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Fallout New Vegas

I still can’t decide whether or not Fallout New Vegas was one of the greatest games I have ever played or a soul destroying experience from start to finish.

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (1)

Tuition Fees

Watching the news last night I realised that I wasn’t completely sure what I thought about tuition fees as a concept, let alone the various proposals that seem to have got people fairly wound up. The majority of the story in relation to this proposal has been, rightly, pulling the Liberal Democrats up on their rank hypocrisy. I hadn’t really seen any of the other political parties proposing to do anything radically different, so didn’t give it much thought.

The Liberal Democrats really should learn that if you are going to renege on a promise then don’t do it on one where you have been filmed making it or where it affects lots of people with both free time and energy.

Watching the TV last night I realised that the attention brought to this issue through constant demonstrations and… yes, violence, has made me really think about what tuition fees mean for the first time. I don’t have any kids and my University days are a long way behind me, so far in fact that I went to a Polytechnic. I did have a small student loan and it took me ages to pay it off and caused me no end of credit problems. In the end it was help from my parents that stopped it resulting in debt collectors. Though as I say that was a long time ago and not really relevant to the situation now.

I suppose I should have started this by saying that I in no way support violent scenes blah blah blah don’t throw an egg at a Prince blah blah think about the children.

Actually I don’t agree with any of that. If kids want to go to London and have a ding dong with the police then fair play to them. Both sides are consenting adults (mostly) and I believe both sides get a lot out of it. I am, in many ways, grateful that young people have the motivation to protest about something which I can’t be arsed to do myself. I’m too old, too lazy and too scared of the cold to do anything like that.

Since the coalition have come to power they have defined everything under the imperative to decrease spending and the need to reduce the deficit. Deficit reduction in itself is obviously something that needs to be done but it is a moot point on whether the most expedient way of achieving this is purely reducing spending or also maximising tax revenue.

The question about tuition fees appears to be fundamental to this overarching theme. The story says that money paid to University’s is unsustainable, graduates need to pay us back for their education and don’t worry about them, they earn a fortune anyway.

One of the central pieces of evidence to support the increase of fees to a maximum of £9k pa is the claim that over their lifetime a graduate will earn, on average, £100k more than they would if they did not have a degree.

I find this interesting in that it appears to contradict the need for tuition fees at all. If someone, on average, will earn £100k more than they would without a degree then, on average, they will repay the cost of their education through income tax. We do not incur debt through people going to University, we actually profit. We actually profit substantially.

Our economy clearly needs people to earn these greater amounts in order to maintain tax revenue. It is strange that rather than look for the most appropriate way to maximise this revenue we have tried to find a solution whereby people graduate but we don’t have to pay for it.

In times of decreasing tax revenue the Government can only really fund higher education through borrowing the money itself or making someone else borrow it. It is a simple fact that Government can borrow money much more cheaply than a collection of individuals.

So we have a a situation where we have chosen the least efficient solution for the nominal position of “saying” we have reduced public sector borrowing. We have really only moved the debt burden from wider society to the individual. It should also be noted that the loan to students isn’t really from the Government. It is from the private company/QUANGO the Student Loan Company. A company required to make a profit, albeit minimal. This means that the total cost of borrowing for students as a collective is still greater than the Government just allocating funds to Universities.

All of this is really premised on ideology. There is an all encompassing view in the statutory provision of services that choice must govern all decisions. Thus through students choosing their University and taking their money with them the system will begin responding as a market and become more efficient.

This ignores one fundamental fact about higher education. We already have a long established system of choice that uses the currency of educational achievement to distribute people around the system. This is a far from perfect system but it does work.

Besides the issue of choice there is a ridiculous preoccupation with the idea that we are paying for pointless courses. This is the annual newspaper story about someone getting a surfing degree and now won’t be able to get a job and we have to foot the bill. Ignoring the fact that this is probably, in reality, a qualification in marine engineering that makes someone eminently employable this belief defines media attitude to courses.

