One of the key features of Linux over Windows is that is flexible, customisable and generally all about the user. Not any more. Unity is all about opposing one vision for the operating system. Canonical, the driving force behind Ubuntu seem to have a vision. A vision which pisses off (Well, everyone in my small sample of 5, including myself, but that is still 100%…). Ubuntu is “exclusively” using Unity now, in the sense that if you prefered gnome, you can use gnome 3 (which is equally unejoyable), but if you want to use something like you had before, namely gnome 2 you *can* except that because gnome 2 was heavily adapted for Ubuntu, it looks like ass. So basically, you’re stuck. Unless it seems you decide to use Kbunutu, which means ditching G in favour of K. Not what I had in mind.

So were stuck with Unity, why is it so bad? Well. A handful of the problems right now can probably be attributed to bugs, and as it’s pretty new, this is to be expected… Fixes? Not yet it seems. An example? All the apps that used G system tray may or may not work with the unity tray… The VOIP app we use at work, is not compatible, which means I can’t use the tray feature, so I can accidentally close the program. Yay… Then there is the phantom highlight half the screen orange bug (this is to do with attempting to highlight snapping a window to half the screen, but sometimes it leaves that box on the screen, randomly…). Oh and sometimes Apps load, in the background. So need to be terminated an reloaded to actually have a GUI. Handy.

Ok. So, time can fix the bugs, so we’re over them for the time being, and we can get used to the new Unity interface, if we must… But this is Linux, and if we can’t change the UI, let’s exploit the famous linux customisablity! WRONG. Unity is fixed in its ways… they’ve decided it has to live on the left hand side. I thought as the Unity bar looks rather like the Windows 7 taskbar, why not whip it down to the bottom of the screen, like Windows! Would look just as nice, and could work exactly the same way. Except Canonical in their infnite wisdom have decided to not support this. Why? I’m all for them having their default settings that is inline with their vision, but enforcing it on everyone? Way to annoy your userbase…

I can’t help but fear that Ubuntu may lose out here. 10.04 is better. Much better. Unity is not the worst looking thing in the world, but in it’s current state it is sucking the life out of the OS. I’d love to love it, but it just makes doing *everything* harder. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d upgrade back to 10.04… It’s so annoying I’m finding an all new love of Windows. Though I do miss my terminal ninja potential… If Windows 7 and Ubuntu had a baby, that would be interesting… A cool OS that can play games? Yes please… Likely? No… I’ll settle for them fixing Unity. Likely? No…

So. What did I say 6 months ago? Stop here, head off and read it. I know I shall, brb.

Crap. Covered it pretty well it seems… Well firstly. Minecraft was indeed officially released, but even if I had considered it eligible, I wouldn’t have included it in my top 5. I’m sure a lot of people are still really into it and Minecon sounded like a lot of fun, but for me and my friends who picked it up when it was on it’s amazing rise last year, it’s hit its peak. Now there are dragons and whatnot else in the game, I’m just not fussed at the moment about seeing that. It’s good, but it’s had it’s moment. At least from my point of view. Too many it’s in that paragraph…

5) LA Noire, 4) Portal 2

Admittedly, I’d forgotten the first 2 picks. In fact, I read it again just now and I’ve forgotten AGAIN what they were. Portal 2 and LA Noire. Wow, they were released this year? Time flies… I’d have to say that for me, Portal 2 actually edges out LA Noire but neither have made such an impact that I remember they were even released this year… That might say more about me than the games, but still, you’d want me to even remember their release… So the top 3…

3) Saints Row: The Third

This game makes me sad. It is, in many ways, the most fun game ever made. The problem is despite the vast selection of insanity it’s still as shallow as a paddling pool. Previous Saints Row games gave you missions, and activities where they genuinely tried to justify spraying excrement onto people and cop cars or jumping in front of moving traffic. Now, the missions have basically merged into the activities and they don’t even try and make the activities make sense. The fact that they played driving a quad-bike around on fire straight made it even funnier. Now we get to drive around in a car with a tiger… So? I didn’t even know what was going on. I did an activity, and there was a tiger… Then there’s the customisation which seems to have been altered in favour of a higher quality graphical style, which looks nice but is a shame to lose options. The co-op is also not as good as it could of been, problems using the garages etc. Like you really want details. Pfft.

Still, swinging a shotgun into a guys balls and ddt-ing random old ladies is still a gas. I just wish it was… better… In the long run, this too will probably slide below Portal 2, but then Cave Johnson is awesome. I want to play Portal 2 now…

2) Gears of War 3

Well. It’s been a tough decision. I say tough… Let’s ignore the Gears campaign, because I still haven’t bothered to play it. For me Gears is all about the multiplayer, and Gears 3 multiplayer is excellent save for two things. Firstly, and there is no nice way to put this; most of the people who play Gears multiplayer are dicks. If I get downed and thrusted at by another player I may have to find out where they live and punch them. With a shotgun, to the balls. The game literally invites people to be a total toolbag by giving them executions, so they invent their own by gang humping downed victims… Douches…

