Search

Categories

• Birmingham
• Finished Games
• Games
• Media
• Misc
• Music
• Politics
• Spotify
• Uncategorized

Links

Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

Mass Effect

I’ve had a strange relationship with Mass Effect. It was always the game on the Xbox that would possibly sway me away from Sony. This was even before I bought a PS3. Actually this was even before I’d played Mass Effect. I think I just liked the idea of an RPG set in space. I still look back on the Knights of the Old Republic fondly. By far the best game based on Star Wars and one I never got round to finishing. Trying to play it on a PC that clearly wasn’t up to the job was a bad idea.

I was envious of Xbox owners when Mass Effect came out. I was even more envious when they kept banging on about how good it was. Then it was all over the news because it was apparently full of cosmic rape. I was dubious, but you wouldn’t go on telly making that sort of claim unless you’d played it all the way through and were pretty sure of your facts.

It took almost a year for it to come out on the PC and I bought it the day it was released. I did the first two or three missions and got bored (probably three or for hours work). That was back in 2008.

When Mass Effect 2 was announced I got my pre-order in straight away. Clearly the fact that I’d lost interest in the first one hadn’t really sunk in.

Two or three weeks ago I was reading a preview of Mass Effect 2 and I suddenly realised that this was the second part of a trilogy. Not only that but the decisions you make in the first one influence how the second one pans out. I assume the programmers would not have been able to have anticipated my decision to put the first one in the loft.

Worried that I was going to miss out on something I decided to go back and finish off Mass Effect. This involved going up a ladder and finding it. Not an insignificant commitment. I also had to find my save game off a backup hard drive and tease it back into the reinstalled game. Not actually difficult or time consuming but it sounds quite impressive.

I ended up being back in a game I had little or no recollection of. Apparently my last save was July 2008.

You’ll be relieved to hear it all worked out alright. It turned out to be a really really good game.

I had intended to fly through the story as quickly as possible and get on to the sequel. In the end I did get through pretty well every side quest and visited every planet I could. It’s also the first game I’ve played in a while where I can truthfully say I did understand what was going on.

The plot was well thought out and fairly robust. Also lots of little stories that lend themselves very well to making good characters.

It’s strange going back to a game that I would  consider old. Especially one that is held up as defining elements of game play we find quite common these days. Moral choices are all over games these days but, and I might be wrong, Mass Effect was the first to integrate this into the way the story develops. inFamous did quite a good job of this but as it was largely based on jumping around firing electricity out of your hands it didn’t have a stable basis in narrative. Mass Effect does ask  you to make some interesting decisions that do influence the game. Quite often the temptation with these sort of games is to play simplistically as good or evil. The decisions here aren’t that simplistic and found me quite often hovering for a while over two seemingly similar options.

There are a stupid amount of side quests to do but they involve travelling to planets that all look exactly the same and have buildings with identical layouts. Whoever got the contract as the principle property developer in this galaxy did very well for themselves.

Mass Effect also relies way too much on driving a large Big Trak about. One of the weirdest game based driving experiences I’ve had. The thing bounces around in a completely unconvincing way but it is strangely compelling.

So I got it finished and ended up putting much more time than I thought I would into it. I’m pretty sure that everyone in the world that was ever going to play this probably already has so I doubt I’ll influence anyone to give it a go.

I did notice there was no cosmic rape in it.

But i would say old games FTW.

I’m going to try something made in 2010 next.

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (0)

Assassin’s Creed 2

The second game of the year finished and we’re just flirting with the end of January. This year has some potential.

Once again, if you’re thinking of buying this then go and read a review by proper reviews. These are just my rambling post finishing thoughts.

If, back in 1982, when I first started playing games, you told me “One day there will come a game that features a fully functioning representation of 15th Century Venice”; I think my first reaction would have been:-

“Why the hell would I want that?”

Back in 1982 I was much more interested in space ships. I’m still very interested in space ships.

It is amazing to see how far things have come in only a few years. It certainly only seems a short time since Grand Theft Auto gave us  a fully realised world to explore. I suppose 9 years is quite along time but it doesn’t seem it.

To see that somebody  has taken this principle and applied it to, what seems an accurate snapshot of history, is a sign of some maturity. To be honest my knowledge of Venice in the 15th Century is negligible/non existent so I have no idea how accurate it is.  It did try and give me a lot of historical information but I didn’t really want learning to get in the way of the killing.

