Bark and Byte

Byte: The inevitable, yet belated, "Best Videogames of 2011" post

2012-01-07T00:04:00.003Z

Having had a few days to really reflect on 2011 as a whole (that is, check on Wikipedia which games were actually released in 2011), I've picked out seven games that have really left a lasting impact on me from last year. Rather than ordering them by merit, instead, I've ordered them by release date.

Magicka
Initially bugged to hell, though that was fine, because I didn't buy it until it had been patched into a state that was vaguely playable. Magicka (not a vampire!) is a delightful little game. It has a wonderful internal logic in the way that you combine spells together, actually has a lot of freedom and flexibility in the way you can create your own tactics for dealing with singular or groups of enemies, plus it really pushes all the parody buttons you can think of: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, and many, many more. It also has some inspired DLC and lots of replay value, as you really try and get to grips with the sheer breadth of the spellcasting system. Like many of the other games on my list, I wish I'd had more time to devote to it. Not finishing it, nor getting to try out the online co-op and combat modes is one of my great gaming regrets from last year.

Dragon Age 2
This was arguably the first of the laughably-called "Triple AAA" titles of 2011. Featuring the greatest (possibly only) Welsh game character ever, Dragon Age II was a wee bit lacklustre - obviously rushed and dumbed down compared to its predecessor; Bioware couldn't even be bothered to put a colon and a subtitle into the game's name - but it was sufficiently interesting enough for me to want to finish it. What it lacked in finesse and deep game mechanics, it compensated for with some of the best written characters in an RPG for years. While most Bioware RPGs suffer from the "Ship of Fifth Wheels" problem, Dragon Age II actually attempted to make you want to experiment with all the characters it gave you to play with by giving them interesting story arcs and real character. Isabela, Varric, Bethany and Merrill are all fantastic characters, very well played by their actors. I wasn't too keen on how they'd changed Anders from Dragon Age: Awakening - Bioware seemed to suck out all the fun from his character, going from Alistair-lite-relief to Angsty-Emo-Anders. It just grated with the rest of the atmosphere of the game and his previous character, somehow. The only party character that really fell flat was Fenris, who is so utterly forgettable, I wouldn't have even remembered to include him in the write up if I'd not seen his name on the characters page on Wikipedia... I'll gloss over Carver, since he always died in the prologue due to my character class choices, so I've not played with him through the whole game.

Dragon Age II has a lot of flaws. It's too action-focused, the RPG mechanics are too streamlined for my liking and the main story arc isn't any great shakes. Also, the ending is fairly terrible and arguably doesn't even make sense in terms of the game world, as well-established characters act completely against type to make things more dramatic. But, despite all that, it's fun to play. It's no Baldur's Gate, or even a Dragon Age: Origins (which in my opinion is by far the superior game), but it's not the soulless piece of EA shovelware some internet reactionaries would have you believe.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Given how voiciferous I was about the merits of the first Witcher game (to the extent of basically getting ostracised by some elements of the games journalism community for criticising a certain review of The Witcher), you may be surprised to hear that I was a wee bit underwhelmed by The Witcher 2, given that it was one of the games I was expecting to r0xx0rz my s0xx0rz last year. My initial reaction to The Witcher 2 was one of horror. Not because it seemed like a bad game. Far from it... Everything about it made me want to play it: the graphics, the setting, the premise - the lack of DRM. This may sound petty, but there was one big thing that really put me off playing the game (which led to it being put aside for the perpetual charms of World of Warcraft and other games), not only is the beginning of the game beset by horrible difficulty spikes and inconsistent difficulty levels, the initial release did not come with the ability to invert the y-axis of the mouselook, instead requiring an ini file hack, until they patched it a few weeks after the release. I've got a lot of time for CD Projekt RED, since I think they've got genuine vision and insight into how PC games should be produced and released (that is, don't treat your customer like a criminal), but this is something that should have been thought of long before the game had even gone gold, let alone been released to the paying public. I will go back to The Witcher 2 at some point this year to finish it off, since it would be a shame to let a game with this much potential stay unfinished, especially as CD Projekt RED have shown the same willingness to provide long term support for their game and really try to make it as perfect as possible - just as they did with The Witcher. It's rare that a developer and publisher give this much long-term love and attention to their games once they're shepherded out of the door. This alone practically merits The Witcher 2's place on my list: PC gaming (and videogaming in general) needs more developers like CD Projekt RED.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
This is another game I didn't put as much time into as I wanted, and will probably end up completing this year, instead. I have to admit, when I first heard about Desu Ex 3, I was skeptical. Actually, skeptical is an understatement. I thought it would be shite. By goodness, was I wrong. Not only did it feel like Deus Ex, it played like it, too. In any other year, this could have been game of the year. What a shame then, that it was released in the same twelve months as arguably the greatest single-player RPG ever made.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
It's not big, it's not clever, but by the gods of Chaos, isn't it fun. Stomp, slash, shoot and mash your way through a big horde of orks, and then do the same with an even nastier horde of Chaos forces. Short, accessible, direct, to the point, and lots of fun. The one stand-out game mechanic is the way you regain health by performing execution moves. It adds a surprising amount of depth to the combat, so it's a crying shame that the end boss battle sucks out all that depth and turns it into a Quick Time Event button-mash-fest. Press X for the Emperor! The storyline was rather ponderous and predictable, too, but that's not stopping me holding out for a sequel at some point.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
I've got over 144 hours currently logged on Skyrim, according to Steam. Considering that the game's only been out for 2 months and for one week of that I was away from my games rig in France and for the rest of the time I was working about 60 hours a week in my day job, I think that's pretty appalling and pretty impressive. I can't think of a game I've enjoyed this much since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Never mind game of the year, Skyrim's gone straight into my All Time Top 5 Videogames. Okay, it's buggy and glitchy and you have to hack the game to marry the Athene-like Lydia, but it's just such a well realised game world, that I find it hard to care about the giants that send NPCs into orbit with a hammer strike, dragons that fly backwards, horses that can climb sheer rock faces and other such problems. Skyrim's a truly great game. There's just so much to discover and do. It's achingly beautiful and the RPG mechanics are streamlined, but not dumbed down. My main character (who's finished the Alduin and the civil war questlines now - so has effectively "completed" the game) is Level 49 now, but still isn't utterly untouchable. Ancient dragons can still hand him his arse on a plate if you get the battle tactics wrong and multiple enemies can still pose quite a serious challenge. But the real motivation to keep playing with him is that Skyrim is a game where there are strong story threads weaved throughout the game, but there's still plenty of scope to create your own adventures and narratives. If I had time I could write up dozens of anecdotes of amazing experiences I've had in the game - ranging from the awe-inspiring to the farcical. Its a game where the world gives you freedom and where the mechanics give you real choice as to how to customise your character - and it's a match made in Sovngarde. I'm going to be playing this for a very long time to come, because when I get bored with my main character, I've got a Mage and a Thief waiting in the wings to play with.

Star Wars: The Old Republic
As one of the guild names on my server (The Arkanian Legacy) so succinctly points out, Star Wars: The Old Republic is "WoW in space". A gaming paternity test would tell you that it's the bastard love-child of WoW and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I've put a few more hours into it since I wrote about it last, and the game's starting to grow on me, though I still have grave doubts as to whether it's the long-awaited-for WoW-killer the MMO genre really needs to breathe fresh life into it. I've tried four of the character classes so far: Bounty Hunter (Level 17), Jedi Knight (Level 17), Sith Inquistor (Level 11) and Smuggler (Level 5). My Bounty Hunter and Jedi Knight both have recently acquired their ships, but it doesn't seem to do that much in terms of fundamentally changing the game, though I must caveat that in saying that I've not had chance to try out the space combat yet.

While the game is starting to grow on me, I'm still yet to be convinced that the 100% voiceacted script truly makes it more immersive and involving than your average MMO. In my mind it's almost like the game has been designed to be a single-player MMO, as weird as that sounds. The problem with voiceacted cutscene conversations is that they inevitably focus more on the player watching the unfolding story, rather than making the player drive on the story for themself. As I see it, the common-or-garden MMORPG player plays an MMORPG for one of two reasons.

One: To develop characters and explore the game world (i.e. The MMO Tourist), or
Two: To play socially within a guild for dungeoneering, raiding and PvP (i.e. The MMO Hardcore)

Neither of these two kinds of player really wants to be sitting around watching conversations between NPCs and their toon. They'd both much rather be out in the game world doing cool stuff. It's for this reason that I think that while the game will be a success, it's not going to be a game changer for the genre. That's not to say it's no good at all - I will probably sink a few hundred hours into it over the next year or so - but will it topple WoW from the top of the MMO tree? I don't think so.

Byte: Star Wars: The Old Republic - The Emperor's New Clothes?

2011-12-21T23:15:00.005Z

Given that I'm on holiday and that I've had a bit of free time, I've spent the last couple of days playing Star Wars: The New Republic. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's going to use the "Emperor's New Clothes" line in the coming weeks and months about The Old Republic. I haven't quite made my mind up about the game yet, but the obvious one-liner is that it's the bastard love child of World of Warcraft and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Given that these are two of my top five games ever made, by rights, The Old Republic should be the end of my social life and career. But somehow, I'm not convinced quite yet...

Bioware's big claim for The Old Republic is that it's supposedly a game-changer for the MMORPG genre, in that it's resolutely story-based and no expense has been spared in the production. Every single line is voice-acted and the experience is undoubtedly cinematic with interactive cutscenes and set pieces, but the question for me is, does this make it a better game? More on that later...

Here's where I am so far: in the last two days of play I've rolled a Bounty Hunter and a Jedi Knight and levelled them up to level 12 and level 11, respectively. It should be said at this point that the Bounty Hunter/Imperial Agent starting area on Hutta is fairly terrible. Dull, ugly, not much variety in terms of enemies or scenery, it's a fairly depressing place to spend your first half dozen or so hours in the game. While that's more to do with the planet itself than the game engine (which is impressive for an MMO - at its best, it's really quite pretty and expansive indeed, not nearly to the level of Skyrim of course, but the game engine is a quite massive step up for those familiar with WoW) - I'd question the decision of the designers to have you start one of the more iconic character classes on such a horrible little muckball. Tython, the Jedi Knight/Jedi Consular starting planet is much prettier by comparison, so it's a bit of a shame that it takes ten levels for you to earn your lightsaber (in itself, wearily predictable) and that the prologue is beset by the main enemies you fight (the ludicrously named "Flesh Raiders", which sounds like a rejected Russ Meyer film title) lack variety and are spectacularly tedious.

I'm not convinced by the presentation, either. The cutscenes are obviously given a greater level of graphical fidelity than the main game engine, so while the story cutscenes (which take place in instanced Story areas, so you don't get munched by mobs in the meantime) are immersive and quite well done, the biggest issue I have with them is that the time you spend watching the cutscene is time you could really be spending doing something productive in the game. At least the cutscenes can be subtitled and are skippable, so if you're a very swift reader like myself, you can read the exposition, rather than listen to it being drawled over in Star Warsy mock-British accents. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for story in MMOs. One of the key things I play World of Warcraft for is the story and the world lore. But the game doesn't try and force it down your throat - you can take it at your own pace and access as much detail as you like. I suppose, in modern Star Wars style, The Old Republic is caught up a little bit in its own gravitas, by focusing on delivering an "experience" rather than just being a game to play.

It's easy to see why, because mechanically speaking, The Old Republic isn't really pushing any boundaries. Combat is an MMOtastic blend of cooldown management and quick-button mashing (just like WoW, then) and if you look too closely at the ability descriptions, you can see the class balancing at work. That is, all the powers are essentially identical in effect, they just have different animations. So while, as a Bounty Hunter, you can do pretty much everything that the Bounty Hunter in the Deceived trailer can (only in rather more crappy armour), somehow it feels a little empty. Again, this is more of a criticism of the genre in general than The Old Republic in particular, but if you're really trying to make the definitive statement in MMORPGs, you shouldn't really just be repackaging World of Warcraft in Jedi Robes.

This isn't to say that the game is bad. I don't think Bioware have truly created a bad game yet - an average one or two, perhaps (Neverwinter Nights, anybody?) - but I would be lying if I said at this point I was blown away by the game. I can see myself giving it a chance for a few months to see what kind of direction Bioware take it, and see how the game changes as you get characters up past level 20 and 30, but can I see myself playing it in five years time? Not really. Not unless it goes free-to-play, which I expect it (and WoW too, incidentally) will do in the next couple of years.

My most memorable experiences with the game so far have been with playing with small parties in Flashpoints - the story-based instanced missions - which are effectively The Old Republic's dungeons. Having smaller groups for instances (with gaps able to be filled by the surprisingly effective AI Companions), makes the dungeon content more accessible to everyone and the Social Points system actively rewards you for not playing the game solo. Obviously, it's early days yet for the game and I've not played any of the PvP content yet, but at this point, if there's one thing that's going to keep me motivated to play the game, it's going to be the flashpoints, because the world design isn't open enough to really reward exploration for the sake of sightseeing and the story so far isnt doing anything beyond what I'd expect of a Star Wars game - it's diverting rather than utterly compelling - doing enough to keep me interested without totally grabbing me by the lapels and forcing me to want to sit down and play.

So is The Old Republic a game changer for the MMORPG genre? Not from what I've seen. Not by a long shot. Is it a failure? Again, no - with the amount of polish and backing from Bioware and EA, The Old Republic will be a success, at least in the short term, though that's not to say that it's bug or glitch-free. Also, reports of the horrific server queues (2 hours plus) experienced by some players are not what you'd want to be hearing about a game in launch week. I've not experienced any queues myself - the PVE server I'm on isn't completely barren, but has a healthy population to be getting into groups easily, without having to wait to get onto the server. I'd say that it's an interesting experiment in terms of exploring how to tell stories in MMOs, but I think that the storytelling emphasis has gone too far. Players play games to be in control, not to watch cutscenes. There's a balance to be struck somewhere in telling a personalised story and allowing the player to do stuff without having to wait for hours and hours of exposition to play itself out. Star Wars is at its best not when people are sitting (or standing) around mumbling incoherently about midichlorians or the Living Force, hokey religions or ancient weapons, but when the Tibanna Gas hits the fan and the action starts and doesn't stop for half an hour.

I'll be interested to see what happens to the game over the next six months, particularly if they do something with the obligatory, godawful standard GUI (for Yoda's sake, someone show them the Bartender mod for WoW!), and how Bioware reacts to what I expect will be pretty vociferous feedback on how they should improve the game. I'll give the game a few months, but with WoW's next expansion around the corner (which I can't say I'm too fussed about, frankly) and Guild Wars 2 due next year (which I am most certainly fussed about!), The Old Republic's got its work cut out to keep its head above the murky waters of Hutta's polluted swamps... I'm calling it here and now: Free-to-play within two years, three at most.

Byte: Five days in Skyrim

2011-12-18T13:57:00.003Z

I think I'm going to have to re-write my Top 5 favourite videogames. I've stuck in over 120 hours in the last month on the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Skyrim and it's only now I really feel that I could really go about reviewing it.

Obviously, a game this big is not going to be as flawlessly polished as a single-player game with an eight hour, linear campaign. Some people are quoting Skyrim as having at least 300 hours of unique gameplay for a single campaign, and I can well believe it. I've got over 120 hours logged on Steam playing it, and I've just finished the main storyline quest threads (the defeat of Alduin and the Liberation of Skyrim), and while I've completed about 50 side-quest chains, I've not finished any of the main faction quests (Companions, Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, etc), and despite having finished the main storyline quests (and just in time, given that Star Wars: The Old Republic goes live in a couple of days), I'm still motivated to keep playing. In the 120-odd hours of game time so far I've experienced some spectacular bugs - from random crashes to desktop, dragons that don't know which direction they should be flying in, purple placeholders instead of real textures, giants launching mobs into orbit with a swing of their warhammer, and many, many more.

The key to the success of any game isn't whether it's buggy or not, but whether the bugs deter you from playing or not. As with an old favourite of mine, Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Skyrim's bugs and glitches don't kill my desire to play the game. They're annoying, for sure, but I'm always straight back, clicking at the shortcut on the desktop to launch the game again, always wanting more frosty, Nordic fun, punching dragons in the face.

The thing I really love about the Elder Scrolls RPG system is that the character classing doesn't really limit your options to a single character class. So my PC character (with whom I've stuck in the vast majority of playing hours - though I've dabbled with the 360 version as well, which is likewise awesome) is almost a Baldur's Gate style multi-class Fighter-Mage-Thief, given that he's specialising in Heavy Armour, Archery, One-handed weapons and Destruction Magic. He's also a world-class Enchanter and Blacksmith, and a decent lockpicker and sneak. Now that my character is knocking about in the mid-to-late level 40s, I'm mildly surprised (after the utterly broken level-scaling in Oblivion) that I'm still able to compete fairly with scaled enemies in the game world. One thing I like to do is imagine the conversation my character has with dragons as they battle; my character fully clad in Dragonbone armour.

"Hoy, Dov! I'm wearing your Mum! And now I'm going to punch you to death!"

I was pretty fond(ish) of Oblivion (despite its many, many flaws), but the changes to the levelling and the addition of a Fallout-style perks system has really improved the character-customisation aspects of the game. Skyrim doesn't restrict your choices of what skills you can level up - whatever you use the most, you end up specialising in - so you can become a genuine Jack-of-all-trades if you so choose. It's one way of giving the player genuine freedom in terms of play style, and not only that, it works: a heavy armour-wearing ninja-assassin-sneak-thief is a viable possibility, if you're willing to put in the time earning the necessary skills.

One thing that's surprised me, looking at the Steam Achievement stats, is that less than 20% of the player base have had their characters get married. Now, I don't necessarily believe that responsible adults should get married as a matter of course, but in game terms, it's a no-brainer of a decision, given that your spouse opens a shop earning you a tidy profit of 100 septims a day. And also, why would you NOT want to marry Lydia? (Note to trolls: DON'T answer that in the comments... I have a Daedric Sword with 32 bonus points of fire damage...)

It's difficult to know where to start when trying to talk about Skyrim and just how good it is. It's graphically one of the most gorgeous games I've ever played, with stunning scenery, handsome NPCs (Hello, Hroki! Hello, Fastred!) and it's just as pretty at night as it is during the day, if not more so. The aurorae you get to see at night while wandering in the high north are spectacularly good. There are also some lovely set pieces, such as the taking of cities or forts during the Skyrim civil war, as well as some challenging random encounters (it's always fun when a cave bear turns up in the of a dragon battle!), but what I like the most is that there's genuine variety in the quests. Your interaction with the game world isn't limited to killing other people. On the contrary, you can help people find true love or help solve murder cases, deliver messages or carry out errands... the game world is just so rich and diverse and all the better for it. The open worldliness of Oblivion always felt a little directionless, to me. In Skyrim there's always something interesting lurking around a corner. There's just so much out there to be found and played with; and yet, even though I've completed the main "save the world" and "save the Nords" quest threads, I still don't feel like I've seen everything the game has to offer. The flexibility in the character customisation is enticing in the sheer amount of play styles the game can offer you. I've discovered 17 different Shouts, (including - SPOILER WARNING! - the one that calls in your own personal close air support dragon to sort out anyone who's giving you too much trouble) though I haven't really played about with most of them in combat yet. When you can Shout people off the top of towers and watch them ragdoll pathetically down the side of a mountain to their deaths, it's not really motivating you to try out all the others...

I think the game I've put most hours into (barring World of Warcraft) over the last couple of years is Dragon Age: Origins (171 hours, according to my Steam stats). I can easily imagine that being doubled in Skyrim before I start being bored with it. Skyrim is such a compelling game world that I'm even dreaming about it - a sure sign of dangerous levels of obsession. There's just so much more I still want to do, even with my 100+ hours main character. It's not even about getting the "achievements" - that kind of thing doesn't make me want to play. No, I like setting my own targets, such as topping out skill stats in all of my main "class" skills - so in the case of Cathal, my fighter-mage-thief, I want 100 in Archery, Destruction Magic, One-Handed Weapons, Heavy Armour, Enchanting, Smithing, Sneak and Lockpicking. As leader of the Thieves Guild, one "achievement" I do actually quite want is to restore the Thieves Guild to its former prosperity. (Incidentally, if you are playing a Thief/Assassin type character, make sure you do the Nightingales questline as soon as possible - the armour you get for it is awesome - not just in terms of stats; aesthetically it's fabulous.) It seems only fair that under my leadership, though by "leadership" I actually mean "doing all the jobs that Vex and Delvin can't be arsed to do themselves"... after all, I sold my soul to Nocturnal in order to oust Mercer Frey, so I might as well get the Thieves Guild up and running. And then once my Sneak skills are up to scratch, I can make a start on the Dark Brotherhood jobs.

