Also available via www.gjob.co.uk

This blog is now only available at www.gjob.co.uk. Please ensure you clear your cookies/cache, etc, so that the redirect works properly and adjust your bookmarks.

All entries currently on this livejournal will remain here. Any entries posted as of today (February 8, 2008) will be found at www.gjob.co.uk

Did i mention www.gjob.co.uk?

This is it. The arena o f my defeat. Fumbler status confirmed.

However, before I go any further, I’d like to point out that this defeat came from a victory. Today, I went to the first press event of my career where nothing went wrong. I didn’t get lost (how could I, when I’d been to the venue for no less than two other events?), nor did I arrive late (try ten minutes early!). I didn’t run out of batteries for my dictaphone or digital camera (I had two spare packs in my bag). Nothing went wrong. At all. Which was a relief given that the first familiar face was a PR girl I met at the disastrous Mario & Sonic event.

Today’s event was a preview of TNA iMPACT, the new wrestling game from Midway that has set its sights on knocking THQ’s WWE franchise out of the arena. The game looks impressive enough, featuring motion-captured animations from every wrestler and a nice dollop of next gen graphics. I’m not a huge wrestling fan, but I thought it looked quite fun.

We were given a presentation on the game by superstar wrestler Kurt Angle (with my cousin threatening to disown me if I didn’t return with an autograph), and then he went through a thorough grilling in a Q&A session. Either the majority of the attendees were wrestling press or wrestling fans because the questions seemed to dwell on his career rather than the product, meaning I only managed to ask one games-related question, but fortunately it’s enough to write a feature out of.

This is where everything goes downhill. After the presentation, we’re all led downstairs to a room full of Xbox 360 debugs with the game’s early code. I pick up a controller and start pummelling a motionless wrestler, hoping to get to grips with the controls before someone picks up the second controller. I didn’t have long, since one of the ringside girls – two typically gorgeous girls asked to dress up in the tiniest shorts imaginable – comes up to where I stand and asks, in a somewhat alluring manner, “Would you like to play with me?”

Determined to behave, I smiled politely, passed over the second controller and we went at it. I mean, we began to fight. Now, I’ve not played a wrestling game in almost ten years, but for the most part, I seemed to be on top. Winning, that is. The controls are pretty simple, with a button for punch, one for kick, one for grab and a general mashing of other buttons pulling off different nifty moves.

The match seems to go on forever, and I have no idea how to pin her to the floor. In the game, of course. I’ve been able to knock her flying, jump on top of her, kick her in the face, knock her senseless and perform all manner of aerobatic special moves that wrap my arms around her and throw her to the ground – in-game.

Just as some helpful soul behind asks “Who’s winning? How do you finish a match?”, the girl finds whatever button was eluding me and pins my character to the floor. Rapidly shaking the stick (the wrong stick, as I found out later), the dreaded numbers “3”, “2”, and the inevitable “1” flash on the screen.

I’ve lost. To a PR girl.

We shake hands, I smile like an idiot and wander off to watch someone else play. And best of all, there were cameras throughout our match, taking both pictures and video of our fight simply because I was playing against one of the hot girls. When I track down the pictures on the net, maybe I’ll post them up here. Or destroy them.

I haven't posted a career update for a while, and no doubt you're all dying to know how I'm getting on, so I should probably fill you in on my recent appraisal.

Upon being offered the job at In Stock, I was told it would only before for three months subject to an appraisal, which I had on Friday. This meant that if I failed to impress Ali, I'd be out of a job and in serious danger of crawling back to *shudder* Tesco.

For the first two and a half months, I thought nothing of it, figuring that provided I work as hard as possible, I'd be ok. Then it got to within a week of the appraisal and I started picking up on some worryingly consistent failings I had developed.

If I'd only been working there for three months, this would be less of a problem, but with fully 18 months experience of working at In Stock, eight of which (or thereabouts) had been a as full-timer, I had considerably less of an excuse than other applicants would.

I chose to approach the appraisal like one of those god-awful evaluations they make you do throughout school and university, mentally listing these failings and planning how to improve on them. Once in the appraisal, I simply unleashed this list.

The major one was news. I sit with NewsNow's computer gaming feed no more than two clicks or a strategic alt-tab away at all times, and yet there were some serious news stories that I read and thought 'interesting but not In Stock's field' - only to find the rest of the team would have reported on it by the end of the day.

