Hero Worship

I've been a bit of a fan of the Guitar Hero games ever since I was given a baptism of beer and pizza with Guitar Hero II on a friends Xbox 360. I even bought both Guitar Hero On Tour (DS) and Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades (DS) leading to many an evening being spent guitar duelling on the couch with the wife.

I'm therefore feeling a little privileged as I got to play the new entry in the ever expanding and market saturating Guitar Hero franchise before it appears in UK stores. Guitar Hero: Metallica (Wii) had me joining a Metallica wannabe band looking to support their heroes by playing Metallica songs past and present along with a number of tracks favoured by the band. There are 28 Metallica tracks and 21 from artists such as Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters, Thin Lizzy and Queen.

I'm sure there can be few who aren't familiar with the Guitar Hero formula, and it's post RockBand expansion to include microphone and drums as of Guitar Hero World Tour. As with previous versions, coloured 'notes' fall down the screen which must be matched by the player by pressing the appropriate colours on the guitar neck and strumming in time with the track. Similarly drums require the appropriate coloured pad or cymbal be struck, and lyrics warbled in roughly the correct key.

This is the second artist specific edition of the franchise, the previous being Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Unlike the Aerosmith edition the track listing here feels solid, and even a none Metallica fan such as myself will be familiar with most of the songs, which adds a comforting element to their playing. There's an additional Bass Drum peddle which can be purchased and a new Expert+ difficulty level so you can really pretend to be Lars Ulrich if you so desire.

One thing I feel the Guitar Hero franchise has, somewhat ironically, failed to effectively simulate is playing the guitar. As a guitar player myself there's always been a feeling of detachment when playing the games. The strum bar is uncomfortable to actually strum, and holding it bears little or no resemblance to holding a plectrum. When I can pick up a guitar and play a track such as She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult, as seen in Aerosmith, there's a distinct feeling that there's something wrong with the interpretation the little plastic codpiece has me fumbling through. When playing with fellow musicians it's the keyboard player, who has never managed to master a real guitar, that gets to live out his Hendrix fantasy. Make of that what you will. By contrast, the drumming (yes I drum too, really rather well!) in both RockBand and Guitar Hero is logical and could actually be an aid to drum tuition.

Like I said, I'm not a Metallica fan so fandom wouldn't be enough to sell me the game. I can play a few Metallica songs though, such as the now staple Enter Sandman, so it was interesting to see that playing the track in the game felt akin to playing the track on guitar. There was a logic to the progression and hand movements that I hadn't experienced in the games before. I don't know whether this is just because the Metallica songs translate better or whether there's been a change in the way the music is converted into the rainbow drops. Whatever the reason, my moment centre stage left me hungry for more and cursing the fact I couldn't take the game home.

The version I was playing was on the Wii so graphically it obviously can't compete with the 360 or PS3, though in my opinion the only graphics that matter are the 'notes' so I've never really understood that being a criticism of the games. Audio on the other hand is paramount, and thankfully things have continued to improve since the somewhat lacklustre audio performance seen in the Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.

Unlike the 360 and PS3, instruments are not interchangeable between the RockBand and Guitar Hero games on Wii, so RockBand owners need to stump up extra cash if they want to join in with their Guitar Hero playing friends. The Guitar Hero instruments require a Wii remote be plugged into them to work, and this is the main issue I have with the pricing policy of the Wii versions. I wouldn't pay the same price for a TV which only worked if I inserted a circuit board I already owned into it as I would for a whole new TV, so why do Activision expect Wii owners to pay the same price for their instruments as 360 and PS3 owners? Whether there's justification for the pricing or not, it looks like Wii owners are getting the mucky part of the woody thing.

Instrument pricing aside, this is certainly my favourite Guitar Hero game to date and has actually made me reappraise Metallica. Maybe I should download some of their songs. They're okay with that, right?

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Nine:

Silent Witless

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: I'm not speaking to you.
Paul: Really? So, you wouldn't mind if I drink all the beer out of the fridge?
JC: ...
Paul: How about I eat all your Doritos?
JC: ...
Paul: I'm just popping to the bathroom with your Sophia Sak pictures.
JC: ENOUGH!
Paul: You're my bitch.

May Play

I believe it was Forrest Gump who said, “I am not a smart man!”. Never has a game had me sat on that white bench eating chocolates quite like Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason (PC), a first person suspense thriller of the highest order. Feeling defensive all of a sudden I should stress it wasn't the puzzles in the game that had me head scratching, as good as they are, but rather the story itself. I lost count of the WTF? moments as a female voice, accompanied by postcards depicting cave drawings, told me about some tribe doing a runner from slavers and then turning on their leader in a forest. Exactly what this had to do with the Russian nuclear icebreaker trapped in the Arctic I was investigating, I really have no clue.