I also want to own fully upgraded houses in all the Skyrim holds that I can (I already have houses in Whiterun, Riften and Windhelm) and give legendary dragonbone armour to all my housecarls. There are just so many things I still have to do. So I guess I better stop writing and just do it...

Bark: A final Project Werewolf update

2011-12-16T00:25:00.002Z

Big thanks to everyone who donated to my MoSpace page or gave me cash in person to support a very good cause. All in all, I raised £123, which is a whole £23 (or 23%, statistics fans - not adjusted for inflation!) better than last year. I'm hoping to raise even more next year, potentially by looking even more ridiculous and outlandish.

The Shaving Of The Mo was met with a mixed reception at my school. While some claimed I look far younger without the Mo, lots of people also said it really suited me and that I should have kept it. Of course, the deciding opinion was that of my girlfriend, who only tolerated it because it was to raise money for charity. She'd chuck me out of the house if I even tried to keep it permanently. Either that or shave it off in my sleep (possibly with my eyebrows as well). So I'm back to being (occasionally) clean-shaven. I don't miss the itching of the facial fungus, but I do miss the opportunity of looking enigmatic and wise when the occasion arose to stroke my Mo thoughtfully whenever I was asked a question...

Bark: An elegant facial hair, from a more civilised age

2011-11-24T21:22:00.003Z

Movember is coming to a close, and it's time to get the begging bowl out.

Project Werewolf is progressing nicely (since I don't quite have the chops for a full-on Captain Price SAS handlebar), and I'd like to direct everyone to my MoSpace page if they would care to donate a little money to a really good cause.

My Mo is much more fearsomely bushy than last year.

Byte: For the love of Lydia

2011-11-21T22:12:00.002Z

It seems like I'm not the only one with a soft spot for Skyrim's Lydia. Herr Walker's tragic account of her untimely demise in his game is both touching, yet mildly disturbing.

John, my shield-brother, I feel your pain. And then I reach for the reload button.

Lydia, my love, I would never let such a terrible thing happen to you... not after all the effort and expense I went to enchanting your weapons and armour...

Byte: Don't cross the memes!

2011-11-21T18:52:00.003Z

I suppose this was inevitable, given all the Chuck Norris jokes that happen in the General and Trade channels.

Chuck Norris vs. WoW - the advert.

Byte: Skyrim thoughts

2011-11-13T00:09:00.002Z

Holy crap, this game is good. (Here be spoilers, by the way...)

I have to admit, I'd been tempted to wait until the price dropped to £20 or so before getting it, but I'm glad I went for the Day One purchase. I liked Oblivion quite a lot, but I was only ever really able to play it by avoiding levelling up like the plague, so to avoid the spectacularly broken auto-scaling system that levelled up enemies to keep you "challenged" - that is, dead at the slightlest provocation. Skyrim is much more like Fallout 3, in that if you go too far off the beaten track, there'll be a giant or something ready to hand your head back to you on a platter, but if you follow some kind of sensible progression, going through the main story and not straying too far into the spectacularly gorgeous wilderness, you should be okay for the most part.

But I'm rambling already. I suppose I should start at the beginning. If you've played Morrowind and Oblivion, it's probably not going to come as a surprise to find out that you start out the game as a prisoner. You're just about to get executed (for crossing the border into Skyrim at an inopportune time and walking into a bit of local trouble and being mistaken for a rebel) when suddenly a big, scaly deus ex machina turns up and starts gobbing fire over the pesky Legion guards that were (quite literally) about to knock your block off. In the confusion, you get to escape, notionally picking a side for who's going to walk you through the tutorial quest. In the opening sequence, the first thing that strikes you is just how beautiful the game is. The character animations (especially the lip-sync) is a whole lot more naturalistic compared to Oblivion, and the dragon is fearsomely impressive. But more on dragons later. The voice acting is improved, too, though a lot of NPCs do tend to run out of new lines of dialogue all too quickly.

Once you escape Helgen and get out into Skyrim proper, it's the sheer scale of the game that takes your breath away. Oblivion was pretty, and so was Fallout 3 in a post-apocalyptic kind of way, but Skyrim is a whole order of magnitude prettier. If you see a mountain on the horizon, you can walk there (at least in theory), but the standout feature for me, graphically, is the water. The rivers. The waterfalls. The streams in Whiterun. The lake outside Riften... The water effects in Skyrim are absolutely stunning. And the weather effects aren't bad, either. Snow. Fog. Rain. Mist. Blizzards on the top mountains. It's all there and just adds to the sense of immersion.

If you decided to follow the story quests rather than just play with the game world after finishing the tutorial, the first city you'll come to is Whiterun. You have to take a message to the local Jarl (the ruler of the city and local area) warning him about the dragon that smacked the shit out of Helgen, and obviously, the Jarl uses this as an opportunity to basically turn you into his latest dogsbody. Within a few quests, you'll be facing off with that very dragon with a few dozen local guardsmen to help. As set pieces go, it's pretty fucking spectacular. I was so taken aback I forgot to take screenshots. After this encounter, you get your first "Shout" and find out that you're "Dragonborn", meaning that you have a natural ability to speak the language of dragons, which obviously means you should immediately go forth and start killing them and stealing their souls. Well, okay then. If I must...

The greatest benefit of completing this quest is that the Jarl of Whiterun appoints you "Thane" of the city and assigns you Lydia, a "Housecarl", who I have been steadfastly trying to keep alive, given my terrible record in Fallout 3 with getting my companions and assistants killed. I'm really rather fond of Lydia, as she is tough, loyal, a good fighter, and very forgiving when I accidentally shoot her with an arrow or set her on fire with a spell. She still "carries my burdens" without complaint. (I really hope that's a euphemism, given that she has an "owned" bed in my - now fully furnished - house in Whiterun). She was vital in helping me defeat a dragon on the way up the 7000 steps to see the Greybeards at their base, conveniently placed on the top of a remote mountain (hence the 7000 steps - and no, I didn't count them, but it's a bloody long way). I think I may try to marry her. AND IN THE GAME! (*coughs*)

My character is now up to level 15, and is half decent with a bow, heavy armour and single-handed weapons. I'm also experimenting with dual-wielding destruction spells (perhaps an odd choice for someone primarily speccing as a Warrior). The Fallout 3 style Perks are a nice improvement to the levelling system compared to Oblivion. All skills contribute to you levelling up, so you can get to be a real all-rounder, being skilled in everything from Alchemy to Smithing or Lockpicking to Two-Handed Weapons and everything in-between.

I'm loving the game so far. It's not without the odd bug or glitch, but I've found it much more compelling than Oblivion. I can see myself playing this more than both Dragon Age games, and (according to Steam) I've sunk upwards of 200 hours into those. I could probably put 100 hours in Skyrim on just one character. It's vast, beautiful and utterly compelling - a perfect antidote to the scourge of the modern, military first person shooter. And thank Akatosh for that.

Byte: THERE IS ONLY WAR!

2011-10-02T21:23:00.002Z

This post merits both a YAY and an EPIC FAIL, for two slightly different reasons. I had Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine pre-ordered on Xbox 360 well over a year ago, because I knew it would be right up my street of man-shooting, Ork-bashing, daemon-rending unbridled slaughter, with ridiculously macho metal shoulderpads and slightly fascist overtones. Before I go any further, I should say at this point HERE BE SPOILERS. Spoilers as big as an Ork Warboss's teeth...

Unfortunately, before I could really put more than a few hours into it, last weekend my 160GB Xbox 360 Elite died an ignominous death, by not actually quite dying (no dramatic red ring of death, or anything like that) but one evening my lady turned it on to watch a DVD and while it made all the right noises and booted up, it steadfastly refused to output video or audio, despite me resetting the video output to default (twice) and trying both the HDMI cable and the component AV output ports.

So instead of forking out £200 I don't have on a new Xbox 360, instead I picked up a PC copy of Space Marine, since that was a slightly cheaper option. I've ploughed through the single player campaign in a little over six or seven hours, but had a rather nice time. Some reviewers (quite rightly) have critisized it for being rather on the conservative side, particularly in the plot and storytelling, which is really rather predictable and Captain Titus (while quite nicely voiced by Mark Strong) suffers from being a thoroughly dull protagonist, evidently from Dullsville, Macragge. The final battle with the Chaos lord, Nemeroth, is also rather an anti-climax, given that it's QTE-tastic, which basically sucks all the real skill out of it - the boss battle with the Ork Warboss Grimskull is much more challenging and rewarding. The epilogue is also rather an anti-climax, with Titus being (somewhat predictably) being taken into custody by the Inquisition because of his seeming resistance to the Warp... There are also other annoyances - it would be nice if enemy NPCs had more than half a dozen lines of dialogue... Hearing Orks yell "More humans to kill!" or "Kill those Space Marines!" for the two hundredth time in the space of two hours gets rather tiresome. The Chaos hordes show a similar lack of verbal dexterity too, though at least you don't have to put up with them for so long, given that Chaos forces only show up within the last couple of hours of the game.

But, BUT... if Space Marine has a saving grace, it's this: the combat. It gets a little relentless at times (particularly since the story exposition isn't terribly interesting or well handled), but by the Emperor, this game makes you feel like you can kick the ass of an Ork horde by yourself. This is mainly because of one fact: you can. Lots of people initially said Space Marine would be Warhammer 40,000: Gears of War. While I see the comparison, they couldn't be more wrong. Space Marine is only superficially like Gears of War. Sure, they have the big guns, shoulder pads and token female characters, but Space Marines don't need a cover system. You can hide behind crates if you must, but a true Space Marine just kicks ass bigger, better and faster than anyone else.

What I really love is the melee system. You can really be aggressive and bash your way through massive groups of enemies if you know what you're doing with the combo system. The melee attack-stun-execution system is very well balanced, and it drives the whole game, given that you don't have regenerating health (though you do have regenerating shields, Halo 1 stylée) and if you want to heal up, you have to get close and dirty, stunning and executing enemies. It's visceral and satisfying and in many cases it's tempting to forego the Power Axe in favour of the Chainsword because it has better execution animations and it's slightly easier to chain together stun-execute combos. The Thunder Hammer is a thing of joy, though the downside of using that is you're only able to use your pistol and Bolter as ranged weapons.

Some (OXM 360 Magazine amongst others) have described the ranged weapons as rather clunky and uninspiring... Personally, I don't have that much of an issue with them. I actually rather like the simplicity of a Bolter Pistol & Chainsword combo, as while it may not be the most powerful combination of weapons, it is the most naturalistic for senior Astartes in the Warhammer 40,000 lore. The Stalker bolter and Storm bolter (the latter of which only makes an appearance in the final chapter of the single player campaign) are both lovely. I'm less convinced about the Melta gun, which I found thoroughly useless and I wasn't too fond of the Vengeance launcher, given that it is quite fiddly to use, but don't seem to have that much in terms of stopping power. The Lascannon is great (particularly in the set pieces you get to use it against Ork Nobs), though ammo for it is a little scarce for you to truly make the most of its power and the few occasions you get your mitts on heavy plasma cannons or autocannons are real highlights.

One complaint I've also seen is that you don't get to use the jump pack enough. You get to use it in three chapters out of the eighteen in the story, and I think that's about right, since it's ridiculously overpowered. The way in which the use of it is taken away from you on each occasion is quite contrived, but it makes sense in terms of game balance. The way weapon and ability unlocks (such as Fury and Marksman modes) are handled is very well done and the enemies also scale well. The challenge of the game increases signficantly once the primary protagonists switch from Orks to Chaos, but this is also well handled, as by then you should have gotten to grips with the right tactics and will have unlocked the superior Fury mode, which basically turns you into a rampaging angel of death, if you select your weapons and use the melee combos effectively.

While it's a shame that Space Marine doesn't really try to push the boundaries of the genre, or even really make the most of its source material (you can't help but feel that Relic wanted to make a "banker" title to make money and prove they could develop games in this genre before attempting something really ambitious), it's still a very solid game and an enjoyable enough way of wiling away a couple of lazy autumn weekend afternoons. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, maybe it is, but hey - there's always the inevitable sequel to look forward to...

Byte: You are dead

2011-08-17T23:37:00.003Z

YOU ARE DEAD.

That's a message that you get to see a lot whenever you play ARMA: Cold War Assault - the game previously known as Operation Flashpoint.

I've written quite extensively about Operation Flashpoint before, not least a review of the Xbox port of the game that was released way back in 2005 (itself over four years after the original PC release) but thanks to Bohemia Interactive re-releasing it as a standalone game in the last week or so (and me being on holiday with quite a bit of time to kill) I've been getting reacquainted with it. Sadly, ARMA: Cold War Assault is missing the rather splendid Red Hammer add-on campaign (though it does include Resistance), but even after a good ten years (and more) since the original release, at £3.49 on Steam, it's still terrific value for money.

Considering that the game is now over ten years old, it still stands up rather well. Thanks to its scale, it was never exactly what you'd call a looker, even back in 2001 - like another long-standing favourite of mine that I'm replaying again (Deus Ex) - the graphics and the animation were always on the rather shoddy side, but it's not as much of a barrier to playing the game as you might think. This is war, after all: it's supposed to be dull, muddy and ugly...

What makes the game special is its sheer brutality. This isn't a military-themed FPS like Call of Duty that mollycoddles you with regenerating health and ammo that you can collect faster than you can fire it... oh no. Operation Flashpoint (sorry, Bohemia, I can't get used to the new name) will make you wait ten or fifteen minutes for you to get into the action and kill you DEAD-DEAD-DEAD before you've even fired a shot if you let your attention wander for even half a second. Oh, and then, just to add insult to injury, the miserly save game allowance will make you replay the majority of the level, not the single encounter you just stuffed up.

But you know what? The game's all the better for it. I think every single 12 year old who plays Call of Duty: Black Ops (just because they think Call Of Duty is the BEST GAME EVAR because it's the most widely hyped) should be strapped to a chair and be made to play Operation Flashpoint without breaks for at least twelve hours. They should do this for two reasons.

1) So that they release that real life and real combat with firearms doesn't have a quicksave or checkpoint system, and

2) So that they get some understanding that war isn't the exciting, glamorous, thrill-ride all the other FPS games they've played makes them think it is.

Most videogames try to empower the player - sometimes to ludicrous degrees. Take COD4, for example - where you can recover from bullet wounds simply by hiding behind a door or under a table for a few seconds. Operation Flashpoint doesn't do this. Not by a long shot. It makes the player acutely aware of their vulnerability and mortality - and furthermore, it follows through on the consequences of making a mistake in a way that's almost unthinkable in games published today. There's no quicksave or quickload, so instead of only losing a few minutes of progress, you might have to replay half an hour or more of a level (depending on when you used your one precious save per mission, or when the auto-retry save point is set). So when you factor in the variability of the AI and the fact that the outcomes of each individual enemy contact can have vastly different outcomes for your squad, depending on the casualties you incur at key points of the mission, a ten minute mission might take you over an hour to complete, after all the retries, during which you learn the correct tactics to use and how to approach an objective properly according to the terrain. This is no linear, corridor shooter: there are so many variables in play that even with the same initial conditions at the start of a mission and any subsequent replays, there's no real way of predicting what will happen.

I can't imagine many 12 year old COD-kiddies being able to stick it out for even a handful of missions. But they should be made to play it - if only to realise that true success has to be worked for and takes skill, persistence and not an inconsiderable amount of luck. What worries me about the "achievements" ethic of modern videogame design is that success only really requires persistence - you put in the time, you get the unlocks and then even people who are more inherently skilled than you (but don't have as much time to play the game) don't stand a chance because they don't have the unlocks that kill everyone on the map without the chance of fighting back. The vast majority of modern game design (especially in multiplayer) rewards sheer bloody-minded persistence over skill, which is why you'll never see me playing COD4 online, but might find me knocking about on an Unreal Tournament 2004 server.

I often wonder about the social messages videogames give our young folk - whether intentionally or not. In my (I suppose rather quaint and old-fashioned) view, anything that sends a message of consequence-free failure and gives reward for simply sticking with something rather than actually trying to get better at it, is not something that should be applauded or encouraged. Though to be fair, I don't think it's just videogames that do this- I think the vast majority of our entertainment media (be it film, games or TV) does the public a massive disservice by assuming that because people have greater choice now, things need to be more instantly engaging, otherwise people will simply switch off or turn over to do something else. All this does is breed a generation with pathetically short attention spans and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's no real reason to assume that teenagers twenty years ago (such as myself) are so different from teenagers from today. I just think that people are just more likely to reach for an excuse these days. Lord knows that if some of the kids I taught put half the effort into doing their work that they did for finding excuses for their lack of effort and poor behaviour, they wouldn't need to make excuses, because they'd be too busy to be bored.

This is why I think all these COD-kiddies, used to easy success and reward and no consequence failure, would be better people if they had to sit down to play something like Operation Flashpoint for a day. Our failures - what they cost us, and how we rebound from them - tell us about the kind of person we are. One thing that I think has been lost in modern society is that sometimes it's okay to fail - that we will learn more from a hard-fought failure than an easy win. People are so petrified of failure these days that the producers of mainstream entertainment (not to mention our providers of mass news media) are afraid to challenge people on every level - from their preconceptions and beliefs to what they might find interesting and entertaining. My fear is that if we (as a society and civilization) lose the ability to challenge ourselves in meaningful ways, humanity will stagnate and regress into tribalism and extremism - and over the past decade or two I've seen some signs that this is already happening, with the rise of religious extremism and the rise of the fear of anyone being seen to do anything that might be construed as being offensive to anyone (I don't just mean political correctness, but that's a large part of it).

Real life, for the vast majority of people, isn't a high-tech, lightning-paced, glamorous rollercoaster of easy success and cheap thrills. Instead, it's dull, difficult, mundane and packed with more failures and defeats than victories. Life inevitably has more losers than winners, but that's not to say that failure can't be rewarding, especially if it teaches you something. And that's the moral of Operation Flashpoint in a nutshell for me. It's hard - by goodness, it's hard - but all those failures and learning experiences help make the rare victories all the sweeter.

YOU ARE DEAD.

RETRY OR EXIT?

[clicks RETRY]

Bark: Culture vs. Anti-culture

2011-08-16T15:13:00.002Z

It's been a little over a week since the start of the England Riots, and still the aftermath rumbles on with "Big Broken Society" Dave and Milidum spouting all sorts of rubbish about "moral collapse" and "knee-jerk gimmicks".

One thing that caught my eyes and ears was the Newsnight discussion with David Starkey - if you only caught the out of context condemnation of Starkey's "the whites have become black" line, I recommend you watch the entire debate.

While some have described the comment as racist, I'm not so sure - at least, I don't think Starkey meant it as derogatory to black people. I would actually agree with Starkey in the sense that in some echelons of our society, "white" (in other words, traditionally British) culture is being supplanted by "black" gangsta culture, imported over from America and the Carribean. I use the term culture rather loosely here.

I think the mistake that was made in the debate on Newsnight was to try and label one culture as being inherently "right" and the other "wrong" (the implication being that Starkey thought that "black" culture was wrong - again, I'm not sure this is the case - there's plenty of room for the possibility that both cultures are rubbish), rather than try to understand why this shift has happened.

Milidum put it down to the "me first" culture and talked a lot "responsibility" and "inequality" without really saying anything we didn't already know twenty years ago. Society has always contained inequality, and if anything, the gap between top and bottom has been getting wider since Thatcher came to power in 1979 and 13 years of Labour government didn't do a damn thing to address it effectively. The poorest sections of society have historically always been largely ignored by the political system, mainly because there's not enough votes in it. Instead, the Labour government threw them bones in the form of benefits and tax credits, hoping it would paper over the cracks.

Unfortunately, they forgot one key psychological aspect of the human psyche: something that has not been earned has no value. So the poor and the forgotten were given enough money to scrape together a TV, a Blackberry or iPhone and internet access, but weren't made to get off their arses for it. With this wonderful technology, paid for by the state, they got fed a diet of TV, films, games and internet sites glorifying violence and materialism - they saw a better life in a bigger TV screen, and the internet allowed them (with the help of Twitter and Blackberry Messenger) to run rings around the government and the police for a few days - a whole country shaken to its core by a few thousand immoral, self-centred thugs with just enough brain power to be trouble.

I think it's telling that the majority of the looters went for TVs and consumer electronics, rather than jewelry. It tells you what's valued by society when silicon is more prized than gold (Whoever said money can't buy happiness clearly hadn't heard of flat-screen plasma TVs).

