It's hard

The problem isn't the lack of ideas of what to write. No, it's generating the energy to actually write them. I've found myself to be so opinionated about so many things in the games and computer industries, that inspiration comes as often as the hairs in my head decide to emigrate south for the winter (spring, summer and autumn) and appear in some other mystery location. Yet, it's that crucial self motivation that's missing.

Maybe for me the answer would be some form of competitive blogging. Having a scoring system that is based on more than just how many daily readers you have. There have been many games that I've dedicated months to; learning all of the nuances of competitive multi-player matches in whichever environment the game would be set in. I played a massive amount of Counter-Strike in most of it's versions. Before that, Medal of Honor, before that Tribes 2 and even before it was the many incarnations of Quake. Each of these games held such a sway over me that I practiced and practiced them until I would become either the best player that I knew, or very close to it. In some cases I had surprisingly high world wide ranks and in the case of Quake I travelled for competitions and started one of the very first UK based 1 vs 1 "ladders". When I played games with friends, having a Tekken night or session of Samurai Shodown (not a typo!), it was usually after I'd spend the few days before getting to know the various moves, combos and finishing moves of each game. It's so obvious now that I actually just needed a good shag!

I don't normally consider myself the competitive type; I'm happy as long as I'm good enough to amuse myself in whichever activity I enjoy. I've been playing guitar for around twenty years and although I don't have any technique to name, nor did I receive any lessons, I'm still told I'm really pretty good. I play a couple other instruments to a reasonable level. I draw, almost as often as Haley's Comet passes, fairly well. I used be quite the swimmer and I was comfortable doing some stupid-fast downhill pedaling on my Mountain Bike. In general though, these things weren't usually against a human opponent or anything that was measurable. If anything, I tended to shy away from more competitive games when I was much younger. When I reached adulthood however, if you put a gamepad in my hands or got me involved in just about any online FPS game, I became a tightly wound coil, desperate to prove to myself that I was actually as good as I hoped I was. Include the present tense however, as to be honest my competitive gaming streak never quite finished to mature and leave...

During the times when I played several of those games, I was either single, or in a relationship that should have ran it's course long since before. I was spending upwards of twenty hours a week playing some of them, and God help me, FORTY to SIXTY (!?!?!) when I was competing at Quake. I was in a long-term relationship and working full time. I'd turn up to work at 7:00 after having gone to sleep at 3:30, my head still buzzing to the slowly fading memory of rockets and grenades exploding. My colleagues had started to believe that I was taking heroin in the evenings as I looked bizarrely ill from months of sleep deprivation. I had a kind of street cred with the people who didn't know I was actually the biggest geek in a five mile radius. How cool was I!

So writing is a hard thing for someone as unmotivated as I am, to do. I lead a quiet and contented life. I'm married without children, I work full time and the spare time I have is mostly shared with my wife. We play some Left4Dead together sometimes, we make tiny but pneumatically enhanced Asian girls throw themselves around in sand playing DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball and we bounce some balls together in Peggle. Mostly though, when I play games now, it's usually while my wife works or for thirty minutes in the morning, with a coffee, in some kind of half-hearted attempt to waken myself up enough to deal with the public at work.

Give me a Blog vs Blog deathmatch, and I'll be damned if I don't practice honing my competitive blogging skills. Alternative grammar skills might just be the new "rocket-jumping" for me as my reflexes slow down and my tendency to reflect increases....

Green things versus dead things

So here it is, me pretending to be a games reviewer again! Many years ago I wrote reviews and articles for a couple of websites I was affiliated with through friends or online gaming communities; they were pretty much the alpha tests on these also feeble items. Now that I'm a sexy blog writer, I want to make the blog bigger than just news on how I fed my cat today. Actually, I don't have a cat. I may be one of the only people with a page on the net that doesn't have a cat. I do like cats, but I hate cat shit. I live in an upstairs flat beside a main road, so it would need to be a stay-at-home type of cat, and would obviously have to leave his smelly gifts in a litter tray. In my flat. Where I would have to clean it up... There is absolutely not a fucking chance that'll ever happen!

So yeah, the review... I should point out I would have to categorise myself as a hardcore gamer, and not part of the casual market. I used to play Quake (world, the original) competitively, I've ran two large gaming communities, I have a mouse that costs £70 (amongst my absurd collection of high cost gaming hardware) and I have a PC that looks like the Obelisk from 2001 A Space Odyssey, but with "menacing" red lights here and there on it; It makes a similiar noise to an Apache Gunship helicopter taking off and can probably hold pace with most military supercomputers. I play Left4Dead on it. Also, I now play:

A few months ago, my flirtations with "casual" games started with Trials 2: Second Edition. This is absolutely THE most hardcore game I've ever played, yet cunningly disguised with a super-slick control system and interface that's only equaled by the games' pick up and play mechanics. Two minutes to learn the basics and throw your bike over a series of ramps (often breaking 30 or so bones, which is a whole kind of fun in itself), but then a hundred hours to do it at a level that sees you riding a 90 second daredevil course to perfection. Plants vs. Zombies retains a lot of the more casual gaming style, but adds so much content, variation in tactics and sub-games that it fits right in the market normally dedicated to the gaming obese. Though maybe I mean obsessed...

