Networking 3 - Flight Control HD

I've been away from a while, hectic schedule with the launch for the local radio station and too little time on my hands to sit here and prepare this one so after your eager anticipation *ahem* this issue of Networking comes out on a little ditty called Flight Control HD. The screen above is actually from the Ipad version but it works in exactly the same way so there's my little disclaimer out the way.

Flight Control is one of those simple short burst puzzle/strategy titles that before you know it you've been playing for hours and missed that meeting you had to attend. There's no way to particularly win it's just a score attack game, "land as many vehicles as you can". You simply guide colour coded planes and helicopters (slow and darn irritating...) to the alloted landing zones using the PSThreemote (C)lankygitwords 2011 or control pad and have to guide as many as you can without them crashing into each other. It's fiendishly simple but the random entry points and semi-random speeds they fly in can make it frustrating. Nothing like getting close to your record on a certain landing field and having a jumbo jet flying in just behind that helicopter that slowly crawls on.

Graphically the HD doesn't really improve matters from a non-HD tv, but I guess it's one of those things that people will expect of games now. In general though there's not much to complain about the planes are a basic block of the colour you need to land them on and slightly different sizes (generally seperated so red = commercial/military jets, yellow = small private craft) until you've routed them into their landing strip when they're white and you see the guide line based on your landing route. On some of the maps closer to the ground you do see the vapour trials behind planes which is a nice little touch.

The sound files add very little to the game, you've got a cheerful little airport muzak tune that plays when you start a new game and on the menu screens. If you last longer than the music file though you're left with very little except for warning beeps as planes begin to get close to each other and a fairly stock crash sound effect. If it weren't for the fact that the sound effect is the only real cue you may have a crash (there's a red circle that goes round each craft but I find myself missing this scanning a busy airspace) I'd probably just mute it as it's far from the finest composition even allowing for the straight forward programming.

I think ultimately this games got a fairly short shelf life. For those into that sort of thing I'd got all the trophies bar one (play 200 games) after booting it up for the first time for a tinker so Trophy Hunters might pick it up for the easy scores but ultimately despite the differing screens (aircraft carrier, cityscape, Aussie outback - complete with emergency flying doctors) and slightly different mechanisms on a few of them it's not something that can keep me hooked. Perhaps on the Ipad version things are different but I'd rather boot up something else if playing for a long time and a good run can take ages so not really that useful for a quick play to kill five minutes.

It's not bad and was quite enjoyable at first but it's running a little thin after a relatively short while. In the last week I've barely looked at it aside from to rush off the desktop before the damned muzak starts!

5/10

Networking 2 - Age of Booty

Slight cheat as this is one I picked up ages ago - might even have been my first PSN purchase or certainly amongst them - but I think this is the first time I've really sat down and played it for any length of time. Made by Certain Infinity and published by Capcom it is the premiere pirate based Real Time Strategy game available on PSN. Incidentally it's quite likely to be the only one but that's neither here nor there.

Age of Booty is also probably the easiest strategy game I've ever played and while incredibly simple I can see some complexities there which would make online fiendishly complex to master. The formula of the game is straight forward, conquer a set amount of towns within either a set time limit or as long as it takes against either human or AI teams of pirates, it's kept simple by allowing you to only control one ship as opposed to the whole fleet but can lead to conflict between human players with regards to upgrading ships and towns, especially on maps where certain resources are scarce!

Upgrades are simple using a combination of the three primary resources of gold, wood and rum you can upgrade either your towns (using 4 units of gold, 2 of wood) which boosts the defenses of the town meaning it can hit back harder when enemies try to take it as well as more health to make it harder. Frustratingly you lose the upgrades if they're broken so don't leave a town for long under enemy attack as a well tooled ship will still pound it to submission and your hard won resources are lost. Your ship has a bit more choice when (for 4 rum, 2 wood) you can choose to upgrade the speed, armour (represented by health) and cannon (how hard you hit, represented by pips above the health bar). Choose wisely though as most maps won't allow you to fully upgrade and though you can specialise in hitting hard and taking a pounding it's irrelevant if you can't chase off unruly buccaneers.

The gathering of resources can lead to a little frustration, with towns it is done automatically and dependent on the towns you own you'll receive two units of a combination based on resources, I think to some extents it's simple but if a town has tiles with more than two resource tiles around it it might not pick the one you want as the third. For those simple complexities this leads to one, make sure to explore the whole map at the start of a game and plan for there. It's simple to pick the first town you see to conquer but if the resources don't complement too well (rum and gold for example) and it's all you've got you could be left behind by the more astute opponent technologically. As well as the gathering from towns you can acquire further goods by picking up salvage on the high seas (also dropped when sinking enemy ships) and raiding enemy towns. On an unfortunate map you could be searching for ages for the salvage you desperately need for upgrades.

To give you an edge you've got the option to do what pirates did best, harass and sink humble traders. While sinking enemy ships gives you a resource, sinking traders will provide you with one of four bonuses. The bomb, is placed on a tile and causes damage to anything within a one hex radius - this makes it useful for saving towns you're too far away to help, or even taking out opposing defenses while being a little further out of range of their cannons. The Whirlpool is placed on a tile and whisks anything sailing into the hex to a random spot on the map - a last line of defense essentially but on most maps the enemy will simply sail on to the next tile and resume as normal, whirlpools seem to take to long to start to be a real quick response. The Ghost Ship turns you invisible until you next attack an enemy, downside of that is that if you sail into a tile too close to something you can fire on you will do as fire is automatic. Finally you have the Pilfer Monkey, very useful on those occasions when you make bad choices in resource gathering as you swipe two random resources from the opponents but as it's random it's pot luck what you gain.

Gameplay is simple, movement is carried out by moving a cursor ahead of your ship and pressing x to make your ship sail to the requested tile. On the route the aforementioned overzealous crew will fire automatically at anything that happens to be in the tile next to it which makes controlling it much simpler. Once your cannons have broken the defenses of a town just remaining in a tile next to it will hoist your flag to claim it (and the resources will begin automatically replenishing at a speed dependent on town rating) though if a rival is also adjacent to the town it will remain contested. If you're taking damage - and you will be hit a lot as everything fights back - you automatically heal by remaining in a tile adjacent to your home cave (where you buy ship upgrades) or a town owned by your team while towns will automatically repair their health bar. To deploy your special bonuses just press triangle, bombs and whirlpools will be placed on the tile of your cursor so make sure it's placed right, don't want to bomb your own defenses....

The game has received some negative feedback on account of the single player game being deemed "frustrating and poorly balanced" and in some cases it is, the thing is, it's a strategy game. I think the poor balance is essentially down to bad planning, some maps are much harder to capture the key resources and sometimes enemy ships will start stronger than your own but with a strategy game isn't it good to have some form of tactical challenges and decisions to make? Next up "why Civilization games suck because enemies send stacks of strong troops to attack my least defended cities!" so though the frustration IS there, I feel it's a part of any decent strategy game. Not played a lot online yet but it seems to be fairly tough to find a full game (could be bad timing on my part) but when you do it's good fun. Would be worth trying to get together a bunch of friends and shiver their timbers it does however have 4 players local split screen play too which is a nice touch. Especially after some rum and fine wenches leavin' ye to sail to blighty. Yaaar!

It's a decent enough strategy title and it's killed a good few hours while I revisited it having not given it a lot of time after purchase. Personally do think it gets a tad repetitive though due to the one game mode - even online variants are the same capture the towns principle - but that's the only real dampener in my opinion. 7/10

Childhood Revisited - Transformers (G1)

I feel harsh appraising this one after all this time. I can't really compare a cartoon designed to advertise toy ranges to a film but as a kid this was essential viewing so it warrants a rewatch. Though incidentally with the exception of the Optimus Prime Toy below I didn't actually have any of the toys of the key characters, I recall a micro machines version of the "Aerialbots" and I think one of the "Combaticons" but generally it was about enjoying the stories for what they were. Incidentally due to a kerfuffle with Play.com (why do they hate me) I'm going to stop just before the movie and stick with the more Earth focussed series'.

