Affectionate Diary

I got two for Christmas, which was quite funny as I opened both presents at the same time in front of both of the people who bought them for me. Chortle! They said.

It’s also a SIGN. A sign that now is the time to learn how to solve the greatest puzzle that mankind has ever faced. Now, after three decades of learning how to learn via the medium of videogames, is the time for the meek to rise up and inherit the Earth. God has spoken to me and said “you will end world hunger and bring about an era of peace that never ends.”

At least, that’s how it’ll feel if I succeed.

The cube comes with a guide. This guide is frankly the worst FAQ ever written. It says things like “make a single side all the same colour and then make crosses of matching colour on the adjacent sides. You must learn how to do this yourself before you can progress any further.” Thanks, Rubik! Shall I also discern the nature of anti-matter while I’m here? So I’m going to figure it out by myself, and then I’ll be able to say “I can do a Rubik’s Cube”, which is something only four people in the world can say. Rubik isn’t one of them.

I honestly don’t know how girls will be able to keep their hands off me.

Three years ago I was in a mess. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had a love of These, but I didn’t know that I could get by with my love for These. Then a friend said ‘These are enough, speak to this Person, who knows about These, and you can do That.’

I said to him, what is That? He said to ask the Person, who would tell me. So I spoke to the Person, repeatedly, and the Person said ok, come with me and do That, and then you’ll have the answers you’re looking for.

For a long time I didn’t know what That was, but it was enough that I had These. So I emptied my mind. I learned everything I could about That from the Person, because That was about These, and I loved These.

Soon I realised that people liked it when I did That. I wasn’t doing anything new, I was merely doing the Person’s That. It worked for him and so it worked for me. And I became happy. And everyone else was happy. And that was enough.

But nothing is ever enough. And so I became hungry for more. I wanted to take the Person’s That and turn it into something of my own. I wanted to make a big noise, because it seemed possible, and I’d never been in a position to make a big noise before and I wanted to feel what that was like. And so I spoke to other people who also did That, and said that I did some of That, but that I wanted to know more. And eventually someone said to me that they did That, but that they also wanted to do That differently, and better, so we reached an accord I said to the Person that I was leaving to do more of That in another fashion.

And so now I’ve left to do That with the intention of making a big noise, because I think I can. And I want to make a big noise that can be heard everywhere. And I hope that when the Person who showed me how to do That hears that noise that they realise that any noise they hear would not have been possible without their teachings. And that Person should also realise that when I make that noise, I don’t make it just for myself. I want them to know that the noise is as much for them as it is for me, because without them, there’d be no noise.

JUST beCAUSE is a marvelous pun. I’m not going to use it again. Instead, I’m going to talk about how this game has a lovely big island and incredible retro fighting action from the PS-1 era.

It’s actually quite fun. The driving is, when not done a breakneck speed on a motorbike through the jungle, pretty shit. The combat isn’t much better, but it’s enough of a laugh. That pretty much sums up the entire game. Enough of a laugh.

I wish it had lots of better things in it, but the bonus activity of paraglide-grapple lift blagging is peacefully relaxing and satisfying enough to warrant the game a superb 10 / 10.

If I had any real ability to review games, this would actually get a 7, but considering I only bought it to avoid going back to Viva Pinata, I have to JUSTify the CAUSE of spending £22.50 on what really is a really lovely mapping technology inhabited by some retarded GTA3 prototype. Still, at least the emergent LOLs arise often enough to make the whole thing entertaining.

GRAPHIX: 8/10. Great environments horribly let down by the inherent drawbacks of cross-platform development.

SONIX: 2/10 Awful. Stock everything for the big noises, rubbish shouting. Not sure about the music as I’ve turned it off.

PLAYABILITIX:  9/10. Even though it’s shit, it’s mental. Enough.

PHILOSOPHIX: 5/10. Moderately thought-provoking, but ultimately too facile and shallow a comment on Cuba to be actually worth anything other than a hearty WELL DONE and an accusatory question. Something like: “So you were implementing a vaguely satirical politcal subtext when should have been putting in Max Payne features, were you?”

OVERALLX: 10/10. I gave that away earlier. It’s For the paraglide and grappling hook thing on vehicles. It’s the square root of Back To The Future cubed.

Viva Pinata update!

Exciting news. This game is still quite boring, despite me following the editor of EDGE’s advice.

Please stop announcing amazing games for the DS every two seconds. I have only just got to Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and I’m well behind on my gaming. Disgaea PSP, Pokemon and a new Final Fantasy Tactics are going to kill me. I’ll need to get a new job even farther away from home to find time to play everything.

Further away.

I don’t know which is the right one to use there. Fowlers Modern English Usage takes more than two pages to explain which is correct in which instance. I’m clearly not going to read that when I could be looking at my Keeley Hazell calendar.

Isn’t that nice.

If fact, it’s quite upsetting me. It upset me enough to prompt a purchase of Prey (£20 preowned!), which allowed me to vent my frustrations with lots of shooting and walking on walls and ceilings and watching a fancy Doom3 engine strain to animate a load of rotating oblongs.

Two days hammering through Prey brought me loads more joy than all of my time with Rare’s pokemon-in-a-field.

I think my big problem with Viva Pinata is that I HATE THIS KIND OF GAME and that I’M A TOTAL IDIOT FOR BUYING IT.

I really wish I could swear fully to describe my frustrations with some of the NPCs. However, SUKI has deemed it necessary to refrain from foul language so we can get on newsnow.