More important than the historical context is the game itself. Assassin’s Creed implements a control system that really gives a feeling of freedom. It’s great fun leaping across roof tops and swooping down from the skies to execute people. I did have some niggling issues to start with where I kept bouncing off walls but it settles down.

Interestingly I’d say Assassin’s Creed is by far the easiest game I’ve ever played. There is little reason to ever die in it and  everything about it holds your hand all the way through. Usually this would grate with me but I still really enjoyed it.

Once again it is another game taken to the end and I’m not completely sure what it was all about. Either there are some serious issues about how much effort people are putting into game narrative or I’ve developed some sort of attention disorder. I wouldn’t discount the latter.

There is always going to have be some sort of moral contortion to get an assassin into a sympathetic protagonist role. I suppose  the execution of your family  might, in some vague way, justify a  decade long roller coaster ride of murder. My approach to game play seemed to involve killing most people I met, particularly street musicians. I like to throw myself into the role.

So, in summary. Really good. Not quite as good as Uncharted 2 but it’s up there.

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (4)

Ratchet & Clack: A Crack in Time

Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to record all the games I complete on here so I have some record of the massive amount of time I waste each year in the pursuit of……

What do I actually get out of it? Largely nothing but a sore wrist.

The first thing I managed to finish has been Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time.

I don’t really want to review it. There are much better qualified people than me that can do that sort of thing. Some of them are even paid to do it as some sort of job.

I have noticed when I look back on games I do tend to build a bit of a mythology in my mind about how good they were. This has the disastrous consequence that I play a bad game again.

So what did I think of Ratchet & Clank?

It was quite good.

It’s a shame as I’d been really looking forward to it. Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction was one of the first “proper” games I played on the PS3.

The Pixar quality of the animation was amazing. The characters were genuinely funny and the weapons were ridiculous.

The problem with a Crack in Time is that it just seems like largely the same game. It looks amazing and is easy to play but not really fulfilling.

I can’t really even remember the story now. Something about a clock and a man with a green head.

The one advance in the game was the time related puzzles where you have to make copies of your character to perform different tasks. I realise that makes very little sense when it’s written down like that.

That bit was good.

Well there you go.

Next will be Assassin’s Creed 2 if I finish it.

Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (0)

Spoils of War

If you are intending to play Modern Warfare 2 and do not want the story ruined then you would be better off not reading this. Having said that it is unlikely that I can ruin the story as it makes little or no sense.

To say I intend to include spoilers is a bit of an understatement. Reading this will leave you in no doubt of any plot twist however ridiculous. It is important to bear in mind that most of this is based on my hazy release day recollections and may not actually have happened.

There is a common philosophy in game development to add the story as a bit of an afterthought. This is largely because developers have ideas for levels they want to make or have types of buildings they are really good at drawing. As a result stories are often absurd.

This isn’t an accusation that relates purely to Modern Warfare 2 but there has been quite a lot said about the moral ambiguity of one level in particular. In a sense it was unfair for the media to extract the airport massacre level as it was fair to assume that the rest of game would provide context for it. In fact the developers said exactly this (probably).

I thought there might be some use in me writing down what I remember about the game as a whole and seeing if there is any context.

To be fair to Modern Warfare 2 it is great. It is jingoistic nonsense of the first order where you do get to blow loads of things up in a modern setting. That’s all you can really ask of it.

So what happens?

+++++++spoilers+++++++

The most important thing to remember when looking at the story is that General Shepherd did it. Everything that happens in the game is largely his fault. This is the big twist that you won’t be expecting.

The reveal of this twist is cunningly hidden behind the device of not much preceding it really having a grounding in reality.

Act 1

The game begins in the Afghanistan where you are selected by General Shepherd to join some sort of covert special forces group. He’s apparently selected you on your ability to run down a sort of assault course in about 50 seconds. Clearly his recruitment criteria is not too rigid.

Before you can explore the terms of his job offer you must come to the aid of some undisclosed army unit that being attacked by generic terrorists. This sums up the problem with Modern Warfare’s interpretation of Afghanistan. It doesn’t look a thing like Afghanistan we’re used to seeing on the TV.

It actually looks quite nice. It seems to have had some extensive urban development and has a relatively good road infrastructure. In fact it looks stunningly like the unnamed middle eastern country in Modern Warfare 1.

I think it was actually a left over level from Modern Warfare and the developers had decided that it was very unlikely that anyone playing would have any idea what downtown Kabul looks like. Except it’s on the news most days so we do know what it looks like. It’s generally more broken.

