Home cinema – a tall order

Perhaps I shouldn’t say this given the focus of this blog but last night I went out to watch “Harry Potter and the Half an Hour Too Long Prince”. I’m a big advocate of home cinema, not necessarily because I’m a big geek who likes mucking about with wires, that’s only half of it. Rather the key word of the previous sentence should be “big”, I’m about six foot five and for the record it’s not cold up here and yes, my parents did make me stand in a bucket of shit throughout my childhood – so thanks for asking...Whilst being of the tall persuasion does have many advantages it does make a visit to the cinema a mite uncomfortable.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened but I blame Kevin Costner, film studios seem to have unanimously decided that they needed to give us cinema-goers value for money. Generally speaking I’m all for that but not at the expense of deep vein thrombosis!

In the world of the six foot plus the perfect film is around about an hour and a half long, at least if viewed at the multiplex - I’m quite happy to go through the three hour director’s cut extended edition on the comfort of my own sofa. The average UK cinema seat just doesn’t seem to have been designed with the modern man in mind, even the deluxe seats give you about as much leg room as you’d expect to get flying economy on a budget airline. As a nation the Brits are getting larger and we’re not just growing outwards, as an ex-(film) teacher I can testify that year on year my pupils were getting taller. Hopefully by 2020 I’ll be able to go to a gig and stand at the front without feeling guilty...

Of course the cinema chains understandably want to pack in as many people as possible, this seems to be working since UK cinema admissions have been steady since they hit a high of 176 million in 2002. As a film buff I’m quite happy to experience extended editions and bloated director’s cuts, however I don’t wish to endure the experience of a crowded, stuffy, deafening and physically uncomfortable environment of many auditoria. Not when I’ve got a comfortable sofa and HD TV at home.

That said, I’ve shuffled and squirmed through all of Peter Jackson’s most recent work, the odd Michael Mann film, “Watchmen”... Say what you like for HD technology but for a proper film buff there really is no comparison to watching the big films on the biggest screens possible – preferably IMAX. While I’m not really convinced we can really call most home cinema “cinema” or that we ever can since Cinema has a kind of alchemy, the shared experience that you can never really replicate in the domestic sphere... However, home cinema is at least at home and most of the time that’s good enough for me!

Read more...

Online gaming – very much like making love to a beautiful woman

First dial her up, pop it in the slot, frantically press some buttons and hopefully you’re a winner.

Ironically since I started writing this blog I seem to spend more time writing about video games than actually playing them. My partner has never been a Playstation widow though, we have an agreement that we won’t spend the free time we have together doing separate activities. Unless I’ve really pissed her off of course.

Due to this arrangement I spend far less time playing time heavy online games, such as Halo or COD4, than I did when I was single. Instead I’ve spent far longer playing turn-based strategy games you can dip in and out of such as Advance Wars or the sublime Civilization Revolution, which probably makes me old – I’ll be on the flight sims before you know it!

However, I’ve rediscovered my online mojo with Dice’s Battlefield 1943, this isn’t a reviews site so I’ll spare you the details suffice to say it’s a stripped down squad based shooter available on PS3 and Xbox and it’s very, very addictive. It’s also download only, there is no single player component and it offers just four levels, its graphics are pretty enough but cannot really compete with its disk-based peers, such as Far Cry 2.

So what’s the appeal? Firstly it’s cheap at around £10, which makes it worth a punt – even to the cash strapped/risk averse. It’s simple and it’s fun and I can honestly say for someone for whom there aren’t enough hours in the day four levels is just about the perfect number. All too often the casual player can be overwhelmed when he/she plays these types of game which tend to be populated by a the much maligned breed known as the hardcore gamer. Typically when I dare to put myself through this I’ll drop in to one of many maps I don’t know or have only have a vague memory of and get picked off by opponents that know the maps like the back of their hand and call me things like “f**kin’ noob”... Or may be I’m just rubbish at video games but I find multiplayer shooters are generally a little intimidating.

Well does that make Battlefield 1943 a casual game...? Let’s think of games like relationships, you have to invest time and effort into them and in the gaming world I’m a serial monogamist. I’ve been going steady with Far Cry 2 for a couple of months now, it looks beautiful and I want to get to know it better but honestly, I’m just finding it a bit dull… Fallout 2 is a potential suitor that’s been waiting in the wings (or at least hiding in my cupboard – the pervert) since Christmas, I really think we’d get on but after Fable 2 I just don’t think I’m ready for that sort of heavy relationship again just yet… And that’s why I’ve got a bit on the side, Battlefield 1943 doesn’t want commitment, it just wants a bit of fun before we both move on, but it’ll never really go away, perhaps we’ll need each other again sometime. And that’s why I keep all my exes in a black plastic box under the telly.

