Updated as often as I can manage

 



Monday, March 15, 2004  

I'm going to keep this short because my room lights burnt out a few hours ago. That shouldn't matter, but for some odd reason even though I don't LOOK at the keys, my typing speed and accuracy fall dramatically in the darkness. I really don't know how or why this happens, but it does, so go figure.

Mixed weekend in footballing terms, because Liverpool's loss totally outweighs any joy from elsewhere. Another one of those games for Liverpool where we totally dominate, create tons of chances, and yet manage to lose 2-0 to the opposition's only two shots on target (and as usual, the first should have been disallowed for offside and the second was a fluke deflection). Owen managed to hit the post from a yard out and miss a penalty too. There was consolation in Newcastle losing, thus keeping us in touch with the race for the final Champions League spot, and Man U being totally thrashed 4-1 by rubbish local rivals Man City (and Fowler got the first!). That result has no bearing on Liverpool other than to give us great joy. The biggest game of the weekend wasn't in England though, but in Italy where Juventus hosted my AC Milan... and Milan strode imperiously on, beating Juve 3-1 with goals from Shevchenko and Seedorf. Forza Rossoneri!

The best part of the weekend from a footballing perspective though was Roberto Baggio's 200th Serie A goal for Brescia against Parma. Baggio is my favourite footballer of all time and one of the greatest of all time. He's retiring at the end of a sensational career, so I was hoping he'd hit this milestone before the end.

Posted at 5:48 AM



Friday, March 12, 2004  

Quick note today... firstly, I'm blogging this from bed using my shiny new Wi-Fi Sony PDA. It's awesome, but the story of it's awesomeness will have to wait for another day. Right now I'm watching the fascinating UEFA Cup tie between Barcelona and Celtic, and the two commentators on ESPN are dire. And I really mean truly abysmal. During half-time, there was a fight in the tunnel and a player was sent off from each side -- including Celtic's GOALKEEPER. When we came back, the commentators were totally unaware of this fact. They saw Celtic bring on a new goalkeeper, and did comment that it was an odd change, but never quite realised that Celtic were a man short. And when Barcelona had a second player sent off, they STILL didn't realise that Thiago Motta had been sent off earlier -- this despite the cameras repeatedly showing him off the pitch, surrounded by policemen, when they had assumed he was still out there playing. It took them a full 25 minutes to put it all together. Absolutely unbelievable.

Posted at 5:27 AM



Thursday, March 04, 2004  

Sorry for another game-related post, but... it's all I'm thinking of right now. And fresh on my mind are two new Bond games from EA: Everything Nothing, out now, and the forthcoming GoldenEye: Dr. No vs Goldfinger.

Everything or Nothing looks and feels like a real big-budget sort of game. It's got a totally original plot written by the Bond scriptwriter Bruce Feirstein, a new Bond song by Mya, and a whole cast of real actors (including Pierce Brosnan, Heidi Klum, Willem Dafoe and Shannon Elizabeth) lending their voices and faces to the game. It's even got the Bond car (Aston Martin Vanquish) and a "pre-titles" opening sequence, where Bond finishes off a mission before diving into the main story. So it seems to have the requisite Bond elements -- certainly enough at first glance.

The game itself still needs a lot of work, though there's enough potential here that I'm honestly willing to forgive a lot of it. They've shifted to a third-person view now, meaning that unlike the original GoldenEye (the most popular Bond game of them all) you're not viewing the game through Bond's eyes -- instead, you see him on screen and control him from there. This allows the game to have more of an all-around action feel, which is fair enough because Bond isn't just about guns. I really like the hand-to-hand combat, for instance; you can mix up your blows by grabbing objects to throw or even rip someone's gun from their hands. And now that you can see Bond, you can also hide him behind crates and corners, and then pop out to fire. It's a really cool idea, but doesn't really work because you're usually being shot at from all angles, meaning there isn't anywhere to hide and doing so will probably just get you killed.

