Things I Hear…

I’ve finally, after years and years, put Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth to rest. It took cheats, true, but the game is bloody hard, bloody boring and bloody slow for large portions. I’d done 90% of it before without cheats anyway.

My two favourite things I’ve heard this week:

Jamie: Don’t put your fingers inside children. They bite.

Hannah: Oh God, oh God! Joe, come look! Sainsbury’s has shaved the courgette!

Today I’m linking to my review of Alone in The Dark for PC. My favourite quote is below.

“Graphically, Alone in the Dark is a bit of a conundrum. For the most part it’s very pretty, but that beauty is ruined by frequent physics bugs – leather coats that bounce off walls like a rubber-coated baby thrown from a third-storey window. There are also some fundamental problems with how some of the characters look thanks to the wonky anti-aliasing.“

You can read the full review here, complete with a graphical analysis of the game.

Out, Joe.

Some People On Facebook Have Stupid Hair…

Gee, I don’t know what happened with the last post. There was supposed to be a picture and it originally made a lot more sense and was spelled properly…or so I thought at the time.

M’eh, I guess this is what heroin does to my literacy.

Hannah’s back today, with extra-special new dyed hair. She hasn’t put photos up on Facebook though so the title doesn’t apply to her. You see what I mean?

Hah, subtle insults are so my bag, baby.

Also, I’m going to start linking to some of my Bit-tech articles in this blog from now on for some obscure reason which isn’t at all to do with me wanting to appear more professional. Here’s my favourite me-quote of the last fortnight, from my review of the HP Mini-note 2133 Linux Edition.

“On the down side, the odd sense of scale can play tricks with your mind. Spend too long using the 2133 Mini-note and you stand the risk of misjudging your pace as you step off the train. You might fall down the gap at the platform edge and be forced to carve at a meagre existence in the World Beneath The Trains, living on discarded crisps and crushed Chavs.

Then again, at least you’ll have your 2133 Mini-note with you so you’ll still be able to read the bit-tech forums in your new underworld hovel.”

Out, Joe.

Weekends Alone…

on my tod all weekend, barely leaving the house as I get down to some serious gameplaying. BioShock-on-Normal-Skill-all-in-one-sitting-with=no-vita-chambers kind of serious gameplHannah has gone back to Derbyshire to commune and what not for the summer solstice and I’ve been stuckying. I went for the good ending this time.

BioShock is a weird game. Normally with games like that (Deus Ex, System Shock, RooGoo) I finish them and then after I either want to take a break from gaming, or move on to something different. With BioShock though, I don’t – I want to play more of it and not just another game like it. I think it’s because in Deus Ex and System Shock the endings are well-thought out and complete. The story comes to a full close and you can close the door on it for a little bit and move on.

The endings in BioShock though are a little weak and you end up feeling like you haven’t finished anything. The good ending especially is pants. It’s like you spend the entire game chasing these philosophers and running through these arguments in your mind, trying to deal with the idea of philosophy in a linear game and so on…but when you get to the end it’s just a big old glowing monster man and a five-second CG cutscene. It doesn’t feel final. Probably why they are doing a sequel, I suppose.

I was thinking some about the original plots of BioShock too. I know it went through a whole Nazi-bunker stage, but it also apparently was planned at one point as being about a cult de-programmer who was hired by a US Senator to rescue someone from a cult and break their belief system. Ken Levine described it as being similar in gameplay, but with a much, much darker character and premise.

What’s weird is that I think the premise is good, but that that plot wouldn’t work with the final gameplay of BioShock. It sounds as if it would be more openly philosophical and theoretical. Bundling run-n-gun on top of that is a bad mix, like vodka and sandpapered scrotum.

Still, what do I know?

On an aside, I interviewed Jim Vesella about C&C Kane’s Wrath 360 and Red Alert 3 recently. Here’s the link.

Joe, out.

The Washing of The Deceased…

Something I’ve noticed; washing up is nearly always done a day in hand because in reality nobody can be bothered to wash up immediately after a nice meal. Instead, most people either wash up a big batch separate to cooking, or they do what we do in our flat and one person washes up [i]yesterdays[/i] dirty dishes while the other one cooks.

Which would make an interesting scenario if a carbon monoxide gas leak ended up killing Hannah and I at the same time. There would be at least one days worth of washing up left to do on any one given day.

It’s a depressing picture. That somebody would have to come and move/dispose/steal all our stuff, I can accept. Family would come and deal with our clothes, collect our belongings, accidentally sell my collection of signed video games for far less than they are actually worth. That is obvious.

For some reason though, the idea that someone would have to do the washing up of the deceased while they were is a little depressing though. On an unlucky day they’d have to empty the washing machine too, clean out the fridge and probably flush the toilet to clear whatever blockages my lower colon has left floating in the bowl.

Someone has to do this kind of stuff, but it’s something that never gets spoken about. Maybe there’s an opening in the market there for people who just want the situation handled quickly and professionally. Maids for the unliving. Janitors for the deceased. Corpse cleaners.

There’s probably a good idea in there somewhere.

Joe, out.