It's kind of a strategy game, with you planting your ehm, plants (not a pun surely?) in a defensive position while awaiting the onslaught of Zombies. The different Plants have different attacks; some fire peas, some corn-on-the-cob, some lob melons, then some are like giant-zombie-traps that eat a Zombie whole and so on... You get the idea; there are many variations on how you choose to defend any particular level.

There's a massive amount of extra gametypes and goodies to get in the game. These are unlocked as you get further, and keep unlocking even after you finish the game. This ensures you dont just complete the Adventure mode once, but that you replay it through on the proceeding difficulty levels to get or use all of the extra stuff. The sheer value for money in terms of hours of play is pretty damn good, especially if you managed to snag it during the Steam pre-release discount offer when it was about six of your British pounds! In fact, it's only equaled (bettered, if i'm honest) by Trials 2 for that factor, though the amount of gameplay in Trials 2' is at least partly due to the inbuilt worldwide leaderboard system. Which sadly I've found myself guilty of becoming obese with... Obsessed, I mean....

As it's a Popcap game, the mini-games are pretty much all based on other Popcap games, so you get Zombie or Plant versions of most of their more famous games. Bejeweled becomes Beghouled, Insanaquarium becomes Zombiaquarium amongst another sixteen variations; though a couple are done a second time with slight changes and increased difficulty. There's also a lot of "Puzzle" levels, which follow one of two gametypes. One sees you with a screen full of garden vases which you smash open, revealing either a Plant for you to place or a Zombie to defend against, utilising whatever items you've retrieved from the broken vases. The Second game type lets you play as the Zombies against a pre-built Plant defense. It usually has one ideal solution, though others can be used which tend to use more of your sun.

So I've hadn't mentioned sun until then... It's the commodity you earn from your sunflower plants. Each plant drops 25 points every 20 to 30 seconds. Obviously the more sunflowers you have, the more sun you earn. A decent plant will cost you upwards of 100 sun. It's a cut-down RTS mechanic that fits the game perfectly.

The final part of the game is the Zen Garden. This is where any Plants you receive from "presents" dropped by the Zombies are placed. You feed them water when they need it, then fertilizer to make them grow and finally at the end of each growth phase you play them music or use a 'mister' to spray them. It's basically a Tamagochi game that earns you regular money drops from each of your Plants. The Zen part of the name is fairly apt as it leaves you in a half-trance, sitting bleary eyed with your point of focus a couple inches in front of your screen, trying to spot which Plant needs what and supplying it as quickly as possible. I wouldn't exactly call it exciting, and when you only have a handful of plants, it's especially dull waiting for things to do. As you fill your garden though, it can become a high speed chase getting the money before it flickers and vanishes. You can however make each job easier by purchasing tools and even a Snail, Stinky from Insanaquarium, to assist. These are bought from the Shop which also lets you buy more exotic "special" plants to use in the main game.

At first I actually thought that I'd put proper reviews on here, but I find myself less enthusiastic about formulaic systems or scores for defining a games merit. So upon thinking about how most purchases of games I've ever made have been based, I'd rather that someone told me "This game is amazing, you HAVE to play it!", contrary to seeing it get 8/10 on some website I don't really give much of a damn about.

So, to sum this up... This game is amazing, you HAVE to play it!

I'd like to point out that the little nugget of information about Stinky the Snail doesn't actually come from me, but from my casual-games addicted wife...

The above pictures are all screenshots. Honest guv'...

A tasteful start

So in fact, this is my first blog. Like most people who start-up a blog, they fake disdain at themselves for "blogging" and give themselves various excuses as to why at this point in their life they feel the need to share their opinions with the world (really only a couple of friends). The excuses are usually along the lines of having some new found spare time or about how they're really frustrated writers. Well, I'm definitely no writer, frustrated or not; unless you count the minor ego blow that my wife is considerably better than I am, which wouldn't bother me, if it wasn't for the fact that English is her second language! Regardless, neither my writing nor my inconsiderable free time are the main factors in getting me to expose my geekish soul to the masses. No, the singular reason for this blog is my own egotistical self-belief in my remarkably perceptive and stupor inducing opinions. They are without a doubt, the most valuable insights to the games and hardware industry. Ever. Honestly....

While I'm on my opening post, I'd like to ask that you ignore my extremely suspect use of the English language. Please suspend your disbelief and pretend that what you are now reading is considered as the zenith of writing ability on the planet.

