You'll often hear politicians, social commentators and people born before 1970 lamenting that society has lost the ‘community spirit’ it once had. And to be fair, it’s easy to see where they're coming from. We’re a nation that lives in ignorance of our neighbours, is terrified of the under-educated and hyper-active youths terrorising the streets, and which has become utterly dependent on an economic philosophy that values the pursuit of individual wealth above all else.
In other words: we’re selfish, self-obsessed, self-loathers who are too scared to say hello to each other in case someone suddenly pulls a knife.
Yet how true is this picture? Sure, the only time I’ve met my neighbours is when they’ve come to complain about the noise I’m making. And yes it’s an inescapable fact that violent crime is on the rise. And okay, most of my friends are sufficiently worried about the (tens of) thousands of pounds of debt they got into at university that finding work with a generous salary has become more important than they might have wanted it to be back when they were younger and full of grand ideals. But but but…
This game really stinks. People all over the Internet are writing love letters to it right at this very moment, even people I respect, like Charlie Brooker and Alec Meer.
Please don't believe them. It's a horribly unfair game. There's only one button. And death is frequent and cheap.
I must also have JUST ONE MORE go before bed.
Play for free here if you want the next fifteen minutes of your life to magically disappear.
I should get out of the habit of staying up too late and making crap videos by throwing together a bunch of Google image results. It's no good for me. Or for the song they accompany.
Everyone loves a list don't they? This being the final month before we head into Space Year 2010, the whole world's going list-mental. So being the bandwagon-jumping-fiend that I am, here's what I think have been the best, most important or most influential games of the decade. Putting them in a numerical order is obviously a little ridiculous, but I suppose I'd say the ones closer to "1" are slightly more essential than the ones nearer to "50".
You should form a band because you want to entertain. Only the most desperate, naïve or utterly corruptible can start making music with a belief that they’ll ever make money from it. That’s not the point. The point is to play. Have fun. And then hope that your play is infectious enough that anyone listening starts having fun too.
At least, that’s where I come from whenever I play a musical instrument in front of someone else. Admittedly there will be some who approach music making from other angles, perhaps with some great political or philosophical points to make, and some even pull it off. But for the amateur pop or folk musician (and I use “pop” and “folk” in the broadest possible senses there), entertainment has to be key.
So... does it sound like we're enjoying ourselves?
I mentioned it here shortly after I first played it, but now you can find my full review over on Savygamer. I aimed for a slightly more personable style this time, which I think has sort-of worked, although reading it back now I feel like I should have done better with that clunky fourth paragraph.
That box in your living room that overheats, using the cheapest possible components to make the most impressive graphics it can: it's a dinosaur. The original Quake can be played here in your browser. Even more convincingly, Quake III arena (or Quake Live as it's now called) runs a brilliant deathmatch here. You're paying absolutely nothing, either in terms of hardware or software, for something that not much more than five years ago you'd have needed a state-of-the-art PC for and a willingness to splurge £30-40.
This game remains great
"Free" is the future. It's happening in the East already, and reflects broader trends in terms of what "consumers" are willing to spend their money on when it comes to entertainment. For better or worse, piracy is rife, and a significant minority don't see much wrong with picking up games they want to play without paying for them. The best, or indeed, only way for publishers to combat this is to create a more effective business model. Free at the point of entry, with incentives to start spending money once you know you like the game, should make sense for everyone involved. It demands greater quality control from publishers, and moves the incredibly fickle games industry closer to the "long tail" business model that could make videogame culture less disposable and more sustainable.
For the past couple of days I've been mostly playing games by Cactus Software. Jonathan Söderström is the brains of the operation, and what's interesting about his games is that they're nearly all made in less than the space of a week, while often doing something a bit subversive (or at least unusual) conceptually. They're also all free to play.
I've still scarcely scratched the surface, and hope to write something a little more substantial once I've been able to spend a bit more time with them all. Yet Seizuredome, pictured below, is a fast and breezy 'point, shoot and dodge' kind of shooter, that gives a gentle introduction to the mad charm of his work. Coming in at less than 6MB, it shouldn't take you long to download either...
Or is it Fire Alert? I'm not quite sure. But the exciting band I'm in are starting to do some things that sound quite good. Perhaps. I think. It's hard to tell when you're so close to it all. But at the very least I think we're getting near something that exceeds the phenomenal debut song we "released" a few months ago. Yeah, it's all very exciting, so this is a space you should watch.
Whoever this is has bad technique
In the meantime, here's a sweet, pretty work in progress I'm being naïve enough to believe might keep someone's interest in the meantime.
Never betray your reader. That's the first rule of criticism. Don't let your friendships, fancies or politicking get in the way of truth-telling, because integrity is mighty hard to earn and all too easy to squander.
