Stuffs...

A few things...

New Flat. Time to start buying furniture.

Played a few new games. I'm going to endeavour to do more "what makes games good". Some games deserve in depth analysis, others that I play I'll just right about 4 or 5 paragraphs about what really stands out. This is useful because some of the games I was going to go really into depth with I can hardly remember now, but the bits I do remember are pure solid gold... probably.

Expect to see (some old ones I was doing in depth but will just do a "what I remember of them") Hydrophobia, Singularity, Grey Matters, and some recent Infamous 2, Alice: madness returns.

Glad to see Duke Nukem is dying a bad death. I will never purchase anything from Gearbox again after this misogynistic tragedy. A shame, because I actually liked Borderlands.

Bit disgusted by Elizabeth's cleavage from the upcoming Bioshock Infinite. Poor, pandering sex appeal in an otherwise well rounded character is the hallmark of the underconfident designer, thinking they need tits to appeal to the lowest common denominator and up their sales. There's a reason why such bawdy crap wasn't present in the original Bioshock, these new developers are obviously floundering at such a large task. I'll probably still get it, but I really am getting fed up with this "we have a female character, better sex her up" aspect, it detracts from anotherwise good character to use her in such a way. Especially seeing as Elizabeth looks about 12...

And then there's Catwoman... That's a whole other kettle of dumbed-down laziest stereotyped fish. Actually put me off the game. Maybe it won't be so apparent in the game (but seriously? Kiss move?!) so again I blame a bad marketer.

That's about it for now!

Sony Ericsson, Xperia PLAY

Aka. the "Playstation Phone".
Been batting it around a while now but I genuinely think I'll be getting this when my contract comes up for renewal (around October, so only a few months wait).

Why? Well, I can tell you now it's not for the playstation suit. Unless some absolute ball-busters come out on that (FF's, some of the weirder ps1 titles that never made it to europe eg. Chrono Cross) I can't really see myself going in for it.

No, I want it for the emulator ability. As the Xperia runs android; one of the hundreds of old ROM emulators should be able to run on it. Then it's just a case of grabbing a ROM image of said old game and bobs your uncle, an entire legacy catalogue of old games on my mobile. Lectures will never be so fun again.

See, I currently have an HTC Hero. It suffered a lot in the upgrade from android 1.5 to the 2.3's, but mostly I've come to realise that a solely touch screen device kinda sucks for gaming. Sure, there's a few titles that were made for touch screen and as such work well, but it's not an ideal gaming platform for when your palms are sweaty. So, emulator, ps-one style controls and whatever takes my fancy. Boom.

This fills a deep requirement for me. I was born in 88, so I feel that I missed out on a lot of the better old school games. I had limited fundings, so only had my mega drive and whatever I could save up for or my parents bought me, a lot of which turned out to be utter crap. But as a kid you don't care. It does mean that now, with the invent of the internet, ROM image copying and

So expect in the future a lot of analysis of whatever I've decided to lug around in my pocket.

This has however had a negative knock on though.. I kinda feel like I don't want to play the old games just yet, save it until I get the PSphone... Ah well, I'm sure there are greater dilemmas in the world.

Recently...

Took part in Valve's ARG and got the golden potato. Currently reviewing the 13 potato pack games.

Been replaying Fallout 3, good fun, but starting to stagnate. Will leave it for a while, though it's reaffirmed my belief that it's pretty much infinitely superior to New Vegas.

Played and completed Portal 2, both single and Co-op. Good, suffered a little in the co-op where only really one person was doing anything. Suffered from classic portal "oh, this is starting to get really, REALLY good... shit, there's the credits" syndrome. Especially the co-op where they finally started throwing decent simultaneous tasks at us and then it ended. Will try to do a decent in depth analysis again soon.

I'm going to knock a large number of other games off my list.Included are the original Fallout, Fear 2, Planescape Torment, and quite a few others. I'll probably do some quick-fire reviews.

Still not gotten DA2 despite (recently and briefly) reduced price, because I simply don't care anymore. GOTY maybe, but it doesn't look good enough to justify it.

Recently played a cute little game called Recettear. Good fun, I highly recommend. Might do an analysis of it soon.

I'm also starting to think that these big scary text dumps aren't neccessarily the way to go... The more I watch video reviews and quick-fire bits of info, listen to podcasts etc, the more I think I need to get some video software and start making ZP-esque exposition dumps. At least it'll only take 5 minutes and I can give you some nice bits and pieces of info.

