holism problem, I've played a little with all three of the available character classes. I'm not massively fond of the Destroyer (read: Tank/Warrior/Barbarian) class, but the Alchemist (read: Mage/Glass Cannon) class is quite nice, especially if you wander around with massively destructive magic wands in each hand as I've taken to doing. But my favourite character class has to be the Vanquisher (read: Hunter/Ranger), not least because my Vanquisher (inevitably called Shareth) is smoking hot. I've got her up to level 29 and she's kitted out almost entirely in Rare and Unique kit. With 350+ dps pistols dual wielded, she totally kicks goblin, dragonkin and undead bottom in the most emphatic way possible.
The art design is very Warcraft, though this isn't a problem as far as I'm concerned, given that I think WoW is has of the best aesthetic designs found in videogames well, ever. (Perhaps only the Metroid Prime games are more perfect in terms of a coherent design of a game world) Torchlight, then, is pretty, well-balanced and rather hideously compulsive. I've already gifted it via Steam to two friends of mine, so I don't think I can really give it a much better recommendation than that.
While I was spending a very pleasant Christmas in Alsace getting quite merry on some very good French wine and eating some very excellent food, I also managed to devote some time writing 16,000 words of a fantasy short-story/possible novella, spent quite obscene amounts of money buying a set of gaming headphones to replace the ones paid for by my Devils Advocate piece for PCG six or seven years ago (has it really been that long?) and devoted several afternoons to plundering dungeons in an unashamed Diablo-esque grind-a-thon.
I am, of course, talking about Torchlight. It strikes me as a bit of a cross between the much-maligned Space Siege (which was maligned not least by me) and the much-fabled ZangbandTK, the staple indie game of the long-defunct State forum for many a month. Torchlight, however, manages to be more accessible than ZangbandTK (not to mention a whole lot better looking, to boot) and about a million times more polished than Space Siege (though to be fair, the story is no less cliched and the voice acting is no less stilted, either).
However, unlike Space Siege, Torchlight is touched in places by genius, not least the ability to send off your pet back to town with a full inventory so that you don't need to stop crawling the dungeon for loot and mobs to kill. There's also a WoW influence in the loot grading system (perhaps not surprising, given that a lot of the design team are ex-Blizzard) and the shared loot chest back in the town of Torchlight itself is another stroke of inspiration, allowing you to spread out the best loot between your characters. Obviously, with my chronic alt-o-holism problem, I've played a little with all three of the available character classes. I'm not massively fond of the Destroyer (read: Tank/Warrior/Barbarian) class, but the Alchemist (read: Mage/Glass Cannon) class is quite nice, especially if you wander around with massively destructive magic wands in each hand as I've taken to doing. But my favourite character class has to be the Vanquisher (read: Hunter/Ranger), not least because my Vanquisher (inevitably called Shareth) is smoking hot. I've got her up to level 29 and she's kitted out almost entirely in Rare and Unique kit. With 350+ dps pistols dual wielded, she totally kicks goblin, dragonkin and undead bottom in the most emphatic way possible.
The art design is very Warcraft, though this isn't a problem as far as I'm concerned, given that I think WoW is has of the best aesthetic designs found in videogames well, ever. (Perhaps only the Metroid Prime games are more perfect in terms of a coherent design of a game world) Torchlight, then, is pretty, well-balanced and rather hideously compulsive. I've already gifted it via Steam to two friends of mine, so I don't think I can really give it a much better recommendation than that.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Byte: Maker watch over us all.
I'm taking advantage of my first free weekend in literally months to finally get around to installing my copy of Windows 7 Pro (64-bit), that I bought for next to nothing, thanks to my status as a student teacher. There's always that sense of apprehension that you get whenever a hard drive wipe is involved, but my old XP Pro installation was starting to get bloaty, slow and flabby, so the hard drive needed a good clean up anyway. I've got everything backed up on my lovely little Western Digital external hard drive, so at least I don't have to go through the bother of installing WoW and all my Steam games from scratch again. And I remembered to back up all my save games as well - much as though I do love it, I don't fancy replaying those 40+ hours in Dragon Age to get back to where I'd played up to last night.
So this afternoon will be spent playing about with a new operating system and reinstalling software, drivers, apps and all that fun stuff. That might not sound exciting to you, but it sure beats the hell out of lesson planning. Though I don't have to do any of that for another month, since my first teaching placement finished rather anti-climatically yesterday, thanks to the snow. I didn't want to risk trashing my car driving a 70 mile round trip into and out of London when its snowing. Anywhere south of Harrogate seems to think it's the next Ice Age if a single flake of snow settles on the roads, so I bailed on the trip - it wasn't like I was teaching lessons anyway, so I think I was entirely justified.
