Category: Not Games

1215: Zoology

Derrrrrp.Andie and I took a trip out to Toronto Zoo today. Getting there from Mark and Lynette's house was quite a trek on public transit, but it's eminently possible. (For those curious, you ride the subway all the way to the east end of the green line — Kennedy station — then catch an 86A bus to the zoo. Said bus stops approximately every 100 yards on the way, lengthening the journey by a considerable degree, but you do get there eventually.)

I've been to the zoo here before, but Andie hasn't. (Obvious, really, since she hasn't been to Toronto before.) Like much of my wanderings around the city in general over the last couple of weeks, I was surprised by quite how much I remembered. A few things have changed since I last came — some exhibits have opened and closed, and we were just a day too early to get a chance to see the zoo's newly-acquired giant pandas — but for the most part it was pretty much as I remembered.

I'm generally not particularly big on "cultural" trips. Museums often bore me if there's not much in the way of interactivity, and my appreciation of the visual arts (or lack thereof) limits my enjoyment of an art gallery. I'm not even a huge fan of live music in many cases, despite being a musician myself, because I'm more interested in the music itself rather than the performance more often than not. (The exception to this rule is live performances of jazz/soul etc, which often have a lot more "personality" than live performances of art music. But I digress.)

IMG_2551Where was I? Oh yes. I'm not generally that big on "cultural" trips, but I must confess to having something of a soft spot for a good zoo. I think it's the simple fact that animals are interesting and unpredictable to watch, and it can be fascinating to discover a creature you were previously unfamiliar with. Particular highlights today, for example, included a "tree kangaroo", which looked rather cat-like; the discovery that bats can and will climb around like monkeys as well as hanging there being boring and/or flapping around wildly; that tigers actually do say "rawr"; and that somewhere in deepest darkest Africa there's a ridiculous-looking bird with an enormous beak that would apparently rather jump between tree branches than actually fly.

Toronto Zoo is a good zoo if you enjoy looking at animals (derp) because there's a lot of them in a variety of different environments. It's quite a trek to get around the whole thing, but it's a worthwhile experience, as you'll have the chance to see all manner of different things. Although today, being a weekday, was relatively quiet, it was clear what the "highlights" for the general public were — the polar bears were winning by a long shot, though I suspect once the new panda exhibit is open to the public it will prove similarly popular, if not more so.

We also took a ride on the "zoomobile" electric car tour thing. This initially appeared a bit steep at $8 each, but after riding it all the way around and being taken into some "zoomobile exclusive" safari park-style areas with free-roaming animals, it proved a worthwhile experience, so be sure to check it out if you're in the area.

IMG_2568Oh, and also we saw a horny male zebra with a gigantic dong trying to boff a female who wasn't having any of it. Poor chap.

1212: The Meme-Ing of Life

We went out to Toronto's apparently-famous comedy club The Second City tonight to see a sketch/improv show called The Meme-Ing of Life. And what do you know? It was pretty great.

I'm a fan of sketch comedy, and have been since the days of The Fast Show and Big Train. One of my favourite shows that I've seen live at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in years gone by was a sketch/improv show, too — performed by Amsterdam outfit Boom Chicago. I particularly enjoyed tonight's show because it reminded me, to a certain degree, of Boom Chicago's shows that I've seen in the past — and that is most certainly a very good thing indeed.

The Meme-Ing of Life was an interesting show for a number of reasons, perhaps chiefly for what it wasn't. The name and posters implied that this would be a show heavily inspired by Internet memes, which gave me some degree of trepidation going into it. A two-hour show in which people who think they're funny simply regurgitate things they've seen on Reddit recently would be pretty cringeworthy, I'm sure we can all agree — there are certain things about Internet humour that make it best viewed in its native environment rather than bringing it into meatspace.