Another was meeting people. While I enjoy meeting people, I've found myself to be hesitant at some of the press events I go to - generally because there are thirty to forty people already there, chatting away cos they all know each other. The Tomb Raider event, in particular, was pretty nerve-wracking, but fortunately I recognised someone from the NiGHTS preview.

The list went on, and Ali sat listening intently. Once I'd finished she simply said that I seemed to have picked up on anything she would have wanted to say, told me to keep up the good work and that was it.

As a result, I am no longer an intern, a freelance, a temp or an applicant on probation. I am now officially a games journalist.

S'good.

Your post "Re: Error: Network Connection Timed Out" was removed from
the forums as it does not follow the guidelines specified in our terms
of use. These areas are intended to address technical issues about
Apple products. Posts that do not conform to the Apple Discussions Use
Agreement are inappropriate.

Reasons that your post was removed may include but are not limited to:
-Off topic or non-technical posts
-Rude or inappropriate behavior/language
-Non-constructive rants or complaints

Please read our Apple Discussions Use Agreement so that you may
discover what constitutes an appropriate post to our service.

Utter, utter bastards. This is the email I recieved four months, four sodding months, after posting on their forums when iTunes failed to recognise my internet connection - a problem that, after Apple failed to help me out, could only be solved by completely wiping my hard drive.Wiping my bloody hard drive.

And worst of all, this is the email I got a few hours after ordering an iPod Nano to replace my broken Shuffle.

What sort of shitty corporation doesn't provide support or customer service, and then has the audacity to delete your post when you do ask for help?

Utter bastards.

How's this for customer service? Early November, my iPod/iTunes ceased working. For no reason. The program insisted that I wasn't connected to the Internet, even though I was browsing the Apple site at the time, looking for answers.

Having spent a good two or three weeks looking for a solution, I gave up, registered and posted a very scolding message in the iPod Shuffle Technical Support section of the Apple forum. I got a few suggestions from customers - all useless, unfortunately - but not a word from Apple.

Today, four months later and well into the New Year, I received a reply from Apple:

Your post "Re: Error: Network Connection Timed Out" was removed from
the forums as it does not follow the guidelines specified in our terms
of use. These areas are intended to address technical issues about
Apple products. Posts that do not conform to the Apple Discussions Use
Agreement are inappropriate.

Reasons that your post was removed may include but are not limited to:
-Off topic or non-technical posts
-Rude or inappropriate behavior/language
-Non-constructive rants or complaints


Please read our Apple Discussions Use Agreement so that you may
discover what constitutes an appropriate post to our service.

You utter, utter, utter bastards. How on Earth can you run a customer service department like that where I have to sign up to your sodding forums just to make a complaint and ask for help, not give me any help, then email me four months later to tell me my post was removed.

I wish, I really wish, I'd got this email before i'd ordered the Nano i bought today to replace the broken iPod Shuffle!

Utter, utter bastards!

It's amazing what is classed as discriminatory or controversial these days. I can understand people kicking up a fuss about a quiz game labelling players as 'super spastics' or the chaos that ensues every time Rockstar releases a game, but this is ridiculous!

For a start, voice recognition in video games can still be considered to be in its infancy. If it was as advanced as people would like, we would no longer be constrained to dialogue trees in Mass Effect. Voice recognition at the moment works on a game waiting for specific commands. You can't say 'fire', 'get him' or 'blow them all to hell' if the game is actually waiting for the word 'attack'. With a system as specific as that, you have to play by the game's rules and not your own. If it wants you to say 'yellow', 'yeller' just doesn't cut it.

That said, I do understand the concern and surely there's a system to remedy this. If there was a calibration sequence at the start of the game, asking you to read key words allowed so it can gauge how you pronounce words, the game could remember it and there wouldn't be a problem. In fact, hasn't a game already done that?

As for Nintendo's defense of 'read the instruction manual' - yes, it's a perfectly valid defense, but when you're making games so accessible that we don't have to, you can understand Northerners leaving the manual in the box as they eagerly delve into your game.

While I'm at work, I spent a lot of time flicking through the various news sites and reading the latest stories and features. Today, CVG's Gamer Types caught my eye, and I had a read. This is what they have to say about me.