 This is especially true for my "the way I play" which is starting to feel more and more like a fan-fic. This isn't what I want to do, I want to discuss my character, how they become who they are and why, based on the mechanics of the game and the environment they're in, I play them the way I do. Maybe a large biography a la a wikipedia page. Not this in-depth epic of story I'm currently writing.
I don't want to end up like tolkien and give too much info, you don't need to know every time I pick up a gold piece...

Lyrical Analysis of "Garbage: Cherry Lips"

A friend of mine recently linked this...



here's what I think the lyrics mean...

Another look at games coming out this year.

 Here's an updated look at my years games, what I may and may-not buy.

Today

A comment on Facebook about Yahtzee's recent review of Killzone 3.

That is all.

Games I'm looking forward to

Dragon Age 2 - Demo was dreadful
More New Vegas DLC - Hopefully give some more plot to this bad-boy!
Skyrim - Nuff said
Deus Ex 3 - Interested to see what direction they take it, and if the Squeenix backing will push it forward
Portal 2 - Always good fun
Uncharted 3 - Been nothing but impressed with this dumb yet incredibly well executed series.


Possibles:
Witcher 2 - despite the horros of witcher 1 I'm wondering if they've taken it in a newer, better direction.
Tomb Raider - I'm still on the fence as to whether you can turn what was essentially the lads mags/page 3 girl of video games heroines into a respectable individual. The old games were genuinely quite good, just the terrible marketing of lara. If anything this shows that the industry is changing.

Dreading
Dragon age 2
Duke nukem forever - Misogynistic trype that should have been burried in the backward 90's, lost so much respect for gearbox reviving this ass.

By the maker

Dragon age is a damned long game..

Additionally, I'm looking at making some minor updates to this blog

-Get a sort of general "theme" going, we're talking a visual one for the CSS to put stuff in.
-Customise that "theme" to each blog, slight change in colour palette or maybe something as simple as the top-banner
-????
-Profit.

Dragon age Female City-elf origin.

Played through the origin for a female city-elf this weekend. Originally when I played I chose mage, found it to my liking and pretty much stuck, neglecting some of the more interesting origins.
As my girlfriend recently played through the city-elf origins, and I realised there was a potential for gender differences, so played a female to mirror her male.

BEST JOB EVAR.

Had a blog-worthy moment at work to day.

Here's the emails.

---

From:  Kate
Sent: 19 January 2011 13:53
To: Everyone
Subject: RE: e-Marketing

Good points and an interesting debate! Shouldn’t this be a blog article…? :)

From: teh_steve
Sent: 19 January 2011 12:47
To: Darren; teh_others...
Subject: RE: e-Marketing

As a marketing ploy, hell yeah.

But as a means of promoting video games as more than damaging childrens toys? Eurgh… Stinks of adolescent pandering and “it’s an 18, but we’re really marketing it to the 14 year olds” mentality that many game studios use.

Dangerous stuff considering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzenegger_v._Entertainment_Merchants_Association ....

For further reading,

http://kotaku.com/5524961/violent-video-game-supreme-court-case-raises-stakes-in-america-sides-sound-off

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1961-Free-Speech (video)

Not every game needs to be a deep involving experience, but that’s still a massively stupid move by the ad-writers considering what’s happening at the moment. I’m not saying kids SHOULD be able to get violent video games, but that games shouldn’t be punished more than other mediums depicting the same thing. You wouldn’t ban a book with a rape scene, and I’m sure even young kids could still buy it, yet you’d ban a game for its bloody content? Don’t ban the game because the parents fail at raising their children properly.

The adds detract from the fact that Dead space should be a harrowing and dark survival horror experience and instead focussing on it being a bloody video game, appealing to the younger gamers with material intended for older.

All this is fluff anyway. The Miller test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test ) is based on what’s good/bad for minors, but doesn’t just affect the kids. 1^st amendment protection would go out the window for most video games, and that’s the real issue. Sure, ban the sales to minors, and properly police those processes, but don’t declare that video games do absolutely nothing to benefit society and plenty to damage them.

</soap box>

From: Darren;
Sent: 19 January 2011 12:14
To: teh_steve, teh_others...
Subject: e-Marketing

This has to be the finest marketing scheme ever.

http://kotaku.com/5734960/for-electronic-arts-it-means-mothers-id-like-to-frighten

---

Oh Darren boy

Darren's my boss. A general jack-of-all trades in our small digital group, which more or less means he's the central pillar for a lot of the teams work. He's known as the "Technical Developer" a title he wears with a fair amount of self-pity.

He also got the job he has now by working as the student placement. All good stuff.

And he's a geek, which helps our rapour massively. He's also very right about the idea of viral marketing, it's an "offend to make a splash" tactic, taking on the ideology that "any press is good press" but in this instance, I disagree.