So with two work-free weeks stretching out before me like the welcoming arms of a comely maiden with low moral standards, I can look forward to getting some serious writing and gaming done. As I'm going to be spending a lot of the holiday in Alsace (where they seriously know how to do Christmas properly, not the commercialised crap with rubbish TV we get over here), so I'm going to be reduced to using my netbook, rather than my consoles and my ever-aging games PC. This isn't such a bad thing, as my NC10 is capable of running a few games quite well, such as Trials 2, GTA: Vice City, Beyond Good and Evil (after I played about with the sounds and graphics options to get the soundtrack and the animation to sync up properly) and the obvious netbook type games, like Osmos (an intriguing little indie game), Plants vs. Zombies and the almost inevitable Peggle. Even KOTOR and Dawn of War run passably on it, though that is really stretching the capabilities of the graphics chip. After Christmas I will probably try upgrading the RAM in both my games rig and my netbook, to eke out a bit more performance for the least amount of money possible (I am, after all a penniless student - a penniless, Scottish student, to boot).
But I think I will try and spend quite a bit of time over Christmas writing. I've not done any games writing at all since I started the PGCE, and while I've been far to busy to actually find the time to do any, I do miss the whole process of writing. So I think I will try to either start a film script or maybe write a short story (or at least make a start on one). The length of the holidays to get some serious writing done was one of the things that influenced my decision to turn my back on industry and go into teaching. So it would be a shame to waste the opportunity of getting some writing done.
Anyway, I've been rambling on for far too long now, and I've successfully imported all my games from Steam into Windows 7 using my external hard drive, so I've got to get back to convincing Leliana to sleep with me. If I don't update again before the New Year, enjoy the holidays and I hope Santa brings you something nice.
So this afternoon will be spent playing about with a new operating system and reinstalling software, drivers, apps and all that fun stuff. That might not sound exciting to you, but it sure beats the hell out of lesson planning. Though I don't have to do any of that for another month, since my first teaching placement finished rather anti-climatically yesterday, thanks to the snow. I didn't want to risk trashing my car driving a 70 mile round trip into and out of London when its snowing. Anywhere south of Harrogate seems to think it's the next Ice Age if a single flake of snow settles on the roads, so I bailed on the trip - it wasn't like I was teaching lessons anyway, so I think I was entirely justified.
So with two work-free weeks stretching out before me like the welcoming arms of a comely maiden with low moral standards, I can look forward to getting some serious writing and gaming done. As I'm going to be spending a lot of the holiday in Alsace (where they seriously know how to do Christmas properly, not the commercialised crap with rubbish TV we get over here), so I'm going to be reduced to using my netbook, rather than my consoles and my ever-aging games PC. This isn't such a bad thing, as my NC10 is capable of running a few games quite well, such as Trials 2, GTA: Vice City, Beyond Good and Evil (after I played about with the sounds and graphics options to get the soundtrack and the animation to sync up properly) and the obvious netbook type games, like Osmos (an intriguing little indie game), Plants vs. Zombies and the almost inevitable Peggle. Even KOTOR and Dawn of War run passably on it, though that is really stretching the capabilities of the graphics chip. After Christmas I will probably try upgrading the RAM in both my games rig and my netbook, to eke out a bit more performance for the least amount of money possible (I am, after all a penniless student - a penniless, Scottish student, to boot).
But I think I will try and spend quite a bit of time over Christmas writing. I've not done any games writing at all since I started the PGCE, and while I've been far to busy to actually find the time to do any, I do miss the whole process of writing. So I think I will try to either start a film script or maybe write a short story (or at least make a start on one). The length of the holidays to get some serious writing done was one of the things that influenced my decision to turn my back on industry and go into teaching. So it would be a shame to waste the opportunity of getting some writing done.
Anyway, I've been rambling on for far too long now, and I've successfully imported all my games from Steam into Windows 7 using my external hard drive, so I've got to get back to convincing Leliana to sleep with me. If I don't update again before the New Year, enjoy the holidays and I hope Santa brings you something nice.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Byte: The inevitable "games I've played this year" post
I should note that this isn't a "game of the year" post, since quite a few of the games I'm going to mention weren't actually released in 2009. And I'm not really going to be passing a judgment on what the best game of the year is, either - mainly because I've not played as many games this year as I'd usually do, thanks to my recent change of career. Instead, this is more a list of the stuff I've enjoyed playing this year, regardless of how old it is. Oh, and there will be plot spoilers throughout the post, so reader beware...
