#oneaday, Day 313: The Pile of Shame, November 2010 Edition

We're coming up on holiday season. If you're American, it's already started with Thanksgiving. And you know what that means if you're a gamer: Steam sales.

Steam sales are terrible, awful things in the most wonderful way imaginable. Top quality games up to 90% off their regular price. Bundles of games a fraction of the cost of their individual components. And, of course, the resignation to the fact that your Pile of Shame will inevitably be getting bigger, because after all, you'd be stupid not to purchase these games while they're so cheap, right?

Right. Glad we're on the same page. With that in mind, and with my broke-and-unemployed status in mind, I thought I would attempt to list my current Pile(s) of Shame in an attempt to convince me that I don't really need Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, despite the fact that I'd very much like to play the multiplayer with the Squadron of Shame.

All right. Here goes. Let's start with the least-depressing part of the list:

Games I'm Currently Playing And Intend To Finish Before Playing Or Buying Anything Else, Dammit

Deadly Premonition (Xbox 360) – fantastic game, and contender for Game of the Year 2010 in my eyes. Definite contender for "most memorable protagonist of all time" and "best ensemble cast". And "worst use of next-gen graphics technology", but that's really not the issue here.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Xbox 360) – one of the most entertaining driving games I've ever played, and looking likely to be the second driving game I ever beat, after Split/Second. I would beat this much quicker if the stupid Autolog "YOUR FRIEND BEAT YOU BY 0.02 SECONDS! DON'T YOU THINK YOU SHOULD GO AND BEAT THEM?!" thing wasn't in place… but that's part of the fun.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (Xbox 360) – You can't "finish" this, unless you give up on it after getting all the Achievements, which you will do after approximately 30 minutes of play. But it's worth noting that this is perhaps the perfect retro reimagining. It's Pac-Man, but not Pac-Man. It has the perfect blend of frantic gameplay coupled with some modes that actually force you to think quite a bit.

Games I Stopped Playing When I Got Deadly Premonition But Intend To Go Back To When I've Finished Deadly Premonition, Dammit

Fallout: New Vegas (Xbox 360) – Controversial to some, but I was enjoying this a bunch more than Fallout 3. I'm a particular fan of how much the main quest appears to branch.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3) – Epic is not the word. A stunning soundtrack and the most gorgeous graphics I've seen since Uncharted 2. Looking forward to getting back into this one.

Games I Think I Should Probably Play At Some Point But Don't Own, Dammit

Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood – I played a bit of the first one and enjoyed it, but traded it in when something better came out, as I recall. I'd like to go back to it and play through the whole series, up to and including Brotherhood. The multiplayer in Brotherhood is a lot of fun, for sure.

The Mario Galaxy series – I have not played a mainline Mario game since Sunshine, which I didn't like much. I hear the two Galaxies are rather good, though.

Games I'm Not Sure If I Want But Think I Might At Some Point, Maybe When They're A Bit Cheaper, Like After Christmas, Dammit

Gran Turismo 5 (PS3) – I said on Twitter yesterday that I probably wouldn't bother with this, but I've since watched a few videos and read a few bits and pieces and it sounds potentially interesting, if a bit flawed in its current state. I like cars, too, though I don't know anything about gear ratios and whatnot, apart from the fact my friend Woody and I once got some Mitsubishi thing up to over 300km/h in the original Gran Turismo by playing with gear ratios and not really knowing what we were doing.

Fable III (Xbox 360) – I really enjoyed Fable II, late to the party as I was, and I was impressed with Fable III's initial showing at the Eurogamer Expo. But reports of it have been far too mixed for my liking, coupled with the fact that you can exploit the game's main "moral dilemma" by simply leaving your console turned on overnight for a couple of days. Still, I like the voice cast, I like the concept and I do like the Fable world, so perhaps I'll come to this one very late like I did with Fable II.

And now, the main event(s). I'm going to split this into several lists to be less depressing.