Fortunately, however, the cast didn't take this route. Rather than directly referencing memes, the show consisted of a series of sketches that were loosely inspired or which made oblique references to things which had been Kind of a Big Deal on the Internet at various points in the past. For example, one sketch featured a band of cheerleaders spewing out increasingly-inappropriate sexual chants on the subject of "legitimate rape", abortion et al, while "Coach," an "old white man who knows what's best for us" gets increasingly irate. This is, obviously, a reference to a number of things — the famously-heated discussions over whether or not you can make the word "rape" funny (hey! You can!) and the U.S. politician (I forget who) who made the ill-advised comments about "legitimate rape" a while back.

It wasn't all politically-charged stuff, though, and not all of it wore its inspirations on its sleeve. Two of the best sketches in the show featured no words whatsoever — one was a wonderful mime/dance number accompanied by music in which a man and a woman did the "dance" that will be familiar to anyone who has ever ridden public transit in their life as the man attempted to get the woman to move her bag off the seat; the other was a fantastic mime scene in which two rival basketball players performed increasingly-ridiculous shots.

The overall theme of the show was "making a little difference", and this was returned to a number of times throughout the course of the evening through a number of touching little interludes. In one, a member of the audience was "picked on" and it looked as if he was going to be the butt of a few gags, but it actually turned out the cast were just buying him a drink. In another, the same thing happened, but this time the "unfortunate" audience member was rewarded with a pre-loaded Starbucks card. And in the last, an audience member was quizzed on what she would do if she had a bit of money to spare and then rewarded with an improvised song about her desires which unfolded while a bucket was passed around the audience for everyone to sling some spare change into — once the song was over, she was just given the money.

To say too much about the show would be to spoil it significantly, but it provoked a number of genuine laughs very regularly. I'm always impressed by the quick wit of people who are good at semi-improvised sketch comedy, and this show certainly did not disappoint in that regard. In fact, just to prove that they were serious about what they do, the cast returned after the main show had ended and performed an extra, completely improvised routine based on an audience prompt word. It was something quite special to see.

1211: I Want A Place Like This

Toronto is in possession of an establishment that I very much wish was a more widespread "Thing", particularly in the U.K. Said establishment is known as Snakes & Lattes, and you can probably guess from its name what sort of place it is.

Or perhaps you can't, since it's sort of an unusual establishment.

Snakes & Lattes is a board game cafe. That is to say, it's a cafe in which the playing of board games is not only welcomed, it is actively encouraged. How, you ask? By the fact it has an impressively huge selection just sitting there on its back wall waiting to be played with, ranging from well-thumbed copies of popular card games to the hardest of the hardcore Eurogames and everything in between. It costs just $5 (plus food and drink) to hang out there for as long as you like, and that price gives you access to the establishment's impressive collection of titles as you please.

Snakes, as it tends to be known, is not just a place to go and play board games, though. It's also a great place to go and learn new board games. The staff on hand are all ready, willing and able to recommend new titles to you, and even to teach you how to play. If you're looking for a particular kind of game and you're not sure what to try, chances are someone at Snakes will be able to recommend it to you.

The other thing that Snakes is is a place to buy board games. A healthy proportion of the games that it has available for play are also available for purchase at the front of the establishment, and for very reasonable prices, too — I picked up a couple of games myself today on the recommendation of a Snakes staffer. Specifically, I grabbed a copy of Zombie Dice, which is a very simple game I've heard a few people recommend recently, and a copy of Smash Up, a very entertaining and chaotic card game that rewards being a complete dick to your opponents — I'm looking forward to introducing this one to my friends back home.

I'm certainly going to be taking at least one more trip back to Snakes before our holiday is over, since there are a number of games I've had a chance to try that I'd like to take back with me. Specifically, King of Tokyo and Flash Point are two that intrigued me a great deal — King of Tokyo for being an excellent, fun and quick game with simple but enjoyable mechanics, and Flash Point for being a great cooperative game with enough differences from Pandemic — and a similarly short play time — to be worth a look. There are also a bunch of small games that I'm keen to introduce to my friends back home, too — stuff like the color-matching card game Coloretto and the thoroughly silly Ghost Blitz and Anomia, but I haven't decided which of these, if any, I'm going to pick up my own copy of. I did also try and snag a copy of Love Letter to take home, but that game appears to be like gold dust at present.