Trials 2: Second Edition - PC
I bought this as a Steam gift for my young apprentice, Phil (the eldest son of some friends of mine) and we had about three months of competition between ourselves, to see who could post the best times on the tracks. Damnably, Phil's better at the game than I am, but thanks to our friendly rivalry, my ranking has soared (it was up to the 3100 mark at one point - which isn't bad out of a player base topping 91,000) and I've finally started to crack a couple of the Hard tracks, though I've still got a lot of catching up to do to surpass some of Phil's scores on the Hard tracks. It's a game of both joy and frustration - there are times when you want to throw things at the monitor, but when you complete a Medium difficulty track without faults for the first time, it's one of those great gaming moments. The sense of achievement - real achievement, not some developer-defined tick-box - is amazing. Just like in the old days, when games had no quickload or quicksave and you had to progress via genuine skill, not just bludgeoning persistance. It's a game where practice really pays off. Practice might not lead to perfect necessarily, but certainly to a few less bone-breaking falls.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - PC
This was probably the first Big Game of the year. As regulars will know, I'm not much of an RTS fan, but the first Dawn of War has to rate as one of my favourite games in the genre. I'm always going back to it so that I can build huge squads of Space Marines and then hoover up Orks and Eldar. Dawn of War II has a much more tactical focus than the original, and if anything played a lot more like an RPG than an RTS, so that was always going to be a bonus for me. I ploughed through the game pretty quickly - always a good sign - and enjoyed the story immensely, even if it was fairly generic in the end. I especially liked the ressurrection of Captain Thule as a Dreadnought, though I never did get the Assault Cannon for it on one of the scavenger hunts. Maybe I'll find it on a replay sometime. I don't think that the game is ultimately as replayable as the original, but I did like the fact that the missions were short, tightly designed and action-packed. And it's a lot prettier than the original, of course. But it's the wealth of tactical options that you have at your disposal that really makes the game stand out. I love using Assault Marines to perform hit and fade attacks on the enemy frontlines and draw your foes into ambushes, where you have your other squads attacking from cover as your Assault Marines and Force Commander get stuck in with melee weapons. Just writing about it makes me want to go back and play it...
Far Cry 2 - Xbox 360
When I first played Far Cry 2 on PC last year, I found it so uninspiring that I uninstalled it after about half an hour. I'm glad that I took a punt on it in one of HMV's '2 for £30' deals, as it turned out to be one of the few games that I completed this year. It's got quite a few flaws (not least all the bloody roadblocks and respawning cars full of thugs), and the story goes completely off the rails towards the end, but as a straight-up shooter it's one of the best I've played in a very long time. Possibly since Half-Life 2, in fact. It's a bit of a shame that they didn't do a little more with the inter-mercenary relationships, and the bit at the end when they all turn on you (forcing me to kill my beloved Nasreen, which I was most upset about) makes absolutely no sense at all. Neither did the way the game stops you from being able to kill the one person the whole game is set up for you to kill (The Jackal) - you can slaughter anyone except for the one person you're told explicitly to kill at the beginning of the game. I'm still trying to work that one out. But other than that, the freeform setting of the game and the shooty bits themselves were top notch. I even quite enjoyed the diamond hunts using the GPS. I also liked the implementation of the in-game map, which was pretty neat and immersive, even if some people didn't like the way the game didn't pause when you had the map open. I still dip back into the game every now and again, just to play about with the different weapon sets. I still get a warm feeling from that time I used the Dragonov sniper rifle to set off a fuel barrel and blow up a roadblock when a weapons convoy was passing through. My timing was perfect, and it was most amusing to see the AI go nuts, as I was perched up on a rock half a mile away, and they had no idea where the hell I was sniping from. Ah, such happy memories...
