One Late Night Left

I've never been to a game festival before. Well, I remember my Dad taking me & my brother to a computer fair in Harrogate where we each had to spend one pound to get in, spent ten minutes to have a look around, realised everything was crap and left.

Not'num Game City is different. It's free.

And alright, it does hold your attention for more than ten minutes. And there are some people you'd actually want to talk to.



I turned up on the Friday after loads of events had already taken place. The major discussion point was that some Japanese game designer was designing a playground for Not'num. I joked that Jonathan King was designing a similar playground for the kids of Derby, but no-one really laughed at it. Shame.

But, after checking on my Grandma in Clifton, I showed up in Market Square to go see One Life Left live. Which was almost immediately delayed as Ann Scantlebury and Simon Byron's train was delayed. I thought I saw Stels but didn't want to bother him.

Luckily by this point Down Home Kitty showed up so I wasn't on my own anymore and before too long Derek and Dbot arrived. The first place we looked at was the EA van, but we quickly left it as it was full of the kids who would usually be crowding round the game-nngh-pods at HMV.

The next place we avoided was the Crysis Live event. Partially because there was a massive queue. I also thought that because it was Crysis - but in real life - there would be too strict a person requirement to go on it*.

So the indie tent was the only alternative left. And of course being student indie games they were either games with a message and therefore absolutely no gameplay, or based on an existing game but done slightly worse. Kudos to the young tykes who were trying to hack one demo PC into showing dodgy YouTube videos. I doffed my cap to them and moved on.

The other main showing in the indie tent were the multi-multi-player games happening on the big screen. These involved about sixteen people playing altered versions of Bit Trip Beat, Jetstrike, Pirates! and reverse Base Jumpers. It all seemed great fun, if you were one of the three people who knew the controls and didn't die straight away. However, if you've got a big screen, sixteen PStwo joypads and multiple multi-taps then I highly recommend it (I agree - A Zelda Four Swords on the Gamecube owner).



Before the fun and games had to finish and One Life Left were to do their live show. As usual with these things there was somehing to make it literally unbroadcastable. In this case it was the annoyingly uncatchy tunes from the big screen and having to play music from a broken DVD player. Despite all this it was rather jolly with special guests like Raina Karaoke Lee! Jonathan Lego Smith! Syphus Blockbusters Syphus! Martin Barber Hollis! and Student Unpaid Helper!

There was also a Gameboy chiptune masterclass with Sabrepulse and Syphus, which actually required some musical knowledge and therefore of absolutely no use to me.

And then it was One Night Left. As official bootleg videographer I recorded Derek's performance which as usual involved a performance worthy Vegas showman at the top of their game. The Paper PlaNES remix going down particularly well.

Craig 'the Rage' McClelland then dropped his poetry on those assembled and, as can be from Mr. McClelland, there was a mixture of shock and amusment from the crowd. He was there selling his book, which I got signed to Nick Griffin.

Next were the main headliners. I felt Syphus just shaded it above Sabrepulse as his tunes were more Amiga based and hit my nostalgia gland more compared to Sabrepulse's Darkcore Rave (I think that's what it sounded like to me). Also Syphus had a keytar.

By this point I was flagging and when team OLL hit the decks I was mostly sitting down. Although I did get to talk to Martin Hollis, Jonathan Smith, Mitu Komplexsurnametospell, Charlie Miller and Craig McClelland. I also think I was the only person sad enough to have their photo taken with the award:


So it was a good night. And apparently Saturday was a good day too with the supergroup of Derek, Charlie and Mazrim hitting the Lego Rock Band stage to the delight of Raina. But I was having tea with my Grandma** which was a lot more fun if I'm totally honest. Sorry everyone.

I highly recommend Game City and if I'm not in a job where I need to work that week*** I'll try to go for much longer.


* Which would probably be needing to be at least 6ft 4, to have the same memory as a Cambridge graduate and Games For Windows Live.

** Except I did go to a comic book shop which had damaged Jake and Jessie Gemini figures, thus keeping one of Wrestlecrap Radio's running jokes running on.

*** Although in a job where I can afford to book a hotel for four nights

The infamous Ben Halup

I think I'm a reasonably funny person. Certainly, in the office environment I can come out with a few witty comments that people smile at*. I consider myself to be someone who can say things to cheer people up, not to depress them.

