Avast!

I forgot to put an update in my last post about how I got on with wading through the mass of things I wanted to consume while on holiday. I know it's not terribly interesting for most people, but what is a blog good for if not me writing about things that I like? And if you're not that bothered you probably wouldn't be reading my half-arsed ramblings anyway.

I got through most of the books in was intending to read: Bye Bye Balham, which is a collection of a few months' worth of Richard Herring's Warming Up, and is very funny, and also strangely reassuring (the book contains notes made during its compilation, so with five years' worth of hindsight); The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories. The works of Lovecraft are one of those things that I've heard referenced a lot in design circles, but never got around to dipping in to, and I'm glad that I have now, because it was very good; Instructions for Living Someone Else's Life, which is probably now my second favourite Mil Millington book, and though it was funny it also made me think about people's perspectives on life.

I also re-started Design of Everything Things. I find the book very dry, and combined with the dated nature of a number of examples, it becomes a slog. In the end I think I have given up, again. At around the same point I did the first time, judging by the overturned corners. I guess a beachy paradise island just isn't the place to read about how doors are stupidly designed.

What I did find funny was that afterwards I was playing PicPic on the DS (sorry, I've just noticed that this simple puzzle game is selling for £47 on Play.com's marketplace. Professor Layton - the first one, for any inter-continental readers, since someone's dragging their feet at releasing them over here - was in a similar situation just before Christmas, are companies vastly under-rating now many carts they need to burn?) and it's clear the designers haven't thought about the interface much at all.

For example, in the Magipix game (sort of like Minesweeper in that you mark squares one of two colours depending on the value of an adjacent tile), there is no way of telling which face button will turn a tile each colour, you have to use trial and error. This is down to the colours being laid out horizontally on the touch screen (when using the stylus controls, you tap the colour you want to change your pen to), which don't map to the control pad at all. Would it really have been hard to find the space to lay out the colours in a cross formation? Probably not, it just wasn't thought about. Even after a few hours of playing, I was still finding that I had to pause and think about which button mapped to which colour, due entirely to this poor design.

Another interface problem that struck me was that the three games contained in PicPic use different controls for similar features - to delete a placed link in one game you have to place the cursor over the number, and hold the 'paint' button down. Whereas in another game to empty a square you press a 'clear' face button. And the controls for moving your cursor to a different point in the maze game seem entirely random.

Oh yes, it uses a horrible font for the numbers in the games, too.


Since getting back from holiday I've been thoroughly immersing myself in the grey bleakness of the non-tropical world by watching Saw and Saw 2. I am truly ahead of the curve when it comes to movies (though, and sorry to keep banging on about my holiday, but ... actually I'm not, on the plane home the Jason Statham "Death Race" remake was on the in flight entertainment. I was going to atch it, but it was preceded by a message saying that it had been edited for content, and I figured that in a movie called Death Race, the only bits I would really be interested in watching are going to be the ones that would be cut. So I almost watched a fairly recent movie).

Back to Saw... I'd seen the 3rd one which made very little sense to me, and thought I should catch up on the first two, which were meant to be better. The first one was, but the second has a bit too much of the psychic serial killer thing going on, where the actions of half a dozen unstable individuals would have to have been predicated accuractely for the outcome to turn out how Jigsaw wanted.

Anyway, after watching them I was thinking that the series would fit pretty well into a video game. A torture porn version of Professor Layton, where you have to solve puzzles and work out solutions to traps within a time limit or people die. I think it would have legs (unlike probably half of the people in the game by the time it was over). And they're clearly willing to bend and whore the IP a little bit - I mean, who doesn't watch a horror movie and think "wow, what I'd really like to do is ride a roller coaster based entirely around this?".

PS - I just saw the trailer video for Section 8, which looks incredibly generic, but this line did make me laugh "Section 8 are elite shock troops, top-grade insertion specialists". I mean, if you're going to specialise in insertion, I guess focussing on top-grade makes sense.

PPS - It was my birthday recently and amongst the presents, I got pretty much the entire new Lego Pirate range. That's where the banner picture comes from. Lego is ace, and anyone who says a grown man shouldn't be playing with it is just a stinkyface who should bum right off. Sorry if the post title and picture led you to think this was going to be another fascinating industry rant about piracy.