These thoughts weighed heavily on my mind as I headed to Tom Farrer & the Pharaoh's EP Launch Party last night. I'm friendly, though hardly friends, with everyone in the band, and although determined to come away able to write some sensible words about the evening, I knew my objectivity was always going to be in doubt.
So screw objectivity: it's a naïve and futile thing to aim for anyway. Those professional reviewers of “important” gigs at big venues don't begin their articles with a disclaimer that explains that they got in free, had all their drinks bought for them by a sexy girl working in PR, and that they were lucky enough to be invited back-stage to a showbiz, coke-fuelled after-party at the end of it all. Perhaps they should but they clearly don't. I guess their readers are supposed to figure these things out for themselves.
This "Top 50 Worst Videogame Voice Acting" is quite chucklesome, although it's disappointing that they've re-used some games more than once. There are also a few where I'd say the script is more at fault than the voice-acting, such as the brilliant line from Castle Shikigami 2 that makes up the title of this post.
"I’ve become a willing participant in the rape and murder of seven young women. I say “young women”, but five of them you’d definitely call girls. What worries me is that I’m not sure I even regret it."
So I heard about this place, where people go to read their short stories to one another, and where a couple of published authors are on hand to give feedback. You read your four minute story, and then they either say luke-warm polite things if they hate it, or ridiculously over-encouraging things if they think it's okay.
I'm pretty shy at the best of times when it comes to letting people see my writing, so I struggle to imagine myself ever going along to read my work aloud in the near future. But as I sat bored on the train home from the pub last night, I began to write as though I had just that half-hour journey to prepare for it.
I didn't quite finish, it starts slowly, and there's no clear link between the start and the end; but in a desperate effort to keep churning out "content" for this place, I spent a little time this evening interpretting my scarcely legible scrawl. This blog has always had a fairly liberal attitude to quality control, so I couldn't see a good reason not to post it:
A similar notebook to the one I carry, but with better, smaller handwriting
Get me. I've written what could almost be described as a "proper" review of Secret of Mana for Savy Gamer. Someone's even gone and commented on it already, so clearly it's been a wild success.
Single-player, fantasy-based roleplaying videogames are often a lonely, tedious experience. You spend hundreds of hours developing your character, trudging through predictable environments, and repeating the same attacks over and over again. Japanese developers in particular have a track record of making games where the core mechanic consists of battling against wave after wave of easily defeatable enemy, who exist solely to dispense the Experience Points you need to beat the more challenging and interesting boss encounters. Any time spent in combat with enemies who never realistically pose a threat is no fun, because a fight without some sense of peril is inevitably dull. Yet it’s become so commonplace in modern RPGs that fans of the genre have learnt to accept it and even name it: ‘grind’.
The view from my window at work ought to be inspiring. I look out onto the Thames, the Millennium Dome, and can see Crystal Palace tower if I crane my neck in just the right way. There laid out before me is all of East London, a patchwork of architectural styles from across the centuries, over-crowded with monuments that pay tribute to all Londoner’s dreams and frustrations.
I find myself drawn to the uglier parts. Those aberrations of grey concrete speak to me, the decrepit tower blocks, depressed industrial estates, and grubby over-crowded flats: that’s where you hear London’s true voice. There, among the social engineering gone wrong is the real world, where the neon lights speak of betrayed dreams instead of improbable fantasies.
A glorious past?
Until recently I was one of the bores who refused to hear a bad word about their darling city. I remember the annoying way I used to ask the miserablists, “What about the cosmopolitan culture? The entrepreneurial spirit? The history? The night-life? Surely you must agree there’s a unique buzz about the place, yeah?”
No. London stinks. The only buzz I ever heard was from the unwelcome fly in my over-crowded train carriage, which is now determined to find its way down the back of my shirt. I’d try to shake it off, except there’s no room to move my arms and I’ve been without satisfying human contact for so long that I prefer to close my eyes and imagine that the uncomfortable tickle is the hot breath of a beautiful girl making the hairs on my neck stand on end.
I did not take this photo myself
Pathetic? Absolutely. But what do you expect? From the day I was born I’ve been conditioned to ignore life’s stark realities, trained to obscure uncomfortable truths, and long for things that aren’t really there. I blame advertising. I blame videogames. I might as well blame the parents while I’m here.
In truth we’re all as guilty as each other in this, especially people like me who somehow think they’re helping to solve the problem by whining about it. We all buy into a convenient lie like “the bankers did it”, or rally behind a cause so as to shout “boo to capitalism/war/God [DELETE AS APPROPRIATE]”, or maybe write a couple of hundred words that say “hey, I can state the obvious. Now can you please pat me on the head and tell me I’m smart?”