Then, there’s the lag. Which at some points is simply inexcusable. Granted, online gaming is a complicated mess, but Gears proves it more than any other game I’ve played. RDR could manage 16 players and it was only really the Americans that caused major problems. Gears finds 10 a problem. I’ve been shot through a team-mate, shot when standing behind my killer, shot through walls and exploded a good few meters from impact. When I say shot, I generally mean exploded into tiny pieces. And of course, generally when I shoot a boomshot at a cluster it can even transpire that nobody even noticed the shot…

I said 2 things didn’t I. I’ve thought of a third. Spawn protection. Spawn protection, in THEORY is a good idea. Nobody wants to spawn, only to get shot straight away, or as occasionally happens spawn next to a planted grenade. Except that Gears generally spawns people AWAY from enemies… Except, when you’ve spawned, moved 2 or 3 feet only to find an enemy has just spawned behind you (or on the broken spawns on Blood Drive where you spawn in an enemy, nice)…

Spawn protection should not apply to someone who has moved about 10m away from spawn. Spawn protection should not apply to someone who has started shooting you. If you happen to run randomly into someone who has just spawned, might as well just bend over. The best part of all this is, is that it never ever seems to benefit you. Just today I spawned, ran out and was with in seconds gunned down. Had it it been the other way around, he’d have deflected every bullet and fired back killing me. Dumb.

Also. The DLC practises employed with this game have left a less than savoury taste in my mouth. They’ve charged us for Horde features that by all rights should have been in the original game, made all the more infuriating by the fact that a 1.4MB download means they were in fact already on the disk. Nice guys. The free maps were a nice effort to cover this shocking practice up, but it doesn’t really put them in a morally good stance yet… The story DLC i’ve yet to play yet, but I had to download it via the game, which means I couldn’t do anything else while it downloaded and at 2GB was a bit of a pain. Still at least it wasn’t on the disk… I’m curious what will be next, but if there isn’t a lambent addition to beast mode, I’ll be very surprised…

1) Skyrim

This is number 1, but it almost didn’t make it. My first experience of the game was very disappointing. Compared with Oblivion, the first few level ups in Skyrim make you feel like your playing “My first RPG” or an “RPG for dummies”. Gone is all the complexity and intricate stat moulding and replaced with a pick a random boost screen. At first It massively turned me off the game, but after a trying a few times I realised I was actually just having an adventure and not worrying about my stats. Oblivion made it almost obligatory to keep a diary of your progress if you wanted to get the best out of your character. Now you can relax and wander and not worry if you’ve jumped too many times this level…

Levelling is odd too. Apparently, one of the complains of Oblivion was that the enemies levelled with you. Skyrim’s alternate approach shows why this is both good and bad. One of the most annoying parts of Oblivion, was that as you levelled up bandits seemed to get richer and richer, starting off with leather and ending up by the end of the game being kitted out in full glass armour. Nice economy. The flip side is now in Skyrim you can’t possibly know what your getting yourself into. You can enter a bandit camp and slaughter them all without breaking a sweat, only to meet the gang leader who apes you in 2 hits. I’m expecting the leader to be tougher, but the distinction seems far too great on many occasions.

Then there is the dragons. The dragons are stupidly hard for my stealthy ninja character to deal with. I have to pound an epic amount of potions and pop it with arrows until I die of boredom or just die. I’m sure some people go hunting dragons, but not me. I run. I find someone else to take it’s focus, shoot it and then run off again. I had a dragon dispatch me easily, so on reload I ran into a giants camp, whereby the giants put him down with ease, and then I killed the giants, because let’s face it, giants may be tough, but they are DUMB. Yes that is a tree, yes you can go around it, no I’m not there anymore, yes that is an arrow in your face. I’ve even had a dragon eat me while I was in a hut. Not even walls can put them off ruining my day. I’m glad I take their souls and wear their bones as a hat. Silly buggers.

Still, the story is excellent and if it wasn’t for a few odd interface choices and just a little bit more RPG depth that I am clearly manly enough to deal with, it would have been a clear undisputed number 1. As it is, it has lag to thank for number 1. Gears would have won, if it didn’t make me want to throw the controller through the TV 20% of the time I play it. Still, a new TV would be nice… And who knows, 2012 might even be a new Xbox. Might have to do a console of the year 2012. Hint, it’ll be an Xbox…

Bonus Skyrim quandaries:

1. Why does everyone in Skyrim instantly trust me to go get/deliver stuff for them?
2. Except all “evil” characters, who instantly attack me without even so much as a how do you do. Morality is definitely a dirty word in Skyrim. You can be “evil” and murder people, but it’s all for the greater good. You are the hero, and you still fight bandits. Even if you murder, steal and lead dragons to villages and hide while it slaughters all the inhabitants.
3. Why do most of the jewellery sellers have no money. How do you afford all that jewellery…
4. Why don’t people clean up corpses lying around houses…
5. Why does a beggar still live on the streets after I’ve paid her 4000 gold for pickpocket training. That’s certainly enough to rent a room in an in for a year… In fact the whole economy in Skyrim is somewhat baffling.
6. Why does everyone keep going on about having an arrow in the knee when literally nobody in Skyrim has said this to me.
7. But in opposition to this, why are an alarming number of city guards part of the dark brotherhood… “Hail Sithis…”
8. Where the hell did Lydia go. More of a personal one since I’m fairly sure she died without me noticing. I’d still like to know where she is. Had some of my stuff…
9. Why did I have an apple I stole confiscated, but the collection of actual stolen property I had left untouched (I know the actual answer is they can’t remove quest items from my inventory, but logically this is dumb…)
10. Why do people yield when nearly dying and just get up and run straight for you again. I can get that *some* of them lie, but they all do it. If some got up and ran off, or even just cowered in a corner, i’d leave them. Possibly. As it is I end up wailing on everyone…
11. How come when they were randomly flinging fireballs at Whiterun my house was the only one not to be set on fire…
12. Why does leather weigh more than gold?
13. Why don’t arrows weigh ANYTHING?
14. Why can’t I run and jump. I mean, the point of games like this is to be more physically able than I currently I am. For instance, I cannot sword fight the undead, but as a relatively lazy man, even I can run and jump at the same time.
15. Also, where the hell do I keep all this junk. It’s the good old Adventure game style of, I’ll just put this ladder in my pocket…
16. Why when I accidentally pick up quest items can’t I put them down. I can see why it warns me, but when they clog up my inventory and I don’t want to deal with them why can’t I store them somewhere safe… Lazy.
17. Why does the Terminator work for the Jarl of Whiterun?

Well yeah. Except I’m ludicrously well trained for programming, considering I’ve been to two Universities to make sure I know how to do it. Hell, to make sure I’ve even taught myself various different languages and stuff to ram it in nice and deep like (Dodgeball).

It’s taken a while, but then there’s no time like the present. Of course it seems like only yesterday that I first learned to get annoyed at Java and blah blah pointless project, degree work, booze, blah. Now here we are. Was it all worth it? Again, only time will tell… Now I have what seems like a minuscule amount of time before I have to be getting up to go there again, yet it took hours for the work day to end and then there’s the sudden realisation that it’ll keeping coming along over and over indefinitely… And all I want now is Gears 3 and the brand new “Dripping Wheel” console which is taking flipping ages to arrive in my sweaty palms… Almost a week to go now. A week?!?! AHHH!!

But then, Only a month ago I was writing the last post. This time a month ago, I had never worked a day of my life. I’ve only just started and It’s like I’ve been there forever. Before you know it there will be a new Xbox. A new Gears (probably) and I’ll finally have my Delorean… Time sucks… The good things fly past and the waiting goes on. And on. And on… I even like working. It just seems to take ages… I blame the mornings. If time is annoying, then the morning is it’s evil henchman… 7am isn’t even *that* early and it annoys me. A lot. I blame the time.

Holy mackerel. Oh nice, spelled correctly first time. Go me! Focus, I’ve just spent what must have been the best part of half an hour writing this! And nobody will bother reading it. They certainly won’t enjoy it. Still, at least Gears is 30 minutes closer…

Oh, and go buy Gravity the Seducer. It’s awesome. Go. Now. No more from me until you do. Oh stop laughing.

Firstly, I know Google is a search engine, and so not obliged to be able to react at rapid rate of response, but it is less than useless at helping me here. Well, It can find any number of shall we say, unofficial websites sporting video footage. The problem here is that people who work for whomever actually owns the rights to this footage also can use Google as effectively as me and have managed to sweep around getting these videos pulled from whichever host service they are using. So most of the links are in fact galleries of copyright infringement notices.

I wouldn’t mind them removing the unofficial highlights if I could find ANY official highlights… Sky would be a reasonable place to look? They carried the game live so maybe they have some highlights to show me? Well. No. They have an interview with Mancini. Great. Football managers excuses are pathetic at the best of times, let alone when he’s forced to make stuff up in a language which doesn’t come naturally to him. So. Nothing here… Maybe the FA? They organised the game, they have a website, surely they have video footage of it taking place? No. Unless you count the 2010 game, but I’ve seen that already.

It’s not like the game just finished. It’s after 9. The game finished several hours ago and the final goal has been shown on Channel 5′s poor excuse for “news”. Yes I watched Channel 5. Men in Black 2 was on. No, I know that doesn’t make it any better… So they can show a clip on TV shows, the “infringers” can put a copy online, in multiple locations, in the time. Why aren’t there any official highlights accessible?

This right here is the problem. There would be no dodgy sites with unofficial highlights if the idiots got their act together and actually delivered what people want, the highlights! It’s clearly not hard, so it must be something to do with money. It’s always about money. But surely they must spend a fair bit trying to track down and squash people videos showing their content. We don’t want to search for highlights. We don’t want to watch videos where the only commentary we understand is “Roooney” and “GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL”. We just want to watch overpaid pretty boys dance about with a ball.

I actually suspect there probably is an official place to watch these highlights. I mean, they can’t be as incompetent as I think they are, right? Maybe it’s my fault however hard I look on the internet I can’t find them. I can’t say I have that much trouble finding anything else I’m looking for… As proof. Here is a duck on a tricycle.

