Tag: oneaday

#oneaday, Day 46: 5 Facebook Games that Aren't Shit

It's fair to say that, as a general rule, Facebook games are pretty, well, shit. For the most part, they're cynical, money-grabbing exercises designed only for bored soccer moms and office drones to while away the hours performing virtual meaningless tasks instead of real-life meaningless tasks. What's worse is the fact that the real-life meaningless tasks are still there once you've clicked on every single field in FarmVille 300 times.

Fortunately, it doesn't have to be this way. There are a few developers out there who are starting to produce games which have some actual substance to them, even if almost every single one of them insists on including an utterly meaningless, pointless experience point/levelling system. Memo to Facebook game developers: you don't "need" that to be competitive. Make a game that's addictive and fun and people will come back of their own volition. You don't need some arbitrary, meaningless, substanceless "reward" to keep people dangling on your Fish-Hook of +5 Monetization. So stop it.

Anyway. Here's 5 Facebook games that aren't shit.

Bejeweled Blitz

The grand-daddy of Facebook Games that Aren't Shit is surely PopCap's minute-long masterpiece. Featuring the match-three gameplay of Bejeweled condensed into a frantic, hectic minute of scoring points that is, to be honest, more luck-based than anything else, Blitz is great fun and enormously competitive thanks to the weekly-resetting friend leaderboards. Even better, the mobile versions also work with the Facebook scoreboards, allowing you to challenge friends on the go. Go play!

Zuma Blitz

See above, only you're playing Zuma instead. You're still matching groups of three or more colours together, only this time you're trying not to let them drop down a big hole. Frantic and arguably more skill-based than Bejeweled, this is another good choice for daytime timewasting. Go play!

Asteroids Online

This game combines the structure of obnoxious gameplay-free experiences like Mafia Wars and actually adds some gameplay to it. Offering a wide variety of missions and some surprisingly impressive (for a web game, anyway) polygonal graphics, this is a good, challenging choice for anyone who grew up with the old Atari classics. Go play!

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

A fun, educational detective game particularly suitable for younger players. You can use it as a means of testing your geographical knowledge and deductive reasoning, or you can cheat (a bit) and using Google/Wikipedia to help you work things out. Either way, it's a lot of fun, even if it does have a completely pointless levelling system that I really, genuinely can't see any reason for whatsoever. Go play!

Robot Unicorn Attack

One of the quintessential two-button platformers out there, Robot Unicorn Attack is always a pleasure to play, largely because of its soundtrack. Now it's approximately seven thousand times as competitive thanks to Bejeweled-style friend leaderboards. Pity the iPhone version doesn't sync with these, however. Go play!

Dishonorable Mention: Scrabble

Fuck Facebook Scrabble. Why? Facebook should be the perfect platform for asynchronous wordplay. Well, two reasons: firstly, dumb copyright issues meaning that there are separate Facebook apps for the US/Canada and the rest of the world, meaning that if you have any friends in North America and you yourself are not in North America, you can't play them. And secondly, the non-American version features some of the most obnoxious, annoying, obtrusive pre-game advertising I've ever had the misfortune to see. Stick to Words with Friends on your smartphone. It's now available for Android, you know.

Honorable Mention: Word Scramble

Basically Boggle, this is a genuinely fun and competitive word game that would be much better if it actually told you when it was your turn. There's also a decent iPhone version of the game which sadly doesn't appear to sync with the Facebook version. Go play!

#oneaday, Day 45: Melancholy

I realise in posting this I am directly contravening the excellent points made by the lovely Laura on her blog yesterday. But, well, you know how it is sometimes.

I'm not bemoaning the fact I'm single on Valentine's Day. This is nothing unusual—I spent the vast majority of my formative V-days single, so much so that it's easy to ignore that particular fact right now, were it not for the fact that this day (and the ones immediately following it) hold rather more personal significance for me than just reminding me that last year I wasn't single.

No, this particular part of the year was when we "met" online. Again, probably nothing unusual for many couples these days. But the context in which we met means that there are permanent digital and physical records of how our meeting came about. And by that I mean there are newspaper articles. Newspaper articles. Granted, they were articles from a specialist professional (teaching, not prostitution) newspaper with a relatively limited UK-based circulation, but still newspaper articles, regardless, and ones which I still have tucked away somewhere. They're not things I want to throw away. They're part of my history, the story that led me to this (depressing) point I'm at now.