I understand that extensive research has demonstrated that tuition fees will not reduce the number of people that go to University. Maybe that is true, it seems counter intuitive to me but if this has been proven then fair enough. I do believe that fees will shape the nature of courses that people now enroll on. Resultant earning capacity will be a much greater influence on choice.

In practical terms this is good because it drives up tax revenue but for wider society this is a very bad thing. We need people that do jobs like physiotherapy, research scientists and even planning officers. All jobs you need to be well qualified for but not very rewarding. Under the coalition plans it might be true that those graduates that earn the least pay the least but if we deter people from entering these essential professions then we lose out.

One of the good things about supporting eduction through central taxation is that we as a society have an investment in it. If someone chooses to become a teacher then we don’t just benefit through the tax they pay, we also benefit through their ability to give society more knowledge.

If we have paid for this then we have some control of the structure of their higher education and the way it is applied. If higher eduction is merely a contractual relationship between the individual and the institution then society loses the capacity to plan for the future.

I think I’ve written considerably more than I intended to on this and probably much more than I should have done. Much of this boils down to my concern that the first act of Government should not be to pass the responsibility of Government to the individual or the state. When I go to work my first act is not to find someone else to do my job for me.

Well I should say thanks to all of those young people that made me really think about something that I thought had nothing to do with me. So, violence does work.

Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Call of Duty: Black Ops

It’s not been a good year for getting games finished. I’ve  started many more than I’ve got to the end of.

I’ve been playing Call of Duty since the first one came out in 2003 and have always had a bit of a tradition of playing through the single player campaign in one sitting. Calling that a tradition is probably overstating it a little, it’s not the equivalent of eating turkey for Christmas, it’s just playing a game.

I think I mentioned before that Call of Duty is a game I’ve invested a lot of time in, in fact most of my time from 2004 to 2005 in fact. There was a group of us that rented a server and hosted our own maps. It’s strange that I’ve never really found anything approaching the online multiplayer experience of the original Call of Duty.

Consequently I think the Call of Duty series has been going down hill for the last seven years.

The latest iteration is not a bad game, it’s fun in its own way. The story hangs together better than most I’ve played recently. Obviously it is just hamming it up, from one set piece to the next chasing some unidentified Russian. I have a feeling that is the set template for most games these days.

It just doesn’t deserve the hype that has been lumped on it and the fact that it will hoover up the Christmas cash can only be a very unhealthy thing from the point of view of a sustainable game industry.

One odd thing I noticed relates to the media nonsense attached to the recent Medal of Honor release. Liam fox calling for Medal of Honor to be banned was quite amusing because it was based on stunning ignorance. Ignorant of how multiplayer games  work but also ignorant that the UK troops he was so concerned about were not even in the game in the first place. Call of Duty on the other hand actively requires you to shoot UK troops. There is some vague context for it but no media outcry.

I am not suggesting this should be banned. That would be stupid.

The campaign leaves you with the same empty feeling inside you get when you watch a Michael Bay film. It looks very pretty but is ultimately vacuous. In itself there isn’t anything wrong with that, it just doesn’t seem to be very good value for money considering how much has been spent on developing it.

Oh, and whilst talking about value for money it is worth mentioning that the bloke who plays JFK does the worst JFK impression I’ve ever heard.

I have given it a bit of time to see whether or not I like the online element before I bothered to write this.

Unfortunately I’ve been spoilt by the genius that is Battlefield Bad Company 2 multiplayer. Whilst BFBC2 encourages team play and tactics, Call of Duty encourages running around like a nutter. It has some beautifully crafted levels but misses the essential gameplay.

So in summary, I think Call of Duty: Black Ops would probably be the greatest thing in the world if you are 10 (though legally not allowed to play it) but falls just short of being anything special.

I reckon it’s worth about £20.

Theoretically the BFBC2 Vietnam expansion pack is imminent and that will hopefully demonstrate how this should have been done. I realise I’m laying a ridiculous level of expectation on something I know virtually nothing about.