After blowing some stuff up General Shepherd asks you to join his secret group and off you go. Nothing sinister so far.

The biggest problem with Modern Warfare is that it jumps round the world for no apparent reason and you’re constantly playing as someone different. I admit that I quickly stopped paying attention to who I was playing and what my motivation was.

So we now pop up in Russia (possibly) as some sort of UK special forces. Apparently a satellite has crashed and we need to retrieve the ACS Module. I still have no idea what an ACS Module is.

The rational solution to this would be to establish diplomatic relations and negotiate it’s return in exchange for some sort of cash oil deal. What we actually do is sneak into sovereign territory, execute their sentries and steal the ACS back. It is important to note that before we steal the ACS we decide to blow up their fuel supply. I have no idea why. It seems a bit spiteful. It’s a bit like those people who burgle your house and piss on your pillows.

Despite the evident flaws it is very exciting and you get to shoot loads of people.

At last we get to the, now, infamous airport level. The premise of this level stretches imagination a little bit. We are once again the American bloke from the first level and General Shepherd has persuaded us to go into deep cover within a Russian Terrorist group. I would assume that the intention would be to find out what atrocities the group is planning and thwart them. I have no idea what they could have been planning that is worse than executing thousands of innocent people in an airport but for some reason we are not allowed to stop the attack.

So we wonder around the airport with this bloke called Makarov generally shooting people. It’s a bit gruesome but I must have no morals as I didn’t find it very shocking.

At the end of the level Makarov decides to shoot us in the first of our shakey pot twists. Apparently knowing that we are undercover he hopes to leave a body behind to incriminate the US in the terrorist attack. In itself this is probably reasonable. We know later on that General Shepherd masterminded this so he probably could leak our real identity. It does leave a little bit to chance and is the first indication that Makarov isn’t a very good terrorist.

Once that’s all sorted we are back again as UK special forces but this time in Brazil.

Apparently the forensics from the airport indicate that the weapons used come from an arms dealer in Brazil called Rojas. I was interested to note that Rojas is younger than me; he seems to have done quite well for himself.

We trail someone in a van until they meet Rojas’ friend. He goes a bit ape shit blowing stuff up but we valiantly chase him down by shooting him in the leg. Whilst our colleagues decide to torture him we are advised to go and hang around in favela in case Rojas turns up.

This seems to be a little bit of a random plan but actually works out for the best. Whilst in the favela we quickly find out that Rojas has a very very big group of people working for him. It never really becomes apparent why he would need this many people working for him.

As anyone will tell you in large organisations the biggest cost is generally labour. Relating labour to income is key to a profitable business. In Rojas’ case security would obviously be a large consideration but maintaining such a massive group of heavily armed people must be an economic drain. I imagine they were generally not required to do much on a day to day basis.

Unfortunately on this day they were required to die on an almost genocidal scale. As you begin killing everyone that moves there is a vague warning about avoiding civilians. There isn’t a lot to worry about as there can’t be more than 6. This is a bit unusual in one of the most densely packed conurbations on earth.

Eventually we catch up with Rojas’ who tells us that there is a man being held in a Russian Gulag that Makarov doesn’t like. A lot of people died for this completely pointless information. The futility of human life doesn’t concern us to much and we ask for some sort of immediate evacuation. Before this can happen we’re off again.

Act 2

This time we’re just in time to witness the Russian invasion of America. It seems the Russians weren’t too happy about their citizens getting killed and planned this as revenge. Using the codes obtained from the ACS they have disabled the US air defences. This is the first indication that the ACS even held codes. The Russians reaction also indicates that we should probably not have blown up their airfield in retrieving the ACS. They are clearly riled.

There’s not much to say about this level. It’s a big war in an American town.

It’s probably my favourite level of the game and it does nothing to develop the story.

And now we’re back in Brazil. It seems that the war in the US has disrupted scheduled air travel and the helicopter can’t pick us up. Oh no.

We also seem to have lost Rojas. I have no idea what happened to him after he gave us his rubbish bit of intelligence, we probably shot him. Unfortunately as the helicopter can’t pick us up from the large patch of open ground we have to battle our way up to some rooftops where it can pick us up. There is no rational for this and a substantial amount of human life (and chickens) could have been preserved if someone had been a bit firmer on the radio.

There’s lots of jumping about and quite an exciting leap at the end.