"How did this happen?" ask the social commentators and politicians - I can only throw in my two pence - there's no reason why my theory should be any more correct or wrong than that of the "experts". It doesn't do any good labelling parts of our society "broken" or "sick" and then beating them with a big stick (such as the proposals to remove whole families from social housing and stop their benefits if a family member was part of the looting) - how does that create a more equitable society?

People in so-called sink estates look up to the pimps, drug dealers and gangsters because they have everything that the media in our society tells them is desireable - money, drugs, guns, cars, women, power. By comparison, people in real authority (politicians, police, teachers, doctors - the people who should be real role models for our society) are made to look weak and ineffectual by the news media and the government falls over backwards to not offend anyone rather than show authority.

"British" culture has become so anodyne and uninspiring that it shouldn't be any wonder that the people who need the most help and direction in our society look to people willing to provide them with a vision - even if it is destructive, amoral and anti-social. I can tell I'm getting old and increasingly intolerant, because I can't help feeling some sort of nostalgia for my formative years under Thatcher - a lot of what she did was short-sighted, socially devisive and destructive, but you know that there's no way in hell she'd put up with shit like this...

This weekend I visited Chartwell, Winston Churchill's house in Kent. Now he was a leader - a unifier - exactly the kind of person we need now. Instead, what have we got? A man who couldn't unify a couple of magnets and a man who couldn't inspire his way out of a wet paper bag. Maker preserve us...

Byte: Beyond Good and Evil

2011-07-29T23:27:00.004Z

As part of my self-set homework for this summer's holiday, I've set myself a few targets. I'm acutely aware that my completion rate, even for games that I really like, is pretty bloody woeful - probably only one game in five, at best.

So this summer I want to knock three (less than 1% of my total games collection) games off my "to complete" list. I'm being remarkably self-disciplined, and playing the games in order of priority, with only a bit of cocking about on World of Warcraft to form a distraction. Given that I don't have a very good track record with sticking to targets, I've tried to be realistic by setting a priority that's remotely achieveable for at least two of the games I want to complete, by tackling them in increasing order of length.

Last on the list will be The Witcher 2, which I haven't made much headway with so far - not due to a lack of enthusiasm, but because I can tell it's the kind of game that really requires a lot of singleminded dedication to get through (like its predecessor), and unless I'm on holiday, I don't have a lot of that to spare. Second on my list is a game that ranks in my all-time top 5 games, yet I never quite got around to finishing - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In previous playthroughs I've completed about 80% of the game, but like my previous mental block with Deus Ex, I couldn't quite bring myself to finishing the game off - it's one of those games you never quite want to end. However, this summer, I really want to finish it, though I doubt I will play many of the optional missions - I'll just stick to the main story missions, any maybe play around the edges if I have time.

But the first game on my list this summer is arguably the greatest videogame ever to come out of France: Beyond Good and Evil. The long-awaited sequel's been getting some hype recently from (series designer) Michel Ancel about "needing power" beyond the current hardware generation of today's consoles, which hopefully gives some indication as to the ambition of its design. Previously, I'd played through about half the game (completing the Nutrapils Factory section) and really enjoyed it (even the stealth sections - which I traditionally find frustrating due to my chronic lack of subtlety and patience)

Currently, I'm approaching the end of the game (with only the section on the moon of Hillys to go - once I collect enough pearls for the upgrades) and even eight years after I played it for the first time, the game really stands up well, barring a few issues with the 3D camera, which veers on the side of hateful at times. I probably shouldn't say too much until I've actually finished it, but I've loved replaying the game and reacquianting myself with the excellent world and game design. Jade, Pey'j and Double H are really delightful characters. Pey'j, in particular, could be really tiresome if he'd been handled badly, but he's very well scripted and voice-acted, so ends up being quite endearing - especially in light of what happens to him halfway through the game.

In many ways, Beyond Good and Evil is a family-friendly GTA, in that it includes open-world driving elements, third-person combat and a few mini-games thrown in for good measure. The story is also simple but well-executed and engaging, and also judged for pace - since the game can be completed in under fifteen hours (even if you spend a fair amount of time cocking about in the mini-games), there's not much padding to be found (though some of the stealth sections are a bit brutal - particularly the Alpha Sections HQ and the bits in the Slaughterhouse with the insta-kill sentry guns). Overall, though, I definitely made a good decision to revisit the game - it's a real joy to play something that's had so much thought put into every element of the design - though I'll talk more about that when I've finished the game (hopefully) within the next couple of days. I'm just hoping that the finale isn't quite so anti-climactic as I found Deus Ex's, after a similar wait to finally get around to completing it...

Bark/Byte: Nerd Lust

2011-07-21T18:16:00.001Z

Is it wrong to want one of these?

Bark: Need Another Space Administration

2011-07-17T08:23:00.003Z

Don't get me wrong, NASA have done amazing work over the years, but the decision (forced on NASA by budget cuts) to mothball the Space Shuttle before they even have a next generation replacement capable of putting people is orbit is, in my opinion, a catastrophic backwards step we may later regret.

Look at this and tell me there's nothing we can learn of value from going out into Space. (And bear in mind that the flat screen monitor you're viewing it on was developed directly from technology used by the Space Shuttle programme.)

Bark: New look

2011-07-12T21:23:00.002Z

Since I'm hopefully going to start posting a little more frequently around here from now on, I've decided to revitalise the layout and tweak the template of my blog, since I've not changed it since I first started posting on this blog, many, many years ago.

I may give the colour scheme a few more nudges in the direction of spectral frequencies that are less likely to make my (paltry) readership's eyes bleed over the course of the next week or two, but generally I quite like the new look.

Bark: If you don't ask, you don't get...

2011-07-12T20:58:00.003Z

Fair play, dude.

Would now be a good time to ask for a date with Jennifer Morrison? No? Damn...

Bark: Round up

2011-07-08T19:26:00.003Z

It's been a rather epic couple of weeks since I last posted. In the last ten days or so I have passed my NQT year, been told that I don't actually have Lyme disease (just some other horrible tick-borne bacterial infection), acquired the latest albums by Moby and Mogwai and signed up for two interesting looking practical art courses at Art In Action, which will be kick-starting my summer holiday in a fortnight's time.

It's hard to believe that there are only two weeks of the academic year left - and that it's now over two years since I left IBM. The time has absolutely flown by, and I don't regret the change at all. Sure, the 30% pay cut was and is increasingly painful, given the escalation of living costs at the moment, but I'm feeling much more fulfilled in my job than when I was stuck working home-alone, shunting numbers around spreadsheets for 10 hours a day. And that sense of job satisfaction is easily worth the pay cut, because there's no point being well-paid if you're miserable in your job. The holidays help too, of course. That and the fact that as a science teacher I get paid to blow shit up and play with all sorts of lovely kit and experiments. The only better job I can think of at the moment is being a pyrotechnician in a special effects company (where you get to blow shit up on an industrial scale). The other thing that's surprised me is that for a self-confessed misanthrope and borderline sociopath, I actually really like working with kids. They can be dumb and exasperating as hell sometimes, but they're never dull and they're often funny, inspired and insightful. So while I'm horribly tired and in desperate need of my summer break, I am looking forward to next year, especially since I'll be much more of a known quantity in the school.

Tomorrow I'll be in London looking for a bit of extra inspiration and more ideas to take into the classroom with me, as I'll be visiting the Royal Society Summer Science expo, which I've been looking forward to for a couple of weeks, since one of my colleagues told me about it. I'm told there's a lot of hands-on stuff, plus the opportunity to pick the brains of some of the scientists behind the research. I'm particularly looking forward to having a poke at the aurora and fundamental particles exhibitions. Fingers crossed, I'll be able to pick up a few posters and resources to decorate my lab and use in lessons. I'm guessing that the place will probably be crawling with teachers - it'll be interesting to see if I bump into any of my old PGCE cohort while I'm there...

More blogging later, but first, I need to make the most of my Friday night by doing some gaming... I can't keep my teacher brain turned on this late on a Friday. IT IS NOT PERMITTED.

Bark: Every cloud has a silver lining

2011-06-29T19:54:00.002Z

I've just finished collating and cross-referencing all the evidence in my NQT folder, which in my currently brain-addled, fevered and achey state has taken all afternoon (albeit interspersed with a bit of Wimbledon-watching and a trip to the supermarket for food). If they judge it by weight, I don't think I have anything to worry about. Will be nice to hand it in tomorrow. I would get seriously drunk to celebrate, but that's not a good idea considering the medication I'm on right now. I guess I'll have to make do with a nice cup of caffiene-free vanilla tea and some white chocolate instead...

Bark: Tau Day

2011-06-29T08:27:00.001Z

Some people clearly need better things to get worked up about. This is the kind of thing that gives Mathematicians a bad name.

Bark: Run for cover (work)

2011-06-29T06:34:00.002Z

I tend not to blog about work, for patently obvious reasons, but today is an exception, because I've actually had to take a day off due to illness (only the second day I've taken off all year). Like most teachers, I tend to go to work even if I'm feeling a little peaky (which isn't often, since sharing a school with 1500+ filthy teenagers tends to give your immune system a good workout - I really don't get ill that often anymore, compared to when I worked from home), because it's a pain in the arse setting cover work. Writing cover work is more difficult than planning a normal lesson, because there are no guarantees that the lesson will be taught by a subject specialist or even a fully qualified teacher, given that most schools these days have dedicated, full-time cover supervisors (and dedicated is the right word - I think it's a far tougher job than teaching, as you have to be ready to teach anything to anyone, for a fraction of the pay of a qualified teacher).

Having to take today off is particularly galling, because I'd normally be teaching five out of six scheduled periods - which is a hell of a lot of cover work to plan and write up. It's not ideal for anyone, really, especially the cover supervisors and the technicians that have to put together new sets of resources for my lessons. Unfortunately, there's not much choice in the matter, because I'm well beyond the point of feeling peaky.

I got bitten by a tick a couple of Saturdays ago when I was visiting Virginia Woolf's writing retreat, Monk's House, (yes, I am now officially old, if it wasn't already confirmed - I'm a member of the National Trust) and I could probably place where I picked up the little bloodsucking bastard up to within about 50 feet, since there was only one piece of long grass on the site that I walked through. I went to bed on the Saturday night not noticing anything unusual, but when I woke up on the Sunday, there the little chitinous fucker was, attached to my lower left leg. Now, as a science teacher (who, ironically, was supposed to be teaching my Year 7s about parasites today), I know ticks are disease vectors and carry all sorts of horrible bacteria of the distinctly unfriendly variety, chief among them being Borrellia Burgdorferi, the cause of Lyme Disease.

Being fairly knowledgeable about ticks, I knew how to remove it safely (that is, without leaving mouthparts or even the whole head behind) and got the little bastard off, disposed of it and disinfected the site of the bite. Given that the infection rate of Lyme disease is quite low (generally ticks need to have been feeding for more than 24 hours to pass on the bacteria), evidently I was unlucky, because last Friday I started getting secondary symptoms of Lyme disease - tightness of the muscles around the bite, headaches and some muscle stiffness (which I attributed to getting a poor night's sleep and a pollen count so high it would give me a migraine anyway). Over the weekend, however, that turned into headaches, loss of concentration, muscle and joint pain and a fever, with the skin around where I'd been bitten coming out nicely (read "horribly") with a blood-red rash. It's not uncommon for symptoms to wait a couple of weeks (or even a month) before manifesting themselves (again, something I knew after reading up about Lyme disease when I'd heard it talked about on House), so on Monday I took advantage of a gap in my timetable to get in to get in to see my GP, who told me it probably was indeed Lyme disease, gave me a blood test on the spot (the results of which I should get on Friday) and prescribed me Doxycycline, a broad-spectrum antibiotic so powerful that it can be used to treat bubonic plague, MRSA and malaria.

The medicine itself has some nasty side effects, not least photosensitivity (just as well that I'm a natural sun-dodger) and instructions to not lie down for 30 minutes after taking the medicine to prevent irritation and ulceration of the gullet... It also makes me so nauseous that it's difficult to find the will to eat - and I've got two weeks of this. Though I suppose the bit that really adds insult to injury is that I've got to completely avoid alcohol while I'm taking the medicine. Great news for my liver and my waistline, maybe, but it means I can't even celebrate the end of my NQT year. I had my final assessment observation yesterday (the only reason I went into work at all - couldn't the symptoms have waited another week before really kicking in?) and it went pretty well, considering that it was a shortened lesson at the end of the day (30 minutes rather than 50, because of an early finish for the day, as our year 11s had their celebration assembly in the afternoon) and that I was running a fever and felt like crap.

Anyway, I think I've written enough for now, so I'm going to do some cover work of my own: bed covers...

Byte: Here Be Dragons

2011-06-28T22:52:00.001Z

I wasn't alone this year in finding Dragon Age II a little on the disappointing side. While it had great characters and a decent enough story, the ending was anti-climactic to say the least and some was the game design was on the wrong side of lazy, with cut-and-paste dungeons galore and far too much padding in the action sequences with trash mobs. I also wasn't especially fond of the way BioWare slimmed down the RPG elements and slimmed down the talents and skills system and the inventory management - I prefer my RPGs with lots to fiddle with and customise.

So I decided to return to Dragon Age: Origins and finish my playthrough as a rogue (I previously completed it with a mage - a class that ends up being ridiculously overpowered at the end of the game - as mages should be!). My rogue is a human noble, which I basically picked because I want to be King (AND IN THE GAME!) - what can I say? Queen Anora is a cutie. Even though it's kind of like kicking a puppy while its looking up at you lovingly, the completist in me led me to exile Alistair after the Landsmeet and conscript Loghain into the Grey Wardens, simply for the irony value.

I took some slightly different routes on my play through - I sided with the clearly deranged Branka in the Anvil of the Void quest, which was a particularly tough battle, since Shale defected over to support Caridin, so I had to fight the battle with an incomplete party. Though at least the pragmatic pay-off was be that I had a squad of ridiculously tough golems to help take on the Archdemon at the finale in Denerim.

I suppose the thing I really prefer in Dragon Age: Origins compared to Dragon Age II is that the combat is much more tactical and requires careful management, even on low difficulty settings. The advanced tactics settings (provided you configure them correctly) do streamline the combat to some degree (purists can turn them off, naturally), but combat with bosses and multiple mobs can quickly get away from you if you don't keep a close eye on the health of all your characters. The other curious thing about Dragon Age is that the best party configuration isn't Warrior-heavy (unlike Baldur's Gate, say). Two mages is practically compulsory at all times (one for DPS and another for DPS/healing), with a warrior acting as a tank and a rogue acting as ranged DPS or back-stabby DPS from stealth, along with the obligatory trap-finding and locked chest opening duties. The story in Origins is also a heck of a lot more multi-layered than in Dragon Age II, though perhaps some of the characters aren't quite so well defined in Origins as they are in the sequel. The other really impressive thing in Origins is that (appropriately) all of the different origin stories for the protagonist are interesting and worth playing, with characters you meet at the beginning of the game coming back for cameos later. Some are more significant than others (especially Jowan, from the Mage origin story).

Dragon Age: Origins, in my opinion, is by far the superior RPG of the two games, both in terms of storytelling and RPG mechanics, and while it might lack some of the immediacy of the Mass Effects or the more formal fantasy setting of something like Baldur's Gate 2, it certainly makes up for it in terms of depth and execution. Here's hoping that the seemingly inevitable Dragon Age III will be more like Origins than Dragon Age II... but somehow, given the direction Bioware have been moving in lately, I doubt it.

Byte: I have a need...

2011-06-21T22:33:00.003Z

... a Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit.

I picked up NFS:HP about a month ago, when it was on sale for around £23 in HMV, after having my interest in the game piqued by playing it a few times on the demo pod at the GAME in Guildford, but it's only really in the last week or so that I've really started devoting a bit of play time to it. Oh man, do I regret that, because it's a terribly sexy and shiny racing game.

This shouldn't be too much of a surprise, given that it comes from the Criterion stable; home to the Burnout series - of which Burnout 3: Takedown has to rate as one of my favourite racing games ever, particularly in the wonderfully brutal multiplayer modes.

Hot Pursuit's twist is that you get to play the game from the perspective of both sides of the law - as a cop and a law-breaking street racer. The physics of the car handling modelling is spot on for an arcade racer, striking a good balance between being realistic enough to allow for proper power-sliding or drifting around corners, yet not so twitchy that the handling model will throw you off the track at the merest mistake. You're also given gadgets, such as EMPs or spike strips to help you evade capture or take down suspects - with the Seacrest Police Department missions also giving you the option of setting up road blocks or calling in helicopter support.

The game is also well balanced and the difficulty in single player mode is nicely pitched to allow a novice to progress yet still challenge a more experienced player in order to earn gold medal in each event. Interestingly, I've enjoyed the law enforcement missions more than the racer missions, perhaps because they are slightly more challenging in the win and penalty conditions. The mission and track design is solid, if perhaps a bit too familiar to Burnout 3 veterans. The gadgets do certainly liven up the missions, but broadly speaking, Hot Pursuit refines rather than innnovates.

Not that this is to say that this is necessarily a bad thing: while the game doesn't really try to introduce new game mechanics to the genre, the whole game is executed brilliantly. The only things I would criticise are the loading times, which are slightly on the tardy side and the ear-bleed soundtrack that seems de rigeur for Need For Speed games. Though given that I grew to actually quite like some of the tracks on the Need For Speed: Underground soundtrack, I live in hope that some of the tunes in Hot Pursuit might grow on me. Maybe in a year or two...

Hot Pursuit does lack the car pimping aspects of Underground (which I really enjoyed fiddling with), but at least there are plenty of cars to unlock that give the missions some good replay value. The game's also terribly good looking, the handling model is responsive and not too twitchy for my old and increasingly flabby reflexes and the bite-sized chunks of gaming (single missions last between three and six minutes) make it incredibly moreish - it's a game that on the perilous side of addictive and it's very hard to put that controller down once you've picked it up.
I've really been enjoying it - it's definitely the best arcade street racer I've played in a couple of years.

Byte: Assistant Professor

2011-06-12T23:06:00.003Z

I've been meaning to write about the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, for quite a while now. Earlier today, my druid finally hit the new level cap. I almost feel a little like I cheated, given that my last level and a half of experience up to level 85 was gained almost entirely by levelling up the almost entirely superfluous secondary skill, Archeology.

I say 'entirely superfluous', but there is a certain satisfaction to flying from one corner of the world to another, digging up artefacts and fossils - and it's not like it's a shortcut compared to questing - getting the NINE MILLION XP to level up from 84 to 85 still took me a good twelve hours of playing time over the course of a couple of weeks, though you could argue that it's the no-brainer alternative to conventional questing.

I do have to admit that one of the reasons that I chose to level my character this way was that I wanted to save the majority of the Cataclysm quests until I had hit the level cap, so that I could basically rake in a massive amount of money to fund my alternate characters. My original plan was to use the money to get Sharéth her Riding skill mastery, but it wasn't necessary in the end, given that I made a shed-load of money selling Heavy Knothide Leather in the auction house, while I was pursuing Outland-vintage reputation quests in Coilfang Reservoir for the Cenarion Expedition and doing dailies on Netherwing Ledge to finally get my Onyx Netherwing Drake - a flying mount that I'd been nerd-lusting over for a good five years... After nearly three weeks's worth of daily quests, I finally earned the reputation to get it, and it was worth every second of time invested. Perhaps even more so than the hours spent in Coilfang grinding the rep (and the 1600 gold) to get my Cenarion War Hippogryph. So far, so 2006, you might think - but I've always taken the long-term view, with regard to playing WoW. Now that I'm at the new level cap, some of the Wrath of the Lich King instances are on the table now for soloing - such as The Nexus and Utgarde Keep, which will help out my two main alts immensely (Level 75 Hunter and Level 70 Mage, respectively).

World of Warcraft may be an easy target these days for the "cool" gaming hardcore, but in my mind it still stands up as an outstanding piece of game design and interactive entertainment. Whatever its technical flaws, and even what some might call an iterative design philosophy (of incremental improvement, rather than revolutionary steps forward), I can't see myself stopping playing it anytime soon.

Bark/Byte: Sweeping away the tumbleweed

2011-06-02T15:49:00.005Z

As my first full year as a qualified pedagogic facilitator draws to a close, I'm starting to feel the need to scratch the writing itch again. And now that I'm getting much more efficient at my job, I'm actually starting to be able to make the time to do it.

