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Well, so much for not neglecting this blog. It’s now May and I have exams to study for. So naturally, I’m choosing now to update. A lot’s happened since the end of January, so I’ll post what I remember of the past few months.

Went to Manchester with Jill to see Coheed. We had delicious chinese beforehand (Jill has a ‘this chicken is orgasmic’ face), then headed over to the Manchester Academy, which for the record, is a lot more of a slightly scummy shed than our Academy. We got there halfway through the K! lineup, in time to see Madina Lake, who are thoroughly average. Coheed, on the other hand were mostly great. After the initial confusion of realising they have backing singers on stage now (like…real, no foolin’ backing singers. Doing the backing singer shoulder dance when they’re not singing and everything. It’s as if 2/3 of the sugababes were up there), it works really well. Claudio puts in so many crazy harmonies on record that I guess it’s a choice between adding members onstage or not getting the full experience (’man your battle staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaations’) on some songs. It works, is the overall verdict. Also, Claudio seems like he’s learned to stay still and sing into the mic a litte more than the first time I saw them, which is nice. The setlist was pretty much what you’d expect, probably an equalish number of songs from every album. Some of the NWFT stuff falls a little flat live…
[Claudio: This is our new single, we're really excited about it *starts playing Feathers*
Me: Oh...you're the only ones then]
…but it’s the same stuff that doesn’t work so well on the album. They didn’t play The Suffering, which was a little surprising, and Jill was disappointed until we realised they were playing it after all and just singing different words. Something about free running, or something…

February brought dissertation project experiment running type-stuff. Or DPERT-S, as I like to call it. It was actually kind of fun, which is bizarre. Maybe I just really like tricking my friends into thinking they’re on a nictotine high when they’re really on a Wrigley’s Extra high. Valentine’s day happened, for which Jill came up. We went out to Old Orleans (I think) for food and cocktails. She got me a real-coffee percolatory coffee making thing, and a cocktail shaking set with a book of recipes, which is awesome. Hence many cocktails over the past few months.

At some point when the parents were on one of their many holidays, I headed back to the parental home to hang with the sister. We got pizza and watched 1408.

1408 is based on a short story by Stephen King. John Cusack is a writer who travels the USA looking for supposedly haunted rooms in hotels, staying in them, and writing books that debunk the myth. He receives an anymous postcard (ooh, mystery and/or intrigue) telling him to stay in a certain room in hotel in New York. Samuel L Jackson is the manager of the hotel who knows the room is evil. Or at one point ‘fuckin’ evil’. 1408 is the room in question. What this equates to is half an hour of setup, followed by over an hour of weird shit after weird shit happening to Cusack, with no story. He gets cold. Then he gets hot. Then he’s in the ocean. Then he’s on a ledge. Then the walls are bleeding. Then there’s a confusing bit where you think (or more accurately, hope) it’s over but it’s not. Then some boring stuff post-room stuff happens, and it ends. There’s some failed heartstring-tugging involving his dead daughter, and some father issues that aren’t explored beyond the film telling you ‘he has daddy issues’. Because, y’know, fleshed-out characters have issues, ergo characters with issues are fleshed-out, right?. Avoid it, unless you like films where Sam Jackson is totally underused and/or weird shit happens to John Cusack. 3/10

At some point around this time I was playing Phantom Hourglass for DS.

Phantom Hourglass is, for the most part, pretty awesome. The controls become second nature faster than I was expecting, it tells a fairly compelling story, and looks really good. It’s also, for the most part, way way too easy. I guess that’s kind of forgiveable, given that the DS is seemingly now being bought by people who’ve never owned a handheld, a console, a microwave or really anything more advanced than a quill and parchment. It’s not without flaws: backtracking through the Temple of the Ocean King again and again becomes kind of a drag, the final boss battle badly needs some kind of better indication of what to do, and the game feels very light on the sidequests compared to standard Zelda fare. But on the whole, these are pretty minor points compared to how much fun it is. 9.5/10

Between then and March 13th I spent most of my life writing dissertation. I also stupidly got into Half-life 2, which is a mistake if I’m trying to be productive. In my defence, that game is awesome. The week leading up to the deadline is a blur of very little sleep and very many energy drinks. I’m nowhere near confident of a good mark, but it’s over and done, and I’ll take anything above 40. The same day as the deadline, Jill came up again to stay for a whole week, which was really amazing, especially since we hadn’t seen each other in a month. Mostly we hung out and were lazy, which was really nice. Had a house party on the saturday, which I don’t really want to think about now. The sunday was Ali’s ‘19th’ birthday, so we organised a cake and a convincing-people-to-sing-happy-birthday-at-midnight scheme. In conclusion, more parties should involve cake.
Went out to tynemouth on the sunday for Ali’s night out. Which was pretty much a school reunion, with added people from sainsbury’s. It seemed like everyone had a good time, I spend most of the night catching up with Al and Laura and Chelle and those other people who I don’t see enough. Plus we didn’t go to any of the scummy bits of tynemouth, which was cool. Further laziness ensued for the rest of the week.
It was my mam’s birthday on the thursday, so we headed to the parental home, then to the wheatsheaf (new york, not holystone) for thai food, which was nice.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the easter break. Got a month’s free trial with Lovefilm, so played a lot of games that are too mediocre to spend money on.