That’s the end of Brazil. We killed a lot of people and we learnt that Makarov doesn’t like a bloke in prison in Russia. Not a good return.

Back in the US we aided in our fight against the Russians by a large vehicle called a/the Honey Badger. It’s great at blowing things like anti-aircraft guns up. Just mindless destruction.

Again this doesn’t add to the story until the last bit of the level. After blowing some guns up we’re diverted to a specific address where someone important is hiding in a panic room. We need to get there and rescue someone.

On arriving we discover the important person gone and cryptically the bodies of some, apparently, unusual people outside of the door of the panic room. You would be forgiven that this little gem might be in some way relevant to the story. As far as I can work out it isn’t. I have no idea who we were rescuing or what happened to them.

Based on the intelligence received from Rojas’ the full US military might of the US and UK are devoted to finding this bloke who’s imprisoned in Russia. There is absolutely no logical basis for this. As we will find out later we apparently know where Makarov lives so we could have just cut out the middleman and gone to his house. We don’t.

Obviously before we can go to the prison we have to free some hostages on an oilrig. People who make these games really like oil rigs. I think this is because of Roger Moore’s 1980 classic North Sea Hijack. Classic might be stretching things a bit but every game I’ve played that includes the customary oil rig looks a lot like it.

The Russian prison itself is fairly uneventful. It does have a lot of shooting people and it is good to see that the Russians have a startling ratio of guards to prisoners. Seemingly two or three hundred to every prisoner. Much like Rojas their costs must be astronomical.

Clearly we’re all very excited to find out who this person is that has got Makarov so annoyed. It turns out it’s Captain Price. Yes, Captain Price from Call of Duty 4. I thought he was dead but I didn’t pay much attention to that one either.

It seems he’s been in prison for five years. In all likelyhood it was for a crime he didn’t commit. Needless to say, why is not explained.

On releasing Captain Price we tell him about the war in America and Makarov’s role in the airport and it is fair to say he is very very angry about it. He suggests that the only way to put out a fire is to light another bigger fire under it. He has been tortured for quite a few years so I’m not too surprised that he has forgotten some of the principles of fire fighting but this should have been an early indicator to not put him in charge of anything.

Act 3

There is now a quick level back in the US where we have to fight to secure a building. Lots of killing not much in the way of story.

Despite the warning signs Captain Price seems to be in charge and he insists we all go to a submarine base. This would have been a good point to ask why?

This bit really confused me. We fight our way, with Captain Price, to the nuclear submarine. Whilst he nips into the submarine we wait outside just killing. After a while there’s a bit of a panic and someone launches a nuclear missile which seems to be aimed at the US. I say someone as I still don’t understand who launched it.

If it was Captain Price then this was a silly plan. Though he had been talking about bigger fires and all that, so it certainly could have been him.

It could well have been the Russians panicking when they saw a very angry Captain Price coming towards them. I imagine that launching the missile wouldn’t have prevented Captain Price killing them as he seems to kill everyone he meets.

I have no idea why we were even at the base let alone why someone decided nuclear weapons would make the situation better.

Ironically it turns out that the explosion of the nuclear weapon over Washington creates an Electro Magnetic Pulse that knocks out the invading Russian helicopters. It is entirely possible that in the post war enquiry Captain Price could claim that this was his plan all along. Given the long term affects of radiation on the Eastern Seaboard I don’t think anyone will accept this was a very good plan.

The loss of the helicopters in Washington gives the Americans just the break they needed to fight all the way to the White House which had previously been under Russian control. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to go there but it’s good fun and the post nuclear affects are quite good.

After Captain Price’s plan goes horribly tits up someone remembers that they think they know where Makarov lives. It hadn’t occurred to them to mention this before now. Well it probably didn’t seem important.

Everyone decides to split up and half the team will go to his supposed house whilst the rest of the team go to scrapyard in Afghanistan. Don’t ask me why.

At Makarov’s house we discover he’s not in but he has left his computer there with lots of lovely intelligence on it. It must be an extremely heavy computer because we can’t carry it to the helicopter. No, instead we must copy the contents of the hard drive before we can leave. This gives Makarov’s men a chance to attack in waves. Many waves.

It does take a long long time to copy the data but eventually we make our escape so we can be rescued by General Shepherd in his big helicopter. As you will no doubt guess, mainly because I ruined it earlier, General Shepherd is pleased to get hold of the data but less pleased to give us a lift. In fact he shoots us legs it.