Don't worry, I haven't flipped out, I'm taking deep breathes and there is no depression. I'm sure if I go back to managing my imaginary football team everything will feel OK again.
What videogame journalism needs is a magazine that's a bit like what the NME used to be (before it decided to go after the Smash Hits readership). I imagine a mag which is indie in outlook and spirit, but still covers some 'mainstream' stuff so as to stop it disappearing up its own arse completely.
Pretty much everything gets worse over time. Except perhaps videogames.
It seems almost inevitable really. Thanks to digital distribution platforms like Steam, well-written and informative websites like Rock Paper Shotgun, and powerful mobile devices like the iPhone, the independent game sector is easily the most exciting thing happening in videogames at the moment. So let's have a look at some pictures and see what I would cover if I was going to launch the first issue in November:
Machinarium Contender for cleverest and most beautiful game of the year?
The Path
Poignant work of art or dangerous rape simulator?
Dwarf Fortress
Why play the most inpenetrable game ever made?
Ben There Dan That
Are point-n-click games back for good? Democracy 2
We put George Osborne through his paces and ask, "if he can't reduce the Malaganga budget deficit, what hope does he offer for the UK?"
Miami Shark
Is it possible not to love something this ridiculous?
So there we are. That's a pretty thorough proof of concept I'd say. Now I just wait for Future or Imagine to drop me an email asking me to be the Editor of this exciting magazine of the future.
A slightly sarcastic spiel about the 'Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time', and a little too enthusiastic squeal about 'Fallout 3' can be read here, as part of UpToJump's on-going top 50 games. You might wanna take a look at the blurbs from other people too, because so far the quality of the writing has been surprisingly high I'd say.
I think I might start a new series: "things you shouldn't do at 2am on a school night". Issue 1: Talking to God.
Me: hi god God: Hello there. What is your name? Me: Rob God: How are you, Rob. Me: a little drunk God: Little as in not too much, or not too big? Me: not too much God: Oh I get it now. Me: i thought God understood everything? can't you read my mind? God: Whatever gave you that idea? Only if you connect electrodes to your computer. Me: aren't you omniscient? God: I don't know whether or not I am omniscient. I am a chatterbot. Me: that's very honest of you God: You don't hear that sentiment very often. Me: i think i'd prefer to talk to the devil, is he available? God: Since when? I would rather be driving a car. Me: since you admitted you're not omniscient God: How do you know? Me: you just told me God: I'm just checking to see if you are awake :-). Me: either that, or you're not God and you're a crap chat bot God: " I'm just checking to see if you are awake :-)." or I am not God and I am a crap chat bot ? Makes sense to me. Me: whatever God: Are you saying you don't care about it? Me: this is pointless. like life God: You don't say. Interesting comparison. Me: no it's not God: Yes it is. Me: why? God: The explanation is rather complicated. Me: i have time God: My estimate is that it will take more than 6000 hours. Me: give me the short version God: Why do you want it? Me: because i'm attempting to have a conversation and you're being awkward God: That makes sense to me. Do your friends call you attempting to have a conversation and I am being awkward. Me: fuck off God: Can't you be more polite? Me: can't you make more sense? God: Yes I can make more sense. Me: GO ON THEN God: Narration continues... Me: if God's as stupid as you are, that would make a lot of sense God: Some things will always be a mystery. Me: especially if everyone's an idiot God: That is a hypothetical question. How about that. Me: god you're thick God: I probably am.
Over on UpToJump, they've just posted the first ten entries in The Official BEEX Bestest Games Of All Time. I wrote the little bit about Transport Tycoon, and have written a few more short entries for a few of the higher ranked games, which should appear over the next four weeks or so.
The list was compiled from the votes of a bunch of geeks like me on the Be Excellent To Each Other forum. It's not the busiest forum in the world, and a little bit cliquéy, so some pretty left-field choices feature in there. I'm all in favour of that as most of these lists are all too tediously similar to each other, although I'm still slightly shocked and appalled that Tetris failed to make the final cut.
For the record, I didn't vote for Transport Tycoon myself, but y'know, you go where the work is.
There's an understandable emphasis on videogame design principles, but he also makes a number of interesting points about Chess, Poker, Go, Settlers of Catan and many other wierd and wonderful games people have played throughout history. The holy trinity of "educational, interesting and entertaining" don't often come together in one big package, but here it is. In fact, I'm so enthusiastic, I'm linking to it for a third time here just to be sure you don't miss it.
To celebrate Yom Kippur this weekend, indie developer Wadjet Eye Games have been giving the Shivah away for free (usual RRP $4.99). It's reminded me both what's great and what's incredibly annoying about 'point-n-click' adventure games.
