The man who planted trees

For Cat's 30th I got tickets for a few plays from York theatre royal's Takeover 09.On Tuesday we saw the first of the plays, The Man Who Planted Trees.

At first I was a little apprehensive, I knew this was a family play (hell it involved puppets), but the crowd was decidedly... young.

I shouldn't have been worried! The play was utterly beautiful, a wonderful little ecological tale performed brilliantly by the actors/puppeteers involved. They had a fantastic combination of a lovely tale and plenty of silly comedy to keep even the attention of even the shortest of attention spans (I'm talking about the kids', not mine).

Young or old, I definately think you should go see this, especially if you can take some young kids with you. :D

Classic knock-off console :)

Saw this in a shop in Scarborough a few weeks back.

What I particularly liked about it, was the maker's audacity in not pretending that this was the next console in the series, but the next NEXT one.

Overall though I hate knock-offs like this. Not because someone out there is making a living off of some other persons brand, but because you know there's some poor kid out there that's the only one with a Wiii 3 instead of a Wii in his class.

A few things I would really like to see dropped from JRPGs

Items / Endings / Areas that can only be found from following strategy guides from the start of the game.

E.g. The god damn Zodiac Spear in Final Fantasy 12. This item could only be got if you avoided opening 4 chests early on in the game, which had no marking, clues, or warnings to differentiate them from any of the other thousand identical chests. Nice.

Also see: Some of the missable quests in Last Remnant. I have to go back to a distant area and talk to a guy before and after each of 6 connected missions in order for a quest to open afterwards or it's missed forever?!?!? WTF.

No further explanation needed :)

70 hour+ game times.

Long gone are the days where good games were few and far between, or I just couldn't afford more than one game every 3 months. Nowadays I don't need my games artificially stretched out. Once I've seen every game mechanic around 100 times, and you've not got anything new in the
gameplay to surprise me, it's time to wrap up the plot and show me the credits.

Again, The last Remnant is a hideous offender in this respect. It's main way of stretching things out is unskippable extra long battle animations for any action (even swinging a damn sword). I've taken to reading a book whilst letting the battles play out, stopping occasionally to issue orders.

Personna 3 is an absolutely brilliant game in most respects, but suffers badly from this. I've been playing it on and off for around a year now, because the battle sides of it do get horribly repetitive until the boss shows up :| Does that freaky tower really need that many floors?

Unskippable, slow moving battle animations.

Already mentioned this above a little regarding The Last Remnant's (Seems like I'm picking on it, but honestly there is a lot to like about that game) gameplay being extended by the long winded battle animations . Final Fantasy is a well known offender for this as well (Knights of the Round being a move taking 1 minute 21 seconds to execute).

Yes we love eye candy, but is there really any reason to force it upon us the 10th time if we want to skip it?

Disgaea showed the world how it's done. You can turn all animations off! Now this may seem like it's taking the fun out of it, but when you're just fighting through an item world to level up you're glad of any time saving device the developers give you!

Alchemy

Oh how I hate alchemy in JRPGs. Some people might love the idea of alchemy in RPGS, but to me they're yet another mechanic to sell the strategy guides and prolong the game.

They're never intuitive, combinations being either trial and error, or done to fixed recipes you have to find in the world. Not that having a bloody recipe helps, because it's never obvious which is the only place in the whole frigging world you're going to find that piece of necrotic metal.

Even once you have all the ingredients, you usually don't dare make the ruddy thing. You never know if that ingredient you're using to build that slightly better sword is the only one of it's kind, and it might be the core ingredient of the even better (but only slightly so) betterer sword you'll get the recipe for in the next part of the game.

Seriously, what is alchemy bringing to the game? Sending me off to the other side of the world (via a strategy guide) for a piece of item that only drops from monster X if I have item B and have killed 300 of them. THAT'S NOT FUN. Give me shops with gradually improving stock and nice item rewards for doing side quests. IT WAS LIKE THAT FOR A REASON.



Got any pet JRPG hates of your own? Comment!

Image Credit : "Moogle" by Christina L. Frazer

Miracle berries? More like curiosity berries....

This week we finally got round to having cat's Miracle berry tablets. They're the ones that affect your taste buds for about an hour, making sour & bitter things taste sweet instead.