Okay so Season one started off with a three episode special detailing the basics of the plot which were a civil war between Autobots and Decepticons on a dying planet, the Autobots fleeing to another world and crashing eons ago on Earth, finding Earth based vehicles to disguise themselves as and the Decepticons trying to steal resources to fly home. In this case it introduces us to the core 6/7 on each side and builds up the story. One of the key elements of the first series is with the exception of the episodes with multiple parts it's typically cartoon. Bad guys scheme, good guys foil scheme, bad guys go back to plot revenge and repeat ad-nauseum. As the series seems to be touching the waters I don't think there's that much there which doesn't overtly reek of salesmenship such as the random decision to build robot dinosaurs. As the hapless Michael Bay says "what use is disguising yourself as a robot dinosaur". That said everyone loves Grimlock. Probable highlight is War of the dinobots which shows Grimlock as slightly more than just a dumb brute, far more like he is in the comic books. Sadly in later years he reverts to little more than a comic figure.

Season two starts off in much the same way as the first with using that same core (primarily) and a couple of the later additions like the Constructicons (without wrecking ball testicles thank you Mr Bay...) but after the first dozen or so it begins to branch. What it does is start to expand the universe, alongside the typical salesman spiel we're now introduced to concepts like the super computer Vector Sigma which gave the transformers life and personalities and going back to when the war began and basically creating a more "real" universe. A lot of the new characters were introduced because of toys but some (Alpha Trion being the most important possibly) were also there to develop a real world. I do think a large part of it was down to the fact the movie was going to be worked so it makes more sense to try and develop a better plot. Especially when they made some of the decisions regarding key elements of the movie, got to admit, little Lanky was traumatised... Of course it wasn't all relevant plot building. Vector Sigma knows what they were thinking with the episode "Kremzeek".

As a product though how does it really hold up? In some cases it does look incredibly 80's and the number of animation and sound errors is shockingly high which shows how rushed some of it would be put together. Overall though it's not that bad to watch, 'er indoors actually watched this all for the first time as I was putting this all together for the sake of the blog and she was giggling sometimes at it and enjoyed watching through generally although I doubt she got why I dragged her to the cinema for the first Bay film like a giggling fanboy.

If you didn't enjoy it as a kid I don't think going back now is really going to change anything. I'm sure Hannah enjoyed the odd episode but I don't think she'd have sat through the lot if it hadn't been for the fact we were spending our evenings with nothing on television. For a nostalgic look it can be worth it but I think it is entirely down to getting it for a cheap price that you're happy with. It doesn't hold up great but I still think it looks and sounds a lot better then cartoons I'd caught since, not sure what that says about kids telly these days...

Networking 1 - Eat Them!

Another semi-regular feature where I look on Playstation Network and pick up a random game to look at. I'm sure I'm going to be beaten for some of the crap I pick up but hopefully I'll find gems. It also means my praise to Nuffle will have to wait until it's untopical but so bloody what? First episode is Eat Them!

As the screenshot above may suggest you're represented by a whacking great big monster and smash the bejesus out of anything you can get hold of. Essentially it's Rampage 2010 on the surface but it is a little deeper than that. Although you don't need to you can engineer your own evil monster of choice from various body parts you can unlock as you carry out challenges and follow the story through. The default monsters are pretty effective to begin with but it's not the same as creating your own beast. Granted that's the RPG Lanky coming out, I used to spend way too long creating band members on Rock Band 2 (before they made it harder to create an authentic band, well researched twunts) so maybe people will settle for the various different default creatures.

Visually the cell shading looks nice and in simplistic terms it's actually quite effective allowing you to tell the difference between police forces, convicts, the army and civilians just by colour of clothing. Kind of like an 8 bit game while looking obviously better and running smoother with more "boom" factor. Incidentally to fit in with the cell shaded look the story is actually built around comic issues which was a nice little touch. The sound is fairly basic in comparison but I guess that's to be expected with it, there's a distinctly chiptune style there and in keeping with the 8 bit style I get the impression Eat Them tries to convey. Of course like the old games there's also the fact it gets repetitive fast audibly. Think back to the same bar from Ghostbusters over, and over again and you get the point but if you're focussed on playing the game you can phase it out, or at least I do.

I've seen some people actually downgrade it for the missions, put simply to advancement in the game to the next issue in the series you need to medal in a series of challenges of increasingly difficulty in each story area to advance to the next section. The better the medal the more you unlock as well for body parts if you're interested in that (a few trophies rely on top medals as you'd exepect if you're into trophy hunting, also a trophy for viewing every part in creation mode). It doesn't seem to prevent story advancement so to skim through it doesn't matter much at all. The offending mission is "race" which entails running around a map to checkpoints within a certain time and doing as little damage as possible.

That seems to fly in the face of the idea of the game wherein people assume to just "smash things" is all you need. Personally it's why I've not played a lot of Rampage over the years, every now and then I play it for a while but never come back. Race helps to move you away from that, sadly that's the only difference from various methods of destruction. The story issues are well thought out with tasks like smashing prisoners out to work for you, bank robberies and helping the getaway cars get out and other nefarious deeds but to get to these you'll need to break things as quickly/effectively as possible.

It's not a bad game to play, the controls are fairly simple though in it's simplicity you're not really told how to do everything, I found out how to roar and intimidate by accident (L2) for example, which was useful as it stopped everyone armed or not from attacking me while I feasted on them to replenish my health (thus the name "Eat Them"), the more intimidating a monster the higher radius.

Essentially, it's an okay game. It's nothing special but it doesn't make me apprehensive of 'er indoors using the words "let's try that one" like some of the titles I've seen while skimming through. The destruction missions are fun to play, at first but I can't see me having the drive to replay them again and again for gold medals later on. Not a bad game and at £6.29 it's a bit of a better price than you would otherwise have for some titles but could be a gamble. I'd give it a stable 6/10

Childhood Revisited - Labyrinth

The first episode of a semi-regular feature now where I go back and re-watch things from my childhood and growing up and see how as an adult things have aged. Today comes from my little girl Sara who kindly lent us her DVD for a couple of days Jim Hensons' Labyrinth. For those who've never seen it the story is about a teenage girl called Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) who in quoting a line from her favourite play causes her baby brother Toby to be abducted on behalf of the Goblin King Jareth (David Bowie) and to win him back she must find her way through a large mazey type thing to his castle and confront Jareth to win him back. On the way plenty of peril and wacky Jim Henson characters.

I can't remember the first time I'd seen it, I'll assume it was on TV in around '87/'88 the first time and again when I was 13 for the Saturday matinee (miss the days when going to the cinema would cost just £1) with an ex-girlfriend though I'm sure I saw it between those two dates I'm sure I've not seen it since but I remember it as an old fashioned fairy story with some creepy moments and wierd and wonderful characters, but what do I see now?

Well for a start the soundtrack is still as good as I remembered it with some great songs (Magic Dance for Rock Band please?) though the score elements are very 80's with lots of big synth chords which could be very in your face but it's the songs which you'll remember from this sort of film anyway. Visually there was only one scene that especially looked dated and wrong. At some stage Sarah encounters "The Fireys" flame coloured creatures who had the ability to remove body parts willy-nilly and essentially were there to sing the song "Chilly Down" but due to the difficult nature of getting the effect of removing limbs to work it was filmed on a black screen and then refilmed with a backdrop but no puppets and merged via computermabob. An ambitious scene which looked off now, obviously understandable but only time I thought it looked "wrong".