[Edit]I can’t believe I forgot to mention this. Call of Duty: Black Ops is also the first game I have completed in 3D.

3D is apparently the future though I’m not overly sure if I’m convinced yet. The first session I played was about five hours and it is fair to say it gave me a cracking head ache.

The effect itself is very good. It’s also subtle to the point that after a few minutes you begin to stop noticing it. I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing. I think, probably good.

The one issue I had with the campaign is that 3D was clearly an after thought. With some cut scenes people had their shadows sort of attached to their limbs producing a very weird effect.

For the multiplayer it is effectively useless. You need more time to aim and compensate for distance. Other people don’t, and consequently shoot you dead.

I think it is something that is almost there but not quite yet. [/Edit]

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (0)

There’s a Theme

I’ve noticed quite a few people claiming that this years TV offerings from the US have been quite poor. Particularly the Guardian have run with this as a theme. I can’t really comment on most of the series in that article but will agree that Shit My Dad Says is possibly one of the worst thing ever put on TV.

What I’ve noticed with this season is that theme tunes seem to be a lot better than usual. Obviously the entire basis for Hawaii Five-0 is the theme and the rest of the story is forced to fit with it. Though the remake does seem to make it sound a bit like the theme to Mission Impossible.

Getting a good theme should be a really important decision. You never know how long your series is going to be commissioned for. Do you think the makers of Smallville really thought we would be listening to Save Me by Remy Zero ten years later? Who the hell are Remy Zero?

So, a few themes that have stood out for me this year are listed for your passing interest.

Rubicon has been one of my TV highlights this year, besides the series itself the them was absolutely spot on. You can see it here, unfortunately embedding is disabled, but have a look and come back afterwards. I have no idea who did the theme to this though I haven’t searched much beyond Wikipedia.

Boardwalk Empire has been my second favourite series this year, and my second favourite theme.

I like the theme because it’s got a bit of Neil Young and a bit of the Velvet Underground about it. It’s only since I started writing this that I found out it’s by The Brianjones Town Massacre. That’s cheered me up as after watching DiG! I always hoped Anton Newcombe got some recognition.

The last on this little list is Terriers. It isn’t the greatest series ever but it has grown on me and I like the theme.

Unfortunately the theme seems to be a bit of a Babylon Zoo moment. Do you know what I mean by that? We all liked the bit of Spaceman we heard in the advert and then realised the rest of the song was crap. I have a feeling this might be the case with the theme to Terriers.

Anyway, it’s called Gunfight Epiphany by Robert Duncan who apparently did some of the music on Buffy. Fair play to him. It has a bit of Beck about it but I doubt I’ll listen to much more than the first thirty seconds.

I suppose whilst talking about themes it would be strange to not mention Sons of Anarchy. It is a series that I’ve had a mixed relationship with. I didn’t get the first series but stuck with it. I really like the second series and just haven’t understood the third series. Why they thought it was a good idea to set it in Northern Ireland is a mystery to me.

Now I’ve never really liked the theme but I especially hate the way they have attempted to make it a bit Gaelic.

Why would you do this?

Posted in Media | Comments (0)

Benefit Fraud

I’m not really that bothered about benefit fraud.

I can see that it is something that probably shouldn’t be encouraged but I don’t see it as something that we really need to get that hung up about. Most people that phoned a radio station this morning probably don’t agree with me.

I used to work for the Benefits Agency. The fraud team seemed fixated that they were some sort of special agents, they had radios.

They would spend months on surveillance, building a case to stop someone nicking  £30. It didn’t seem very cost effective.

This morning, or possibly last night, David Cameron announced a new “policy” to unleash bounty hunters on benefits “cheats”. This sounded quite exciting. The prospect of unleashing Dogg the Bounty Hunter on someone “doing a foreigner” (not a literal use of the term, but I rarely get to use it), seemed a bit over the top.

The reality is that it is just an excuse to bung more cash at credit reference agencies and give them access to more data to flog to companies. This is nice because credit reference agencies always have a hard time in a recession.