Anyway. No idea what's on the cards for tomorrow daytime, but I believe we're going out to a comedy club tomorrow evening to see an entertaining-sounding improv and sketch show on the subject of Internet memes. There's a subject that could easily be cringeworthy, but the comedy club in question is apparently rather highly regarded in the area, and thus I'm looking forward to it quite a bit. Doubtless I will be splurging my thoughts on the matter over these pages tomorrow evening, so look forward to that then.

For now, good night!

1209: Further Adventures in Fudz

As I noted the other day, one of the fun things about our trip to Toronto is that we've had the opportunity to sample some of the city's more colourful eating establishments. Mark and Lynette both know the places that Torontonians (I bet they hate being called that) visit on a regular basis rather than the inevitably much more expensive touristy places in touristy areas. Consequently, we've had the opportunity to eat well for relatively reasonable prices — Mark and Lynette refer to a $20 bill as a "yuppie food stamp" and it's easy to see why, since the vast majority of meals we've had while we've been here have come out somewhere in the region of $20 each.

We've had a lot of Asian cuisine of various descriptions since we've been here, as I noted the other day. Today I added to the range of Asian foods that I've experienced by having a taste of okonomiyaki. I had no idea whatsoever what okonomiyaki was prior to today, but I had at least heart of it — the character Kirari in the visual novel Kira Kira (which is eminently worth your time, by the way) is obsessed with it.

I was half expecting okonomiyaki to be something similar to takoyaki — the small fried rice flour balls filled with octopus meat and other goo, then drizzled with Japanese mayonnaise. Okonomiyaki is, as it turns out, absolutely nothing like takoyaki. No; rather than being small bite-sized thingies like takoyaki, okonomiyaki is instead somewhat akin to a cross between a potato cake and an omelette, with lashings of a rich barbecue sauce-style substance slathered all over the top of it. I forget exactly what the omelette-type-thing was made from and am far too tired to actually research it at this hour in the morning, but it was quite tasty. Like an omelette, it could also be made with a variety of different fillings, ranging from beef to shrimp or squid. I had a squid one to make up for the fact I didn't have a squid taco at Banh Mi Boys the other day, so I now feel suitably guilty about devouring some of Ika Musume's relatives.

I wasn't quite sure what I was going to make of okonomiyaki, as I was aware going into it that it was made with onions, which those who know me well will know are a vegetable I despise with a great passion. (I had terrible trouble growing up convincing my parents that I really genuinely didn't like onions, despite actually retching at the dinner table when I could taste them on several occasions; the fact that being able to taste onion today still makes me retch makes me feel somewhat vindicated that I wasn't just being an awkward child about them.) Fortunately, however, the onions were shredded up to such a degree (not to mention having had the shit fried out of them) that they were inoffensive to my palate's delicate sensibilities, and consequently there was no retching.

Actually, I enjoyed the okonomiyaki very much. I'm pleased I tried it; I'm not sure it's my favourite of all the Japanese food I've tried to date, but I am happy that I've tasted it and now know what to expect should I find myself ordering it again.

Now all we have to do is complete the "Japanese trifecta" by having sushi one night this week and we'll be all Asianed out.

1207 Part 2: Food Travels

Here's a full update to make up for the pitiful effort last night. Apologies for that, but I was in far too much pain to even contemplate writing more than a couple of sentences at the time. I was even sick. You really wanted to know that, didn't you? Of course you did. BLAAAARGH.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to talk about in last night's post was one of my favourite aspects of travel: food. I'm not necessarily talking about sampling local cuisine — which here in Toronto would probably be poutine, I guess — but wandering around and having a chance to sample some local eateries, and eat some interesting food that you might not be able to get back home.

Toronto is particularly good for Asian eateries of various descriptions. Yesterday we sampled two of them: the Banh Mi Boys sandwich shop, and Kinton Ramen.