Games I Own And Haven't Played At All Yet And Feel A Bit Bad About, Dammit

Steam

And Yet It Moves
Gish
HeXen II
Jade Empire
Jolly Rover
King's Bounty: The Legend
Multiwinia
Puzzle Agent
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
Sam & Max 105, 106, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205
Time Gentlemen, Please!
Unreal II
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 3
X-COM: Terror from the Deep
X-COM: Apocalypse

Console

killer7 (PS2)
Resident Evil 4 (PS2)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)

Games I Have Played Before (Maybe A Few Times) And Enjoyed, And Intend To Go Back And Finish Sometime (Probably Restarting From The Beginning… Again) Because They Were Rather Good, Really, Dammit

Steam/PC

Aquaria
Darwinia
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
King's Bounty: Armored Princess
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Mount & Blade
Peggle Nights
Plants vs Zombies
Torchlight
TrackMania United
Trials 2
Unreal Gold
Vampire: Bloodlines
The Witcher
World of Goo
X-COM: UFO Defense
Baldur's Gate II
Icewind Dale
Ghost Master
Realms of Arkania
Myst
Riven
URU
Martian Memorandum
Mean Streets

Handhelds

Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (GBA)
R-Type Command (PSP)
Ratchet and Clank: I Forgot The Subtitle (PSP)
Final Fantasy Tactics (PSP, though I have beaten the PS1 version)

Xbox LIVE Arcade

Castle Crashers
Lode Runner
Peggle
Perfect Dark
Puzzle Quest
Rocket Riot
Shadow Complex
Splosion Man
Super Meat Boy

Consoles

ICO (PS2)
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame, PS2)
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (PS2)
Persona 3: FES (PS2)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Darksiders (PS3)
Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
3D Dot Game Heroes (PS3)
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii)
Zak and Wiki Make A Porno… wait, that's not right, whatever it was called (Wii)
Demon's Souls (PS3)
Disgaea 3 (aka The Game I Always Forget I Actually Own, PS3)

Games I Own But Will Probably Never Finish Even If I Kept Playing Them Non-Stop Until The End Of Time, Either Because Of Immense Difficulty Or Sheer Volume Of Content Therein But I'm Still Glad I Played Them, Dammit

Alien Hominid HD (XBLA, difficulty)
Braid (XBLA, difficulty, overratedness)
Forza 3 (Xbox 360, volume of content)
Trials 2: SE (Steam, difficulty)

Games I Own And Have Finished But Would Like To Go Back And Replay Or 100% Or Achievement Whore Them, Dammit

Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360, would like to play Awakening too)
Bayonetta (Xbox 360)
Canis Canem Edit/Bully (PS2, though I'd like to try the Xbox 360 version)
Persona 4 (PS2)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Steam)
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (PC)

Sooo… maybe I don't need to play the Assassin's Creed series just yet, huh.

#oneaday, Day 312: Quest Complete: C25K

I've been somewhat short of what one might call "victories" recently. In fact, most of my endeavours for the last I-don't-know-how-long-now have ended in what could politely be called failure. As such, I've been in a bit of a funk recently, getting very tired of… well, everything, really.

So when an actual, genuine, bona fide victory-slash-achievement rears its head, by golly I'm going to celebrate it.

Tonight I completed the nine week Couch 2 5K running programme, introduced to me by one Mr Calin Grajko, who is a really cool guy and, I have it on good authority, doesn't afraid of anything. I've mentioned this a few times previously, but for those of you who can't be bothered to look back a few entries, have joined me recently or who are having trouble finding exactly what you want using the search box (which is fine by me), let me explain.

Over the course of nine weeks, you go from being someone who "can't run" to someone who, well, can. The first week begins with you running for a minute at a time, then walking for 90 seconds, then repeating this process several times. Each week ups the ante somewhat until you reach the final week when, in theory, you should be able to run for 30 minutes at a time without stopping.

When I started the programme, I seriously doubted that I'd ever be able to do more than a couple of minutes at a time. I deliberately hadn't looked at what horrors the end of the programme had to offer because I figured the system shock would just put me off and demotivate me. So it was a genuine surprise each week to find out what I'd be doing. It was a big surprise in the last few weeks when the jumps started getting bigger.

But I'm pleased to announce that I can now run for 30 minutes without stopping. It's not easy, sure, and I'm not quite at that elusive 5K distance just yet (not far off, though—my best distance in 30 minutes is 2.99 miles, just under the 3.1 miles that roughly equates to a 5K) but I figure I can get there with a bit more training. Tonight, I felt a noticeable increase in my speed, for example, though that disappeared with the hilly bits towards the end of tonight's run.

The important thing with any exercise regime is motivation, and making sure you keep this motivation flowing in both the short and long term. By "short term", I mean "while you're doing your exercise", and by "long term" I mean "the duration of the programme and beyond".

Through this programme, I think I've got both of those things pretty comfortably sorted. The long-term motivation is handled nicely by the programme itself—making constant, regular, measurable progress is motivation in and of itself. Plus telling friends that you've completed week whatever-it-is is something you can genuinely take pride in, particularly if your friends are appreciative of what you've been trying to do.

The short-term motivation—keeping going while in the middle of a session—can be harder. If you run out of energy, you run out of energy. Part of this is about pacing yourself, but it's also about not getting too bored of what you're doing as well.