There are also some driving levels (which makes sense, since every Bond film has a good chase scene) which are a mixed bag. When the levels are good, they're fantastic -- simple, fast, full of explosions, and with depth by way of shortcuts and new routes and enemies. Unfortunately, they also felt the need to turn the driving levels into mini-Grand Theft Auto clones. Now, I LIKE GTA a lot, and I don't really have a problem with copying it (if you're going to copy a game, why not copy the best?). My problem is that they did a REALLY half-assed job of it. Naturally, the areas are much smaller than GTA's, but they're also totally lacking in detail or secrets. Alternate routes are few and far between, despite the apparently open areas, and there is little cohesion or intelligent planning when it comes to their layout. In general, it's boring. I can see a vague place for more GTA-style driving missions, taking place in urban areas packed with other cars and not necessarily involving flat-out speed and destruction, but if it's not implemented right it's useless. And it is here.

I wonder sometimes if EA "gets" Bond. They certainly do on the surface, but in other areas I'm really not so sure. Like the cars. Yeah, the Aston Martin is there, but what are Bond's other cars? A superbike and an SUV. How utterly American. His main gadget? A Q-Spider, a spider robot. Bond gadgets are almost ALWAYS regular items with hidden functions (pen grenade, toothpaste C4, etc), not a little robot. The so-called "Bond-liners" are totally flat, too. The latest Bond location? The swamps of New Orleans. Come ON.

And yet, with all that in mind they also came up with the super-cool "Bond Moments". See, every once in a while there's an opportunity to improvise, to deviate from the mission plan, and to accomplish your goals in a suitably 007-esque way (ie, blow up a gas station and take out two tanks AND a helicopter at the same time). These are awesome. They accurately reflect what Bond is about and are just damned fun to find and pull off.

But then they go blow their good work there by releasing the first details on GoldenEye: Dr. No vs Goldfinger, and it only justified my fears. First, let me explain the title. The "GoldenEye" part is basically an attempt to piggyback on the incredible success of the original N64 game, which is still regarded as the finest Bond game around. It may also refer to the fact that this is expected to be another first-person shooter like GoldenEye was, and rumours floating around suggest that it's also because the team behind the game are aiming to make it a spiritual sequel to GoldenEye. The "Dr. No vs Goldfinger" part is because this game is focused on the Bond VILLAINS, rather than 007 himself. And indeed the first details confirm that you're not playing as Bond in the game. Instead, you're a henchman trying to gain favour in Goldfinger's organisation (dubbed "the greatest criminal organisation of all time" in the press release -- uh, what about SPECTRE?). The twist? You used to be a candidate for 00-agent status, but MI6 kicked you out for "excessive brutality". Ugh. Ugh. UGH. "Excessive brutality"?!? I really don't think you can get more "American" right there. Bond films generally are not brutal films -- the only exceptions are notable because they are indeed exceptions to the rule. And the N64 game, despite being a shooter in the age of Quake and school shootings, was virtually accepted as the "non-violent" violent game. Parents saw the Bond brand and knew that this wasn't some wild, brutal game -- it would be just like the Bond films they've all seen: Bond shoots enemy. Enemy drops dead. You might see a patch of red on their shirt. That's about it. But hey, the trend in games is to get edgier, to get more hip, to hit maturity... and apparently, violence is the way. They really, really don't get it.

And it's sad, because generally it sounds like this could be a good game. I mean, it's a return to the original GoldenEye style, and features villains across the Bond universe, continuity be damned. The multiplayer, with all the villains present, should be awesome (and incidentally, if I'm not Bond, I bag Red Grant... or Alec Trevelyan).

The game will be featured heavily at E3 in LA in May, apparently. Wish I was going...

Posted at 11:51 PM



Wednesday, March 03, 2004  

The funny thing about games is that even the worst one can be redeemed with a multiplayer mode. It doesn't even have to be a GOOD multiplayer mode, but just having one in anyway will cause two things to happen:

1) You allow a second person to experience the same crap you're experiencing, and thus you can both make fun of the game together.

2) You start getting competitive, and thus drive each other to actually try and ride roughshod over the flaws to master the game as best you can as soon as possible to beat your opponent into submission.

This is true of NBA Inside Drive on the Xbox. I played a game with a co-worker on his last day and it was an intense experience. The game itself is pretty poor, full of odd quirks, stiff controls and just plain STUPID things (uh, Dikembe from downtown? I don't think so), but none of that mattered. We had only played it once before -- he won, after a close encounter -- but given that we talk NBA all the time, there was a little rivalry going on here. Especially since I was my beloved Lakers, and being an East Coast guy he hates LA.