So when PC Gamer asked on twitter for questions for their latest podcast I had a good think. Do I ask a question about PC Gaming (which I wouldn't have much opinion on as I can hardly play Half-Life 2 on my ageing Dell) or do I go for the amusing question?

I had noticed that the Artist Formerly Known As C-Monster and J Walker had already tweeted in amusing questions so I thought one from me would also be appreciated**. The only problem was what to ask about?

I remembered that on the last podcast they were making references to the fact (it is an undeniable fact) that Ross Atherton, gentlemanly editor, kept prostitutes in his cellar. This was the joke I could use! And inspired by Richard Herrin I sent in the following question, which was used:

[audio:http://www.yellowreggae.co.uk/audio/J_Fritzl_PC_Gamer.mp3]

Oh. Looks like Ross didn't appreciate being linked with a murderer, rapist and incestor. I now appreciate the lot of a stand-up comedian when their jokes fall totally flat. However this was offset by the giggling of 12 year-old Deputy Editor Tim Edwards who found it most amusing.

Would I do a similar joke again? Possibly as I found it very amusing, but I would probably aim it more at myself than anyone else to avoid offending them. Even though Ross deserved it for his depraved attitude towards women.

If you want to download the full podcast it can be found here.

* I was quite pleased when someone said "We don't have a fear and blame culture here" and I immediately said "And whose fault is that?"

** Especially as I was keeping One Life Left's mailbox full at the end of their last season

A list of film directors influenced by computer games

• Sam Rammi


• Uwe BO-L-L


• Alfred Hitch-Chicken


• Michael Disk Drive Bay


• Joss Wii-don#


• JJ and Jeff Abrams


• George Lucasgames (clever wording I know, cheers)


• Francis Ford Virtua Coppola


• David Kane & Lynch


• David Cronenburgertime


• The Chronicles of Ridley Scott


• Tim BurtOni


• Christopher 7th Guest


• Wes Super Mario Landerson


• Snes Craven (Freya's one is the best)

Sofa's Edge

According to Karen Chu, British Gas have been inspired by Little Big Planet for their latest set of adverts. Unfortunately this wasn't mentioned as an inspiration by the advertising in the away day that we recently held (as part of my role in a well known British based Gas company). That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't an inspiration, just that advertising man didn't want to incriminate himself.

In his defence, the British Gas doesn't totally steal from LBP. Whilst parts of it evoke the feel of the game, it doesn't look exactly like it. It also doesn't have an annoyingly floaty jump.

CSL sofas don't really have the 'inspired by' defence.  It's entirely stolen from the first level of Mirror's Edge that made everyone fall in love with it (and then fall out with it because the combat was not intuitive).



The problem is I don't see how a distopian future on the roofs of high rise buildings makes you think 'Sofas'.  If anyone can answer this for me I would be most appreciative.

Reviews Sunday

Zack and Wiki - Wii

There's a been a bit of a trend recently for point and click games to be ported over to the Wii. The highly rubbish CSI game and some Agatha Christie adventure being the latest (and only) ones I can remember. They've been quite rightly ridiculed for their lack of imagination in using the Wiimote. Pointing at a screen isn't that revolutionary, surely you could use it in a better way?

Zack and Wiki - no! but yes! - does this. For some strange and convoluted reason the young mute pirate Zack is friends with a flying monkey/bell Wiki and they have to rescue bits of treasure. Instead of just digging around with a Bill Wyman endorsed metal detector they decide to go into various caves and get the treasure chest held within. Unfortunately said cave is filled with fiendish traps.

To sum it up it's a cross between Indiana Jones and The Adventure Game*.



And it uses the Wiimote so well. In only short space of time I've cranked, flauted, shoveled, prodded and rung the bell and it's always felt natural. There are sudden death's but unlike, normal point and clicks, because the action is split up you don't have too far to go back when restarting. And you always no why you died, the problem is just working out what to do to stop it happening again.



So a highly imaginative game, that tests your logical & lateral thinking much more than Kawashima ever could. Perhaps it's not as replayable as other games, but that's the same of many point and clicks. I'm sure you would enjoy this just as much on it's second go as you would with Toonstruck or Monkey Island.

Six out of seven

* A far better title for the new Indie film than the one it currently has.

P.S. Eurogamer! If I'm not meant to nick your pics & put them on my flickr account let me know and I'll remove them.

