Oops - Part 2
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Another week, another blog post. This resolution to post more often really isn't going well.
In my defence, though, it's been busy: work has seen me staying late the last two nights of the week, I was at football on Tuesday. The rest of my evenings have been taken up by rampaging all over Cyrodil or talking on the phone with the lovely Beth.
I've also had a little dip into Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 on PS3, which I also got for my birthday.
Oddly, though, there's a few areas where the PS3 version isn't as good as the PSP title which, if I'm not mistaken, is based on the engine used for the PS2 version of the game. For a start, the replies are horrid: they've tried to replicate the shaky, can't-keep-up-with-the-ball camerawork of football on TV but gone way overboard. It makes actually watching the ball impossible - I've tried to watch a goal going in but, in the entire reply, haven't been granted even the slightest glimpse of the ball. Crucial tackles that have resulted in bookings are given replays, too, but the camera is too far zoomed in to let me see the actual incident. All this is done with a horrendous frame-rate that makes it look wobbly and distinctly last-gen.
Still, the core mechanics are superb - it's Pro Evo, after all, and it plays a fantastic game of football; it always has. The benefit of the PS3, with its USB ports and hard drives, is instantly obvious. There's no more Berkshire Blues playing West London Whites - Reading v Fulham for those poor people who play FIFA - when I can go online, download an option file and suddenly have every name, kit, badge, stadium and tournament named correctly, every recent transfer added and every face tweaked to make players look even more real.
I read a recent interview with Seabass, the creator, who said that the next version of Pro Evo will be the real next-gen game, which makes sense - there's always a period of transition from one game to the next, so I'm expecting world-defining, life-eating things from Pro Evo 2009.
Talking of world-defining, life-eating games, Grand Theft Auto IV is released to a baying public, worldwide, on Tuesday. I've heard that GAME aren't guaranteeing that you'd get a copy if you pre-ordered after April 7h and, in a report inThe Sunday Times, that ALL initial stock has already been sold.
Then again, this is the same newspaper that today called Nintendo's casual console the 'Sony Wii'.
Nevertheless, I'll still be going out at lunchtime on Tuesday to hunt a copy. If I get my hands on one, I'll try to post before the week is out. Can't promise anything, though, with Liberty City and Cyrodil to occupy me.
Who needs the real world, eh?
In my defence, though, it's been busy: work has seen me staying late the last two nights of the week, I was at football on Tuesday. The rest of my evenings have been taken up by rampaging all over Cyrodil or talking on the phone with the lovely Beth.
I've also had a little dip into Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 on PS3, which I also got for my birthday.
Oddly, though, there's a few areas where the PS3 version isn't as good as the PSP title which, if I'm not mistaken, is based on the engine used for the PS2 version of the game. For a start, the replies are horrid: they've tried to replicate the shaky, can't-keep-up-with-the-ball camerawork of football on TV but gone way overboard. It makes actually watching the ball impossible - I've tried to watch a goal going in but, in the entire reply, haven't been granted even the slightest glimpse of the ball. Crucial tackles that have resulted in bookings are given replays, too, but the camera is too far zoomed in to let me see the actual incident. All this is done with a horrendous frame-rate that makes it look wobbly and distinctly last-gen.
Still, the core mechanics are superb - it's Pro Evo, after all, and it plays a fantastic game of football; it always has. The benefit of the PS3, with its USB ports and hard drives, is instantly obvious. There's no more Berkshire Blues playing West London Whites - Reading v Fulham for those poor people who play FIFA - when I can go online, download an option file and suddenly have every name, kit, badge, stadium and tournament named correctly, every recent transfer added and every face tweaked to make players look even more real.
I read a recent interview with Seabass, the creator, who said that the next version of Pro Evo will be the real next-gen game, which makes sense - there's always a period of transition from one game to the next, so I'm expecting world-defining, life-eating things from Pro Evo 2009.
Talking of world-defining, life-eating games, Grand Theft Auto IV is released to a baying public, worldwide, on Tuesday. I've heard that GAME aren't guaranteeing that you'd get a copy if you pre-ordered after April 7h and, in a report inThe Sunday Times, that ALL initial stock has already been sold.
Then again, this is the same newspaper that today called Nintendo's casual console the 'Sony Wii'.
Nevertheless, I'll still be going out at lunchtime on Tuesday to hunt a copy. If I get my hands on one, I'll try to post before the week is out. Can't promise anything, though, with Liberty City and Cyrodil to occupy me.
Who needs the real world, eh?