Banh Mi Boys is a pokey little shop that often has queues extending out of the door. They serve a variety of Vietnamese-inspired food that includes Asian-style tacos — floppy rather than crispy — and steamed rice flour buns known as bao. They also do Vietnamese-style baguettes, the titular banh mi, which are a decent meal in themselves. We tried the tacos and the bao, both of which were delicious. I had pulled pork in my bao and some sort of spicy beef in my taco — there were several different options on offer besides these, including squid tacos, which I sort of regret I didn't try now, even if eating them would make me feel a bit guilty towards Ika Musume-chan.

Kinton Ramen, meanwhile, is fairly self-explanatory. It's a ramen shop. All they do is ramen and a few side dishes. They do do several different types of ramen, to be fair, but if you don't want ramen this is probably not the place to come. I must confess to not being overly familiar with ramen, as it's something we don't seem to get all that much of back in the U.K., but the couple of occasions I have had it in the past have been thoroughly enjoyable.

For those unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine, eating "ramen" generally involves getting an enormous bowl full of broth made from pork bones (with the amount of fat used in it determining how "rich" it is) which is then filled with ramen noodles, vegetables such as beansprouts, nori and various other bits and pieces, and typically topped with a lump of pork. Some also have a whole egg in them — sometimes this is served chopped, but at Kinton, there's just a whole egg dropped in it, which is quite amusing. You then proceed to consume the whole bowl using a combination of chopsticks and a wooden Japanese soup spoon. At Kinton, they take your photo if you finish the whole thing, which is actually quite an achievement — there's a lot of food there, and due to the way it's structured, it often looks like you're not making any progress with it for a very long time. Like the Persona 4 beef bowl, if you will.

Anyway, that should hopefully make up for last night. And hopefully my headache will fuck off and die now.

1206: My Holiday, by Pete, Age 32

I am still on holiday, or "vacation" as you crazy Americans call it, and I'm having a great time. A significant proportion of this can be attributed to our gracious hosts Mark and Lynette, whom I've been looking forward to coming to visit again for the past several years. It's a bummer not living near the vast majority of my friends, most of whom live in various parts of North America and a few of whom live even further afield than that. This means that the opportunity to actually spend some time with people who mean a lot to me is something that I will seize whenever possible.

The other part of the reason I'm having a great time is simply the fact that I'm on holiday with absolutely no commitments or worries right now. It's a thoroughly pleasant feeling to be in a position where I know I can just enjoy myself without having to think about getting work done, or live up to any responsibilities, or anything like that. It's a feeling I haven't had for quite some time, so I'm taking full advantage of the opportunity while I can.

Today has been a lazy day. Andie has been feeling a little under the weather as a side-effect of being a bit ill shortly before we left, so we took it easy for the day. Most of our time has been spent sitting around playing video games, watching TV and generally just hanging out. Some people may think it's a waste to come three and a half thousand miles to do things that I'd do at home anyway, but combine the opportunity to relax without responsibilities with the chance to hang out with friends I literally haven't seen face-to-face for years — despite talking to them most days thanks to the Intertubes — and that sounds like a thoroughly good time to me.

I'm a very easy guest. Provide me with a couch to sit on, something to look at and occasionally someone to talk to and I'm happy. I never feel obliged to be doing stuff constantly, unlike many other people I know. (That's not a passive-aggressive thing — it's simply the fact I know different people like to holiday in different ways.) I'm very happy just sitting around relaxing and doing things I enjoy with people I like rather than always being on the go, trying to cram as many "sights" into a short period of time as possible. To me, that way lies madness; I go on holiday to chill out and relax, not to be stressed out trying to mark things off on an imaginary, arbitrary checklist.

Basically, all is well in the world, and the holiday period is progressing pleasingly slowly. By the time I return, I should be ready to face whatever the future has in store for me.

1204: Torontonia

We went out and about for a bit in Toronto earlier, primarily to pick up some computer bits for my friend Mark to build his "Steam Box" PC but also to get some dinner and have a little wander. Again I was struck with this city's enormous diversity.

