"I need to get to a library"

Apologies for the hiatus. It's been a week of sickness and busy-ness. Came down with a rotten cold on Friday, which found me on Saturday hunched in my dressing gown pounding away at Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Have reached a rather nasty difficulty ramp which left my Breton mage Cinnadar splattered all over the various castle and dungeon walls of Tamriel with a depressing regularity. Despite the frustrating have an itch to get back playing the thing as am convinced that with just a little more tweaking and the right spells I'll be able to "bring the noise" especially when it comes to those sodding trolls.

In other news have experienced the cinematic - erm - 'experience' of the Da Vinci Code. Have the immense scepticism towards this of the Foucault's Pendulum fan and am sad to say that nothing I saw in the film changed this. Indeed - though I haven't read the thing all the way through - the movie just seemed to emphasise its clunky and narratively limited nature. It is amazingly poorly constructed, pisses away its best assets (Paul Bettany's mad albino monk and Ian McKellan's eccentric recluse) and is, fundamentally, impossibly to engage with: the lead characters are unsympathetic, their quest nonsensical and their adventures drably unexciting. Will crash and burn.

There's a storm coming...

Took less time than expected, but my xbox360 has achieved sentience.

Where's John Connor when you need him?

Passing fancies

I've not been following E3 terribly closely, but have been quietly amused by the extreme scepticism shown towards Sony and the PS3. On the one hand UK Resistance pointed out certain disparities between early claims Sony made about the PS3 and the reality. On the other, Kotaku suggest some bandwagon-jumping on Sony's part with regard to the Wii's motion sensitive controller. I'm sure there's a raging flame-war somewhere on the internet, but as far as I'm concerned this just goes to justify my Xbox purchase - sad and insecure man that I am.

This was bolstered by news that MGS4 and GTA4 will be released on Xbox and PS3. In addition there was news of Just Cause, a game that conjured memories of playing Flames of Freedom on my Amiga. Along with PSP MGS, various zombie games as enthused over by the Baron and the Lost Planet demo released for download on xbox Live (oh, and Halo 3 too) there's been such a tidal wave of games stories that I'm sure I've missed some good stuff. Nevertheless, plenty to keep me indoors during these summer months.

Dur dur dur-dur, dur dur dur-dur, diddle-dee...

Mission Impossible 3 over the weekend and a pleasant surprise - a competently executed summer blockbuster. Admittedly expectations were rock bottom, but it seems that J.J. Abrams knew what he was doing with the plot while Tom Cruise was having one of his better days when it came to the performance. It's certainly a hell of a lot better than John Woo's effort, though I still rate Brian de Palma's Mission: Impossible as a decent enough film in its own right. What's important is that Abrams understands the material - specifically that the original TV series was about ludicrously contrived capers executed by a team - the film features no less than three of such set-pieces, in addition to another couple of action sequences. Indeed, little time is wasted and at two-hours the end result is a fairly tight piece of cinema (despite at least one example of gratuitous exposition).

Meanwhile the massacre continues on Battlefield 2. I've slaughtered my way to Corporal but it's quite depressing how conservative online gamers are - there's little variation beyond two very popular multiplayer maps and tactics used on those maps. Creativity is not really a factor in most people's gameplay and I'd question how much enjoyment there was in such an approach. Though that may just be because I keep getting "pwned" on Backstab. I hate snipers.

Going live

Have gained access to the hallowed ranks of online video game players through the somewhat undignified route of a demo for Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. Multiplayer only, it dumps you straight into a pre-set up map with a lot of other demo players. Quite fun, and I think it's overcome my social phobia of contact with other people - may well hunt down the full game soon. Anyway, for the time being have added my live id to this blog - a somewhat optimstic move assuming that anyone with an xbox live account reads it. Indeed, that anyone reads it al all. Still, takes my mind off the disappointment of local election results.

Jack Bauer's finest hour(s)

Still watching the new series of 24, which has recovered from a feeble dip in the last few episodes to what threatens to be a reasonably exciting finish. With this in mind, check out 24 great 24 moments.

Horse-tastic

Bit quiet over the last few days on account of a visit back to the West Country and associated day at the races.



The horse in front is the one we wanted to win. Sadly, on the second and final time round the circuit, it was just pipped at the post. Most annoying.

Anyway, perfect way of spending a sunny bank holiday was trying out the xbox's multiplayer support, at least multiplayer in the sense of running two controllers off one console. In brief GWAR is great and Blazing Angels rubbish. GWAR's technical single-player mode becomes a fun FPS. There's less finesse to the controls - no hugging walls for cover - but there's no drop-off in graphics and the level design is polished, though designed for rather more than two players. Coop mode is also great fun, though really comes into its own once inifinite respawns have been turned on. However multiplayer on xbox is really geared towards online play and sadly I've still not had much luck with this... To Be Continued.

Oh, and Blazing Angels really does get worse every time I play it - I see a trip to Computer Exchange in my future.