And that’s that. I genuinely can’t express my feelings without swearing, so I’ll wholeheartedly blame myself for buying a management game when I know I hate them, instead of blaming Rare for making a soul-less collection of cross-market IP obviously intended for extreme commercial exploitation. I won’t mention how only 50% of the pinatas are actually cute. Nor will I mention how boring it is waiting for things to happen, or how empty the world feels, or how disconnected I feel when I don’t have a personalised avatar. At least Animal Crossing got that right. Then there’s the FLIPPING SHOPS. GAH. The hideous, hideous, HIDEOUS dialogue that cascades from the zombie-eyed mouths of those soul destroying NPCs is enough to make me chew through every tendon in my body.

Still, I hear there’s a Eagle Pinata. If I can catch that, everything will be A-OK and I can go back down to code white.

FOR NOW, I’M ON CODE RED.

I had a few goes on what I presume was a prototype of Sega’s new arcade stick at TGS earlier this year. I also spent a fair bit of time in the various Club Segas playing VF5 on both the dedicated cabinets and the regular cabinets with VF5 installed. I also own a Hori Real Arcade Pro stick, which I’ve modified with Sanwa parts, changing the buttons and stick so that they feel exactly like the sticks in the Club Segas in Tokyo. So when I got to Tokyo and played in the arcades I had no problems at all. If anything, the solid base of the cabinet meant that when I played as Akira I could do some of his more elusive combos more consistently.

VF5 is out in Japan on PS3.

I really want to swear but I promised myself I wouldn’t for a while.

Test Drive Unlimited’s progress is tied into its achievements on the 360. That is not stupid. It’s brilliant. It also means a save game is locked to a profile. So why is it that when I go to play Test Drive Unlimited, signed in as me, it asks me if I want to start a new game or continue? I only want to start a new game once - when I turn the frakking thing on. I will never want to start a new game again. I can’t imagine a single person in the world who will want to regularly start a new game from scratch, so this choice is completely redundant and wastes my time. Whack it in options, please. TDU isn’t the only game that does this, obviously.

I don’t own a memory card for my 360 - I have the hard drive. Most people do. I think it’s something like 70 per cent of all 360 owners have a hard drive. Every time I turn on my 360 it knows that I don’t have a memory card plugged in, and it knows that I have a hard drive. And yet, YET, I have to choose where to load my game from every single frakking time. In Project 8 I have to select it twice! Come on, man. My 360 should know what I’m doing. It knows if I play invert or not, but it doesn’t know where to save my games, even though I have only one way to do it.

Gears of War - when I start a game with my friends I can’t change what type of game I’m playing once I start. If we’re playing War Zone and want to switch to Assassination we all have to quit the room. As far as I can see, anyway, and I know my way around a game. That is stupid. Or maybe I’m stupid. Either way, there’s something stupid going down.

What stupid things do you have to put up with in games that we should have left behind in the SNES era?

As I flicked through the Argos catalogue the other day I came across the following fact splashed across two pages in the flatscreen section -

“Did you know that a 32″ screen is over 80% bigger visible screensize than a 26″ for only approximately £200 extra.”

English aside, AS IF they’re going to get away with that! They might fool the people who go to Argos for their jewelery but not me. I’ve got a C in Higher Maths (I only did half the course so that’s like an A++ in real terms) so let me explain how WRONG they are, using RAW NUMBERS -

 
As we can see from this Hawkingsian working, the screen size is actually only increased by precisely 50%. Which means Argos has breached the trades description act. That’ll teach them to mark up the RRP of games I want to buy.

Well, it would if I did anything about it.

I’m down for good games. I usually just get every game system as they arrive because I don’t want to miss out on anything good. I spend indiscriminantly and thus do not own my own home.

A friend asked me what I thought of the recent Edge article on the PS3 and Wii. It called them ‘disruptive technologies’ and asked me if I agreed with him. He though it marked the 360 as obsolete. I’ve just read it and, well, I couldn’t disagree more.

If anything, it renders both the Wii and PS3 as obsolete. For me. Simply put, I’m a gamer. I play loads of games, I fucking love them, I’m not bored of them and I don’t do anything else. I’m really fussy these days and I have less time than I used to, and that’s the same as everyone, but that doesn’t mean I’m looking to dramatically change the thing I enjoy the most in the world. I have finely honed my tastes for 30 years and I know precisely what I enjoy. Yes, I am looking for new and good games, but I still like the games I am playing now. I still enjoy the experience. And at the moment, only one platform is looking after me and my needs, and the needs of my friends, and that’s the Xbox 360.

It has the best pad BY FAR. The sticks are great and the triggers are great (the face buttons are at best average). And there is nothing wrong with today’s conventional pad. It lets me play games with my friends, who are everywhere. It lets me play the kind of games I enjoy. I am not bored of these games yet. And I’ve spent years learning how to play these games. I am good at them. I don’t have as much time I as used to so I’m not as good, but I can enjoy a competent level of skill with minimal effort. If you take that away from me and throw new control systems at me, I have to start again. I might not enjoy that. Also, I get enough fucking exercise, THANKS. I need downtime, not uptime.

I have a PC. That means I don’t need something to store movies and music, or to check the weather or my email, THANKS. I don’t do that shit on my console because the telly is a communal device. I need to let the rest of my house use it sometimes for the X Factor, which I definitely don’t watch (fuck off McDonald Brothers!).

In short, I am so fucking happy with my 360, and so dismayed by what the other machines are trying to sell me, I feel for the first time an affinity for a piece of hardware. It looks after me so well. Nintendo and Sony have changed. They don’t care about me anymore. They’re off out on the town, looking for new guys to get laid with. Fine. Off they go. I don’t need them. And I don’t need someone telling me that I need them. Because I don’t. I’m happy with good - I don’t need different.