Performances were fine, Jennifer Connelly (shocked to find only 14 at the time) was fine in the main role and carried the film well. Essentially she had to work on her own most of the time (thankfully it's the 80's and Henson. Now next to none of it would be practically done) and she did a good job for what it's worth. Opposite her Bowie didn't do too much bar the songs and I think Jareth is played in a campy villainous manner but it all works reasonably well. Something I noticed more now was the sexual tension between the two (part of this because of Bowies' tights and rather noticeable trouser snake (hypnotic)) which would've had another twist had they gone with the proposed Michael Jackson in the role! That said Jennifer was the wrong gender and too old for him (too soon?). The real stars though were the puppets, "Hoggle" was essentially the second lead and was superbly done and of course there's the typically individual looks of each other character.

In the end I still enjoyed it. The sense of menace wasn't the same and on DVD it felt brighter than I remember it being but it still did the job. Some of the childish perils ("The bog of eternal stench") were typically Henson, Python (screenplay written by Terry Jones) and certainly would still appeal to children. The songs were enjoyable, the characters memorable (Sir Didymus, the fox-terrier knight riding his english sheepdog steed Ambrosius still makes me laugh) and I'm glad it was made when it was and by the right people. Now, Labyrinth would be a highly CGI charged affair which would take away most of it's charm, nothing would've felt the same as all the practical stunts used in this and the interaction with the puppets would feel, almost flat. To me, watched with a family I can see this still has it and I hope that families will continue to enjoy it. Future Jr Lankys will certainly grow up learning to fear the "eternal stench" and look in terror at Barn Owls for generations!

Game. Set. Match. Mr Thunderhead

Courtesy of Shinobi from the Retro Gamer forums I've decided today I'm going to head back to gaming for a while and a look at Sega Superstars Tennis. This to me was partly a game released 10 years too late. Growing up in primary school the big debate was always Sega Vs Nintendo a war which ultimately with the arrival of a third party Sony led to a resounding defeat for Sega withdrawing them from hardware and only focussing on software. Nintendo for their sins had became experts at prostituting their intellectual properties and while Sega made good games right up to the Dreamcast era Nintendo essentially could rely on sales of self developed franchises like Zelda and Mario, the latter of which starred in spin-off games of a variety of types, most successful being the Mario Kart series (many a gap between scenes has been killed playing wirelessly on the DS version to this day!) although the little plumber has also enjoyed stints on the golf course, football pitch, medical profession and tennis court.

Sega have finally caught on and now unleashed the Superstars series first with a substandard mocap game using the eyetoy for PS2. Released now with the rise of these kind of mini-game fests maybe it would've been a bigger success. This was the follow up taking Sega superstars onto the tennis court. As a game it does exactly what you would expect from it. Lots of cartoony graphics played out in game themed locales for a quick game of tennis - on default settings a match can be over in under a minute - with a selection of mini-games for longevity.

As far as playing it goes, the control system was over elaborate. Move by using the left stick with X for a standard shot, and [] for a slice. However lobs and dropshots are played by using a quick combo of the two others leaving the two other buttons unused while your superstars special ability unlocked with the top shoulder buttons. I can't work out why it was done this way, I suspect it was essentially laziness in programming a slightly different control scheme compared to the Wii version over the other consoles. It's not a major problem and I'm sure you could change the controller settings if you wanted, it's just a strange design choice.

Being tennis though it's straight forward to play with you hitting it back and forth against an opponent until one of you misses it for a point, yadayadayada. Also included are mini games though, my favourite of which based on House of the Dead (named Curiens mansion due to a ban in Germany!) involving knocking waves of zombies unconscious with tennis balls, it might sound childish but hitting them in the midsection and hearing a groan is good for a giggle akin to hitting bystanders on a Tiger Woods game and watching them hop in frustration. The mini-games add to longevity alongside Superstars mode which combines standard matches and mini-games into unlock various other stages and courts. Though like a lot of sport games, its best played multiplayer, it keeps her indoors quiet as Amy the Hedgehog from Sonic smashes a serve straight past the awesome Gilius Thunderhead from Golden Axe.

Thing is, I think Sega in typical fashion missed a current generation trick. Downloadable content. Out of the box there are 16 characters on 10 courts yet these don't really mix too well, for example you have Alex Kidd and the almighty Gilius (notice who my fave character would be...) as playable players but no court for them and courts for House of the Dead or Outrun but no characters to play on them, while Sonic is typically represented by two courts and 5 characters. In my view a DLC pack of a doubles team (e.g. Ax Battler and Tyris Flare from Golden Axe) with a court (and associated music) tied in wouldn't be a bad idea (price dependent) and since their are so many franchises untouched they could have a supply that depending on content prices would keep a steady group of fans content and add longevity. I challenge thee to find someone who could resist the chance to smash tennis balls at Toejam and Earl?

Ultimately it's a solid game and worth around 7/10. Playing on your own you won't get masses of playtime but with mates round it'll be a nice little game to play alongside drunken FIFA battles. Shame there were some missed opportunities with regards to adding a little more for fans. That said I'd have loved more DLC for Ultimate Mega Drive Collection too, more modern retro goodness please!

Confused.com? I am now!

Why are all adverts so criminally piss poor? I once heard someone say that "the worse an advert the more memorable it becomes" now judging by the continuing use of that fat git from the Go Compare adverts I don't think I need Adam and Jamie to say "Myth Confirmed" for this matter. Far more irritating though is when an advert becomes so bad that you can't actually remember what it's advertising.

Some of the offenders, the aforementioned Go Compare and Comparethemarket.com (granted I still have a soft spot for Alexander the meerkat, probably due to the voice actor being the legendary Michael from I'm Alan Partridge - and a meerkat) are at least obvious what they are advertising. It's still got the nuisance value but they at least sit there and make it obvious. Far worse though are sitting through adverts which don't actually seem to be that good at what they're doing.

Now let's look at the latest Confused.com advert shall we? We have some bint singing how she needs somebody to love and two random people from loads who join together and talking about two million people... When the blue Hell did they turn into a dating website? When they first started advertising it was obvious, show hopeless elderly person being shown how to use the internet and how easy the web site is. So why on Earth did they go with some cryptic thing which leads to any confusion. Rule number 1 of performance and PR, always assume that people have no idea who/what you are. Incidentally the blonde must have severe back trouble with bristols like that!

For a long time there have been a whole host of adverts along this line, generally they fit into three categories. Car adverts, men's deodorant (clearly we can't handle the scientific and hilariously small focus groups used for women's stuff!) and alcoholic beverages are the ones worst for this. Please, if you're going to wind us up at least could you do us the pleasure of making it obvious what you're trying to sell us!

Fantasy Football

Now the FA Cup is an occasion - next best to Christmas Day, when every team that's in the country get their chance to plaaaay. Apologies for quoting Chas and Dave ('91's epic song "We're off to Wembley (because we beat the Arse nal)") but we're at that time of year when we see something in sport that's almost entirely unique. As I sit at my desk I've spotted League 1 Notts County take the lead against big boys Sunderland. Championship side Cardiff are winning at top flight Stoke and fallen giants Leeds have just been unfortunate with a 90th minute penalty going in against the aforementioned Arse leading to a 1-1 draw at one of the toughest grounds to win at.

FA Cup 3rd round day is one chance when surprises can and do happen and one of few occasions when the little boys have a chance of glory against the big boys, some times it goes further. 13 years ago this weekend was the 4th round tie and one of my favourite memories of growing up, non-league Stevenage Borough 1 - 1 Newcastle United with Stevenage having a goal disallowed due to a tight offside call. Newcastle managed to win a replay 2-1 up in t' North courtesy of a goal which only the referee thought crossed the line, an incident for which I was suspended from school due to everyone wanting to discuss it with me in class the next morning.