Welcome to Cyrodil, population: Me.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
I got The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for my birthday, but haven't been able to really get into it until the tail end of this week - and, good god, what a brilliant game.
Like the rest of the Elder Scrolls titles, it's set in a region of the same country, Tamriel - this time it's Cyrodil, and peace is threatened by the assassination of the king and the opening of portals into Oblivion. And, in typical fashion, it's up to you to save the world.
And, when I say 'you', it really can be. The character creation systems are as baffling as they are powerful - every little nuance of your face can be tweaked, prodded, pulled and manipulated once you've picked from the dozen or so races. And it's not just varieties of human: dragons, elves and myriad other creatures can be picked for your own nefarious desires.
Your first introduction to the world doesn't really hint at what's to come. It's a typical dungeon run, except with a hint of Star Trek - as the voice of Emporer Uriel is provided by one Patrick Stewart. Criminally, his part lasts all of half an hour. It's a total and utter waste.
Make your way out of the dungeons, though, and be prepared for some serious taking of breath - you emerge, blinking, into the daylight, to a scene of pastoral idyll (yes! pastoral idyll! I used my degree!) that's a stark contrast to dark, goblin-ridden tunnels. A lake stands before you, water lapping at the shore and cascading around a wooden jetty and fishing boat bobbing beside it. Beyond the lake - with the water only beaten by Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Bioshock in gaming terms - there's rolling hills, covered with trees, stretching off to the horizon. Forests are silhouetted against the blue sky, dappled with clouds, and in the middle distance you spy the ruins of an ancient fort, expert masonry reflecting the bright sunlight.
And that's just one view.
Another I remember - crossing the huge bridge from the prison across to the Imperial City. Jump up onto the ledge of the bridge, on either side, and the view is like that described above - but ten times bigger, on either side.
At the moment I've barely even touched the main story arc because I'm too busy exploring everything that the City and the surrounding areas have to offer. I've barely touched any of the crafting or combat - a few quests have kept me sated so far. I'm also ashamed to say that plenty of my excursions have been at night, rifling through papers and cupboards, looking for things to steal, nice little items I can sell on for a healthy profit. So much so that I'm not a member of the Thieves' Guild and most of the shopkeepers keep an eye on me when I'm in their establishments. They don't look too happy when I chat with them - and I know why. I've robbed most of them.
The wonderful, brilliant thing is that this is just one city. The Imperial City is full of quests, characters, conversations. Houses, shops, merchants, bars. Hotels with rooms to rent and food to eat, and The First Edition - a bookshop - is stocked full of tomes, each of which is actually full of stuff to read. Backstory, history and folklore from this world that Bethesda have spent decades developing. It's so deep and so, so clearly a labour of love, which makes it even more fun to play, knowing that someone cares about this as much as I could end up caring about it. After hearing a few stories of people losing hundreds of hours to this game, I can certainly see why. It happened with Morrowind, happens with World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy - any Final Fantasy - and Tabula Rasa.
And one, amazing fact that I couldn't really comprehend when I heard it. The world in Oblivion is staggeringly big. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas took pride in creating a state - The Elder Scrolls IV renders an entire country in gorgeous next-gen graphics. Plenty of regions and cities, dozens of towns and villages. Enough to explore, marvel and just enjoy for dozens, hundreds of hours.
The amazing thing about this, though? The second game in the Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall, also takes place in a region of Tamriel. Except this particular region is over 60,000 square miles in size.
About two Great Britains, in other words.
The programmers are quick to point out that a lot of Daggerfall was randomly generated compared to the dedicated labour that went into creating every inch of Morrowind and Oblivion - the third title had about six square miles of terrain to explore, and Oblivion has about 16.
Even so, Daggerfall still takes the biscuit. 750,000 characters to interact with - a quarter of a million! - in 15,000 towns, villages, mines and settlements. I daresay there's some intrepid gamer out there with a 1996-era PC who's still plugging away, enjoying that world, and still discovering new things on every trip. It's worrying and awe-inspiring at the same time. I sort of want to shake his hand.
Anyway. Enough of that. Back to The Imperial City for me. I've just picked a pocket and need to find which house this key fits into.
Like the rest of the Elder Scrolls titles, it's set in a region of the same country, Tamriel - this time it's Cyrodil, and peace is threatened by the assassination of the king and the opening of portals into Oblivion. And, in typical fashion, it's up to you to save the world.
And, when I say 'you', it really can be. The character creation systems are as baffling as they are powerful - every little nuance of your face can be tweaked, prodded, pulled and manipulated once you've picked from the dozen or so races. And it's not just varieties of human: dragons, elves and myriad other creatures can be picked for your own nefarious desires.