Unfortunately, regular games reviewing or feature writing is kind of out of the question (since it's just too time consuming), but I am gradually finding some time to re-start work on a couple of short stories (one sci-fi, one fantasy) that I've had on the go for over a year now. I'm concentrating on the fantasy one first (given that I'm in a fantasy mood, thanks to The Witcher 2 and my ongoing relationship with the worlds of Azeroth and Outland). I'm setting myself a target of trying to write at least a hundred words a day until the first draft is finished (at which point I can have it mercilessly picked apart by some of my closest confidants who know the odd thing or five about writing). It's a fairly modest target, you might think, but my greatest problem as a writer is that rather than just bashing down new words, I continually go back and revise and revise what I've already writing, rather than just finishing the story. This goes a long way to explaining why despite having lots of ideas for short stories (and even novels), to date I've not finished a single one. So those one hundred words a day need to be *new* words. I think I'm about a third to half way through the fantasy story so far (weighing in at around 17,000 words so far), so getting finished by the end of the year is a bit of a tall order. Though at least I do have the summer holiday in which to get some serious writing done.

Since I've never been one to really concentrate on one thing at a time, I've also got another non-fiction project on the go - a kind of gaming autobiography. I've only got a skeleton of the book ready so far - I know what games I want to write about, I've just got to sit down and actually bash out the text. Between the two of them, I've got enough writing to keep me busy for probably another year, but I do want to start blogging more regularly again - I really miss taking the time out just to reflect and keep a record of what's been going on and what I've found interesting. I'm not really interested in setting up a Twitter account - I'm not nearly vain enough to believe that the entire world needs to know what I think, as I think it, in 140 character brain dumps. If I'm going to write about something, I want it to have been really considered and thought about - knee-jerk or off the cuff responses to things just tend to get you in trouble anyway.

I'm also not falling into the "social" trap of Facebook, either - for me that's always seemed like an excuse to "keep up" with people without actually interacting with them socially. I guess I'm just old fashioned that way (though I've also got other, professional, reasons for steering well clear of it, too). Incidentally, I saw The Social Network a week or two back - brilliant film - and how ironic that probably the greatest social networking tool of the digital age was invented by someone so utterly socially dysfunctional... but I digress.

So I'm going to stick with the blog for now and try and update rather more regularly than I have over the last year or two. I'll blog later about the new PC and what I've been playing on it. Surprisingly, it's not all just about World of Warcraft...

Byte: Lurch

2011-03-28T17:41:00.002Z

Somehow the zombie PC continues to lurch along (albeit rather worryingly, constantly accessing the RAID array even when it doesn't appear to have any reason to) - but the good news is that my shiny new PC has already been put together by the tech-wizards at PC Specialist and is in testing. Fingers crossed it will be sitting in my bedroom by lunchtime on Saturday, gobbling up all manner of software and drivers voraciously.

I can't wait to see what a 64-bit, Windows 7 Pro system runs like on a 3.2GHz 6-core processor with 8GB of RAM. Should be... SPEEDY.

Byte: Time to upgrade

2011-03-27T15:24:00.005Z

Something very odd happened with my games rig last night. I went to turn it on to have a pleasant evening's trash mob bashing on Dragon Age II and... nothing. Not a beep, hoot or poot. A few whirrs from the PSU cooling fan, but otherwise no life at all. Kind of ruined my evening, really.

Then this morning, as I was about to take the thing to bits to do a little diagnostic poking (since it wasn't even POSTing, and I'd previously had a problem with a dead motherboard battery, my initial prognosis was a dead motherboard), I decided to give it one last check. I prod the power button and... it worked. Hmm. Something definitely strange going on here, thinks I. A computer lurching back to life after showing all the signs of permanent death? What the...? There's only one possible conclusion: MY PC IS A ZOMBIE! AIEEEEE!

Fearing another repeat of PC death, I've left the PC on all day, and instead of doing the mountain of work I have to do today to prepare for next week, I've been configurating and ordering a new PC. As usual, I'm getting it from my preferred supplier, PC Specialist - this will be the third PC I've bought from them.

Here's the spec:

CPU: AMD PHENOM II X6 1090T (3.20GHz/9MB CACHE)
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1333MHz
GPU: 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 460
HDD: 1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

Plus all the usual odds and sods, for near as dammit £700, plus a little extra for a fast track build and a Saturday delivery, but that's fine, since I'm saving £100 because I don't have to buy an OS (as I have the Win7 Pro disk I bought when I was doing my PGCE).

Not quite a ravenous monster spec, but it should cope with most things on max settings fairly easily. It quite comprehensively makes what I've got now look rather old and sad - which it is, to be fair - my dead/dying/undead PC is clocking on for four years old now, so I think I was due an upgrade. Of course, a spec like that is total overkill for playing WoW, but at least now I can think about getting Shogun 2 or Crysis 2 (if I had either the time or the inclination) without thinking 'nope, not going to run'.

Though the really nice thing is that my nice, shiny new PC will be ready and waiting for when Witcher 2 shows up in a couple of months. It'll be nice to play that without having to tone down the details.

Bark: Well that doesn't happen every day.

2011-02-15T18:31:00.002Z

I got home tonight to find a rather officious looking envelope waiting for me. 'What's this?' thinks I. 'Someone probably wanting money, no doubt.'

On the contrary, it's a letter from what used to be called the Inland Revenue, giving me a tax rebate for the year that I left IBM and changed careers. Attached to the letter was a cheque. For near-as-dammit £1000.

RESULT!

Now I don't feel quite so guilty for buying that World of Warcraft mouse...

Byte: Disposing disposable income

2011-02-13T18:13:00.003Z

Having taken quite a substantial pay cut when I changed career a while ago, (that is, when I suddenly stopped having any time to write blog posts), I haven't had as much disposable income to dispose of on games as I used to. One of the consequences of this is that I'm putting most of my gaming time into World of Warcraft at the moment, though that barely amounts to about an hour a day, given that my day (and night) job keeps me busy for upwards of 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, plus a fair bit more at the weekend.

So since I don't buy so many games as I used to (and since I don't have the time to do game reviews anymore, don't get quite so many through the post for free, either), I thought I'd give myself a little bit of a treat and invest in the new WoW MMO mouse.

It looks like a pretty mean piece of kit - at that price it should be! - look at all those buttons! I'm looking forward to getting my mitts on it.

Bark: A funny thing happened on the way to the barber

2010-12-11T18:57:00.002Z

I was queuing up at the cash point to take some money out for a much-needed haircut earlier this afternoon, when I noticed that the gentlemen at the ATM was taking an inordinate amount of time, fiddling at the buttons on the screen. I bite down my instinct to make a sarcastic comment like "Anytime today would be fine, mate", which I often do in my car when waiting for someone to make a decision to whether they should pull out into a junction or at a roundabout when they have clear right of way.

Just as well, really, because when he turns around IT'S BRIAN BLOODY BLESSED.

It's not every day that you get to use the same cash point as a national treasure. Though apparently, as my barber tells me, he lives just down the road and he's always in our local supermarket. Ten years I've been living here, and that's the first time I've seen him.

Byte: Doggie Style

2010-12-10T23:15:00.004Z

I had an absolutely mucking fiserable day at work on Tuesday (Year 9, need I say more?), so coming home to find that Blizzard had sent me a copy of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm really made my month.

I've had a few hours over the past couple of days to play with it now, and in keeping with my chronic case of alt-o-holism, I rolled a new toon - a Worgen Druid - to check out the new Alliance race and starting area. No surprise - it's rather bloody good. The Worgen vibe is cockney Victoriana, with one of the early quest rewards being a rather natty top hat. You're into the action immediately, with your home city of Gilneas being invaded by vicious, feral Worgen, and it doesn't really stop until you take the boat to Darnassus around level 13, where you pick up the new, improved Darkshore quests.

The real highlights of the Worgen starting area are the missions where you get to fight off the Forsaken invasion of Gilneas, whether it's by foot, by air, or my vehicle. The two missions where you get to take out the orcs reinforcing the Forsaken invasion with a Night Elf Glaive Launcher and by assaulting an airborne gunship are the real standouts towards the end of the starting area, but there are plenty of other nice moments to help liven up your first few hours. Most surprising is the introduction of in game cutscenes to mark particularly significant story developments (the first being your transformation from a human into a Worgen) - there's a real push to make your more involved with the story, rather than just have you dash off to kill the next set of mobs.

I really like my Worgen, incidentally. Blizzard have nailed the character mannerisms of these curious dog-people - and naturally, there are all-new dances and flirts that are sure to raise a smile. I especially like their lurching, ungainly stride as they run and I'm looking forward to reaching level 20, where they learn the 'run on all fours' ability, which has them running as fast as a standard mount, without actually needing one. Their other racial bonuses (fast skinning, increased crit rating and Darkflight - a brief speed boost ability) make Worgen perfect for Feral Druids or Rogues - and their feral forms for Druids are pretty funky. I can see me levelling up my new Worgen up to level 60 to take in the revised Azeroth content, because what I've seen of the revised zones so far looks really good. Thousand Needles is much more interesting now that it's been flooded and many other zones have really been improved. Darkshore has been ripped to shreds and Desolace actually has sprouted a few points of interest, post-Catacylsm.

I haven't had time yo take in all the changes to Azeroth yet, but I hear good things about the new versions of Stonetalon Mountains and the revised zone around Astranaar - I look forward to checking them out with my Worgen to see if the hype is justified.

The downside of having new races to play with is that it tempts you into neglecting your level 80s. I haven't really got stuck into the high end content yet, but I'm pleased to report that at least they're not charging thousands of gold to get your master pilots license to fly in Azeroth. Top whack (without rep bonuses) is a mere 250 gold, which is affordable at day one even for mainly casual players like me. Flying mounts in Azeroth is a bit of a game changer, but it has been balanced out by Blizzard nuking all the capital city portals in Shattrath and Dalaran (no doubt due to the effect of the cataclysm) - so you do really need fast access to flying mounts in Azeroth. On Tuesday night I did feel obliged to pay a visit to Mount Hyjal, since it's so prominent in the lore. First impressions: FECK ME, IT'S HUGE.

After the scale of the areas in Wrath of the Lich King, the design doesn't quite feel so amazing, but it's hard to not be impressed by the variety and grandeur of the design. And for a non-raiding, guildless casual like me, the quest rewards are ridiculously better than the blues I have right now. It shouldn't take too long to get my main up to the new level cap, and it's refreshing to see that they haven't added in filler content to enable people to gain an extra ten levels instead of five, just for the sake of getting extra levels.

I doubt that there's anything in Cataclysm that would persuade WoW-haters to change their mind about the game, but I don't suppose that's the point. Cataclysm ought to make Blizzard another couple of warehousefuls of cash - since it does make efforts to improve an already great game. I can't wait to see all the new zones, particularly the high-end content and the Goblin starting zone - this expansion pack is going to keep me busy for a long time. You can expect to see more missives from me inbound from Azeroth over the coming months.

Bark: Movember

2010-11-14T22:07:00.002Z

I've donated my face to charity this month, the month of Movember, because not only have a lot of my pupils asked whether I'm growing a beard for charity (due to me not shaving through lack of time in the morning), but also because I got the horrible but not entirely unexpected news this week that one of my friends, who was diagnosed as having terminal liver cancer about six months ago, has been taken off chemotherapy and only has a few weeks left to live.

So I'd really appreciate it if you could donate a few quid/dollars/Euros* to a good cause and I will post humiliating pictures of my Merv Hughes-inspired hideous upper-lip-carpet for the rest of the month on my MoSpace page.

Show your support here. Cheers.

*delete as applicable

Byte: I am Murloc!

2010-07-30T01:02:00.004Z

I just downloaded a Murloc Gurgle ringtone for my mobile phone.

I am such a geek.

Byte: Your game is nothing compared to Starcraft 2! Part 2

2010-07-27T23:06:00.002Z

HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.

This game is good. Damn good. The production values are amazing. If the game's budget really was $100 million (though Blizzard are trying to debunk the Wall Street Journal's original report of this figure - and WSJ have retracted the report, apparently), I think half of it went on the cinematics, because they're bloody incredible. The cutscenes are absolutely stunning - you can see the skin pores in people's faces, for frick's sake. Are videogame characters finally climbing out of the Uncanny Valley? Maybe.

It'll be another few days before I've played enough to review it properly, but everything I've seen so far says "two thumbs up".

Byte: Your game is nothing compared to Starcraft 2!

2010-07-23T17:49:00.002Z

Having used my teacher training year to successfully avoid all the hype and the beta, I wasn't going to get too excited about Starcraft 2. But then I wasn't expecting a totally unsolicited review copy to drop through my letterbox this morning, either.

Of course, it won't install, because Blizz haven't turned on the activation servers yet (it gives me a "come back on the 27th" message when I try), but at least I have something to look forward to on Tuesday, now. When you haven't written a review in nine months (or more, I really can't recall) it's nice that the first one you have to get back in the saddle is the biggest frickin' PC game release of the year. Sweet.

Bark: Alignment update

2010-06-30T14:03:00.003Z

Every so often I like to do a gaming mental health check, using an AD&D character generator test. Here are my latest results.

I Am A: True Neutral Human Sorcerer (5th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-14

Dexterity-17

Constitution-16

Intelligence-18

Wisdom-16

Charisma-15

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Lawful Good ----- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Neutral Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (17)
Chaotic Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (15)
Lawful Neutral -- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (16)
True Neutral ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (21)
Chaotic Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (19)
Lawful Evil ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Neutral Evil ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18)
Chaotic Evil ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (16)

Law & Chaos:
Law ----- XXXXX (5)
Neutral - XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Chaos --- XXXXXXXX (8)

Good & Evil:
Good ---- XXXXXXX (7)
Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXX (11)
Evil ---- XXXXXXXX (8)

Race:
Human ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Dwarf ---- XXXXXXXX (8)
Elf ------ XXXXXXXX (8)
Gnome ---- XXXXXX (6)
Halfling - XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Half-Elf - XXXXXXXX (8)
Half-Orc - XXXXXX (6)

Class:
Barbarian - (-2)
Bard ------ (-4)
Cleric ---- (-4)
Druid ----- (0)
Fighter --- (0)
Monk ------ (-19)
Paladin --- (-23)
Ranger ---- XXXX (4)
Rogue ----- (-4)
Sorcerer -- XXXXXX (6)
Wizard ---- XXXX (4)

Nice to know that my alignment hasn't changed since last time (though I am sliding dangerously close to Neutral Evil), but very interesting that I've switched from Half-Elf to Human and my class has changed to Sorceror, too. I guess like Anders from Dragon Age: Awakening, I just want to be able to shoot lightning at fools, too.

Bark: They call it schadenfreude

2010-06-27T22:12:00.004Z

Byte: Steam summer sale

2010-06-25T12:47:00.002Z

Dammit, Steam! Why must you tempt me with cut price games that I feel compelled to buy, even though I know I probably won't put more than a couple of hours into each of them??

Mount and Blade: Warband's a must at that price, though. And so's the super-duper-starship-trooper version of The Witcher, too. My review copy doesn't want to work anymore, so I had to, really...

Byte: 3654 Days'o'sex

2010-06-24T21:41:00.004Z

This week is Deus Ex's 10 year anniversary. RPS's Verdict is probably all you really need to read about the game, but that's not going to stop me from talking about my memories, both old and recent.

Deus Ex is one of those rare games that I keep coming back to, despite the fact that I've completed it. Though the story of how (and when) I completed it is a tale worth telling in itself. I bought the game the week it came out (thanks to KG's legendary review of it in PCG) and it was the first game that ever really made me see the potential that videogames had as interactive storytelling devices. (Note that I hadn't actually played Half-Life at this point)

The first level (Liberty Island) was a marvel, though predictably, I initially tried playing the game like Doom and ran into the steepest learning curve I'd encounter in a game until playing EVE Online - though my first memory of Deus Ex (after the hideously animated, but intriguing, opening cutscene) was of Paul Denton running up to you at the beginning and asking you to pick from a sniper rifle, a GEP gun or a mini-crossbow. I was horrified. I'd never played an RPG (on computer, at least) so while I knew from the review that it wasn't your average FPS, I wasn't expecting to have to make a decision quite that quickly. How was I supposed to decide based on so little prior information? I took a punt on the GEP gun, which probably turned out to be the best decision I made in the first 15 hours of the game, in all honesty, since you don't get the opportunity to pick another one up for hours, while the other two are freely available to be picked up from NPCs in the first level. Hurrah for out-of-context problems!

Anyway. My first attempt at wending my way through the NSF ranks to get to the top of the statue was an absolute disaster. I didn't twig the RPG accuracy mechanics and ran out of ammunition before I'd even killed two terrorists. And then I got slaughtered. The number of times I died trying to beat that level the first time... I'm not sure I can even give a reasonable estimate. But we're talking dozens. There was something compelling about the game, though. It took me probably about six hours to explore all the options of how to complete that one level - the front door, the crate climb at the back, the air ducts in the tower foyer, hacking ATMs, lockpicking medbot hideaways, using the turrets to blow away the NSF guards... The game just gave you so much scope. Once I'd grasped the mechanics of the game - by playing that one level for longer than it takes to complete Call of Duty: Modern Warfare! - I was absolutely hooked. The game also tapped into the whole X-Files-inspired government conspiracy theory zeitgeist of the late-90s, early-noughties (this was pre-9/11, though much was made of the lack of the World Trade Centre towers on the Manhattan skyline in the opening level - eeriely prescient, looking back), so it was easy to overlook the manifold technical flaws, because it was just so different to everything else I'd ever played.

Perhaps the most surprising thing for me at the time was the fact that once the initial mission was over, the game didn't simply whisk you off to the next one. Instead, you got to go back to base and kick around the HQ, where you'd be able to listen in to the idle chat of your co-workers and their paranoia about the vending machines, read papers and "accidentally" finding your way into the ladies toilet... (and getting your wrist slapped by Manderley for it) It had an absolutely coherent game world and the transitions between maps made total sense within the context of the game, making it a relatively seamless experience.

The game really comes alive in Hong Kong (despite the dreadfully cheap voice acting) and there are some brilliant levels - not least the infiltration into the MJ-12 research lab. Hong Kong is also the first place where you meet the absolutely rat-bastard, hard-as-nails MJ-12 Commandos, who have wrist-rockets that would make Boba Fett proud. If you haven't got a scoped, silent pistol or a sniper rifle at this point to take them out with headshots, you're going to have a hard time with them, even with the ballistic protection mod. Of course, the real Deus Ex hardcore insist on only killing people with the lightsaber (sorry, Dragons Tooth sword) that you pick up in Hong Kong, or indeed, not killing anyone at all (I never had the patience for that). I think Hong Kong is many people's favourite section of the game, and I'd probably agree with that, though there are still several standout levels in the rest of the game.

The Naval Base infiltration when you get back to New York, so that you can sink the tanker carrying the plague virus is a real corker. Security bots, lots of mobs, and several ways into the submarine pen, each with their own distinct challenges. Then when you're actually on the tanker, there are plenty of things to do in there beyond just cracking the seals to sink the ship. I doubt it would make many people's favourite level list from Deus Ex, but for me it was one of the most memorable, because by this point I'd ploughed enough points into the support skills (Computer, Lockpick and Electronics) to really have a go at every single entry point and open up all the options in the game.

After that, it gets a little mental with the conspiracy theories and the plotting (but in an endearing way), when you go back across the pond to Paris, where there are some even more spectacular moments in the annals of atrocious videogame voice-acting. Oh lord, the accents. And I thought the faux-Australian of the philosophical bartender in Hong Kong was bad... Keep your ear out from the "I am a Frenchman" clearly voiced by the guy from Paris. Paris, Texas, that is... Brrrr. The Paris levels aren't so great, but the Notre Dame level was a highlight for me, as it was the first level where I seriously tried infiltration, albeit with a silenced sniper rifle. Those MJ-12 commandos didn't last long. And the finale of the mission is a showdown with Gunther, who regrettably doesn't last long either. Not against an assault rifle packing 20mm explosive rounds, anyway.

So while Paris isn't so fantastique, things do pick up again for the remainder of the game. The level where you have to rescue Gary Savage's daughter (before heading off to the Ocean Lab to sort out Walton Simons) is another tight little level that gives you an almost bewildering amount of ways to approaching one particular problem: how do you kill the three MIBs (who explode on death) guarding Savage's daughter, without tipping them off and having them murder her before you eliminate all of them, or have her die in the fight. The Ocean Lab is a bit of a pain in the arse, frankly (goddamn greasy greasels and krappy karkians!) - a silenced sniper rifle is pretty essential if you don't want to get your legs shot off trying to approach the building. From then on, it's a pretty straight run towards the end game in Area 51, which is actually where I left the game and stopped playing. I can't remember what I started playing instead (No One Lives Forever, maybe?) but while I started new characters and tried out different kits (hacker, non-lethal, assault, etc) - playing the game through again as far as Paris - it was years before I dug out my old save game and actually went back to complete the game. I did blog about it at the time (a year or two back), but I can't seem to find the post right now.