Chances are the big boys will win, but as William Wallace/Mel Gibson once said about wanting "one chance, JUST ONE CHANCE!" and the pep talk in "Little Giants" where the losers remember the one time they got one over on more successful siblings to inspire them to that win it's that potential which makes it exciting. Personally, that Stevenage side were one of our weakest in recent years, but still I remember the likes of Des Gallagher, Michael Love, Robin Trott, Mark "Smudger" Smith, Ryan Kirby, Giuliano Grazioli (I once did a presentation claiming him the greatest Roman of all time in History despite being a Londoner), Neil "Sarge" Trebble or Gary Crawshaw as greats (no idea why I never remember the midfield) and with the hype for the rematch tonight on ESPN showing clips from Grazi's goal in front of the tense Geordies I still feel a bit teary eyed in the way that only sport seems to make grown men quiver. I just wish it hadn't been so long ago, would love to relive the memories on those tense ties on DVD, our VHS collection long gone, something which no sport really allows.

Growing up with rugby union, certainly in the amateur days I have fond memories of the "Pilkington Cup" which was close. Granted football has got many more professional teams but the Pilk used to do similar. I still remember the disbelief when my beloved London Wasps managed to lose to the Birmingham Pertemps Bees in a huge shock (though Wasps losing to Bees gave my mates some giggles I didn't share) and the joy when home town Huntingdon managed to qualify for the first round of this hallowed competition (as a youth player we got to play the big boys occasionally, mainly due to the regional nature. Playing Northampton at Franklin's Gardens for a spot in the Midlands cup final at Twickers being a career highlight) but that's now gone. I suppose with the move to professional status the smaller teams got left behind so much quicker and it just didn't get people's interest in the same way as the FA Cup. Such a shame as like the FA Cup those rare shocks were what appealed to me as a fan of the sport.

Tonight as I get ready to see the big game at Broadhall Way (better start checking I've got the tickets on me!) for vengeance a mere 13 years ago I know there's a chance I'll be feeling a bit dejected as the much better equipped and financially supported Newcastle beat us comfortably (that disallowed goal being our one chance) but I, for one, will be delighted that this opportunity exists. We may be a league side now but it changes nothing as we'll again be huge outsiders. Long may the FA Cup continue and here's hoping for some of those shock results!

Well? It's the big show

Standing at 7 feet 4 inches and weighing in at well over 500 pounds it is... The gaping hole in my calender which inevitably follows a successful run on the stage. That's it, pantomime season has finished for me and after a good run as "sound viking" for a production of Snow White and the scheming, manipulative and award winning role as Mr Boderick Bod (son of Bod) from Beauty and the Beast over with it is that long awaited yet loathed time which any actor hates. Downtime.

A few years ago this was not an issue, In the late teens I was confident enough in myself and the smaller roles I would generally get to take on two or three roles simultaneously but as the ageing process continues and I find myself generally getting the larger roles and forgetting more lines (huzzah for Autocue!) I now tend to only do two a year. I've done my annual light hearted romp with pantomime but between that and my Summer piece Shakespeares "Measure for Measure" (glad he wrote a new play, seems like years since the last one) I have got nothing. So what do actors do during downtime.

Well for one I feel sorry for the West End who're now going to be subjected to the hapless technical styling of the profressionals (not a typo, they call themselves such) who were so bad they were asking 'er indoors for advice. Other than that though, we're left with nothing. As it stands Facebook is agog with statii about how much people are missing the crew and the inevitable post show parties are being planned but the reality is, we fade apart. We'll all work together soon enough and it'll be smiles, hugs and buttock squeezes (when other halves backs be turned) again and as if we've not been apart but until then it's loneliness, quoting not yet forgotten lines and the inevitable what next?

Funny thing is, as an actor you find yourself not actually wanting to do anything! I've sat back to try and get to grips with Football Manager 11 (Huntingdon Town to Premiership glory?), rampaged around the fort on Fallout : New Vegas slaughtering post apocalyptic Roman legionaries and attempted to get my vocal skills up to scratch to take on Bohemian Rhapsody with full harmonies (solo) on Rock Band 3 but the problem is I don't want to do any of that.

Acting at times is like being a war veteran, "you weren't there man, you don't know what it's like!". We go through months of being in each others pockets, during the course of a show the cast are more a part of your family than those you live with, you live and breathe for each other. As a company you get to know everything about everyone and in Stockholm Syndrome fashion you love and care for those who you'd have bugger all to do with normally. Not to say that emotions and friendships aren't real, some of my best friends come through my time on stage, but you're living together and as exhaustion rises you're going through something that outsiders don't quite understand.

I've not really got too much to say today but had to return to blogging as we head into the new year, so this little rambling entry goes to my new brothers and sisters (come to think of it doesn't that make all the hugging and pecks on the cheek turn it into borderline incest?) who've been so key in helping get through the last few months. Some of you I'll never work with or speak to properly again but even still the memories remain...

Just a mo - Supercharging my Prius

I hate Clarkson, I hate that little twerp Hammond, Mays' dislike of the other two makes him bearable and I have no interest in cars what-so-ever. So why on Earth do I enjoy the Gran Turismo games? Theoretically a real driving simulator would be absolute tripe to me and I'm certainly not going to have the patience for going through all the driving licence tests and why on Earth can I not just use that top notch Ferrari from the moment I turn on the game?

Thing is, I think that's just what makes it popular and why I've been coming back since the original. It's almost a career simulation with the aspect of a pretty good driving game thrown in (management mode if you want these days) and - to me - that's one of the better features of recent sports games to ply my trade as a footballer at Lincoln City and work my way to international goalscoring superstar hero. I'm not particularly car literate, I'm not going to play it and be able to analyse the slight differences that may get a little more out of it, but I can look at the numbers and work out how to get more out of those pixels to give it a boost. Until recently on the Football/Championship manager games you saw nothing but numbers and had to work out how to use them to your best. Stevenage Borough winning the champions League? Relatively straight forward with the right mind.

As a driving game, it's one I've never had a problem with, one of the complaints has often been the lack of visible damage but to be perfectly frank that does nothing to me. It could just be my style but when I'm playing I tend to drive in driver seat view as I find it easier to gauge turns and distances, so I'm not going to see it except for in a replay but rarely am I that excited by a race I need to sit there for another 10 minutes to see it all from a different angle.

In short, as a genre it's one I'm not particularly interested in and that's due to my lack of interest in the subject full-stop but as a game. I keep coming back, for some part I'd say it could be the obvious improvement curve, of course in races if I turn up in a Bugatti Veyron against some substandard family saloons I'll romp home but going from scraping bronze to gold passes on licence tests shows that your skills are improving. Other than that I think it's just a incredibly well polished, deep driving game that if you're only going to play one of them fills all holes. Though my hatred for Top Gear is enlarged by trying to manoeuvre camper vans around "Hammerhead" at high speed!

Oh yes and I get to drive a supercharged version of Bumblebee from Transformers, probably 'er indoors' favourite feature...

Art of Acting 2 - Time to start work

I've been far too quiet on here recently and this comes down to the fact I've been barely able to sit still and relax for a few weeks, and it'll get much, much worse now! Over the next month I'm going to be living at the towns Commemoration Hall first in my role as "Sound Viking" for the youth theatre and then on stage during pantomomomime which is now less than 30 days away from show time, celebrity guests (well rumoured Emily Ovendon from Pythia/Medieval Baebes fame) and Miss Pipe heading to the countries first privately owned hospital *grumble* for childish delight.