Your first introduction to the world doesn't really hint at what's to come. It's a typical dungeon run, except with a hint of Star Trek - as the voice of Emporer Uriel is provided by one Patrick Stewart. Criminally, his part lasts all of half an hour. It's a total and utter waste.
Make your way out of the dungeons, though, and be prepared for some serious taking of breath - you emerge, blinking, into the daylight, to a scene of pastoral idyll (yes! pastoral idyll! I used my degree!) that's a stark contrast to dark, goblin-ridden tunnels. A lake stands before you, water lapping at the shore and cascading around a wooden jetty and fishing boat bobbing beside it. Beyond the lake - with the water only beaten by Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Bioshock in gaming terms - there's rolling hills, covered with trees, stretching off to the horizon. Forests are silhouetted against the blue sky, dappled with clouds, and in the middle distance you spy the ruins of an ancient fort, expert masonry reflecting the bright sunlight.
And that's just one view.
Another I remember - crossing the huge bridge from the prison across to the Imperial City. Jump up onto the ledge of the bridge, on either side, and the view is like that described above - but ten times bigger, on either side.
At the moment I've barely even touched the main story arc because I'm too busy exploring everything that the City and the surrounding areas have to offer. I've barely touched any of the crafting or combat - a few quests have kept me sated so far. I'm also ashamed to say that plenty of my excursions have been at night, rifling through papers and cupboards, looking for things to steal, nice little items I can sell on for a healthy profit. So much so that I'm not a member of the Thieves' Guild and most of the shopkeepers keep an eye on me when I'm in their establishments. They don't look too happy when I chat with them - and I know why. I've robbed most of them.
The wonderful, brilliant thing is that this is just one city. The Imperial City is full of quests, characters, conversations. Houses, shops, merchants, bars. Hotels with rooms to rent and food to eat, and The First Edition - a bookshop - is stocked full of tomes, each of which is actually full of stuff to read. Backstory, history and folklore from this world that Bethesda have spent decades developing. It's so deep and so, so clearly a labour of love, which makes it even more fun to play, knowing that someone cares about this as much as I could end up caring about it. After hearing a few stories of people losing hundreds of hours to this game, I can certainly see why. It happened with Morrowind, happens with World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy - any Final Fantasy - and Tabula Rasa.
And one, amazing fact that I couldn't really comprehend when I heard it. The world in Oblivion is staggeringly big. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas took pride in creating a state - The Elder Scrolls IV renders an entire country in gorgeous next-gen graphics. Plenty of regions and cities, dozens of towns and villages. Enough to explore, marvel and just enjoy for dozens, hundreds of hours.
The amazing thing about this, though? The second game in the Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall, also takes place in a region of Tamriel. Except this particular region is over 60,000 square miles in size.
About two Great Britains, in other words.
The programmers are quick to point out that a lot of Daggerfall was randomly generated compared to the dedicated labour that went into creating every inch of Morrowind and Oblivion - the third title had about six square miles of terrain to explore, and Oblivion has about 16.
Even so, Daggerfall still takes the biscuit. 750,000 characters to interact with - a quarter of a million! - in 15,000 towns, villages, mines and settlements. I daresay there's some intrepid gamer out there with a 1996-era PC who's still plugging away, enjoying that world, and still discovering new things on every trip. It's worrying and awe-inspiring at the same time. I sort of want to shake his hand.
Anyway. Enough of that. Back to The Imperial City for me. I've just picked a pocket and need to find which house this key fits into.
Oh Bugger.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
So, the resolution to post more - once every two days, at least - hasn't exactly gone well. But, for once, I do have an excuse: I went to Aberystwyth for the weekend for my birthday celebrations and I'm still recovering.
Got there on Friday night not long after midnight thanks to Chris and his gorgeous Alfa, and chilled out, chatted and went to bed - without going to the pub as we'd planned. We were all a bit tired.
On Saturday, Chris, Frances, Sue and I went to the Snooker Hall for lunch, where I had a gorgeous pizza (chicken, ham and pepperoni - the usual), and Dave turned up. Our first flat get-together since we all left! Plenty of laughs, not least when Dave called me a cradle snatcher. Oops.
We tooled around town after that, going in and out of various shops - including a session in Nice and Naughty laughing at the title of porno films - and I bought a cool book by a local author called Niall Griffiths. I saw him at a reading last year at Uni and I'm pleased that he's bought a book out called Real Aberystwyth - like a Lonely Planet guide to the town.