In some ways, it was a bit of an anti-climax, as I'd spent the entire game hoarding explosive ammunition, so I wiped through the final level in about half and hour flat, blasting my way through MJ-12 commandos, security and spider bots with absolute impugnity, using my GEP gun and the 20mm assault rifle ammo. I didn't try out all three ending - just the Helios one - though I may go back and try out the other two in time. Given that it's the 10 year anniversary (and also given that I'm on holiday) I am tempted to go back and play it again and really try my best to break the game, knowing what I know now about the levels, story and the way the game engine itself works.

Deus Ex is still probably the most well-designed game ever made, in terms of allowing the player to approach situations and find creative solutions that the designers never anticipated. And it's this that I really love about Deus Ex. Most games give you one tool to do one job. Or maybe they give you a couple of ways of solving one problem. Deus Ex designs in at least two ways of approaching a problem and if you're creative enough, you can use the game mechanics to find at least two more. Whether it's a LAM trap reverse-ambush, a turret hack or simply sneaking through a vent and avoiding combat entirely, Deus Ex can be played if you like combat, or if you like stealth, or if you like trying to find ways of subverting the design. There's obviously a bit of a risk there, in that you throw away your suspension of disbelief and don't take the game seriously, but the story is well-executed, if outlandish. The fact that the designers catered for so many eventualities in the way the story can develop (such as choosing to kill Anna Navarre instead of Lebedev on the 747, or blowing up the hostages - either by accident or design - in the Battery Park subway station) shows just how good this game is.

If you never did play it back in the day (or in the subsequent 3650 days since), it's still a must-play for a PC gamer. I don't think we'll ever see its like again (not with today's blockbuster-or-bust development 'philosophy'), and it will be interesting to see just how well Deus Ex 3 lives up to its heritage (my prediction: shiny, but ultimately a bit rubbish. What a shame.). It still rates in my Top 5 PC games and it's certainly one of the most replayable, thanks to the design. I'll have to get around to playing some of the mods I've missed out on, as well - especially the Nameless Mod, of which I keep hearing very nice things. So how could I sum the game up, in one short, pity sentence that entirely removes any need for you to read that huge mass of text above? Ambitious, intricate, brilliant, flawed, yet more than the sum of its parts; Deus Ex is all these things and many more - I can envisage it still being revered as a classic in another ten years. It's really that good.

Byte: Best. Game. Ever.

2010-06-22T17:56:00.002Z

Well, maybe not ever. But it is brilliant. I heard about this via RPS and was totally sold by the video, especially the music in the first half. It's just so appropriate. Warning: the video does contain some naughty words.

Go play Transformice today! (If you can find a working server)

Byte: Movie misquote review - Dragon Age: Origins

2010-06-21T21:56:00.004Z

I love the sound of Shield Bash in the morning. Sounds like... VICTOLY.

(Inspired by: Apocalypse Now)

Bark: They think it's all over... it is now!

2010-06-21T21:41:00.004Z

No, I'm not talking about the England football team's sense of entitlement, rather the fact that for pretty much the first time in nine months, I actually have a free moment. Though the coincidence that my PGCE course should finish in time for the second week of the World Cup and the first week of Wimbledon is a real bonus...

Teacher training is without doubt the hardest thing I've ever done, but now, having survived the year, I can say that it's also one of the most enjoyable and rewarding things, too. That's not to say that I'm not looking forward to a nice, long, relaxing summer. I have every intention of doing a huge amount of gaming and writing over the next two months, until I start my job in my new school in September.

I'm going to kick off my summer by starting a new meme - videogame reviews in the form of movie misquotes. You'll see what I mean by that in my next post. But other than my games writing, I also want to work on a film script based on an idea that's been kicking around my brain for the last few months. I'll keep you posted of how that goes. So here's to a brief period (at least) of more frequent blogging and writing - and a nice, relaxing summer.

Byte: Modern Warfare

2010-06-04T17:00:00.003Z

I recently got around to playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, thanks to it coming down to a reasonable price on Steam. Having come to the game after all the hype surrounding it has calmed down, I would have to say that it's one of the best shooters I've played since Far Cry 2 - though I would have to say I prefer Far Cry 2 in respect of it not being utterly on rails, though some of Modern Warfare's set pieces are absolutely brilliant.

The reason for this post, however, is less to do with the fact that I've finally gotten around to playing the game, but more to do with one particular level - All Ghillied Up - which is probably my favourite in the entire game, since it plays like what my conception of what being an elite, special forces soldier would actually be like on a mission behind enemy lines, without backup. Some of the level is Operation Flashpoint-esque: crawling around in a ghillie suit, trying not to be trodden on by enemy troopers (or run over by BMP-2s), while still allowing you to do silent takedowns of lone patrols (Gotta love that silenced M-21). The level is great for building suspense and tension without ever really giving you much of a chance to relieve it. I was on the edge of my seat pretty much the whole way through.

A lot of the time in linear FPS games, you can see where the level designers have thought "we need to throw in more excitement here", if you've not had a firefight for 200 yards, but this level is all the better for restraining its hand. Less is most definitely more. I was shitting my pants as I was crawling through a field, three yards behind the arse of my commander, as a couple of dozen troops and four BMPs were coming the other way toward us. You know that one mistake is instant death - fighting your usual "I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!" impulse that you get in FPS games really sets your heart pounding.

And still, there are odd moments of levity. Captain MacMillan (your CO for the mission) has some great lines, not least when you see a wild dog gnawing on the corpse of a dead civilian - "Pooch doesn't look too friendly." It's the kind of gallows humour you'd expect from people whose trade is the dealing (and possible receiving) of death.

It's a great level, and the fact that you don't do a lot of shooting covers the big flaw in the overall game (and its sequel) - infinitely respawning enemies. They're there to help to force the pace - as in, they stop respawning if you keep moving forward - but I still think infinite respawns are a hateful design choice. Some situations call for a defensive action, but COD doesn't have any of that - it either makes you keep moving or run out of ammunition, and that's a big flaw in any shooter that could be seen as being of a more tactical bent (like the ArmAs or Delta Forces of this world). No Spec Ops soldier in their right mind would push themselves forward into the kind of situations that COD presents you with - but admittedly, it is just a game, and therefore NOT REAL.

It's the SAS levels that really make the game for me - the USMC ones are good, but lack a little of the edginess of the SAS ones. I was also pleasantly surprised by the voice-acting. Captain Price and Gaz are real standouts, despite them being voiced by cast-offs from The Bill and Eastenders, respectively. Somehow, it just works. And the final couple of levels are simply awesome - given that its the Brits, not the ubiquitous Yanks who take the lead in the missions. The finale is great, too, where Soap has to take out three Ultra-nationalists (include The Big Bad) with just seven rounds from Price's .45 calibre pistol. They don't call me "Double-tap, one kill" for nothing...

Actually, they don't call me that at all, but that's another story...

Byte: Reasons why I play more games on consoles than PC

2010-06-02T23:07:00.006Z

I'll gloss over the fact that I've not posted here in months and instead get straight back into dispensing my inimitable brand of games punditry. (It's inimitable not due to reasons of style, but because no-one would be stupid enough to want to copy it...)

One of the many side effects of doing a PGCE is that all your free time tends to evaporate, being consumed by the three-headed monster of lesson planning, resource preparation and assorted administration. This means that over the last nine months or so, I've had precious little time for gaming, let alone blogging or games journalism. Over these nine months, there have been quite a few changes in my gaming habits.

Firstly, nightly gaming sessions are now non-existent. These days I'm lucky if I get to play for more than an hour at a time on a couple of nights a week. With my gaming time now so much more precious and limited, I can't afford to be so indiscriminate with my gaming habits.

Secondly, the time of day when I usually do get to play is in the early hours of the morning, when all work has ceased and I don't have access to my gaming PC (due to its location in the bedroom) - my lady would not approve of me clicking and tapping away as she tried to sleep.

Thirdly, when I do get to play something, I'm usually so tired that I can't managed anything too complicated. It's got to be simple to pick up and play, and also not so addictive that I can't put it down again when I want to get some sleep.

Additionally, when I do want to play something, I want it to work without having to spend hours fiddling around with it to get a frame rate or have the content work properly. Xbox Live just *works*. Games for Windows Live (which I only use for Dawn of War II) is a monstrosity that never signs in properly, even on Windows 7. And don't even get me started on publisher-specific "points" systems that replace real money when you want to download new content for your game onto your PC. I tried that with Dragon Age: Origins, and it's a clusterfuck. Not only does the game refuse to log in to the servers 99.9999% of the time (and yes, I've tried every solution in every single support thread in the BioWare forums, and it's still fucked), I've got "points" (i.e. money) that are sitting in EA's deep pockets that I can't even spend because I can't log into my account via the game client... You're on a PC with access to the internet, for fucks sake. What's wrong with just using Paypal? Or a credit card? I can understand using points systems for consoles, where you might have users that don't have credit cards and buy their points on cards from GAME, but for the PC it's just incomprehensible. Say you want to buy a Dragon Age add-on for the PC. First, you have to register with BioWare and then buy "BioWare points" (with yout credit card) that you can only redeem through the game client to buy content. So if the login system in the client is screwed, they've just taken your money and you can't do a damn thing with it. Surely it should not be beyond the wit of man to be able to pay for and download the content directly onto your PC via the wonders of Teh Interwebs?

So is it any wonder then, that I decided that I was going to buy Mass Effect 2 on Xbox 360, because then, a) I knew it would run properly, b) have a content download system that worked, and c) be on a machine that I could play on when my beloved was getting her beauty sleep.

The old argument (that I used to endorse) for gaming on the PC was that the games looked better, had more depth and sharper controls. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case. Higher resolutions be damned, I'd much rather play Mass Effect 2 on a 32" LCD TV than a 22" widescreen monitor. (I've even played Halo on a 8 foot wide projector, but that's another story) Games on the 360 look just as good as most titles I play on my PC (if not better on the larger screen), and in the few cases they don't, well... I can live with it.

On the second point, it's only really in the strategy genre that the PC truly has the consoles licked in terms of depth. I doubt you're ever going to see Sins of a Solar Empire on the 360, but given that I don't have time to play 4X games other than when I'm on holiday, that's no great loss either. In every other gaming genre, you can't argue for PCs being better on grounds of depth, given that the games that migrate from one platform to another are usually pretty identical. And usually for multiplatform titles, it's the PC that gets the raw end of the deal in being sloppily ported (how many PC games can you name where they're better off played with a 360 pad than a keyboard and mouse?) Bad ports to console are relatively rare, by comparison.

Even on the last point - controls - there's been a definite improvement in recent years. I've played a fair few titles on both PC and 360 over the last year or two and I actually found Far Cry 2 more playable on 360 than on the PC. Given that I'm equally useless in an FPS game with either a mouse or a pad (something I have proven again to myself in the last few days playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on PC and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on 360), I'm leaning towards the console again on grounds of player-friendliness.

My PC is starting to show its age now, and earlier this week I scared my lady by looking at the prices for a new quad-core monster PC that would see me through another couple of years gaming. And then I thought, is it really worth it? There aren't really that many PC-exclusive titles out in the next year that I'm genuinely stoked about. (Starcraft II? Couldn't give a Protoss...) Sure, the PC gets cheaper games, but how many would I have to buy to offset the cost of the hardware, compared to just buying the games on 360? More games than I have the time to play, for sure...

And then there's what might be the final nail in the coffin - DRM. There was absolutely no way I was going to buy Splinter Cell: Conviction on the PC. It's a stonking game, but with Ubisoft's new and slightly evil "always on or you're off" online authentication system, the 360 version was the only option, really. I'm not going to put up with that kind of rubbish for a game that's run entirely locally and doesn't have a server-based component. No doubt conspiracy theorists are saying it's some dastardly corporate scheme to force gamers off the PC onto the more profitable consoles, but personally I think it's just idiocy, rather than a plan. Let's hope that one doesn't turn into a trend.

I'm not about to abandon PC gaming entirely - the awesomeness of GOG and Steam should see to that - but it has slipped off its long-time perch as my primary gaming platform for the time being. Such heresy! I'm no longer a PC gaming fanboy. My former forum alter-ego (LORDTHRAWN) must be spinning in his virtual grave...

Bark: All quiet on the Eastern Front

2010-03-21T20:49:00.003Z

Apologies for the lack of activity here over the last few weeks and months. Things are very much hotting up on the teacher training front and I barely have time for the niceties of things like eating and sleep, let along gaming and blogging.

I've been averaging less than five hours sleep a night for the last month and I'm working about 16 hours a day (though I get to take a break on weekends - I only work 12 hours a day then), so I'm pretty much dead on my feet. Where they expect me to find the time to apply for jobs and finish writing my essay assignments, I have no idea...

I used to think I worked pretty hard as a corporate slave, but it doesn't even compare to the workload you have as a trainee teacher. It's easily the hardest work I've ever done, but at least I'm still enjoying it in the main. Everyone in the department is wonderfully supportive, understanding and helpful - even the kids are great for the most part. The only group I'm really having trouble with are my Year 8, who - bless them - aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box. There are some lovely characters in there, but they do like to make life hard for themselves (and me). So I'm being thoroughly evil with them, so they remember just who is in charge. I almost reduced one of them to tears in our lesson on Friday, because I sent him out for swinging a stopwatch about by its string while I was attempting to explain something to the class. It's the first time I've ever had to send someone out of a lesson, but at least it had the desired effect. They will learn... eventually.

I'm going to have a little "me time" over the Easter break, where I will be able to do a bit of gaming and writing, so expect to hear about my adventures with Miranda, Tali and Jack in Mass Effect 2 that I have managed to squeeze into my Friday nights over the last month or two, plus a few raging laments about the rubbishness of the DLC system in the PC version of Dragon Age. Is it really too much ask that EA should be able to allow you to log into a system that allows you to download extra missions and content after you've already forked out the money to buy them with their godawful "BioWare Points"? Judging by my spectacular lack of success with it, apparently it is... Higher resolutions be damned. I don't have to put up with this kind of rubbish on the 360... but that's a story for another time, when I don't still have another three lessons to plan before I go to bed.

Byte: The inhumanity of videogaming

2010-03-05T18:34:00.002Z

Don't get me wrong. I love videogames where you get to shoot people in the face as much as the next sociopath (indeed, tonight I came home from Sainsburys with a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360 so that I can shoot my friends in the face online), but I've been trying to think of games that eschew this violent formula and have game mechanics that are genuinely positive and actually serve to help other people rather than yourself.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, I'm coming up rather empty. I've played hundreds, if not thousands of videogames over the last three decades (give or take a couple of years) and I'm having difficulty of thinking of any games set in the real-world (or a non-abstract game world where there are people) where the core game mechanics don't involve you going around blowing shit up or murdering people.

There are some games like the Phoenix Wright and Trauma Centre series where the aim of the game is to help people rather than find innovative ways of rearranging their internal organs (or indeed, making their internal organs external), but these are very much the exception, not the rule. The problem is that games like these tend to be quite scripted and not have much replay value - hence they can never really be popular with the online crowd and will more often than not end up back in the store on the second hand resale racks.

But I do recall one game from my early gaming days that didn't involve fighting, killing or blowing shit up that was set in a simulated real-world setting and asked you to do truly humanitarian work. And I was hooked on it for years.

That game is Cyclone, on the ZX Spectrum.

Cyclone was an early game from Vortex Software (or as my brother and I liked to call it, Costa Panayi Software, since this was still the era of bedroom coders, where one man could set up a successful software games company) that cast you in the role of a Search and Rescue (or, to use the proper parlance, SAR) helicopter pilot. The game was set in an archipelago stricken by the storm-force winds of a violent cyclone - essentially a hurricane or typhoon, depending on which longitudinal hemisphere you happen to live in (I always assumed the game to be set in a fictional set of islands in the Carribean, but that was more a personal flight of fancy than anything). The biggest thing that struck me about the game was that the primary antagonist of the game was utterly unbiased and impartial - a force of nature. The one other threat in the game is the possible collision with low-flying aircraft, but this rarely becomes an issue, once you learn the flight paths they follow.

Though the game thrusts you into a tragic situation - a natural disaster, where people are in peril - the overriding aim of playing the game is overwhelmingly positive and humanitarian. Your role as a SAR pilot means that you have to rescue helpless civilians from danger and return them to the central island that houses the headquarters of the rescue effort and base of operations. In order to progress between difficulty levels (harder difficulty meaning that you lose control of your helicopter and crash at lower values on the Wind Force bar), you need to collect six supply crates and return them to the HQ. Additionally, you may also choose to rescue civilians for bonus points. Mechanically, the game is quite challenging as you have a set time limit to find and return the supply crates for each level, and they may be located absolutely anywhere throughout the archipelago. Not only that, some of the islands don't have helipads, so if you have to land due to the wind force getting too high, you will continue to lose fuel while the winds batter overhead.

So playing Cyclone becomes a balancing act. Do you just concentrate on returning the supply crates to base, or do you try the completist approach and go for the highest score possible? The latter is most rewarding, both existentially and in terms of points score, yet is by far the hardest to achieve given the time limits and the capriciousness of the cyclone. Both my brother and I, should you talk to us about Cyclone, would tell you that we suspect that the AI cheats. The cyclone will seemingly wander the map randomly until you need just one more crate and then it will make it almost impossible to retrieve the last crate by simply hovering over the area until you run out of time (this is especially true if you've progressed five levels or more and the wind force doesn't actually have to get into the "DANGER!" part of the wind force bar before you can no longer control your helicopter.

One of the odd things about playing Cyclone was that even as a pre-teenage kid, I was fiercely gallant: there was only space on my helicopter for the women. The Titanic evacuation approach definitely held true for me - women and children first! The blokes? Well, fuck 'em. They can take their chances... (This may explain my more recent gaming predilection for RPGs - this desire to do what is morally "right" is very Lawful Good) More often than not, I tried to adhere to the completist approach, mainly because I enjoyed the experience of flying the helicopter around more than anything else - and that the one problem with the game was that after level 5 or so, the helicopter just became so sensitive to the wind that the game started to become unplayable.

Even so, the experience of playing the game and the warm fuzzy sensation of knowing that you'd helped and rescued (virtual) people more than made up for the mechanical flaws in the game. Cyclone was the first game that made me think more about the other characters within the game and their well-being than my own progression through the game. In other words, most games are selfishly revolved around the experience and survival of the player. Cyclone, on the hand, revolves around the selflessness of the player. Do they want to do the most good, or do they want to top the high score chart?

What surprises me is that after a full quarter of a century after I first played this game, I'm finding it difficult to name another example of a videogame where you're expected to act with the same level of selflessness. I grant you that even in 1985 the vast majority of videogames were still about blowing shit up or killing people, but regardless, I find it somewhat dissapointing that we're still churning out videogames obsessed by death, violence and destruction like they're ten-a-penny, while fantastically compelling and uplifting games like Cyclone are a rareity.

Good drama requires conflict, self-evidently. The question I would like to pose to game designers is that why does this conflict always have to involve shooting each other in the face with small arms? Good games don't require explicit, graphic violence and death to be compelling. I'd like to see more developers to make games like Cyclone and fewer generic cover-based shooters with BIGZ SHINY GRAPHIX like Gears of War 2. Not only would be videogaming be more diverse as a form of artistic media as a result, but it would lead to some more interesting games being produced as well. The intransigence of Nature is a great narrative device that could be used far more within games. Instead, most developers would rather play it safe and let people run around and shoot each other dead in ever greater graphical fidelity. And I can't help thinking that's rather sad...

Byte: NERD RAGE!

2010-02-18T21:48:00.003Z

You hear that? That's the death knell of PC gaming being sounded. Well, if you listen to the doomsayers of the Ubipocalypse, at any rate. I've not delved too deeply into the nine page comments thread (for reasons that must be fairly self-evident), but clearly there's rather a lot of nerd rage and strong feeling rumbling around about this at the moment.

I can certainly understand why. I've been PC gaming since, oooh... 1995. I consider myself to be primarily a PC gamer (indeed, I still subscribe to PCG UK) but despite all the talk about PC gaming "dying" that has floated around the internet ever since the release of the Xbox and PS2 a decade ago, I never really believed any of it, until now.

