Posts tagged ‘games’

There’s a reason there’s not many updates around here at the moment, and it goes by the name of Grand Theft Auto IV. I’m finished, yet still not done.

I’m currently considering napalming the whole of Liberty City. The cost in human lives will surely be outweighed by the time I’ll save not running about killing all the pigeons.

I have many words of a Burnout: Paradise review sitting about on my hard drive, and yet I still don’t feel like I’ve actually said enough to truly call it a “review”. And so, from now on, I will blog about games, because I’m lazy and most certainly not dedicated enough to finish a game before anyone else is bored of it.

Residing in my DS at the moment is The World Ends With You, a crazy new game from the reliable folks at Square Enix. My favourite games for the DS which haven’t involved Mario or Phoenix Wright seem recently to be made by Square; they’ve got a real dedication to making DS games which truly take advantage of the platform.

World is a fun old time, and much of this is from the crazy combat (there’s a picture above). The touch screen of the DS has been used for several neat things in the past, but this could be my favourite. On the bottom screen it’s essentially combat-by-gesture; slash across your character to shoot in that direction, slash upwards to create a giant icicle, tap various enemies to create chain lightning, drag along the ground to set it on fire…

But people with eyes may have noticed that there’s also a top screen, and one has to fight on both of them. Splitting your attention between two screens makes for a frenetic experience, and I enjoy the combat, but at this stage I almost wish I were playing a game with just the bottom screen. Often my right hand ends up scribbling like a mad thing, and I can’t quite concentrate on either part of the battle completely. World is what it is, and what it is is awesome, but I hope to play a game one day with the gesture combat brought completely to the fore in a more relaxed fashion.

Ideally, this game will also made by Square Enix.

Oh, bad Wii puns. It’s been too long. I arrived home today to find that Andy had purchased a WiiFit. You may know these from their mind-bogglingly dull billboards, which appear to be taking the reliable marketing tactic of “oh, you so want a rectangular piece of white plastic.” It turns out that they’re a lot more exciting than their unassuming exterior would have you believe. The platform is of course pressure sensitive and allows you to balance, perform yoga, do aerobics, and various other things even more exhausting than Wii Tennis. By the end of my first session I was buggered, but I’ll be coming back because of the COMPETITION. Much like Brain Training on the DS, WiiFit keeps track of your progress and measures you against your friends. And I’m kicking serious arse; after only one day, I’ve already managed to be less fat than Andy due to the sneaky height dependency of the Body Mass Index.¹ I don’t know if families were starting to get sick of Wii Sports, but surely this can only solidify the console’s place amongst perfectly normal people who want to have fun without leaving the comfort of their homes or shooting imaginary people.

1. Andy’s not the first to be screwed by the BMI. Little girls are getting their feelings hurt, too. Having previously downloaded the BMI dashboard widget, I was well prepared for hurtful labels. ↩

I may need an intervention. My efforts at avoiding a cult have only left me open to another dangerous obsession. Of course, I saw it coming, but I was unprepared for its dangerous allure. Gaming has become a very real vice for me.

This is not to say that I’m a hardcore gamer. My paltry gamerscore currently sits at 2,715 which barely rivals certain other, more dedicated folk. But there’s the rub, right there. That’s what sucked me in. Statistics. Sneaky, fiddly little statistics. Because that 2,715 isn’t just one number, but an aggregation of achievements that I’ve accrued in various games. Perhaps even that might not have sucked me in, but for a certain other game’s nefarious influence.

Halo 3 came out a little while back and has gone some way to consuming my spare time. The game obviously comes with its requisite 1000 available points for your gamerscore, but there’s more than that. There’s this. Every single game you ever play, listed, categorised, broken down, analysed, outlined and summarised.

So now, not only is gaming eating into my other hobbies, but gaming is eating into my gaming. Why play Zelda on the Wii if I will receive no points? Ace Attorney 3 on the DS (dutifully imported by Jackson) is at least holding my attention, due to the same delightfully ridiculous sense of humour that has run through the entire series.

And now, a segue.

Ace Attorney is a game about lawyers.

Now I am talking about lawyers.

We had some lawyers come to talk to us at work, and sitting across the table from them made me realise just what a whacked out view of them I really have, courtesy of David E. Kelley. I was constantly disappointed as they failed to sing, dance, engage in witty repartee, have affairs with each other, pour the water in a slow trickle, announce their name and say nothing more, or just admire the skin underneath women’s jaws.

Must try harder, lawyers. You’re being left behind by fiction.

clears away cobwebs

Ahem. It was a peculiar feeling to wake up after a few days heavy skiing a week or two back, and suddenly realise that new iMacs had been released during the night and that I had completely forgotten about it. New Apple releases, debuts of favourite television shows, and the anticipation of a fancy meal at a quality restaurant are the only things these days that manage to simulate that childish enthusiasm which comes less and less easily these days.

After a few SMSes from Jackson and a few moments at the internet cafe, I realised that the lower of the two 24″ iMacs was the one for me. And now, one ski trip and one house-move later, I has myself one.

It’s only very nearly 3 years since I purchased my last one, so I felt somewhat extravagant after I lightened my credit card. However actually receiving the computer put all my misgivings aside. Big changes have happened since I last bought a Mac — intel processors, webcams, remote controls. The whole thing feels like a much more complete media centre, and certainly looks more like a widescreen television than the old iMacs. I was dubious about the keyboard, but it’s actually crisper and more pleasant to use than the previous model. And, of course, I can play Half-Life 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, and any number of other sequels on the… ick… the Windows partition of the iMac.

What’s that? Oh yes, I mentioned moving house, didn’t I. Yes, now I live with fellow atypicalreviewers Andy Cocker, Jackson Kearney and Matthew Cocker (in order of prolificacy of writing), for the first time since Marten Court. Strictly speaking, I’m in their garage, however the garage has been converted, painted and carpeted to be somewhat more appealing. The room is short on furniture, but big on lack of furniture.