Disturbing analogies aside Battlefield 1943 is cheap, short and relatively easy to master but does that really make it a casual game? Probably not, it’s multiplayer, it’s a shooter – neither of which give it the pick up and play appeal of titles like Tetris or Peggle that attract even non-gamers. Dice was never really a small developer and still continues to work on big budget titles even though this release suggests its owner EA has seen the potential in download only titles.

Casual games have been a driving force behind the unprecedented success of Apple’s app store and Sony is aiming to get a slice of that action through the download only PSP Go. Cheaper and shorter development times have opened up the market to independent studios that no longer have to sign up with a big publisher to secure marketing and distribution budgets. This is a step away from the AAA blockbuster titles that can make or break a developer, so all power to indies... Or is it? Oz-based blog Screen Play recently suggested that Microsoft is looking to limit the number of independent titles released each year on Xbox Live, whereas there seem to be no such limits on larger publishers re-releasing or remaking retro games on the service or ploughing significant development and marketing spend into “budget” titles such as Battlefield 1943.

Read more...

A Portrait of the Blogger as an Egomaniac

I recently got back from my two weeks in the sun and since my return I've baked several times in the daily London transport commuter cattle run and Victoria station has been closed during rush hour due to flash flooding... All in all I'm pleased to say I'm firmly back on British Summer Time.

The summer hols coincided with my annual ban from all things internet, this electronic exile actually does me a world of good since I spend almost all of my working life plugged in to a computer. After a while you can lose sight of who and what really matters; a minor software update often isn't that important in the scheme of things and despite the branding on the front of a piece of shiny kit it's (generally) not going to be radically different from another piece of shiny kit with a different name... Did I mention that this is a personal blog and not representative of my employer or its views?!

In my day to day business I sometimes come across people who would describe themselves as being very important on the internet. Some of them would even classify themselves as gurus of one kind or another, but “guru” is a small word with a larger meaning. To be perfectly honestly only once in my (fairly short) career have I worked with anyone who could be described as a web guru. It should be noted that he didn't attach that moniker to himself, that label is down to the New York Times... But hey since it's there! Now perhaps I could be accused of self-aggrandisement so to clarify I spent much of my brief time with Mr. Big making tea and small talk.

Almost all web gurus are self appointed and very few would meet the dictionary definition – it's like people that describe themselves as “a bit mad”, relatively few have had psychotic episodes and ss for web gurus it's hard to reach enlightenment in 140 characters or less. Bloggers have an ego, it's only natural you don't want to think you're wasting your time and if occasionally someone says they they've enjoyed a post or like your photography or home dungeon (or whatever) then that makes it worthwhile. However, dealing with “professional” bloggers on a business level can reveal that some of them are egomaniac tosspots!

While I was my holidays I found the perfect remedy for self importance... All my life I've held a healthy respect/fear of the sea, it's an alien environment where you are the intruder and it's full of things with teeth/spines/poison etc. However, I was persuaded that exploring the underwater world is fun, safe and natural, against my better judgement I was talked into scuba diving. There was no training, we were just taken a mile off shore and chucked in the sea, apparently this is perfectly legal as long as you don't go any deeper than five metres. I'm sure it was very safe, I was escorted by a professional, I could see the surface above me and that barracuda looked quite a long way away in retrospect, however I was of course petrified.

I had time to reflect on this as I waited for my friend to catch up as I hung from an underwater podium where I was supposed to feed the big-looking fish, however I'd previously flung the fish food away in a moment of sheer panic. I was left there with my thoughts staring out into the blue as my instructor briefly left me to my own devices - in my mind out of disgust at my abject cowardice. Rather than thinking about the sea's majesty I spent my time running through the ways I might die, I was surprised that drowning sat at the top of my list rather than being eaten alive by a rogue shark. I've now reached the conclusion that a diver must have come up with the phrase “big fish in a small pond” because I felt very insignificant, just one person in a world of billions whose life could be snuffed out in an instant (or at least in a nightmarish drawn out drowning.)

You'd be right to ask “so what does this have to do with home entertainment...?” Well after contemplating my own cosmic insignificance I began to recognise the psychological appeal offered by the digital world: I may not be a Booker prize winning novelist but I can still (hopefully) entertain a few friends and peers with the musings/rants on this blog, I don't have the wit of Stephen Fry but I might occasionally offer up the occasional amusing tidbit to at least draws an LOL from all my new BFFEs on Twitter. I'm certainly not going to compete at Wimbledon but the Wii offers as close an experience as I'm going to get, I've never been a samba-fixated cartoon monkey... I could go on.

Sadly there have been a few instances of disturbed individuals who have been unable to fully separate their digital world from the real one, perhaps these isolated incidents will increase as technology improves and digital simulacra become ever more “real”? For the time being video games are arguably a safe outlet for our fantasies of world domination, social networks offer a semblance of community in an increasingly isolated and sedentary Western world. Therefore the positive aspects of digital entertainment largely outweigh the negatives and as for me I'm a blogger which makes me one of the most important people in the world... Now where did I put that spacesuit?

Read more...