Certainly, PC games retailing on the High Street is pretty much dead and buried. You only need to look into your local GAME store. Ten years ago, half the store would be devoted to PC. Now you're lucky to get more than three or four racks. These days I tend to buy my PC games via Play or Steam - I rarely venture into GAME these days, and even more rarely actually buy stuff in there. If I get anything from there at all, it's usually for my consoles, and even then only if it's on sale and I can get it cheaper than I can from Play. But the overall trend in recent years for PC gaming is worrying. Multiformat titles generally come out first on the consoles, and the PC ports are generally pretty shoddy. There are a few exceptions to this (Dragon Age would be a recent example), but even here, PC game publishers seem to manage to take aim squarely at their foot and pull the trigger.

To use Dragon Age as an example again, the Downloadable Content system on the PC version is totally, totally borked. 99% of the time I can't get it to recognise my internet connection is active, meaning I can't log into the DLC servers, so despite having the "BioWare Points" (seriously, don't get me started on that) available to buy the Return to Ostagar DLC, I can't log in to spend my "points" (money, I would note, that already sits in BioWare's pockets, yet I can do nothing with). Compare this to Xbox Live, and suddenly the 360 version looks a whole lot more attractive. This was one of the reasons that I decided to get Mass Effect 2 for 360, rather than PC - because at least I can be sure that the DLC system is going to work and I will get a decent frame rate (something that can't be guaranteed on the PC) and there's no ridiculously draconian DRM to worry about. (I don't think having to have the DVD in the drive is a draconian restriction - though I'm sure some would be prepared to argue the toss on that)

It's just as well that there's bugger all on Ubisoft's confirmed PC release schedule for this year that I was interested in, because this DRM is beyond a joke - and my internet connection is generally pretty solid. It's bad enough that you make your customers wait 6 months for something that's fairly inevitably going to be a fairly shonky port, and then bundle in a DRM system that kicks you out of the game if you have a wobble in the stability of your internet connection. You don't get this kind of bullshit with console games, which almost inevitably means for mainstream, multiplatform games I will generally be buying them on 360 in the future, because at least then I can be sure they're going to WORK. It'll only then really be MMOs, indie, strategy games and PC-exclusive RPGs that I'll buy on PC.

I don't think it's going to be that long until we see the PC games market disappear from the High Street entirely (I give it 5-10 years, max), with what's left being exclusively distributed through digital download services like Steam, Impulse and GOG. I can also see a lot of the big publishers abandoning the PC as a gaming platform for anything other than MMOs over the next decade, too. Personally, I don't think that's such a bad thing - if it means that we'll get back to the real roots of PC gaming through the indie scene. It makes more sense for the big budget publishers to go for the console mass market and leave the PC to cater for niche markets that don't have to worry about Hollywood-grade shiny production values.

Frankly, I can live without the Assassins Creeds and Splinter Cells of this world if it means we can atill get things released on PC like DEFCON, Mount and Blade or Sins of a Solar Empire. Ubisoft are just trying to defend their bottom line in the PC market, and while I can appreciate that, I do think they're going about it in entirely the wrong way - a way that's alienating the very market they're trying to encourage to buy their game and not go stampeding for the nearest torrent site. I'm not convinced by the argument that 'better DRM = less piracy = better sales', given that we PC users like to be able to use our software the way we like - not have unreasonable methods of use imposed upon us. You only need to look at the SecuROM scandals surrounding Bioshock and Spore to understand the depth of feeling surrounding the topic - feelings that no doubt contributed to Spore being one of the most rapidly and voraciously pirated games ever.

If the big publishers (barring the ever redoubtable Valve) do decide to abandon the PC as a gaming platform, to be honest, I'm not that worried. After all, I've still got my 360 and most of the games I get on PC these days are indie PC exclusives anyway. So no great loss, really. Still, it will be interesting to see how Ubisoft's sales figures for their PC games hold up over the next few months.

Bark: Wait, it gets better!

2010-01-21T20:22:00.003Z

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.

Bark: Oh dear

2010-01-19T10:35:00.002Z

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...

Bark: And they say that the education system isn't dumbing down

2010-01-18T21:04:00.006Z

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.

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...

Byte: Scariest. Game. Ever.

2010-01-17T13:52:00.002Z

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.

Bark: Well, that's my birthday present sorted.

2010-01-14T17:19:00.002Z

ZOMG.

Bark/Byte: Okay, bored of the snow now

2010-01-14T08:46:00.005Z

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?

Byte: The Archdemon Killed My PC

2010-01-09T00:09:00.003Z

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.

Bark: Snowed In

2010-01-08T09:52:00.002Z

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.

Bark: Winter like they used to make

2010-01-07T16:34:00.002Z

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.

Bark: Snow like they used to make

2010-01-06T12:14:00.002Z

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.

Byte: It's not a skirt!

2010-01-02T22:26:00.003Z

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.

Byte: Maker watch over us all.

2009-12-19T12:12:00.005Z

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.

Byte: The inevitable "games I've played this year" post

2009-12-18T08:32:00.006Z

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...

Bark: The Hunter S. Thompson Method triumphs yet again!

2009-12-13T17:26:00.003Z

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...

Bark: In case anyone wants to buy me a Christmas present...

2009-12-08T19:22:00.001Z

HINT HINT.

Want.

Bark: Weight loss guaranteed!

2009-11-26T17:43:00.002Z

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.

Bark: Hard work is good for the soul

2009-11-11T22:06:00.002Z

At the time of writing, it's just past 10pm. This is quite literally the first free moment I've had since I woke up at 6.15am this morning. Today I've taught two pretty dreadful lessons (for various reasons), am suffering from just about every minor ailment known to Mankind thanks to all the bugs that the kids drag into the school, and I've got a two hour commute every day that eats up time I could otherwise use lesson planning.

People always moan about teachers getting long holidays. If the last few weeks I've had are anything to go by, bloody hell, we need them. Teaching makes working for a large multinational IT company look like a walk in the park by comparison. This is without doubt one of the hardest weeks I've ever had in my working life. But do I regret jumping ship?

Hell no.

Byte: My beautiful netbook

2009-10-31T00:44:00.003Z

Eariler today I acquired a Samsung NC10 netbook, which I had been tech-lusting after for some time now. I bought it with roughly one quarter of my first installment of my PGCE training bursary, and consider it to be money very well spent.

Not only will I be using it for late night emergency lesson planning, but it is also a fine machine catered for mobile internet surfing and retro gaming. X-Com: UFO Defense (a.k.a. UFO: Enemy Unknown) runs brilliantly on it, while Trials 2: SE and the Steam version of Star Wars: Dark Forces also run passably well. Rumour has it that Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War (possibly my favourite old school RTS ever) ought to run decently on it as well, so I'm downloading that from Steam as I type.

I'm also going to be trying out Warcraft III, Diablo II and Starcraft on it, since I can now download them digitally, thanks to merging my WoW account into a Battle.net account a few weeks ago. If I can stomach the download time, I may even try to download WoW and see how well that runs. It would be nice to have a backup machine to play WoW on after my gaming lapdog died earlier in the year, and since my new netbook has a VGA port, I can hook it up to my TV as an external monitor, so even if it doesn't have the processing power of my old laptop, at least I can get the big screen experience via my TV.

Gaming aside, easily the most impressive thing about using the netbook thus far is the battery life. I've not exactly been holding back on the screen brightness or the wifi access, but the battery is still going strong (good for at least another hour) despite having been hammered royally for a good five or six hours. Consider me mightily impressed. The keyboard is small but perfectly formed (just like Nichole from the Renault Clio adverts of yore)... comfortably large enough to type on without making typos every two seconds, but petite enough to not make you feel like you'd have been better off buying a full size laptop. The keys have a lovely soft spring to them as well - very tactile and comfortable to type on for extended periods of time. I approve.

I have been turning into somewhat of a Samsung fanboy of late (not only do I have one of their netbooks, but also an LCD monitor and LCD TV as well - they do make some outstanding LCD screens these days), and if you've been thinking of getting a highly portable laptop, it's hard to find a reason why you shouldn't pick up one of these beauties. Even Fleur (the French luddite that she is) looked at it longingly, as if amazed that someone as tech-macho as myself would be willingly seen with such a sleek, dinky piece of technology such as this.

Samsung may have come out with some newer model netbooks in the last few months (the 9 hour battery N140 being perhaps the pick of the bunch) but if you don't fancy paying the extra £50, the NC10 represents some pretty staggering value for money.

Bark: Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast

2009-10-15T18:15:00.002Z

Some amazing pictures from the 'great sardine run'.

Pretty awesome.

Bark: Saturn equinox

2009-09-25T11:26:00.002Z

A composite photo of Saturn taken by the Cassini probe last month. Absolutely stunning. If there was ever a one-way scientific mission out to Saturn, I'd be first in line to sign up. I dream of being able to go out into space and see this kind of stuff with my own eyes.

Byte: One last level rush

2009-09-06T20:36:00.003Z

With my inter-career holiday break now almost over, I've really been ploughing an obscene amount of hours into three games lately, in a last grasp of game time before I spend the next ten months or so being stressed and having such a big workload that I won't have time to play anything.

Inevitably, one of them has been World of Warcraft (or as Fleur likes to call it, rather charmingly, World of Bullshit), as I've been putting time into my lower-level alts, if only to get them to skill-up their professions skills. My priest still needs another six levels before she can take the next level up in Tailoring and Enchanting, but her she can now do some really useful enchants, especially for my lower level alts. I don't really enjoy playing with the character that much, since priests aren't great for soloing with, and I don't really fancy respeccing to Holy, as I don't want to spend all my time healing in instances. But I do have some incentive for levelling her waiting for me in the bank. That and I've got about 40 stacks of Netherweave Cloth stashed away, so that once I do get the 300+ Tailoring skill unlocked, I can make lots of lovely stuff for my Mage, who is about to hit level 61 and is firmly entrenched in Outland, but since I blasted through Outland with my Death Knight not too long ago, I'm going to get back to her once I've made her loads of cool cloth gear to upgrade her all the way through from 60-70.

The recent 3.2 patch lowered all the level requirements and costs of the land mounts (level 20 for the first mount, level 40 for the swift mount) and flappy mounts are now available from level 60, though the swift flappy training will still set you back 5000 gold. Though that's not so much of an issue now, as they uprated the speed of the first flappy mount from +60% to +150%, so now the first flappy mount is at least faster than the swift ground mount. But the real bonus for me was that I hadn't training my Mage for the swift ground mount, so I got it at a discount - and at some point I will get my other characters to forward her some cash to buy the first flappy mount. So all my Alliance characters have the swift ground mount now, as I pushed my lowest level Alliance alt (Corleth, my rogue) up to level 40 over a couple of nights so that I could get one for him, too. Rogues are quite fun to play, and I've got quite a few rare armour pieces lurking for him in the bank for when he (eventually) gets beyond level 50, but I'm concentrating mostly on my Paladin, Gormlaith, at the moment.

At the beginning of the summer, she was on a par (in level terms) with Aoibheann, around level 40 or so, but I've been fairly streaking through the levels with her lately, and should get up past 50 with another couple of hours' worth of play. I think it certainly helped having an epic weapon to murder mobs with, but the Paladin is a really nice class to play, since they're resilient, can heal and aren't terrible in DPS terms, either. I do need to work on her blacksmithing skill though, as she can't really make any decent armour yet.

In all this, I even managed to find the time to put another level on my oldest character, Shareth, who is still a very long way away from the level cap. I haven't really played much with my 70+ characters at all lately, since even though I really like all the design in the Northrend areas, needing 1.5 million XP per level makes progress seem rather too much on the tortuous side for my liking. I will try to get at least one character towards the level cap in time for the next expansion pack (flappy mounts in Azeroth! about bloody time!), but I am enjoying going for the quick win with my alts. It would be good if I could get them all beyond level 50, but inevitably, I think I will get bored with a couple of my alts and then neglect them for a few months. I really ought to just use my high level characters to gold farm for a while and throw some cash at my alts to buy them some nice gear and the flappy mounts (when they can use them), but I'm not sure if I can be bothered to plan that far ahead. It's amazing that after four years and goodness knows how many days of playing time I've put into the game that I still love it, but somehow, I do.

But I just wouldn't be me if it weren't for the tendency to play at least five different games at the same time. Even WoW isn't able to consume all my gaming time. I've been dabbling a little with the old Delta Force games, since they appeared on Steam a little while back (I may knock off a Replay article about Delta Force 2 and try and convince Tim Edwards to print it) and I've been enjoying their retro charms a lot, but it's on the Xbox 360 where I've been spending quite a lot of my late evenings (and early mornings!). I picked up Trials HD from Xbox Live, and it's probably the best thing out on the 360 right now. It's got quite a few different game modes compared to the PC version, and lots of new tracks, though I think on the whole, I prefer the PC version - if only because the camera is better. The console version is a bit out there, compared to the PC version, with explosives littered around all the levels (obviously, it wouldn't be fun for the console crowd if things didn't explode), and it makes some of the levels ridiculously hard (and Trials wasn't exactly easy to begin with). Though if I don't really approve of that, the challenge modes (ski jumping, bone breaking, riding in a huge cage ball, for example) are fabulous fun. I really like the target collecting mode, which essentially turns your bike and rider into a pinball, as you're catapulted around the level by huge flippers. AWESOME. If you've not picked it up yet, it's well worth the 1200 MS points.

The other game that's really been eating my time lately has been Far Cry 2. I did pick this up on PC when it came out last year, but somehow it failed to spark with me. But something inspired me to pick it up on 360, and now that I've put 25 hours or so into it, I think it's one of the best shooters I've played since Half-Life 2. I'm about 60-odd percent through the main story missions, and I'm finding it absolutely compulsive. The game's not perfect by any means, as you can't travel more than 400 metres on a road before having to blast your way through a roadblock, which does get tiresome after a while, but there's a tactical freedom that you don't get in most FPS games. I've unlocked most of the weapons and there's a great balance and variety in the way you can kit yourself out. You can go super-stealth (silenced Makarov, silenced MP5, Dart Rifle), fully automatic (Uzi, AK-47, PKM), super-sniper (IED, Dragonov, Dart Rifle, or super-explosive (M79 grenade launcher, MGL grenade launcher, mortar), though obviously, doing that is a little on the extreme side, and you're better off having a good mix of weapons. My favourite loadout is to take the Dart Rifle to pick people off silently from a distance, have the silenced MP5 (which the game oddly classifies as an assault rifle, rather than an SMG) as your main weapon after you've picked off as many people as possible and need to get in close, and have an Uzi as your weapon of last resort, since it gives you a lot of close range killing power. Another good combination is to have the Dragonov sniper rifle to spring long range ambushes (I did this rather epically on a convoy destruction mission - as the convoy was passing through a checkpoint, I sniped an oil barrel, setting the whole place on fire, allowing me to pick people off safely from distance as they fled from the flames), backed up by the M79 grenade launcher (it's the one Arnie has in Terminator 2) to blow things (particularly vehicles) to hell from medium range and have the PKM light machine gun to mop things up if they get too close to take out with the Dragonov or the grenade launcher. Fire is also a great tactical option, as you can use Molotov cocktails to literally smoke people out of buildings or long grass, and it adds an element of confusion into the combat that you can generally use to your advantage.

So even if the game lacks a little in design terms (too many roadblocks and assault trucks magically appearing 20 seconds after you get into a vehicle), the combat itself is great and very satisfying. The game does get significantly harder in the second half, as the enemies start using better weapons. I messed up a stealthy approach on one particular mission and got a very rude shock when mortar shells started raining down. That got rather frantic, as I'm not only dodging mortar fire, but also having to fight a dozen goons who now know exactly where I am and are throwing orange smoke bombs to mark my position for the mortar guy... Yipe. And you can also expect to have a hard time if you don't take at least one scoped weapon with you, as there are snipers dotted around some of the roadblocks, too. But I haven't had too many frustrating deaths (they've generally been my fault for doing idiotic things), and I also like the buddy system. It's nice that they characters aren't all white, middle-class superheroes. There's a good, diverse mix of people in there. I've got a bit of a soft spot for Nasreen, the Tajik woman merc, who's rescued me a couple of times from botched missions. And I was doing really well with Paul in the first half of the game, too - but unfortunately, I had to give him a morphine overdose after he got too badly wounded during a story mission. I got quite upset about that, as we were up to 17 on buddy 'history' score. If the game tries to kill Nasreen, I will not be pleased... I might have to shoot a zebra in the face. Hell, I may just do that anyway. It ought to be more fun than running them over in a truck.

Bark: I am not a personnel number, I AM A FREE MAN!

2009-09-03T08:50:00.000Z

As I vaguely hinted at a couple of months ago, my life has taken a slight turn for the weird lately. And as my dear Hunter S. Thompson once said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

If it appears that I've forsaken the internet in the last couple of months (as evidenced by an absolute dearth of new posts here and a very intermittent presence on MSN Messenger), well, there's a very good reason for that. I kind of have. For the last nine and a bit years, I've gotten very used to having the electric world at my fingertips for upwards of 12 hours a day, every day. This was a consequence of being sat behind an LCD monitor in my day job for 10 hours a day, and being stuck behind another LCD monitor for most of the evening, playing games, blogging or just surfing the websites I use to keep up with the events in a rapidly moving world. So, you might ask, what on Earth could tear me away from this wired, interconnected existence?

Well, rather devastatingly, a nagging sense that I wasn't doing all I could with my life. After nine years of work for a rather large multinational corporation, I found myself with a choice. I could either embrace the 80% work, 20% life culture that we laughably call a "work-life balance" and continue to be a slave to my job (albeit one with a decent salary), or I could quit my job, find another career and do something different. I made a decision a few months ago, the implications of which I'm still trying to get to grips with, even now.

To get to the bean-spilling, I left my life as a corporate worker bee behind at the beginning of July, and after the longest holiday of my entire life, in a little over a week, I go back to university. Me, a filthy student again. It's quite a bizarre notion, now that I'm on the wrong side of thirty years old. There are other details about my decision that I'm not going to go into here (for fairly obvious reasons); they're pretty much already in the public domain - so you don't need to read about them here - but that's the essence of it. Lots of people are absolutely fine with the 80%-20% work life balance you find in most large companies these days, but I found over the years that, increasingly, I'm not one of them. In fact, I consider myself lucky that not only did the people I used to work for help me make the decision more decisively than I might otherwise have done, but also helped make the whole thing a lot less financially painful than it might have been. I consider myself very lucky in this respect, and have no regrets about the time I spent with the company - it was a great place to spend my 20s and early 30s in the early part of my career, but I couldn't see myself there in another 20 years (or even 5 or 10 years), so when I saw the opportunity to move, I jumped at it like a lion pouncing on a wildebeest.

It takes someone very brave or very stupid to leave a well-paid career in the middle of the biggest recession since the 1920s, but the timing of everything was just too good to pass up the opportunity. In about a week, I start a PGCE in Secondary-level Science, with a specialism in Physics at Roehampton University. Science (and Physics in particular) has always been my first love, intellectually. I only really went into IT because it was a career a Physics graduate can get into pretty easily and get handsomely paid for doing so. Hell, the programming options in my Physics degree were my least favourite parts of the course (embarrassingly, I was a terrible programmer - there's a real irony that I was able to find someone willing to pay me to do it). What I really wanted to do was carry on with Physics, except that I spent too much time falling in love with Fleur in my second year and too much time playing Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D in my third year to really do myself justice academically (Again, I have no regrets - I'd do it all over again in an instant). So it's taken 12 years since I graduated, but I'm re-engaging with Science and Physics again in a major way, this time by teaching it, rather than studying or researching it.

Why become a teacher? Well, it's something I had a very long, very hard think about earlier in the year. There's an element of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", since not only is Fleur a teacher, but so are her parents, one of her sisters, my brother and my sister-in-law... So it's not like I don't have a realistic idea of what the profession is like. And even better, I've literally got decades of experience to tap into whenever I need to ask one of them for advice. My brother has always joked with me that there are only two reasons to be a teacher: July and August. The truth is that you can't really argue with 13 weeks holiday a year. If you're going to get worked half to death in whatever profession you opt for, go for one with proper holidays. But the main reason for wanting to become a teacher is that not only are Physics specialists in real demand (only about 5% of the people applying to do a Science PGCE are Physics specialists - 80% are biologists, with the remaining 15% being chemists - so if you're a Physics specialist, you've picked quite a safe profession in the long term), but I also think the time is right for me now. It wouldn't have been if I'd gone straight into teaching after leaving university (indeed, I once swore at the time I would never go into teaching), but now I've mellowed a bit (yes, really!), got some real life experience, and the favourite part of my old job was mentoring the IT placement students on their industry placement year. To steal a gag from Mass Effect - knowledge is like herpes: if you've got it, spread it around - and I found that I really enjoyed doing the spreading. Knowledge, information, has always been my drug (well, other than alcohol), which is why I was constantly plugged into Wikipedia and read huge volumes of the Children's Encyclopedia Britannica (a set of 24, as I recall) that my parents bought for me and my brother when we were in our early teens. There's no doubt that teaching is a high-workload, high-stress, underpaid, under-appreciated career for the most part - but it's also a whole lot more existentially rewarding than shunting numbers around an Excel spreadsheet for 10 hours a day. As a teacher, you're helping shape lives and have far more of a hands-on impact on the fabric of society than any corporate job. I have to confess that I find the prospect both exciting and no small part daunting.