It's curious how these things go in cycles. Nothingness begat words on a page that became a real person whom I loved… and back again, for specific reasons on both our parts that have ceased to matter right now. Only it's not back again; it's not back to how things were before it ever happened. The details of exactly how it "is"? Well, that's for me to know; while the lead-up to all this may have led me to where I am now, it's not the only thing that bothers me, and arguably not even the most important thing on my mind at this time. I'm not even sure I know what the most important thing is to me right now.

It's a strange situation to be in. Some days I feel I have it all figured out and can move on—or at least try to, what with all the many obstacles life keeps throwing in my way; others I either can't or don't want to deal with it; others still I'm incapable of coping with anything and just want to hide. I don't have an answer, and I suspect there isn't one—short of letting things happen as and when the Fates decide it's "time", that is. Because all the effort I put in to making things right for myself (because I think I have earned the right to be completely selfish and I will fight anyone who says otherwise with sticks and hammers) keeps getting thrown in my face and contributing to The Pile, which hasn't got any smaller since Day 170 of last year.

This isn't whining self-pity—well, it is, but it's not, so shush—it's frustration at the fact that I'm trapped and stifled in a situation I don't want to be in with what feels like very little control over how I can get out of it. My fate is in the hands of people I don't know who seemingly want nothing to do with me despite my best efforts to make myself look awesome in a variety of different ways. I am grateful to the few people who have taken my awesomeness on faith and given me the opportunity to prove myself over the past year. It's a start. But it remains to be seen if that's the "right" route, as at the minute, it's not enough to survive with.

And this all leads to a vicious cycle. Each fresh new rejection makes it more and more difficult to summon up the energy to keep fighting. Because it is a battle, it is a struggle, and one which some days I wonder if it's possible to win.

The only thing I am grateful for out of this whole mess is the many new friends I've had the opportunity to make that I may never have come into contact with otherwise. I am grateful for their help and support and I wouldn't want to be without them.

Life and love send you up many streets, blind alleys and shit creeks without a map. I still don't know where I'll end up, or how. And the next person who says "well, life would be boring otherwise" in response will get a serious Number 10-Grade punch in the face. I want a boring life. I want to be able to get up in the morning, go to work, earn enough money to survive by myself and buy the occasional nice thing. I want to be with someone who is right for me, who understands and appreciates me, my talents and my life. And I want to be able to go to bed at night and just sleep rather than lying awake staring at the ceiling in the darkness boiling with anxieties.

I'll leave you with this.

#oneaday, Day 44: The Late Review - Final Fantasy XII

Since I'm currently going through my backlog of games and beating them one at a time, it seems only fitting that I should write a sort of "review" of each one as I come to their (hopefully inevitable) conclusion. So tonight it's the turn of Final Fantasy XII, one of several "black sheep" of the series thanks to its complete defiance of established series conventions and adoption of a quasi-Western RPG style of gameplay. I will try and avoid as many spoilers in this post as possible.

I will preface this by saying, as always, that I am a total Final Fantasy fanboy. I don't care if they're clichéd, I don't care if big tentacley angel monsters as final bosses are overdone, it's what I expect from a JRPG, and it's what I inevitably get from the Final Fantasy series in particular. Overwrought melodrama, gratuitous and unnecessary love stories and the inevitable destruction of the world that only a plucky band of teenagers (and one guy in his twenties who inevitably gets referred to as "old man" throughout) can prevent? Sign me up. I love it.

So it was something of a surprise that Final Fantasy XII eschews most of these things. The melodrama is kept to a minimum, any romantic subplots are handled with the subtlest of nudges and winks rather than faintly embarrassing scenes accompanied by someone singing and the small ensemble cast is likeable, realistic and "human", typically ridiculous Final Fantasy costumes aside. (Penelo must be really sweaty by the end of the game.)

In fact, for once in a Final Fantasy game, the plot almost takes a back seat to the gameplay. There are large tracts of the game where you're given a lot of freedom—something happens, the party comes to the conclusion that what they really need to do next is travel to something that is inevitably on the complete opposite side of the game world to where they are right now and then it's up to the player how to proceed. They could go straight there using the various means of fast travel. They could walk straight there. Or they could wander off and go and do some of the many, many sidequests, most of which are available throughout the game rather than the usual Final Fantasy trick of saving them all until just before the world really needs to be saved right now please. Granted, you still have the somewhat silly opportunity to go and do all these things while the final confrontation patiently waits for you right in the middle of the map, but you just know that people would bitch and moan if you didn't have the opportunity to do this. It's also worth noting that the amount of time between the "point of no return" and the ending of the game is actually pretty short, so it's not as if you have to go off and do all the sidequests then spend 6 hours battling through the final dungeon. This is a refreshing change.