The Fumbler

The Fumbler is something of an enigma. They love games, play them frequently and can communicate their passion for the form as good as any. Yet they're generally shit at games; just can't seem to break that skill boundary most of us take for granted. They're like to kid at school who knew EVERYTHING about football but couldn't hit a bran door with a ball. If you've ever wondered what the end credits of a game look like or always get a sinking feeling whenever anyone challenges you to a game of Street Fighter then you're probably a Fumbler. Don't even try to play Guitar Hero because it's just going to annoy the neighbourhood cats. And as for 2D shooters, that's just something other people do.

What's the cure? There is no cure, your reactions are shot and no amount of practice will change that. But you could still become a master of turn-based games like Advance Wars.

This is just depressing. I had suspected that perhaps I wasn't very good at games - certainly since signing up to Xbox Live and it's hive of GamerscWhores - but I had no idea how critical my condition really is. "Generally shit"? "No cure"? Is there no hope for me?

I take solace in the fact that I have seen plenty of end credits, but it still doesn't help. I'm bad at games, despite my passion for them, and must learn to deal with it.

Then again, thanks to my job, I get to be shit at games before anyone else has mastered them!

And about time too!

The online drip-feed that was the Smash Bros Dojo has closed for business. On the day the highly anticipated and (thanks to the past couple of days) utterly spoiled Super Smash Bros Brawl hits Japanese shelves, Sakurai has deemed it necessary to end the daily updates on Dojo.

Or so you would think.

Having scraped the bottom of the barrel for the last few months in terms of daily updates, taking you through the options screen with a ridiculous and borderline patronising degree of detail, there really is nothing left to update. But, in his infinite wisdom and poorly translated text, Sakurai has promised to continue to update the Dojo with information about hidden characters and stages, thus turning the site into a game guide - or more accurately a spoiler hole.

Which strikes me as pointless given that, thanks to Japanese and import gamers, anyone with an internet connection knows about all of the hidden characters months before the U.S. and Europe have recieved the game.

The Dojo was a great idea at the time, and fantastic for compensating for Nintendo's no show at the holy trio of game events, E3/Leipzig/TGS. And, lest we forget, it brought some of the most shocking, fan-pleasing announcements that Nintendo's loyal followers have ever seen. Online multiplayer, including co-op? The chance to beat up Sonic? You can't deny these were dreams come true for anyone who still proudly defends Nintendo's baffling lack of technological advances and persistent coveting of the casual markets.

There are lessons to be learned, however, namely taking into account the fact that your game might slip by upwards of six months. The announcements were clearly timed to coincide with the U.S.' ill-fated December 3 launch date - the fact that they've announced a (partial) end to the daily updates on the Japanese launch date is proof enough of that!

Why not convert the Dojo into a general Nintendo site. The publisher is notorious for giving very little for the press to chew over, let alone its fanbase, but at least with a guaranteed update every day, no matter how meagre it was, they had their fans eating out of their hands. And while Smash Bros was the perfect candidate for such a marketing system, with so much content to reveal, surely turning the site's attention to Nintendo as a whole will make it a little more worthwhile.

After all, we're now waiting for the next Mario Kart, the next Mario, the next Zelda, the next Metroid, the U.S and European launch of Wii Fit, the recently announced Kirby game, the inevitable Star Fox, Disaster Day Of Crisis and all manner of gaming delights currently being guarded by Oompah-Loompahs in Nintendo's factory of fun. Surely those could provide a few daily updates.

Nintendo needs to build on its online community. Xbox owners have Major Nelson and the Gamerscore Blog, while even PS3 owners have a blog dedicated to their console - and what was the Dojo but a glorified blog? Reading the cheesy posts of Sakurai-san made the whole ordeal of waiting for Brawl a little easier to deal with, if only because it gave each bit of news a more personal touch.

For a company boasting that wii all connected to each other 24, they still seem to be clinging to their secretive practices that I have always felt held them back!

I kid you not.

Went round to Delphi and Milhouse's place for a fairly sophisticated evening of eating fajitas and watching Atonement.

That was the plan.