The game seems to have split reviewers as it doesn't sit comfortably in any particular genre. It's played out as a first person shooter, but don't let the guns fool you. There are puzzles that need to be overcome in order to progress, though they are never excessively challenging and function as a way of telling the story of what happened to the stricken ship and her crew.

There are numerous breaks with gaming convention along the way. Rather than health and medi-packs your survival is dependant on your body heat. Finding hot pipes, burning embers, or even light bulbs becomes all important. Weaponry is incidental as while the guns you find are necessary, it is a shooter of a sort after all, you're not gunning your way through enemies with unending supplies of ammunition, but rather using weapons selectively as and when required. The enemies themselves are in the main members of the crew who have become a kind of possessed semi human, and I'm desperately trying not to use the term zombie but failing miserably to come up with a suitable alternative, with the exception of a couple of what could be classed as end of level bosses.

The character you play through the game is a geologist who by a rather fortunate happenstance is gifted with psychic ability. This ability gives you flash backs to some of the events leading up to the ship becoming stranded in the ice. It also gives access to the games primary selling point. Mental Echoes. A number of frozen corpses you come across still have some form of essence that you can use to relive their final moments. In doing so you alter the physicality of your surroundings by correcting their error. For example, accessing the mental echo of a body lying in front of a door leads you to finding a piece of the hinge allowing the crew member to repair the door and escape, which on returning to your own mind has resulted in the pathway now being cleared and the door open.

Of course any self respecting physicist will by this point be having kittens (biologists not withstanding) and screaming terms like 'causality' and 'paradox', and they certainly entered my head on a number of occasions.

At the start of the game there is the not uncommon step of taking you through the gameplay mechanics as you are approaching the ship across the ice. As far as I could tell though, the bodies (yes plural) I was coming across and reliving those final moments of were my own, which lead to my first WTF? moments. On completion it does link back to the start and so corrects itself to some degree, though I was still somewhat perplexed.

There's a horrible term from the past, the 'interactive movie'. Used to describe dreadful FMV titles it has thankfully disappeared from the lexicon, though my personal feeling is that Cryostasis is what an interactive movie should be. It's blend of thriller and investigation driving the story forward makes it compelling viewing, while all the actions of the protagonist being directly controlled by the player means it is still very much a game rather than some passive experience.

Unfairly being labelled a Russian BioShock prior to release may have raised interest but also expectations. Gameplay if more akin to Condemned or Fahrenheit than Rapture's Plasmid and fire-power driven action. Visually the environment is repetitive, you're on a ship in the Arctic after all, though the ice effects, and particularity the melting frost on the walls, are beautiful to behold and never get tired.

Despite my confusion I thoroughly enjoyed Cryostasis and found it to be a breath of frosty fresh air.

The same can't be said of Wheelman (360). Vin Diesel has professed a love of games and so in addition to making mediocre formulaic movies he's now responsible for mediocre formulaic games.

It's easy to dislike Wheelman. The story is farcical in so much as the plot sees Vin driving cars and getting mixed up in a gang war to save a woman from his past. Edam-orific. The Barcelona scenery is colourful and comic as opposed to the gritty realism of GTA IV. The out of car controls are cumbersome and combat against the woeful AI opponents simply reinforces that this is a driving game and you need to get back in a car without delay.

Whatever the developers may have been striving for, one thing they have not delivered is a rival to the afore mentioned GTA IV. This is not a sand box action adventure game. This is a relatively open arcade driving beat-em-up. Preposterous actions like 'Airjacking', which sees you driving behind a target vehicle and then jumping from your vehicle onto the target in order to capture it, wouldn't be seen in the same neighbourhood as Nico Bellic. On that basis a fairer comparison would be to something like Burnout Paradise, which is certainly superior in the driving stakes though loses out in the destructible terrain and lack of vehicle melee combat. Yes, vehicle melee combat. Racing down a street and an opponent pulls up alongside? Shunt your vehicle sideways and give them a crumple zone slap. Ridiculous and hilarious when pulled off. As you progress even more ridiculous moves become available, such as turning the car through 180 degrees while maintaining directional motion so you can shoot the driver of the car tailing you. Not something you could do in the family Zafira, I'm sure.

If Midtown Madness met Road Rash after a few too many and got friendly in an alley, this would be the illegitimate offspring. It's not the best driving or racing game by a long way. It's certainly not the best beat 'em up, obviously. It is arcade tomfoolery and great fun. A game to hire for a weekend of tearing around Barcelona and frightening your sub woofer with Mr Diesels dialogue.

