Back in the Waddle

Not sure that title works. It’s supposed to be a play on the fact I’m too fat to ride a horse but looks like I've been bumming a famous Geordie and Spurs legend.

Hello. Yes I was as surprised as you to discover this is still here. And they said the internet wouldn't last! But why am I back dropping my keyboard mashes here? Well, I've destroyed everywhere else I've written and proven myself a Jonah for games sites so it’s back to my little corner of insignificance.

In the space between my previous post and this one I've been waffling in videos and created a videogame podquiz (Level Up), and it’s that little enterprise that has drawn me back here. I need a home for it, somewhere to link to it from now that plughead.net is no more, and in the absence of a clue as to what I’m doing I thought I’d try this old haunt. So here I am.

Oh, and I finally finished my 2011 game of the year, Skyrim, a couple of weeks ago.

On the ball me.

A Gay Post

I’m not gay. Did I need to mention that? Does it matter? Will your opinion of me change now you’ve discovered that I don’t have a penchant for sucking pole? Is using that phrase derogatory to the act of man on man oral love making? What of ladies who love ladies?

The reason I’m clumsily shuffling into this mine field is because gay rights and attitudes towards those who gay seems to have been prominent in the media recently. From online evangelists demanding that some polygons never intersect other polygons to the forthcoming debate and vote in parliament on gay marriage.

As it’s not something I’ve had cause to speak with my children about I found myself wondering how my attitudes and things they may hear in passing might influence them. When putting my eight year old daughter to bed last night I decided to ask her.

ME: [REDACTED], if a boy wants to marry another boy, should he be allowed to?

HER: Boy marry a boy? I guess.

ME: What about girls. Should girls be allowed to marry other girls?

HER: If they want to.

ME: What’s the most important thing then if two people want to get married?

HER: That they love each other. And they take care of each other.

This parenting lark is a doddle.

No Escape

It’s been a tough couple of months. Financially things are finely balanced, as I think they are for most people. Austerity measures bite into the support that low income families rely on. We’d prefer not to, we’d love to be completely independent, but my historic lack of academic performance, inability to co-ordinate my faculties into production, and my social ineptitude have combined to ensure a salary approaching the national average shall remain as lofty a dream as that of those who purchase lottery tickets. But I have my PC. My wonderful PC which takes me away from, well, me.

Or at least it did. My ageing system is finally starting to fail. It has been a wonderful companion over these past few years but I can no longer resist the need to replace its innards. That of course brings us back to our austerity issues. Gaming PCs aren’t cheap, even low to mid performance components for those on a tight budget will stretch you to a couple of consoles worth of purchasing power. Sure, in the long run the PC will work out comparable if not cheaper overall, but it’s still an eye watering initial outlay.

Thankfully I’m not frivolous with money and the years of abusing my body with alcohol, tobacco and drugs are long behind me. I still eat far too much, but I think that’s pretty typical of those who lack a degree of self worth. Whether that’s a result of my being an unwanted inconvenience to be paternally abandoned as an infant leaving me with trust issues I don’t know.

It’s been the ever present monkey on my back: If my own father didn’t like me enough to stick around and I don’t particularly like me, why should anyone? Which leads me to think they don’t and so must be lying if they say they do. And if they’re that deceitful how can I then trust them? That’s pretty tough to resolve when you’re married with children.

The sooner my PC is back up and running and I can stop being me again the better.

Pavlov's Writer

I’m struggling. Things aren’t going well. I’m broken.

My first little bit of scribbling thoughtforms onto the intersplodge this year was to be a review of BIT.TRIP.RUNNER for GamingDaily.co.uk. Around January last year I reviewed BIT.TRIP.BEAT for the site and a quirk of fate had landed this other BIT.TRIP game in my lap so, “How fun” I thought, “it would be to review it as a call back to that other piece.” The problem was when I wrote the RUNNER review it was, well, shit. An uninteresting description of the game and its mechanics. A lifeless interpretation of an otherwise enjoyable, if shallow, platform romp. It simply would not do.

There was a time I’d have sent it in anyway and let Craig (Gaming Daily's Editor) fix it or throw it back at me with pointers as to how to fix it, but not now. Now I would be embarrassed to show it. I was as surprised as anyone to discover I’d developed standards. I’m sure they’re low standards, but standards none the less.

I intended to rewrite the review but first I had to undertake a joyless experience in the playing and reviewing of Postal 3 for plughead.net. I didn’t expect it to be joyless, I expected contrived controversy and poor humour. If only it were that crude!