By far the most refreshing thing about the game is the battle system, though. I waxed lyrical about this back on Day 5, but it's worth mentioning again. The combat system, combining the best bits of a quasi-real-time MMO-style combat system and the "active pause" style of a BioWare RPG whilst keeping it optimised for a console, works astoundingly well, especially once you get the hang of using Gambits. By automating common actions such as curing and buffing, you're not making the game unnecessarily easy, you're making your play more efficient. Are you really getting any more from a game where you're manually selecting to cast "Haste" on your attackers every few turns?

I described the Gambit system as being akin to the "huddle" you have when playing an MMO with a well-organised group. The best way to use it appears to be to give everyone clearly defined roles. For me, this means one tanking attacker, one who solely focused on healing HP and status effects and a third who focused on buffing the tanking attacker with Protect, Shell, Regen and Haste. All of them got stuck in hitting things with sticks and hammers when they didn't have anything else to do, but this setup worked extremely well and saw me through most of the game. Any mishaps could be quickly dealt with by popping up the menu and dealing with them manually. And in boss battles where circumstances suddenly shifted, such as them suddenly becoming immune to physical attacks? Well, that was just a case of popping open the main menu and adjusting the attacking Gambits to use Magicks instead.

It's a great-looking game for a PS2 game, too. Sure, there's rough edges when playing on an HDTV, but it's clear to see this is a well-crafted, well-designed world with distinctive-looking characters. The animations in cutscenes are excellent, too, with some high-quality facial animations doing a great deal to help forget the laughing scene in Final Fantasy X. One tiny bugbear with the graphics is that all the FMV sequences are in 4:3 while the game itself happily runs in 16:9 but this is a minor issue, as the vast majority of story sequences are rendered in-engine.

The sound is probably the weakest bit of the game. The voices are heavily, heavily compressed, though the acting itself is generally very good. The music is unmemorable, however, which is quite unusual for a Final Fantasy game. It has character, and sounds like Final Fantasy Tactics (which is understandable, given their common setting) but there's nothing anywhere near as iconic as One Winged Angel on display here, which is a shame. There's also a couple of areas that repeat music from earlier in the game, too, which seems a little lazy, given that the vast majority of areas have unique music. It's hardly a deal-breaker, though.

Final Fantasy XII is often described as the FF for people who don't like FF. And it's absolutely true—the crushing linearity of earlier entries in the series is nowhere to be seen (although the main plot is firmly on rails, you're free to wander off and do your own thing at any time right up until the finale) and there's very little need to "grind" by running around in circles waiting for random battles to happen. In fact, it's possible to "grind" without noticing simply by travelling from one place to another—the numerous long-distance journeys that the plot tasks you with seem to set you up to take advantage of this fact.

At the same time, these elements may put some people off. Some people enjoy the tight focus that a strictly linear plot gives, and indeed in FFXII it's very easy to lose track of what happened in the story when your last cutscene was eight hours ago. The plot picks up pace towards the end, though, and you find yourself wanting to press forward and see things through to their conclusion. How quickly you choose to do so is entirely up to you—so if you're a fan of a tight plot, you could probably romp through fairly quickly. If you're a completionist, though, there's plenty to keep you occupied here. I beat the game after 98 hours with barely half of the sidequests completed. Then there's secret weapons to find, a boss with 35 million HP to take down, secret Summons, optional areas to explore and doubtless many other things besides.

So in summary then, I was very, very impressed with the whole game. As a Final Fantasy fanboy, I enjoyed the fact that it still felt like a Final Fantasy game whilst playing very differently to the more "traditional" entries in the series. And as a fan of good games? Well, this is very much a Good Game.

The only thing that makes me a little sad is how few people will probably be inclined to play it these days. With the lack of backward-compatibility on new PS3s, playing it will either involve tracking down a PS2 or using an emulator. It's wholly worth it, though, as it is without doubt one of the best RPGs I've had the pleasure to play for a long time, and certainly one of the finest entries in the Final Fantasy series. A pity we probably won't see its like from Squeenix again.

#oneaday, Day 43: Got any ID?

Little Johnny wants to buy a copy of acclaimed and excessively popular (some might say cultish) Lovecraftian multiplayer FPS Call of Cthuty: Black Arts and heads down to his local GAME. There, he attempts to procure a copy of said game—which has a big shiny red BBFC "18" certificate on it—with the pocket money he's saved up. Little Johnny is eleven years old and doesn't have any ID, fake or otherwise. The cashier at GAME refuses to serve him. Little Johnny goes home and cries, and Xbox LIVE is safe from another squeaky-voiced pipsqueak for another day.

Well done, GAME, correct response.