Unfortunately, we started drinking upon arrival, so by the time we started the film, a drinking game was in order. Here are the rules:

- Any time Miss Knightley says "Come Back To Me" = 1 swig
- Any time she lights up = 1 swig
- Any reference to WWII, i.e. Bomber flies over, joke about Hitler = 1 swig
- Any time the typewriter can be heard in the music = 1 swig

and best of all, but only available on a press review copy...

Anytime the words "Property of Universal Pictures International Entertainment" appear on screen, obscuring the action = down your drink or swig heartily

Enjoy! (Please Drink Responsibly)

Not the dance, of course. Whether sober or inebriated, there are only certain routines I can pull off - I'd like to keep them. I'm referring to the time between game releases in different regions.

I'm aware it's a problem that has plagued the industry since its birth, and that delays between launches are, in some cases, much shorter than they used to be. And I'm aware that we Brits get screwed as we've not only got to wait for the NTSC->PAL conversion, but also the translation into French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Berkish, Jewish, Jibberish and Rubbish (in the words of the great Ronnie Barker).

But we've had games in recent years that manage to hit shelves around the world simultaneously, or close enough not to cause a problem. Hell, even the latest generation of consoles (with the obvious exception of the PS3) managed to find their way into people's homes within the same month.

Why, then, can't we eliminate these delays? If the Japanese version is ready first, make them wait. If the British version is letting everyone down, hold off on the other versions. Game delays happen all the time - believe me, I know! A single week can see several slippages which completely alter our mag's content!

What brings on this fruitless outburst? Brawl. As listeners of the WiiDS Podcast will know, I couldn't be more excited about Super Smash Bros Brawl. I have fond memories of both the original and Melee, so i'm eagerly awaiting Brawl to satisfy this hunger.

I knew there would be a delay between the Japanese launch and the day I slip the disc into my Wii, and I'm patient enough to handle that. Unfortunately, the internet exploded today with videos and images from the Japanese version, revealing hidden characters and scenes from the highly anticipated Adventure mode.

Yes. I could have avoided reading them, but when you're eagerly scanning NewsNow all day as part of work, it's hard to resist clicking on headlines such as "New Brawlers Revealed", "Confirmed: Final Brawl Roster". And if your podcasting co-host is bombarding you with image links over MSN, it's only polite to look at them, isn't it?

Perhaps the answer then is to eliminate the Internet. Cut off the smarmy Japanese gamers with their full, finished retail copies, and prevent them from spoiling the surprises that await us. But then, the Internet's something of a big deal now, it's too great an entity to control.

It's one or the other, and since time delays are a tad more pruneable, I think you'll agree which one needs to go!

Try opening your console casing and peering inside!

ELSPA recently raided a man selling illegal PSP games and chipped Xbox/PS2 consoles. When the investigators took off the casing, checking for chips and signs of tampering, they found a staggering £12,000 where the hard drive should have been, or tucked between the wires.

If ever there was a reason to peruse your console's innards, this is it!

- Special Guest: Steviepeas!
- Question Of The Week: Worst Gaming Moments
- News
- Mario & Sonic Boosted By Word Of Mouth
- 5 Million Wiis in Japan
- Smash Bros Roster revealed? Additional Pokemon appear?
- Main Discussion: Game narratives
- An interview with a games writer
- What does games writing involve?
- How to enter the industry?
- How well do Nintendo present their storylines?
- Could Nintendo do more with their storylines?
- This Week In DS: Disney GPS system
- What We've Been Playing
- More!

As we all know, Fox is currently incurring the wrath of gamerdom by accusing Mass Effect of portraying graphic sex. Fine. They can make whatever accusations they like - they're wrong. And, of course, it's unsurprising that games are the scapegoat - after all, they've given up trying to beat the film industry, and as for the porn - well, i imagine quite a few of the network heads have a few explicit tapes in their collections.

However, in the uproar there's one medium being overlooked: books. I, for one, am getting tired of reading graphic sex scenes in books where it's not really necessary to the story - and no one bats an eyelid.

Robin Hobb's Farseer and Liveship Trilogies - various graphically described sex scenes between characters, rarely in wedlock, one of whom's a whore.
Tad Williams' War Of The Flowers - a fairly gripping fantasy saga of political machinations and intrigue, but features a sex scene towards the end of the book in order to build anticipation for the climax.
Mario Puzo's The Godfather - alright, the sex is all focused on one character, but she gets it more than people get killed, and Puzo even added a plot around the size of her...area...
R.A.Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy - granted, I've only read the first one, but it features a ritual sex ceremony with an entire year group of students.
and the worse one is Emily Gee's Thief With No Shadow - a fantasy tale of curses and magic, featuring graphic descriptions of sex with a whore (three counts), homosexual male rape by a water lizard things and a sex with a female fire lizard.