We tried a range of different things:

• Lemon & Lime - I loved these, tasted nice and sweet to me, but they were still a bit sharp flavoured for some of us.
• Goats Cheese -tasted a lot lighter and creamier
• Guinness - didn't taste like chocolate milkshake like advertised, but definitely took on a sweet almost milky taste. Very nice :)
• Banana bread beer - win win win! So tasty, the sweet banana flavour really took over and made for a lovely drink.
• Salt & Vinegar crisps - tasty good, not sure how to describe the flavour, kinda like a sweet peppery sort of flavour I think.
• Pickled onions - I love pickled onions anyways, but the tablets really brought out the sweetness and gave them a very moreish quality.
  

Overall it was fun, but hardly mind blowing. I think whoever named them miracle fruits needs to get out and see the world a little more :D

A fight between logic and love - dealing with insects

I'm generally a very logical sort of bloke. I don't let sentimentality or superstition get the better of me. However when it comes to dealing with insects I have been conditioned by my girlfriend to rescue them and gently escort them out of the house. I find myself doing this even when she's not in, or when I'm at other peoples homes.

I guess it's not a bad thing. I definitely think the principle "First, do no harm." is a very good one to live by, but I know that insects are just efficient little impulse driven little robots. They don't have feelings. In fact I completely ruined ants for Cat one day by telling her how I learnt that most ants spend a huge percentage of their lives doing absolutely nothing. Literally nothing. Not even moving. Which if they really are self-aware, terrifies the living bejesus out of me.

Was reminded of this last night after a daddy longlegs spent most of the evening annoying me by flying between our two sets of lights like a maniac. Impossible to catch until it tired itself out and landed on a nearby wall (several hours after it's appearance), I was struck by how utterly ridiculous it was that I didn't just bash it with something nearby, as I'm probably more than entitled to given my much larger brain.

Still rescued the little sod though didn't I.

All you need is love (and a lot of plastic instruments)

Should I buy it.. Shouldn't I buy it? It was a massive dilemma considering my current situation. I'd already turned down Batman : Arkham Asylum this month despite a very impressive demo and it getting great rave reviews. Did I really need another Rock Band?

I was mainly undecided because it seemed to go against everything I liked about the Rock Band concept: you buy the software once (okay maybe twice - Rock Band 2 was a pretty upgrade), and then all you buy after that is songs you want. Alarm bells sounded when they buggered it up with the AC:DC branded version, whereby they provided a severely crippled version of Rock Band, which even if you export the tracks to Rock Band / Rock Band 2 worked out much more expensive than a track pack would have been. Then I head the bad news that the Beatles version would go a step further and not allow you to export the songs, or play any non-Beatles DLC.

Not good. I decided I wasn't going to buy it. Then the trailers hit and I realised this wasn't going to be a crippled version of Rock Band, but an entirely rebranded, re-worked game. It showed a proper story mode. Lots of unlockable photos and videos and stuff. Plus: It's the frigging Beatles.

Combine this with a sudden discovery of a cache of Tesco Clubcard vouchers and of course I caved.

Do I regret it? Not at all! I have to say this is the slickest version of Rock Band so far, the presentation is gorgeous and there's lots of neat interface tweaks, for example a difficulty display on the screen where you choose between Guitar & Bass which is a huge help for avoiding tedious bass lines / obscenely tricky guitar tracks. So far we've only played a little way through the Story mode (Cat's still suffering with post-viral fatigue, we have to take things easy) and browsed the track listings but we've really enjoyed it. In fact I practically had to wrestle the controller off her last night and use the classic parenting line "It'll still be here tomorrow" ;).

The bonus content really is something special. We've only unlocked a little, but so far the photos and accompanying text are very interesting and we've learnt quite a few suprising things already. An impressive "prize" extra we unlocked today was the content of a very limited edition Christmas record that was sent out to Beatles fan club members in... 63 I think? Was very silly but incredibly fun to hear, the quality of the recording was outstanding!

Need to have a gathering at some point and see if we can get enough xbox microphones to try out these 3-part harmonies some of the tracks support. Then again I think most of me and my friends struggle to find the right pitch when solo :D

But is this going to happen? I honestly don't know. Even with 45 greatly varying tracks, I don't know how this would go down with my Rock Band buddies. The only couple of friends I know that are definitely Beatles fans don't normally touch Rock Band, and the friends I have really into Rock Band definitely aren't Beatles fans. Perhaps this isn't a match made in heaven?