Little Johnny returns to GAME with his mother, who doesn't know much about video games. He has convinced her that he "needs" this game in order to fit in with all the cool kids, who are all playing it for 37 hours a day, some of whom have already Ascended and are going around the levelling system again, only this time with brand new Elder Powers to choose from. His mother picks up the game, barely gives it a second glance, asks the cashier for it with Little Johnny standing right there, and the cashier doesn't question this at all. Little Johnny's mother hands him his shiny new game, he shouts "FUCK YEAH!" and runs out of the shop giggling.

No, GAME. Bad GAME. Incorrect response.

Bigger Johnny (no relation) wants to buy a copy of acclaimed and excessively popular (some might say cultish) Lovecraftian multiplayer FPS Call of Cthuty: Black Arts and heads down to his local GAME. There, he attempts to procure a copy of said game—which has a big shiny red BBFC 18 certificate on it—with his credit card. He is 19, after all. He gives the "If you're lucky enough to look under 21…" sign on the counter a brief glance but decides that the bum-fluff he's managed to grow on his chin will ensure he won't have to worry about ID—which is good, because he's forgotten to bring it. He is incorrect in his assumption, as the cashier asks him for ID and he is unable to provide it. He leaves the shop empty-handed, but with his bank account forty quid better off than it would have been.

Well done, GAME, correct response.

Bigger Johnny's mum just happens to be Mary "Queen of Shops" Porta, supposed shopping "guru" who is on the tellybox frequently whingeing at shop-owners about how rubbish they are. She is outraged at the way GAME have treated her darling son and tells him all sorts of things about how he should have demanded to see the manager, then promptly gets on the phone, shouts at them, gets hung up on and then demands to speak to the CEO of the entire company. In public. On Twitter. CEO promptly deflects her with his PR human shield… and the matter is still ongoing at the time of writing.

This latter part actually happened today, albeit with a 15-rated game and a 17-year old son who attempted to use his 16+ Oyster Card as valid ID for GAME staff to check his age. They refused—and good on them, frankly, for upholding a law which is all too often flouted by retailers more concerned with making a quick buck than actually ensuring inappropriate content doesn't get into the hands of kids. Mary Queen of Shops, however, was furious, though it's not entirely clear what grounds she has to complain. Here are some of her tweets on the subject:

You'll notice her casual dismissal of the ratings system as "we are not talking drink". Apparently some retail laws really are worth more than others to our Mary. She is also heavily focused on the ID issue, though implies that there was some non-specific "rotten attitude" from the store in question. When asked about this by one Twitter user, however, her only response was this:

No mention of what the "more to it than that" was. She hasn't said anything since, at the time of writing.

Now, I've talked about this topic a number of times. Censorship is a bad thing; but the refusal to sell age-restricted products to minors is not censorship. It's ensuring that people have access to age-appropriate material—a law which would mostly work were it not for the stupid loophole most retailers use to avoid difficult conversations where they'll happily sell the game to a parent even if it is very, very obviously on behalf of a child who is standing right there.

I don't for a second believe Fox News' nonsense that games cause rape, violence and AIDS. But I do believe that "mature" content should be kept out of the hands of minors until they're old enough to deal with it appropriately and not run around shouting "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" in the middle of the street. (Which they genuinely used to do in sunny Southampton.) Foot-stamping and attitude from people like Mary here doesn't achieve anything except devalue the law every time it's circumvented. If her son wanted to buy the game—which he was quite entitled to do if he had one of the forms of ID that everywhere else in the world accepts and not an Oyster card which no-one has ever* accepted as valid ID—then he should have gone prepared. And when he got turned away, his initial reaction should not be to speak to the manager as Mary seems to think it should be. It should be to shrug, accept the fact that he done messed up, like, go home, get his ID and then try again.

But no; the customer is always right, after all. Even when they're clearly wrong. You have my sympathies, retail types. I remember all too well what it was like.

* And if they did, they shouldn't have. FACT.

#oneaday, Day 42: The Hangover

It's been a while since a truly drunken night, and as I commented in one of my favourite posts of last year, it's important to take stock of your situation the day after in order to ensure that no lasting damage has been done to yourself, your friendships, your relationships, your internal organs or the bathroom in the place where you were living or staying at the time.

Last night was what we shall politely call "a heavy night". The reasons for said night out are either unimportant or possibly under embargo right now, so let's just say that there was me; a group of people from whole other countries; lots of free-flowing alcohol, mostly in the form of Kamikaze shots or Jameson's and ginger beer, which seemed to become the "official drink" of the evening (I initially judged the first one as disgusting but it either grew on me or I stopped caring after the first one. I forget which.); a basement bar called Roppongi; some girls in very tight dresses including one with a very 80s haircut and her friend who was still dressed up but looked like she had made less of an over-the-top "conscious effort" and was consequently far more attractive; and… well, I don't think I need to go on—surely all the ingredients for a great night are already there.