Today, I read about the Movie Industry, in particular the origins of the movie industry and got into the founding of Paramount Studios, a company which made a lot of movies and a lot of money. See Paramount went for something called vertical integration, no I hadn’t heard of it either, whereby in a nutshell you own every stage of the development process to save yourself money and make lots more. E.g. They owned the movie production and the distribution and exhibition of said movies. Pretty smart. Of course this lead to bullying business practices where they forced theatres to buy blocks of movies, even films they hadn’t seen to show to customers.

They must have bought some absolute trash that nobody should have had to see, or probably even bothered to see, putting all the risk of the movie production on the distributors. Lame for them. They didn’t like it, they fought back and eventually the supreme court (ego much?) told them to knock it off, a fairer business practice developed and TV became massively popular.

So. 4th paragraph and no DRM. Yeah. Suckers… The point was that the system was corrupt, evil you might say, and they had to fight back. We may be getting close to such a situation in video game land as quite frankly publishers are starting to take the piss. DRM in games is getting ridiculous. Today I also read that the new Driver game, asides from not supporting steering wheels (…) will also require you to be connected to the internet at all times. ALL times. It will actively stop you playing if your net drops, or wire comes out or as pointed out, you go somewhere that doesn’t have internet… Let alone this relies on their servers working, supporting the load and not suffering a PSN style hack attack…

Also, bye bye to pre-owned games. You need a pass to play most of them online, or get DLC and the new Resident Evil game on DS only allows you to have 1 save game… Hope you didn’t fancy starting that from the beginning. Cause you can’t. We’ve long since been in a world where games that were too hard to finish never we’re witnessed to the end, so they made all the games easier. Now we’re getting too much content free it seems so if you don’t pay them up front there’s no on-line or DLC for you. Even if you do buy it new some of you won’t be able to play if you’re net is dodgy.

We have rights, although clearly not enough. We need to nip this craziness in the bud. Spore had one of the craziest sets of DRM on the planet and it was the most pirated game of that year. You’re asking to be taken down a peg if you start criminalising you’re legitimate customers. The people that take you’re stuff are not going to buy it because they don’t respect the product or you’re company. Is it right? No. But is their solution any better? If they worked to earn their business and didn’t treat even their loyal customers like scum perhaps they would do better for it. Certainly wouldn’t hurt to knock 5 quid off the RRP for every game…

I hope you’ve learnt a little bit of movie history, and enjoyed a rant at the “man”. Maybe we can start a revolution, maybe we’ll say I told you so, or I knew this was coming, but I fancy it’s only gonna get worse before it gets better. We will have to make a stand, let’s see how far they take it… Soon they’ll be charging you a flat fee for the person who has to witness you playing the game before you can play it, just to make sure you didn’t steal it. I don’t know why but I suspect his name would be Scott. You’d have to feed and cloth him too. Don’t worry though, he’d be your unlock code for all games by that publisher. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned this idea. If I spot any EA ip addresses reading this entry I’ll remove it immediately and issue a full apology…

You’re still here? Why… Oh you’re interested, right. Yeah. So. Satisfaction. In life it seems that we all strive to be satisfied. The problem is that satisfaction is, like all things a temporary state of mind. Take the prospect of dinner. Most people like eating and everyone has a favourite kind of food. My personal weakness is Chinese, most likely egg fried rice with some beef in black bean sauce. Excuse me while I wipe the drool of the keyboard…

So first of comes the anticipation. I’ve made the decision to go to the Chinese takeaway and now all there is to do is wait. I imagine how delicious it will be and I look forward to it immensely. Then there’s the drive to the restaurant or the phone call and a wait for the delivery man, either way the anticipation grows as the delicious meal gets ever closer. The slightly annoying bit where you have to pay and then the delightful acquisition of the meal.

So far we fell great. We’ve got what we came for and dinner is moments away. No matter how great the eating is, or how much food there be, eventually you will be full and the eating has to stop. We’ve passed the peak of the experience and all that is left is the feeling of delicious satisfaction. Won’t be more than 10 minutes before you’ve already started to forget how it tasted and how delicious it was, 20 minutes and you’ve probably had a drink and started watching tv. Suddenly before you know it life is back to normal and all the good work you’ve done disappears into mundane every day life.

Ok. So granted this example is rather spurious. No great achievement I grant you, but it’s just a matter of scale. I’ve spent the last few years generating great project ideas and occasionally starting them with great gusto and never really getting anywhere. I’ve often made great progress but run out of confidence or focus or lost interest and moved on to the next fad. More recently I’ve actually gained enthusiasm, focus and success in a project which I am still actively producing. It’s obviously not finished because I’d be touting it all over the net to as many people as possible, but It’s already got some pretty impressive features that I was a major part of implementing. Do I feel satisfied? Not really.

Also in this vain, I always used to feel frustrated that deep down I really wanted to work on these projects but I could never force myself to, so day after day nothing would happen and I’d be thinking, well maybe tomorrow… So now I’ve been doing a few hours a day, sometimes more, sometimes less but generally over the course of a week creating new things and improving both the code and myself as a programmer. Am I satisfied with this change? Hell no. I’m annoyed that I opt to play Black-Ops instead of programming, if nobody else is playing on the 360 I play something else when I shouldn’t be. Even right now I have a rough idea of what I should be programming but I really don’t want to tackle it because its complicated…

The overall problem? Satisfaction. I am unsatisfied. If I was to do better, I’d still be unsatisfied. The problem in a nutshell is I largely suspect even if I was as successful as notch and Minecraft I’d still be irritated with myself. Satisfaction sucks. Though atleast in that instance I’d be rich, so there is that.