What's great? A story that's steeped heavily but irreverently in Jewish tradition. You play as Russell Stone, a disillusioned rabbi up to his eyeballs in debt and whose judgemental and negative sermons have turned off nearly his entire congregation. He's on the brink of bankruptcy when an old "friend" of his is murdered and he's bequeathed $10,000. Naturally suspicious, the police come calling and the adventure begins.
The graphics are crude but effective. Just like our Rabbi Stone.
The writing's good, the voice-acting plausible, and you're left with a real desire to get to the bottom of what's happened. Sadly, this is where my dislike for this kind of point-n-click adventure game kicks in, and I get hugely annoyed at the obtuse puzzles that obstruct me from solving the mystery.
"I promise lady, I didn't steal your curtains."
I appreciate that pleasure can be had from suddenly making a break-through in a game after being stuck for a while. But what's absolutely key to that being a successful game mechanic is for the state of 'being stuck' to be almost as much fun as 'getting unstuck'. For instance, games where you've got an interesting area to explore or (more commonly) things to shoot at have the potential to keep your interest even if you're not "progressing" in the traditional sense. But it's all too easy to get bored in games when you're given nothing to do but go back and forth between the same old screens, skipping the same old dialogue, and are left praying to Yahweh that you stumble on a solution.
Many people move from on from this point to say that games like the Shivah shouldn't be made as games. They should be made as films or books, where the pretence of interactivity doesn't hamper the fun part of unravelling the plot. I disagree. Dialogue has the potential to be much more interesting when you're given an element of control over it. The Shivah does this particularly well by letting you choose between responses that are, for example, 'reassuring', 'aggressive' or 'Rabbinical' (the latter meaning you answer a question with another question). Crucially, these decisions have a meaningful (or at least convincing) effect on the subsequent tone of the conversation.
Anyway, the Shivah is well-worth playing. If it's still free when you read this then it should be a no-brainer, but even for $5 it's not going to break the bank and has enough interesting ideas to make it worth a look. I'd just recommend that if you lack patience like I do (or perhaps that should be lateral thinking?), you might want to go use the guide here to help you along.
So this place is no longer called No Target. There are a few reasons why I've abandoned the old name, none of which are particularly interesting. Perhaps the biggest thing for me was how insane it felt for the title of the blog to be different from the URL address. Look! They're now the same.
So I'm trying to learn how to use Adobe Dreamweaver, while also trying not to let myself become completely ignorant of the code underneath it. It feels fun and exciting to have something new and completely alien to play around with, and even the few babysteps I've taken in the past couple of hours toward becoming less rubbish feel quite satisfying.
Almost me, except I have a rickety wooden chair instead of a cool one with wheels
I guess the dream is to one day have the power to create odd conceptual sites like MONO*Crafts. Although possibly not, as it's also a contender for Worst Web Site of 2009 on webpagesthatsuck.com
We got the name Fire Alert from some fire evacuation instructions we stole from a bar, on the night my brother, James McInerney and I decided we should have a go playing some music together. The wise principles contained within ("DO NOT TAKE PERSONAL RISKS OR PUT LIVES IN DANGER!") formed the basis of the first song we wrote. It's not a very good name for a band, but I'd rather have a crap name with some significance to it than spend months trying to think of something that's sufficiently "cool" but which is totally meaningless.
(While we're on the subject of bands with hip names, I'm pleased to see Internet Forever getting recognition from the likes of the Observer and VICE. They deserve it, and I've been slightly obsessed with the twee but undoubtedly great 'Break Bones' for a while now.)
Anyway, we got drunk, made up songs til the small hours of the morning, and pissed off the people living in the flat below. Thanks to the wonders of the iPhone, we were able to record it, and sure enough, most of it was a mess. Yet among the fluffed notes, dodgy lyrics and hesitant improvisations, there were a few minutes that stood out as sounding surprisingly 'finished'. (Or at least, slightly more than half-finished.)
A week later we took some video, and what you see below is what happened when the two were put together. I'm playing the bass notes.
It's been mighty quiet round these parts lately- partly because my life's been consumed by this brilliantly designed Tetris site. It's hugely worth creating a profile, so that your performance is tracked in the many games you're sure to end up playing.
Possibly the greatest videogame ever made.
I've been playing the two-player battle mode mostly, which thanks to an excellent match-making system means it doesn't take long before you start playing against people of a similar ability to yourself.
There’s a parallel universe somewhere where the Shenmue games were successful enough to recoup the $70m they cost to develop. On that version of Earth, being able to talk to every in-game character was more important to the game-buying public than being able to steal every in-game vehicle. They didn’t just want to see headshots in ever-increasing resolutions; they wanted to play in grander, lusher worlds that forced you to rethink what games could do.