Lost: Via Domus is in a word: brief. It offers around five or six hours of play, which is about as much time as you’ll want to spend playing the formulaic exploration, light puzzle and occasional uninspired action sequences. It’s not great, but gives 1,000 achievement points for your time. Therefore, it is great. Well no…but it’s about as good as you can realistically expect a property based on the Lost license to be. Let’s face it, there’s nowhere near enough action in that show to keep a truly fun game going, unless you jumped around and played as whichever character is relevant for each situation. The full voice cast would have definately helped, especially seeing as the major character models look so good. 7/10

The Simpsons Game is both good and terrible. It looks so, so much like an episode of the show. In motion, no matter where the camera is…whatever EA did with that, that’s how to do 2d animation in 3d. The writing is really good, for the most part. Probably better than the writing on the show has been for a while. There’s a host of game and game-culture parodies and in-jokes, and it all works pretty well. That said, it’s also very frustrating. The camera works well enough most of the time, but that just makes the moments when it completely breaks down and spazzes out all the more jarring. The humour is there, but not there constantly; there are long sections of levels when you’ll be exploring or fighting and hear no dialogue. In this sense, probably the best mission is the one they used for the demo, simply because having Kent Brockman ‘covering’ your progress from the newscopter means there’s a constant barrage of jokes to distract you from how repetitive and frustrating the actions you’re performing are. I guess the most bizarre and disappointing thing is that a game that’s game savvy enough to feature a cameo from Will Wright, a game that’s so self-aware of its place in the gaming universe (the collectable ‘clichés’ show that the designers aren’t simply stupid) can still conform to so many bad conventions. It’s like the game goes ‘hey, collecting things. That’s dumb right? Hahaha, all those stupid games that make you collect a billion different things’ and then gives you a billion different things to collect. The game makes fun of the stupid conventions of the game industry and then goes right ahead and conforms to them, and usually more poorly than the average game. Repetitive combat, frustrating platform sections, obvious boss fights; if you’re looking for a game that will make fun of a flaw and then fall victim to it anyway, The Simpsons Game is for you. 7.5/10

Jumper: Griffin’s Story is a bad, bad game. This represents the lowest depths of my pointwhoring to date. It starts out deceptively well. Easy combat, pressing face buttons to teleport to the four directions and attack dudes? You think, ‘Alright, I guess it’s just a few hours of playing as Nightcrawler in the X-men Legends games. I can dig that’. Then it gets better. Achievements start unlocking like a delicious rain of cherry drops. Finish an opponent from the left? 50G. Finish an opponent from the front? 50G. Somehow trigger an environmental finisher? 50G. Find a powerup? 50G. Based on the first 7 or 8 minutes, Jumper is the most awesome game ever.

However, it’s all downhill from there: You run through a corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You realise all the corridors, rooms and guys all look exactly the same. That is to say, ugly.

Continuing to play at this point is a mistake. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. Then things get worse. You’ll start to encounter higher level enemies, who can block and counter. But it’s okay , because your targeting reticle shows the side they’re vulnerable from. This will change throughout the battle. In theory this is a smart mechanic which changes the pace of the game somewhat. In theory, this keeps you from hammering on one button to win fights as easily as you have done so far. In theory this staunches the repetitiveness that was starting to grate. In practice however, which side is vulnerable will change during your attacks, causing you to get blocked and consequently knocked on your ass. A lot. But you persevere. You mash on buttons. You win the fight.

Further continuing to play at this point is frankly, some digital form of self-flagellation. You run through a corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You realise you’ve had enough of this and that it’s time to throw your pad down in disgust. And then another achievement unlocks. 50 sweet gamerpoints for doing something you don’t even realise. You remember that this is why you’re doing this to yourself in the first place, so you bolden your resolve and go on.

You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 4 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 4 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 4 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 4 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You come across a boss. You get knocked on your ass. You mash buttons. You win the fight.
You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 5 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 5 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 5 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You come across a boss. You get knocked on your ass. You mash buttons. You get knocked on your ass again. You win the fight. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them. You run through another corridor to some more rooms with 3 guys you have to kill in. You kill them.

You come across the character who is presumably meant to look like Samuel L Jackson. He is possibly relevant to the story, but seeing as you can (read: will) skip cutscenes, you don’t care. You mash buttons. You get knocked on your ass. You mash buttons. You deplete his health bar enough that he teleports off to another location. You follow. You mash buttons. You get knocked on your ass. You mash buttons. You deplete his health bar enough that he teleports off to another location. You follow. You mash buttons. You get knocked on your ass. You mash buttons. You deplete his health bar enough that he teleports off to another location. You follow. You mash buttons. You get knocked on your ass. You mash buttons. You deplete his health bar enough that he teleports away and is presumably vanquished.

You realise that this wasn’t the final boss fight. Further corridors leading to rooms filled with 6 guys you have to kill await. By now most of these enemies are the blocking ass-knocking boss variety. Beyond these rooms and corridors waits a final boss. Fighting him is like fighting a regular boss, but with 10 times more being knocked on your ass, and summoning in waves of regular bosses.

At this point you realise that you’ve been playing Jumper for 3 hours, which is 2 hours and 45 minutes too long. You eject the disc and fight the urge to seal it in a lead container to prevent leaking of its sheer terribleness and bury it in a ditch. You look at the 700 gamer points you’ve gained for your three hours of effort and feel every bit the filthy whore you are. Non-360 versions: 2/10. 360 version: 9.9/10

~ by Mucker on May 16, 2008.