drizzle, drizzle everywhere

It's been quite wet here just recently.

I think every day over the last month or so it's rained a bit. It's quite the turnaround from the heat wave we had at the beginning of summer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I broke out my aircon during the heat wave, but it's kinda annoying that I've not had any cause to use it since. Not that I'm generally a fan of hot weather - showery summers suit me fine - but I'm English, so complaining about the weather (whatever it may be) is practically a legal requirement.

I had a real good session last nigh on Anno.

I'm increasingly impressed by the game if I'm honest. The Scenario is very well put together in that it teaches you stuff at a good pace, but also the story is quite entertaining too.

It's also very clever - it throws quite a lot of stuff at you (sub-tasks), but not enough for you to feel totally overwhelmed. It's strange in a way, because even though it's real time, these sub-tasks aren't time limited (or at least, I've not encountered one that is). But you do still feel compelled to do them as quick as you can.

It also gives the game a similar feeling to the "just one more turn" thing you get in Civilization. Even though it's not turned based. These tasks make you think - I'll just finish this one task. But then when you do you get another one - it's quite clever.

Plans for the weekend are slightly complicated by the fact that both the next Formula one race in Hungary and the British MotoGP race are on. That basically rights off Sunday afternoon in its entirety. Maybe I'll do some ironing while they're on so I don't feel like I'm not achieving anything.

What I do really need to do is get this stuff on e-bay. It's getting in the way a bit now, as well as representing trapped cash.

I also need to at least start on the last series of BSG. I've been taking something of a hiatus from it this week as I really did get a bit burned out watching it so intensely. However, there is another reason for me putting it on hold - I've been trying to watch some of the telly I record live.

Now that's not because I'm feeling guilty at recording so much, it's because of the weather. That rainy weather has been joined this week by lots of wind and the combination of the two has really poxed up my digital reception.

And when digital reception goes, it really goes. Analogue you get a bit of static, but the stuff is still basically watchable. With digital it has a sort of threshold - it's fine and then suddenly becomes totally unwatchable.

This is a real disaster for me, as there's a lot of stuff I watch that's only shown on BBC3 or E4 or whatever, and I hate missing episodes.

I've even started using my old VCR again to try to make sure I don't miss a few vital things.

anno (domini that is)

So Anno 1404 turned up on Tuesday.

I can't say I did much more than in install it on Tuesday. I've been feeling very run down this last week. I dunno if it's been a knock-on from the intense work of the last few weeks, but it's taken me half a week to feel even vaguely normal again.

Anyway, I had a bit more of a play last night and I'm fairly impressed. There have been a few niggles, though.

One of the most obvious was the complete rubbishness that was the manual. Traditionally, complex strategy games come with a fairly decent manual. This is because they can be quite complex, but also because they tend to launch you straight into that complexity without anything much to really cushion the blow.

They compensate for this with a manual that explains the basics. Plus, the type of person that plays this sort of game tends to be the sort of person who will generally read a manual.

However, Anno's manual is rubbish. It virtually just tells you how to install and start the game.

I was unimpressed - this might be okay for someone who's never played Anno before, but for newbie's like myself it feels like you're being dropped off the deep end.

However, it turns out that the campaign mode actually acts as a "trainer" as well. It's broken up into missions, with each mission having a series of sub-tasks. These sub-tasks act as guides for playing the game, as well as providing an enjoyable narrative story.

It's quite clever, though it would have helped if the manual indicated this or perhaps the other game play modes (scenarios and 'sand-box) could only be unlocked once you'd played the campaign through a bit?

Anyway, I played for a good couple of hours and really quite enjoyed myself. There were a few quirks and oddities - for example, after I quit I realised it hadn't asked me if I wanted to save the game. I'm therefore guessing I lost all of my progress since the last save :/.

One thing I will say is the game looks gorgeous. The buildings and people and environment are very detailed, but, interestingly, they're still clear and distinct. Sometimes when you get so much detail it becomes unclear what's what - you can't tell the cathedral from the houses - but here it's really easy to see what's what, even when you're zoomed out.

It's also interesting to play the game in real time.