I managed to conduct myself with an appropriate degree of decorum, however, and found myself on more than one occasion confronted with some very pleasant company who were probably mostly using me as an excuse to get away from some somewhat more lecherous company but at least did me the courtesy of seeming interested in the things I had to say. I can remember their names and everything. See, perfect gentleman, me. (Well, all right. There's one I can't quite remember the name of. But I'm not convinced I ever knew it in the first place, so I think we can let me off on that count. Also it was very noisy, and I was very drunk.)

The basement location of aforementioned bar precluded any possibility of drunk livetweeting the evening, which is probably for the best. It also prevented drunk texting and phoning, also probably for the best, though I can't recall a time I've ever actually phoned anyone when drunk. (People phone me, though. The words "Lana no sleep!" and the sounds of the person in question frantically scrabbling at their front door attempting to get in and failing still haunt me to this day.) I am occasionally guilty of the odd drunken text, however, as that previous post will attest.

In fact, the whole evening was thoroughly pleasant—no-one got into a fight, no one pissed anyone else off (or if they did, the one who was pissed off hid it well) and no-one made too much of a fool of themselves. Everyone made it back to their respective sleeping quarters safely with no "unexpected guests". And no-one was sick.

Until this morning, of course, when the hangover came. I can't speak for my companions but if they felt anything like I did when I woke up at 8am after about 5 hours' sleep, I sincerely pity them for having to be up, about and ready to be driven to the airport.

The trouble with a hangover is it takes time for you to work out its severity. When lying down, you might be able to judge that Today Will Not Be A Good Day. Standing up is the next text, as is attempting to walk to the bathroom. Breakfast offers an additional challenge, carrying the risk of your stomach going "AHHH. NO MORE. SRSLY" when confronted with… well, anything, really.

And all the while your brain is going through a constant cycle of thinking "Please don't be sick. I won't be sick if I don't think about being sick. But trying really hard not to think about being sick is making me wonder if I'm actually feeling sick. And wondering if I'm actually feeling sick is making me think about how far it would go from here to actually being sick, and if I can make it to the toilet if I do suddenly feel sick. And oh. I feel sick. BLAAAARF."

Sometimes you can overcome these urges, of course. It would be ungentlemanly of me to reveal whether or not I succeeded in this, however. You'll have to make your own mind up.

#oneaday, Day 41: Hotel Dusk, Dawn and Day

I love hotels. I'm not sure what it is about them, but if I have the opportunity to stay in a hotel, I always enjoy it. Perhaps it's just the novelty value of "living" and sleeping somewhere different for a little while. Perhaps it's the whole "being waited on" thing. Perhaps it's the incessant politeness of the staff, even if you're staying at a relatively low-key establishment. (Well, usually.)

I imagine that staying in a hotel semi-permanently in a sort of Alan Partridge manner would quickly get tiresome, but I do know that I certainly never tire of short breaks where I get to have a little place all to myself in relative privacy.

I think part of the appeal is wondering what goes on behind closed doors. The somewhat juvenile side of most people would probably be listening out for people having sex and giggling like an idiot, but it's not just about catching people doing the dirty.  Who are the people behind those doors? Why are they here? What possible reason brought them to the same place that you happened to be at the same time? Is there some dark purpose at work? Should you go and talk to them? (Probably not. And if you do, steer clear of the term "dark purpose" as it tends to freak people out.)

Another part of the appeal is the simple opportunity to sleep somewhere else. Your own bed sometimes gets boring. And while most beds follow the same sort of structure (flat bit to lie on, possibly with something to stop your head falling off at one end should you inadvertently decapitate yourself in the night) it's remarkable how different some beds can feel from one another.

Take the bed in the hotel I'm currently in, for example. It's pretty comfortable, and a lot "springier" than I'm used to. I got to sleep last night at a reasonable time and woke up early feeling pretty refreshed. Compare and contrast with my bed at home, in which I suffer from terrible insomnia and typically wake up some time around noon, possibly having woken up once around 7am, been unable to move except to text or tweet and then promptly passed out again. Is it just the bed that does this? Or is it other environmental factors? Probably a combination of all of them.