For me and Cat though it's going to be a fantastic experience, and that's all we need.

Why do we enjoy messing with our heads?

Today I have finished Uzumaki, watched Dead Man's shoes, and nearly finished reading Grotesque. All three with very dark themes making for an uncomfortable read / watch.

I'm certainly not a very dark and gloomy sort of person overall, I'm just as likely to watch Spongebob Squarepants or read a manga involving a kung-fu fighting panda as I am to watch a horror movie, but sometimes I just get in the mood to get all dark.

Why do we enjoy this sort of things? What is it in us that makes us seek out these kind of experiences?

Are JRPGs really worth playing?

I love JRPGs. Well at least I think I do.

Secret of Mana planted the seed (for anyone that's actually played it the pun was unintended), and FF7 really fanned the flames (mixed metaphors ahoy!).

12 years later and I'm trying to get back into Persona 3 on the PS2 again (clocked 60 hours on it so far, probably about 5.6 through so another 10 or 15 hours left I reckon) and I'm finding myself asking myself if it's worth my time... Persona 3 is a well-executed critically acclaimed, innovative example of a JRPG. So why am I thinking of packing it in?

It's all about pay-off for hours put in. It has a great plot, but only about the quantity you'd find in an average anime series, probably less... so if I want plot I'd be better off watching something. How about the game play? Well fun at first, with lots of new mechanics I'm not used to... but at the 60 hour mark I really am not going to see anything new. Perhaps this could have been said at about the 10 hour mark too...

I've lost that compulsive need to uncover every secret, max out all the characters skills, see every line of dialogue that I used to have when I was younger and I didn't have that many games to play. Now I don't need and perhaps don't want a game that lasts 20 hours +. My best kicks seem to come from short and sweet little indie games (see a lot of my previous blog posts), action blockbuster type games (e.g. gears of war & halo), and casual stuff (I'm beginning to think I'm Popcap's bitch now).

Maybe it's an age thing.

Mmmm curry

I love curry and cooking curries, but just can't keep all the ingredients you need to cook them
so I usually have to rely on those sauce in jars.

Sometimes they just don't cut it, so then I use Rafi's spicebox. You choose the curry you want and they measure out all the fresh ingredients for you, customised for the amount of spiciness you like, and put it in an airtight heat sealed bag for you to take home.

All that's required is then for you to cook it up with the meat and vegetables of your choice, add in some creamed coconut and/or tomatoes, and preferably leave it overnight to let all the flavours come out (not compulsory).

The closest thing I've ever had to restaurant/takeaway curry. If you're even in York, pop down Goodramgate and grab a curry or order online!

Going to the doctors rarely achieves anything for me

It often takes a lot to get me to go to the doctors. It's not that I'm scared of going to the doctors, or don't like doctors. It just very rarely produces any results for me. Usually I'll go in with something like a weird black mark that didn't use to be there, an ache, maybe problems with stomach pain or general lethargy, and I'll get a big 'ol MEH from the doc.

Today I went to the doctors for a muscle pain in my chest (resulting from buzzcocks gig moshpit) that if anything has been feeling worse rather than better. I've also got a long-running problem with feeling bloated and burping too much. Was told bumps to the chest area often take a while to settle down so it's probably nothing to worry about that it's feeling worse rather than better, oh and try eating slower and see if that sorts out the stomach thing. Not particularly convincing...

When I talk to the doctor I always feel that I get run through the "is it going to kill you" checklist. As soon as the doctor rules out symptoms that might be something dangerous you can see them instantly lose interest. Still eating? Not bleeding anywhere weird? Probably fine then, carry on, see if it changes.

At first this annoyed me and I felt like they weren't giving me proper attention or even being neglectful. Then I came to the realisation... they're tech support. They're tech support for my body and like most tech support and support programmers they don't have time for the small niggly stuff you can work around. They just want to make sure they have the time to debug the bigger problems.