The review was difficult to write, not least because I was somewhat enraged by the game, and I did seek assistance as to its content prior to submitting it to the world. I was attempting to straddle the line Postal 3 failed to. I hope I succeeded.

Having no further use for Postal 3, I uninstalled it, performed an exorcism on my HDD, and bleached my eyes. I was now free to returned to the BIT.TRIP.RUNNER review. The problem was I sat reading through what I’d written and couldn’t see a way to salvage it, so I decided to start afresh and deleted it. Blank page, fresh start. That blank page stared at me for an hour. I started to panic. I just couldn’t express myself. I’ve exhausted my catalogue of reproductive organ jokes, similes, metaphors, and innuendos, suddenly finding myself unable to perform.

I blamed it on BIT.TRIP.RUNNER. Clearly the game was mediocre and so couldn’t inspire me. I needed something grand or something dire. Something to juice me up a bit.

Gaming Daily were instigating a Friday Night Race Night. I’ve always enjoyed racing games, though like most genres I enjoy my ability lags far behind my enthusiasm. In the discussion to seek a suitable game for the inaugural event I got to thinking about all the various racing games out there and a way for the venture to be completely inclusive. I figured the best way to be all inclusive would be for a game that anyone could pick up easily and cheaply and that wouldn’t be too demanding on hardware. I came to the conclusion that such a game would be Need For Speed World. I decided to check it out.

Having checked it out I decided I should warn others and so sat down to explain why when it comes to racing games you certainly seem to get what you pay for. The fact you’re reading this rather than that should convey how well it went.

These failures have been on pieces I was doing because that’s what I used to do, have an idea or thought about a game and squirt some words out. I’m thinking that as for over a year now I’ve been doing what was asked rather than what I felt like my brain now salivates only when an assignment drops.

I’ll get to test this theory over the next week or so as my review copy of point and click comedy adventure Da New Guys is inbound.

Being Nice

Despite most professional game reviewers being well educated literate people, I’ve noticed an increased level of resignation in much of their work and comments. If you look closely you can see the wreckage brought by the knowledge that irrespective of what they write their opinion is instantly dismissed in a tidal wave of contempt that washes over from the curse that is this communal online cesspool.

It’s the digital age. Zeroes and ones. Right or wrong. Game is the best thing ever, game is the worst thing ever. Scales and degrees are lost and the nuances of descriptive narrative are removed in favour of following the man with the arrow over his head, with the validity of such a movement being the consumerism of the ignorant.

You people make me sick.

The reason I say this is because for all the time I’ve reflected on the games I’ve played and written about them, and as with this blog thing, I am constantly worried about the words I use and whether I’m accurately expressing myself with those scales and nuances I like to experience myself. That’s quite tough for me because as anyone who knows me will appreciate, and I’m sure I have mentioned it here before, I’m an uneducated buffoon. And I don’t say that to be self depreciating or ironic. This isn’t a platform to branch out into a career in comedy podcasts or TV. Certainly not with this face, these teeth, and that hairline. Rather, it’s the confession that I have yet to write anything without a dictionary and thesaurus to hand because I fear using the wrong words. Something that was highlighted recently when we had the plughead.net Game Of The Year discussions and I found myself opining without my usual safety nets. It was a great debate to be part of, but equally terrifying. I suspect that’s why when things get a little tense I revert to knob and tit gags.

I’m aware that even when choosing the correct language and being suitably descriptive and reasoned my opinion isn’t worth a carrot. Highlighted over the festive season by my brother announcing a recent game acquisition which he then sought my opinion on over drinks. I naturally expressed concern and a degree of hurt that he hadn’t read my review and suggested that perhaps rather than me providing a summation he would be better served by reading my review in its entirety.

He asked me for the score and a good / bad list.

That’s what has become of reviews. Marketing is king now and people only (skim)read reviews to validate their hype lead purchases. People don’t want to know what the game is really like, they want nice comments about how they’ve made the right choice.

So why not just be nice? Why not just say what people want to hear? Sure, in a few months they’ll have finished the game and be looking to trade it in, but that’s fine because when they were playing it they felt okay about it. You stroked their head and told them how clever they were. They were culturally relevant because they had bought The Emperors New Franchise Entry and you were in it all together, but all together and all together, you’re all together as complicit and deserving of my scorn.

2011 GOTY and stuff

It’s been an interesting year for me, mostly because I’ve spent a fair portion of it writing about games at both www.plughead.net and www.gamingdaily.co.uk. As the year ends though it has become increasingly difficult to balance that with playing games for their primary entertainment purpose. And the family of course. Mustn’t forget them. So as the year ends and I look at the 105 games currently installed and yet to be completed in my Steam list and realise I really am going to have to reign it in.