First point to address. Minecraft is officially released this year, and although I’m still playing it a lot, and indeed will probably play it more than some of these titles I still can’t bring myself to include it again… So it will reign as last years champion, but will not get a second run out this year. Even though it’s out this year. And is still probably better than some of the games. Excellent. On with the list. I like lists.

5. Portal 2

Holy crap this game was fun. But even with co-op it’s lifespan is naturally going to be short. I’m not bringing it down any, as an experience it is top of the line and I would recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat, it’s just given the strict and finite quantity of game-play, It’s hard to rank it any higher. Technical excellence and top notch hilarity make this game one everyone should play through, unless you’re kind of dumb, then you’ll get stuck and end up cursing at your Xbox… Playing with a friend definitely added to the experience, one puzzle in particular I remember involves one person running very fast and hoping to god that their team-mate lines up the portals in time and doesn’t send you running into a swamp of death…

4. LA Noire

I have to say, this game confuses me. I’ve enjoyed every aspect of it, but I can’t help but feel I should be getting more out of it… I’ve not even finished the second disk yet. Which is always the bottom line. Whatever you think of a game, or think you think of a game, if you haven’t finished it, it can’t be *that* good. The case structure is always a bit off-putting, I don’t feel like playing it because I’m not sure I can commit to the time to see a whole case through! How stupid is that? It’s a game I want to want to play, but not enough to actually turn on the box and stick it in… I think I’m just lazy. I’d rather watch a season of Castle and have him solve the crimes than do it myself. His cases are always more interesting… Plus Castle gets Det. Beckett, who do I get, Rusty? No thanks… Hopefully it will be complete before 2012…

3. Saints Row: The Third

I’ve been a fan of Saints Row since the very beginning. At the time the original filled a very large GTA4 shaped void on the 360, and turned out to be so much more than an entertaining substitute while we waited for the real thing. So much so that Saints Row 2 is easily a far more entertaining game than GTA4. Why? Because it’s all about fun. GTA is a gritty crime sim in comparison to the poo spreading hilarity that was part 2. Now they appear to have gone and just about lost the last thread of sanity that was holding it clear of the loony bin. What do we get now? I’ve only seen a short video, but that was filled with spinning DDTs, ample blows to the testicles and a massive tank. Oh, there was also a giant novelty cannon that shoots people across the map. It has co-op chaos too. It’s bound to be hilarious and unlike Portal 2, the scope for the hilarity to remain entertaining puts it significantly higher up the chart. Or is it a list. Cockney-ectomy aside, it’ll still be hilarious.

2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Oblivion is old now. It shows. They’ve flirted around with Fallout which was a fine deviation but deep down TES is where we really want to be. Oblivion was an epic experience and Skyrim is almost certainly going to top it all over. Let’s start with the engine. New and shiny. Though, still has soupy long range textures but on that I’m going to blame that on the 360 more the game engine. Stupid old console… So, it’s prettier. Which is great, because now we have dragons. Hell yeah! Dual wielding in any combination? Hell yeah! As a single player experience, there will be nothing more engrossing released this year. Grab your novelty armour set and dive in as an Elf shoot arrows at ugly looking orks. Yeah, like Lord of the Rings without any of the annoying characters! It will own.

1. Gears of War 3

Holy hell. I hate Gears. I don’t even know why I bought the first 1. I’m sure it was someone else’s fault. I’m damn sure I only bought Gears 2 because someone else made me… The single player campaign is fairly generic but playable, featuring the macho fridge army and a bunch of creepy humanoid alien baddies. The chainsaw gun is pretty cool. Then there was Horde, good fun with buddies working together to murder lots of baddies. Competitive multi-player is ass. The host wins. So they’ve got another chance to win the audience, one more time to make a game that will capture all the people like me, who reluctantly sit on the fence, one desperate attempt to steal a vague proportion of the vast legion of COD fans. Part 3.

Well they’ve got a good chance. I still don’t give a toss about the campaign but they appear to have done a Lazarus on the multi-player. Realistically, they could have left horde alone, but instead they’ve bumped up the wave variety, added bosses and even tower defence aspects. Oh, and now there’s a mode for being the locust! Sweet. Oh, and now multi-player WORKS! Game servers, better rules, new modes, new weapons, new skins, new badges, oh and did I mention game servers? Now me and my wingman will tear it UP! Plus the beta has brought me the glory of a Gold Retro lancer. 1 of only 234,000. Doesn’t sound that impressive, but since Gears 2 sold about 6M copies, the chances are Gears 3 will eclipse that. If you assume 10M sales that puts me in 2.5% of people who will have it. That’s pretty damn exclusive, especially since a bunch of those guys won’t play, even less using the Retro (idiots).