My major previous experience with a game like this is Civilization, which is very much turn-based. This is like Civilization meets real-time-strategy. It's initially a little disconcerting, but in the end works very well.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to really getting stuck in.

As seems to be traditional for summer I'm having some financial problems. I was horribly afraid of this. I've spent so much money in the first half of this year with Monaco, my Dad's 65th and my Sister's 30th. If I'm honest it's kinda frustrating, as financially things were going quite well, especially over the winter period.

I really need to work out what I'm doing with my credit cards for one thing - things seem to have gotten very cock-eyed.

Plus it's imperative that I get some stuff shifted on e-bay. Even if this brings only a small cash injection it'll really help.

jumper

What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a sheep?

A wholly jumper.

That has absolutely no relevance to the film in question, but is one of the few jokes I can remember. I'm not one for jokes, which isn't to say I don't find them funny or that I have no sense of humour, just I never remember them. I also find people who can trot out dozens of them to be a bit tedious.

Tedious might be taking it a bit far, but the film Jumper isn't all that good either.

It's difficult to put your finger on one reason why, though - it's more like a combination of little things.

First off, the hero, David, is not entirely likeable.

At the beginning he's a nerd who gets bullied. He's got a crush on a girl too, which he doesn't really act on. David's mother is missing, having left when he was five. It's also hinted that David is being physically abused by his father, but unfortunately not in any strong or clear way.

These then are apparently his motivations for his actions following his discovery that he has this power of jumping - the ability to create 'wormholes' and thereby teleport himself elsewhere.

Instead, he robs a bank and proceeds to enjoy the proverbial life of Riley. So, in other words, he doesn't do anything good with the money, or anything specifically bad, he has fun. It's therefore hard to give a shit about him.

This is where the cracks are starting to appear.

David doesn't use his powers to get revenge on his bullies. He doesn't use them to impress the girl. He doesn't' use them to find his mother. He doesn't use them to punish his dad.

Instead he runs away. Now if this were a proper theme - that running away doesn't solve you problems - that would be fine, but it really isn't a theme. It makes no sense.

Just like Samuel Jackson's character Cox makes little to no sense. He's a Paladin who hunts jumpers and kills them. Why, exactly?

We learn nothing about Jackson, the Paladins or their organisation. They are just "the bad guys".

But not only that, when David encounters the bad guys he suddenly decides he needs to go back home and hook up with the girl again. Why, exactly? Surely putting her in danger is a spectacularly dumb thing to do.

I could go on. For example, David with his life of Riley jumps to London and pulls a hot blonde. He's a man with no small amount of swagger and confidence. It also paints him as a bit of a shit, but the main point is that when going back to see the girl he starts acting like a nerd again. This just seems bizarre.

I dunno. They could have done such a better job, but as it is, the film is just sort of inoffensive, bland and a little predictable.

cod: world at war

I've lost count of how many times I've stormed the Reichstag.

Not literally, of course - I don't think the current German government would appreciate me running in there firing an MP40 and sticking the soviet flag on the roof - but in terms of playing games I've done it quite a few times.

In this case it was as part of Call of Duty: World at War, which I mentioned briefly at the end of yesterdays post.

I'm a big fan of the CoD series. There are some moments and missions that really stand out as things I remember from my gaming history. It's always managed to hit a great balance between enjoyable missions and keeping a good representation of the actual conflict.

In this case, there's a newish element, in that the American missions are centred around the war in the pacific. You play a marine as they try to take the various Islands leading up towards the Japanese mainland.

It means lots of jungle fighting, but more than that it means having to deal with Banzai attackers.

CoD has always had attack dogs in it, and they've always been my least favourite element, because if you let them get too close you're almost certainly dead. You can shoot them of course, but once in close range you have to try to time your attack to grab their throat - it was always bloody tricky.

The Banzai guys are quite similar - they pop out of hidden ditches or come running over the top of walls or down trenches and you have a very short time to shoot them before they're on you and stabbing you with their bayonet's or whatever.

Once you get the hang of it they're a bit easier to deal with than the dogs, but no less heart-in-the-mouth scary.

What else?