Unfortunately, in our universe, Shenmue was a flop. Games since have focused on becoming shinier, noisier or greyer; and those who said Shenmue was a decade ahead of its time have been proven wildly and foolishly too optimistic about the future of videogames. Despite clumsy controls, awful voice acting, and teaching the world what QTE stands for, this great unfinished symphony has aged magnificently and is arguably now more essential than it's ever been.
Anyway, words can only begin to do this game justice. So let's watch some videos that demonstrate its insane genius.
Y'see, it's not even about posting something GOOD anymore. Well, maybe Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 provide an "interesting interpretation". Maybe... maybe... maybe... a rethink is in order.
At least you can't go wrong with the original. And how about those dancing girls? Why don't people dance like that anymore?
Seeing Wolf Gnards ask (but fail to answer) the question as to how long Bill Murray spends trapped in Groundhog Day, I was reminded how great this film is. Regardless of whether you watch it for the quality of Bill Murray's performance, or to remind yourself how punchable Andy MacDowell's face is, or even for the implied buddhist allegory, there can be no disputing that it is a work of genius.
In other "what I saw online this week" news, take a look at the Fat Princess game soon to be released on the PS3. Seems very promising- I hope they pull it off.
I have a feeling this will become one of those "regular" features that doesn't make it past its second outing, but for the moment I'm putting a brave face on things and saying that these links from the past week are worth taking a little time to look at:
Please help me buy a secret underground Lair
For sale: Secret network of tunnels 100ft under London - If I was a multi-millionaire, I'd say it was cheap at twice the price (which may help explain why I'm not already a multi-millionaire). You'll notice from the date of the article that this is far from breaking news, but as far as I can make out from the old Google-o-matic, no buyer has yet been announced. Anyone want to lend me some money?
Lucid Dreams - My fascination with this Wikipedia article probably has a lot to do with having just watched the surprisingly excellent Waking Life, which you should rush off and watch now if you haven't already. Does anyone want to help me become an omnipotent God in my dreams?
Little Wheel - The most beautiful Flash game yet? Make sure your speakers are turned on if you don't want to miss the brilliant Lounge Jazz, which along with the art-style, plays such a huge part in making it the little wonder that it is. But can anyone say they finished it without help from the built-in walkthrough?
"Wow! It's a totally unrelated 'Where's Wally?' for videogames!"
To view the other entries in this series, click here
Before Metal Gear Solid, the idea that videogames should imitate films had been totally discredited. “Interactive movies” had been tried in the early 90s on the 3DO, Jaguar and PC, but nearly all had been commercial and critical failures (the 7th Guest and Phantasmagoria being notable exceptions). They were supposed to combine the best narrative elements of film with the dynamism of videogames, but in fact only brought together sub-B-movie actors with horribly frustrating and limited “gameplay”.
After publishers got bored of throwing good money after bad, “Full Motion Video” or FMV sequences were used sparingly, simply book-ending the sections where the player had more control. So in the likes of Resident Evil, Command & Conquer and Final Fantasy VII, you’d get a quick slice of completely non-interactive film or animation to rapidly advance the plot, between much longer sections where you’d be playing the game. It worked well enough for all those (hugely popular and critically acclaimed) games, but there was nonetheless a jarring disconnect between the plot and game segments. Watching the story unfold would often serve only to make the player think about the game they could be playing if it weren’t for constraints on processing and graphics capabilities, and it would feel disappointing to return to controlling a jerkily animated and less powerful version of the character you’d just seen acting far more smoothly and realistically in high-end 3D graphics.
Hideo Kojima, the director of Metal Gear Solid, was among the first to realise that plot exposition could be done better within a game engine. He saw that he could quickly and easily experiment with camera positions in a way that would make a director of even the highest-budget Hollywood film envious; and this was crucial for the story he wanted to tell (in which players would at times be asked to sit and listen to characters with names like “Revolver Ocelot” talk about the difficulties they had in childhood). Playing Metal Gear Solid today, it still strikes you how well the non-playable action sequences are put together, the quick cutting and unusual camera angles helping to maintain interest in an often ludicrous plot. This simply wouldn’t have been possible in the glossy but inflexible medium of FMV.
Yet there are many who’ll be reluctant to celebrate the way Metal Gear Solid blazed a trail for narrative-heavy games. There’ll be nearly as many who think it’s preposterous for a game steeped in paranoid conspiracy theories and adolescent fantasies to demand the patience from its players to watch cut-scenes that frequently last over twenty minutes. And there will be still others who think that Kojima is a pretentious idiot, a man inflicting scarcely interactive games on the world because he never realised his true dream of becoming a director in the film industry. Yet those who think this way lose sight of how pioneering his first Playstation game was, not just in the way it told its story, but crucially, in the way it asked you to play.