I have a fairly obsessive personality, let’s call it passion, and right now Gears 3 is all I’m interested in. Only 80 odd days to go, they can’t go by soon enough. Unless they’ve totally ruined it since the beta, game of the year uncontested. Bring on the horde…

Ever played a game? Yes, you have, like any 2D game. Civilization is a classic game I’ve played for many years. Units are moved around the map across tiles, but they can’t go on every tile, and hills and rivers take longer to travel across than a rail-road. How on earth does it work out the best route?! Path-finding! One such method for finding a path, is A*. In theory it always seems pretty simple, and it can’t be that baffling because I’ve implemented it twice. I know, I’m awesome. *sarcasm*. What intrigued me was the second time was a lot harder than I remembered.. So, here is my take on it. Maybe I can simplify it enough for others…

Starting with the Wikipedia article, it’s clear I don’t read things to well… It makes more sense now I know how to do it. Actually, that’s probably true of everything. Anyway, focusing on the pseudo-code. I’m all about code, good pseudo-code should explain everything. Let’s break down their code…

I don’t like maths, so their use of G/H and F annoys me… G is the cost to traverse to this location, H is the estimate to the goal and F is both of them. This had me pinned down for a while… I know, I’m dumb.

The next bit that was a little fuzzy was the betterness evaluation. It implies that the default value for a node’s cost is excessively higher than expected. The neighbour nodes are added to the open nodes for the next wave, but the cost for each neighbour is calculated and checked. Wait… I’ve suddenly realised I’ve got the opportunity to rectify another oversight. Hmm. I frequently impress myself with my code, yet I tend to despair in equal measure. Hold on, and let’s see if can update my code…

Well. Not that you care, or will be able to notice but now my code looks rather more like their example, but in actuality I don’t think mine was any worse. Like most code it can be done in many different ways. It’s a learning experience. Or something. Though when I had it running the first time, my algorithm didn’t terminate when it had found the goal. It just kept processing the open list… It still worked out the best path, It just pointlessly checked all the other potential steps before it gave up! Not a big problem right now, but with multiple entities trying to find their way across the map would definitely cause unnecessary overhead…

But back to their pseudo-code, it’s not a complete set. It provides several methods, such as heuristic cost estimate and dist between which are not even remotely specified… Annoying. I can help there. Distance between is dependent on the map your working on, but assuming it’s a grid then the distance is 1, using Chebyshev distance. Yeah that’s right, I said something fancy. If more complicated, here you’d use the cost to traverse over that square. Water for instance harder to walk across than dirt. Unless you’re in a boat. Boats don’t work on dirt.

Another oversight appears to be how they retrieve neighbour nodes, but again this depends largely on what kind of world you’re operating in. A grid would simply take all +/- combinations of the x and y of the current position, ignoring itself obviously. This is a good point to remember to tell it to ignore all walls or impassible positions…

The other function is the estimate, which might seem odd, but this never considers the difficulty of how to move. There are different techniques but the simplest to understand is the direct distance between here, and there. That would be the euclidean distance, or if you’re a GCSE maths student, or hate maths, the hypotenuse. Or If you hate that too, the distance between two points… But that involves a square root, which is bad, computationally. Manhattan distance, or block movement is fine and much cheaper, if you can’t move diagonals. If you can move diagonals, make sure to to consider the diagonal distance using a larger weight for diagonals. This is important because paths that consider straight the same as diagonals are prone to wobbles when moving vertically or horizontal would look better. If the cost is the same, the node which is chosen depends largely on the order in which they were considered, which means moving directly two tiles right would probably result in choosing to move up and right, then down and right… A more detailed explanation of heuristics can be found here. It’s very detailed and has pretty pictures.

I had considered this being useful at the start, but then it devolved into a random wander through my code… I guess over the course of writing it I made my code slightly better, which is always nice. I also learned I cannot spell pseudo-code. For some reason my brain says press ue not eu. If you we’re considering path-finding, go A*. I’m sure you can follow the example with much more ease than I managed it… And if it’s causing you pain, try and write about it. You’ll realise you were being a total wally… Another fascinating conclusion. You can see why I’m not a journalist.

So the plot, in a nutshell. Actually, scratch that, this is the plot in an essay. Sorry. Thora is a social outcast, with the hots for a “jock”, best friends with a nerd named Martin. He’s naturally my hero as he’s a tech nut who for money, arranges a way out of a geography trip for Keira, the dude she fancies and the jock. On Thora’s request, he insists she goes too. So what do we have? Keira Knightly locked in a hole in the ground? Sounds good so far? They can’t get out. Even better?

They are with the two guys, in what is some sort of bunker, sealed for some reason… Let’s deal with the obvious flaws. This is a fancy ass private school, how they couldn’t have got the cash to get a hotel room for a few days is a bit odd. Sure they could have gone camping, but they are stuck up poshies who the idea of nature is some sort of crime against nature (get it?).  Anyway, logically he didn’t need to lock them in. It’s not like someone was gonna come and check the lock… I’m sure they would notice the music first… Plot hole? HOLE? Moving on…

