Tag: late

#oneaday, Day 14: Is A Tardy Person Called A “Tard”?

Some people are habitually late for everything they do. Some more so than others. Some of them justify it under the guise of being “fashionably late”, that obnoxious concept where people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that the time on an invitation is open to negotiation, particularly if the event in question doesn’t involve people talking, singing, dancing or stripping (forget that last one) for your pleasure on a stage.

Where has this concept come from, though? eHow gives a frankly unnecessarily detailed five-step guide of how to be fashionably late. Urban Dictionary defines it as anywhere between 5 and 45 minutes depending on the event. But then they also define it as “showing up 5 minutes late with a supermodel on your cock”, so perhaps take their word with a grain or two of salt. The ever-reliable Ask Yahoo! fails to come up with any conclusive answers whatsoever. And no-one seems to be able to quote a reputable source pointing out where this concept came from in the first place, besides something vague about “rich and famous people at parties”.

So why do people do it, and where are they taught to be this way? I’m typically on time for things, unless it’s something REALLY IMPORTANT, in which case I will usually arrive three hours early, get bored, go and find somewhere that sells sandwiches, eat them, realise I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry the fuck up and end up rushing to get to the place at which I arrived exceedingly early in the first place. But social occasions? If I say I’ll be there at 8pm, I’ll be there at 8pm.

Many embittered experiences and mournful tweets from a lonely booth in the corner of a bar haven’t taught me my lesson yet. I turned up on time for my own stag night and my guests waltzed in the door approximately two hours later. I’d been having some fun on Twitter in the meantime, of course, but that meant by the time we were all drunk enough to collectively pretend we were a hot 18-year old virgin on Omegle my phone battery was almost flat. We went on to have an awesome night, incidentally, but it could have been two hours longer had people showed up when I’d asked them to.

People don’t change easily, so there’s no real sense complaining about this in the long run, though. So with that in mind, I think I’ll just keep on being the barfly for two lonely, Twitter-filled hours while I wait for people to show up. And the rest of you can take your time washing your balls, applying supposedly-attractive smelly liquids, polishing your shoes, swearing at holes in your trousers/pants/tights, realising that your boots don’t fit any more, finishing watching that hilarious series of 200 cat videos on YouTube or having a nervous breakdown in the meantime.

I’ll see you at the bar! (And just because I got there first does not mean I will be getting the first round in, just so you know. Actually, it does. I will have got the first round in. A round of one drink. For me. Yeah.)

One A Day, Day 39: Inclement Weather Conditions

Whoops! I know this is technically breaking the rules but as long as I’m caught up by the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.

So where was I last night? Heavy Rain is the simple answer to that.

The gamers among you will already be familiar with this game and you’ll probably have your own opinions on it, but for those of you who haven’t come across it yet or were asking about it, here’s what it’s about.

Heavy Rain markets itself as “interactive drama”. Despite being on the PlayStation 3, it’s keen to distance itself from the idea of traditional “video games” and by its own admission isn’t afraid to “break with conventions”. This basically means that it’s an interactive movie where you take part in the murder/kidnapping mystery story as four protagonists (none of whom are guaranteed to survive to the end credits) and interact with the world, making choices about how to act, what to say and so on.

Those of you who have played adventure games before will think this all sounds terribly familiar, but it’s the means through which Heavy Rain is executed which makes it something a bit different from the norm. For starters, it doesn’t play like a traditional “adventure” as such. You don’t have an inventory screen, for one thing, there are no status screens, menu bars or anything like that. Interaction all takes place by moving your character around the various locations and small icons popping up with “movements” depicted on them. The movements are intended to mimic what your hands would actually do to take that action in reality, so for example, opening a door is often a case of pulling down (to move the handle) then “out” (to open the door). It also makes use of the motion sensitivity of the PlayStation 3’s controller, so, for example, to kick a door down you might “throw” the controller down (obviously making sure you hold on to it).

It’s an interesting method of interaction that was first seen in the developers’ previous game, Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit, as it was known in Europe) – a game which also had pretensions of being a movie rather than a game, including the “New Game” option on the title screen being replaced by the “New Movie” option.

The thing I particularly like about Heavy Rain is the emotional engagement factor. The story is unashamedly adult, and that doesn’t mean gratuitously violent or sexual (though the game isn’t afraid to show either) – it means a mature story that deals with themes and emotions that (I imagine) children would find difficult to comprehend, such as bereavement, anxiety, depression and, at times, outright panic. There are quite a few things that happen (and I won’t spoil anything here) that it’s unusual to see handled in a “video game” with the same degree of care that they are here – at least, I think so. There are others who feel differently, but in a sense I think the fact that this game means different things to different people (whether those things they feel are positive or negative) is a good thing.

One protagonist, Ethan, suffers from anxiety, depression and discomfort around crowds, all things which I’ve had experience of. His reasons for suffering these things are very different from mine, but I can understand the emotions which he is going through which are depicted in the game. Much of the early part of the game revolves around his increasingly uncomfortable relationship with his son, and the game does awkward silences well, too. You have the option to sit Ethan down next to his son, but when the conversation options run out, there’s not necessarily an indication that it’s “time to move on” – you could find yourself sitting in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, and unlike other games where you’re constantly pushed on to the next objective, sitting in uncomfortable silence feels like an important part of the Heavy Rain experience.

The term “interactive movie” will inevitably conjure up images of the terrible video-based games that were around in the mid-1990s, but it’s good to see that with the advent of impressive, realistic graphics that can be rendered in real-time that we can finally have a movie-like experience with some interactions that are rather more meaningful than “movie stops, click a button to see the next clip”. There’s a touch of the Uncanny Valley about the characters to some, but there’s no doubt that particularly when it comes to facial animations and lip-sync that these are some of the most realistic controllable computer-generated characters you’ll see. I remember being struck by this some time ago when this first promotional video was shown:

Interestingly, this movie is from several years back, and the characters look even better now.

I played for a while last night and the game clearly had an impact on me, as I feel like I spent most of the night dreaming about it. I don’t often dream about games, movies or books, so there must have been something there which had an “impact” – even Mass Effect 2, absolutely the best game I’ve played recently both in terms of story and gameplay, didn’t have the same effect.

I look forward to seeing how the story continues, and if the developers’ much-vaunted “YOUR DECISIONS MATTER!” schtick is genuine.