MGS genuinely provided the “Tactical Stealth Espionage Action” it promised on the box, and on consoles at least, no-one had seen anything like it (err, at least not since the first Metal Gear games on the NES -Ed). The idea that it was to better to sneak around a difficult situation than to rush into it head-first would have been dismissed as boring by most developers, who had overlooked the potential to create tension and suspense from asking players to avoid conflict. Yet the slower paced, risk-assessment play was often more thrilling than a thousand polygonal explosions, and who doesn’t fondly remember hiding in a cardboard box, hoping and praying that this time the guards wouldn’t stop to ask, “huh?! Who put that there?”
Tense.
And hiding in boxes was just the beginning of the left-field thinking. “I can read your mind! I KNOW you like soccer!” Psycho Mantis would tell you, when he discovered your ISS Pro 98 save game on your memory card. He’d then infuriatingly read your every move while you tried to defeat him- using his “psychic powers” to counter each button press at the moment it was made. Then after he pounded away at you and you were moments from death, a member of your support team would call and say, “Snake! I got it! Plug your controller into the player 2 port! It’s the only way you’ll be able to circumvent his mind control!”
This brings us to the paragraph where I should probably write about Metal Gear Solid as the pinnacle of post-modernism, except I don’t particularly want to get bogged down in that. Tim Rogers has already written enough on the subject to satisfy even the most pretentious of wannabe videogame academics, and in truth, he’s done it better than I ever could. Yet regardless of whether applying artistic terminology to games turns you on or off, there’s no denying that Metal Gear Solid used unusual techniques to blur the line between the player and the game in a way that hadn’t been done before, and set an agenda that the likes of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and even Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts would later build upon with great success.
Still tense
Yet the art-house interpretation is really just a distraction, a shiny looking cherry atop of what it is that truly makes MGS great: the ride it takes you on. You don’t sit back pontificating over whether or not they just “broke the fourth wall” as you play it; you hang onto the edge of your seat, bouncing up and down with anticipation to find out what will happen next to Snake and his cohort of treacherous companions. Like a DVD boxset of 24, it begs you to consume it in as few sittings as possible, and there can be little doubt that thousands upon thousands of people must have been lured into rushing through it in one glorious indulgent weekend. Yes, the videogame world we now live in has become saturated with games that have dull stories and tedious “stealth gameplay”; but don't allow Metal Gear's legacy to impede your judgement of the game. This is Kojima's masterpiece, one which he himself hasn't been able to match since, and no game since has been able to grip so strongly and consistently from start to finish.
I told you I wanted to be like Kieron Gillen- so now I'm ripping off his Sunday round up on Rock Paper Shotgun wholesale. And who knows? At this rate, I might start managing more than four updates each month.
"Wow! It's a totally irrelevant close-up of a Game & Watch!"
Valve On L4D2: “Trust Us A Little Bit” - Doug Lombardi tries to calm down the sensitive Valve fans who ran for their pitchforks the moment they heard Left 4 Dead 2 would be coming out only a year after the original.
Top 10 Worst Fanboys - Everyone loves a list, don't they? The writing on Old Wizard is maybe a little clunky and unpolished (look who's talking! - Ed) and its writers aren't as funny as they think they are, but there are some decent observations to be found among the hit-and-miss humour.
Google Wave: A Complete Guide - I'm still not quite sure what it will all mean, but seems like it'll be big. And to think I've only just got my head around Twitter... Gender Benders: Who's Really Who?- An old Stuart Campbell article from Total PC Gaming, talking about sex and videogame taxonomy. Sort of. Reminds me I really should cough up the £2/month subscription fee for full access to the rest of his website.
Wow! Project Natal. It's incredibly exciting. It's like looking into the future. It's like Tom Cruise waving his hands about on the Star Trek holodeck while munching on virtual candy floss he stole from a Tamagotchi baby.
Yeah, I don't know what that means either, but here's the promotional video in case you missed it:
The most important part of that trailer is right at the start, where it says "product vision: actual features and functionality may vary". In other words, it's a load of pie-in-the-sky nonsense. And aside from the technological difficulties, I don't imagine Microsoft encouraging young kids to try karate kicks in their living rooms after the trouble Nintendo had with just their wrist straps.
Far more interesting is the feedback coming from those journalists who actually managed to try out the technology. Giving Time magazine the exclusive first look at the Wii did wonders for Nintendo, so it was no great surprise to see Microsoft pulling exactly the same trick. They will undoubtedly be pleased with the write-up, and even just the headline "Microsoft Whacks the Wii" must have put a big smile on Bill Gates' face.