After 3 days, he’s supposed to come back, and let them out, but he doesn’t. He must be the bad guy? Sounds pretty plausible. Us nerds like trapping people. Yeah… The plot is unravelled by Thora, traumatised she is telling a psychiatrist what happened. So, naturally over the course of being trapped, in a hole, presuming they are held hostage they start to go a bit crazy… It seems that after assuming Martin was listening to them, he let them out  once they satisfied him they all hated each other. Interesting game he had going on. He loves Thora, so he didn’t want her to hook up with the jock. Teach her a lesson. Or something. He shouldn’t have locked teenagers in a hole if he didn’t want them to resort to fooling around with each other… Still, Martin comes across as a bit of a nutter. So based on her testimony he gets arrested. His story however, is somewhat different…

In his world, Thora is actually best friends with Keira, and it was all her idea to go into the hole… She’s actually a smoking bitch, with a desperate need to graduate to being a full blown whore, with the jock. In that respect his plot is similar it has be said… So one of them is lying… We assume its him, obviously, but then she starts “remembering” events which seem to follow his theme. Smoking ciggies, drinking and a near threesome… kinky. We also get to see Keira’s breasts, though after a quick bit of maths it turns out she was 16 when this was filmed… Kinda creepy…

So. What to think? The story unravels quite nicely. At first it seems open an shut. I mean, a bit implausible, but that only makes the resulting events make more sense… Why were they locked in? Bad idea? Well.. Logically yes, until the motives become clear…

So Martin tracks Thora down. Naturally, he’s annoyed to have been arrested for doing nothing… They have an argument, as she seems to suggest she fingered him (no, not like that. Disgusting.) because she knew he’d get away with it? Hmm. Odd don’t you think? If she knew he wasn’t at fault, why did she say he was… The plot tries to keep you guessing, if she’s a victim, or the villain of the piece. It starts to seem like she’s remembering wrongly, but no, we’ve already worked it out now haven’t we. See, she is why I love this movie, she’s a classic psychopath and it seems like the psychiatrist begins to piece it all together.

Locking the door is crazy, to all logical people, except Thora, who wants to keep her love interest close until they “inevitably” fall in love. Sounds crazy. Which, obviously she is. By the end it turns out that Martin “slipped” and died. Yeah right, she pushed him hands down… Well, hands forward is a push, unless they are below you. Shut up. Back to the plot…

So, then the psychiatrist takes her back to the hole. God why she does is beyond me. I’m sure it’s not in the psychiatrist manual. In fact, lesson 1, when someone is traumatised, don’t take them back to what traumatised them as part of their recovery… Anyway. This is where we find out what really happened. No food and water, Keira inevitably becomes sick, just as Thora is about to close the deal. Days without any form of action, and the fear of death is great motivator for a man. Beer goggles be damned, the prospect of death is enough to make any girl attractive, it seems, standards be damned. However, Thora doesn’t even care about Keira,  she just wants to get the deal sealed. Of course in her mind, one more day is fine…

Except that Keira actually dies. Oh dear… She does seem to show remorse, clearly not a grade A psychopath but don’t go soft on her yet. Despite death, She doesn’t let them out, but of course she can’t just open the door. So she waits, as they go progressively more hungry and crazy… So much so that one guy kills the other over a can of coke. Don’t worry, the right one died… So now Thora and her man are alone together, and finally he tells her that he loves her. Sweet, so now she can let them be free together forever! Right?

So, now is a good time to get outside and frolic together. Oh, except that he sees her open it, so as a desperate attempt to justify everything she confesses her undying love for him… So, being a reasonable man, he goes ape-shit that the other two had to die for her whim. Trying to get at her, he falls, and dies. And now, because of Martins “suicide” (yeah, I know, cops are dumb…) he looks guilty, especially when Thora pulls the “oh, I’m so scared” act when the cops arrive in the hole. They agree bringing her there was a bad idea. Even I knew that… So Thora’s going to get away with it…

It didn’t do all that well, nor did it get rave reviews. In fact, one such review says the film got muddled in trying to decide whether she was a victim or not. I call DUH. The pacing of the plot keeps you guessing right until the end, and every time you see a scene in the hole, you can’t really be sure what actually happened because they deliberately don’t fill in all the holes. Get it? As a character study, it’s brilliant. The lengths people will go to are exposed, mixed in with the lengths a psychopath will go, to get what she wants. She could have given up at any moment, but she doesn’t. She has to get him to love her, whatever the cost. She doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as she gets her man. She puts 3 people, her friends through absolute hell for “love”. She doesn’t care that it wasn’t natural. I mean, typically people fall for each other over time, no matter how long it takes, not because the are no other options… How many successful relationships do you know that began forced in captivity? No, not many. Of course, I bet even fewer than that would last based on captivity where somebody dies…

If you’re not interested in the way people think and how they can go insane in a box, or toilets filled with maggots, or thrillers or movies with Keira Knightley’s teenage breasts, or the thought of her being locked in a hole, you probably like the majority wont get much out of this movie. It’s certainly not a laugh a minute thrill ride, but as a character driven piece it is as good as I’ve seen. It’s one of those movies I watch whenever it’s on, as despite being dark and dreary I always find it fascinating. But then maybe that says more about me, than the quality of the movie. What have I learned? Well. I can’t spell psycho… Except I got it right that time. Maybe I’ve learned how to spell. Cool.