With that deadline in mind we're now at the stage where people are putting down scripts, getting more physical and in some cases drifting towards complacency. First up let's tackle the "scripts down moment". Some of us are just about trying certain parts, myself included, without the script but the thing is. This leads to confusion as the person whom would fill the role of "contiunuity supervisor" or "prompt" if you prefer hasn't arrived yet which means that there is the continuous stopping when people don't notice you haven't got your script which becomes a repeat later on when the CS/P arrives (two days before show inevitably) who doesn't know when you're stopping for a dramatic pause or forgotten lines. Or they're over eager with a prompt line. Imagine if you will Romeo & Juliet as I, Romeo stand over the "dead body" of Juliet confronted with your one true loves body you don't just ramble on so I stop take a deep breath lower my head and begin working into a state of tears and a voice is heard bellowing from the wings "DEATH THAT HATH SUCKED!"... There goes that mood then!


The problem is that if there is no prompt in early rehearsals they're not going to know these acting nuances when it comes to performance and as a result people find themselves bundling through lines and losing some of the acting side, alternatively pausing midsentence due to the unmistakeable shout. I've only once seen someone forget lines in a professional show (Christian Slater for the record, noticed having played the role of McMurphy myself) and the secret is that the prompts actually turn up for rehearsals, I know in the West End they're paid for it but if actors and directors are there why can't a prompt from the crew turn up too?


Anywho, it's also now getting to the "physical" stage, having slung scripts over the shoulder a production can start picking up on things that are hard to do with a book in your hand. Aside from hitting someone with a book this will include running fight sequences, slapstick routines and other assorted pieces in situ. This in itself isn't too bad, in fact it's when the show starts to really comes together as people start experimenting. Where it does become a problem though is that you find yourselves getting too eager (I have a shirt somewhere with a nice sword hole in the sleeve from a lucky dodge) AND pushing it further as to what "extras" we can put in. Sometimes this isn't too bad, in panto for example people will expect big, larger than life characters and tricks but you can still push it. From a simple sequence like the stronger, braver character panicing, screaming and collapsing unconcious in a heap in terror (possibly with dropped females, sorry Grace) you can lead to more absurd and self induldgent moments. Already we've spotted a few and need to reign ourselves in. Sadly, some actors don't take too kindly to being told "it's a bit too much", That spear carrier pointing with gestures that would make Hulk Hogan blush during the finale of Hamlet springs to mind.


Finally, some people start to drift in a complacent stage. You'd think with less than a month till opening night people may get tense and start focussing... Of course not! Those who felt "untouchable" back in auditions still get that feeling even now (possibly even after getting the crummier role than their superior acting skillz deserve) and for whatever reason still think that they have forever. These are the people who on last night are still reading the script at every opportunity to avoid forgetting lines, they probably should've learnt them earlier. Of course, there are certain roles which are stupidly wordy so can understand but does that character in only two scenes really demand that much? Acting types sit back, relax and then the week before the show realise where they are and start panicking. Shockingly so do directors, while a last second bollocking may seem like "waking them up" the problem stems at the stage when they say that "everything is going really well". If you keep complacency going it's harder to get that later boost. Feedback does need to go both ways, oh and don't get someone who nobody has ever seen before to do the bollocking, it's hard to put on a show when your cast have walked out at the last minute!


That said, this years panto does seem to be going quite well but with a month to go there's not as long as people thing to get it going slick. Now let's wait to see what happens when the tech rehearsal comes along...

Building Better Worlds

Sorry for making this sound like a Weyland Yutani brochure but having installed the new hard drive for the PS3 I've finally been able to spend some time enjoying bigger games and admiring the crafted worlds of games like Oblivion (below) and Dragon Age, and this has led me to some observations and to relift and old idea which has been lingering (and been reminded to me by the lovely Kate every time we see eachother!

When running around these worlds (best viewed while with female elf character and after removing armour in 3rd person... ;) ) we find that not only do they look amazing and give fantastic energy but whether they're fantasy worlds like the above or barren Nevada wastelands people are now able to create a universe that feels "alive". Games are finally now able to build a universe (cliché ridden or otherwise) which is able to absorb you in another world or time period just like classic literature used to be able to.

Thing is, for the most part some elements of literature seem to have lost this same thing. Despite being fictional worlds they have elements which bring the reality. Even something like Dracula took elements of the reality and slotted it subtly in to the fantasy world, fiction but plausible. The sequel supposedly written using Stokers own notes however constantly name drops people of the era going as far as to change the dateline of the original novel to make Van Helsing a suspect in the Ripper crimes (evidently the alusion is Dracula was Jack the Ripper). Still marginally better then the other vampire series written by Ms Meyer which unlike the books she rips off comes across as half arsed fantasy which doesn't come close to absorbing. At least the Rice novels have that plausibility, for all the absurdities about supernatural beings there's the chance they COULD be legit (spoilers - they're almost certainly not though...)

Thing is, it just feels like creativity can struggle at times, even the books and games I like feel it's all been done before (recommend the Merlin Codex, nice mix of Celtic/Greek/Finnish mythology) in the above examples of Oblivion and Dragon Age it's basically king dies, demon invasion to quell. Books just seem to have got scarce further with ideas and the number of shocking remakes of films seems to go hand in hand with this. Even the "best young writer aged 6-13" who won an award for "original and creative ideas" when asked where her inspiration came from replied "well I watched this film with Brad Pitt and thought that'd make a good book". David Camerons expression in the photo was priceless!

This leads me to my project, a while ago on the Nightwish forum (why do people STILL send me private messages despite leaving over a year ago?) I ran a community story, almost like a text adventure RPG. Essentially it was a genetic engineering Crichtonesque piece using Jurassic Park as a start point and then moving from there to show off the new creations he'd created. Sadly inspiration seemed to hit most of the other writers and I couldn't kill them all off and try and limp through to the end of the episode with just two or three others.

What if, however, it's started with the plan of small contributions and working together to build the universe? What if perhaps there was some form of platform where people were able to make fairly large, in depth pieces of writing with an easy way of sharing it? National Novel Writing Month kind of went horribly wrong for me but nothing to stop people from trying this on the side. Perhaps we'll take Kate's poetry book idea and get a nice purdy cover published (even if it's only amongst ourselves). Now what shall we find as a starting point? Counter cliché fantasy (why do dwarves all hide underground and poncy pointy ears (despite being hawt) ALWAYS live in harmony with nature?) perhaps? any ideas?

Birthday Blues

This is not going to purely be ranting about the lack of breakfast in bed on my birthday, though I am sure that people would concur not even receiving a cup of tea would be incredibly insensitive and just downright mean. These sort of losses deserve a full scale rant but I can cope with them. Nor am I going to complain by the realisation I find myself sitting down and conversing with people half my age on a regular basis through theatrical escapades. Come to think of it the most alarming thing about that is that these kids are trying to teach me far too many dance routines for this years pantomime.


It's about the loss of the "special milestone" that birthdays used to be during our formative years. For the last 5 years very little has really happened and it now becomes "just another day", yes you'll receive a few cards from family members to show that people remember birthdays (incidentally this is now the missus' department, no card, blame her) and you'll receive 45 wall posts saying variations of "Happy Birthday" on your Facebook page and on nice forum communities you may be fortunate enough to receive a happy birthday topic of your very own. It's always nice to receive that small dose of appreciation but for the most part it's just another day.


Compare this to those "milestone" birthdays from not that many years before. As a child you would be lucky enough to receive that special gift you wanted and while we may get one little thing from those closest to us those days are long, long gone. As we go further into our teens these presents become rarer but so to do parties, do people assume as you reach 15 you're no longer deserving? We may be fortunate to have a special occasion such as our 18th and 21st party and special nights out (16th for young'uns due to the septic influence) but for the most part things are drifting further away from us.


What I'm saying is, us oldies should reclaim our birthdays from the doldrums. Why on Earth when I'm at work on my birthday why should I be the one expected to provide cakes/tin of sweets (thankfully cheap due to post Samhain sales) for everyone else? In fact, in schools it's almost seen as expected for the child to have their birthday off with no repurcussions. Let's extend this to the work life. One free days leave for all workers. If you are not due to be in work on your birthday allow this day to used up in another days paid leave.


