#oneaday Day 590: Furniture Village

At what age do you buy “proper furniture”? It’s clearly not yet because most of the stuff I have is from Ikea or Argos. And while it’s okay quality (the Ikea stuff, anyway — the Argos stuff is consistently shite) it’s not the sort of thing that, say, your Gran has.

At some point though, presumably you say “Yes. Now is the time I’m going to spend over a hundred pounds on one piece of wooden furniture.” That, I guess, is some sort of tipping point into “true adulthood”. Or possibly middle age, I can’t quite decide which.

Oh well. So far as I’m concerned, if it does the job for which it’s been designed, it’s worth having and holding on to. Who cares where it came from or if it has some famous woodsmith’s initials on it somewhere? Ikea for the win. At least the stuff from there has funny names.

#oneaday Day 589: Further Enthusing Regarding Xenoblade Chronicles

Xenoblade Chronicles is the reason you kept your Wii and didn’t play with it for months. Xenoblade Chronicles is the game Final Fantasy XII fans wished Final Fantasy XIII was. And Xenoblade Chronicles is, I feel, shaping up to be a strong contender for Game of the Year.

Why is it so good, though? Perhaps it’s the fact that you’re straight into open world adventuring from the very beginning. Perhaps it’s the fact that exploration is rewarded with fast travel landmarks, collectibles and unique named monsters to defeat. Perhaps it’s the fact that the combat system is an excellent evolution of that seen in Final Fantasy XII, offering an excellent balance between having to quickly respond to incoming threats, manage aggro like in an MMO and trigger positional abilities for maximum effect. Perhaps it’s the fact that the in-game Achievement system, which rewards specific accomplishments with XP and other quest-like rewards carries some sort of in-game worth to it rather than simply online bragging rights. Or perhaps it’s all of the above.

I’m aware I’m gushing somewhat but, you know, it really is that good. So far (10 hours in) there’s been a healthy mix of tooling around killing shit in the open world; hunting down collectibles; hunting specific named monsters; solving interpersonal dilemmas in town — often with several solutions; and, of course, appropriately JRPGish melodrama. What would a JRPG be without it?

Fortunately, though, the plot so far has been interesting and well paced, though it suffers from that perennial RPG problem of “characters say ‘hey! Let’s move on!’, player hangs around for 5 hours collecting bugs and lettuces” though when there’s as much to do as there is here, it’s worth exploring every nook and cranny. All the sidequests are optional, of course, and if I’d ignored them I’d have probably progressed a lot further through the story by now. But part of the attraction of Xenoblade is its world and its characters, and by allowing you a brief snapshot into the lives of these people going about their business you develop the sense that this is a well-realised game world that is worth exploring and far more than just a pretty backdrop to kill rabbits in.

So if you have a Wii and the means to play Xenoblade, I’d encourage you to do so right now. Deus Ex may be the high profile hotness right now, but Xenoblade will offer you an altogether different — and far less orange — experience.

#oneaday Day 588: House Guests

We have two cats. They’re not ours, they belong to our neighbours. But they look like becoming regular visitors.

When I was unpacking things a few days ago, our neighbour visited and warned me that there might be an “inquisitive cat” coming to visit.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “We’ve met.”

Right on cue, Chester (for that was his name) came darting out of my front door, fresh from his expedition into our living room full of cardboard boxes. He’d been exploring and had obviously enjoyed himself.

Later, we also met Artie, the other cat from next door. Artie, while initially nervous, is now much more keen to come in whenever possible. “Whenever possible” meaning “whenever the door is open.” We’ve had to kick the little bugger out several times already as he’s already decided this place is his second home, it seems.

It transpires that the people who used to live here took care of the aforementioned cats whenever the neighbours were away, so it seems the cats associate this house with pleasant times. Fine by me. Cats are awesome.

(In other news, we get Proper Internet here in two weeks. At that time, the quality and length of entries will likely show a marked upswing as I can stop writing them on my phone and start doing them on the computer with its word count facility once more.)

#oneaday Day 587: Progress

Unpacking is going surprisingly well. We woke up super early without realising and managed to get a ton of stuff done in the living room in particular. Most of the furniture is in the right place now, there’s just a bunch of stuff still on the floor. There’s a working telly in place now, too, though I have determined that the speaker cables for my surround setup aren’t long enough to tack around the doorframe and prevent trailing cable syndrome. Frustrating, but not impossible to fix.

No Internet or other utilities sorted as yet, but everything is working as it should at the moment. Once things are unpacked and we have phone, Internet and whatnot we can get sorted on those. And being in an Internet-free situation as I am right now (save the poor mobile Internet signal I’m writing this on) I realise how stupid it is that BT invite you to check out their introductory offers by going online. WELL DUH.