The first obvious thing to note, is this is a game which quite simply couldn’t have existed 10 years ago. The technology behind this game is rather beautiful, and a testament to how the video games industry has evolved. Hell, only 10 years ago Lara Croft still had a angular and spine damaging bosom. Now we have facial feature reactions that are as life like as you’re likely to see. It is wonderful to watch, especially the incidental reactions of people who aren’t even talking. Someone starts talking nonsense, the guy behind rolls his eyes and you feel his disbelief and annoyance. But this isn’t just an interactive movie guys. There is serious crime solving to do!

They’ve broken it down into 4 basic tasks. Getting it out the way, there is shooting. Inevitably bad guys don’t like giving up, so occasionally you’ll end up massacring groups of people. It’s a Rockstar game after all. Even a serious grown up one still needs a reasonable body count… Next we have chasing down people, sometimes on foot but usually in cars, with some nice car physics and damage simulation. Smashing bits off vintage cars is a blast, though accidentally driving full speed into the broad side of a tram is a suitably frightening experience. I believe that cost the city a few quid, not to mention serious whiplash. It still stings.

The none-interesting stuff out of the way, the other tasks are searching for evidence, and interrogating people. The first is a mixed bag, It’s a game so items are laid about pretty neatly. The game wants to help you out, so rumbles when your near something of potential interest, but really it’s a game, so items that can be picked up stand out a reasonable mile away. Several scenes have you arrive with all the evidence marked anyway, so it’s just a case of visiting the points like a join the dots picture. There are also several naked women who’ve been off’d. Now I’m not against nudity, but it does seem a little “ooh, let’s be edgy”… Maybe I’m just picking hairs… The real weakness here is that there never really is any searching involved. Not that I’d want to go through hundreds of items to find the right one, but frequently the evidence might as well have slapped you on the face when you walked in the room. So much so that it actually made me doubt people could be THAT STUPID when it appears they did it anyway. Which gets me onto the 4th task…

Interrogation. Thank god I’m not a cop. It is truly interesting to try and judge peoples reactions, and some of them are freakishly good at lying (Yes I know they are actors, but they are believable in their performances, smart arse. Yes, I was thinking of you.). The problem I have, is with the Doubt/Lie scheme. The dialogue is obviously more complicated than simply yelling “YOU LIE” at them, so sometimes the direction Cole takes it somewhat different to how I had imagined, which can lead you to making a mistake. Now, a doubt is a lie with no proof, so go with that if you think they are full of it, unless you were actually supposed to have proof… I fell into a trap just now, a guy said his boss was one of the people I’d just shot (in the face btw) when I know fully well he was in his office as I *jus* left there… But there wasn’t a “LIE, I’ve just seen him” option.

It may seem counter-intuitive. On the one hand I’m complaining about finding stuff being too easy, and interrogation being to difficult, but it’s all about the fine details. The interrogation should be about judging the persons reactions, but it turns into a guessing game as to whether you’ve interpreted the response in line with the scriptwriters. Sometimes picking a piece of evidence is easy, and other times I’m left scratching my head KNOWING they are lying… It’s more that it’s fussy than difficult, and unpicking it seems to be rather more luck than judgement.

But the good thing is, the game wants to be played, and isn’t going to slap you down for making a mistake. Luckily for you, missing the odd question or piece of evidence still means the case is solvable, just down a slightly less polished line of inquiry. Thank god is all I can say. If you had to nail every interrogation then the game would be NO fun at all. In fact you’d have to save and reload a lot, or just wait for someone else to do it and follow a guide, and by then you might as well just stick on a Film Noire movie.

The cinematic nature of the game also runs into other problems. Throughout the game there are chases on foot, sometimes you tackle, sometimes you fire a warning shot, sometimes you just have to follow them until the game decides the chase is over… The game provides you with these alternatives, but because of the cinematic nature of the storytelling, it can’t let you choose what to do. Which rather makes you feel like a passenger rather than the protagonist. Which is a shame.

The scripted cases are the core of the game, though I have solved a few “street crimes” which are just mini set pieces with no strong narrative. I’m sure they’ll pass the time, but after the cases are gone I can’t see any fun coming from the ability to cruise around the city. It’s not like I can get the national guard after me… Which is fine, It just seems like a bit of a waste.

I’m still only on Disk 2, which in itself is probably the most telling part of this game. I enjoy it, but I can’t play more than one case in a sitting at the moment. It’s kinda odd, but I enjoy the experience, I’m just done in a case. Which is probably about an hour. I guess that’s healthier than playing Minecraft all day. It’s certainly not a game you could just pick up for a quick go. You have to designate a chunk of time to immersing yourself in the experience and that I feel is brave considering the casual gaming trend… But i’d still like to be gripped. I’d like it to be so fascinating that I can’t wait to play the next case. Instead it feels a bit like having to go to work solving crimes… Luckily the bad guys wait for me to turn on the xbox before they murder anyone.

A verdict? Where does it stand in the gaming hall of fame? It should be praised for it’s attempt to do things differently and any game that is more cerebral than visceral can only be a good thing. It is by no means perfect, but after investing so much in facial capture I suspect many more attempts to hone my interrogation skills will be forthcoming. LA Noire 2: Lie Harder, Coming Soon*.

* Not coming soon.