I look around a hotel room and it often makes me wonder about other guests. Are there other people staying in this hotel long enough to make actually using all the drawers and wardrobe space worthwhile? This specific one has bookshelves; does anyone turn up to a hotel with enough books to necessitate the use of bookshelves, particularly in this age of the Kindlenookreadotron? And why are hotels one of the few places left in the world that still have CRT TVs?

My delight at hotels even extends to virtual depictions of them. I vividly recall by far my favourite level of Duke Nukem 3D being the hotel level. And I enjoyed Hotel Dusk on DS a great deal, for obvious reasons. No One Lives Forever had an excellent hotel level that involved some very precarious rooftop sneaking, and although I still haven't got around to beating Gabriel Knight 3, its initial setting of a hotel was appealing, even in all its low-poly anti-glory.

So hotels are great. A home away from home, surrounded by strangers. A place where you can be whoever you want to be for a few days, and no-one will know any different from the day you check in to the time you check out.

Just remember to hang the thing on the door if you're planning on getting naked and the maids are doing their rounds, huh?

#oneaday, Day 40: Technology is Exciting!

It's been a funny few weeks for the games industry, what with spats between high-profile journalists such as Leigh Alexander and Jim Sterling; the whole Penny Arcade "dickwolves debacle"; and, yesterday, Fox News making the astonishing claim that Bulletstorm directly encourages rape.

This sort of thing is oddly symptomatic of the modern industry, though. We take technology for granted so much these days that new, exciting things are met not with the excitement that they deserve, but with cynicism, caution and, at times, outright hostility. This is arguably wise, given that technology generally isn't cheap, particularly for early adopters. But sometimes I miss the days of wide-eyed wonderment at a new gizmo that does something no-one else has ever done before.

Case in point: Sony and Nintendo's upcoming handhelds, the NGP and 3DS, respectively. Both are pretty impressive pieces of kit—the 3DS for offering glasses-free 3D glasses (which may or may not prove difficult to appreciate for those who actually wear glasses) and the NGP for being a veritable behemoth of pocket-sized power. Both will make a significant dent in your cashflow should you choose to adopt them, but both are incredibly exciting pieces of technology.

So then, why do the industry press feel the need to publish articles like this? This is perhaps a bad example, because PocketGamer did, in fact, also publish a counter-article about why you will buy an NGP. But this is by no means an isolated incident; game sites are filled with list articles like this offering you "reasons to sell your Wii", "reasons not to buy an [x]", "reasons why the [y] is rubbish" (I'm paraphrasing, obviously). It's a curious offshoot of fanboyism that some game sites seem to be voluntarily perpetuating—presumably because it encourages "discussion". Discussion means hits. Hits mean ad revenue. That's what it's all about for many of these sites these days, after all.

Sometimes I think there's a market for a site that treats things with the kind of wild-eyed enthusiasm that we as kids and teens in the 90s used to show for every new and exciting thing. Remember when Starfox/Starwing came out and it looked like games we'd been playing on home computers for years but everyone still loved it because it hadn't been done on a console before? Remember when the Atari Lynx had hardware sprite scaling? Remember when you were gobsmacked about how many layers of parallax scrolling Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga had? Yeah. That. I want that back.

Perhaps it's symptomatic of the fact that technology advances have slowed somewhat since those days. An oft-quoted line with every new generation of gaming technology is "it's difficult to imagine how graphics could possibly get any better than this", or "[x developer] claims they're using 100% of the [y console]'s power". But then someone does something cool. It might not be as huge a leap as that between, say, the SNES and the PS1. But it's still an improvement, and something that I, personally, feel is still worth getting excited about.

For so-called "enthusiast press", sometimes we're not very enthusiastic.

[Thanks to @Alex_Connolly for inspiring today's comic.]

#oneaday, Day 39: Games Maketh the Man

"Is Bulletstorm the worst video game in the world?"

That's the question Fox News asked earlier with an article that was hyperbolic and scaremongering, even by their questionable standards. According to Fox's "experts", including Carol Lieberman, a psychologist and book author, "the increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games".

Whoa there. Hold on a minute. The playing out of sexual scenes in video games (which, I might add, are typically incredibly tame and rather immature in the way they are handled) is a "large" contributing factor to the increase in rapes?

This is scaremongering against games taken to a whole other level. Unbelievable stuff. And, of course, complete and utter nonsense. If we follow through Lieberman's arguments to a natural (and exaggerated) conclusion, here's how the life of an average gamer would generally go:

09:00 – Wake up wearing same clothes you've been wearing for the last six months because game characters never change their outfits. Skip breakfast because game characters never eat. Skip going to toilet for same reason.

09:05 – Leave house. Run down road because game characters never walk except in cutscenes.