As such, I have made sure to have some banging playlists on my iPhone while out on my running sessions, matched reasonably well-ish with the timings of each session. Me being me, these songs have mostly fallen into the video game soundtrack category. Conveniently, though, the generally regular tempo and "inspiring" nature of a lot of game music makes it entirely appropriate for use in exercising. So without further pontificating on the philosophy of exercise (there are plenty of people out there who can comment on it with much more authority than I) I will share with you my playlist for tonight's run. iPhone users, tap the song titles to play the tunes. Everyone else, you should have a fancy-pants Flash player to play each song with.

Warm-Up: The Elite (from Split/Second)

The Split/Second soundtrack was a fixture on my playlists. For the first few weeks, my playlist consisted solely of the Split/Second soundtrack. Because it's awesome. And free. But this song in particular was an excellent warm-up track because it builds up a bit at a time. There's also a spooky bit in the middle with jangly guitars that is great when you're going out at night-time. During this piece, I was doing my 5-minute walk as a warmup for the main event.

Get Ready: Operation Briefing (from Trauma Center: Second Opinion)

The sole reason this song is in there is so that the woman on the GetRunning app which gives verbal coaching for the C25K programme has something unnecessarily dramatic to talk over while she's briefing you about how long you'll be running for. Timing the start of playback perfectly will mean that you start running with the next piece, which is…

Go!: Friend (from Bayonetta)

If you've never played Bayonetta, know that it's a study in glorious excess. SPOILER: There is a bit where you ride a motorbike up a rocket into space in order to go and rescue the titular Bayonetta, who has gotten herself trapped in the crystalline eye of God, who happens to be a large female statue that is more than a bit pissed off. This music is from that bit. And it's awesome. It's also perfect music to get you pumped up and moving. The tempo is a good pace for running to.

Jenova Returns (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

And so begins a set of Final Fantasy VII pieces, or more specifically some awesome remixes by the immensely talented community at OCRemix. When this piece gets all dramatic in the middle, I was just hitting my stride tonight. Which was good.

Beginning of the End (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

This is one of my favourite pieces from FFVII. The original version always used to get my pulse racing as the final battle with Sephiroth began. Used at this point in the playlist, I was just starting to feel the proverbial "burn" a bit, and the overdramatic nature of it helped push me through.

Black Wing Metamorphosis (from Final Fantasy VII, OCRemix album)

This is a great, creative remix of the song that everyone knows from FFVII—the final boss theme, One Winged Angel. Bad-ass choirs and screaming guitars? That sounds like motivation to me.

Final Battle: Opportunity (from Skies of Arcadia)

You may be spotting something of a pattern with these pieces. Since it was my last run, I figured I'd make it something of an "occasion" with some ridiculously overdramatic music. The Skies of Arcadia final boss theme is neat because it starts ominous, threatening and dramatic and turns triumphant and victorious by the end. In-game, these changes happened according to how well the battle was going, so you could tell aurally when you were winning. Knowing this sent me subconscious signals that I was on the home straight.

Possibly.

Panic Attack (by Dream Theater)

I loved this song ever since I first encountered it in Rock Band 2, where it gave my fingers something of a workout. And cramp. It's also, like, deep and stuff, cause I can, like, totally relate to the lyrics and whatnot, yeah?

In an exercise sense, it's fast, gets the adrenaline flowing and has the line "rapid heartbeat pounding in my chest" in the middle of it. So it's, like, appropriate.

Of course, it also has the line "I am terrified, so afraid to die" in it. Which, depending on your fitness level, may also be appropriate.

Navras (from The Matrix Revolutions)

Ever since I first heard this piece, I thought it would be an awesome accompaniment to some sort of final battle. In fact, a variation on this piece called Neodämmerung is used in the final battle with Mr Smith in The Matrix Revolutions. This piece, to my mind, though, is superior and is only used in the end credits.

So why not have this piece as the grand finale to the nine-week push? Why not indeed. Conveniently, my 30 minutes were up just as it got to the slow bit in the middle, so I got to cool down to some trippy floaty ethnic-sounding warbling. Which was nice.

So, in summary, then? Keep your motivation up (possibly through the use of some banging tunes) and you can achieve whatever goal you want. I've achieved one, which is something of a relief after so many things that have gone wrong over the last couple of years.

Now, just another 50-something posts to go to achieve another goal…

#oneaday, Day 311: Monstrosities of the Indie Marketplace

As I have mentioned once or twice previously, the Xbox LIVE Indie Games Marketplace is a veritable treasure-trove of unappreciated hidden gems of gaming.