Fallout 3 - Xbox 360
Without doubt, one of my favourite games of the year. I never really played much of the first two games, so I didn't have any fanboy baggage to bring into the game with me. As a consequence, I really got into it very heavily, though I didn't quite get around to completing it. Whether you consider "Oblivion with guns" to be an epithet or not will undoubtedly sum up how well you'll get on with this game. I found Fallout 3 to be much easier to get into than Oblivion, however, and the levelling system is certainly a whole lot less broken. The VATS system didn't take long to convince me that it's possible to integrate turn-based combat well into a real-time game, and let's face it, shooting the heads clean off people in slow motion never really gets old. The game is perhaps a little too restrictive to begin with, though. If you venture too far off the beaten path too soon, you'll get your ass handed back to you on a silver platter with a nice garnish of your gizzards. Trying to take on a rocket launcher armed super-mutant with a pistol and an SMG is never really going to end well. But other than that, the game world is beautifully realised (though not exactly beautiful - this is a radioactive wasteland, after all) and the action is absolutely compelling. You're never going to forget the time you first hook up with the Brotherhood of Steel and fight your first super-mutant behemoth. I do intend to go back to Fallout 3 and polish it off at some point. I'm not sure when that will be exactly, but it's good enough for me to want to go back to it and not just leave it on the huge pile of unfinished games sitting underneath my desk.
NextWar - Xbox 360
This is probably the best game you've never heard of this year. I'd heard a lot about tower defence games over the last year or two, but wasn't sure if I'd get on with them or not, so never got around to playing one. But when I was up late (drunk) one night, trawling through the Indie games lists on Xbox Live Arcade, I stumbled across this little gem. The screenshots looked interesting (it's done in neon, 8-bit style vector graphics) and for the measley sum of just 80 MS points, I thought 'why the hell not?' And it turned out to be one of my best buys of the year. The map design has quite a bit of variety and I really like the strategy of placing your EMP and weapons towers in mutually supportive positions, so you get the maximum defence value from the smallest number of towers. I've stuck hours into this on the skirmish mode (and there's a campaign mode as well) and had lots of fun, obsessively micro-managing the placement and upgrade status of all my colourful little towers. It might not have the polish of something like Plants vs. Zombies, but it's a neat little game, well worth the tiny asking price.
The Path - PC
Well. What can I say about The Path that I've not already said? If you could truly call it a game, it would probably be my game of the year. It's beautiful, haunting, controversial, thought-provoking and challenges your preconceptions of videogames needing to be fun. It's the first real videogame for artists, hifaluting intellectuals and surrealists, and the finest endorsement of the game probably wasn't my 10/10 review on Videogamer, but the words "What's that? That looks interesting." coming out of the mouth of my girlfriend when watching me play it. Given that she normally treats videogames with the same kind of distain you'd give dog shit on the soles of your shoes, this is high praise indeed. It's not fun, it's not HD-pretty (though the design is absolutely gorgeous) and it's probably not even a game in the conventional sense, but for me it's one of the unmissable videogame experiences of the year.
World of Warcraft: The Lich King - PC
If my gorram ISP hadn't decided it would be a great idea to block the port used by WoW's login servers (rendering the game absolutely unplayable through terrible lag), I'd no doubt have my dr00d PvPing her way through Wintergrasp as a level 80 by now. In my mind, WoW's still the King of the MMO genre. I can't really describe what makes me keep wanting to go back to WoW - the game world just has such a hold on my imagination. Whether it's the story and lore, the aesthetics, or just whether it's such a nice world just to poke around and explore, I don't know. But I find it uniquely compelling, and if I could sort out my ponging ping problems, I'd still be hooked. One thing's for sure - I'm changing ISP before Cataclysm comes out next year.
Dragon Age: Origins - PC & Xbox 360
I freely admit that I'm a total sucker for Bioware's RPGs. Dragon Age is the ultimate modern take on an old school fantasy RPG - Baldur's Gate for the HD generation, if you will. It's obviously a Bioware RPG in that it has the same old generic structure to the story (Duncan = Gorion = Nihlus), and you've got to be stunningly blind if you don't see Loghain's betrayal at Ostagar coming from several miles away, but it is executed very well. Like KOTOR, Jade Empire and Mass Effect before it, the game suffers from the fact that there are too many characters for your party, giving the game the old "ship of extras" (a.k.a. ship of fools) feel. Which is a shame, as some of the characters are brilliant. I'm very fond of Alistair's cheery sarcasm and Leliana is a constant ray of sunshine (even if her voice acting is a bit stilted at times). Morrigan is a little less convincing, since she's mainly there just for the side-boob. Though there is some nice needling tension between her and Alistair when you have them both in your party. It's everything I've come to expect from Bioware: good writing, lots of polish, good action and lots of stuff to do. I've not completed it yet, but I don't see myself putting it aside for something else anytime soon. I picked up both versions, since I don't always have a lot of time to play with my gaming PC, and it's definitely true that the PC version is superior to the 360 version, but given the limitations of the control set, the 360 version is eminently playable. It is a shame that they blunted the texture quality, but if (like me) you're more interested in the characters and the story than you are with the shinies, it's still worth picking up, especially if you don't have a PC that can handle it. If I do have one big criticism of the game though, it does have to be the obsession with gore. It's pretty hard to take a game seriously when you're trying to have a tender, romantic moment and both of the potential lovers are splattered with blood. It also descends into farce in the sex scenes, since the girls don't even take off their bra and knickers to have a cuddle, and if one of them is covered in blood, it's even more hilarious. "Kiss me, but mind the darkspawn blood. It'll kill you."
Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy
I know I said I'm not much of an RTS fan, but this expansion was a little beauty. I can do RTS when it's done on as grand a scale as this. SOASE still reminds me of Star Wars: Supremacy without the 'Star Wars' bit. Being able to put in starbases to defend your planets without fleets was a brilliant addition to an already excellent game. I'll never forget the first time I had a capital ship fleet being chased around the system by a Vasari starbase. It was like the Killer Rabbit scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Ahhhhhh! Run away! Run away!" Good times. I've already got the Diplomacy expansion pack pre-ordered, so will be checking out the beta in due course.
The major disappointments of the year
Firstly, Mirror's Edge - Xbox 360. I really liked the concept, but I couldn't get on with the game at all. This is mainly my fault for having old and flabby reflexes, but I never got into the game as much as I wanted to.
The Sims 3 - PC. I think I'm just about the only critic who didn't splurge love juice all over this. I LOVE Sims and Sims 2. Don't get me wrong. But I really didn't like Sims 3. I don't think that they really added enough to the formula to really make it worthwhile releasing the new one. I wasn't that impressed with the town - I thought that it gave you as many problems as advantages, not least in keeping track of what the hell your Sims were doing, and increasing the autonomy of the Sims seemed to actually miss the point as far as I was concerned. Your whole purpose as a player of Sims is to direct every aspect of their lives, according to your own twisted design. Giving them minds of their own and just sitting back to watch them defies the entire point of making it a game. Otherwise you might as well just watch Eastenders. As far as I'm concerned, definitely a mis-step for the franchise.
Things I am excited about for 2010
Mass Effect 2 - Xbox 360
I think I'll grab this on 360 rather than PC. It's Mass Effect. TWO. Need I say more?
Star Wars: The Old Republic - PC
It's Star Wars. It's Bioware. It's an MMO. It's probably the reason I will flunk my PGCE next year (if I do). I really want to see whether this will be able to take on Blizzard's masterwork.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - PC
If I can sort out my ISP troubles, this will probably eat up a huge share of my gaming time next year.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Xbox 360
Pleasebegoodpleasebegoodpleasebegoodpleasebegoodpleasebegood...
Trials 2: Second Edition - PC
I bought this as a Steam gift for my young apprentice, Phil (the eldest son of some friends of mine) and we had about three months of competition between ourselves, to see who could post the best times on the tracks. Damnably, Phil's better at the game than I am, but thanks to our friendly rivalry, my ranking has soared (it was up to the 3100 mark at one point - which isn't bad out of a player base topping 91,000) and I've finally started to crack a couple of the Hard tracks, though I've still got a lot of catching up to do to surpass some of Phil's scores on the Hard tracks. It's a game of both joy and frustration - there are times when you want to throw things at the monitor, but when you complete a Medium difficulty track without faults for the first time, it's one of those great gaming moments. The sense of achievement - real achievement, not some developer-defined tick-box - is amazing. Just like in the old days, when games had no quickload or quicksave and you had to progress via genuine skill, not just bludgeoning persistance. It's a game where practice really pays off. Practice might not lead to perfect necessarily, but certainly to a few less bone-breaking falls.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - PC
This was probably the first Big Game of the year. As regulars will know, I'm not much of an RTS fan, but the first Dawn of War has to rate as one of my favourite games in the genre. I'm always going back to it so that I can build huge squads of Space Marines and then hoover up Orks and Eldar. Dawn of War II has a much more tactical focus than the original, and if anything played a lot more like an RPG than an RTS, so that was always going to be a bonus for me. I ploughed through the game pretty quickly - always a good sign - and enjoyed the story immensely, even if it was fairly generic in the end. I especially liked the ressurrection of Captain Thule as a Dreadnought, though I never did get the Assault Cannon for it on one of the scavenger hunts. Maybe I'll find it on a replay sometime. I don't think that the game is ultimately as replayable as the original, but I did like the fact that the missions were short, tightly designed and action-packed. And it's a lot prettier than the original, of course. But it's the wealth of tactical options that you have at your disposal that really makes the game stand out. I love using Assault Marines to perform hit and fade attacks on the enemy frontlines and draw your foes into ambushes, where you have your other squads attacking from cover as your Assault Marines and Force Commander get stuck in with melee weapons. Just writing about it makes me want to go back and play it...