Then there's the parties. Are we frightened of allowing ourselves to have a big old get together and good time with our friends and family? Let's reclaim the birthday party, let's make it so it's not seen as wierd for us to crash our parents place and put a big old bouncy castle in the garden get our friends round and have a huge sugar rush (not advised for GemGem). If one desires to have a swimming party with the giant inflatable pirate ship then my deity we should be allowed this option without the old bat at reception saying "sorry this is for children under the age of 13". It's my birthday and I want be allowed to be spoilt and have a darn tooting day with my friends. Is it really too much to ask?


I know a spoilt birthday can't be every year for cost reasons and the like but let's be fair here. When do we get the chance to truly be spoilt once we embark on life in the big wide world? It's the anniversary of our birth and we don't get too many days to celebrate that (average 80/29000 days) and this is just not fair. Let's enjoy our birthdays and win those classic days back. Come on, let's be having you!

Splodge

Ah yes, "splodge" the unmistakeable sound of goblin making the mistake of getting too close to an ogre not quite as stupid as he looked at first glance. Yes Blood Bowl is supposed to be the most brutal of sports games and since getting the board game version in around 96/97 one of my favourite of all time. As far as sporting games go there's been nothing for me, subbuteo was fun in doses but ultimately it didn't matter in the long run. Being into strategy games there wasn't a system for long term play and you didn't develop any form of skills other than being a good flicker = victory (though I did grow an attachment to a player with a broken leg in a Villa shirt I called "Steve Froggatt" due to an injury I remembered him picking up). After this there was Totopoly which was a fun little horse racing game. Thing is as far as sporting games went, I'd rather load up Premier Manager than any board games.


So as I began to get into miniature wargaming I came across this one set in the Warhammer world. American football with the added brutality of orcs flattening goblins and assorted other fantasy creatures. Considerably cheaper than going out and spending in excess of £100 to have a reasonable sized "army" it became easier to collect and put together a team. As it now stands I've got all official teams (except Norse, the vikings would be prod buttock, did the minis have any resemblence of the actual team roster) now and took part in two Blood Bowls where the "New Skaven Ratriots" (ratmen) got a Desmond (2-2 w/l record) before "Da Reggae Boyz" (Orcs with some modeling putty dreadlocks in a Jamaican football kit) lost all four.


I did come across a Blood Bowl game for the PC around the time I got first into it. I played it briefly but in the end I was still happier getting the board game out so it ended up in the little second hand game shop in town (sadly, no longer with us) and was forgotten about. As the years progress though I continued to play the board version (the wench is currently undefeated, must stop playing matches with a severe disadvantage against her...) and though my competition days are gone (for now...) my collection still get good game time.


14 years later, after spotting a game called "Chaos League" and spotting the blatant rip-off that it was, I caught the news that the company behind it had received the rights to make the official game. I guess Games Workshop learnt from the past, they accepted a one-off payment for Blizzards game with similarities to the Warhammer universe, next thing you know Blizzard are a huge company and the name Warcraft is bigger than Warhammer, lost them millions. So last year it finally hit the shelves and at the end of the month it's updated to include every team from the board game (bar Chaos Dwarves but they don't exist anymore (not profitable enough))and seems a good time to write it up.


Sound - Like all sports games the commentary can be quite good, with the odd funny one liner but if you play any sport game for more than a couple of hours it does get a more than a little tiresome. Other sound effects are general sporty grunts (and snarls from various creatures) so not fantastic sound but it does create some form of atmosphere though in turn based game play if you're a square short of a touchdown the roar of the crowd goes on forever. Oh the anticipation of a touch down.


Graphics - the image above is from one of the opening sequences (each team has their own sequences which is a nice touch) so not quite in turn with gameplay. In game though it does have a decent look though by modern standards not perfect. It is quite good in that you can instantly recognise the positions of the players and how experienced they are and any mutations and the models do look similar to their miniature counterparts. Graphically it could probably be better but it works and is supposed to be about gameplay right?


Gameplay - It keeps the rules as of the "living rule book version 5" (updated to 6 in Legendary) so as far as the game goes, what works on the board game should work in the game. Sadly a couple of rules are bugged which makes things incredibly difficult to plan ahead, skills dedicated to fouling like Dirty Player or Sneaky Git don't quite work properly which means the goblin method of "counter-splodging" is made harder to implement. A cheaper version of the board game with a couple of rules that don't work right (judging from the 117 page topic on the "Claw mutation ruins games due to being overpowered" that's in the game already! Aims are simple, two halves of 8 turns to try and score more touchdowns than the other team.


Longevity - No two matches against the same team are ever the same anyway and you can always lose that match you should win due to bad dice rolling, you need the skill to make yourself less reliant on dice but every now and then you can't avoid seeing your players laid low as little buggers nip in to beat you 1-0. Add to this the campaign mode which allows you to create your own team from beginning to top and developing skills to (hopefully) make the top and win the Blood Bowl championship itself. With 9 teams (human, orcs, dwarves, lizardmen, skaven (Ratmen), goblins, Chaos (daemonic beasts) and wood or dark elves) you have 9 teams if running to a formula lineup but by tailoring your teams can have much more, not to mention that as skill rolls are random you're never certain to have exactly the same team. Adding in the other 11 teams from the end of October and you should have plenty of replayability.


Overall, I'm probably going to get a lot more out of it than the normal player due to enjoying the board game for so long. If you want a sports game with a bit more depth than FIFA or Madden but don't want the full depth of a purely management title it'll probably go down well with you. It was on the 360, but lost some of the online play meaning online tournaments and the like weren't available and legendary edition isn't going to be released on there for the time being. If you have a PC though give it a go, although for me it's near perfect probably worth a 7/10 for an outsider. Of course, now you've at least got the advantage of demos!

Shambolic Sport

Thought I'd give this a Horrible Historyesque name today and write up. Reason for not writing for a while being that aside from being busy (4 interviews in a week!) when I've had the computer access I've been watching the commonwealth games and trying to figure out why Liverpool fans are so excited about a potential change in ownership which won't actually benefit them too much.

Thing that has me confused about Liverpool is, for starters, how the deal can go through if the owners don't want it to happen. A normal person can go bankrupt, default on their mortgage and have their house taken off them, however an estate agent can't decide to sell their house behind their backs. Not sure why sports different. Then of course you get the fans who're excited and whooping with joy, when it's their own fault. Where we these people when they were second in the table a year ago? Oh they didn't care because they had Stevie G and 'Nando Torres and were sucessful. Can't have it both ways lads (unless finances can be bi...), do you want to spend the money on glory? Or are you prepared to plod around and hope you can get lucky like Spurs or Villa who despite winning multiple European titles (including THE title for Villa) had to settle with years of midtableness just to come close due to frugal management. Even Arsenals' profits don't pay off all debts they gambled on with the new stadium and Wenger is abused due to it.


From here we move back to Delhi where the games' are rife with poor attendences and sickness. Golly gee! I again am shocked. Like the football world cup they've headed out to a country with next to no sporting heritage (a total of 20 medals in 110 years at the olympics), however, unlike the football world cup nobody cares enough to invest the money required to travel out for the Commonwealth games, so you're largely reliant on the locals embracing them. As for the sickness, is it a surprise? Delhi Belly has been a problem with the city for years so anywhere when you have hundreds of people in one place for a fortnight is always likely to affect some of them.