It's also an uncleaned litter tray of some of the worst fecal matter you'll ever have the misfortune to play. Still, all credit to those developers for actually finishing a project and getting out there for the public to at least try out. And if they sell just one "pity copy", then they can call themselves a professional game developer.

Even if their game is one of the following, which I have exhaustively researched (well, played the trials of) in order to bring you today's blog post, featuring the very worst the Indie Marketplace has to offer.

Well, perhaps not the very worst. I was highly scientific in the games I chose: I picked the ones with the ugliest or cheesiest cover art on the marketplace or, in one case, the most hilarious title. And here are my results.

Spring Break in Zombie USA

This game promises "action" and "driving". In practice, it's a twin-stick shooter where you have to press a fire button as well as move the right-stick, and occasionally you jump into a car and drive up a vertically-scrolling road that is completely straight with no obstacles on it whatsoever.

The concept is that you are racing down to Spring Break to rescue your sister, who has, as these things tend to go, got stuck in a zombie apocalypse. It's up to you, as either a long-haired rocker dude or a pimped-out black guy with a bitchin' hat (presumably it's an adoptive sister to one or both of them) to shoot lots of MS Paint zombies that take entirely too many bullets to take down and move too fast for you to be able to escape or kill them before they "get" you.

Oh well. At least the soundtrack is actually reasonably good, at least on the title screen.

Pie Collect

The title of this one is extremely literal. You play a small orb known as a "sweeper", whose job it is to collect pies, which are inexplicably floating in space. Collecting a pie releases an evil orb, which moves back and forth or up and down across the screen. There are a few powerups, but you only have one life.

It has a certain Crystal Quest-esque charm about it, but any challenge in the game is entirely negated by the "safe zone" at the bottom of the screen, represented by a picnic blanked that is also inexplicably floating in space, and allows you to safely navigate around all the orbs, putting you at minimal risk.

A Game you can't BEAT!!

Erratic capitalisation is as the game represents itself on the Marketplace. This is essentially one of those Impossible Game-style things where you control some sort of inanimate object/shape and have to jump and not die. In this case, you control one of three different balls, and there is a simultaneous two-player mode.

It's extremely difficult but there is little to no incentive to try again, though there are a few quasi-Achievement medals to chase in the full version. But when the "Easy course" repeatedly kills you after approximately eight seconds every time, that's just taking difficulty a little too far.

Valet Parking, Inc.

This one wins the "cheesiest artwork" award, with a girl in a "sexy parking attendant" costume on the cover art who clearly has nothing to do with the game whatsoever beside a rough association with the theme of the game, which is parking cars.

It's actually a moderately-interesting idea for a game. Cars show up, you park them wherever you like, keep an eye on the clock and give them back to appropriately-coloured customers when they return. You also have "hunger" and "stamina" meters that gradually deplete as you run around and spend time doing your job, so you have to take a break every so often.

Trouble is, the cars handle really weirdly. They seem to rotate around their back wheels, which makes controlling them somewhat troublesome. They also have a weird acceleration curve that goes "slow… slow… slow… SUDDENLY FAST"

The graphics are entertainingly mid-90s pre-rendered, too. And the in-game clock can't handle times that have "00" as the minutes value, so the clock moves from "12:59" straight to "13:01", for example.

Still, with a bit of polish this could actually be a moderately fun "time management" game. You can tell it's the best by the fact I've written more than two paragraphs on it.

Super Janitoroid

Obviously intended to be some sort of Super Metroid spoof, this game stars an Aussie janitor represented by a crudely-drawn body with a digitised head atop it. He is armed with a badly-drawn mop which can attack horizontally and vertically, and there's a large map to explore in a Metroid stylee.

It also has one of the most horrendously awful frame rates I've ever seen on an Xbox 360 game, which makes your eyes go squiffy after a while. Assuming they haven't already gone squiffy from the bizarre graphics.

Techno Kitten Adventure

Save the best for last. Techno Kitten Adventure is a single-button game in which you control a kitten with a jetpack as it attempts to fly around a series of box-shaped obstacles.

The twist with this game is the horrendously awful Euro-dance soundtrack which is annoyingly catchy. This fact is made even worse by the titter-inducing fact that the background animates according to the lyrics of the song, featuring rainbows flowing past, falling stars, throbbing techno laser light shows and lots and lots of flashing lights.

This game is worth playing purely to see its hilarious "interactive music video" nature. Thankfully, you don't actually have to play it, as the song and background animation continue even while you're waiting at the "press A to start" screen, meaning you can watch the whole thing without having to purchase the game. Which is probably for the best.