Rather stupid

I just spent over thirty quid on three games. Two of which will cost me more money if I want to continue playing them after one month. I think this means that I am rather stupid, and broke.

Reviews Sunday

This weeks review is of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the Xbox.



It's Grand Theft Auto. But with a control method on the Xbox that's far worse than the method used on the previous Xbox versions.



And I'm unable to do a mission for the blind Chinese guy because I haven't been swimming long enough to get the relevant swimming skills. This is annoying.

However the game itself is alright. It's no The Warriors though. Four out of seven.

Team Fortress Poo

And Ouendan Poo.

I'm annoyed with my PC. It's so out of date that it takes 10 minutes to load Team Fortress Two and then I have to have it in the worst resolution possible to have even a chance of playing it. And I was enjoying it, until my PC crashed again at the end of the game meaning my game data was wiped. What a swizz.

It's the same with Oudendan Two. My stylus is so unresponsive that I can't get off the 'text message' song of the Elite Beat Divas levels. Gach. Although this might be more to do with my lack of rhythm than anything else.

Reviews Sunday

Sunday is now officially reviews day. Where I'll review things that I found during my week and then mark them out of seven (because then I can't give anything half marks*). In this inaugural edition I will be reviewing Mario Vs Donkey Kong on the GameBoy Advance.

Mario Vs Donkey Kong is based on Donkey Kong 94 which was the Game Boy game that could be played on the Super Game Boy for added graphical effects. DK94 is the game that connects 3D Mario to 2D Mario as it was in this game that Mario started to do backflips, somersaults and not really care about how many lives you had. It was also very hard and whilst easy to complete, to fully get all of the extra goodies took a lot of skill and patience. Yes, plenty of patience.



Mario Versus Donkey Kong is more of the same. But with better graphics and great sound bites**. The aim is to collect a key to get through the door, and the challenge is in all the little things that get in the way. You can also collect the three presents for an opportunity to win an extra life and completing the level with a high enough score gives you a star (apparently getting all of these unlocks expert levels, which luckily I'm nowhere near getting).



So it's Mario & Donkey Kong business as usual, except every six levels you have a section where you have to guide mini toy Marios to a toybox***. This is more of a challenge as the Mario's follow you, but can't do the same moves as you, so you have to make the level mini-friendly in a Timekeepers sort of way.

I'm rapidly losing enthusiasm for this reviews Sunday format, therefore I will end by saying that Mario Versus Donkey Kong is a worthy successor to the excellent Donkey Kong 94 and I highly recommend it to anyone. Six out of seven.

"Thank you very much for to reading my reviewsis."

* Unless you count zero as a mark, in which case three would be a half mark. But I'm not so it's not. Perhaps tomorrow I'll explain my scoring system. Hopefully not.

** They're really great. Charles Martinet really earns his money on this one. When starting the 'plus' levels Mario says "Here we go again. Again."

*** There's a vague plot about DK getting annoyed with Mario having his own toyline. In a first for a Mario game (probably) the Princess DOESN'T get kidnapped. Just some toys.

It's Business Time

Tomorrow I have to get up at 5.30 so I can get a train to Peterborough at 7, wait in Peterborough station for an hour and then get a train to Norwich. It's for work. I'm a little worried about what will happen as I've revised a report and instead of saying we save around £1.4m each month we're actually only saving just under £0.5m. I expect they will resort to violence to make me change my mind, however I know I have truth and justice on my side and will not be wavering.

So I will not be blogging tomorrow (well I will, but when I get home on Tuesday). In order to help you pass the time whilst you constantly press F5 on my homepage I point you towards http://www.alteraction.com/. This has the interactive game MASQ which is like a choose your own adventure book, but without swords and dragons and with rufty, clothes and the inability to bookmark a page so you can go back to it if you make a mistake. I highly recommend it.

Ball Ball Ball

In fake football news* I have just become injured for nine weeks with a groin strain. It's a bit annoying as Forest were top of the league, but now we're sinking like a heavy thing without good weight distribution. I'm currently valued at just over £30m and have over £10m in the bank. Shows what I could have done if I only applied myself.



* From New Star Soccer 3

NBPM 25: Quit

After my first ever go on Team Fortress 2 where I wandered around without really knowing what I was doing, but having a lot of fun nonetheless, I've played it two more times.