I will try and keep this blog up to date with my progress throughout the year, but I can't guarantee how regular updates will be, as I'm not going to be spending much time at a computer during my course and teaching placements. Wish me luck... I'm going to need it!

Bark: Feeling the heat

2009-07-01T14:09:00.003Z

I'm Scottish. I'm not built for weather like this. Where's a traditional British summer (i.e. thirty days of unbroken rain) when you really need one?

Bark: The real big news story of the week

2009-06-26T14:36:00.002Z

The mystery of how crop circles get created has finally been solved. It's nothing to do with aliens or hoaxers. No, it's wallabies off their heads after snacking on opium poppies.

Fucking awesome.

Bark: Michael Jackson broke the internet

2009-06-26T10:54:00.002Z

Inconsiderate bastard.

Bark: Why you should always buy Sennheiser

2009-06-23T22:10:00.007Z

I'm going on a bit of a health kick for the summer, and unusually for me, I've hit the gym twice in the last three days. When I was getting ready to go to the gym tonight, I realised with a dawning sense of horror that my dear lady had just washed my gym kit, which was a bit ripe from my session on Sunday.

Unfortunately, she'd neglected to tell me that she was going to wash it before I saw it hung out on the line. The reason I was horrified was because I knew that Fleur had just stuck my kit straight into the washing machine without bothering to check the pockets (she never does) and I'd left my best set of mini-headphones in the pocket of my cycling shirt, as I use them to plug into the TVs on the cardio machines at my gym.

Over the years I've had a pretty terrible record with breaking sets of in-the-ear headphones (one of the reasons I upgraded to a set of wireless gaming headphones for my PC a little while back, because at least I can't accidentally pull the wires out of the earphones - usually by treading on the lead or moving too far away from the jack socket and almost taking my head off in the process - if there are no wires to pull out), so having had this set go through the wash, I wasn't confident about their chances of survival. Thankfully, they only went through at around 30 degrees (rather than a boil wash), so after they'd dried out, I tested them on my laptop and they still worked! And now they smell of lavender, which doesn't make any difference to the sound quality of the music, but does make the whole experience a little more pleasant, nonetheless.

Granted, earphones aren't exactly hugely complicated bits of electronics (they're just coils of copper wire and a couple of magnets wrapped up in plastic and a occasionally a bit of rubber, really), but the fact that they'd survived being thrashed around in the drum of a washing machine for an hour or so was pretty impressive, I thought.

Byte: Now with added Madness!

2009-06-23T15:09:00.003Z

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that my post archive now goes back to 2003, rather than starting in December 2004. This is because I've used a nice bit of functionality in Blogger to integrate all the posts from my old blog.

I'll probably delete the old Mad Iain blog now that I have all the posts consolidated in one place, and will spend a little time over the summer weeding out all the old posts with dead URLs and broken image hotlinks. I haven't imported any of the comments from the old posts, because (as I remember) some of the comments threads did have the tendency to turn into slanging matches because of a bit of cross-pollination of ire from the old State forum, and we don't really need to drag all that up again here. A lot of water has passed under the ruined remains of that particular bridge by now.

I did originally intend to do this blog integration job on my own little piece of internet real estate, but in the end I decided that doing it this way was a whole lot easier, and free, to boot. Never underestimate the attraction of doing something something quickly and cheaply as opposed to spending lots of time and money to essentially get the same result... What? What did you expect? I am Scottish, after all...

In other news, you will have also noted that it's been very quiet around here for the last few weeks. All will be revealed in a month or two - but I'm not quite ready to talk about it yet. (How's that for being enigmatic?)

Bark: My new method of dealing with cold callers

2009-06-19T13:08:00.002Z

Byte: The Old Republic

2009-06-03T11:03:00.002Z

As game trailers go, this is pretty epic.

Yeah, I want this one for review... I will, however, be a bit disappointed if you can't do the fighting combos you see in the trailer in the game. There's nothing worse than seeing all these flashy moves being showcased and then the game utterly failing to deliver on your ability to do them within the game. (Which, I would note, the opening cinematic of World of Warcraft didn't do - broadly speaking, your characters can do everything you saw - shapeshifting, commanding demons, etc) It's right up there in game-crimes with allowing enemies to perform actions that you, as the player cannot. I'm specifically thinking about Unreal 2, here, where you had Skaarj leaping, jumping and rolling about to avoid fire, while you lumbered around like a pregnant elephant. Still, getting back to The Old Republic, the hype looks good - whether it will live up to it is quite another matter. BioWare have long been one of my favourite developers, though, so I'm pretty hopeful.

Bark: Go-go-Jonny!

2009-05-29T16:38:00.004Z

The research scientist, Doctor Jonathan Rae, quoted in this piece on the BBC website is one of the guys I studied with at Leicester. I'm not quite sure how he ended up in Canada, but to see someone you knew personally pretty well as a student doing real, new, hard science is pretty awesome.

I also recognise quite a few of the names of co-authors on his Publication list, too. M. Lester was my tutor, T.K. Yeoman was one of my core Physics lecturers (he was the young, 'cool' one - he used to wear very funky shirts, as I recall) and A.B. Stockton-Chalk (better known as 'Molly') was a girl in my tutor group.

How cool is that? Kind of makes me wish I'd studied a bit harder instead of spending quite so much time on TIE Fighter and Dark Forces. 1997 was clearly a vintage year...

Byte: Toodle-Pip(boy)

2009-05-29T09:33:00.003Z

I've been playing rather a lot of both Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 recently. And I was going to write a huge long post of analysis about both games, but my review copy of The Sims 3 just dropped through my letterbox, so all bets are off! There goes my productivity for the day...

Bark: We like to flip our homes a lot in Scamalot

2009-05-27T10:42:00.004Z

This whole MPs' expenses scandal has been keeping me broadly amused for the last couple of weeks. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show had a nice take on it - I thought using Terry Jones in drag (from The Meaning of Life, I think) as Douglas Hogg's wife was rather inspired.

I've especially been loving all the insincere hand-wringing and contrition in the press - the only thing they're really sorry about is the fact that they got caught. Though the response from one MP about the size of his expense claims was breathtaking in its level of sheer arrogance, and is probably a truer gauge of the feelings MPs have for their constituents. But I'm amazed at just how naive people have been in thinking that the MPs *didn't* have their hands in the pot. Come on, if you've got an expense account that's larger than the average national wage, and you can claim stuff of relatively modest values without even having to provide a receipt, how is that system (which the MPs got to police for themselves) not going to be widely abused?

So now we've got the likes of David Cameron (or Tony Bland, as I like to call him) shouting out that there's got to be a revamp of Parliament and their expenses system, but curiously enough, he doesn't want to change the voting system over from our current first-past-the-post system (which basically means if you live in a constituency that's predominantly inclined to one party, say Labour or Conservative, when you're a Liberal Democrat, you might as well not vote, because there's no way you can affect the outcome) to a system of proportional representation, where every vote has an equal weight. So at the moment, we have a system where governments are decided on a few dozen marginal seats, where only a few hundred thousand votes might be cast. The rest of the population gets absolutely no say at all, because the constituencies are divided historically down party lines and very rarely change sides. Neither Brown or Cameron want to do away with this system, because it means they wouldn't get so many seats in Parliament, compared to a proportional representation system. Politicians clinging desperately onto their power? Surely not! So much for putting real power back into the hands of the people.

Though I have to say that Cameron's idea of putting ordinary people up for election into Parliament isn't what I'd call a good one. Mainly because the average man on the street is an idiot (that's why we define "average" as average). It's bad enough that we get politicians making decisions about how to run the country - put the same decisions in the hands of your average Sun reader and that really would end in chaos. There's a certain irony in the leader of the party that's most flagrantly abused the current system saying "join us to help us clean up politics", too. It takes some chutzpah to stand on a mountain of shit and tell people that you're on the moral high ground. If the Conservatives had been in government right now there would be riots in the streets. It's only because they're seen as the government-in-waiting that they're getting away with it. That and the fact that Gordon Brown is about as charismatic and likeable as a maimed dung beetle in comparison.

The problem isn't that we have a political elite class - it's that this political elite is an untrustworthy, self-serving bunch of incompetents. Maybe that's a little unfair - some politicians do have integrity and do a good job, but as a breed, in touch with normal day-to-day reality they are not. Try getting MPs to file expenses like someone who works for the NHS, or a school, or any large organisation (where you need VAT receipts for absolutely everything you try to claim) and they might understand why people are pissed off about them being able to spend £400 a month on food without even providing so much as a receipt from Waitrose (somehow I don't think many MPs buy their grub from Aldi or Farm Foods).

A little reform certainly won't do the House of Commons any harm, but do I expect any substantive change out of this furore? No, not really. Mainly because my cynicism could power several small towns for a year, but also because while it's relatively easy to get people to accept more power or privilege, trying to get them to relinquish it voluntarily never really works. The politicians will talk a good game for the next couple of months, and then conveniently forget the whole thing by the time the next general election comes round. I think it would have been amusing if Gordon Brown had called a snap election - unfortunately his balls aren't nearly as big as that pathetic excuse for smile he keeps flashing about on Youtube. I used to think Tony Blair had an insincere, Cheshire Cat smile, but Gordy's really takes the biscuit. A piece of advice, Gordon - if you're a miserable git, don't try to hide it with a smile that make's the Joker's look natural. It's painful to look at and doesn't fool anyone. Be yourself - be a dour, miserable Scottish git. You might get more respect for it.

Byte: Nice Muscle!

2009-05-27T09:44:00.001Z

That's got to be the strangest game I've ever seen. WANT.

Byte: The parabolic arc of a severed head

2009-05-21T08:55:00.001Z

Now that my PC is starting to show its age, I've started to buy quite a few cross-plaform games on my Xbox 360, rather than the PC, because at least then I can be sure that they're going to bloody work. At the weekend I paid a ten pound premium (versus the PC version) to pick up Fallout 3 on the 360 and overall, I think it was money well-spent.

Due to other commitments on my time right now, I've only had the chance to play around the opening few areas around Vault 101 and Megaton (no, I've not blown it up yet, though I suspect I will once I've exhausted all the other quests there), and I'm fairly impressed. I never played the original Fallout, but did attempt to play Fallout 2, before I got so frustrated with the turn-based combat system that I uninstalled it and never looked back.

That was probably a bit naughty of me, so I reinstalled it last night and started a new game on it. I found that the best way of getting through the rather tortuous temple of trials at the start was to put some points into melee weapons and then wait until the ants or scorpions got within range and hit them with a targeted thrust from my polearm, using my spare action points to run away bravely so that they'd use their action points to close up to within striking distance for my next turn. That makes combat a whole lot less painful (even if it still takes ages) but my main, overriding impression from playing it last night was just how awful the quest journal was, compared to what you get in modern RPGs nowadays. You get a one-liner for each quest and that's it. No other help than that. It just shows you how much RPGs have come on in the last 10 years. Anyway, I digress...

Combat in Fallout 3 is much better than I found its predecessor. Various people have described it as "Oblivion with guns", and that's a relatively fair assessment. Fallout 3 does play a lot like Oblivion, but the VATS combat system allows you to be much more efficient in the way you use your ammunition, compared to playing it in real time, like another FPS-RTS hybrid, such as Deus Ex or Vampire Bloodlines. Which is just as well, because ammo is relatively scarce and you can't afford to hose down weak enemies with an assault rifle when a .32 calibre pistol could do the same job, albeit just not so quickly. I'm quite proud to say that I have managed to take down a rocket launcher-wielding Super Mutant outside Big Town with just a 10mm pistol (at only level 4), though it's not an experience I intend to repeat in a hurry. I'm certainly dreading the point at which I run out of ammunition, too. But I'm not at this point yet, leaving me free to enjoy the way using VATS allows me to take the heads off raiders and mutant ants and see them fly through the air with a complete disregard for the laws of physics. One of my favourite kills so far was a sneak headshot on a raider with my trusty 10mm pistol in the Super-Duper Mart, which crit'ed him for a one shot kill, sending him catapulting off the top of the supermarket shelf he was walking on, somersaulting and cartwheeling ludicrously through the air in slow motion, like an over-enthusiastic stuntman in a John Woo film. That might get old. Sometime next year. Maybe.

So it's hard to fault the combat right now, and the openness of the game world is very enticing, even if they've gone a little bit too far in the "wasteland" stakes. I know realism in games is the done thing these days, but crikey, is all that wasteland dull or what? Couldn't they have raided the local B&Q and painted up Megaton a little? Where's a post-apocalyptic Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen when you really need one? The sheer sameyness of the town really makes it hard to navigate initially, particularly at night. Surely they could have found a few tins of paint from somewhere to brighten things up a little. There are certainly enough paint guns lying around the place...

That's not my only gripe, either. Bethesda have done the same thing they did with Oblivion and blown their entire voiceover budget on a single character you only see for about ten minutes at the beginning of the game. The consequence of this is that after you've talked to a person twice, they've run out of things to say and all you get from that point on are repeated lines and throwaway comments like "Nice to see you're back". And there's the Oblivion thing where characters all say the same lines, but at least there's a wider variety of voices now. It's also a little disappointing that Bethesda have done away with another one of Fallout's standout features - being able to get married or otherwise basically slut your merry way around the wasteland.

I've always found it odd that developers will be quite happy for you to decapitate and maim your way around the game world, but the merest mention of sex is totally off limits. The closest I've seen so far in Fallout 3 is being able to spend the night with Nova, the redheaded working girl in Megaton, but even that's mostly implied and you don't even get to see so much as her underwear, let alone have her comment on you spending the night together if you rent the bed at Moriarty's. Even something as archaic as Baldur's Gate II had a much more mature treatment of romance (and even casual sex, should you choose to sleep with Phaere in the Underdark). That the subject seems to be totally off verboten in modern games is a tad disappointing.

But overall, I am enjoying the openness of the game world, which is well-realised, if a tad on the dull side (something the post-apocalyptic Auto Assault had trouble with as well). I don't have any followers as yet (not even Dogmeat - hell, I don't even like dogs) and I'm not very far into the main quest, so I'm reserving judgment for a while yet, but I'm enjoying it so far. That I played it well into the early hours of Sunday morning the day I bought it, when I only intended to muck about with the character creation system (which is really nicely done, incidentally - a lot more better than Oblivion's, I'd say) is a good sign. I even picked up the Broken Steel expansion off Xbox Live, since I've heard it fixes a lot of the problems with the way the main quest ends in the unexpanded game. And a raised level cap is always good...

Byte: EVE vs WoW - the revenge!

2009-05-20T08:47:00.003Z

Last night I filed a review of the latest release of EVE Online - Apocrypha - with my editor at Videogamer. It's written mainly for the benefit of prospective new players, because I didn't really see much point in preaching to the converted. If you're already playing EVE, then the retail release now in shops isn't really meant for you.

Obviously, Apocrypha has been out for some time now, and in order to review the game properly, I've had a much longer stint playing it than my previous effort a couple of years ago. And what I found was very surprising. It's actually grown on me over the last few weeks.

The key to this was that rather than blindly flying around solo wondering what the hell you have to do, I enlisted the help of some EVE veterans I'm friendly with in what's laughably called "real life". They chucked me some money, a couple of spare frigates to get me out of the pathetic starting frigate as quickly as possible and then gave me all sorts of invaluable advice as to what skills I should be training and how to clean up your system overview window to concentrate only on the important stuff (and also how to avoid accidentally shooting one of your Corp-mates).

So rather than piddling around running missions for NPC agents (or worse, mining), instead I was able to head straight out into 0.0 space and see what's really out there. The first thing I learned was that frigates aren't entirely useless. Their speed and maneuverability make them great for harrying larger ships when you're in a fleet, but you still wouldn't want to fly into 0.0 space in one solo. If anything, I've found that EVE is a much more social game than WoW. It's players are certainly much friendlier and helpful in the chat channels than your average WoW player. I've found very little snobbery about the kind of ship you fly. This is because, unlike WoW (where unless you have a full set of top tier Epics, most people look at you like you're somehow inadequate as a human being), each class of vessel has its own particular strength. A small frigate or cruiser set up for electronic warfare or drive jamming, when used in a coordinated way with the rest of your Corp's fleet, is just as useful to have in a fight as the most heavily armed battleship.

This is something I missed entirely in my previous forays into New Eden, mainly because I never really made it out of 1.0 space and didn't see any of the tactics that can be employed in PvP. Even so, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of EVE now, but I suppose that's to be expected. The game is so huge, so complicated, it's only really now after dabbling with it for a month or two that I'm getting any sort of handle on it at all. I've still not really done much with the economic side of EVE, mainly because I've been trying to get to grips with the social aspects of the game. EVE is famous for its political intrigue and inter-corporation warfare, and I have to confess, this is one of the things that appeals to my Machiavellian streak. And it also demonstrates the real difference between EVE and the more traditional structure of an MMORPG like WoW.

The fact that you can influence the in-game economy and the social balance of power is extraordinary after you've played something like Warcraft for four years or more. There, if you nail Onyxia in her lair, she never really dies. She'll respawn in a week and you can kick her scaly butt all over again. But if, for example, you infiltrate a rival corporation alliance and use an administrative loophole to disband it (as recently happened to Band of Brothers), you've just made a profound change to the balance of power within the game. That's almost incomprehensible to someone used to the regimented structure of something like WoW. That the developers would allow players such freedom to do a thing that literally destroys years and years of effort on the part of the alliance involved, just beggars belief when you see the way Blizzard stamp at the merest hint of people playing the game in a way they don't want you to play it.

I still think I probably need to play EVE for at least another six months before I could really pass a proper judgment on it, but having experienced both games properly now (and I freely admit that I was an idiot for trying to play EVE like any other MMORPG in my previous efforts), I think I can do a more reasonable 'versus' comparison now.

Both games have a lot going for them. In their own way, I like both immensely, and it's not really fair to draw a direct comparison, because of the way that the games have been designed and structured.

WoW is a far more regimented experience. You have your levels and your level grind and the objective of the game is to work your way up to the level cap, enjoying (or not) the story along the way, before devoting yourself to either doing organised PvP or high-end raiding at the level cap, or rolling and levelling a new character. You also have to live with the fact that you're never going to be able to change the lore of the game. That's imposed upon you and what you do will never truly make the blindest bit of difference to the game world. That's just the rules of the game.

EVE on the other hand doesn't attempt to restrict you in any way. The game world is vast, complicated and dynamic. It's as much about making money and gaining power as it is about flying around star systems blowing shit up. EVE is what you want it to be. There's no grind, just time invested in skills research. I do still have massive reservations about the learning curve, however. While you can get started in WoW relatively easily, EVE remains utterly overwhelming and bewildering to begin with, and despite CCP Games's best efforts to tone down the learning curve with some nicely put together tutorials, I can see it still putting off a lot of players in those first couple of weeks. The key is to get in with a corporation quickly and let them show you the ropes, rather than stumble around in the dark wondering where the light switch is.

If I had to recommend one game out of the two for someone to pick, assuming that they've never played either before and would be starting a new character from scratch, it's a tricky decision. WoW is clearly a lot easier to pick up to begin with, but if you want to get involved with a guild and what they're doing from night to night, it's a long journey to get to the level cap so that you can participate in the top-end raids (assuming everyone doesn't sniff condescendingly at you because your gear isn't good enough to come along). I'm not sure what the average level 1-80 time is now in WoW, but it's got to be something of the order of 200-300 hours or maybe more - especially if you're a brand new player. That's a lot of time to invest in a game before you can really get stuck in and involved with the end-game. Which, frankly, I've never found all that interesting, myself. I'd much rather explore the game world and level characters. WoW was always more about the journey than the destination, for me.