Rachel arrived on the bus at 2pm, so we went and met her and wandered back to Sue's. Me and Chris left the womenfolk alone to chat and catch up and get changed and we went for a couple of frames of snooker; I have to mention that I won, and then came from behind (wahey!) for another victory in a best-of-5 game of pool. Miracles can happen, apparently.
We went to Wetherspoons at around 5 and met up with Dave, a couple of his friends, and Rich and Dan for some food and to start the drinking - much merriment ensued with the help of Kopparberg Pear Cider. Fit. Several of us then drove out to Goginan as there was a band playing with two of our old lecturers in it: cue plenty of dodgy looks from the locals as we hadn't been in before, although a few pints of cider soon put me at ease. A drunken escapade into a nearby field of sheep to fly Rich's model aeroplane, though, was halted by a shouty famer and the angry revving of his Land Rover.
On the return to Aber, we hit the pubs in force: Cambrian for plenty of cocktails, including a great one with a sparkler in, and a random shot. Don't know what that was. Went to The Mill where Jade bought me a couple of colourful, potent looking shots. Don't know what they were either. A Long Island Iced Tea in The Castle was followed by a pretty disappointing finish in The Bay, but up until then we'd had a brilliant night. Thank you for coming, everyone!
Went back to Sue's and crawled into my sleeping bag. I think.
The hangover was sickeningly, horrifically epic. I could barely move without feeling ill, and the best option seemed to be to lie on the floor, perfectly still, grunting at people as they passed. Except I had to get home on the 11:30 train - work to do when I returned. I crawled out of bed and hauled myself to the shower, which made me feel a little better, but the dry-heaving and throwing up of stomach acid wasn't encouraging.
Eventually - it really did take a while, as everything was taking four times as long - I packed my stuff away, said some hazy goodbyes and wandered to the station, via Spar: Jaffa Cakes and a huge bottle of water were to be my companions on the journey back. Except, despite National Rail telling me the train left at 11:30, it actually went an hour later. Cue a walk back to Sue's, where I saw Jade and her fiancé looking bright, airy and very awake. Jade's impression of me made my walking look like that of a severly wounded zombie - and she wasn't far off.
When I got back to the house, Chris asked me if I remembered what I was doing in the middle of the night - and I had no idea. Rachel, though, had seen me sleepwalking: apparently I crept out of my sleeping bag, walked over to her - almost stamping on her head - and spent some time fiddling with the curtains, before returning. Oops.
Got on the train after another round of goodbyes, and ended up talking to a guy on the way back who was also visiting Aber, to see his sister. He'd been out for a heavy one, too, but wasn't in the state I was. He's in the RAF, stationed at Swindow, but is originally from Birmingham, and we chatted about plenty - football, games, music, politics. He certainly made the journey much more bearable.
At Birmingham New Street I found out that I couldn't actually get a direct train to Reading - my best bet was to go to Oxford, which is a station I'd never visited before. After a baguette - I didn't trust myself with food other than Jaffa Cakes earlier in the day - I felt considerably more human. It's odd: for a city that prides itself on historial buildings and, as the cliché goes, dreaming spires, Oxford Station seems to be in the middle of an 80's housing estate. A bus took me to Didcot, and the twenty minutes passed very quickly because of the lovely phone conversation with the wonderful Beth. Train to Reading, then, and home.
Very hungover. Mostly sat down all night and vegetated.
Still, a brilliant weekend!
Got there on Friday night not long after midnight thanks to Chris and his gorgeous Alfa, and chilled out, chatted and went to bed - without going to the pub as we'd planned. We were all a bit tired.
On Saturday, Chris, Frances, Sue and I went to the Snooker Hall for lunch, where I had a gorgeous pizza (chicken, ham and pepperoni - the usual), and Dave turned up. Our first flat get-together since we all left! Plenty of laughs, not least when Dave called me a cradle snatcher. Oops.
We tooled around town after that, going in and out of various shops - including a session in Nice and Naughty laughing at the title of porno films - and I bought a cool book by a local author called Niall Griffiths. I saw him at a reading last year at Uni and I'm pleased that he's bought a book out called Real Aberystwyth - like a Lonely Planet guide to the town.
Rachel arrived on the bus at 2pm, so we went and met her and wandered back to Sue's. Me and Chris left the womenfolk alone to chat and catch up and get changed and we went for a couple of frames of snooker; I have to mention that I won, and then came from behind (wahey!) for another victory in a best-of-5 game of pool. Miracles can happen, apparently.