That aside, all’s good. There are at least four cats in the neighbourhood, two of whom have already invited themselves in for a look around; the supermarket is within walking distance; there don’t appear to be any chavs; and it’s cheaper than most places I’ve lived before. Also I get to live with Andie, who doesn’t mind me playing Xenoblade Chronicles in bed.

Sounds like a win all round to me.

#oneaday Day 586: The 4AM Club

There’s a marked difference between those who drive late at night and those in the early morning. The night is filled with Mercedes drivers and chavs who believe they are the only ones with the right to be on the road, and that anyone driving slower than them is scum; conversely, those out driving at some ungodly hour in the morning are somehow brought together by a sense of camaraderie — we’re all doing this because we HAVE to, not because we want to.

Such as it was this morning when I had to rise from my slumber in the darkness of 4AM and drive my empty van 150 miles back to return it, only to later load up my car with the last few bits of crap and drive back that same 150 miles for hopefully the last time for a little while.

It’s not all bad driving at stupid o’clock though. Driving through the sunrise is pretty cool. And the fact that the 4AM Club is a fairly exclusive club means that roads are quiet and traffic is minimal.

Despite all that, though, I’m looking forward to the mother of all lie ins tomorrow.

#oneaday Day 585: Moving Day, Part 2

Getting there. Have driven 150 miles in a van today — not as terrifying as I was expecting, as the van was a lot easier to handle than the last one I drove.

The day opened with lots of packing of stuff into said van. This is a procedure by turns exhausting, frustrating, infuriating and stressful. And occasionally — for brief snatches of time when that box fits in just right like that long Tetris piece that comes along at just the right moment — satisfying. But that doesn’t happen much.

I didn’t get everything in the van, not because it didn’t fit but because I got to that stage where you’re so tired you want to throw things. I also determined that if I didn’t set off then I probably wouldn’t, making hiring a van somewhat unnecessary.

Still, it’s done now — the van is unloaded and I’m lying in bed, prepared to get up super early to drive 150 miles back to return the van, then drive all the way back again with hopefully the final load of stuff.

Then I get to unpack. Yay. That’s the fun bit though — you get to put stuff where it lives, and you end up with a finished house.

Nearly there.

#oneaday Day 584: Moving Day, Part 1

Moving house sucks. It’s supposedly shortly behind or ahead of getting divorced in the stress stakes and while I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, it is a pain in the arse — largely because you usually find yourself having to move six metric shit-tons of crap in 24 hours AND clean AND remember to cancel all your bills AND argh.

So far this time things have gone relatively smoothly, largely because there isn’t the time pressure involved. Both Andie and I are moving from our respective parental homes, which means no requirement to be away and completely vacated by a specific deadline. This is nice, and certainly a far cry from the panicked move which was me leaving Southampton last year — the stress of which was not helped by the fact that I really did not want to be moving amid everything else that was going on.

I haven’t done “the big bit” yet, which is shifting furniture. That comes tomorrow with the joyful hire of a van. Once that’s done, though, it’s a simple matter of clearing up small odds and ends, unpacking stuff, acquiring extra bits of furniture as necessary and getting broadband and whatnot set up.

Once all this is done, I will feel a lot better about things. I will be in my own space doing my own job with my awesome girlfriend and things will be good. I am looking forward to things being good after a very long period of depression. It’s about time.

#oneaday Day 583: Creative Breakfast

I’ve reached a decision. Once all this moving stuff is over and done with I’m going to start writing these entries in the morning. There are many reasons for this, chief among which is the fact that by the time it gets to late evening I’m knackered and have already spent the day doing my day job which involves, yes, writing.

Part of this is sheet stubborn determination to not let tiredness and lack of creativity beat me. It would be easy to say I was fed up and tired of writing stuff every day. I’m not; it just feels a bit like it sometimes, particularly when it gets to 11pm and I haven’t written anything — and often haven’t thought of anything to write.

So the plan is thus: get up, eat breakfast, indulge in “creative breakfast” by writing blog in the morning. That way 1) it’s out of the way in the morning and 2) my mind is already in a good mindset for writing.

It also helps avoid filler entries like this one which follow 4 hour drives.

So night night! Look forward to the new regime starting soon.

#oneaday Day 582: Xenophile

I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles earlier. I have the feeling that despite its surprisingly strong showing in the charts this week that it will become very difficult to find in a few weeks, so I didn’t want to miss out on the game that everyone’s been raving about.

I’ll confess I knew absolutely nothing about it save for the fact that it was the first Wii game in a very long time that people had been excited about, and that it was a JRPG fashioned somewhat after the Final Fantasy XII vein. I enjoyed Final Fantasy XII very much, so more of the same (including low-rez graphics) would be very welcome.