I suppose this is why, now that it's finally clicked with me, I think EVE is arguably the more rewarding game, both in the short-to-medium term and in the long term. Those couple of hundred hours you would spend in WoW just getting to the level cap could (in EVE) instead be spent getting directly into the action with a corporation. Whether you wanted to go down the mining, trading or PvP route, EVE's structure, as unwelcoming as it might be at the initial outset, doesn't stop you from getting involved in a meaningful way, right from the start (because the whole game is the 'end-game').

So I've definitely changed my mind about EVE over the last few weeks. This may surprise a few people, given what I've said about it before, but hey, wisdom comes with age, I suppose...

Bark: Bacon Monday

2009-05-12T10:21:00.002Z

I was so bad yesterday. Three meals, three servings of bacon. I was working in the Portsmouth office yesterday, meaning that I had access to their fine canteen, filled with the usual breakfast delights. I went for my usual Breakfast Muffin of Death (bacon, egg and a hash brown, slathered with lashings of brown sauce), washed down with a cold bottle of Diet Coke. Just the way to start a long, hard Monday in the office.

At lunchtime I had a brie and bacon baguette with yet more Diet Coke, which sustained me until I got home, whereupon I decided to complete the set with some linguine with a tomato, bacon and chilli sauce, accompanied by some red wine (because at this point, the only thing I was missing in my food group list was alcohol).

Not my healthiest day ever, but definitely one of the tastiest...

Byte: Well that went well

2009-05-05T19:22:00.002Z

Of all the possible things that could have fouled up my attempt to repair my laptop, I didn't foresee this one.

Thanks so some rather robust German over-engineering, it seems like they used case screws made out of titanium and got them tightened by The Hulk, because they ruined my mini-screwdriver (literally sheared off the edges of the turning planes) by the time I attempted to remove the third screw. Out of nearly THIRTY. At that rate I'd be spending a fortune on new screwdrivers simply to open the little bastard up.

So I didn't even manage to take the case off, let alone have a go at repairing the power socket with the soldering iron I was so looking forward to using. Sigh. I guess I'll just have to find a decent independent PC shop that repairs laptops.

Byte: What could POSSIBLY happen?

2009-05-05T16:41:00.003Z

Some companies have a very odd business plan...

I was in PC World yesterday to pick up a USB Flash stick for my beloved, when I thought I'd take the opportunity to pay a visit to their "Tech Guys" to see how much they'd rob me to repair my laptop, which has been broken for a couple of weeks. I explained the problem thus: my laptop has stopped charging, because I believe the power socket has somehow managed to work itself loose from the motherboard, as it was giving me an intermittent contact when I plugged the power pack in for a while, and then it decided to give up the ghost and not want to charge anymore. I'm certain that there's nothing wrong with either the battery or the power pack, since the power pack has a little light at the PC plug end, which faithfully illuminates when I plug it into the wall and the battery happily discharged its remaining power, and if it works discharging, I can think of any reason why it wouldn't want to charge. So the culprit has to be the connection between the motherboard and the power socket in the laptop itself, which is failing to form a circuit.

The "Tech Guy" listened to all this sagely, and then said, fatefully, "We don't do any laptop maintenance on site, we send it away, and there's a fixed price for laptop repairs." That price being somewhere over £230. Who the hell would pay that? For that price you could buy a perfectly good netbook. So I thought, screw that for a game of soldiers, especially since the part that's broken must cost all of a couple of quid at most. So, I thought it would be much more cost effective to go out and buy a soldering iron, some high quality electric solder and a decent mini-screwdriver to take the case apart and fix the damn thing myself, for less than £40.

Which is what I'm going to try to do tonight. I mean, WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? At worst I'll screw the motherboard, but since the lappy's absolutely unusable anyway, I don't have much to lose at this point other than pride and faith in my own ability to fiddle safely with electronics. It's been approximately 17 years since I last used a soldering iron, but electronics was always one of my favourite bits in Design & Technology. Fingers crossed I'll have a working laptop come the end of the evening. And if I don't, well, it's not like that's too different from what I started the evening with...

Byte: Bizarre Gaming Injuries

2009-05-04T16:32:00.002Z

My right side has been killing me all day, because I was up late last night playing KotOR on my Xbox 360, and I was lying on the floor, with my elbow tucked up underneath my ribs, grasping a gamepad. I think I've done myself a bit of a mischief, because it feels like I've either badly bruised or cracked a rib. It's all because I stayed up a little longer than I intended to finish off Taris and take my first couple of Jedi levels, so I wasn't quite as attentive as usual in the way I was sitting. I'm going to have to get myself a good beanbag, or one of those gaming rocking chairs...

What're your most bizarre video game related injuries, readers?

Bark: I AM WINNER!

2009-04-30T18:00:00.002Z

Finally, I can officially call myself a Winner. I'm going to give it another week (even though I finished the first draft nearly two weeks ago) and then have a go at the second draft. But right now I think I can feel justly proud of myself, and I have the png file to show for my efforts.

Bark: Hymn To The Immortal Wind

2009-04-27T17:13:00.002Z

I've been spending much more money than usual on CDs lately, and my latest acquisition dropped through my letterbox from Play this morning.

My buddy Matija (a fellow former WoW player) tipped me off about these chaps a week or two back, and obviously, since my music tastes are about a decade behind most normal people, I'd never heard of them. Mono are a Japanese post-rock band, who've apparently been fairly huge for around the last ten years. I picked up Hymn To The Immortal Wind after listening to a couple of its tracks on their Myspace site, and the album's really nice - kind of a cross between Mogwai and Michael Nyman. It's a very strong album: easy to listen to, yet lots of variation in mood, intensity and an imaginative use of instruments, blending the use of classical concert instruments with those of a modern rock band. Some tracks (especially Ashes In The Snow, The Battle To Heaven and Follow The Map) are hauntingly beautiful. It'll be keeping me happy while I code macros for the rest of the week, I'm sure.

At the weekend I also picked up some Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, simply because it's about bloody time I did, frankly. Yeah, that's how behind I am. Give me another decade and I might finally get around to buying some Franz Ferdinand...

Byte: What the?

2009-04-24T10:31:00.004Z

This is probably the last time I'll post about World of Warcraft for the foreseeable future, since my subscription expired while I still had 40% of the Uldar patch to download.

My old State-chum Mark flagged this story up to me this morning, which left me going MUH?

World of Warcraft and Peggle are perfectly wonderful games. Two of my favourites, in fact, but they don't belong together. This could be the first sign that Blizzard are really beginning to lose the plot with WoW.

If I want to play Peggle, I WILL PLAY PEGGLE. I won't load up World of Warcraft and stand around in Orgrimmar or Ironforge challenging people to Peggle duels. It seems utterly futile to me.

It's a little bit like all those 3G mobile phone companies telling you "you can watch TV on your mobile!" I already have a TV for that, thanks. It's built specifically for that purpose and it does a much better job of it than a 2 inch screen on a mobile phone, too.

It's like Blizzard have sat down and thought, "how can we make WoW even more appealing to bored housewives and layabout students? I know - PEGGLE!" And, of course, Pop Cap aren't going to turn down the chance of 10 million people being able to play their game (since some of them will want to go off and buy the standalone version), but it's a bit meta, isn't it? Games within games, real world game meets fantasy world... though I can't help but think that Puzzle Quest would have been a more appropriate choice.

But this story gets me worried about games. When you get this kind of thing happening in a game, my internal alarm bells start to clang and it's a sure sign you're on the express train to Shitsville. Just as well my sub has finished, really.

Bark: A wholly inadequate response

2009-04-19T20:28:00.002Z

:'(

J.G. Ballard has died.

Obituary.

Ballard has been one of my favourite authors over the last few years and one of my greatest influences as a nascent writer of fiction. Super-Cannes ranks up there as one of my very favourite books, and Crash is probably the most disturbing book I've ever read, so Ballard's work will always have an influence on the way I view our increasingly techno-obsessed society. He was one of the first people to see and make the connection that as our level of technological advancement as a civilisation increased, our standards as human beings seem to regress.

"Genius" and "visionary" are two very much over-used labels these days, but I believe that they can be applied to Jim Ballard in the most literal sense.

As a fantastic author, thinker and keen observer of the human condition, Ballard is going to be missed - not least by me.

Bark: And that's a wrap, people!

2009-04-17T08:06:00.003Z

I stayed up into the wee hours this morning adding the final few pages to my Script Frenzy. I'll probably regret it this afternoon when the lack of sleep catches up with me, but right now it feels worth it.

One hundred and four pages in just seventeen days. To quote Han Solo, sometimes I amaze even myself...

I mean, daaaaamn. I just wrote a film script (admittedly just a rough first draft) in less than three weeks. It actually ended up a little shorter than I was expecting it to be about a week ago, as I really picked the pace up in the final act on the Star Forge. I'm pleased with my ending as well, since it's less clichéd than the game's "Prodigal Knight" wrap-up and medal ceremony, and the very last scene especially ought to give people a big sentimental uplift - which is necessary because a lot of the film is quite dark.

Now I'm going to convert it to PDF and send it out to a few people to get some feedback (from people who've played the game to see how well they think it sticks to the spirit of the game, but also to a few people who never have and never will play the game, to see how it functional purely as a story and a film). Then I give it a couple of weeks to put some clinical distance between myself and the script as it is now, so that I can do a re-write with a much more objective eye and tighten everything up. I already know that the script has a few weaknesses, particular in the way in the foreshadowing is set up for the big reveal about Revan. I skipped a fair bit of that because I was worried about the overall length. But since the final act turned out shorter than I expected, I can put a lot of that exposition back into the first two acts.

But that's for another day. Today is for feeling rather pleased with myself. I've written a film script, FFS. I might never be able to do anything with it (in terms of making an actual film), BUT I'VE WRITTEN A GODDAMN FILM SCRIPT. Lots of people like to casually mention in conversation that they're writers, only to get immediately embarrassed when people ask what they've written and they have to admit that they've never actually finished anything, not even a short story.

Well, today I actually finished something for once, and it feels great to know that I can do it. Today I finally feel that I've earned the right to call myself a genuine writer. Somehow the games journalism stuff (not to mention the drivel I post here) never really seemed to count. But today I don't feel like a casual keyboard basher anymore. I actually took on a project and gave it a beginning, middle and an end. And hurrah for that.

Bark: They don't call it a frenzy for nothing

2009-04-14T13:13:00.002Z

It's been a most productive weekend. I'm eighty-one pages into my film script adaptation of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. That's way, WAY ahead of schedule. I reckon I should be done by this weekend.

In terms of actual text, 81 pages isn't actually a huge amount, only about 18,000 words, but that still surpasses what I managed for last year's NaNoWriMo by quite a significant margin.

It's been hugely fun to write, and I'm just about to embark on the finale, which has been taking form in my head over the last few days. It's going to have a similar form to that of the game, but will differ in quite a few ways in order to make it a little bit more dramatic. I'm pretty happy with the way things have turned out so far, though I did decide in the end to drop HK-47 entirely. His taunts of pathetic meatbags will be missed, but hopefully not too much. Juhani also doesn't make the cut, either - but the galaxy's much better without a mopey cat-woman cluttering up the place.

With fewer characters to fit in, I've been able to flesh out a couple of the supporting players more. Carth is much more likeable - more of a cross between Atton Rand and Malcolm Reynolds, but still with a touch of Carth's whiny angst around the edges. Jolee's playing the Wise Old Man, or Obi-Wan role, but there are parts where he's a little bit too much of a Captain Obvious. I'll probably have to go back and rewrite some of that at some point. Canderous is also a bit on the Captain Obvious side, but I do have a nice twist for him in the climax.

Before I started I was a little concerned as to how I would get on writing the dialogue - given that with screenwriting you have to convey so much more with what is said, rather than what is described - but I have to say, I've not found it nearly as difficult as I thought I would. I've hardly reused anything from the original game. There are a few rare instances, but nearly all of the dialogue is formed from the spirit of what appears in the game, rather than the actual words themselves.

I will be sending out the script to a few select people for honest, no-bullshit assessments. I can't really be a judge of the standard of my own writing (I'm biased, I think everything I do is awesome), so it will be nice to have some feedback and maybe a little bit of ego-puncturing. Having said that, though - I don't think there's a huge amount of flab that could be cut. Certainly, it's been written in a hurry and that will show a lot, but I've tried to keep things tight and follow the screenwriter's mantra: come into a scene late and get out early.

It's been a terrifically enjoyable exercise, though. And I don't say that about writing stuff very often. I could get used to this...

Byte: Even the mighty Google fears the power of Chuck

2009-04-12T01:55:00.001Z

You don't find Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris finds you.

Bark: The Week of Eating Dangerously

2009-04-09T19:49:00.005Z

Friends and regular readers will know that I'm a pretty keen cook. There are relatively few things I enjoy more than rummaging around a half-empty cupboard and then miraculously transforming its contents into something nutritious and delicious. However, when my good lady is away (like she is at the moment, visiting her parents), I really can't be bothered cooking for one.

So this week I've been living off all sorts of stuff I normally wouldn't eat, like pies with hash browns, chinese takeaways and (for breakfasts that I'd normally skip entirely) toasted crumpets with smooth peanut butter. And I've not exactly been drinking healthily either, since I've had enough beer over the last five days to bathe a blue whale.

Just as well it's a four day weekend coming up, because I'm going to need to spend at least half that in the gym...

Byte: Oh, the humanity!

2009-04-08T16:37:00.003Z

The comments thread on this RPS piece almost had me wetting myself. Dr_Demento's is my favourite. Well, other than Tei's bizarre-o-comment, that is... Some people just don't understand the whole concept of satire. (though most of the people in the thread do, thankfully)

Maybe I'm veering into meta-commentary here, but the Onion's piece isn't just a satire on the content of videogames, but also the one-dimensional reporting of it in the news media. Anyone who was paying attention in the last 15 years would have known that The Onion is one of the most well-known news media parody sites out there. I really can't fathom how some people have been taking it seriously. Were they not keeping an eye on the headline ticker? No wonder the Daily Mail constantly get up the collective nose of gamers. They're such an overly defensive, poe-faced bunch at times.

Bark: First-generation Gargoyle

2009-04-08T11:06:00.002Z

If any of you out there have read Snow Crash, then you're going to find this pretty interesting.

Bark: SMASH CUT TO...

2009-04-08T08:52:00.003Z

I'm pleasantly surprising myself with Script Frenzy. We're eight days in, and I've already clocked up a fairly staggering 44 pages. I think I'm actually going to overrun the 100 page target by a good 10 pages or so, but I've got everything planned out in my head as to how the story is going to work.

Due to time constraints, I've made quite a few significant changes to characters and events in the game, which would no doubt upset quite a few fanboys if this film ever made the light of day. But since annoying fanboys is one of my biggest aims in life right now, that's okay.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

One of the biggest changes from the game is that I've aged Mission from a teenager into a woman in her early twenties, basically because I thought having a 14 year old girl zooming about space with a group of 30-plus men was a bit creepy. The more dramatic reason making her older was so that I could set up a classic love triangle between Mission, the protagonist and Bastila. I've also killed off Zaalbar before they even leave Taris, mainly for dramatic purposes ('surely he's not going kill the cute fuzzy-wuzzy?' - yes I am!), but also because (despite looking like one, as my good lady always reminds me whenever she wants me to have a shave) I don't like wookiees that much - and there's not really much you can do with one in terms of characterisation. And given that there simply isn't time in the film to deal with Zaalbar's exile sub-plot from the game, he's otherwise pretty much surplus to requirements.

Carth is also a good deal less angsty in my version of the story, just to make him more likeable, though Bastila wouldn't be Bastila if she wasn't taking haughtiness to noble levels. I haven't had to do too much with Canderous, though he doesn't stick around for long after they get to Dantooine. Jolee makes his appearance as he does in the game - on Kashyyyk - and sticks around from that point. I've not quite gotten there yet, but Jolee's a fun character in the game. He should be nice to write scenes for.

I've cut Juhani and T3-M4 from the story entirely, since like Zaalbar, they're just extra mouths to feed in terms of screen time. They're not strictly needed to drive the plot onward, so I might give them background cameos at some point, but that's about it.

One character I'm not quite decided on yet is HK-47. We're skipping Tatooine entirely, since there's no real reason to have to visit more than one star map in the film. At the risk of a whole internet's worth of Nerd Rage being directed at my inbox, I think I'm going to cut him. I'm loath to do so, given that he has all the best lines in the game, but I'm not sure there's enough slack in the screen time available to be able to do him any sort of justice at all. I'm kind of tempted to conflate his character with that of Calo Nord, as a secondary antagonist, since it makes more sense to have a psycho-killer robot working for the bad guys rather than the heroes, but again, I'm undecided at this point. I'll probably save that decision for a re-write.

SPOILERS END HERE

I'm really amazed at just how well things are going so far. I've even got my ending sorted out, and it's much more bitter-sweet than I originally thought it was going to be. I'm not going to reveal too much now, but let's just say not everyone gets a happy ending...

Byte: ZOMG! W00T!

2009-04-06T18:43:00.004Z

I was flicking through my subs copy of PC Gamer (Issue 200), when I got to the letters section. I'm scan-reading through when I see a screenshot on page 52 that looks rather familiar, underneath a letter by one of the PCG guildies playing on Steamwheedle Cartel.

I may have just scared the neighbours with some rather delighted screaming. Cheers to Tim, Ross, or whoever it was from PCG who picked it up off the Screenshots thread on the PCG WoW guild forum. You just made my day.

Bark: Röyksopp Forever

2009-04-03T20:35:00.005Z

Röyksopp's new album turned up from Play this week, in a particularly well-timed move to coincide with the start of Script Frenzy.

If I had to describe it in a word: jaunty. If I had to describe it a horrible, mangled, compound, triple-hyphenated word: HAPPY-HAPPY-JAUNTY-JAUNTY!

I don't know nearly enough about music (unlike some games journalists) to delve into detailed criticism of the album or its individual tracks, but it's had me bounding happily in my chair all week, so it can't be half bad.

Speaking of Script Frenzy, I'm pretty shocked by my progress so far, given that I've written over twenty pages in the last four days. I suspect because it's mainly because I know the game forwards, backwards and sideways, after so many playthroughs, but I think the time I spent 'pre-writing' last week setting out my page and scene plans is really paying off. If I keep going at this rate, I'll be finished well ahead of schedule. As of Sunday, I'll have nine evenings of uninterrupted writing time, which is fantastic. I might even be able to finish up before Fleur gets back from France. I really wasn't expecting it to be quite this easy. But let's not count our poulets just yet... Twenty pages much be a good start, but there's still a long way to go.

Byte: A case of bad timing

2009-04-01T15:26:00.002Z

The announcement of OnLive's cloud computing service, which hosts videogames on a 'cloud' server farm and then streams the video output down your broadband line for you to play on your PC or via a low-cost TV-console, got a predictably short thrift when people sat down to analyse it last week.

My own thoughts (see the comments thread) on the subject were along the lines of "Remember the Infinium Phantom?" That little exercise didn't exactly end well. Years of development and millions of dollars burned in R&D costs and all they had to show for it was a $120 lapboard. Which I don't think anyone bought.

As you might expect, the response from OnLive has been pretty robust. Shame they chose to make their rebuttal statement on April Fool's Day, though. Probably could have timed that one better...

Bark: Fade in

2009-04-01T09:06:00.002Z

I stayed up extra late last night for a post-midnight writing session to make a flying start on my Script Frenzy, and wrote five pages of script before I went to bed.

I'm pretty sure what I wrote was total rubbish, but this time (unlike with NaNoWriMo and just about everything else I write) I managed to resist the temptation to go back and rewrite stuff as I went. That's what May is for. So I've almost done my first two day's worth of script within the first couple of hours of the Frenzy. Hopefully I can keep that momentum up and hammer away at the script in a major way while my good lady is off visiting her parents in France next week.

It really helps that I have such a clear idea of how the scenes would work in the film (who says replaying KOTOR a dozen times or more was a total waste of time, huh?), so the words are really flowing at the moment. It also helps that I'm in the kind of mood where I just need to sit down an WRITE, too. I don't know quite yet, but I might actually prefer screenwriting to writing standard narrative prose. I've always had a very visual memory and way of thinking (I used to memorise Physics equations before exams simply by staring at them condensed onto a single side of A4 paper for half an hour before walking into the exam, letting me remember equations simply by visualising the piece of paper - I never would have passed my degree if I hadn't been able to do that), so I can see myself doing a lot more of this in the future.

I'm not sure what I'll do with the script when I've finished the first draft, given that I could never afford to buy the rights to make a film with it, but I suspect I'll selectively distribute it to a few of my writer-y friends, get some feedback on it and do at least one rewrite on it. Then if that's any good, I'll try and do an original script. Who knows? This could be a new career. Hey, you can dream, right?