The Strat Man's Blog

Beatles Cover & Blog Update

Greetings C3,

My body clock has been royally screwed with by a three-week series of horrible all-nighters to meet final year deadlines. I definitely regret: not having my dissertation finished until the wee hours of morning on the day it was due, I also regret leaving my creative writing portfolio ‘because I already thought it was good enough’ only to discover a couple of days before that it was not. Beside those I’ve had a ton of essays to due. Honestly I’m so thankful everything is over now except two exams in a few weeks. Then I’ll be free to do the stuff I want to do (and have been doing anyway, at my works expense), with that in mind, here’s a Beatles cover I recorded at 3am today. A bit of fun, with a guitar solo at the end.



I’m looking forward to E3 immensely, also hotly anticipating Max Payne 3 which is out at the end of the month. In other procrastination news, everybody needs to buy Fez on XBL for retro/sprite/dreamy 3D goodness, it’s the stuff I dreamed would be in the future during the days of the SNES.

Hope everyone is well,

Putting Things in Boxes (New Song)

I’ve wanted to get serious about recording more jams for awhile, about five months ago now I got hold of some great gear (iMac, a good audio interface, Logic Pro 9, MIDI keyboards and so on) and now I think I’m getting the hang of things. Was going for something mellow to jam over. I love playing over things like this, and never happier than when jamming on my Deluxe Fender Strat.

And this years resolution is to write an album. I think this is the first track I’d be happy to add. Please let me know what you think!

Also I get to use this as coursework for part of my degree it’s for a film lit module about adaptation, I have to adapt a scene from Romeo and Juliet to music. This is supposed to be the balcony scene between Romeo on guitar and Juliet as the keyboard. Haha. English degrees..

Still have that dissertation to write, with SSX on the way soon..

Skyward Sword: Why Wii U Can't Come Soon Enough

So a couple of days ago I picked up Skyward Sword for a tidy £25 online at Gamestation. I'm always on the look out for great bargains at this time of year, but I was surprised to find a practically brand new title (certainly the Wii's biggest holiday game) for cheap. This is especially true considering first party Nintendo games hardly ever seem to drop much bellow the RRP. But I suppose this year is different, what with the Wii U on the horizon and the PS3/360 sporting so many massive games for this festive period. The last hurrah (I don't really recall a first hurrah) it would seem.

I definitely think I've played enough to form a coherent opinion of Skyward Sword. Granted, there's still a lot of playing time ahead (I'm only three dungeons in) but already the key points for me are very clear. Skyward Sword, in my eyes, is definitely a bit of a paradox. It does so many things so well, at times using these new items with Motion Plus is a huge joy, and entire afternoons will be lost playing through dungeons, at the right moments that Nintendo charm hits the spot like no other.

But for everything is does right, there are glaring errors that are impossible to discard. How on earth could Nintendo over-look the camera angle problem? For a game that's all about adventuring, exploring and water-paint vistas - it seems absurd that it often seems to fix itself so high above Link that you can't really see ahead properly. And the dialogue, at times, is so unimaginative and atmosphere killing - in this game more than ever, I feel like there's no subtlety. On a few occasions so far, after collecting an item, a stream of text has actually directly told me where to go next or what to do with it.

Overall, while I am persevering through these annoyances and definitely enjoying the game, I think the biggest nuisance and downfall of the game highlights some important things about Nintendo of recent times:

While Motion Plus has added great depth to swordplay, I have been infuriated controlling Link on occasion. Approaching an edge wanting him to drop only to find he leaps and vice-versa are amongst some of the most frequent issues I have. There's no denying that certain terrain causes major issues, unnecessary leaps into lava, camera spasms misdirecting rolled bombs - in general I've found a lack of precision. But really, I think what it is, is after so many years of majestically flying about with Etzio and the Prince of Persia with Sony and Microsoft's current systems - you come to expect that sort of ergonomic flowing control from everything, regardless of what hardware it is. When I was collecting one of the last keys for the Earth Temple around Eldin Volcano, it took me an hour to figure out how to get across that un-drawn bridge because after inspecting the small ridge to it's side, and not being able to vault onto it and have Link grab on - I concluded that I couldn't pass through that way and started backtracking. It did not occur to me that I had to stand at the edge, press A and then shimmy across - maybe last generation it would have. But not now. Which is exactly my point:

For all the innovations the Wii has provided for its core series, not being able to keep up with the more practical advancements of much better hardware has cost them dearly. To play Skyward Sword, not only do I have to lug a TV out the attic that isn't HD - I have to constantly remind myself it needs to played like a game of last generation. It needs extra patience because of less than seamless controls, you have to supress the disappointment of no voice-acting, and of an over-world that serves only as a gateway to what seems to be a disappointingly un-connected and small lower-world, the music quality.

And that to me underlines why Nintendo cannot get into the HD game soon enough. The Wii U will finally raise the general bar for Nintendo to the level of its competitors: as great as it has been to see Nintendo push their games in new ways on the Wii - I do firmly believe, with few exceptions, that being so caught up in innovative features has stifled the evolution of other really basic yet important aspects of these games.

So for now, I'm putting up with Skyward Sword's failings - because in the grand scheme of things it seems to be a fantastic game so far. If it had come out during the Wii's prime it probably would have been even better received. But if the next home console Zelda is as clunky, and wreaking of Gamecube-esque physics, controls and mentality - I am most definitely opting out of Nintendo and their core franchises. I am tired of hardware-based innovations, once upon a time Nintendo were good enough to achieve that through game ideas alone.

Anyway, have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

Back in my Day...

So, summer is here, for most people my age that starts a very particular process that I’m sure many students here will recognize. It’s called, fail to get a job and then spend all summer aimlessly hanging with friends and playing video games. I don’t really have an issue with that; it seems to be 'how it is' these days. Except for maybe that last bit… because recently I feel like video games have been white-washing my brain.

Is it just me, or were games just a hell of a lot more fun when we were younger? I know every generation says this, but in today’s HD ultra-realistic, series-happy, commercial minefield, I genuinely do feel like we’re missing the point of video games.

Take Mario 64, for example, lots of us remember it. Running about on bomb-omb battlefield for the first time was incredible. And maybe it’s just me, but was a big part of that experience not using your imagination to envisage this world alive? Beyond the confines of the game itself I mean, you were ten, you were having fun, and your imagination played a big part in making this Mario 64 world magic and memorable.

I wonder, really, whether a generation brought up on Modern Warfare will get the same thing. When I play those games, as fun as they can be, my mind is constantly thinking simulation. Therefore I don’t believe anything is going on unless it happens right before me. As emphasized by Modern Warfare 3’s big emphatic trailer featuring the destruction of New York, it seems to me that developers have to show us these things now, because our imaginations have become so useless. Did Perfect Dark not create that same feeling of a world engulfed by warfare? How did they achieve that without a set-piece scene where the statue of liberty’s head dunks into the sea and real-world water physics carry it off toward the atlantic ocean?

I want purer games. Simpler. Games that are just fun, again.

Jobless, Bored Undergraduate Rant

This blog essentially is just a random rant, just so you know. But anyway, yeah, I just got back to the UK two weeks ago after a year studying abroad in Colorado and although it has been fantastic to see friends and family; I’m bored as hell and as an apparently useless undergraduate student, I feel like I’m stuck in a rut.

Not even the scent of a possible summer job opportunity, and the general reports amongst friends aren’t good at all. Despite feeling reasonably qualified to wait on tables or work at a gas station, I’m getting the impression that nobody wants to hire snobby “sophisticated” students. And that’s a label I think we get stuck with all too easily.

Maybe I can’t get a job for other reasons, maybe there’s just nothing going but I’m quite suspicious that employers look at ongoing undergraduate students as leeches. They would much rather hire an 18 year old who is sticking around all year, somebody who they know straight away won’t disrupt the work environment at all.

But yeah. I feel bored. And useless. And everything I want to do (for those interested, get on the road, get an iMac for music, go some places) costs money. And, well, you see how the circle of boredom works.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next