—

So there you go. I've played those games so you don't have to. I hope you appreciate the sacrifices that I've made for you. And you really should play Techno Kitten Adventure to appreciate its horrendous…ness.

I'm trying not to be too harsh on these games, though. Because the thing is, I couldn't make something half as good as Techno Kitten Adventure. I wouldn't know where to start with programming for the 360. So, as bizarre and, in some cases, awful as these games are, you should at least give the developers some props for getting out there, trying to make something and having the guts to release it to the world so people like me can rip them to shreds on blogs they'll never read.

So fair play, guys. I'm sure it's all good practice.

#oneaday, Day 310: Don't Be Hatin'

Somehow I don't think that anyone who is reading this blog will fall into the category that I'm about to talk about, but I'll direct this at everyone generally just in case.

Have you used any kind of expression involving the word "haters" recently in a non-ironic sense? I have one simple request to you: stop it. You sound like an idiot.

I don't know who was the first person to decide that posting something along the lines of "I don't give a fuck about the haters" (or, more accurately, usually "i dont giv a fuk abt da haterz!!!") was a great idea and made them look Deep And Stuff™, but it's a plague on far too many people on the Internet, many of whom are clearly desperately wishing they were from a socioeconomic and/or ethnic group other than their own.

The latest person to come out with some such bullshit was none other than British Formula 1 racing driver, Lewis Hamilton, who earlier tweeted "To those of u who care, thanks for ur support, am on here for u. To all u haters…I jus don't give a fuck haha" [sic]. The tweet has since been removed, suggesting one of two possibilities: 1) McLaren got in touch and told Lewis to stop pretending to be 50 Cent (who tweets nonsense like that all the time, but inexplicably occasionally censors himself when he says "shit") or 2) the tweet wasn't by him in the first place. Either are entirely plausible.

But let's assume, for the sake of rantitude, that it actually was Hamilton. Twitter promptly exploded at the fact that a high-profile sports personality who normally came across as a nice, if rather boring, young man on television knows the "fuck" word. Some people even seemed to think that his "taking a stand" like this was somehow admirable. I thought it made him come across as a bit of a cock.

The thing is, in my experience, any time I've seen anyone coming out with the "screw u haterz" nonsense, they are desperately insecure and usually spoiling for a fight. Perhaps they like to post unpopular views, troll forums or simply act like a complete penis online. Never once have I come across someone who posts in full sentences and understands what punctuation is who has said "I don't give a fuck abt da haterz" or similar.

The knock-on effect of this is that it causes people like me, who put a lot of stock in the written word, to judge the people who say this sort of thing, perhaps unfairly. Nine times out of ten (I made that up) the people who post things in this manner online are white middle-class teenagers who desperately, desperately wish they were a street-smart hip-hop gangsta, yo, preferably packing a piece. (I feel extremely middle-class and very English just typing those words. Oh well. Fine by me.) Quite why they want to come across as a "thug" (their word) is beyond me.

So, then, consider it a warning. If you start talking about "haters" and your indifference towards them, I will judge you. And it will not be a favourable judgement.

And Lewis Hamilton? If that was you tweeting that nonsense, I now think you are a cock instead of simply a moderately boring person. Guess I'm a "hater". At least you don't give a fuck.

#oneaday, Day 309: One Of Those Days

Nearly everyone I've spoken to has had an absolutely terrible day today. If you are one of those people who has had a terrible day, I offer my sympathies, condolences, fistbumps, high fives, whattups, hugs, manly nipple tweaks or cock-punches (take your pick) and understand entirely if you're currently feeling a bit less-than-optimum.

Me, I'm right there with you. I too have had a pretty rubbish day. For starters, I had a job interview. That in itself is not, in fact, rubbish. It's something which should be celebrated and applauded, given the length of time I've been jobhunting without success. However, the fact that I drove 120 miles for said interview only to discover at the interview that the job in question was only likely to be for four or five hours a week? That was rather more irritating. Particularly as the interview itself was lengthy, stressful and presided over by one quite attractive and pleasant woman and one rather rude lady. I spent the whole day with bubbling bowels, and for what? Naff all, it seems.

I then had to drive 120 miles back home. Fortunately, I'd done the driving there last night, as I didn't fancy going there and back in one day. But, as luck would have it, tonight was National Traffic And Roadworks Appreciation Day, with everyone driving extra-slowly to admire the one set of roadworks on the M25, then the next set of roadworks on the M25, then the roadworks in the Hatfield Tunnel on the A1(M), then the roadworks about two miles further up on the A1(M). All told, it took somewhere in the region of A Very Long Time to get home, during which I was feeling very tired and a bit embittered at the fact I'd pretty much wasted a day I could have spent doing far better and/or more productive things.

