One Month in the Blog-less Wilderness: Part II

The accuracy of this round-up's title is questionable (must be closer to two months by now), but I'm steaming on with it anyway, largely because it seems wrong to miss out the thing I've spent most of the summer involved with - video games.

Picked up Dead Rising again and, armed with Gamefaqs, stormed through a huge chunk of it. It's a game that infuriatingly straddles the border between compelling and infuriating - the latter due to the game strongarming you into dashing from objective to objective without time to savour the zombie slaughter. I found what little respite there was between missions was spent dashing to and fro between gun shop (to rearm) and the security room. The ticking clock vibe adds tension but - along with the deliberately alienating save-game mechanic - goes a little way to stripping some of the fun from the experience. Anyway, maintenance tunnels beckon, though it's been a good month to six weeks since I touched it last.

Also on Xbox had an abortive stab at The Darkness, a game which initially sucked me in thanks to positive reviews and some superficially fun controls (as well as one really good twist) but quickly became dull and plodding especially with the addition of a power which amounted to a "win button".

Bit more potential in Saints Row, especially in light of the delay to GTA IV. Basically it's a game about character customisation, building on the clothes and appearence ethos of San Andreas. The car controls are slick and the running-and-shooting a huge improvement on Rockstar's mechanic. It's fun but without depth, which is probably why attention has wandered.

Bully was also a passing diversion. Essentially it's a competent batch of minigames tied together with a decent narrative. Fun enough, but a bit meh in the medium to long term.

Finally have been loving the pokemon and - more surprisingly - the PSP, largely due to the port of Sid Meier's Pirates. This was one of my earliest favourite games (way back on the Amiga) and the version for Xbox that came out a couple of years ago kept me busy for ages. The move to PSP was perfectly judged due to the small scale of the game itself, and its episodic nature - turns out the PSP can last for a good long while in standby mode.

Catching them all

Off on holiday next week so have been fine-tuning my portable gaming set-up. Basically, this means ensuring my girlfriend has her own DS (so that she won't steal mine to play bust-a-move) and that Pokemon Pearl is in my possession.

I've not really been 'into' Pokemon since the first round of Gameboy titles Red and Blue. However, it seems that seven years have changed little in a world that still revolves around OCD levels of exploration and fighting to level up your stable of pocket monsters. It's not as crack-like in its addictive qualities as Puzzle Quest, but it still has the right mix of long-term appeal and compulsive gameplay on the sort of scale tailor-made for handheld gaming.

The only downside is the amount of grinding required to get through the levels. It's not for the impatient and can get monotonous, but I was still disgusted with my excitement on managing to net an Onix. It just serves to emphasise how portable gaming works on a different level to the console world. The PSP suffers not only due to the types of game that have been ported onto the system, but also its control system. The attempt to replicate analgoue control on a portable system is wrong-headed. The touch-control of the DS is vastly more successful as it gives a more tactile and direct link to what's going on on screen (conversely the Wii has yet to fully realise this sort of endeavour on TV screens).

Every one of the games I've bought from the DS have been instantly engaging and addictive experiences. By comparison the PSP has got depth in its games, but crucially fail to draw in players looking for the instant hit of gameplay designed to work on the level of a tube or bus journey. If you can sit down in a room lit for gameplay for a few hourswith an AC adapter to hand the PSP can be a great experience.

One Month in the Blog-less Wilderness: Part I

Time flies when you're having fun, and despite the stress of an unsuccessful OLPAS application season (boo) it's been a fun month . I've even DONE some exciting STUFF. Which I intend to relate over a few parts - hopefully something which will also get some posts going in this barren desert.

Firstly Movies. It had been a pretty disappointing year for brainless pap (pretty much my staple cinematic diet at present) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix did not much help matters. Stodgy rather than stupid it swapped any sense of urgency or pizzaz for a dogged tread through the plot of the book. Though not as guilty in this regard as the first two, in comparison with the genuinely good third movie it's just not a film, coming across more as the middle installment of a (very well-funded) TV miniseries. Moreover I'm a 28 year old with reasonable tolerance for long films - I'd hate to take a child to see this.

However, salvation came in the form of an old bald man. Die Hard 4.0 was the first film of the year to deliver on the promise of its trailer. It went bang on a suitably regular basis and to a suitably extreme degree. Was far from perfect, and is cearly the least good of the series but was such a relief not to be landed with a film which was ambitious beyond its means or hampered by a leaden script and plot. More interestingly its emphasis on 'real' stunts amounts to a reasoned critique of CG effects - to the extent that the plot pits computer hackers against an unrepentently physical cop. This is partially spoiled by a massively incongruous climactic CG spectacle but generally it's an interesting approach - now to come up witha suitably pompous title for self-consciously physical blockbusters. Organic popcorn?

All that said, Transformers happily overturned any ideas that there should be a tilt towards the 'real'. It's a nauseatingly put-together film bith in terms of editing and sound, and there are some serious plot flaws but the saving grace is - oddly - the film' inconsitency of tone. It shfts from scene to scene between serious sci-fi melodrama (in the vein of Independence Day) and almost slapstick comedy (with a great performance by John Turturro). However, this makes for enjoyable action sequences with some palate-cleasning genuine laughs in-between. It's unlikely to stand a repeat viewing, and in any case would never work on the small screen but for a one-off piece of entertainment will do just fine.

Right, next time video games.