I’ve spent the last couple of hours playing it and dear lord it’s good. Like really, really good. Rather than taking the usual JRPG approach of being completely linear for 40 hours then opening up in the last 10 or so, Xenoblade Chronicles begins as it (presumably) means to go on: by providing you with a ridiculous number of non-linear tasks to go off and complete at your own pace. Story quests and locations are clearly marked, so you know where to go when you’re ready to advance the plot, and any quests which might “expire” as a result of story events are clearly marked, too — a very nice touch.

The combat system is similar to Final Fantasy XII in that it all takes place in the field via an auto-attack system with triggered abilities, here called “arts”. Unlike FFXII, though, they don’t use MP, instead operating on a cooldown system. This means you can use them a lot more, rather than the habitual RPG problem of “saving” your MP for boss fights. I haven’t got far enough to know if there’s an equivalent to the Gambit system as yet, but I assume there’ll be some way of fiddling about with your other party members. We’ll see.

The most striking thing so far is the astonishingly brilliant music, featuring all but seamless transitions when moving between areas, and subtly different mixes of the same theme for day and night time. While a lot of it is synthesised, the sounds used are considerably better than some of the dodgy sounds used in some of the earlier Final Fantasy games — and indeed, the soundtrack is considerably better than FFXII‘s unmemorable score. It has battle music, too — something which FFXII was (arguably) sorely lacking. I’m a big fan of over the top JRPG battle music and Xenoblade Chronicles delivers in spades, even going a bit crazy with the cock-rock guitar when fighting the game’s equivalent of “elite” monsters.

The dub is pretty good, too — though I’m fairly tolerant of poor voice acting — and all the more striking for being English. Not American; English. These people have English accents and talk like English people. This is a refreshing surprise. Purists would probably sniff at me and say that I should be playing the game with the original Japanese dub, but what can I say? I like English voices. Perhaps if I ever replay the game in the future I’ll play it with Japanese voices.

There’s tons of cool little game mechanics hidden away too, most of which I get the impression are optional. Meeting named characters in regions, for example, adds them to your “affinity chart”, which displays relationships, links and little facts about each character. And there are a lot of characters. Alongside this, an Achievement system pops up little challenges on a regular basis, meaning there’s always something to do or discover.

I’ve established all this in the last 2 hours. I shudder to think 1) how long this game is and 2) what other things it’s going to throw at me along the way. One thing is already clear, though; this is an excellent game and one that I’m going to very much enjoy working my way through. If you’re a North American gamer and considering importing a copy to play on a modified Wii, don’t hesitate; do it. It builds on the things Final Fantasy XII learned to produce a game which, even at this early stage in the story, looks like being something very special indeed. And if you’re planning on giving the game a miss because “ugh, 480p”, then know that you’ll be missing out. So there.

#oneaday Day 581: Deluge

There are so many awesome games coming out in the next few months that it is nigh on impossible to know where to start — especially when there’s a backlog sitting there mocking me, too.

For starters, the long-awaited Deus Ex: Human Revolution is out this week, and reviews have apparently been very positive. I’m pointedly ignoring them, though, as I find myself doing increasingly these days — I much prefer making my own mind up without having someone else’s opinion ringing in my ears when I do so. When I do this, I often find myself enjoying games that others might find not so good, and vice versa. It’s healthy to have an opinion that differs from others — particularly if you’ve developed it yourself.

But anyway; Deus Ex is one game that is very interesting. Xenoblade Chronicles is also very very interesting — for starters, it’s the first Wii game in forever that everyone has been excited about, and it also sounds like an awesome RPG.

Further down the road, there’s TrackMania 2, version 2.0 of The Witcher 2, Guild Wars 2 and all manner of other stuff. Having seen Guild Wars 2 in action at Gamescom, that looks like a game that could very easily put everything else on hold by virtue of its awesomeness and multiplayerness. I enjoyed the first games a lot (though I never beat any of their campaigns) and appreciated the fact that it was an MMO with high production values that you didn’t have to pay money into every month.

Then there’s the various HD remakes inbound — the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus collection and the Metal Gear package of particular interest — that make me want to revisit these titles. And Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, which makes me want to catch up on the rest of that series right now.

This isn’t even getting started on the excellent free to play games that are on the way — Star Trek: Infinite Space looking particularly excellent, and Perfect World’s Rusty Hearts, which I’ve already been playing the beta for.

It is both a great and a terrible time to be a gamer. Great for the sheer amount of choice, and terrible for the sheer amount of choice. At some point you have to shrug and admit to yourself that some titles are going to be sitting on that backlog for a long time to come yet — and some you might never get to at all.