This is the point that we realise that General Shepherd has planned all of this from start to finish. We do not realise why on earth he would have come up with such a strange plan.

The other team, in the scrapyard, realise that General Shepherd is not to be trusted. This is largely because there are large groups of his men and Makarov’s men having a massive fight. I do not know why they are there or why they have fallen out with each other.

Captain Price is with the other team and somehow manages to get hold of Makarov and persuade him to give us a lift out of the massive fight.

The one thing we know about Captain Price is that he doesn’t like Makarov (and he can’t be trusted with submarine based plan).

The one thing we know about Makarov is that he doesn’t like Captain Price. We don’t know why. Despite this they have quite an amicable chat and Makarov agrees to pick us up in his plane.

He also quite happily agrees to drop us off at General Shepherds secret mountain base.

This means we wave goodbye to the terrorist we’ve tearing the planet apart looking for. He gets completely away with it.

It also doesn’t explain why General Shepherd has a secret mountain base. It’s not a very good one. It has virtually no amenities but there are lots of heavily armed men there. It isn’t very clear what he was planning on doing there but we don’t stop to ask and rampage through it killing everyone in our way. General Shepherd fearing for his own life attempts to escape in a rubber boat. He doesn’t get far.

Then we get the final explanation.

It seems that General Shepherd is generally vexed by the recruitment crisis in the US military so he decided to engineer a Russian invasion. That’s it.

It’s a massive amount of trouble to go to when this could have been largely resolved through a decent poster campaign.

Anyway that’s all I remember about Modern Warfare 2.

Posted in Games | Comments (0)

Cloud Gaming

I reckon the development of streaming gaming has the potential to revolutionise the way we think about games as entertainment. There are no other forms of media that are so utterly dependant on the hardware that delivers them.

It’s also strange that gaming is the only form of media that provokes arguments about which form of hardware is the best. Not critical discussions but proper arguments between grown men (I do believe there is a gender bias in this). This is a silly situation.

Looking at Onlive’s Web Site I think the imminent arrival of Cloud Gaming is probably not that imminent. I couldn’t stream the introductory video.  Either my connection is rubbish or their servers can’t cope at the moment which means a big fail for it working as a concept.

I have no idea what the technical barriers are to getting this working, but if all of the processing can be carried out remotely then we are surely in a position where the only costs to users are the input device, display and subscription. I would say that I’m sceptical about the claim that lag is unnoticeable but that is probably something that can be resolved.

The timing of this has got to be a crucial factor in whether or not it will succeed. Is there a sufficient number of people that accept the subscription model for games? The money paid for access to XBox Live and the truly daunting number of Warcraft players would seem to indicate “yes”. Though the cost will clearly be a deciding factor.

Tags: Games, Warcraft, XBox
Posted in Games, Media | Comments (1)

Master of Puppets

So Oliver Postgate died then.  The reaction from the media was the sort usually reserved for a Pope. Nearly ten minutes of coverage on Channel 4 News goes someway to prove that conventional media is still ruled by men of a certain age. 

Watching the IT Crowd the other week I noticed a flaw in the basis for the episode (this is loosely connected). It was based around a web site that gave people stock quotes about football, thus enabling the most nerdish to talk with “real men”. The liberal times we live in mean that you’re just as likely to have a mixed gender conversation about whether or not Gerrard and Lampard can effectively play together; and there’s nothing wrong with that.

No, the last preserve of male only conversation is cloying nostalgia for children’s programmes.

One of the weird consequences of Oliver Postgate’s death is that it proved a catalyst for exposing the facade of chumminess the Conservative Party have been carefully crafting. In the absence of policy the principle reason for the Conservatives claim on Government seems to be David Cameron is a nice BLOKE. He’s the sort of bloke you could go down the pub with and he wouldn’t be afraid to put his hand in his pocket.

In all likelihood David probably drinks pints of gold and frequents the sort of places that wouldn’t let me look at the door let alone walk through it.

The veneer of a sculptured  “everyman” was cruelly exposed by Radio 5 on Tuesday. On being told that Oliver Postgate had died David Cameron was asked what he thought. He told Nicky Campbell that he didn’t really understand the Clangers and preferred Ivor the Engine. The idiot. 

Everyone knows that Ivor the Engine was a bit crap. They had to write a dragon into it to try and maintain their dwindling audience. The Clangers was set in space with chickens. What is there not to understand?