This is not a random selection of books. These are the last five books I have read, making for a consistent dose of literary sex.

Bestiality in a book, and no one raises any concern. And books are by far and away easier for young people to get there hands on. There are no advisory warnings, no age limits, no form of censorship whatsoever. Thief With No Shadow is a nice short 400-ish pages, something an advanced young adult could easily read. The Dark Elf books are based on Forgotten Realms, which some young readers will know from games such as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Is Fox reporting on them too?

I can only hope that Sony Pictures know how to joke about their work, because the title of the new Bond film was revealed today.

Quantum Of Solace.


....yeah.

Now, I appreciate that they ran out of books to steal names from - although I hear this one is based on an unpublished short story, the name of which escapes me but was a hell of a lot more flemingish than Quantum Of Solace. I also realise Fleming isn't exactly around to offer suggestions, but is that the best they could come up with?

It sounds like the lovechild of a philosophical sci-fi thriller and a Japanese RPG. Authors with the Bond license have been able to come up with suitable titles for years, as have the video game developers and the filmmakers themselves. Who on Earth came up with this one?

I feel sorry for David Arnold. While Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough are both in keeping with the title songs of previous Bond outings, he's going to be hard pushed to come up with anything that rhymes with Solace.

"I've got a Quantum Of Solace
and I took it from a guy named Wallace"....?

What does it even mean? Granted phrases like like A View To A Kill don't exactly come up in conversations regularly but at least they make sense!

A few years back, I was just as outraged over the appointment of Daniel Craig as Bond and I was well and truly wrong about that. I only hope the same applies for Quantum Of Solace...

I think I need to work on improving my professionalism and downplaying my enthusiasm. A bit.

Last night after work, I attended an art exhibition based on video games at the headquarters of BAFTA. There I stand, next to my editor, glass of champagne in hand, smiling, nodding and politely contributing to the conversation whenever I could, surrounded by big industry players that I've never met before in my life.

All was going well, even the ever-so-slightly casual conversation about MMOs with GamesIndustry's Phil Elliot when more people join the crowd. Ali introduces them, revealing that one of them works at Team 17.

"Oh, Wow, Worms!" I responded, in a tone that smacked of 'ZOMG FTW'. The developer smiles briefly. "We have worked on other things, you know."

A tad embarrassing then, and something I need to get out of the habit of doing as I progress, but for now, in the early stages of my career, I'm sure I can get away with the odd fanboy yelp.

On a side-note, I've seen that a lot of sites are reporting on the Lost presentation I went to on Friday, so I assume the embargo has expired. With that in mind, I'll be working on my hands-on preview and publishing it here by the weekend, so eyes peeled folks.

I've discovered a major flaw with Xbox Live and the joys of auto-sign in: It means all of my friends can see when I'm online.

This may seem obvious, and I knew this was how Xbox Live worked, but when you come home from a night at the pub - having politely turned down your friends' offer of a Halo night by insisting you need to go to bed because you have work in the morning - it's a little embarrassing to then be caught playing Puzzle Quest (what else?) until 1am.

I'll have to fiddle with the settings a little more - presumably there's an MSN-style 'Appear Offline' button, so you can still be online, still get achievements but not be caught.

Last night, I just went with the simplest solution: yanking out the wireless adaptor!

DOWNLOAD

- With an opening keynote speech from Reggie
- Question Of The Week: Guilty Pleasures
- News
- Assassin's Creed DS
- Smash Bros Delayed. Again.
- Factor 5 Wiiturns
- Bioware Sonic RPG details
- Main Discussion: Controller Lawsuits
- Is Nintendo's technology stolen?
- Why do people file such lawsuits?
- What if Nintendo hadn't invented the DS/Wii first?
- Why is control so important to gaming?
- Our Man In Japan: PWiidictions
- What We've Been Playing
- Virtual Console releases
- Competition deadline

.....shouldn't be this addicted.