Far Cry 2 - Xbox 360
When I first played Far Cry 2 on PC last year, I found it so uninspiring that I uninstalled it after about half an hour. I'm glad that I took a punt on it in one of HMV's '2 for £30' deals, as it turned out to be one of the few games that I completed this year. It's got quite a few flaws (not least all the bloody roadblocks and respawning cars full of thugs), and the story goes completely off the rails towards the end, but as a straight-up shooter it's one of the best I've played in a very long time. Possibly since Half-Life 2, in fact. It's a bit of a shame that they didn't do a little more with the inter-mercenary relationships, and the bit at the end when they all turn on you (forcing me to kill my beloved Nasreen, which I was most upset about) makes absolutely no sense at all. Neither did the way the game stops you from being able to kill the one person the whole game is set up for you to kill (The Jackal) - you can slaughter anyone except for the one person you're told explicitly to kill at the beginning of the game. I'm still trying to work that one out. But other than that, the freeform setting of the game and the shooty bits themselves were top notch. I even quite enjoyed the diamond hunts using the GPS. I also liked the implementation of the in-game map, which was pretty neat and immersive, even if some people didn't like the way the game didn't pause when you had the map open. I still dip back into the game every now and again, just to play about with the different weapon sets. I still get a warm feeling from that time I used the Dragonov sniper rifle to set off a fuel barrel and blow up a roadblock when a weapons convoy was passing through. My timing was perfect, and it was most amusing to see the AI go nuts, as I was perched up on a rock half a mile away, and they had no idea where the hell I was sniping from. Ah, such happy memories...
Fallout 3 - Xbox 360
Without doubt, one of my favourite games of the year. I never really played much of the first two games, so I didn't have any fanboy baggage to bring into the game with me. As a consequence, I really got into it very heavily, though I didn't quite get around to completing it. Whether you consider "Oblivion with guns" to be an epithet or not will undoubtedly sum up how well you'll get on with this game. I found Fallout 3 to be much easier to get into than Oblivion, however, and the levelling system is certainly a whole lot less broken. The VATS system didn't take long to convince me that it's possible to integrate turn-based combat well into a real-time game, and let's face it, shooting the heads clean off people in slow motion never really gets old. The game is perhaps a little too restrictive to begin with, though. If you venture too far off the beaten path too soon, you'll get your ass handed back to you on a silver platter with a nice garnish of your gizzards. Trying to take on a rocket launcher armed super-mutant with a pistol and an SMG is never really going to end well. But other than that, the game world is beautifully realised (though not exactly beautiful - this is a radioactive wasteland, after all) and the action is absolutely compelling. You're never going to forget the time you first hook up with the Brotherhood of Steel and fight your first super-mutant behemoth. I do intend to go back to Fallout 3 and polish it off at some point. I'm not sure when that will be exactly, but it's good enough for me to want to go back to it and not just leave it on the huge pile of unfinished games sitting underneath my desk.
NextWar - Xbox 360
This is probably the best game you've never heard of this year. I'd heard a lot about tower defence games over the last year or two, but wasn't sure if I'd get on with them or not, so never got around to playing one. But when I was up late (drunk) one night, trawling through the Indie games lists on Xbox Live Arcade, I stumbled across this little gem. The screenshots looked interesting (it's done in neon, 8-bit style vector graphics) and for the measley sum of just 80 MS points, I thought 'why the hell not?' And it turned out to be one of my best buys of the year. The map design has quite a bit of variety and I really like the strategy of placing your EMP and weapons towers in mutually supportive positions, so you get the maximum defence value from the smallest number of towers. I've stuck hours into this on the skirmish mode (and there's a campaign mode as well) and had lots of fun, obsessively micro-managing the placement and upgrade status of all my colourful little towers. It might not have the polish of something like Plants vs. Zombies, but it's a neat little game, well worth the tiny asking price.