On holiday

I'll make no attempt to hide that this post has been written in advance and then scheduled to publish today. The reason for this pre-record (as I'm told they call it in radio and TV circles, and I figured that if I start comparing the games industry to radio - instead of movies - I might be at the forefront of some exciting new stupid internet arguments this year) is because I'm on holiday.

Which means that as you're reading this I should be spending some proper time with the DS games I've bought but haven't got around to looking at beyond the tutorial levels - in particular PicPic and Soul Bubbles. Though it all kind of depends on whether my DS manages to survive the beach, since about six months go the little plastic ratchet things that keep the lid open at certain angles snapped off. Now I have a floppy DS.

So I might not be playing much DS. Being away from the gaming comforts of home (if you imagine that I won't have my iPod Touch with me either, though I'm not sure what the score is with chargers where we're going, and playing games on that eats the battery faster than a PSP) will be good in other ways though. I will hopefully get around to reading some books I've had on a pile next to my bed for ages (the Design of Everyday Things, Richard Herrin's Bye Bye Balham, and Charlie Brooker's Dawn of the Dumb).

And finally I can try out a new gadget, which is always good. I bought myself a waterproof digital camera. So hopefully I should come back with some ace pictures of fish from my snorkelling.

Non-holiday stuff I have been up to recently...

I finished Gears of War 2. Even at the end it left me with the feeling that yes, it was all very exciting, but it was still very bitty, with each section having its own special new rule or element that you have to pay attention to. It also seemed to focus quite a bit on vehicle sections that I thought were rubbish for the most part, and downright confusing in sections. It wouldn't surprise me if, even though it feels like a longer game than the first Gears, it turned out that measured section for section, there is less time spent doing the core "in cover, shooting enemies" gameplay that I bought it for. Really nice blood effects at the end of the second act, though.

And finally, for this update, I watched the Hitman movie (based off the IO Interactive game series, if you didn't know). Timothy Olyphant wasn't vey good at all in the lead role, he looked far too young and his voice was just odd - for half of his "menacing" lines he sounded like his voice would crack and he was about to cry. The love interest angle seemed very out of place too.

47's bodycount in the movie is also surprisingly high, which doesn't really fit with the intention of the games that you should be able to finish each level by only killing the target and leaving other people with a headache at worst. But after thinking about it I realised that the film matched what tends to happen when I play Hitman - a disguise eventually fails, and from that point on I have to shoot my way in and out. Usually about five minutes into a level.

Movies Games and Videos

Recently I thought I'd try out the Video Marketplace thingy that MS have finally released in the UK. My main reason for it was that I have a high def TV, but it's only 32" (girlfriend acceptance factor dictated tht I couldn't get anything much bigger), and I was curious to see if an HD movie format would actually look noticably better than the upscaling DVD player I have at the moment.

The marketplace itself is quite nicely laid out (certainly a lot better than the Arcade), allowing you to search by genre, popularity, or year of release, and offering up "if you liked X you might want to try Y" links. Once you've downloaded a movie it's very clear how long you have to watch it, so you're in no danger of something accidentally timing out on you.

I probably won't use it very often though, for two main reasons:

First off is the price. It seems high to me, especially for the HD stuff. Currently I rent using Blockbuster's online service - as many movies as I can watch (3 at a time) for £15 a month. And that includes Blu Ray and HD DVD.

I would have thought the HD movies would cost the same, or possibly even been cheaper, than SD, to tempt people into using it more - especially if MS really are trying to kill the HD format war so they can step in with downloads. The standard def version of "300" costs around £2.90 - a better option for most people would be to buy the DVD for only £3.99 and watch as many times as they liked (or sell it on if they didn't like it).

The second downside is the poor selection of titles. At the time of writing there are still only around 40 titles, about three months after the service launched. Everything on it seems quite old, and the recent titles (recent in that they're only a few months after DVD release) have even more hiked up prices.