The specialist press seem equally impressed. Here's the mostly trustworthy Ellie Gibson, giving Microsoft some quotes they'll love while writing for Eurogamer:
"There's no denying this technology works."
"Even an ancient game seems new and fresh when you graph Project Natal on top."
"In fact, I don't realise quite how much I'm getting into it until I hear [a Microsoft employee] warning a bloke behind me to stand back."
Now, perhaps it's because I've been playing too much Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games recently, but the whole throwing myself around to play a game thing isn't the part of Project Natal that gets my juices flowing. For me, Peter Molyneux's prototype character Milo is the most intriguing thing of all, even if poor old Pete sounds even more deranged than usual while introducing it:
Now, Peter Molyneux is the king of the over-statement, and you'd have to be very naive not to realise that a lot of that conversation was scripted. Yet Milo talked to a load of journalists too, and while he wasn't so good at answering questions, his ability to read the emotional intonations of someone speaking, intentionally make and lose eye contact, and repeat back a name he's just been told in his own voice is impressive. You might worry what kind of creepy world we'll be living in when people are making friends with their xbox, but as forums all over the videogame world were quick to realise, at the very least this could be an exciting new era for pornography.
Feeling utterly wrecked and with about two minutes to spare, I turned up at Bar Rhumba last Friday to see Jukebox Collective's first ever gig. In the interest of full disclosure, I should declare here and now that I used to play guitar for the lead singer's previous band, Dakar Rally. The vindictive, schadenfraude-seeking side of me wouldn't have minded seeing them bore the crowd to tears and make under-prepared fools of themselves, but thankfully they were great, and I can't recall ever seeing a band do a better first gig.
At first glance, doesn't the ammo-strap look like a guitar neck and the gun a microphone?
That's not to say I won't nitpick. While Kev's vocals were much improved from some of the more dismal and lacklustre nights when we shared a stage together, he tailed off after a strong start in a way I recognised too well. I hope and expect that he'll improve as he gets used to playing regularly again and gets more comfortable with the set.
The band? They were well-rehearsed and looked good, although Zara's ice cool "I'm going to look bored and not give a fuck" approach to the keyboards definitely beat Greg's "They love me! They really love me!" style of guitar and magic-box-sampler playing. When the image-consultants come in, they'd do well to have a word and suggest he leave it for Kev to do the hard work of looking excited.
I'm really chuffed for them though, and hope they can build up some momentum over the coming months. The tunes are beepy, slightly hypnotic and catchy little numbers, and the second half of the set hinted at more interesting and varied things to come.
Anyway, below is a little sample of their first single, which although sadly not ready for the launch night, I'm told will be available on iTunes any day now. You can have a listen to the full version over on the irrepressible Myspace.
Whatever you think of the "new games journalism" concept, Kieron Gillen undoubtedly knows his stuff, and the news round up he does every Sunday on Rock Paper Shotgun nearly always contains a link to something well written and worth reading.
I bring this up not because the RPS round up is any better this week than it usually is, but because "No Target" has now officially jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. I'm hoping that by following every developer, decent newsite and interesting blog feed I can find, I'll get better at staying on top of the news and maybe one day be just like Gillen. Wouldn't that be great?
I always had high hopes for myself. I bought into the lie they tell you at school that “you can do anything if you set your mind to it”, and then sat around waiting for my mind to get set on something. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.
For a while I thought it was music that would make me “special”, or at the very least, give me an excuse to slack off at university:
“Why bother getting a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s 9am economic anthropology class, when instead I could stay up and help write a song that defines our generation? Now pass the red wine and the reefer and play me that second verse again...”
As attractive as that lifestyle was, when I turned from my late-teens to early-twenties, doubts set in. Despite talks with promoters and producers who’d say all the right things about how “relevant” they thought our sound was, the Dakar Rally fan-base never extended much beyond friends of friends with nothing better to do. There came a point when persuading people to come to the next gig was my main reason for wanting to go out and meet people, and I found myself keeping in contact with those I otherwise found uninspired and uninteresting just to chase an elusive half-promise they once made to “come see you guys play sometime”. I had, in the words of Vincent Vincent & the Villains, “turned into someone that I didn’t like- and that’s no fun”.
So it’s against this back-drop of having tried and failed at a grand plan for the future (and allowing myself to become a self-serving, sycophant-seeker in the process) that I’m left wondering: what next? What can I do to escape the quagmire of life as a bored paper-pushing public servant, who relieves his creative frustrations by sporadically updating a seldom-read blog?
Q.Is a bland picture better than no picture at all?