In the first (second?) go it finally clicked. I started to play as the pyro and actually managed to steal the opponents intelligence and bring it back to the base. I even set some enemies alight and laughed heartily at their smoldering corpses.

I even got so good that for one round I became the best player ever. The only annoying thing was that the game never seemed to end. Apparently it was the first to three. But only in the darts sense of the word. Getting three only meant that you had won one 'leg'. And you had to get to five legs. After half an hour it was 3-2 on legs. It was time for tea. But I couldn't find the quit button. So I gave up and turned off my PC.

When I logged on for my third (second?) go I noticed that Steam hadn't recorded my excellent results from when I was the Pyro. Bah.

And this time around I was much worse. Perhaps it was because my Pyro worked much better in the smaller map of the previous competition. Or maybe it was because this map was a capture the territory map rather than capture the flag. Or maybe I was playing much better people.

At least this time I had worked out why I couldn't quit before. I hadn't defined a quit key in the menu (thanks Valve for not giving this option in the first place!) so I chose ' . There wasn't much point to have done this as my PC decided to crash. Which meant that my stats for this go weren't recorded either.

So I've given up on TF2. Not because I'm rubbish. But because my PC is. Or Steam is. Or Valve are. Or Something.

NBPM 14: Revision

What I did instead of revision for my FPC exam:

I thought about Portal a lot. I passed the exam but I think that was more down to it being multiple choice rather than any work I did.

NBPM 11: Objection!

After my fake legal troubles yesterday I've started playing the second Phoenix Wright game. It's pretty much the same as it's predecessor, but with one change to the main game. I would have no problems in recommending it to anyone but I would advise said person to play the first game first.

By the end of the first chapter of the first case it already refers to cases in the first game. In the second case a character shows up who keeps talking about the earlier case you met her on. So if you play the second game cold you're going to have fun, but you aren't going to understand a lot.

It's the same with Serenity/Firefly. Whilst I could imagine that if I watched Serenity without having seen it's predecessor Firefly I would have enjoyed it, it does make a lot more sense watching the TV series first. And then the comic as well.

It got me thinking, what videogames and films could you play a sequel without having played/seen it's earlier version and not having any loss of enjoyment. The easy option would be Burnout or any other car racing game. Or FIFA and Pro Evo. But I'm talking about those games with plots, obv.

I think you could get away with playing Halo 2 before Halo, but I reckon it would help if you played the first Halo first. Only because the plot in Halo 2 is so rubbish that by having played Halo 1 you will have enough goodwill from that to make you keep playing Halo 2 to the end without giving up in annoyance.

In films, as with anything, my choice would be the Evil Dead films. You can watch them in any order. Mostly because each film remakes the earlier films in the first fifteen minutes. Also because each film is in a totally different style to the other films. Evil Dead I? Out and out horror. Evil Dead II? Horror/Comedy. Army of Darkness? Action/Adventure.

The only game I can think of that has changed it's style to such a similar effect is Resident Evil, whose fourth game (in terms of numbers) has changed from survival horror to action horror. I'm sure there's other ones I can think of, but I'm tired and need to sleep.

Cheerio!

Walk out to winter...

...swear I'll be there

New work complicated.
Old work hard to handover.
Tiredness coming back.

That wasn't a haiku, but still it accurately summed up my past few days. I did have some interesting things to blog about, but forgot about them in the shower. And to stop boring you about videogames I've signed up to 1up.com.

My blog about videogames will now be seen at http://uppi17.1up.com. Hope to bore you there.

Do what you want...

...make the ("funsters" - ed) pay

I'm in a dilemma. I want to play an MMO, in particular World Of Warcraft, but the last time I tried it out (a free demo on PC Gamer) it went a bit like this:

Partario is created. Red hair is a must.

Partario waits to enter Darkspear

Partario waits some more. Alternate between the two pictures for about twelve minutes.

Partario enters the world. Has to kill wolves for some reason. Gets challenged to a duel. Runs away. Speaks to no-one.

So I didn't really enjoy my excursion into World of Warcraft. But I think it might have slightly been my fault. I definitely didn't go around chatting to the various people there. That's why I'm giving it one more chance. I'm having another 10 day trial and will go in with Uri Geller Noel Edmonds style positive thinking this time around. Who knows, I might like it?

