Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Why I Love Manchester

Published on July 28, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Recently, I was back home and as my train was arriving into Piccadilly, I had the inspiration to write this post.

I was brought up in Rochdale, and to be honest, I never really ventured out of there to go shopping until I was perhaps 13 or 14. I started going to Manchester with my friends around then and enjoyed the wide range of shops and busy atmosphere. However, it has only been recently that I’ve appreciated Manchester for the architecturally beautiful city it is, and also that it’s nightlife is top notch if you know where to go.

The building that really inspired this post is the Palace Hotel on Oxford Street. Apparently, it was only converted to a hotel in 1996, and it was originally built for the Refuge Assurance Company. I have seen the interiror but only on a television programme not so long ago. But it is lovely and made up of tiles and arches and just stunning architecture. It is also one of the prime examples of why Manchester is known for it’s red brick buildings.

The city has been revamped a lot over the past decade. Mostly following the 1996 Manchester bombing. Obviously there is still building going on, but to be honest I don’t think the Manchester skyline would be quite the same without a couple of cranes.

As well as the older architecture there are some really good examples of modern architecture in Manchester. Most notably the new Hilton Hotel building and the Urbis.

To stop this turning into a boring post about buildings I’ll also talk about my experience of the famed Manchester nightlife. I’m not really a clubber but I like to go and dance to good music where there’s a nice atmosphere. recently I went to see iLiKETRAiNS at Roadhouse in Manchester and it was a really good venue. At the weekend I braved a night out in the city and we ended up there for a club night where they played classic and new rock. It was truly one of the best nights out I’ve had, and there was so much choice for this kind of music, Roadhouse was far from the only place offering this type of night out. It’s a shame that other towns and cities don’t realise that this is something the public want, but then I say this when I live in Stirling for University, and it is pretty dull at the best of times with around 4 nightclubs.

However, we did start out in a pub that was only playing The Smiths and Morrissey. Only in Manchester I suppose but it was full of blokes with NHS glasses and Smiths t-shirts, one saying ‘Je suis Morrissey’ highlighting the sheer pretentiousness of it all. But despite me not enjoying it, it does show that Manchester is a very diverse city and I really do miss it when I’m up in Scotland.

Too Human – The Demo

Published on July 25, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Too Human has a well documented turbulent history. It had an infamously bad showing at E3 a few years back and has garnered mixed previews at best recently.Reactions to the recent demo have generally been negative as well, with gamers citing the lack of right analogue stick camera control and “bad” graphics as reasons not to like the game. Having tried the demo last night, I can’t help but feel sorry for this rough gem of a game.

You see, it’s not bad. In fact it’s very good. I can’t understand why people couldn’t get their heads around not being able to control the camera with the right stick. It has the often used mechanic of using the left bumper to centre the camera on your character; meaning a relatively full level of control is maintained. The camera facilitated the action almost flawlessly in my experience, all the while maintaining a very cinematic style; particularly in the in-game cut-scenes. This style actually added a really interesting dynamic to the game, it felt more alive and less sterile than a lot of games I’ve played recently.

Graphically the naysayers had more of a point. While the art style is very nice, technically things aren’t quite so good. You can tell this game has been in development for a long time, as the variability in quality of in-game assets is remarkable. Some objects can look really nice, whereas other objects can look decidedly last generation. This is probably a given for a game with such a troubled development history, but a real shame given the relatively interesting techno-norse-punk (too far?) art style.

The action was really fun, with the right stick controlling most attacks and secondary fire coming from the right trigger. The right stick combat system gave a good feeling of control over the action if you took the time to learn which action corresponded to which attack. I think the combat will easily stand up to a full game’s length. Particularly given that I’ve heard the main quest is relatively short. That’s another bonus in my book, I don’t have time for anything over 15 hours these days, so around 10 is just about right for me.

The demo certainly convinced me to purchase the full game, hopefully I’ll enjoy that as much as I did the demo. I don’t think Too Human will be critically acclaimed or sell well, I do think it’ll be loved by a sub-set of the gaming community though.