It is, for me, one of Toronto's most defining characteristics, and one which you can notice very quickly upon spending some time downtown, or even out in the greater Toronto area. Go for a walk and you'll be in one distinctive district one moment — perhaps Chinatown — but then you'll round a corner and suddenly it'll be suburban-style houses with lots of greenery. It's quite disconcerting at first, but you soon realise it's part of the city's character.

Today we had a wander in the Kensington area, which is fascinating to walk around. It's difficult to describe exactly what it's like, but there's a definite sort of Latin/Central American vibe going on, with lots of pokey little shops, many of which have their wares strewn all over the street outside them.

We happened to find an amazing video games shop in the middle of all this. From the outside it looked like just another crappy used games store, but inside it was like a treasure trove of Every Game I Want To Play Ever. Seriously. I have either played or very much want to play every title on the back wall of that place. It even had some rare offerings, such as the original Persona games for PS1 and rare stuff like Dracula X, Chrono Trigger and Mother 2 for SNES — all of which cost a pretty penny!

It's very warm here at the moment, which makes going out and walking for too long a little uncomfortable. I think I might invest in a pair of shorts while I'm here as I feel like wearing jeans is suffocating my legs!

1201: WE AR GOINGON HOLLYDAY TUMOROW

Well, we are. I'm looking forward to it a lot, even though my innate Britishness prevents me from showing any outward signs of it.

It's the first proper holiday either Andie or I have had for quite a while, and it's the first one I've had for ages where I haven't had to do at least some work in it. (As it happens, depending on when my new gig starts, I may find myself having to do some work while I'm out there, but at present I'm as free as a bird, which is a very pleasant feeling indeed.)

Holidays are ludicrously expensive, aren't they? Well, depending on where you go, obviously. But for the most part, if you want to go somewhere nice and/or abroad, you'll generally find yourself having to pay through the nose just to get there, and then a whole bunch on top of that once you are there, assuming you actually want to, you know, do stuff. Fortunately, we're lucky enough to have some friends where we're going (all right, the primary reason we're going on holiday is to visit them) and as such the expenses while we're actually there will be significantly less than had we had to find a hotel for the time we're out there. So thank you enormously to our gracious hosts for putting up with us!

This will be the second time I've visited Toronto. I really enjoyed my last trip there, as it's an interesting city. Those who live there probably take it all for granted by now, but I was struck by its incredibly multicultural nature. I'm not talking like British multicultural, either, where you have districts that are predominantly Asian, Polish, whatever — no, I'm talking about this strange and wonderful thing Toronto has going on where you'll be walking down one street and it's Chinatown, then you'll walk down another and the architecture is completely and utterly different and the people are likewise completely and utterly different. It's quite chaotic, in a sense, but in a thoroughly pleasant sort of way.

The other reason I'm looking forward to visiting Toronto, of course, is the people we're going to visit. Mark and Lynette are some very dear friends whom I haven't seen face-to-face since 2010 and my trip to PAX East, at which I got to meet a whole bunch of people from the Squadron of Shame for the first time. I've often said that that trip was one of the most genuinely happy times of my life, and I stand by that; the fond memories are made all the more potent by the fact that everything else in my life pretty much fell to pieces shortly after that trip, but fortunately, as long-time followers will know, things are in a much better place for me now.

I'm looking forward to seeing Mark and Lynette (and their friends, too, some of whom I'm already acquainted with) because they are My Kind of People — people with whom I can nerd out about Persona, anime, JRPGs, board games and all manner of other geeky stuff. Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoy spending time with my friends who live near me here in Southampton, but very few of them are "into" the same things to quite such a degree as I am. Sure, a lot of them are gamers to varying degrees, but an unfortunate side-effect of the games industry's diversity these days is that not everyone is into the same things. One of my regular board gaming buddies is massively into Minecraft and Skyrim, for example, whereas I think I'm pretty much "over" both of those games, largely because I have such an astonishingly huge Pile of Shame to play through and thus don't really want to devote any time to two potentially endless experiences. I don't really know many people in this country — certainly not anyone I can just pop over for a coffee with — who would get quite so excited about, say, Ar Tonelico or Trauma Team as me.