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Now that I've fully told you my entire life story and every single fact about me, I'd like to bring the tasteful Box Art that's dramatically illustrating this paragraph to your attention... Feel free to look closer, as yes, that is in fact an exposed lady nipple. I remember to this day, the shock I was in as I left the local John Menzies (now called W.H Smith) with my newly purchased magazine, I turned over to the back page and there it was, brazenly demanding my full attention. At close to becoming 15 years old, a strange combination of awe and embarrassment came over me as I began to consider a career in freelance computer game illustration...

Anyway, back to the perky Box-Art: It was ran in several magazines as a full page advert during 1988 when the game itself, titled Game Over, was released on most of the major home formats. Many of those magazines were pretty much aimed at children, and the game didn't actually have anything to do with the celeb-style "oops" or indeed the lady adorning it so tastefully. So my reason to have it on this page is actually rooted in a strange kind of nostalgia at my teenage self for having been so fascinated with any vaguely lifelike lady-flesh in my favourite mags and after recently watching MrsMute play through about 12 hours of DOA Xtreme Volleyball 2, I realised that "titillation" in the games industry has definitely changed a lot, although not necessarily "grown up". I have to say that it just isn't capable of grasping a fully grown man by the short and curlies in the same way it can "pique the curiosity" of a 14 year old!

Another reason I can cite for having it brighten up this gloomy page is that I find the concept of using sex to sell products to children more than a little bit weird... I fully understand it for adults and teens that are of the "ejaculation-capable" age, but the real kiddies? What's the point; you may as well influence their reading habits by offering them some Kafka instead of Bob the Builder!? Although I expect that Jackie Collins' stories have more in common with nipply box art. I was actually a pre-teen once myself, and I remember how awkward I felt when I seen bare flesh in a film or on TV. That awkward feeling could be increased geometrically by adding either parent into the equation. Watching "9 1/2 Weeks" with my dad at some point during '86 was a truly humiliating and bizarre experience... So the question is really, "do kids respond to sex themed advertising?". I personally doubt it, as the primary factor in children wanting anything, is usually other children; peer pressure.

I'm also reminded of quite a few games that were also on the booby bandwagon at around that time, foremost of these is undoubtedly Barbarian by Palace. This "starred" the massively buxom Page 3 girl Maria Whittaker, in a sporty looking bikini (which from my knowledge isn't really warrior styled attire of the Dark Ages; though to my young impressionable mind the battle effectiveness of such clothing was irrelevant and the fact that those tiny triangular slivers of cloth were the only thing preventing me from seeing an actual nipple made it much more than fine). Accompanying that historic bosom, was none other than Wolf from TV's Gladiators, dressed in a furry loin cloth, the absolute height of 'cool'; you even got to play his character in the game. Dear God... Maybe I'll add the cover to this post, as it's actually massively entertaining. Neither of them are wearing wigs!

There were also quite a few Strip Poker games that mostly featured poorly digitised yet "sexy" black & white images of such lovelies as Samantha Fox and Linda Lusardi... I also remember the game Vixen had a Page 3 girl of some flavour, dressing up to play the "real life" version of the 24 pixel high heroine. The many links between Page 3 girls in the past and games are as plentiful as the ladies assets...

It's actually only as I've gone back and creeped through my memories of these games, that I realised there was in fact a link between Page 3 and gaming. There's a couple of uses of Jo Guest for different games as well, one being a Football game and the other one being a 2001 style Science Fiction space ship romp (ad to the left); the links between a nearly naked lady and either football or piloting a spaceship are still a bit beyond my grasp. In fact, more recently, towards the end of the 90's, the game version of the Fighting Fantasy RPG-in-a-book Deathtrap Dungeon utilised the rather sizable ass(ets) of Kelly Brook; yet another "boobs out" tabloid girl. The whole Page 3 link took me by surprise, I have to say, and there are undoubtedly many more as I did no actual research for this; it's entirely from my own slowly dissipating memory. Similarities can definitely be seen with EA's use of modern pin-ups in the NFS series...

It does amuse me to see the differences in what's considered sexy from the 1980's in comparison to what's considered sexy today, which in my mind has more points in common with "slutty" as opposed to just "sexy" on it's own...

To step back a little from the whole advertising and sex fiasco, Game Over is actually a fairly good representation of the state that home computer games were in during the late 80's. It was no glory time and for every Turrican that was released, there were at the very least 30 or more "Game Overs". Games may have improved, but the percentage of good games vs. bad games is at best exactly the same as it was, and more likely much worse. Sex however is still being used to sell games to youngsters, but increasingly also to adults now, and the games are still mostly "teh suck". Which was my point all along (I think...). Cunning eh!? Though maybe it's all just an excuse for the most non-erotic "tits n' ass" on the net!

At some point in the not too distant future, I'll vaguely compare how the industry is using sex nowadays to sell games to an older market, and all the subtle (as subtle as Rob Halford) gay icons in video gaming! You have been warned...