Salt, Peppa and Spinderella

Published on July 24, 2008 in Music and video. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Johnny Foreigner are probably my favourite new band of the year. Their debut album Waited Up ’til It Was Light pops and fizzes with excitement in places, while still favouring well structured songs above all. Salt, Peppa and Spinderella is the forthcoming single from said album. It’s perhaps not the most representitive track on the album, more the slightly different mid-album song, but it’s great and one of my favourites on the album.

The video is also amazing and I fell in love with its style. Embedded for your pleasure.

Johnny Foreigner- Salt, peppa and spinderella from Best Before Records on Vimeo.

Best Band – The Best Band Evar11

Published on July 19, 2008 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

May I present Best Band. The best band evar!

Say It Ain’t So.

God I can’t sing.

Bloc Party – Mercury

Published on July 8, 2008 in Music. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Normally I wouldn’t post about something like this, but the song has been getting such a kicking I felt the need to. This song is really good. I know there are a lot of people out there who used to love Bloc Party back when they “just made guitar choons” and haven’t liked anything since Silent Alarm. I get that. But those people shouldn’t feel like they have to complain about all of their post Silent Alarm output. It was fair if they complained about some of the earlier stuff, up to and including the second album. This is the second song after album number two now though, if you don’t like the direction they took you should get over it.

Incidentally Flux met my expectations of the Two More Years -esque fairly bad single after an album. This is genuinely very good.

How Nintendo Got It Wrong

Published on July 1, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 2 Comments Tags: , .

This may seem like a strange post given that Nintendo are currently riding high, winning both the console and handheld wars and reaching out to a new market. Indeed that Nintendo made it out of 3rd place at all in the home console “war” is remarkable. However, all is not well. Increasingly traditional gamers, that’s consumers who have been purchasing games consoles since long before the Wii, have been feeling that the company is no longer making games for them. Indeed it would be easy to quote Shigeru Miyamoto himself to back up such a claim; I don’t have the exact quote to hand, but he said something like “I’m no longer making games I consider to be fun, but making games I think my wife would like.” This is exemplified by his recent output, made up largely of games like Nintendogs and Wii Fit.

It is this sort of game that is Nintendo’s problem. While the Wii is selling well, it is well known that the system has a relatively poor attach rate (number of games sold per console sold), largely because a lot of these games are little more than the latest fad. Wii Fit in particular is an offender here, I wonder how many non-gamers have bought a Wii for Wii Fit, only for the Wii to now sit unused after the initial novelty wore off.

While this is happening, traditional gamers are starting to feel left out. Beyond Super Smash Bros. Brawl there has been no Nintendo game which has elicited that old feeling of joy from me. Even the much vaunted Super Mario Galaxy left me cold. While I may be in the minority on the latter, few can disagree when it is noted that Nintendo have been lax with their output recently. Twilight Princess was okay, but it was a Gamebcube game, not a Wii game. Mario Kart Wii felt dumbed down and can be played almost on auto-pilot. Metroid Prime 3 (not strictly a Nintendo game, but overseen by them) had too many people in it at the start and felt generally diluted. Metroid Prime was noted for its feeling of isolation, among other things, introducing too many non-player characters was just a flat out bad idea.

What of the horizon? What is to come? Well, unless E3 has some serious surprises; Nintendo has nothing of interest to show to the traditional gamer. The big rumour I’ve heard is Kid Icarus, an update of a NES game nobody really cares about. Nothing new has been brought to the table by Nintendo in terms of genuinely interesting IP of late. As a more traditional gamer you can’t help but wonder how Nintendo got it so wrong. When did their consoles become host to little more than dressed up gimmicks and experiences that are game like, but not games.

In reaching out for a new audience, Nintendo have seemingly abandoned the old audience they once catered for. They have done this with no evidence that their new audience will show a sustained interest. It is a brave, if perhaps foolhardy move. It does however recall their original move into computer games, after having originally set up as a company that made playing cards. I don’t get the feeling this move will continue to be as successful though.

But is it really that they got it all right? (Stay tuned for the next post in this series; Where Nintendo Got It Right).

The Big Three: Gaming Dissected

Published on July 1, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 0 Comments

This is just a short post to explain the coming series. I intend to cover the big 3 companies in console gaming, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Each company will have at least one post covering their current situation, what they’ve got wrong and what they’ve got right. By the end of the series I hope to understand exactly where the big three are and where they might be going.

So, onto our first post. How Nintendo Got It Wrong…