The Path - PC
Well. What can I say about The Path that I've not already said? If you could truly call it a game, it would probably be my game of the year. It's beautiful, haunting, controversial, thought-provoking and challenges your preconceptions of videogames needing to be fun. It's the first real videogame for artists, hifaluting intellectuals and surrealists, and the finest endorsement of the game probably wasn't my 10/10 review on Videogamer, but the words "What's that? That looks interesting." coming out of the mouth of my girlfriend when watching me play it. Given that she normally treats videogames with the same kind of distain you'd give dog shit on the soles of your shoes, this is high praise indeed. It's not fun, it's not HD-pretty (though the design is absolutely gorgeous) and it's probably not even a game in the conventional sense, but for me it's one of the unmissable videogame experiences of the year.
World of Warcraft: The Lich King - PC
If my gorram ISP hadn't decided it would be a great idea to block the port used by WoW's login servers (rendering the game absolutely unplayable through terrible lag), I'd no doubt have my dr00d PvPing her way through Wintergrasp as a level 80 by now. In my mind, WoW's still the King of the MMO genre. I can't really describe what makes me keep wanting to go back to WoW - the game world just has such a hold on my imagination. Whether it's the story and lore, the aesthetics, or just whether it's such a nice world just to poke around and explore, I don't know. But I find it uniquely compelling, and if I could sort out my ponging ping problems, I'd still be hooked. One thing's for sure - I'm changing ISP before Cataclysm comes out next year.
Dragon Age: Origins - PC & Xbox 360
I freely admit that I'm a total sucker for Bioware's RPGs. Dragon Age is the ultimate modern take on an old school fantasy RPG - Baldur's Gate for the HD generation, if you will. It's obviously a Bioware RPG in that it has the same old generic structure to the story (Duncan = Gorion = Nihlus), and you've got to be stunningly blind if you don't see Loghain's betrayal at Ostagar coming from several miles away, but it is executed very well. Like KOTOR, Jade Empire and Mass Effect before it, the game suffers from the fact that there are too many characters for your party, giving the game the old "ship of extras" (a.k.a. ship of fools) feel. Which is a shame, as some of the characters are brilliant. I'm very fond of Alistair's cheery sarcasm and Leliana is a constant ray of sunshine (even if her voice acting is a bit stilted at times). Morrigan is a little less convincing, since she's mainly there just for the side-boob. Though there is some nice needling tension between her and Alistair when you have them both in your party. It's everything I've come to expect from Bioware: good writing, lots of polish, good action and lots of stuff to do. I've not completed it yet, but I don't see myself putting it aside for something else anytime soon. I picked up both versions, since I don't always have a lot of time to play with my gaming PC, and it's definitely true that the PC version is superior to the 360 version, but given the limitations of the control set, the 360 version is eminently playable. It is a shame that they blunted the texture quality, but if (like me) you're more interested in the characters and the story than you are with the shinies, it's still worth picking up, especially if you don't have a PC that can handle it. If I do have one big criticism of the game though, it does have to be the obsession with gore. It's pretty hard to take a game seriously when you're trying to have a tender, romantic moment and both of the potential lovers are splattered with blood. It also descends into farce in the sex scenes, since the girls don't even take off their bra and knickers to have a cuddle, and if one of them is covered in blood, it's even more hilarious. "Kiss me, but mind the darkspawn blood. It'll kill you."
Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy
I know I said I'm not much of an RTS fan, but this expansion was a little beauty. I can do RTS when it's done on as grand a scale as this. SOASE still reminds me of Star Wars: Supremacy without the 'Star Wars' bit. Being able to put in starbases to defend your planets without fleets was a brilliant addition to an already excellent game. I'll never forget the first time I had a capital ship fleet being chased around the system by a Vasari starbase. It was like the Killer Rabbit scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Ahhhhhh! Run away! Run away!" Good times. I've already got the Diplomacy expansion pack pre-ordered, so will be checking out the beta in due course.
The major disappointments of the year
Firstly, Mirror's Edge - Xbox 360. I really liked the concept, but I couldn't get on with the game at all. This is mainly my fault for having old and flabby reflexes, but I never got into the game as much as I wanted to.