I think I went out on a high though with my Xmas 2011 Waffle: http://www.plughead.net/happy-waffle-xmas-2011 (Do feel free to share that with everyone you know)

There have been some truly stunning releases this year but of course Skyrim is my game of the year. You were perhaps expecting me to be different and controversial and choose something that panders to the masses like Modern Warfare 3?

As nice as it would be to be able to separate myself and stand out from the crowd, sometimes something rare and beautiful comes along which unites the righteous as one voice. Something that no longer exists outside your consciousness but envelopes it. That is so compelling you measure time and space by it’s absence. Those weren’t ten minutes I spent sat on my couch watching the headline news item, those were ten minutes I wasn’t crossing the river and running up the hill towards Solitude. The thirty minute ride to work should be more than enough time to investigate and clear Wolfskull cave. As I write these words I’m 9.4miles away from Breezehouse, my Whiterun home, where I left Lydia to rest while I went in search of a Redguard woman who continues to elude me.

That’s not to say Skyrim was the only contender, as while I think 2011 has seen a fair number of titles falling short of expectations, Brink, Dragon Age 2 and Rage being examples that immediately spring to mind, the consequence of this has made those that have actually succeeded in meeting or even exceeding expectations appear all the more magnificent for it. For weeks Portal 2 provided me with tales of joyous narrative discovery and puzzles overcome. Of multiplayer larks where we’d regale each other with how we removed the light path from beneath a colleague’s feet and guffawed into their headset. Or cast a friend into the void by changing the exit portal location just as they’d reached sufficient velocity to be unable to avoid their fate.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution made me the most violent and abusive pacifist imaginable. A contradiction the game itself wears throughout, never truly providing a satisfying consequence to my selected course of action, as irrespective of my desires there’s a story to be told and divergence doesn’t feature in it. Until the push button ending, which was a bit of an elbow blade to the scrotum. And those boss fights! Even when replaying as a gun toting psychopath with a side in kleptomania they felt tagged on, which we have since learned of course, they were. That didn’t stop the game being a thrilling adventure and one I will continue to revisit, as I have with its forebears.

Crytek returned with the their trademark stunningly realised visuals with Crysis 2. A continuation of the franchise that felt more focused and polished than either of its prequels and also acknowledged that the suit is the star of these games, not the lump of meat the player inhabits. That focus however also narrows the field of view and much of Crysis 2 felt a little claustrophobic. Arguably the choices in how to take on the enemies, be it by stealthily cloaking and working my way around or bolstering my armour and going in all guns blazing, are no less decisive to the outcome than in Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s vent crawling versus shotgun to the face approach. Without the pretence of real choice or notion that decisions will affect the outcome it was easy to enjoy a traditional shooter for the modern age. Certainly in terms of pure action gaming it’s difficult to see past Crysis 2.

And let’s not forget that this year I once again get to put on my gruffest voice and whisper into the ear of anyone who’ll listen, “I’m Batman!”

I also think the independent sector has truly risen above the main game studios this year in terms of reconnecting with the audience as to what constitutes an enjoyable gaming experience. They’ve certainly filled the void that endless wheelbarrows of money thrown at cross platform development had created. Trine 2 is puzzle platforming art in motion. Waves is an adrenalin fuelled acid trip. Orcs Must Die is a bizarre action tower defence hybrid that has me sniggering and on tip toes, while I’m sat down.

However, as good, and indeed great, as all these games are they are cast aside and left on the road to Riverwood simply for the crime of not being Bethesda’s latest opus. Certainly it lacks a little polish with its bugs, pop up, broken dialogue, ill conceived UI, and backwards flying dragon patches. Nevertheless, how could Skyrim not be my game of the year when it’s the most fraught, exciting, mysterious and beautiful land I’ve ever visited?

And that was 2011, or as Cave Johnson would say, “We’re done here!”

At Home With The Dentons - Episode Sixteen

Please Release Me

Paul: JC! JC! The reviews are coming through and it’s all good. They’re raving about it.
JC: What?
Paul: JC! JC! The reviews are coming through and it’s all good. They’re raving about it.
JC: No, what are they raving about?
Paul: Deus Ex Human Revolution. It’s getting great scores with some saying that it’s better than the original and that Adam is a far better realised character than either of us.
JC: What? That’s an outrage. How dare they sully the Denton name!
Alex: Hi guys. You watching anything ‘cos I want to watch Phineas and Ferb?
JC: Never mind.
Paul: Be fair. Phineas and Ferb are brilliant.
JC: I hate you both.