Zorac's LiveJournal

OK, after waiting this long, I don't think I will barbecue it, but still...

Thanks to this site, I got notified the minute Amazon got some more Wiis in stock and had the order placed immediately. Now I just have to wait for it to turn up...

So, I went to see Hot Fuzz today, another excellent piece of it's-not-quite-a-spoof-it's-just-really-funny cinema from the team behind Shaun of the Dead and the ultimate fanboy sitcom, Spaced. The gentle comedy of the first half does a great job of setting up the full-on (albeit slightly silly) action movie second half. Pegg and Frost are on form as usual, and Timothy Dalton is clearly having far too much fun hamming things up, plus the who's who of British actors and comedians - Jim Broadbent, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan and the seemingly obligatory Bill Nighy cameo. An unexpected bonus was having a lot of the film shot in the cathedral city of Wells, which is where my Gran lives, so I know it quite well. Many familiar sights - the best moment being a chase scene down the pathway which run's behind Granny's garden - it's a small world, after all.

In other news, my quest for a Wii remains entertainingly doomed. Bricks-and-mortar retails seem to be barely stifling amusement if you have the optimism to enquire if they have any in stock. As for online, I have found a nifty stock-checker-alerter website, but thus far the stock has only appeared either as part of a full-price bundle including a bunch of games I don't want, from shops which will only deliver to the registered credit card address, or exactly when I'm not online. Yes, I could reserve one, but I should have done that months ago, and do do so now would be just cheating! (I'm deliberately not reserving a PlayStation 3, because there's no way I'm paying that much for a games console).

So, it's been a busy week on the Star Wars front, starting with the release of the long-awaited "Limited Edition" DVDs of the original trilogy, featuring the unaltered theatrical Han-shoots-first-dammit versions of the movies which George Lucas swore would never be released on DVD except if he could make a really big pile of money. Actually, they really are a bit of a con - each movie has a two-disk set, the first of which appears to be identical to the disks from the Special Edition trilogy box set, and the second of which contains the theatrical versions. No special features other than commentaries on the special editions (not even the stuff from the fourth disk of the box set). Meh.

It's no coincidence that this week also saw the release of LEGO® Star Wars™ II: The Original Trilogy - another entirely too much fun video game. It follows much the same format as the original, albeit with a few new bells and whistles. Once again there's a vast array of playable characters (and if you have a save from the first game, you can play as any of the Episode I-II characters too), and great gobbets of silliness. Excellent.

What was more fortuitous is that this week saw the One Man Star Wars show passing through Oxford, which I went to see on Thursday night. It was utter genius from start to finish - hilariously funny and constantly entertaining. Admittedly, if you don't know the movies then you'd be completely lost - but that's really not who this is aimed at. Writer/performer Charles Ross has incredible energy as he plays all the characters - including seamlessly portraying both sides of the battles. And, yes, he does the music and the spaceship battles too. Go see it if you can!

And finally, ( Collapse )

So, what with chemical warfare proving utterly ineffective in the battle of the pipes, today I went out shopping for new and improved weaponry, tomorrow I shall be engaging in biological warfare, as well us unleashing the drain-cleaning equivalent of a sharp pointy stick. Whether this will lead to victory remains to be seen.

What else have I been doing? Playing a lot of games, actually. The most recent acquisition being Lego Star Wars - it's as silly as it sounds, and entirely too much fun. The downside is that it covers the prequel trilogy (although the newly released follow-up covers the original trilogy and promises even more silliness). The idea is that you play through six or so sequences from each film, playing a variety of different characters (you can switch between members of your party on the fly). In free-play mode, you can choose to be pretty much any character of note from the three films (often in several versions), which does have the upside that you can be General Grievous laying the four-lightsaber smackdown on Jar-Jar Binks, or have Darth Vader lop the head off young Anakin Skywalker. And all in the form of LEGO. Genius!

On the PC, I've been getting all first-person-shootery with Half-Life² and its spin-offs (if you have said game, I highly recommend the single player mod MINERVA - it's an incredibly polished piece of work, and I'm eagerly awaiting the final instalment.) Today I've been online with Day of Defeat: Source which was good fun, despite my utter ineptitude. I am, however, getting increasingly frustrated with the online pay for Age of Empires III - this is no reflection on the developers, it's just too difficult to find a fun game. Even if you do manage to find players of a reasonably similar skill level, there's no guarantee that your opponents won't blatantly ignore the agreed rules of engagement - or simply drop out of the game (actually, the latter usually happens with my allies, but today, after investing the agreed "no-combat" time in building up a strong economy and a formidable army, the entire opposition team quit, leaving an utterly hollow victory).

I really need to go to Lush at the weekend. The main reason for this being that I finally got the hot water fixed on Wednesday, meaning that I can have hot baths rather than (usually luke-warm) showers for the first time in weeks - and my stash of ballistics and bubble bars is consequently running low.

Yesterday evening got off to a fun start when the electricity decided to cut out just before, I was due to leave, meaning that I ended up having to hang around for another couple of hours until the power was properly restored (rather than doing an impression of a yo-yo). On the plus side, I grabbed a copy of Uplink from Steam and spent a fun evening playing the part of a 1337 hax0r. Until I got caught. Bugger.