He picked the East All-Stars to counter my West All-Stars (otherwise known as the Los Angeles Lakers -- last year's model though, sans Payton and Malone) and we went at it. No matter what happened, the game stayed close. I went up big early. Then he caught up and it stayed tight. Then he went up by eight, got an odd charging call (honestly, how do they come up with charging fouls in games?), and then saw me go on a 10-2 run to tie it up. It went on through to the last two minutes, when he went on a simply ridiculous streak of five 3-pointers in a row (one of which was the aforementioned Dikembe Mutumbo Bomb) to pull out a six-point lead... only to see Fisher (3) and Kobe (3) tie it up before Shaq's dunk with 1.8 seconds left to give LA the lead. It was (near) the end of a long game, and we were starting to realise that we had taken quite a break and it really was time to go back to work. Naturally, he manages to inbound it, get it to Jordan, get the shot off, see it roll around the rim and trickle in to send the game to overtime.

We mulled abandoning the game, but realised that this was actually going to be THE last game anyway, so we had to finish it. And you can't have a game like that without having a winner, right? So, overtime it was. Same story. It was close again until his All-Stars finally busted ANOTHER ridiculous three-point streak (Antoine Walker with four in a row, which given his FG% is arguably as ludicrous as Mutumbo's trey) to lead by three with 4.6 seconds left. He joked that we should get back to work, and so I should just give up now. Yeah, right. I need a three. Clutch time. Inbound to Kobe. MJ's guarding him. Juke left. No dice. Pump fake. MJ buys it. Release the jumper. Hear the buzzer. Swish. Game tied again! Time for DOUBLE OT... right?

Wrong. At this point, we realised that there was never going to be a winner in both a literal and more meaningful sense. On the one hand, we were heading into 2OT and there really was no winner in sight. On the other, having someone actually lose such a great game would probably only detract from the experience and the fun (as fun as they are for the winner and the neutrals, those dramatic last-minute victories -- like the Superbowl or the Euro 2000 Final -- are no fun at all for the losers, no matter how much commentators prattle on about how they should be proud to have participated in a great match). So, much like the famous Ryder Cup Concession between Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin... we left it at 89-89 and called it a draw. Sportsmanship and fun ruled the day, and that was that.

(Of course, we were already late for work and figured that "We were in a really, really close game!" wouldn't cut it as an excuse, so that DID play a part in our decision... but it was mostly sportsmanship and For The Love Of The Game, honest)

Posted at 11:01 PM



Tuesday, March 02, 2004  

It's been a long, long time since I last posted, but I'm back by popular demand. No really, there was actual DEMAND for me to update.

And besides, today is a really good day to update. Why? It's Super Tuesday, the day 10 US states cast their vote for the Democratic Presidential nominee. Including California. Has anyone figured it out yet? No, I'm not a rabid Kerry fan. More like... a David Palmer fan:

"The following takes place between 6am and 7am on the day of the California Presidential Primary."

Yes, that's the intro to every episode of 24. Today is the day the events of the first series of 24 take place (though in fairness it could also refer to Super Tuesday in 2000, not 2004...). Yes, this is horribly geeky and silly. But would you expect anything else from me?

I've also been addicted to a couple of Flash games, Mini Putt 2 and 3D Pong. Mini Putt 2 is a great little minigolf game, very simple, but tons of fun. My best score is 45. 3D Pong on the other hand is probably more addictive than regular Pong, because it feels a bit fresher (we've played Pong millions of times and in various guises, from Breakout to Virtua Tennis) and is unfeasably hard. Seriously. What makes it worse is that it doesn't use the traditional Pong scoring system (you know, 1 point for knocking it past the other player) but some bizarro system that almost always gives the computer double the points you have, no matter how close you are in "goals". I was leading 5-3 at one point and somehow managed to be behind the computer by a hundred points. Which is... interesting. But then again, so is the fact that I'm still playing this game.

More tomorrow, I SWEAR.

Posted at 11:07 PM