In search for entertainment I've found myself watching some sports which normally aren't on my radar and two of which have really annoyed me. First of which is netball. I watch this game and I honestly can't work out how the game has picked up for so long. While basketball is not my cup of tea I can see the appeal, however the most positive aspect of it is removed when converting to netball in that you lose most of the speed. I just can't see the appeal of watching people move the ball forward, then standing still for what feels like forever and throwing a ball into a hoop, mostly unopposed. Can't believe I could dislike a sport with leggy women running around in skimpy skirts. The other major annoyance is archery. Actually saw someone in a medal final who didn't even need to pull back on the bowstring and just had to hold a widget that did it for her. So not only do they make it easier to aim but you don't even need to pull on the bowstring? Henry V must be spinning in his grave. I'm not going to comment on the poor quality of female goalkeepers in hockey, it's people like that which make female sportspeople look bad, been some great attacking play though around the blunders!


Next up, more sport. Only this one involves harder tackles and more ogres, elves and orcs (OH MY!)

Distant losses

A short and sombre piece today due to time restraints. I've been inspired to write this one today by my wee brother and how he was hit yesterday morning by sad news. He woke up and logged on to his laptop to see the news that his friend Ethan had passed away after taking his own life.


Little Lanky has, as you could guess been pretty damn inconsolable since. One of the things about their friendship is that they've never actually met in person. What they have done though is spent the last 6 years talking on a daily occurance about all manner of things, helping eachother through GCSE's and always being there for eachother whenever one needed the other. In the modern era it's become much easier to meet people of a similar mind and forge those tight friendships. Friendships which often last much longer and seem more sturdy than those forged face-to-face at school.


A few months ago I too had lost a friend, the awesomely named Scott McFly, while me and Scott hadn't had as much conversations nor stayed as close as Daniel and Ethan had been when he passed away (due to my own lack of logging into MSN just for a quick catchup, something I've still not learnt from) it still hits hard. Often, just as hard as when a "real life" friend goes, others it'll hit far worse as you become close companions to all manner of wierd and wonderful people.


I've not really got much more to say, the subject matter in itself says more than any literary ramblings possibly could. Always remember and try to go that little extra for friends no matter where they be from, we can never be sure of anything in this world and sometimes, that loss of the friend from San Antonio, Chile, Ooop North or even just down the road but hard to get to can build just as big a hole as the loss of a family member. RIP good friends, near or far.

I bin dun workin' dem railways

I've got bugger all to really talk about so with the release of Civ 5 I'm going to comment on the divorce earner and time loser that strategy gaming genius Sid Meier is. Even if the only thing he ever went near were the aforementioned Civilization series he'd have accounted for millions of pounds to the biggest selling entertainment industry (well except "adult entertainment") and probably an equal amount for divorce settlements.


The key factor of these games is depth and replayability and he makes sure there's plenty of this. In Civ for example you move from a small settlement to hopefully head of the UN and winning the race to settle on another planet (after nuking Mahatma Gandhi's vast empire due to his xenophobic and agressive diplomatic policies this one's a bit of a wasteland now...) and no two games are ever alike. Plus as it's a long running game it leads to the disease "onemoreturnitis" and that "quick play" soon becomes several hours as you notice the time appears to be long gone. If you were to add up the time played even if you have relatively short runs it's not uncommon for people to have played the series for at least a month of their lives.


The recent bane of my existence has been Railroads. Anyone who's ever played a PC game will be familiar with "X Tycoon" well he's the man behind the first "tycoon" game which was Railroad Tycoon, as you'd expect it's about running railways and the series has got SOMETHING which draws you back again and again. For some, maybe it's the basic sandbox mode and the ability to create a "dream" railway and since it'd cost a fortune to have the full Hornby set designed this way it's far cheaper but to me that's not as fun. A game needs a challenge and to me that just is not it, where're the rivals?


What keeps me coming back is trying to get a "perfect" profitable and efficient mini-empire. Playing on and making Hitchin the business capital of the United Kingdom with all sorts of industry based around this little Hertfordshire town (meanwhile Manchester and Liverpool are certified as "a village") and trying to get it running so well that the rivals are unable to prevent my aquisitions and even funnier, financing my own businesses. Thing is, although it's played out in real time and so doesn't have the onset of "onemoreturnitis" as a plan comes into your mind and you spot that new profitable route and that target it becomes that little bit harder to pull yourself away until the goal is achieved. Then of course you have that next target, and the next, and the next and then, just as you're about to achieve your prime goal.... You're bought out, due to your obsession with that bottleneck outside the metropolis of Lands End you forgot to make sure once you started making big profits that you bought all the shares and some sneaky bugger (Brunell I'm looking at you...) has bought you out and you're seeing out your days as a.... well, depends how well you played but in my case I see "travelling circus freak" an awful lot...


As the man behind games like Civilization and (colonial Americaesque sim) Colonization I owe a lot to my interest in history to this man. I still remember handing in my first piece of homework in secondary school a 10 page document on the relationship between Cortez and Montezuma and it is purely due to the time spent on his games on boring weekends. Now Civ 5 is out I'm going to have to bite on that there thumb of mine not to buy it. I'd initially told myself the laptop wouldn't cope with it but now research shows it probably would I am somewhat relieved how skint I am, otherwise I might finally have drove the wench away with my inescent rambling and warmongering. "Bite that Convention on for size Geneva muahahahahahahaha"

Second time lucky

Okay so I'd prepared a long and detailed series of posts, then the computer died so I'm livid and am now to go rather briefer hopefully will still raise discussion.

First, saw on Sky yesterday that scientists have finally noticed that when an older and calm dog suddenly bites a small child it's actually the childs fault. No shit Sherlock! Turns out that the dog doesn't like having a toddler grabbing it, diving on top of it, pulling on it's fur as it falls over and then to make it worse, children are unable to understand growls and bared teeth, they mistake them for purs and smiles. So they keep going until darling great grandson/daughter gets bit. Dog loses life everyone feels sorry for kiddo. Here's an idea. Keep an eye on your damn kids so YOU can notice this stuff yourself. If you can't keep an eye on your kids don't moan when they do something they shouldn't.


Second on sports, it seems that Delhi may be struggling to make next weekends deadline over the Commonwealth games. As with the above, no shit Sherlock. I understand that in sports you try to spread the major sporting events round but you need to look at the nationwide infrastructure to begin with. In 2003 London managed to foul up the World Athletics Championships and a year later Athens barely scraped it for the olympics. So who really thought that in a borderline third world nation, in a volatile diplomatic situation would pull it off easily? They've had 9 years to get things reasonable yet a week before the off they've barely built any accomodation (shocking, given 150,000 people at best don't have access to basic sanitation in Delhi), the road to the main stadium isn't built (oh look it's collapsed as well now) and parts of various other venues are unstable WITHOUT any one in them. What's that? The rivers just broke it's banks flooding the city? So much for terror threats, they'll implode without Osamas boys going round!


Thirdly onto manners and intimidation, something for more ranty perhaps. Why the blue Hell is a library such a horrible atmosphere here? Traditionally youths hang around on street corners, with cheap cider and look a bit menacing. In Lankyvilles Zimbabwean community they use the library. Yup, of all the places to feel uncomfortable I can't believe it's the library. For some reason, and Sigmar, Odin, Jehova, Apollo or Zeus knows why but young Zimbabwean lads choose the library to be the hunting ground. They stare at you as you walk in to try and intimidate you, when you sit next to one of them they're constantly watching your computer screen and staring at you, they talk loudly to themselves often with Ricky Gervais fake laughs, they mumble insults to you, they elbow you and are just deliberately anti-social. I wonder if library in Ndebele means something completely different to over here...