Finally a quick word about Plants Vs Zombies (PC). It's £6.99 on Steam. 'nuff said.

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Eight:

Since You've Been Gone

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: Hi Paul.
Paul: Seems like a while since we spoke.
JC: Yes. Yes it does.
Paul: Should we talk about that?
JC: Best not.

Your attention Sir, with relish.

I think it's fair to say I like a little attention. If I didn't I wouldn't write a blog and post it here where literally some people could read it. I also wouldn't use Twitter. I used to play in bands and relished live performances, so there must be some degree of exhibitionist in me. Having said that, I was always uncomfortable at social gatherings as I was quite happy to stand or sit in a corner having a chat with one or two people when I was apparently supposed to be entertaining the collective. Eventually my lack of contribution to the overall joyous nature of such occasions saw the invites diminish year on year until my plan to perfect social leprosy was finally complete. I'm quite happy to present myself and open myself up to praise or ridicule, but I don't feel any need to attract either. From scouring tweets and blogs, I get the impression that my philosophy is typical. Every now and then I do spot something that is at odds with that philosophy, such as the actions of Andy Ireland.

Andy is from Leeds. His Bio reads: Hi I am Andy. I am Fun.

Andy appears to have gone beyond liking a little attention and has entered the dark realm of needing attention. Not convinced? Let's go back to his Bio. “I am fun”. I'm sure that's supposed to be endearing. Hey everybody look at Andy, he's fun, let's all be his best bud. The problem with such a claim is of course that as with people who claim to be intellectuals, or not be racist, or crazy/zany, if you have to tell people then it's clearly not self evident, which would suggest at least some degree of delusion.

Further, Andy doesn't crave attention from just anybody. His demand is for the attention of those perceived to be outside the generic public domain. Celebrities. Andy has gone beyond the pitiful begging of celebrities to follow his tweets and has instead opted to get their attention by sending them a Rick-Roll link that when activated resizes the browser and moves it around the screen. This would be annoying in itself, but to prolong the pain in the event of the browser being maximised, an attempt at closing the tab instead produces the lyrics in a succession of dialogue boxes. Increasingly annoying based on the number of tabs open at the time and the fact that using task manager to close the browser also means the session cannot be restored without also restoring the Rick-Roll.

Rick-Rolling was a harmless, if irritating, Internet phenomenon that some people found entertaining last year, but what Andy has done is turn it into celebrity browser hijacking – by proxy. You see Andy can't even claim the Kudos for the scripting, he's just sowing a link he's collected. No doubt caught by the honey trap laid before him, his frustration turning to elation as he realised he could piss people off to the same extent he surely was and in the process temporarily fill his attention void.

I think Andy needs to amend his Bio. Hi, I am Andy. I am a twat.

Fat Man Uses The Force

April has been a funny month. Not hilarious, or oddly peculiar. In fact, now I think about it there's nothing particularly funny about April at all. Forget I mentioned it.

The schools being closed for a fortnight over Easter gave me some precious time with the fruit of my loin, which in addition to her bicycle escapades also saw her attempt golf for the first time, complete with a solid five foot put. Already aspects of her game are superior to mine. She'll be five next month so will naturally be turning pro.

Days in the park, basketball and football were fun, though did highlight my ever expanding waist and my need to step up my weight loss and fitness regime. Time to fish a dusty Wii Fit board out from under the TV unit. Firing it up I discovered that it had been over three hundred days since my last workout, giving my beloved and ever supportive wife yet another opportunity to assert her correctness. Looking at the figures from last year I was genuinely surprised to see that I had been losing weight at a nice steady pace, so I started to wonder why I'd stopped using it. Some uncomfortable memories of my former employer followed. Extra work, additional hours, integrating new people following another acquisition, re-routing the fleet, and the regional manager suggesting that I should tell the disruptive elements of the workforce that I masturbate regularly, as a way to endear myself to them. I'm still not sure how that was supposed to work. Perhaps the thought was that once informed they'd invite me to their masturbation parties.

As I no longer have those excuses, I mean reasons, I'm back on the fitness trail. This is where it gets difficult though. I know why I'm fat. I eat too much and exercise too little. I eat because I'm hungry, because I'm unhappy, because I'm happy, and because I like food. I don't exercise enough because I'd rather be eating. Particularly crisps. In fact, just thinking about it makes me want to eat.

As I'm being healthy I had a large bowl of Bran Flakes, with a Cheerios chaser.

Getting back to exercise, the idea is to burn off more calories than you take in, only, the exercise makes me hungry. So I eat. I learned that lesson early, which is why I stopped using the treadmill after breakfast while watching The Wright Stuff and switched to watching Stargate SG1 before lunch. Whether this fresh impetus will work is solely down to me, and I think that's the main problem with weight loss and exercise. The only people who can effect change are the people whose lack of discipline got themselves into that state in the first place.