I can understand the need for a back catalogue to be presented, but surely to provide a useful movie rental service you need to ensure each week's new releases are added promptly? How many people do MS think are sat at home thinking "oh if only there was a way that I could watch Wild Wild West and Executive Descision, yet those two titles are simply impossible to rent or buy"?

You spin me right round

I won't bore you with the reasons why, all you need to know is that I've ended up spending a couple of hours this evening watching the Dead or Alive movie. And since that's kind of to do with games, I thought I may as well try and scrape an update out of it.

So let's begin, shall we?

Kasumi looks a bit funny, and has managed to sneak a backpack-cum-handglider into the palace on top of a very large cliff. The Ayane actress looks familiar (I hope it doesn't turn out she's been in porn now I've typed that). If you're a big fan of Earl's wife then there's plenty of bikini action to keep you happy.

The next scene with Holly Valance as Christie was a bit corrupted on my rental DVD. I'm not suggesting that's because it's the bit most likely to have been watched over and over in agonising slo-mo, frame stepping along to try and catch a peak of nipple (and that's certainly not what I did and you can't prove otherwise) but the only other bit of the DVD that messed up was a later fight with Christie in the rain.

Group shot on a plane - your first glimpse at most of the fighters. Helena doesn't look right at all and apparently now rollerblades everywhere in a bikini, but I suppose a ball gown doesn't offer the t & a shots required. Bass looks smaller than I expected. Zack is spot on. Gen Fu looks like an 18 year old in an old man's clothes and wig. The two Russians are there - they look okay.

Who the hell is Max? Have they taken to inventing male characters? It turns out that yes, they have invented a load of male non-fighters to pad out the story, which is a bit odd considering how side-lined some of the existing men are. I think they were just embarassed about their Gen Fu casting.

Nice visual nod to the games with a building with hundreds of floors. They seem to have done away with the ninjas being able to teleport. Lots of the 3 main girls grunting as they climb this. Oh, and they've decided they need teamwork to get their task done in time - it's a film with a moral, nice.

The format for at least half of the film appears to be lots of bikini shots broken up with comedy Zack moments. If it continues like this it's a sure-fire 5 out of 5.

The DoA organisation, like so many companies in films, use a propriatory format for recording to media - tsch, haven't they learnt anything from Sony? See I felt it would be more relevant if I put games industry jokes into my write-up. Sorry.

Brad Wong is now very short and not drunk. No wonder he lost his only fight so quickly. The DoA tournament seems to be some kind of Big Brother-esque affair, with fights breaking out anywhere against anyone. None of the characters have shouted any racist insults yet though - that must happen later.

Hyabusa looks about 12. Oh God, and now they're trying to do story. Some guff about Hayate going missing the previous year. Isn't this DoA 3's story? It turns out the main baddy has absorbed everyone's fighting moves into some sunglasses. He seems to have overlooked the obvious flaw which proves to be his downfall, as is only proper for a villain in this sort of thing.

If I could be a character from DoA (apart from one of the women, obviously, since then all I'd do is stare at my bikini-clad self in the mirror all day) I'd be Zack. He's the only one who isn't a boring arsehole who takes his badly written lines too seriously.

I think that there was a deliberate Commando homage, which is interesting and unexpected. Unless there other films where someone is thrown through a wall onto a bed where a couple are having sex?

Genuinely funny moment with Bass thinking Tina and Christie are 'special friends'. So Zack isn't the only comedy character, then! If you do ever end up with this DVD then make sure you watch the extras, since they cut out a load of decent comedy scenes along with some of the boring obvious plot exposition.

Oh hey look they play volleyball when they're relaxing - I wonder where on earth they got the idea for that from? - and I think Hayabusa's just come. This film certainly treats some of the characters badly - there's a good chance your favourite is a really shitty fighter, looks like a child in a cheap Halloween costume, or both.

Skip to the end...

So to summarise, not as bad as I was expecting actually, and top of the heap of fighting game movies I've seen. Just the right amount of not taking itself too seriously, just the right amount of fighting, and just the right amout of lovely girls. I wouldn't buy the DVD, but I would probably watch it again if it was on telly.

Oh okay, I probably will buy the DVD.