Still, I guess in one sense this is a sort of good thing — I'm grasping here, I know — because it makes those rare opportunities to get together with Your Kind of People special occasions to be enjoyed and treasured. I'm hoping the coming two weeks will be memorable and fun not only for me and Andie, but for Mark, Lynette and anyone else who gets involved, too. There will doubtless be plenty of board and video games along the way, plus eating good food with good friends.

Can't wait. So I should probably get to bed so I don't miss our flight in the morning, huh? Catch you on the other side of the Atlantic, then.

1200: It Was Just a Joke

Playing Robot Unicorn Attack 2 on the toilet earlier, a question came to me. It's been lingering in my mind for a few days, actually, but as I was there attempting to better my score and ensure supremacy for Team Rainbow in the twilight hours of the second of May, 2013 — Team Inferno probably have it in the bag, sadly — it struck me that perhaps Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is taking itself a bit too seriously.

And then this, naturally, led my mind on to ponder "how far is too far?" for things that are, essentially, jokes, memes, gags, whatever you want to call them. Because that's what the original Robot Unicorn Attack was — a joke. An immensely popular joke, yes — one million plays within a week of its release, apparently, and plenty more since then — but still a joke. This much is probably self-evident from its title. It is a game called Robot Unicorn Attack. No-one has called a video game something quite so literal and ridiculous and meant it since the 1980s.

And yet here we are in 2013 with Robot Unicorn Attack 2, a surprisingly well fleshed-out expansion of the original's "endless runner" gameplay that features online asynchronous cooperative "community" goals, an upgradeable unicorn, a levelling system, downloadable content, a bonus level unlockable if you either progress far enough in the game or stump up enough in-game currency, and all manner of other things. It's not the deepest game in the world, but it is a mobile phone game — and, more to the point, it is a mobile phone game that understands the sort of experience that is sensible and practical to put on a mobile phone. (It's also one of the less offensive examples of the "freemium" model I've seen recently, though the pop-up adverts are a bit gross.)

It's hard to explain, but it just feels a bit "wrong". It feels like it's not a joke any more. I hesitate to use the words "sold out" but… well, yes, it's sold out. It's Robot Unicorn Attack, but monetised out the wazoo to be profitable, whereas the original was a freeware Flash game that anyone could play without having to pay a penny.

I think that "monetisation" part is the key defining characteristic that determines "how far is too far" when it comes to jokes — particularly ones which started on the Internet. By the time money gets involved — i.e. it gets incorporated into something which is sold, or used to advertise something else for profit — it is probably already well past its sell-by date.

I can think of a number of examples where this has happened in advertising in particular. Take the advertisements for the price comparison website Go Compare, for example. For quite a while, these featured an irritating moustachio'd arsehole singing the service's jingle over and over again in various different styles. Everyone got immensely irritated with it. So, naturally, what the "clever" marketers did was leverage the fact that everyone was irritated with the "Go Compare Man" and put out some ads in which he was subjected to various indignities. But by that point, everyone had already pretty much just moved on to wanting to fire everyone involved with Go Compare into the sun and never hearing of their stupid company ever again. (Any time I need insurance, I will not go to their stupid site on principle any more.)

See also: the number of pointless mobile apps that have attempted to incorporate any combination of Nyan Cat, Gangnam Style, the Harlem Shake or any other "viral" sensation out there. Viral sensations are a marketer's dream — they provide a ready-made audience, so long as you can inextricably link one annoying thing with a specific brand. The audience doesn't even have to like the annoying thing — they just have to start thinking of these things not as "Gangnam Style" but as "that music off the [Brand X] advert".

I often wonder how a lot of marketers sleep at night knowing that their career is, essentially, to irritate people as much as possible. It surely can't be satisfying to flick on the TV, see a Go Compare advert and think "I did that."

Still, I guess they'd probably say the same about a games journalist's output. Oh well. Each to their own, I guess.