When I came to this way of thinking I kinda had a bit more sympathy for them.... So I'll wait until these low priority bugs persist long enough for the priority to be increased ;)

Doing nothing is underrated

Today I achieved absolutely nothing. Nothing new there you'll all be thinking, but usually I'll get done a couple of jobs I've been planning to do, or enjoy something I've planned to read or watch, or get on the Xbox with something I've been meaning to play.

Today I just didn't really do anything. I listened to what happened to be on the radio. I ate whatever I happened to have in the house. I read whatever articles happened to be in my news reader, but I didn't really do anything in a planned way and it was so damn relaxing.

Not everyone can do that. Some people when they aren't achieving something "worthwhile" start to panic and start planning the next grand ideas. Must build something. Must rewire something. Must bake something. As soon as it gets to a point where nothings left in the task queue they panic. These are also generally speaking the same people that are always complaining about how they're so busy all the time and don't have time to enjoy themselves. *sigh*

I think it comes down to one of two things.

1. People being scared. If they're not constantly doing these projects, they might start to think about things. Might start to think about what they're doing in life, and how they're not entirely happy about it. Rather than confronting these difficult questions they constantly distract themselves from them, needing an insurmountable list of things to do to avoid leaving a gap.

2. Guilt. Some people have it drilled into them if they're not doing something "worthwhile" then they're sinning or at the very least being selfish and decadent. I find this idea rubbish because in the grand scheme of things we're going to all be dust at the end of our lives. Most actions are just as worthwhile as others. Obvious exceptions being noble things like charity work and stuff, but spending time re-organising your books / doing all but the most fundamental of housework is just as worthwhile in the long run as sitting on the toilet doing sudoku. Even if there is a god, I find it hard to believe he's petty enough to care whether you spent that weekend in July building a new section of your garden or watching the clouds go by.

Take a moment. Relax. Realise that doing nothing is fine. It's very liberating. :)

Passage - proof for me that games can be art

Passage is a 5 minute long game (if that) that produced more emotional response from me than 95% of the media I've read, watched, played or listened to.

Firstly go here, download the game, and play it. You might need to press B a few times to reduce (increase?) the resolution of it as today's monitors blow it up a bit too big and make it a little blocky to see whats going on.

After playing it, if you didn't really get it, try playing it again.

Then and only then read what I thought:

This is an incredible piece of art that takes a theme and explores it in a way that wouldn't be possible in any other media. At first it's confusing as the graphical style just looks a mess and you can't tell what's going on. Then you notice it. You see the way the character's position has moved relative to the passage. You notice how the the compression of the pixels has subtly shifted.

Seriously, if you haven't played it yet, play it before you carry on reading this.

At first you start near the left of the screen at the beginning of your journey. Ahead of you is everything you will experience, compressed together in a tight pattern. Gradually as you move through the passage, you encounter these things & events. You might meet someone that will accompany you through this passageway. As time goes by your position on the screen has moved further right, and the things you have encountered have become compressed in a tight pattern behind you.

The passageway represents life. This is you travelling through life. Behind you are your memories, ahead of you is your future.

Eventually you notice the characters starting to age, soon you notice that there are more past events behind you than there are future ones in front of you. That's when I started feeling a little apprehension but there was nothing to do but carry on. Older and older, less and less to encounter ahead. The girl I was travelling through the passage way changes into a gravestone. My character can do nothing but carry on down the passageway, now travelling in a much slower way until he does the same.

I cried. I started crying again when I wrote this. I think I need a drink.

RepRap will be to patent infringement what computers were to media piracy

RepRap is an incredible open source project to create an affordable Replicating Rapid-prototyper. In simple: imagine you could connect a printer to your PC that could print solid 3D objects.

Sounds like science fiction doesn't it? Amazingly the project already allows you to build a RepRap that will create plastic objects for around €500, and most the parts for the RepRap can be created using a RepRap (spooky eh?), so the more people that have them the easier and cheaper they'll be to build!

Some of the objects it can already build are already pretty useful. You've got coat hangers, iPod mounts, fly swatters, door handles, shot glasses, rings, water filter inserts, and other things.

First thought - awesome.
Second thought - when the revolution happens, some corporations are going to lose a lot of money.
Third thought - corporations don't give up without a fight.