Finally I want to read into something more positive for the day. Recently I finished Empire of Silver by Conn Iggulden and came across a character from history unfairly forgotten. Sorghaghtani Beki (from now on Sorgie) was wife of Gengis Khans' son Tolui. After her husband sacrificed himself in a shamanist ritual to save his brother and supreme khan Ogedeis' life on campaign she inherited his lands and rules as sole queen (khatun) but also perhaps out of his guilt became a key advisor to Ogedei. After Ogedei died in 1241 his wife Torogene became regent for five years. It would appear according to many references in the official Mongol records Sorgie was really in charge and kept the regency safe through diplomatic and more nefarious means. During the five year regency she was probably the most powerful and influential person on the planet (aside from her 20 years as sole ruler of Iran, Mongolia and north China after her husbands death) and perhaps even makes her the most powerful woman in the history of the world. Sadly the Mongol Empire is no more which means to most of the world she is but a footnote in the lines of history. More respect for Sorgie please Amerupean historians.

What if?

This was actually a topic came up with weeks ago but while locked in my eternal pit of damnation it got put on the back burner. A while back during the traditional 3AM neither of us can sleep conversations me and wench started discussing various What If? scenarios. Of course some of them are over in two seconds (i.e. What if Hitler didn't invade Russia - WW2 over by the end of '41) but sometimes you can go on and look over matters with a bit more depth.


One that often comes up is "What if Henry VIII hadn't divorced Kat?" I always find it quite interesting, as a starting point would England have split from the catholic church? I think ultimately, we wouldn't have done. The only reason we ultimately split from them was that Annie B was a bit of hooker and Henry had become obsessed with having a son which given Kats' breeding always made me laugh. A lot of other countries that left the Papal faith behind had a trigger, I don't know if the English would've had this afterwards. Potentially with the civil war but I think it would've happened catholic/protestant this is assuming after Mary lines remain unbroken of course.


As for Mary. The woman has been demonised almost since the day she was born, ultimately for being the wrong gender. Thing which gets me is had her mother remained queen and Henry not started persecuting Papists she probably wouldn't have earned the moniker "Bloody Mary" as the bitterness would not have been bred into her. Accordingly of course with the strong breeding in her she may have had a much better reign and that may instead be referred to as Englands "golden age" as opposed to that of her half-sister, given that her death seems to have been linked with the stresses she imposed on herself to stop Dizzy Liz from taking charge.


Around these great historical turning points, and I've kept it brief before going on too much of a lecture (any comments to discuss anything in further of course), we moved onto the "insignificant" turning points, or rather our own lives. The conversation inevitably turned into "what if we'd not got together?" and ultimately I honestly couldn't really give a plausible scenario. Wench seemed to watch it better than I could (I got scarce further than less headaches) and saw ultimately in her mind that I would've been managing at the company I was working at when we first got together. Had I not been coming through yet another bout of depression I would've focussed on that and overcoming the demons in that way, instead I'd opted to drop the work stress and took the time to recover by spending more time in Poxford.


Relationship wize she went bolder still and predicted that I'd have got into a relationship with one of three girls she's seen me with using the assumption that I'd have still been involved in the same groups which I guess is pretty solid. I refute all three of these as I was always an expert in getting to the "you're a great friend but..." scenario and put a lot of the relationship with wench down to putting her off a relationship for so long to avoid my depression and as a result mood swings harming her had we got closer it'd inevitably have gone wrong well before it finally happened. Incidentally I'd have got a lot less stress from her so with a higher paying job and a partner who according to her I'd "make the perfect couple with" something tells me this what if went the wrong way! :P


In the end we just had a nice conversation spending time together and looking at those little things that make up our lives and how in little changes the way our directions and history is built up. Of course, nothing can change now but sitting there and taking alternative looks at certain events no matter how small or minor can be a great way to pass the time. Now to start checking the library for some "alternate history" novels to along side the Cornwell and Iggulden.

Art of Acting 1 - Auditions

As we head in to the Christmas period up and down the land various groups are now preparing to enter "pantomime season" where pretty much every actor up and down this land is preparing to engage "over the top enthusiasim mode" and shouting "Oh no you're not!" over and over again. For a long period I hold my hands up to snubbing panto (Me to play buttons? I'm a serious bloody Shakesperian ac-tour) but after my bid to direct and produce a Hallowe'en performance of "The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" fell flat I had a Christmas free and went for it. Personally I've never looked back and I'll do it again. The thing is, when auditioning you find no matter where it is and whom the production is directed by we have a similar procedure.


LIMPETS - Of course, the first thing that happens is that the prospective actors arrive and begin sizing eachother up as potential rivals. The obligatory overtly camp lad no doubt intends to be the butler/servant, a few middle age men are generally going to be fighting over the dame/villain of the piece and roughly 3,971 teenage girls are going to fight it out for the roles of "good fairy" and "pretty love interest". Occasionally one of them will find herself heartbroken in lead male since "well, she looks kind of masculine". Around this, every group has "the regulars", people who come back year and year again who're a little harder to judge ("Do I REALLY want to be the dame 4th year running?") these become the limpets, clinging to those they know.


You see, usually you see groups come in and they're all cuddly and happy and you know they're rooting for eachother. Limpets will inevitably have next to nothing to do with eachother during the run but for now, you're best friends for life. That snooty biatch over there is competition and a limpet will find a corner with fellow limpets and plan their downfall. Hopefully they will read opposite them and make them look REALLY bad but the limpets will often do all they can to make sure their little play thing doesn't get harmed by "outsiders". Shakespeare once wrote "Hell hath no fury like a limpet scorned", a limpet without a role WILL become full of rage and hellfire and begin smeer campaigns on facebook.


READINGS - Once we've gone through the meet and greets and introduced eachother (queue limpets highlighting their years of service) we find ourselves given the roles that the director sees us based on initial appearence and the "I would likes...." almost immediately someone will find him/herself deflated as they're given the complete and utter opposite type of roles to read on. They will find themselves looking like thunder for the rest of the afternoon. Inevitably though people only really get one chance, JUST ONCE CHANCE [/William Wallace] to show what we're capable of. This often ends up with the interesting image of seeing someone trying to show versatility and going through a nice little geographic tour of accents they can do (most end up sounding Indian...)


Sometimes, seeing the script is enough to put people off the role they invisioned themselves/write themselves off in the view of the director (memories of the Zimbabwean Romeo who could barely speak a word of English come flooding back), after this people are well and truly deflated or starting to get confident on their part/sabotaging of the "outsiders" chances.


STUPID MOVEMENTS - It doesn't matter what you're auditioning for, there WILL be a stupid movement session. So many directors like to sit there and watch the way you move. Sometimes this is understandable and in the guise of a quick choreography session where a group of people who're unsure dancers look uncomfortable (female limpets will scowl at the pretty young rivals who appear like professional dancers compared to their flat footed shenanigans) but at least one can understand why. I've never understood why this is required while auditioning for King Leer though.


WAITING GAME - Ultimately, that's it with an audition. Stupid movements will often also cover a little bit of "singing" but by now we've gauged those who're musically aware and whom looked out of their depth so it doesn't offer much except for the remaining 1,573 "pretties" in the event of a tie. Nope you get the waiting game instead. "Thanks for coming, we'll be in touch" this normally has a disclaimer along the lines of "just because you don't hear when your friends do it doesn't mean you're not in". This is a lie, it means you're not in but it gives everyone the butterflies waiting by the phone.


Normally at this stage we thespians begin analysing ourselves and rapidly fall out of love with the audition and aren't too hopeful overall. Some however will be bought to Earth with a bang (most of the limpets in the event of a larger audition) after being convinced they're deities gift to acting. Most will be disapointed and while some will protest and boycott the group, most actors should use this to spur them on. It's still a nice feeling to get that call and get YOUR role (trying to calmly say "yes I will accept X" as your jaw drops is nigh impossible!) but nobody walks into any role and if you're a good, versatile actor you'll still get a decent role. This week I had a bad audition and came out unhappy. I've not got the role I wanted but looking at the script and knowing me I can make it work, anyway, what's the point of playing the same old roles all the time? I personally, am now relishing the role of "Mr Bod" even if he was nowhere near my radar at the audition. Bring on rehearsals!