The way this has been represented seems to be the most interesting thing about it. The figure of £5.2 billion in fraud a year has been plastered over everything. This surprised me as I thought that fraud levels in previous years were much lower. I know we’ve had a recession but this would have been a massive increase in such a short time.

As you look at the story you notice that this figure is in fact fraud AND error. So it includes money paid to people by mistake. Though there doesn’t seem to be much interest in the press in the error part of it.

Finding Dave’s figures proved to be quite tricky. I couldn’t find anything that matched £5.2 billion but I did find the Department of Works and Pensions 2008/09 figures. They tell quite a different story. They say fraud and error account for £3.1 billion. So we have a discrepancy of over £2bn.

They also state that fraud accounts for one third of this total.

Over a billion quid in fraud is something that we should be interested in but it isn’t really the £5.2bn that started all this.

Listening to Five Live this morning you might have thought that most of the country were signing on whilst working. The DWPs own report estimates that Job Seekers Allowance fraud accounts for £240 million.

The report also highlights the £0.5bn that is underpaid to people each year. This again hasn’t been mentioned by the press.

Whilst looking for the figures I came across a press release from the Citizens Advice Bureau highlighting the £16 billion that is unclaimed each year. This is the real issue that should be of concern to us. This is a vast amount of money that should be paid to the most vulnerable in society but isn’t. These are winter fuel payments that play a vital role in keeping people alive.

Overall our current benefit bill is much lower than it should be.

That’s something to think about next time we make excuses to not chase the £40 billion that is avoided in tax each year.

Posted in Media, Politics | Comments (2)

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Another week and another game. I know, it’s mental.

I’ve never really got on with the Battlefield series. I missed the first one, 1942, I didn’t have a PC that could play it. I loved the idea of combining all the elements of combat on foot, tanks and flying all in one large game, but I didn’t get round  to playing it.

I played a lot of Call of Duty: United Offensive. Actually a lot is an understatement. I played it pretty well constantly for well over a year. It was great but didn’t provide what I believed Battlefield promised in a fully integrated…..er… Battlefield.

I gave Battlefield 2 a go as soon as it came out. The odd thing about the Battlefield series is that it always insisted on throwing you straight into multiplayer. This was fine because it is, at heart, a multiplayer game. The problem I found is that everyone else in the world seems to be really bloody good at it.

One of my principles in playing games is that if I don’t at least achieve a basic level of skill quickly, I give up. Life’s short and there are a lot of games out there.

I gave up on Battlefield 2 even though it looked like they’d done a really good job of it.

I didn’t really pay attention to Battlefield 2142 and to be honest it’s really only looking on Wikipedia just now that even reminded me that it even came out.

Battlefield: Bad Company came out around the time of COD4 and consequently I didn’t pay much attention to that either.

This is all going somewhere.

I hadn’t really been inclined to play Bad Company 2 as I couldn’t see what it could do that Modern Warfare hadn’t. I was massively wrong about that.

The Bad Company series, apparently has added in the single player campaign in order to, I assume, make it viable on a console. I think this makes a big difference, it teaches you how to play the game before throwing you in.

Although the single player is essentially a tutorial it weighs in at about the same length of Modern Warfare 2 but is much more thought through. The levels are constructed well. There is a story that vaguely makes sense. There are characters that elicit some sort sympathy. You can even blow up most of the buildings.

What isn’t to like?

I loved everything about the single player campaign and could happily play it again.

This is the point where I would usually say “I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet”; having realised this I thought I might actually play it for a bit and see if it is any good.

It’s very good. Also, unusually, for a game that has been out for a while now, there are a good number of people playing and it isn’t impossible to survive for longer than a few seconds.

I’ve found it very easy to get into and a multiplayer experience which I’ve missed recently.

I don’t think it is much of an exaggeration to say this is the game that modern warfare thought it was going to be.

Go and buy it now.

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (2)

Red Dead Redemption

It took four months but I finally got round to finishing another game. It hasn’t taken four months, no, it’s been sunny, I’ve been outside.