On the game front I finished Far Cry 2 (PC) and found the whole experience somewhat lacking. For all it's free form pretensions I found it to be little more than a series of fetch quests through familiar terrain and endlessly spawning enemies with Steve Austin-O-Vision. That's not to say it wasn't fun. It was. The weapons and vehicles were well realised. The environment was suitably varied, if a little ecodome-esque, and graphically it was stunning. Game breakers for me were the likes of destroying a checkpoint, including blowing up the gas cylinders and fuel storage and killing everybody on site, only to return a short while later and find the thing rebuilt and fully manned. It's all well and good having great fire effects and showing them off as the fire rages and spreads across the grass, but when that grass grows back into a lush carpet within the day, the suspension of disbelief puts on it's coat, gets into it's jet powered rocket copter, and trundles off back to Jelly Tot Land.

On a happier note I corrected a grievous error on my part and finally played Knights of the Old Republic (PC). When it was released back in 2003 I had a quick go on a friend's X-Box, and I didn't take to it. Since then I couldn't help but notice the reverence with which it and its sequel have been held by the PC community at large. There is a fear with such things that nostalgia does have a habit of painting things much more vibrantly than they may appear to the naked eye, so when I installed it and it proceeded to crash to desktop on a regular basis I was in danger of letting my frustration cloud my judgement and dismiss the game. Obviously the issue is down to the game being so old and Windows, despite what Microsoft may say and what we PC gamers may extol about our wealth of a back catalogue, doesn't play well with it's older siblings. Thankfully the issues brought about by Vista and in particular 64bit Vista are not uncommon and I found a number of fixes, none of which work fully but that between them made the game playable. As long as I saved my progress frequently I was able to make it through to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. At some point I will return to it and play through again, allowing the dark side to rule. For now I remain a child of the light. A fat man-child of the light casting a grotesque shadow, but a child of the light all the same.

Who Watches The Watchmen?

Quality time with the family. Playing in the park. Trips to Granny & Grandad's and Nan's. Learning how to fall off her stabiliser free bike. School holidays are an endless treasure trove of tiny delights. In this oasis of joy I find myself popping my head over the parapet to see the bullets of hate and lies whizzing past.

World leaders gathered in the sleepy village of London to try and find a way to dig us out of the shit pile their friends Fred, Brad, Topper and Gretchen have landed us in. Those who would oppose global economics used their time off from their studies to gather and make themselves heard, before returning to complete their dissertations and embark on their chosen career, complete with pension and stock options. Somewhere in the middle would be the usual pack of anarchic Neanderthals for whom any mass gathering is an excuse to show their disgust by destruction of property. Nothing says you are a true anarchist quite like forcing up insurance premiums.

In my happy little pacifist ignorance I watched the headlines and was saddened to see that in the midst of the chaos a protester died of a heart attack, and that as police tried to provide assistance and get him medical treatment they were beaten back by bricks and bottles from other protesters. Except, over these past few days footage has come to light proving that whatever the actual truth of what happened is, those initial reports given by police and reported as fact were nothing but abject lies. Ian Tomlinson wasn't a protester, and the circumstances leading to his death seem far removed from what we were lead to believe.

I'm reminded of a sketch David Baddiel did on The Mary Whitehouse Experience in which he explains the feeling of helplessness should a member of the constabulary decide to take their frustrations out on you, as it's something I can relate to. When you've been jumped or are being beaten up, one of things you may think to yourself as another brick hits your lower back, is that maybe someone in a house overlooking the scene will have heard the noise. Maybe they'll look out of the window and see a gang amassed around a solitary figure huddled in the foetal position, and they'll pick up a phone. You hope beyond hope that in the absence of any superhero like figure willing to take on such a collective that perhaps the sound of a siren or the sight of blue lights would be enough to at least disperse them while you still have some feeling in your legs to make it home. Aside from wishing that it will end while you're still breathing, there is always that hope.

When those who are tasked with our protection are the ones dispensing arbitrary justice, there is no hope. There is just confusion and fear.

Anyone with a keen interest in photography will no doubt be aware that police now have the power to confiscate your camera on sight if they believe that you have captured images of them, or official buildings, or manhole covers, or anything at all in a public place, under the crochet blanket of the Counter Terrorism Act. Indeed it's a wonder MI6 haven't been breaking down the doors of Google's London offices or undertaking controlled detonations of Street View vehicles.

The cynical or sceptical may say that the purpose of such a power isn't so much to protect us, but to conceal things from us. I also wonder why else police would wear balaclavas and hide their identities if their intentions were not nefarious.