Air New Zealand
You know, watching this video makes me quite interested in trying them out for some reason. They certainly seem a jolly bunch of folks..
If you can’t take it..
..then don’t dish it out!
It’s been observed on more than one instance that cats are sociable creatures for the sole reason that it’s impossible to ignore someone if they’re not there. Cats often seem to delight in making their presence felt and then acting with apathy and indifference to those attracted to them.
Best tactic to show a cat up? Give it a taste of its own medicine!
Beaten: Dead Space
I’d had my eye on Dead Space since it first got announced. It looked superb even though Survival Horror isn’t a genre I really go for. Some of that is to do with the Resident Evil series being the flagship title in such a genre and my utter dismay at the array of broken mechanics and archaic design principles that litter that franchise.
Having played Dead Space through to completion I have to say it’s one of those rare games that exceeded my expectations. As such, it instantly goes onto a pretty short list of games I can whole-heartedly recommend. To me, Dead Space is the the pinnacle of the Survival Horror genre and EA, a company that recieves a lot of criticism, deserve enormous praise for their efforts.
Firstly, the setting is great! Zombies in space. Why didn’t anyone think of that before? (Dino Crisis 3 doesn’t count, ok?) You get all the joy of videogame zombies and the jumps and groans they offer PLUS! extra game mechanics like zero gravity, space-age weapons, sci-fi technology, airlocks and more. It’s a great setting and Dead Space makes the most of it. There are just as many ‘space’ themed events and challenges driving the game forward as there are ‘monster’ ones which not only adds a degree of variety in the challenges you face as a player but, because they’re so well put together, each complements the other and, in the context of the game, the overall experience of both aspects are elevated.
The graphics are uniformally superb with each deck given its own theme (medical, engineering, hydroponics etc). A variety of lighting tricks add enormous atmosphere to the game. Special mention goes to the stunning rendering of the player’s character Isaac, he moves with purpose and believability. I’ve rarely been so convinced of a living player character as I have of Isaac in Dead Space. It just works.
And a game like Dead Space lives or dies on its sense of atmosphere and how well it draws the player into the world it creates. Thanks to the excellent lighting, believable animation and nuances of Isaac and the astonishing sound design, the game excells when it comes to atmosphere. I’ve got some 5.1 surround headphones but, frankly, I didn’t have the balls to wear them whilst playing Dead Space!
Home improvement - the Dead Space way
Another hugely impressive part of Dead Space is in its user interface – or lack of one. Atmosphere can often be broken by hitting PAUSE and going around some menu items or glancing at a map. Dead Space offers you these features but presents them as a holographic interface directly in front of Isaac in the game. In fact, as you move around your inventory Isaac’s head follows the highlighted area. Whilst navigating this interface the player can still use the second analogue stick to move the camera freely around and, in doing so, you can see the holographic interface from different angles – including reverse angle – and see that whilst it looks flat from the front view, it’s actually a layered interface with different depths. All the time, however, you are kept inside the game world, the suspension of disbelief is not threatened by the need to review your inventory as it might be in most games. Even the player’s ammo and health are depicted as parts of the weapon and armour respectively. All the information is clear and available to the player but it never takes them out of the game world. To me, this is one of the most brilliantly designed aspects of the game and something that works to perfection. Interface design is hugely important in all areas of software, games have extra considerations (such as maximum resolution, having to keep areas of the screen clear and so on) and I think Dead Space’s execution is well worth studying. If you’ve played the game and never really noticed the interface then that tells you how good it is!
Aside from a handful of times at the start and end of the game, there’s barely any cut-scenes either. Nearly all communication in the game is handled in audio or through a holographic video playing out in front of Isaac. Again, because this is in keeping with being kept inside the game world it means that Isaac can still march forwards or open doors and shoot zombies without the game’s narrative insisting that he stand still and listen. Once again, it’s another example of how the sci-fi setting is exploited in the game design to allow the player more freedom to get on and play the game. In fact, this audio delivery is used to startle the player sometimes as your radio might crackle into life with loud static at a most unexpected moment. Everything, it seems, is designed to heighten the game experience.
My only criticism with the game is that, by the time you’re into the second half of it you might anticipate some of the tricks used to manipulate your feelings. Interesting objects are frequently put at the end of long corridors and, as you walk down the corridor focused on the object something will jump out at you from one side. Classic misdirection but it becomes a little familiar. As does the device of having you walk into a room with only one exit in order to obtain a key item and seeing the exit lock behind you trapping you inside as zombies start to spill out of innocent looking hatches and vents.
To compensate, the game has more than enough moments of unexpected thrills and daring (such as realising you’ll need to walk on the exterior of the ship or might choose to indulge in some zero-g basket-ball) that are far more memorable than getting jumped on by a zombie.
Dead Space is a cracker of a game and easily one of my favourite in the last 12 months. It’s Wii counterpart is also shaping up to be something very promising indeed. The studio that produced Dead Space are hard at work on Dante’s Inferno – said to be a God of War style game. I can’t wait!
Churnalism #1: Say it with words, not pictures
In what may turn out to be a recurring topic, I rant a little about what I regard as questionable behaviour in the often free-from-criticism world of mainstream media writing. These are a reflection of my views and my standards, yours may differ.
Are you a regular visitor to a frequently updated web site that publishes every single one of its articles with a clever or ironic header image?
You know the sort of thing I mean. The type of site that tries to sell its story content (or, more frequently, the opinion of the author) via a witty image that suggests that as much, if not more, time was spent on Google image search looking for the right semi-related image than there was spent on writing the original article in the first place.
What does it say about the belief in the quality of writing on the site or the treatment of its readership when such a site invests that sort of energy into leading the audience to form an opinion on something before they’ve even been informed of what that something is?