Part of the reason for losing interest was the death of my PS3. A motherboard failure meant I lost every game save I’ve ever had and lost all progress with things like Final Fantasy and God of War. This is supposed to be fun so I’m not really motivated to go back and start things again. I probably will, but not at the moment. It did give me an excuse to go and get a new thin PS3. If you’re interested here’s my review. It’s the same as the old one but thinner. There really isn’t much more to say about it.

After a bit of lull in completing things it was good to throw myself into something quite as large as Red Dead Redemption. Although it was always billed as a massive 2010 release it wasn’t something I had my eye on until the last minute. I’ve loved every GTA but something about games set in the “Wild West” doesn’t really interest me.

Having said that, someone did lend me Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood last year. It was very playable and created an inevitable basis for comparison. Red Dead Redemption is much much better. A fantastic open world with some breath taking scenery.

Some elements like riding a horse for miles is tedious but at least they’ve built in a good work around with many different ways to fast travel. I did notice that many reviews mentioned that the diversity of missions is greatly improved from GTA. It isn’t. Just about every mission is based on riding into town and killing everyone. Not really a bad thing.

The story is fairly interesting. It doesn’t pretend to be literature and is compelling in its own way. The developers have tried to mess with the narrative by creating a really final part of the game where you basically do chores. It’s an unusual step and to be honest fairly boring.

I think this will stand out as being technically great but slightly missing something that GTA had.

The multiplayer element does look interesting but I’m not sure how much time I’ll put into it.

So, in summary, it’s fun. You can execute bears.

Posted in Finished Games | Comments (0)

Blues

It’s fair to say that as soon as I stated recording games I’ve finished I lost interest in playing games really quickly.

As nothing seems to have got completed in ages I decided to make a playlist.

I used to obsessively listen to Blues. It was the  music that started me playing the guitar because it was deceptively simple. Over the years I’ve lost most of the really good stuff I used to own, mainly because it was on tape and I don’t own a tape player.

I thought it would be plan to try and put together everything I could remember into one playlist. So here you go,  the blues, as remembered by a bloke from Eastbourne.

Posted in Music, Spotify | Comments (0)

Heavy Rain

Bloody hell. That was good.

Which probably sums up in five words why I would never get a job reviewing games.

The idea of Heavy Rain seemed strangely familiar when people started whispering about it. The idea that you’re  basically watching a film that invites you to interact with it by pressing the right button was pretty well the concept of  Dragon’s Lair. Clearly Dragon’s Lair was far from watching a film, more of a cartoon.

Just like Heavy Rain, Dragon’s Lair was talked about in hushed tones back in 1983. I remember seeing it on….. I can’t remember, the telly. It looked beyond anything I could imagine. A proper cartoon that you could actually take part in.

I grew up in Eastbourne which, being by the sea, had quite a few arcades. That meant there was a better than average chance I’d get to play Dragon’s Lair. The odd thing was that when it did turn up, it arrived upstairs in The Enterprise Centre (actually I’m not sure that link is right or it’s even the same place. It looks posher than it did 20 years ago and I thought it was named after a fish). There’d never been an arcade game in there before. They’d definitely never been one that was going to change the world.

I remember hearing a rumour at school that there was one in Eastbourne. I remember going down to have a look at the weekend and it turned out to be true. That’s about as good as it got. Dragon’s Lair was a truly dreadful game. You just smashed a random button for, seemingly, no reason and hoped you didn’t die. Invariably you did die.

So 27 years later I’d assumed that technology was unlikely to have improved much beyond Dragon’s Lair.

As it turn out it has.

Heavy Rain is really good.

Things seem to be looking up in terms of story as well. At last a story that I wanted to take part in and it made sense.

The game itself is far from perfect. Mainly because some of the stuff you take for granted as being cut from a film is a staple  in video games. In a game when you walk from one room to another you bloody well make sure you walk from one room to another. In a film the transition is cut to make sure you don’t lose the pace of the film. I have no idea how you resolve that conflict and make people feel that they’re still in control but I did feel it quite often while playing.