We went to Wetherspoons at around 5 and met up with Dave, a couple of his friends, and Rich and Dan for some food and to start the drinking - much merriment ensued with the help of Kopparberg Pear Cider. Fit. Several of us then drove out to Goginan as there was a band playing with two of our old lecturers in it: cue plenty of dodgy looks from the locals as we hadn't been in before, although a few pints of cider soon put me at ease. A drunken escapade into a nearby field of sheep to fly Rich's model aeroplane, though, was halted by a shouty famer and the angry revving of his Land Rover.
On the return to Aber, we hit the pubs in force: Cambrian for plenty of cocktails, including a great one with a sparkler in, and a random shot. Don't know what that was. Went to The Mill where Jade bought me a couple of colourful, potent looking shots. Don't know what they were either. A Long Island Iced Tea in The Castle was followed by a pretty disappointing finish in The Bay, but up until then we'd had a brilliant night. Thank you for coming, everyone!
Went back to Sue's and crawled into my sleeping bag. I think.
The hangover was sickeningly, horrifically epic. I could barely move without feeling ill, and the best option seemed to be to lie on the floor, perfectly still, grunting at people as they passed. Except I had to get home on the 11:30 train - work to do when I returned. I crawled out of bed and hauled myself to the shower, which made me feel a little better, but the dry-heaving and throwing up of stomach acid wasn't encouraging.
Eventually - it really did take a while, as everything was taking four times as long - I packed my stuff away, said some hazy goodbyes and wandered to the station, via Spar: Jaffa Cakes and a huge bottle of water were to be my companions on the journey back. Except, despite National Rail telling me the train left at 11:30, it actually went an hour later. Cue a walk back to Sue's, where I saw Jade and her fiancé looking bright, airy and very awake. Jade's impression of me made my walking look like that of a severly wounded zombie - and she wasn't far off.
When I got back to the house, Chris asked me if I remembered what I was doing in the middle of the night - and I had no idea. Rachel, though, had seen me sleepwalking: apparently I crept out of my sleeping bag, walked over to her - almost stamping on her head - and spent some time fiddling with the curtains, before returning. Oops.
Got on the train after another round of goodbyes, and ended up talking to a guy on the way back who was also visiting Aber, to see his sister. He'd been out for a heavy one, too, but wasn't in the state I was. He's in the RAF, stationed at Swindow, but is originally from Birmingham, and we chatted about plenty - football, games, music, politics. He certainly made the journey much more bearable.
At Birmingham New Street I found out that I couldn't actually get a direct train to Reading - my best bet was to go to Oxford, which is a station I'd never visited before. After a baguette - I didn't trust myself with food other than Jaffa Cakes earlier in the day - I felt considerably more human. It's odd: for a city that prides itself on historial buildings and, as the cliché goes, dreaming spires, Oxford Station seems to be in the middle of an 80's housing estate. A bus took me to Didcot, and the twenty minutes passed very quickly because of the lovely phone conversation with the wonderful Beth. Train to Reading, then, and home.
Very hungover. Mostly sat down all night and vegetated.
Still, a brilliant weekend!
22!
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
So, as of yesterday, I'm 22. Does it feel any different to 21? Apart from a nagging feeling that death is a teeny bit closer, at least in periods of 12 months, not really.
I do have some more stuff. CD's, books and games - the usual.
Going up to Aberystwyth at the weekend to celebrate with all my friends and I can't wait! We're going to The Bay, too, which is always better than Pier. Should be awesome.
Work's going really well, too. I saw the latest issue of the mag today, with my first Labs test in - and my photograph! Awful picture but it's nice seeing myself in there like that. I also think this is the issue I've had most in, so far, because I have quite a few reviews too. I've also been given my own section! The coverdisc is one of the smaller areas of the magazine, but it's a good starting point - or so I've been told - to learn about the responsibilities of managing deadlines and stuff like that. Can't wait!
Hello Beth, wonderful girlfriend! I'll write something a bit longer tomorrow, promise!
I do have some more stuff. CD's, books and games - the usual.
Going up to Aberystwyth at the weekend to celebrate with all my friends and I can't wait! We're going to The Bay, too, which is always better than Pier. Should be awesome.
Work's going really well, too. I saw the latest issue of the mag today, with my first Labs test in - and my photograph! Awful picture but it's nice seeing myself in there like that. I also think this is the issue I've had most in, so far, because I have quite a few reviews too. I've also been given my own section! The coverdisc is one of the smaller areas of the magazine, but it's a good starting point - or so I've been told - to learn about the responsibilities of managing deadlines and stuff like that. Can't wait!
Hello Beth, wonderful girlfriend! I'll write something a bit longer tomorrow, promise!
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