My current game/drug is Puzzle Quest. Downloaded from the XBLA out of simple curiosity, this is a game that - like Portal - I've heard everyone raving about. The difference is, I absolutely love this game.

I really shouldn't. Puzzle games bore me usually. Tetris is alright for a while, and I have fond memories of Dr Mario, but I wouldn't rush out to get the latest copy of Bust-A-Move. And yet I can't put Puzzle Quest down. It's not because it's such a fiendishly unique concept in terms of the actual puzzling. It's simply because it's dressed up in fantasy artwork and riddled with terminology like spells, mana, and quest.

As I said when discussing Portal, I prefer to have some sort of purpose or objective in my gaming experiences, and that's exactly what Puzzle Quest gives to its genre. And that's such a simple idea, it's inconcievable how no one has come up with it before.

It makes you wonder what other genres could appeal to gamers like me. Could card games become more interesting with a Casino Royale-style storyline, with murder and intrigue in between each hand? Could football, golf or any sports game be improved if they revolved around futuristic tournaments in which losers are enslaved or killed?

I'm currently trying to track down a copy of the DS Puzzle Quest, since sitting upstairs on my Xbox isn't exactly very sociable when I could be chilling out in an armchair in the lounge.

What games have you been addicted to that you wouldn't normally enjoy?

Every. Fecking. Time.

Every time I'm invited to or sent to a press event, something always goes wrong. Whether it's brand-new batteries conspiring to give up on me when I come to the interview, or the DLR sending me to the arse end of nowhere, something always goes wrong.

This afternoon, I'm heading to an unveiling that I'm really looking forward to. Last night, I checked I had everything - directions, dictaphone, fresh batteries, back-up batteries, business cards, copies of In Stock, everything. I wake up this morning, to find my Oyster Card, Railcard and Ticket have disappeared.

Dis-a-smegging-ppeared. There is nowhere it can be other than my pocket, or my bedside table, but i've turned the house upside down (and missed my first train in the process) and I still can't find it.

Just for once could I please have a day at a press event where everything goes smoothly and I don't actually look like an incompetent moron. I'm trying to make a career here!

As you may have noticed from the bottom of my recent posts, I've been playing The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on my 360 for the best part of a week now. It is brilliant. Morrowind was, is, one of my favourite games of all time, simply for the scope, the immersion and the freedom the developers give you, and to do that in a lush, fully-realised world like Cyrodil just makes my mouth water. I can just lost hours to the game, and of all the RPGs I've played, it's the one where I feel most connected to my character.

Gushy fanboyisms aside, a recent session on Oblivion made me realise a key concept that games seem to be overlooking: rewarding players for their own experimentation.

As I sought out the Thieves Guild and found the Waterfront District, I boarded the Bloated Float, an inn built into a moored ship. After a quick chat with the owner, I paid for a room on the lower deck, made my way down and rested for a few hours. Upon waking and leaving the room, I was confronted by a Blackwater Brigand, a member of a band of thugs and thieves. The Brigands had taken over the ship while I was asleep and set out to sea, and only I could stop them.

Now my point is that this quest, An Unexpected Journey, was exactly as the title suggests - unexpected. There was no menu for me to select a mission from, along the lines of 'Go and save the Bloated Float from being hijacked'. There was no one telling me that I need to go to the Bloated Float for my next quest. It literally came out of the blue, and that can feel far more immersive than being told what to do.

Games developers need to stop leading players by the hand, telling them or not-so-subtly hinting at what's next. There should be more freedom, more surprises, more reasons for you to try everything you can think of. Some developers and publishers seem to understand the concept, but not the potential.

Look at Nintendo's Zelda titles - attacking chickens triggers an attack by the whole coop, but that wouldn't have even been programmed if some developer hadn't guessed that gamers would have the determination to chase and slash at chickens. The distant hovercars in Perfect Dark wouldn't blow up if Rare hadn't guessed players would try to shoot them.

Meryl wouldn't blush and giggle if some Konami programmer hadn't guessed players would perv over her. The most amusing moments and responses from LucasArts' Monkey Island games was experimenting with the most ridiculous combinations of items and set-pieces. The list goes on.

Rather than guessing what developers want us to do, developers should be guessing what we would do in a given situation. That is the way to create the best, most immersive and most satisfying gaming experiences.