Well they ramped up the blood-and-guts. CoD: Modern Warfare was one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, and this is clearly using the same engine, so you get amazing visuals and almost life-like character models, but to go along with that they've increased the variety and nastiness of injuries that happen - so blowing people's hands off is a new one and people dragging themselves along the floor while bleeding out is another.

It certainly makes things pretty atmospheric I have to say, though perhaps not for the feint hearted, although you can turn the gore off.

Another great element is the graphics they've used to represent the story elements. They're very modern in style with swooping graphics showing maps of progress, and representing statistics and stuff. It's a really nice touch.

There's a great inclusion of genuine peril in the story-telling too - you get nearly killed on several occasions and it's initially difficult to tell that these are actually part of the story, rather than you just dieing again. It's very cleaver.

There are a couple of downsides, though.

As mentioned, the Russian mission pretty much retreads old ground - heading for Berlin. I mean, it's good to be back in good old Nazi-killing CoD territory, but it would have been nice to have something a bit different.

I guess part of the problem there is that the end of the War in the Pacific is a bit rubbish from a game play/climax point of view - they nuke Japan, rather than there being a proper invasion. So I guess they needed something with a proper 'end' and the Reichstag is a good, if obvious candidate.

But the real problem is it's too short.

If I'm honest, to me it almost felt like an expansion pack for Modern Warfare, albeit one with a complete overhaul and a different story, but still - it didn't feel big enough.

This was especially true for the tank and plane missions. CoD has had these before of course (indeed, again it could be a criticism that these don't really represent anything particularly new) but here there's only one of each - one tank mission and one plane mission and that's it. Before you'd at least get two or three missions, in order to form a proper narrative element. Here, they just feel like bolt-ons.

Don't get me wrong, though - I really enjoyed playing it, just I think having two afternoon's worth of game play, rather than one would have been better.

to do lists

I'm a great maker of to do lists.

I think I've probably mentioned this before, but every weekend I put together a to do list. It has a lot of stuff that repeats on it. Indeed, there's so much repeating stuff that I have a file with all the repeating stuff listed out.

To make that weekend's actual to do list I therefore start by copying in all of that stuff and then editing, deleting and adding to it as appropriate. Some of the stuff on the list is more optional than others - I mean, going food shopping is pretty necessary, otherwise I wouldn't have anything to eat, but something like doing some scanning is less vital.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I try to do the list sensibly - I pace stuff out so that there's plenty of time. But then what I end up doing is trying to do as much on Saturday as that then leaves Sunday open as being more like a 'free day'.

This weekend was no exception. As an example, I'd put wash the car on Sunday morning, but instead gave my car a quick wash on Saturday afternoon. That meant the morning was then free for me to do what I wanted.

Initially I'd thought I would spend most of Sunday scanning. With all four of the Japanese magazines here, I didn't want to get behind again, so I thought I'd do that.

But weirdly, I had a very strong hankering to play a video game. I'm not entirely sure why - I think maybe it was to do something different. I've been intensely watching BSG as recent blog posts will attest and had done a lot of catch-up scanning, so I think I was just in the mood to do something different.

But another factor I think was that I actually ordered a new game on Friday - it's called Anno 1404 (as in Anno Domini, like 'AD' on a date, so 1404AD) and is sort of like Civilization meets SimCity. I also discovered that the Red Alert 3 expansion has been out for a few months, but it's only available as a download.

So I think also there was an element of guilt there too, that yet again I'm spending money on games without actually tackling the ones I've already bought and not played.

Which is all a bit besides the point - what did I play?

Well initially I dusted off a game called Desert Rats versus Afrika Korps. Actually, that's not true as initially I spent a good few hours applying updates to my games machine as it's been ages since I updated it. But in terms of games I tried to play Rats again.

I say again, because I've tried to play it before, without much success. This time was no different - the game is almost impossible. That is to say, it's impossible for me - I'm guessing someone who's good at games might just find it 'challenging', but for me, who's rubbish, it's impossible.

It therefore wasn't long before I'd uninstalled it and put it in the e-bay/bin box.

But I still had a hankering for some gamering, so I next installed Call of Duty: World at War.

It was good, but this blog post is already quite long and drivelly, so I'll discuss it in more depth tomorrow, I think.