Sadly, the surprises the day had to offer didn't end there, either. I knew that today I'd be hearing from another job—one that I was particularly enthusiastic about and very much looking forward to the possibility of doing—so I was prepared, but feeling reasonably confident after my interview and my contact with the employers in question. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Apparently I was near the top of the list, just not top of the list. Perhaps it was one of those situations where they just had to pick one person or the other. And, as luck would have it, it wasn't me.

In some senses, it's a bit of a lottery, applying for a job you really want. Because all the preparation in the world, all the confidence you exude in the interview, all the important buzzwords you try and drop into conversation, all the thought-provoking questions you provide; sometimes it just comes down to a simple choice. And sometimes that choice isn't going to favour you.

I just kind of think it's about time one of those choices did favour me, hmm?

#oneaday, Day 308: Google Is Your Middleman Preventing Effective Communication

Ladies and gentlemen, we are afflicted with a plague of the Information Age. The plague of "Google/the search bar is your friend". A plague of laziness, if you will, as this is a catch-all response which makes it look like you're being vaguely helpful and/or knowledgeable when in fact all you're doing is being an arrogant asshole and trying to get out of answering a question as quickly as possible.

Google is wonderful, of course. It is generally possible to find the information you're looking for quite quickly, especially if you're familiar with some of those handy tips and tricks on how to phrase your search query. But sometimes—just sometimes—you want a human response to a question. So you ask people. You might ask them on a forum. You might ask them on Twitter. You might email someone and ask about it.

If you receive one of these emails/tweets/forum posts and instinctively go for the "insert 'Google is your friend' template", I have one request.

Stop it.

Sometimes when someone is asking a question, they don't just want an answer. They want to open a discussion. They want to find out who knows things so they can get a better understanding of that person or the community. They might be new to the community and unaware that the question has been asked before. Or they might—get this—have already tried Googling it, been confronted with "about 7,190,000 results" in "0.23 seconds" ("how to change a lightbulb", for the curious) and been understandably intimidated, or unsure which one of the often-conflicting pages to believe.

Okay, "how to change a lightbulb" is perhaps a bad example as there aren't many pages out there that helpfully inform you that the best way to change a lightbulb is to stick it up your arse and then attempt to fart it into the socket. But take a question about, say, philosophy or a political perspective. Tons of pages out there are biased one way or another, and as such it might not be clear which one is the "correct" perspective. True, asking a person the same question is also open to bias. But at least when you're dealing with a person, you have the opportunity to question their point of view and for them to justify it.

Actually, instructional "how-to" guides aren't such a bad example. Let's say you have a non-standard light fitting, as I did in the bathroom of my old flat. I was unable to work out how to remove the cover for it as I didn't know what the fitting was called. I posted a photo online and people gave some suggestions. Eventually, I levered it off with the help of a stepladder and a teaspoon. I now consider myself adequately qualified to be able to help someone else in the same position, because surely I can't have been the only person in the world with a light fitting like that. So if anyone asks me about it, I'm not going to ram their face into Google, which they've probably already done. I'm going to give them an answer, even if said answer is readily available elsewhere on the Internet.

If you're a "Google is your friend"-er, then try taking just an extra minute or two out of your undoubtedly busy schedule to help someone out. You might find they appreciate it, rather than getting arsey about you sounding like a big know-it-all. So stop hiding behind Google and help a brotha/sista out. You might learn something, too.

#oneaday, Day 307: Wait. Terry Wait. Overwait. Call The Wait-er.

How much time do you think you waste every year waiting for things to happen? Whether it's waiting for the phone to ring, the response to an email, the answer to a question, an alarm to go off, someone to call you into their office or for your delicious improvised curry sauce to thicken, chances are you spend a good proportion of your time waiting for things to happen or for other people to do things.

Just think how much more we could all get done without all this waiting. Consider how long it takes someone from any Government agency to write back to you, drawing out what is usually an unpleasant process (why else would you be writing to an arm of the Government, were it not to complain about something?) even longer than necessary. Perhaps your question was a simple one that can be answered with one word—the words "yes" and "no" were invented for exactly this situation—but no. More often than not you'll receive a letter back informing you that they're "unable to action your correspondence" or, in English, "not able to reply to your letter" and demanding further details that you've already given them at least fifteen times.

This sort of thing is annoying and, in this age of instant communication, bordering on inexcusable. Who writes letters any more, anyway, for starters? Wake up and smell the electronics.