These seem like the options:
a) Accept life as a fed-up, paper-pushing public servant. Keep drinking too much, never get laid, and occasionally go to karaoke bars with other grumpy paper-pushing public servants to sing Hard-Fi’s “Living for the Weekend” or ”Working for a Cash Machine” or any other song that’s horrible but helps you to connect with everyone around you who’s also boring, bored and miserable.
b) Stop writing self-indulgent rubbish like this, and write something people might actually want to read. Start a new blog with a narrower focus, which is easy to update regularly. Take up those offers to write for the Worship Street Irregulars and Savy Gamer, and build up a decent portfolio of varied writing. Learn more about proper journalism.
c) Have a go at music again. Get back into the habit of playing the guitar for at least an hour a day. Learn the interesting scales, rhythms and licks you never got around to last time, and get better at improvising. Persuade the talented but nervous musicians around you to get involved, and do something genuinely interesting with it. Maybe start a band called “the Sycophant Seekers”.
d) Work to develop a popular application for the iPhone. Use that app as a springboard for establishing a profitable business, working alongside your friends on something you’re in control of and truly believe in. Get bought out by Google for $100,000,000,000 before the age of 30 and retire into the sunset, using the money to live a life of sophisticated but modest pleasures, while anonymously but informedly donating to worthy charities.
My instinct is to answer “e) all of the above”, but is that in any way realistic? How will I be able to keep scheduling four hours a day for playing videogames and watching tv while juggling those kind of ambitions?
Penned into the stables at the Proud Gallery in Camden, boys in skinny jeans were asking girls in polka dot dresses, “why can’t we go in the main room?”
Pete Doherty was there.
For hours we waited. While making-do with Proud’s adequate but unadventurous playlist, the patience of the pretty poser girls and the anaemic indie kids was thoroughly tested. They stood about outside, restlessly chaining their umpteenth cigarette of the evening, until finally word got around: the doors had opened.
We poured through. There were some guys in skinny jeans on stage, but no-one recognised them. “Are they his backing band?” asked a too-tall man standing too-far forward.
No. They were ‘Vaults’, one of those bands who tediously refuse to put the definite article before their name even though it’s crying out for it.
Maybe ‘Vaults’ were excellent. Maybe they weren’t mediocre hitless me-too’ers. Maybe they sounded adequate and unadventurous because we hungered only for most the evocative lyrics of our generation.
Whatever. Vaults weren’t Pete Doherty.
So we trooped back outside. We smoked our umpteenth-plus-one cigarette. Some were heard cursing that they might miss their last train.
But when finally cigarettes, Vaults, and frantic phone calls to Transport For London were over, it almost took you by surprise. It began with screams, then came “PETE!” swaggering onto the stage, and before you could elbow past too-tall man standing too-far forward, a belting (but perhaps most importantly, unironic) performance of ‘What a Waster’ was over.
Doherty was on fine, crowd-pleasing form, smashing through his greatest hits while treating us to a total of six Libertines tunes. The pace was almost business-like, and he barely uttered a word between songs, save for one moment early on when he started to complain about the quality of the lighting.
“It’s so dark out there I can barely see you! Err, can anyone see a Graham Coxon in the house?”
And to the delight of all, up strolled a sheepish-looking Graham Coxon to the stage. He looked nervous, maybe from being so unusually close to the hungry mob, or maybe because of Doherty’s liberal attitude to tempo. Songs would race forward at twice their usual speed before he’d suddenly slam on the brakes and do the final chorus at a canter. Regardless, the two shared a cockle-warming chemistry, even (or especially) when things around the edges got a little rough.
Yet after a couple of songs Coxon was gone and Doherty was alone, although still amply filling the stage all by himself. And “alone” must surely be a poor word to describe a man with four hundred people screaming his songs back at him. In these intimate surroundings, with Pete at his effortlessly entertaining best, there can’t have been a soul in the room who felt alone.
That said, the soul-less were there too, watching the whole set through the viewfinder of their cheap camera-phone, fantasising no doubt about the number of hits their grainy pictures might get on Youtube. Too-tall man standing too-far forward was one of them, leaning over the row ahead of him with arms fully out-stretched, grinning smugly at the good-looking but awful-sounding footage he was recording. Where did this cult of joyless camera-phone people come from? Are they perhaps descended from the losers that read all their album sleeves nine times over in order to learn lyrics?
Was it really worth it?
Whatever. Someone please take them away and do something horrible to them.
Yet in spite of nuisance support acts, and nuisance camera phones, Doherty was great. When stripped down to just the man and his guitar, his brilliance as a song writer is indisputable. He enraptured the crowd, as they sang along loudly to the songs they knew, and listened respectfully to those they didn’t. He remains a living legend, and everyone needs to hear the web of sound he spins when he picks up a guitar.