Although it's mega annoying that I can only log on to European servers. World of Warcraft? Continent of Warcraft more like*.

* I used the 'joke' before on a message board, but stole it back. I'm not witty enough to lend jokes to just anyone.

Hey (hey) You (you)...

...I don't like your girlfriend*

Coincidences are weird aren't they? Especially when you try to work them back and figure out how the coincidences started.

My most recent one involved me going into my local Borders and buying a copy of EGM that I found there. When I got home I read it and was really confused as it appeared to be talking about really old games like Dead Rising. Then I noticed it was dated August 2006, which meant it first came out around February 2006**. For some reason Borders must have been unable to offload them back to Ziff-Davis so kept them on the shelves for non-date checkers like myself.

But the coinkidink happened when I was listening to the latest EGMlive podcast and they spoke about the same issue. Wooooooo...

Although thinking about it, EGM talking about one of their old issues isn't that weird. Still it gave me the willies.

* Hey (hey) You (you) I don't like your new song, more like.

** Magazine scheduling joke.

Still the fire of a love is true...

...and I would be breathless without you

Now I like puzzles*, but I don't like having to pay two pound fifty for six cards with brainteasers only to have the same ones keep coming up. That's why I got annoyed with perplexcity. The idea behind it was ok, but I felt a little annoyed that I couldn't spend a set amount for all the cards and then get confused by them. Plus there's the fact that after all that effort of making finding the cube really exciting with helicopters flying over people & phones ringing you up in a cinema it ended up being buried in a field. Bit boring that, I'd have thought they would've had it in some security place where you would need the password to get through. Ah well.

The perplex city board game looks like decent, but the whole point of board games is replayability. Knowing me, I'll probably look at all the questions and then annoy everyone by having the answers memorised.

Anyway, my point is that a cheaper brain teaser is in need for me. And I've found it. Say hello to Abstractica 2 ("Hello Abstractica 2!" - the readers). You have to work out the phrase for each level and type it in. If you're right you move onto the next level. If you're not you get annoyed and use the tip, or search on the forum for clues.

The puzzle below is one I was stuck on for ages, but have now completed.



If you can get it and found it fun then download the full game here. If you can't get it the answer is in the file name.

By the way I'm not taking responsibility if you get totally addicted to this and spend ages trying to solve 'one more level'. Like Freya and I just did.

Cheerio!

* But not spelling as I had written puzzels first.

Rolling like thunder...

...under the covers

According to a study* you're a much better surgeon if you play video games. I can sort of understand that, particularly for the surgery where you're doing it by joystick (except they should now use a stylus or wireless nunchuck, natch).

I only wish that playing games could somehow make me a better accountant. Except the only games I can think of that would help me understand accounting & numbers better would be Football Manager and World of Warcraft. And they're boring enough without doing them for work.

Oh, and what's that at the end of the article? "...the Royal College of Surgeons said research, [done by someone else], showed no correlation between video games and performance in surgery." So that article I spent five minutes blogging about was rubbish? Ah well, such is life.

I watched the first episode of Heroes today. It was good.

* To be seen in full here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2016992,00.html)

Start me up...

...if you start me up you never stop

Oh yea-uh! Mick Jagger here! I'm a-uh fa-uh-ous rock star, I've sold concerts all over the world, been some (mumbles) films. But I'm here to tell you something. A-uh rock star has been telling you-uh some myths.

Not Bono! Not this time-uh, but David Bowie.

He's been telling you-uh that Elite Beat Agents was rubbish. That if it was a Rolling Stones album it would be our-uh latest album (whatever that was called). But it's not. It's the equivalent of Sticky Fingers.

It's really that good. Oh yea-uh! It's just really addictive, and every time you get stuck on a song you seem to get slightly further each time. That makes it really addictive.

David's slightly correct in that some charm is lost by the move to English songs & lyrics in that the song doesn't necessarily-uh relate to what the cartoon is about but who knows if that wasn't the case with the Japanese one? The song where you help the kid pass his exam could have had lyrics where 'love conquers all'.

But all the songs-uh do have a good beat to them and then never outstay their welcome. So I'd recommend that you ignore what Mr. Jones said and instead go out and buy Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo DS. As soon as it comes out in the UK.

Plus Jumping Jack Flash saves the world so I could never insult a game that does that..

Oh yea-uh!!!