The double-whammy of an undoubtedly eye-catching headline (oh, I’ll cover that in another Churnalism rant, have no fear) and a sarcasticly presented image tend to lead easily impressionable readers to a certain view before they’re even aware what it is that they should be having a view on!
Are your words alone not sufficient to inform and captivate? If you cater and, more importantly, target the lowest common denominator of your readership then are you really doing yourselves or your audience a proper service?
Of course not. You’re there to churn out articles and to provoke a response in any way you can.
The litmus test: Is your article as readable and compelling without your clever/sarcastic/ironic imagery above it? If not then there’s a lot of scope for improvement in how your articles are written – and you’re not going to find the answers in Photoshop.
Post it
It’s great to see someone come up with a post-its-as-pixels novelty that dares to be more original than doing the same old schtick of recreating a sodding NES Mario sprite!
Anti Natal
As someone with the crazy idea that good gameplay design makes a game worth playing over something like a gimmicky way of controlling it I’ve never been convinced by the Wii (and it’s shockingly low average scores for its software aren’t really doing much to support the “gimmicky controller is a silver-bullet solution to F U N” either) and so it was with disdain that I saw both Microsoft and Sony wasting huge amounts of time and money in producing gimmicky controllers of their own.
Whilst Sony admit the effort they presented at E3 is a work-in-progress, Microsoft’s work-in-progress effort is already being pimped as the Second Coming of a revolution that hasn’t proved to be all that revolutionary in the first place. Within days of its announcement various high-profile shows in the US have all shown us how much fun it is to pay $400 (TV not included) to kick a virtual ball around in a virtually unsatisfying way. The notion that spending less than a tenth of the money for an infinitely more satisfying genuine experience seems to have eluded most people. Heck, you don’t even have to limit your movements to standing in a small square on the floor with a real soccer-ball either.
So, it’s with great satisfaction and not a small amount of relief that at least one USA show, The Colbert Report, can tell it like it really is:
The merriment starts at about 1:40 and I defy anyone not to laugh out loud when he pushes that red button when asking if the time is right to invest in Microsoft.
Enjoy!
Wallpapering
Over a year ago, the always-excellent Lifehacker.com had a brief article on how using a dark and low-contrast Windows theme may help reduce eye strain from prolonged computer use.
Since then, I’ve become a fan of dark Windows themes and wallpapers. My current XP install sports a desktop theme called Razor2 Final and is accompanied by a suitably subdued wallpaper of wood panelling courtesy of the Dark Wood Wallpaper Pack. It works better than it sounds:
Got wood?
The laptop computer in the other room, which is used far less frequently than my desktop, sports an altogether more vibrant and feline wallpaper called Kyoko:
Kyoko Wallpaper
Classy!
It’s all about image
Backing up your data is mundane and unexciting but it’s better than the worst-case scenario of losing things like your contacts, emails, personal documents and so on. I speak from personal experience and assure you, it’s not a lesson you want to learn the hard way.
I like to have my PC environment set up in a certain way with certain settings and preferred applications. Doing a full system restore and manually reconfiguring and installing everything would take a day or more.
Imaging saves me a huge amount of hassle.
What is imaging? Well it’s rather like taking a snapshot of your data or system. The main difference comes not in how the data is backed up but how it is restored.
Imagine your system and data is a sheet of paper filled with words. You can write each word individually, one after the other. Maybe correcting a mistake here, crossing out a word there. Eventually your page has all the words on it that you intended. Re-writing the page if it were blanked would take much the same time as you’d have to repeat the entire process again.
Now, imagine that you’ve a page-sized rubber stamp. All the words have been set on the rubber stamp. You’ve been careful to set the stamp up just how you want it and not have any errors in the words or layout. It’s probably taken a little longer to prepare the rubber stamp than it would have done to write all the words on the page individually as described in the paragraph above.
However, when it comes to actually putting those words onto the page, you just push the rubber stamp onto the page and in one brief operation all your words and layout are printed back onto the page. If the page was blanked then putting all those words back onto it would be a simple task of using that carefully prepared rubber stamp again.
And that’s how I’d describe the difference between restoring data / reinstalling a system one part at a time or recovering an entire system from an image backup.
There are a few different types of software that’ll manage this process for you but I think Acronis True Image is the one to go for. I happen to think it’s very user-friendly and feature-rich. If anything, it has more features than I’d want to use in a domestic environment.
As much as I love the software, it’s the principle of imaging that’s the real beauty. If you’re prepared to spend a bit of time setting up your system well, removing junk you don’t need and getting everything fully featured but not bloated and then make your perfect image then your computer is almost bullet proof!
Why spend thirty minutes doing a virus scan that may or may not solve the odd issue that recently appeared on your system when you can do a complete clean-and-restore in under five minutes and eliminate the problem for good? Why let your PC get more and more bogged down as you use it with all the temporary data and indexes that build up when you can flush all the rubbish out and restore to a lean but fully featured system that runs nice and quickly in the same time as it would take you to make and drink a cup of coffee?
Imaging isn’t a total solution for backups. You still want to back up current data like your emails and documents in a state where restoring them won’t send you back in time. But if you’re willing to invest time in preparing a good backup image then you can feel confident knowing that, whatever happens, you can get your system, complete with all your settings, back in a flash.
The 360 round trip
The 360 is back and, after an initial scare, it seems to be ok. The initial scare took the form of an immediate system crash when I first booted with all things plugged in. I unplugged my HDD booted and all was fine – re-did the system setup, re-attached the HDD and tried again. Seems ok!
I know, I know – you’ve all been wondering how it was going. I’m such a tease!