Erectin' another issue

A recent blog post of mine was tangentally about the "Mass Erect" issue, and how Mass Effect got cast in a negative light. now sure, those of us with half a brain know it's not true, and still bought it. And those of us that like that sort of thing (you sick fucks) probably bought it to play the porn simulator, as disappointed as you would be. But there's the issue. It's "us" and "them". Those that buy video games and those that don't.

Just watch the Extra Credits: Gamer episode and you'll start to get what I mean. All of the content in the email, everything from the Supreme Court case to the general dislike of video games. All of it is because we lack integration. For the same reasons that scientists could be seen as heretical in ye olden times, people hate on different religions, and things like comic books, new musical styles and even films have all been seen as corrupting.
It's fear of the unknown.

If everyone played games, knew what they could do, knew their ability to deliver a narrative in a real-time, consequential, and interactive medium, then this sort of bullshit would vanish, and we couldn't judge all games by the choices of the few.

Wii and DS was taking us that way, but man, if deadspace didn't just faceplant us back a few hundred yards.

Dead Face
Anyway, I'll try to keep it brief, though all of the above is true.

Do I believe kids should be getting access to M rated video games? Fuck no. But do I think that games should be declared a negative influence on all society, morally reprehensible and damaging to ALL minors? Again, no.

Why isn't there a middle ground? Why's it got to be art of purile steaming toxic waste?
In the UK stores actually bother to heed age guidlines, on all media. So they're neither banned nor freely available to those that really,REALLY shouldn't have them.

Whatever the reasons, and whatever the result, you guys on the advertising team for Dead Space really, REALLY screwed up. Though "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." ~Voltaire. </end auto-felatio>

Subtitles

Subtle Insanity
Oh, and just so you all know... These little subtitles I do through my posts are sort of mini-bookmarks to break up the writing.

See, I did English at school (close to 5 years ago now, Christ, time flies) and I have rather a... vomiting approach to essays.

What I tend to do is empty my brain of all possible information. I find ideas are a lot like a fire, they spread and reach out to other touching points. Everything is interconnected, and we see that in day to day life.

Point to point to point to point
Ever had a conversation about one thing, and then 10 minutes later jumped to another topic and thought "how the hell did I get here?".
Well, when you think about it you'll normally see logical routes, from logical roots (ha). Maybe you started off talking about football (which I hate) and end up on pizza? Well maybe you once went to a football match and had pizza afterwards, and that's where you draw the link.

My posts are a lot like this. However I've also taken a big chunk of my previous writing style. I tend to rewrite and revise a blog post several times, and go back and edit it at a later point. I treat my original "bleurgh" of information as the raw matter, the clay, and from that I sculpt a coherent(ish) post, editing phrases, juggling order of sentences, and deleting that which is redundant.

Get on with it, would ya!?
I still ramble a bit, because I tend to ramble when I speak, but fuck it, this is my blog and it's all good information for me, you're just here for the ride!

Point is, one of the last things I do when I've written a blog-post is go back and read-through. I tend to write a lot so I'll add these little bench-marks of subtitles, which are generally a thought or phrase I feel applies to the next "part". That's mostly it, I go by feeling and gut instinct.

Ultimately, I don't put a lot of thought into these subs, as they're just a quick way of splitting up my blog-posts, so there's a fair amount of "streams of consciousness" about them. Though instead of a stream it's more a dollop, you get the idea.

So yeah, my subconscious (kinda) helping me write my blogs.

Steve

Mancrush in 5, 4...

I'm a perfect harmony of my two parents. My dad's a massive geek. My mum's a very post modern woman.

Both have great moral fibre, and both are deep loving intelligent people, and while I can't claim my fathers technical prowess or my mothers raw intellectual spark, I'd still consider myself a fairly smart, capable and confident guy.

Anyway, enough auto-felatio.

DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!

So, a bad movie with lots of blood gore and violence is made, and the movie industry isn't panned. A book with rape and murder is written, and again it isn't panned.


Whatever the means, whether it's for some sick twisted kick or because it's actually making a statement all media and those attributed to it will in some way defend their medium.
They'll either stand in line, take the blows and say "I believe this should be in the medium because of this, it's making a point" or they'll dismiss it saying "Yeah, but I wouldn't go in for that sort of thing". Their media still remains "clean" no matter how many bad uses of sensitive material like sexual violence, inequality/racism and violence are used.

Hello world!

Hello all, and welcome to my blog!

Well, my blog-type thing that I'm going to be using for my own purposes more than anything else, but it's defined as a blog none-the-less.