The trouble with taking this attitude, though, is that it starts to filter into other parts of your life. You find yourself wondering why the text message you sent thirty seconds ago hasn't been replied to yet, without thinking that the recipient may just have better things to do than respond to a message that simply says "COCK! PISS! PARTRIDGE!" because they might, in fact, have a job to do. You forget the context of a reply on Twitter because someone replied to something you posted four hours ago. And in the meantime, you sit staring at your computer screen, iPhone or, in the worst possible scenarios, your wall or ceiling. Because you might get that response you need in the next thirty seconds/minute/half an hour/hour/day and you couldn't possibly do anything useful in the meantime. But of course you can't send another message following it up because that's pushy and rude and you don't want to look like an asshole.

Well, bollocks to it. We need an inversion of this situation, where "important" things get resolved quickly rather than are "endeavoured to be responded to within 72 hours", and where it's okay for your friends, family and/or that hottie you texted to be quiet for a few seconds/minutes/hours/days at a time. Because let's face it, staring at a wall is marginally less productive than staring at a toaster waiting for it to pop.

Because at least if you stare at a toaster, you end up with some delicious toast. What's your wall ever going to give you?

#oneaday, Day 306: Need for Speed

My brother was good enough to send me a copy of the new Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. It arrived this morning and I've spent a fair amount of time putting it through its paces today. I shall now share my thoughts for the benefit of those of you considering it.

In very simple terms, it can be described as "Burnout with real cars". This is not in the slightest bit surprising, given developer Criterion's history. But this is through-and-through a Burnout game, right down to the ways you earn boost and the cinematic "crash camera". And not a Burnout Paradise interpretation of Burnout, either. Because although I loved that game, as did some of my friends, there are plenty of people out there who didn't like it much, either, for various reasons.

Hot Pursuit returns to the roots of both the Need for Speed and the Burnout series, in that it is about driving impossibly-expensive and shiny cars through a variety of circuits in an effort to Be The Fastest Mo-Fo In The World. There's no tacked-on story (besides the fact that the cops have outfitted themselves with some seriously heavy-duty automotive hardware) and no unnecessary fluff—it's just a map screen, a series of events and a bunch of cars to unlock gradually according to your progress. Those who did enjoy the free-roaming nature of past Need for Speed games as well as Burnout Paradise are free to drive around the sprawling game world as they please to find events, but those who prefer kicking it old-school can just select events from a map. Best of both worlds. You have to wonder why this hasn't been thought of previously.

The shining light in Hot Pursuit's arsenal of, err, light-emitting weapons (abandon metaphor!) is the Autolog system. Essentially an in-game social network, it sets out to do what Blur did, but better, and succeeds admirably. While racing any event, you have not only the single-player targets to beat, but also an "Autolog Recommends" target to beat, too. This way, when you do beat all the single-player events (and you will, eventually, because they're not that difficult, at least to begin with) you have plenty of incentive to go back and beat your friends. This incentive is made even better by the fact that you have a Facebook-style "wall" on which you can brag about your Achievements and even write your own custom messages and comments. There's a fairly heavy-duty naughty word filter in place, though, which inexplicably censored the post "This game is awesome. Time to take a break, now, though." in its entirety. I haven't seen bizarre censorship of this nature since Phantasy Star Online censored the words "shoes" and "Saturday" for having rude words in the middle of them.

Overzealous censorship aside, though, the Autolog feature is an excellent one. Every time you log in, assuming you have friends playing the game, you'll have a new set of challenges to beat. Autolog even recommends friends of friends that are playing the game whom you may want to add to your Xbox friends lists. This is a smart idea—again, why hasn't anyone thought to do this before?

Possibly my favourite thing, though, is the return of one of the best things about Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The cinematic "chase music" when you're being chased by cops. While the licensed soundtrack that plays in cop-free events is solid enough, though fairly forgettable, the orchestral, cinematic music that plays in Hot Pursuit events gets the pulse pounding and adds a sense of urgency to these races. I'm glad to see the return of it.

I haven't tried playing as a cop yet, though I'm anticipating an experience akin to a modern-day remake of Chase HQ. This is very much a Good Thing. Further reports as events warrant.

In summary, then: You like arcade racing? You gonna love this.

#oneaday, Day 305: My Content! No, MY Content!

I was watching a programme called It's Only A Theory the other night. It's an entertaining and thought-provoking show hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter in which they bring on a series of experts, get them to argue the case for their theory then make an arbitrary ruling on whether to accept or reject it.