I suppose that really comes down to what the hell this is. It clearly is a game but it’s also straying into the area of more passive entertainment.

I had thought a game that you essentially just influence every now and then would be  a bit of an objective experience. That ‘s just wrong. Some of the action sequences suck you in purely because you don’t know when you’ll get to influence them, whilst simultaneously trying to take in what you’re seeing, digest it and getting ready to press triangle really fast.

It’s interesting that after mentioning moral choices in Mass Effect, they form the basis for how Heavy Rain works. There are decisions in there that I almost agonised over.  They clearly influence how the story develops as having seen adverts on the Telly, everything they’ve shown me is different to my first play through.

If you have spare cash then I heartily recommend Heavy Rain. It’s a game that you won’t regret playing but as soon as you finish it you’ll think “the sequel will be amazing”.

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (0)

Aliens vs Predator

When it comes to writing anything that involves Aliens and Predators there is a very long and established custom. It is important to stress how cool Predator was and how Aliens is better than Alien because it has Space Marines in it.  It’s then important to look off wistfully into the ether and contemplate how brilliant it would be if Predators, Aliens and Space Marines could all be combined into one masterpiece. I’m probably not going to mention any of that.

We all know it.

Having said that I am probably one of the few people in the world that thought AVP: Aliens vs Predator wasn’t that bad a film and it taught us how important pyramids are.  I even sat through AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem which wasn’t that good. I haven’t got any real recollection of what happened in it.

I suppose that all points towards me being a bit of a fan of the AVP concept.

The one thing I’ve never done is play the Aliens vs Predator game. It was 1999, I had a Playstation, I didn’t play that sort of thing. I remember it being popular but as I didn’t have a PC that was ever going to play it I just let it pass me by.

I was quite excited by the build up to the newest version of Aliens vs Predator. If the first few attempts have worked out alright and the films had sorted out the importance of pyramids then how could this go wrong?

It’s difficult to say it went wrong. It’s just mind numbingly average.

I can see why they split the game into the Marine, Alien and Predator campaign but this, cynically seems like an excuse to just reuse levels three times. Fair enough if they are good levels but these aren’t. They are very much your standard “future complex” building blocks with a bog standard jungle and some ruins thrown in.

The Marine campaign goes on for, what seems like forever, and it plays like a standard FPS except with Aliens. Aliens which don’t seem the hardy bundles of terror I was expecting. In fact they’re really easy to kill and towards the end you’re just wading through piles of them hoping it ends soon.

The Alien and Predator campaigns are a little bit more interesting but there isn’t a vast difference between the two. The one thing they have in common is the control system being a nightmare. This is especially the case with the Alien where walking on the ceiling becomes a disorientating mess. Though both of these campaigns seem to take minutes to complete in comparison to the Marine section.

Unusually for me I decided to get this on the PC. Mostly this was through laziness as I couldn’t be bothered to go to the shops. I pre-ordered through Steam; actually that indicates I knew I wouldn’t be bothered to go to the shops which demonstrates some foresight. It was only £24 which is about ten quid cheaper than on the PS3. I notice that it’s now £18 on Amazon and it only came out on Friday. I think that points out it isn’t in danger of getting a game of the year award.

I do think there is still some justification that FPS’ work better with a mouse and keyboard. This isn’t a game where I would ever be able to prove this one way or the other. I’m left handed so I have to go through a fairly lengthy process of reconfiguring keys for games on the PC. Aliens vs Predator happily lets you change the keys for the Marine campaign but, seemingly, not for the Alien or Predator campaign. It is quite possible that I just couldn’t find the menu but that in itself is pretty bad and is very lazy programming. So I ended up playing it with a controller.

This is my first game I’ve finished in 2010 that  was  made in 2010.  I hope this isn’t indicative of the quality to expect.

More annoyingly I’ve still got a pile of other better games that I’m still working through. I need to prioritise better.

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (2)

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