It’s a bit cold though. Must buy heater.

2pm. Malpractice Investigation. Stanford Hospital.

Alright, you want the truth — yes, I did kill a man. Is that what you want to hear? Are you happy now? But before you rush off to get me fired, you should know that the circumstances were extremely mitigating.

I’d been working at my other job for 8 hours, then there were Friday night drinks and I was catching the bus home. A man came up to me and showed me a small piece of glass sticking into his right arm.

The piece of glass appeared to be a minor injury, capable of being treated by an idiot. So even though I was on a bus and slightly drunk, I decided to give it a go. I said:

I was relaxed about the procedure. The patient blood pressure was 130 over 70 and the pulse was 80, which is not mentioned on his chart. I could take my time. The conditions in the bus were sub-optimal and hindered me more than I realised. Normally an operation looks like this:

Today, there were smudges, fingerprints and dust on my glasses:

My drinking had made me over confident and blurred my vision:

The bus was swerving from side to side:

The bright afternoon light made it difficult to see:

And then in she walked:

I lost blood pressure in my brain:

I tried to pick up a pair of tweezers to extract the glass. “Ow!” said the patient.
“Sorry, that must be the syringe,” I apologised.
“Argh!” said the patient.
“Whoops, that’s the laser.” I apologised again.
“ARRGH …” said the patient.
I said “Good, he’s fainted from the pain.”
“Excuse me doctor,” said the hot nurse, “you’re holding the scalpel.”
“Hello Nurse!” I helpfully replied.
“Doctor, if you could stop looking at my breasts for one second, you’d see that the patient is dying.”
“No problem,” I answered. This was my chance to show off my mad skills to the hot nurse. “I’ve got the Healing Touch. I just draw a five sided star like this, and time slows down.”
“Doctor! You’re still holding the scalpel! The patient is hemorrhaging from numerous wounds.”
“No problemo. I’ll use some of that magic green healing goop.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Are you even a real doctor?” she shouted.
And that’s when we arrived at the hospital.

The Chief Malpractice Investigator shook his head in disbelief. “It’s a good thing for you that all our doctors have automatic save insurance. Would you like to reload?”
“Yes, please.”

It may have become obvious that I haven’t been writing much about things here. This, naturally, is because I’ve been too busy playing/watching/reading the things that I should be writing about. Thus, a quick catch up is in order, on some of the more interesting things that I should have been writing about recently…

Heroes

Heroes has just begun in Australia, but through the usual channels, I’ve been following the American broadcasts. At first, I must admit, it looks like it’ll be a snorefest a la LOST, but there’s one or two key differences that become apparent as time goes by…

For a start, most of the questions tend to get answered, and replaced with new questions. There’s none (or not much) of the ‘unanswered thread escalation’ that one gets in The X-Files and such. Most of the mysteries are simple “How did he get here?” sort of things that don’t stretch out irritatingly. The “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” arc actually finishes (to an extent) halfway through the series or thereabouts. Which is nice.

Also, because all the characters are split up and moving in different directions, if there is a plotline you don’t like, often it doesn’t stink up the rest of the show. Like, hypothetically, if the Nikki/Jessica plotline was really, really dull, you can kind of deal with it.

Wii

My brother got a Wii. Finally. I’d been playing me a bit of the old Wii tennis, and thought I’d put my Pro Tennis Mii onto the Wii remote and show him off to Andy. Irritatingly, it turns out your Wii Sports information is not kept in your Mii, or at least not the bits that come along when you put the Mii on a Wii remote. Unless I did something wrong.

That was a confusing paragraph. The Wii is fun though. A quick variation on the anecdote that everyone’s been telling; my Mum has been playing Wii Sports and loving it, despite almost never playing a game ever before. That’s how good Wii Sports is. Excite Truck is also good.

Stargate SG-1

Still patchy, this show. And it’s sneakily come back in other countries before Battlestar Galactica has finished. So you can’t expect Andy to start reviewing it again. After all, he’s busy not reviewing Battlestar. Maybe he’ll get to it later. Last week’s show, ‘Family Ties’, was particularly disappointing. I don’t know what it is about shitty character actors that so enthrals the makers of the show. It’s as if they see this actor mug for the camera, do an irritating voice, and completely fail to bring any sort of believability to the part and think “Yes. Yes. There’s a story about him. I can see it now. It’ll be completely unbelievable and irritating. How cool is that?”

The Fountain

Do you like overwrought emotion, long periods of silence and a general lack of drama? Then this film is for you. I can see how The Fountain could have been an awesome film. Bits of it are exciting, bits of it are beautiful. As a whole, though, the word “ponderous” comes to mind. I doubt I’ll review it, but someone else might.

An interesting point about The Fountain — the space backgrounds were done not with computer generated effects, but with particles in water being filmed in slow motion. An interesting point about going to see The Fountain — if you don’t know that, you assume it’s computer generated, and it goes completely over your head.

Please everyone stay calm. I have called this press conference because there is some urgent news. As you all know, this is what a nuclear silo in the middle of launching ICBMs looks like.

We’ve been examining maps and found this. Yes, it’s what we’ve feared. It’s an active silo preparing to launch.

Many of you hoped this day would never come. I assure you that counter measures have been initiated. You should send your loved ones to small inland cities. Our simulations show that these will take the least damage during the oncoming war. I hope you all are prepared and have appropriately stocked shelters.

Some of you have asked about getting help from other nations. To those people I quote the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates: “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more, no less.”

There’s time for one last question, you at the back. What’s that? Ah, no, I don’t think they’re too bouncy. There’s no such thing.