09:06 – See passer-by, assume they're enemy. Kill them for XP and loot and/or rape them if they're female.

09:07 – Repeat process ad nauseam until reaching work.

09:30 – Reach work, still running. Enter work building. Start lurking around corners.

09:35 – Shoot out security camera in case it sees you, despite the fact you actually work here.

09:40 – Run around office using cubicles as cover, shooting anyone you happen to catch a glimpse of in the head.

10:00 – Called into boss's office.

10:05 – Defeat boss by filling him full of lead.

10:10 – Rape him for good measure.

10:15 – Loot his body, because bosses always carry the phattest lewt.

11:00 – Take elevator up to next level. Repeat process.

12:00 – Police arrive. Shootout ensues.

12:10 – Die. Fail to respawn because you don't get to do that in real life.

Now, granted, there are some absolute fuckwits in the world to whom that probably sounds like a great way to live out the last few hours of their lives. But, as is frequently pointed out by rational people every time such a tragedy happens, if someone is going to go on a killing and/or raping rampage, it's probably not games that caused it in the first place. To assume that the average person doesn't have the appropriate filters in their brain to differentiate between the darkly comic, over-the-top, ridiculously exaggerated violence in Bulletstorm—a game intended for (immature) adults, let's not forget—and how horrifying it would be to witness real-life violence or rape? That's just insulting to, well, everyone.

The article does raise one valid point about control and "censorship", though. Parents still aren't taking responsibility for the entertainment their kids are interacting with. Personally, I strongly believe that there should be tighter controls on how games are sold. I'm not talking about censorship, I'm talking about stricter enforcement of age ratings—and a change in the ridiculous policies that most retailers adopt that allow parents to buy age-inappropriate games for their children. If the parent is by themself, then sure, there's not much that can be done. But as it stands right now, if a parent is obviously buying a game for the kid they have with them, most retailers won't do a damn thing about it.

The above will probably have made clear that I don't believe that there's a direct causal link between violence and sexual content in the media and the way people behave. But I do believe that children shouldn't be exposed to such content from such an early age these days—more so they can hold on to the increasingly-irrelevant concept of "youth" more than anything else.

Sadly, though, it's pretty clear that it's too late. To backtrack now and enforce tighter controls would be difficult, if not impossible to do. So we're just going to have to live with the consequences. Which, according to Fox News, is a society full of joypad-wielding rapists.

I shall leave you with two interesting thoughts to mull over:

#oneaday, Day 38: Angry Jedi

In an attempt to stem the tide of people asking one of the most common questions on the Internet—"how did you get your username?"—I shall set out the story forthwith.

I'm a trained teacher, as some of you may know. This meant I spent an extra year at university following my practically useless but enjoyable English and Music degree studying a PGCE (a PostGraduate Certificate of Education, for those who like to know what their acronyms mean). It was an enjoyable but stressful time, and I was happy to make some good friends during that time, one of whom was my placement buddy for my second in-school assignment.

His name was Owen, and he was a good man that I've sadly fallen out of touch with in recent years, but we had some excellent times. He was also convinced that we were Jay and Silent Bob, an observation that was pretty accurate on so many levels. But that's beside the point: the point is, Owen and I were the original source of Angry Jedi.

You see, sometimes when you get home from teaching practice all you really want to do is get absolutely trashed on cheap rosé and make music from approximately 48 CDs worth of samples. So that's what we regularly did, with extremely entertaining results. We decided that we needed a name for our makeshift band, and decided that the oxymoron "Angry Jedi" was a fitting summation of our respective personalities and the bizarre music we created. Ever since that time, I've taken to using "Angry Jedi" or some variant thereof as my username, as it's 1) a reminder of some very fond memories and 2) a name that no-one else ever appears to have thought of on the Internet… except someone on Xbox LIVE.

On Xbox LIVE, I'm called "sonicfunkstars", which I believe we discussed the other day. "sonicfunkstars" (all lower case, that's important) was a previous makeshift band that consisted of me and, occasionally, my good friends Sam and Edd. There was also a brief dalliance with being "Captain Gaspard and the Snarfriders", but tracks under that name are all on a MiniDisc somewhere (yes! MiniDisc!) and I have no idea where. If I ever find them, you'll be the first to know.

But you don't care about personal history. You want to hear the ridiculous sounds we came out with, of course. All right. Here's a selection of some of our finest moments. iPhone users, as ever, click on the song titles to listen. Everyone else, use the fancypants WordPress flash player thingy.