My reaction to the news that Oliver Postgate was very much along the lines of “who is he?” Obviously I know the programmes as well as everyone else, but I’ve never known the name of the bloke that made them. To be honest if you’d asked me last week I would have assumed he was already dead.

The thing that has most struck me this week, as we’ve been shown clips of Bagpuss and the Clangers, is how relevant they continue to be today.

Much of my time recently has been taken up playing Little Big Planet. It truly is the natural successor of all of those children’s programmes from years ago. The irony is that it is the first game that has given a true representation of real life objects, which works because we can use Bagpuss as a frame of reference.  

Also, as we’ve heard this week, such classics as Bagpuss and the Clangers were made in a barn using household objects that had been left lying around. Little Big Planet gives us the tools to create similar scenes in the comfort of our own homes. 

So in a roundabout way I’m trying to say that Little Big Planet is a fitting tribute to a man whom I’d never heard of until Tuesday.  

Posted in Games, Media | Comments (1)

Money for nothing

I’ve had a Second Life account for bloody ages now. It must be two years at least. In total I’ve probably spent around 3 hours wallowing in the frustration that it has a habit of generating.

Second Life has always had a bit of a problem in that it wants to be Social Networking but it also wants to be a game. In the end it has managed to achieve neither.

The essential problems with it are that it looks rubbish and navigation is a nightmare. I don’t know if it is a result of how long it has been about or if it is an attempt to give anyone access to it. Overall I reckon the graphics are on a par with Duke Nukem which I suppose isn’t in itself a bad thing. Duke Nukem was ground breaking when it came out. Unfortunately it came out in 1996. Second Life was launched in 2003 so it was hopelessly dated when it was released. Charitably Second Life is trying to achieve something different to Duke Nukem. It is trying to create an immersive world where people can interact much like a Massive Mutiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). Unfortunately Everquest started doing this four years before the launch of Second Life and it looked and worked much much better.

At the end of the day we can all ignore shockingly poor graphics if the experience itself is immersive. Second Life is by no means immersive. I have never come across anything that makes me more angry than trying to bumble around Second Life. Everything is an obstacle. You bounce off the tiniest of objects. You can’t get over the smallest of bumps. When creating an environment surely control is the most basic thing to get right? I have played some very poor games in my time but Second Life has by far the worst control system.

It may not be a fair comparison but I’m going to make it anyway. Why have Linden Lab not looked at Warcraft? When Warcraft first arrived, three years ago, one of the claims they made was that to play the game you would not need to read a manual. This turned out to be very true. Walking about in Azeroth is just simple. Watch any of the numerous Youtube videos to see just how flexible the control system is. It takes minutes of playing to just forget how you are controlling your avatar.

If you compare the minimum spec for Warcraft and that of Second Life  you can see that they are roughly equivalent. In fact you’d probably get away with lower spec graphics card with WOW. Warcraft also obviously deals with substantially greater traffic than Second Life but does it seamlessly.

I accept that this isn’t a fair comparison as Blizzard invested over $100 million in getting WOW right but it should be noted that the effort has paid off by creating an income stream that dwarfs many of the worlds real life economies.

Obviously I’m not banging on about Second Life because I suddenly think that it needs a good kicking after being about for four years. No, I’ve got a reason.

Today saw the launch of Birmingham’s very own Second Life Island. 

Why? I have no idea.

Digital Birmingham do ask the question “Is Second Life the ultimate digital experience?”. I could have answered that for them fairly easily.

No it isn’t.

It certainly isn’t Half Life 2, It’s not even close to Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots. Admittedly the concept of Birmingham whoring itself in Metal Gear Solid would have been great.

This is one of those plans that clearly seemed good at the time but the practical application of it holds little value to the people of Birmingham who’ve ended up paying for it.

I’ve just logged onto virtual Birmingham. At the moment there are 68,000 people in the entire world logged into Second Life. Of those 68,000 there are 5 visiting the Birmingham island. I’m one of those 5. 

Having had a bit of a walk round the island I’ve noticed that essentially it is a bit of grass with a canal cut through it. Do you get it? A canal? we have lots of canals in Birmingham. No landmarks have been recreated and actually nothing that you would really think sums up Birmingham.

Overall 2/10. Two for…… having a go?

[edit]Since I wrote this last night I’ve come across a few things written by other people that I think I’d like to address.