Today I have a shiny new video card to install when I get home, although I probably won't have much time to admire the shiny. frayer will be here with the weekend, along with her friend lizziwig, who is starting at Oxford University in the autumn. The idea is that Liz can have a look around town before she comes up to study, but I imagine that lost of cocktails will be involved, too...

This will be a random entry.

Last weekend I was up in Yorkshire, visiting the lovely frayer. Whilst on a brief expedition to the pretty city of York, we discovered the ideal solution for those little snack cravings - ( Collapse )

Yesterday, I ventured in to down to run various errands. On coming round the corner from my flat, I was confronted by this ( Collapse ) Naturally, I plan to live for ever, but should the worst happen and I end up the guest of honour at a funeral!t00bage, I expect you all to chip in to send me off "Swiftly, and With Style". (Points to any one other than Freya who gets that reference.)

Once I got into town, I was rather surprised to see a couple of people carrying Krispy Kreme boxes, not being aware of anywhere in Oxford selling said doughnuts. After seeing several more people (including a policeman with several boxes) I got onto Queen Street where it seemed that every other person had some. Turning the corner, all was revealed in the form of a long queue of people leading to a lorry filled with such boxes. A few minutes later, I was the proud owner of one dozen free original glaze doughnuts. Yum. ( Collapse )

Thus fortified, I ventured forth unto the kitchen showroom, where I did verily order a kitchen. Finally. A slight tweak to the original plan to put a proper corner-cupboard on the wall rather than just leaving a void, plus selecting the worktop, appliances, etc, etc. In a couple of month's time, I should have a kitchen worthy of a king. As opposed to the current one which isn't worthy of a pauper...

After other assorted shopping ad some food, I went to the cinema to see V for Vendetta. Whilst most certainly not subtle in its politics it was more so in its action sequences than the Wachowski brothers' most recent efforts - more plot-heavy than effects-heavy, even compared to the original Matrix. Plus you have to love Stephen Fry being, well, Stephen Fry, and Natalie Portman is so much better when the director actually permits her to act...

Since then, I've been mostly playing 24: The Game. Whilst certainly not having the most original or high quality gameplay in the world, what it does do very well is re-create the feel of the TV show - most obviously the clock, but also the use of split-screen and technobabbleollocks. Having the original voice cast really helps, and they actually did a pretty good job of making the characters look real. So far, pretty good fun.

Happy Birthday to the fabulous frayer!

♥

Also, after our game of Antike yesterday and Risk a few weeks back, I have to report that Freya has a disturbing aptitude for world domination.

So, I did the "Your Letter to SatanSanta" meme. Alas, it was mostly dull, except for the part where "Last Monday I helped iharthdarth hide a body (-173 points)". Hee!

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So, I spent last week chez mes parents in the south of France.

Short version: Heat. Books. Pool. Wine. Food.

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It's many, many years since I first played The Secret of Monkey Island™, back in my Amiga days, but I've been a fan ever since. For my mind, this series of games is the crowning glory of the graphic adventure genre. The first game sees you playing Guybrush Threepwood, washed up on the shores of Mêlée Island™ with dreams of becoming a mighty pirate, and from there you swashbuckle your way around the Caribbean solving quirky puzzles, doing battle with the evil undead pirate LeChuck and trying to win the heart of fair Elaine.

The creators have made no secret of the fact that they were inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean, so it's no great surprise that it has much the same feel as last summer's blockbuster movie (and indeed some more blatant similarities). What the games really have in buckets is humour - both constant running gags and silliness, and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Combine that with wonderful characters and interesting storylines and you have a sure-fire winner.

Naturally the graphics are somewhat dated (the earliest game came out in 1990), in particular the first two are fairly blocky and lacking a huge palette, and the move into 3D for the fourth game is not up to today's standards (plus they dropped the pointy-clicky interface). The sound, however, is pretty good even for the earlier games - the music is fabulous even in its MIDI incarnations - although it's not until the third game that we actually get to hear the characters speak.

Happily, the games have a thriving fan community, possibly the best part of which is SCUMMVM - an emulator which allows you to load up your copies of the older games on your Windows PC rather than trying to get them to run in DOS mode (it also runs on a whole bunch of other systems, including Macs and even Palm hand-helds). It also does nifty stuff like scaling up and smoothing the graphics for that Maximum Monkey Experience.

What makes these games classics is the need to experience them again and again - like the books I've read every year for decades, or the movies I've watched a dozen times or more. I don't know how many times I've played Secret over the years - certainly I know my way through all the puzzles by now - but it's still tremendous fun to play. Having played through all four over the last few weeks, I thoroughly enjoyed the lot - perhaps the later games don't quite recapture the glory days of the first two, put perhaps that's just a case of rose-tinted spectacles. Certainly the final game concludes with a level of glorious silliness that even I can't match.

Here's hoping that LucasArts produce Monkey 5 before too much longer. In the mean time, y'all should go and play the ones that are already out!