And what has the recent music debacle taught us? That's right! The way forward isn't to evolve and embrace new technology, the way forward is to sue the crap out of your customers. When RepRap takes off, whether it's this year or in 10 years time, people are going to share files online that will allow you build useful objects with your RepRap.

And some of these designs are going to be for objects already patented by big companies.

Imagine Dyson have a patented plastic doohickey that makes their vacuum cleaners work. If you started manufacturing these plastic doohickeys and selling them at a cheaper price than Dyson do, you'd suddenly find a lawyer appearing at your door with a cease & desist. Taking into account the costs involved in setting up a production run & sales channels, no-one is going to risk it.

But put a RepRap design for the plastic doohickey online and suddenly Dyson have lost a source of income. Everyone just creates their own plastic doohickeys at home. (Yes this assumes the revolution has happened and the RepRap is as common as the iPod). Other examples of grey areas include models of copyrighted characters such as Pokemon, or the latest brand-name designs for vases & glasses.

So who's going to get sued? Is it the person creating the plastic doohickey? Is it the person creating the designs? Or the person sharing the file containing the instructions for creating the plastic doohickey?

Or is it the creators of the RepRap?

It's mp3s all over again :)

Multiplayer games are great. Shame most people aren't.

It's so frustrating. I love multiplayer online games like Halo, Gears of War, Left 4 dead. I was into a MMORPG for a while too.

Unfortunately at the moment I can't stand 90% of the people playing them. This wasn't always the case, I don't know whether it's got worse due to the technical barrier being lifted, or maybe my tolerance has dropped dramatically in the last couple of years.

Here's my main frustrations:

Problem 1: Kids

Can't we have some kind of adults only tickbox when we're joining games? I don't want to have to put up with someone filling my headset with random high pitched screeching sounds, or shouts for their mum to bring their favourite E-number filled snack treat.

Why are these parents letting their young children play these murder simulators anyway? ;)

Problem 2: Bad losers

Almost every time I play a game online I seem to be put on the same team as the guy who has to flood the chat with the latest injustice that caused him to die. Only a combination of lag, hacks, camping, and glitching can kill the bad loser. It's never because the other guy did something right. Face it guys, unless you're in your teens and unemployed or a student, 90% of the people out there are going to better than you. I've accepted this, you should too. No-one likes a whinger.

Problem 3: Bad winners

You won, congratulations is in order. It doesn't give you the right to really insult everyone in the lobby afterwards. Chances are they're just gonna give you negative feedback. It's just a game so enjoy playing it rather than bragging about it afterwards. Incidently bad winners and bad losers tend to be the same people a lot of the time.

Problem 4: The silent loner

If you like playing online games pretty much solo that's fine, there's plenty of deathmatch based games designed for that. Just don't join objective-based games like Left 4 Dead, and Halo's objective based game types. If you're going to play a team game plug your damn mic in!!!!

I think this is probably my rantiest post yet :D

The Ten

Ran into an interesting piece of text, well just a list really, called The Ten. I found it by following some links on a fun little music video called Why don't bees go to heaven that was kicking around on reddit.

It's a really nice and positive take on atheism, stressing that just because there is no god that doesn't take any of the magic out of life. Take a look at the site and give it a read and see what you think.

I'd skip 10:9 if I were you though, that'd take a lot of the fun out of this infinite universe for me ;)

Micheal Jackson has died, sad but that's all

I hate it when famous people die. It leads to over-exposure on every media, with fans & celebrities gushing like the deceased was a genetic combination of the best bits of Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Jesus.

I'm not going to go on about allegations, mistakes, the way he lead his life etc. It's really not really relevant. A guy who created some amazing music in the 70s and 80s and transformed the music industry has died today, but today is not a life changing event. Today the world has not changed (except for the unlucky few that paid well over the odds for tickets on eBay). We're not even really that worse off for it, I think the time that Micheal Jackson could manage to have any real effect on the world was well over a long time ago.

It's sad, I get it. Especially for the family. But COME ON, get over it quietly and in private, and perhaps give some screen time to something more important like stolen elections or something.

Lars and the real girl

Watched an absolutely beautiful film last night called Lars and the real girl.

Initially I was very apprehensive, the films premise really does not fit in with the fact that I find it very difficult to watch embarrassing situations. In fact, I nearly had to turn it off in the scene where the "real girl" was about to make it's first appearance, the director having brilliantly drawn out the moment for as long as possible.

