Monday 27 December 2010

Primary Gifting Period 2010 hailed as success!

A resounding success in fact, as I'm updating from... a phone. My ever-attentive folks got me a smartphone doohickey; now I can idly hurl my thunderbolts of insight into your living brains from anywhere. Stroking my chin while perched atop a cathedral for instance. Perhaps even from inside the toilet on a train! Rapture.

Monday 20 December 2010

Today in Gaming.

Today in Gaming:

World of Warcraft Cataclysm- why should you care?

You've played the game since the servers first opened, you and your friends have battled gods, dragons, Satan and something with a face like an inside-out Bear's arse. You've lol'd, you've QQ'd and you've requested popcorn for the guild drama matinees.

You've watched the game spiral into a hell of whining, quasi-competitive fan boys and outrageous liars. You've seen the little circle of light that was once Blizzard quality control shrink as Activision stuck their thumb into Blizzard's money hole.

You've seen dungeons devolve into tubes with loot pinatas at regular intervals and raids turn into miserable hit and hope affairs that still, somehow manage to be cordoned off for the near exclusive use of the top 30% of most snotty and prickish players.

You've come out of Wrath of the Lich King tired, disillusioned and psychically battered. "Stuff this game" you snarl, swearing to yourself that this was the kick in the arse you needed to end your Warcrack habit and move on with your gaming life. Why, on all that's holy, would you ever want to come back? Why stick your head in that snake pit again?

Oh, so many reasons.

Cataclysm is... lets say it's like not getting anything for Christmas, but then a truck arrives on January 2nd with more gifts than you could hope to deal with. It's late and that desolate December 25th still haunts you, but woah, look at some of this stuff! I'm just beginning to dig in now and what I've seen so far is marvellous. Detailed observations will follow.

"This is Jimmy".

I finally managed to get a hold of a copy of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. Now it's important to note that I originally decided on a half-hearted boycott of the game, due to the business model and pricing plan (that's a can of worms I could bore you with all day) involved in this latest installment of Blizzard's space-going IP. However, after a few months of pretending I didn't care and practising my "not listening" face in the mirror I have caved like a meringue under a blowtorch.

I know, it's ugly and wrong to see it, but I'm first and foremost a gamer, and Starcraft was one of the earliest PC games I had. The plot was engaging, even if the action was occasionally stilted and predictable. It was a soap opera with tiny space marines instead of chavs or salt of the earth types with faces like a litter of  suicidal bulldog puppies. I had to know what happened next. Would Jimmy succumb to alcoholism? Would Kerrigan ever discover who delivered the second grand piano to her secret hive lair on Char? Would anyone ever run a bus service to Aiur again?

Blizzard have taken this most venerable of plots and applied what I like to call Blizzard sanding. They've polished it to such a wild degree that even the flaws shine. They've taken the meat and potatoes of SC and ladled on gravy overwhelming.

I love it- and that's a problem; now I'll have to stump up for the next installment and the next. Kotick has me in his grubby little palm. I already play World of Warcraft- don't you have enough money now Bobby? Please, stop leaving your chubby fingerprints on IP that formed my gaming psyche- it makes me feel filthy just for enjoying my hobby.

Snowbound!

Like most of the rest of the country I am currently having some difficulty with the snow. Incoming Christmas presents have been frozen in their tracks and I, by dint of living in a remote area, am likewise stuck where I am. It's mildly stressful to say the least. People are expecting their Christmas tat. I'm expecting my Christmas tat- and dinner!

I remember snow being my friend- back when I was little snow was a sometimes treat, bits of the floor you could safely prise loose and throw at people with no worse consequences than having your face rammed into a snowbank for seventy seconds. Later on it became the last cast-iron, unassailable excuse to get out of school or college and pursue your own interests for a day or so. Mystery illnesses and family emergencies came and went but snow was solid, a skiving wing man no one could gainsay.

Now, in adult life, snow appears to have become the enemy; it's turned its back on Jim the adult and exists solely to thwart him. Like a bitter and deluded ex-girlfriend it sits and waits before unfolding a masterstroke of spite and malice, for which it can't even be blamed- force majore! Worse still you can sometimes feel the ghosts of the old pleasure at watching the flakes mount up even as you know it's going to cause you untold hassles- echoes from childhood when you and the snow were in it together.

I hate the bloody snow- but I suppose that's just the child in me wondering what the hell happened to my elemental buddy. Somewhere along the way one of us went off the rails.

Sunday 28 November 2010

Until tomorrow, the dole queue is my home.

Well, it turns out that my job and the job of several dozen others where I work is likely to be relocated early next year. No shock in this economic climate you might think- and you'd be almost right. The proposed move makes no economic sense, and is an insult to the people who've worked hard to pull the company out of the gutter by its eyelids, but that isn't the surprising part.

The surprise comes from the sheer number of people who have risen up from the shop floor to push back against this decision. They aren't going quietly; they've dug out obscure contract clauses, challenged the financial wisdom of relocating and pointed out some potentially embarrassing legal obstacles. Some wonderful, shadowy bugger even manged to tip off the local media.I don't think they've finished yet either.

I salute their efforts to keep this job alive; a job that has repeatedly handed them dog turds and demanded they be made into gold nuggets, time after time after time.