Bad Influence

This track was composed for two reasons: firstly, to have an excuse to use as many Harry Potter quotes as possible, including the titular "Bad Influence" extract. Secondly, we put it together while we were teaching a unit on "fusion" music at school. As such, there are some fairly diverse ethnic influences throughout the track. It also contains the line "It's knowledge. It's power. It's not a fucking tractor." And, as I recall, we used to find the "ta ta tippy tippy tum na" guy hilarious, though that may have had something to do with the amount of wine consumed.

Baching Mad

When creating this track, we decided it would be amusing to imagine what it would be like if J.S. Bach were having a piano lesson and doing very badly—so badly, in fact, that he ended up breaking his piano. (Let's leave aside the historical inaccuracy of J.S. Bach playing a piano for a moment.) We then followed this by attempting to mix together as many inappropriate pieces of "classical" music as possible with some kickin' beats. See how many you can spot. This is, to date, one of my favourite aural monstrosities. Particularly the key change partway through.

Kick the Dog

I honestly can't remember what twisted path of logic led to the decision that we should create a track based on abusing small yapper-type dogs with a variety of increasingly-gruesome implements punctuated by drum fills performed by chickens. But I'm glad we followed it. Owen's performance of all the verbs he wanted to do to annoying rat-like dogs took several takes, as I recall. There's also a nice bit of Nirvana mixed in there, too. No actual dogs were harmed during the course of this track.

The Guff Rap

No explanation required.

Get Off My Ship Original Mix and Ultimate Mix

These two tracks performed two important functions: firstly, to provide a showcase for PATRICK STEWART, and secondly, to demonstrate the concept of remixing to impressionable sixth formers. Captain Picard gets increasingly frustrated at the people who keep invading his bridge and politely requests they vacate the premises.

The Judas Joint

Our crowning glory: mixing, if I recall correctly, five Judas Priest tracks together and including a break for Meg Ryan to have an orgasm. The evil laugh in this is performed by me. I was pretty impressed with myself.

There are other tracks, some of which don't appear to have survived the move between computers and through time. The most notable absence is a brilliant song called "Today Fucking Sucked", which I don't believe needs any further explanation.

Anyhow. I hope you've enjoyed this window into the life of a trainee teacher, circa 2002-2003. And now you know why I'm called Angry Jedi. It is not because of the somewhat more offensive meaning of the phrase which my friend Amy discovered last year.

If you want to know that one, you can Google it yourself. (It's quite amusing. And/or disgusting. I forget which.)

#oneaday, Day 37: Sportyballs

I don't get sport. I never have, and I suspect I never will.

This is not through lack of trying. I used to play football (soccer, for our American readers) with my local Cub Scout pack when I was a kid. We were sponsored by a scrapyard and our best result was 1-0 to us. Our worst result was 21-0 to them. This convinced me that football (soccer) was Not My Game.

Early in my #oneaday career, I decided I was going to attempt to get into Formula 1. Cars racing around tracks is more appealing to me than sweaty men running up and down a pitch. But I found myself not caring enough to keep up to date with it. And forgetting that races were happening. And finding myself thinking there were many, many things I would rather do than sit passively in front of the TV for hours at a time. (One of which was sitting in front of the TV with a controller in my hand, which at least is a bit more "active" entertainment.)

My wife enjoyed football (soccer), so back when we were still together, I picked up a copy of FIFA 10 in an attempt to try to understand what was so appealing about it. I played it a bit, got destroyed 21-0 in an online game and was convinced for the second time in my life that football (soccer) was Not My Game.

I find myself perpetually bewildered by people who discuss the sports team they support as if they have anything to do with it. "We bought that striker person for a bajillion pounds," they say, substituting "that striker person" and "a bajillion pounds" with an actual player's name and an actual amount of money respectively. "We had an amazing result," "We're top of the league". I just don't get it. I don't even show that much loyalty to my RPG characters. They're still "they" to me.

And today, apparently, is something to do with a superb owl. (Thank you to whoever posted that joke in my Twitter feed while I was writing this.) There seems to be an assumption that everyone will be supporting either the Packers or the Steelers, which may be true if you're an American, but I have no idea who either of those teams are or where they're from. I could Google them, but to be honest, I really couldn't care less.

I guess it's just a different form of nerdery; one that is more "accepted" (for want of a better word—perhaps "embraced" is more appropriate) by society at large than video gamery and gadget-joy. I can talk for hours about my character builds in Final Fantasy XII and the makeup of my team of Personae from Persona 4 but I wouldn't know where to begin if someone started a conversation on the batting average innings goal difference of the Packersteelers bowling out for a duck's ludicrous display.

Each to their own, I guess. Just don't expect me to even try a little bit to join in with such a conversation. I'll see you at the bar.