Jon Bounds wrote this  before I started writing, if I’d bothered to read it I’d probably have realised he made most of my points only slightly better, and with more fact.

Dave Harte has posted a response to Jon’s post which makes some points but I don’t really agree with them. I do accept the point that a 3D representation of Birmingham itself wouldn’t be that useful but a tiny Rotunda would be nice. Something that instantly says BIRMINGHAM when you arrive.

There is a practical value to exploring the representation of Birmingham in virtual worlds. I think that Second Life is a poor vehicle to use to this end. It is flawed software with a frighteningly small user base.

I would have liked to see Digital Birmingham explore the opportunity of Playstation Home.

Alright I’m talking about a virtual world that doesn’t exist yet but that means it is an untapped opportunity. Sony are frantic to promote the PS3 as more than a games console. To do that they need to work with partners to add that extra element. You can probably see where I’m going with this. If Birmingham had approached Sony at an early stage they could well have got all of this done for free and demonstrated an innovative approach.

This raises the issue of access to a Virtual Birmingham based in Home. It is true that market penetration of the PS3 is small. It is also true that with worldwide sales of around 14 million, all of which will have Home installed for free in the next few months, you will suddenly see the largest Virtual World developing. There have been 1.4 million PS3s sold in UK to date. On an even spread across the country that would give an estimated sale of 2000 units in Birmingham. That is surely far greater than the number of active Second Life users in Birmingham. There were 5 last night.

Well, that’s what I think.[/edit]

Posted in Birmingham, Games | Comments (5)

WOW : Terror Plot

According to Wired the Pentagon have developed a theory on how World of Warcraft could be used to plan terrorist attacks. 

The ludicrousness of this claim is truly incredible. In fact the underlying factual basis of it is somewhat reduced by the quote:-

There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds.

So basically there is no evidence to to support it whatsoever and it’s people like me propagating this nonsence that give it credance. Oh, I hadn’t really thought that through.

It does look like there are a number of spies that quite fancy being paid to play Warcraft all day. Good luck to them, it’s probably good work if you can get it.

Posted in Games, Media | Comments (0)

Global Financial Meltdown: My Role in it All

You can’t read anything these days without it relating to the global financial apocalypse. All in all it’s getting a bit dull now. The prospect of war with Iceland seems to have receded, which is fairly disappointing and all the news consists of flashing red numbers and doom laden graphs.

As everyone seems to be cheering up a bit it might be a good time to begin to apportion blame.

Many people believe that the root cause of the root cause of the collapse of the world economy has been the lack of liquidity in bank lending as a result sub prime mortgage lending in the US. The de-regulation of US financial services would be an easy target when looking for someone to blame but I believe this is too simplistic.

In truth much of the responsibility for the situation we now find ourselves in sits firmly on the shoulders of the Guardian.  I know this because I saw it happen before my very eyes.

For the last couple of years I’ve been a fan of the Gamesblog run by the Guardian. The Guardian has really gone for the whole blogging thing but the one about video games in particular is the one that I look at everyday. Mainly because I like video games but also for the people that comment on there.

The main reason for its success is down to the fact that used to use pretty ancient blogging software. As a result quite a few people found that it was one of the only sites that they could look at whilst they were at work. Over the years a little community grew up of people that found they could avoid doing any work by using the comments section of the blog to have discussions about the types of drugs they used to take and biscuits.

As a result of the number of completely arbitrary comments the Guardian agreed to put a post up everyday just for comments. I haven’t really looked around the rest of the Guardian site but I’m pretty sure this was unusual. At its height this post could get over 500 comments in a day which just made up a very weird conversation.

It was quite obvious that of the 50 odd regular posters quite a few of them were from the banking sector. Particularly Lloyds TSB in all parts of the country. Over the last few years I’ve learnt quite a lot about Lloyds TSB.

This was all working fine until the Guardian decided it would be a really good idea to update its blogging software. Unfortunately this has meant that the comments now rely on java script and can’t be accessed in many work places.

It seems unlikely that it is any coincidence that the day after numerous Lloyds TSB employees were forced to go back to working for a living that our banking system collapsed. It also says quite a lot for their recruitment policy if when their employees do a full days work for a change the share price falls through the floor.

I hope this can serve as a warning to all those organisations out there that want to begin using draconian monitoring software. There can be unintended consequences. Sometimes those consequences can be worldwide recession.

Posted in Games, Media | Comments (0)

© 2024 Daz Wright