The episode I watched featured a guy with terrible posture who was convinced that "user generated media is killing our culture and economy". You can watch the episode from this point here if you're in the UK.

The gist of the guy's argument was that the sheer amount of user-generated content out… there (here?) on the Internet is killing established cultural phenomena, partly because of the "culture of free" that there is on the Internet. Why pay for stuff when you can get it for free?

He also argued that the predilection for misinformation and relative lack of censorship on the Internet meant that overtly biased material could easily make its way out into the wild and people assume it's fact.

Take this video:

Despite it clearly being dubbed with someone pretending to hiccup and fart, it was all over the Internet yesterday, accompanied by hyperbolic language ("I literally couldn't stop watching") and more exclamation marks than your mother uses when writing an email.

It is kind of funny, fake or not, but that's beside the point.

There was an interesting twist in the ever-running battle of "who invented [annoying meme x]" recently as Rage Guy found himself at the centre of controversy. According to Internet wisdom, a meme is apparently officially "over" as soon as Hot Topic make a T-shirt of it. Because once people in the street start going "FFFFFFUUUUUUU-" to each other, what hope is there?

4chan decided not to take this insult lying down, despite having milked the concept beyond dry for the last two years. Yesterday, this post appeared on Hot Topic's Facebook page:

Someone had "tipped off" Hot Topic that "Rage Guy" was actually a racist comic featuring a guy called "Race Guy" and promptly set about creating a lengthy back catalogue of racist comics. Hot Topic, as a company in the public eye, did the only thing that they could do in the situation—withdrew the stock.

This being the Internet, though, they were of course informed of the prank within a matter of hours and a short while later, this post appeared:

As mildly amusing as all this was, it goes some distance to showing that user-generated media is probably never going to topple properly-produced, accredited and protected media. Both will undoubtedly exist side by side. But while the children of the Internet fight over what is "theirs", play childish pranks on each other, throw their toys out of their respective prams and call each other "faggots", the professionals will continue doing their thing, the same as they've always done, and be paid accordingly. Those with nothing better to do will tear each others' eyes out over who came up with the concept of producing shitty comics in MS Paint first.

You wouldn't catch the BBC World Service trolling Hot Topic.

#oneaday, Day 304: Head-Up Display

I'm a big sci-fi fan, as many of you will know. But one thing always confuses me when it comes to visual design for sci-fi movies, TV shows and games.

I am, of course, talking about the "information overload" screen displays. Take this example:

vanquish2 — Look at all that shit all over his face. What does it mean?

And, from the same source (SEGA's Vanquish, if you were curious):

vanquish-61 — Look at all that shit floating around her. What does it mean?

The future, it appears, will be filled with masses and masses of information floating around us in 360-degree 3D, very little of which we'll actually need. And this is a pattern that is by no means limited to video games. We see it in movies, too. Any time you see a first-person view from a robot/android/cyborg/guy with mechanical penis that shoots lasers from the bellend, there'll always be some inexplicable spinning numbers, wireframe graphics, text (inevitably in blue or green), blips or markers implying "scanning".

Now, consider what a world where you're bombarded with that much information in one go would be like. It's bad enough having a hand-held device like an iPhone that showers you with push notifications, text messages, emails and all manner of other nonsense 24/7, but at least you can turn that off, switch it to silent, hide it in your sock drawer, whatever. But it seems that visual designers for sci-fi movies, TV shows and games believe that the future is filled with unnecessary, redundant and, often, meaningless information.

You don't get sci-fi writers indulging in this, though, usually. Asimov's Elijah Bailey never spent five pages worth of exposition staring at a green-hued computer screen wondering desperately which set of jiggling alphanumeric characters allowed him to open the door to his apartment, for example. If Charles Dickens wrote sci-fi, his protagonists might well do that. But, well, he's not around to inflict that on us. Thank God.

In actuality, what we're more likely to get, should we ever end up with head-mounted displays or computers in our brains, is something akin to a first-person shooter's head-up display. Perhaps with the capability to install apps. So while you're sitting in a boring meeting and not paying attention, you can be playing Snake instead. And no-one will be any the wiser, except when they see your eyes darting around to find the next apple. And when curious sound effects start emanating from your nostrils.

Actually, given the amount of time people waste with plain-sight devices like computers and smartphones, perhaps the ability to install apps into your own brain might not be the best idea.

So, the future then. Somehow I doubt it's going to be quite the way it's been represented to us in movies over the years. And that's probably a good thing, since popular representations of the future often end up with most of us being horribly mutilated, raped and/or killed by machines/robots/aliens/demons from another dimension/the government.

The only hope is, of course, Star Trek.