The Sims 3 - PC. I think I'm just about the only critic who didn't splurge love juice all over this. I LOVE Sims and Sims 2. Don't get me wrong. But I really didn't like Sims 3. I don't think that they really added enough to the formula to really make it worthwhile releasing the new one. I wasn't that impressed with the town - I thought that it gave you as many problems as advantages, not least in keeping track of what the hell your Sims were doing, and increasing the autonomy of the Sims seemed to actually miss the point as far as I was concerned. Your whole purpose as a player of Sims is to direct every aspect of their lives, according to your own twisted design. Giving them minds of their own and just sitting back to watch them defies the entire point of making it a game. Otherwise you might as well just watch Eastenders. As far as I'm concerned, definitely a mis-step for the franchise.
Things I am excited about for 2010
Mass Effect 2 - Xbox 360
I think I'll grab this on 360 rather than PC. It's Mass Effect. TWO. Need I say more?
Star Wars: The Old Republic - PC
It's Star Wars. It's Bioware. It's an MMO. It's probably the reason I will flunk my PGCE next year (if I do). I really want to see whether this will be able to take on Blizzard's masterwork.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - PC
If I can sort out my ISP troubles, this will probably eat up a huge share of my gaming time next year.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Xbox 360
Pleasebegoodpleasebegoodpleasebegoodpleasebegoodpleasebegood...
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Bark: The Hunter S. Thompson Method triumphs yet again!
As my first PGCE placement rapidly hurtles towards its conclusion, for the last week or so, I'd been getting increasing stressed about how I had a 3500 word essay on Science in the National Curriculum to write for next Wednesday, and despite the fact that I'd been given the spec of what to write months ago, I'd not even go so much as a title and document template created.
So yesterday I did the only reasonable thing, which was to send my lady off to meet a friend in London for the day, while I locked myself into the flat with a vast supply of alcohol, a huge plate of oven chips, a jar of Branston pickle and some of the finest post-rock and electropop ever to come out of Iceland and Norway, with the steely resolve not to go to bed until the damn thing was finished. Even if I ran out of booze.
Proving yet again that there is no motivation quite so good as last minute panic, I finished my masterpiece after a fourteen hour/eight pint writing marathon, finishing at a quite obscene 6:58am this morning. I seriously doubt that it's up to M-level standard, but at least I have something to hand in on Wednesday.
Of course, I've still got all my lessons to plan for next week between now and bedtime tonight, but hey, at least that's one less thing to stress about. And I'm on holiday as of 3pm Friday. And bloody hell, have I earned it...
So yesterday I did the only reasonable thing, which was to send my lady off to meet a friend in London for the day, while I locked myself into the flat with a vast supply of alcohol, a huge plate of oven chips, a jar of Branston pickle and some of the finest post-rock and electropop ever to come out of Iceland and Norway, with the steely resolve not to go to bed until the damn thing was finished. Even if I ran out of booze.
Proving yet again that there is no motivation quite so good as last minute panic, I finished my masterpiece after a fourteen hour/eight pint writing marathon, finishing at a quite obscene 6:58am this morning. I seriously doubt that it's up to M-level standard, but at least I have something to hand in on Wednesday.
Of course, I've still got all my lessons to plan for next week between now and bedtime tonight, but hey, at least that's one less thing to stress about. And I'm on holiday as of 3pm Friday. And bloody hell, have I earned it...
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Bark: Weight loss guaranteed!
Stressed? Depressed? Overworked? Overweight?
Well, taking a teacher training course probably won't help with the first three things, but if the last month I've had is anything to go by, training to be a teacher does wonders for your waistline. I've lost over half a stone (5 kilos) in the last month and not even lifted a finger or flexed a bicep at the gym. I'm sure most of it is probably just the stress killing your sense of appetite, but actually spending the day stalking menacingly around a classroom, rather than sitting constantly behind a desk eating crisps, drinking fizzy pop and shunting numbers around spreadsheets all day must make quite a big difference to the number of calories you burn.
If I keep going on at this rate, by the end of the course I'll be as lean and wiry as I was before I started working in IT. And that would be a result.
Well, taking a teacher training course probably won't help with the first three things, but if the last month I've had is anything to go by, training to be a teacher does wonders for your waistline. I've lost over half a stone (5 kilos) in the last month and not even lifted a finger or flexed a bicep at the gym. I'm sure most of it is probably just the stress killing your sense of appetite, but actually spending the day stalking menacingly around a classroom, rather than sitting constantly behind a desk eating crisps, drinking fizzy pop and shunting numbers around spreadsheets all day must make quite a big difference to the number of calories you burn.
If I keep going on at this rate, by the end of the course I'll be as lean and wiry as I was before I started working in IT. And that would be a result.
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