So yeah... it's a film about a strange introverted bloke with a full-blown mental delusion that his real doll is a real person who's in love with him. [WARNING :- link contains pictures of fake boobies]. How a film with this premise manages to be one of the most touching and wonderful films about community and friendship I've ever seen, rather than a crass smut-filled comedy disaster, is testament to the incredible job done by everyone involved, especially the actor playing Lars.

Honestly, don't let the premise stop you. You need to see this film!

All stores selling second hand media are stealing

Firstly I want to avoid any (undue) criticism by stating firmly: I do not personally believe sharing files online is stealing. I'm just taking the record & movie industries' logic a little further to a quite strange conclusion.

A major contention point with the MPAA & RIAA's arguments is that they've again and again associated file sharing with stealing. Many people argue against this because it's not literally stealing (For it to be literally stealing someone who had purchased the item would have to be denied it due to the file sharer's action). However in a slightly twisted bit of logic, the stealing is explained as stealing a sale from the artist. This takes more than a slight jump in logic when applied to file sharing as it assumes that if you hadn't have been offering the file online on your P2P network of choice at that time, the downloader would have popped straight off to the shops to buy the song legally. Dubious at best, but let's stick with this and take it further.

So: If you prevent the artist/creator from making a sale you're stealing.

I can think of a much more concrete example of this than file sharing: selling second-hand media. Most media retail stores are either in or are starting to grow into the 2nd-hand market. Companies like Game in the UK and Gamestop in the US are enjoying very large profits and a large percentage isn't down to selling new games/films. It's down to selling 2nd hand ones. You see, a company can make a much much higher margin selling a 2nd hand copy than selling a new one, as the publisher and developer get nothing from the 2nd hand sale.

They're doing this very aggressively as well. They'll often check to see if they can offer a 2nd hand copy to a customer standing there cash in hand, already commited to the purchase of a brand new copy, for only a few quid less: This is absolutely 100% stealing a sale from the artist. Not only are these guys blatently "stealing" as per the definition above, the file sharer does it for free and the retailer is making millions from it.

But they're suing the single moms first eh?

Don't listen to salespeople about pre-orders!

Heard a massive load of garbage coming from the mouths of the staff at Gamestation about how necessary it is to pre-order.

A dad was in there buying a game for his kid, and was asked if they were planning on getting the next "Modern Warfare" game in November. The dad made the mistake of saying they were, which prompted the doom & gloom warnings from the member of staff about how hard copies of the previous modern warfare game were to get at launch, and how every big game sells out and needs to be pre-ordered, and how they should put a deposit down there and then and then they would "hopefully" get a copy.

What utter crap. Other than the Wii & Nintendo DS consoles, I can't remember the last time anything to do with gaming sold-out. ESPECIALLY the big released like Modern Warfare and GTA! If anything it's the games that sell less that are harder to get (try finding a copy of fire emblem on the DS, or valkyria chronicles on PS3). Shops like Game & Gamestation buy in shed-loads of these blockbuster games knowing that they will sell, and will make sure they don't run out of copies as they don't want to miss out on sales. Pre-ordering is all a big con to stop you shopping around for the best price when the game is out. Disc-based media is NEVER in short supply as the manufacturing process is so fast & cheap, and scarcity in supply is not a good thing for the publisher like it is in the case of hardware like the Wii & DS.

So in short: Don't listen to these people, don't put down a deposit on a game that they won't even tell you how much it'll cost. If you do really want to have something on the release day use a good online retailer like www.shopto.net who guarantee delivery on release date or they'll give you money back!

Woot! new oldies but goodies!

As part of my step-brother-in-common-laws clearout (see yesterday's post), I got hold of copies of the 2 Metroid games on the gamecube, and an original N64 cart of Zelda: Majora's mask.

I'm a massive fan of the old 2D Metroid games but only briefly had a go on the 3D gamecube ones, so looking forward to playing those. As for Majora's mask, despite it being one of the most unusual (and opinion splitting) Zelda games I've never even really known much about it, so getting to play it in it's original N64 format is going to be great!

Don't think I'm going to get much done this week. ;)