Headflid

Written by oddbob   Comment


Gah, I’m all over the shop with stuff.

It’s more than a little frustrating as at the moment, thanks to C4 starting school I’m actually starting to get some time back - which has been curiously absent in the 6-8 months prior. He’s off out most of the day and in bed at 7:30 at the outside these days, so in theory I’ve got all that time to do stuff. And in many ways I am doing stuff, it’s just my concentration for single projects right now isn’t really lasting out.

Normally, I have 2 projects on the go. One to fiddle with and one to plug away at in a relatively serious manner but the past month I’ve started and stopped more stuff than I have in about 5 years.  It’s not even a flailing around trying to find something that interests me sort of thing, it’s just a very odd funk whereby I’ve got the urge to do something and write something but haven’t got the attention span to see it out.

I’ve got 4 games a gnats breath away from being completed, but it’s just not happening right now. I knew something was especially odd when I was doing some under the hood stuff on RR last week and I’d found I’d pixelled half a sprite set for one level and a title screen for a game I’ve been meaning to do for years, saved it and found it again yesterday tucked in a folder labelled something absolutely nothing to do with the game. Much to my own befuddlement.

I guess it’s that autumnal shift I tend to get where everything goes a little bit wonky. Traditionally whenever things have gone majorly tits up in life it’s always been around this time. I’ve had now the best part of 8 years of comfort with no major crises (last years house rubbish really doesn’t count) that I’m becoming increasingly convinced that my brain goes onto some sort of strike come the autumn and doesn’t really come out of hibernation until we’re into winter proper just in case.

Naturally, there’s only one cure for such a funk. Fuck it all off and play some games.

Gravitron 2 has just landed on Steam at a bargain bucket price, so I bought that again (and got a verbal from X-Out for buying it twice) and ploughed through 6/10 of the achievements. I’ve been running around in Burnout Paradise for a week and a half and quite enjoying that, well, until I realised how much of the game wasn’t so much about having and making your own fun but pandering to bizarre OCD habits. I tried Pure after someone described it as “the next best thing to Excite Truck” only to find out they fucking lied big time and it’s not really even in the same league, never mind ballpark and umm, yeah. That’s about it.

With Gary being too busy to try and lay waste to my Galaga Legions score, I’ve not gone back to that in a few weeks despite loving it to bits and I’ve finally come to the realisation that I’m not enjoying Geometry Wars 2 half as much as I should as some of it is just too fucking random and I get a bit pissy with things spawning too close for me to avoid. So I can’t really play it of an evening when C4 is around as he’s picking up words a plenty at the moment and I don’t really want him going into school shouting “fucking shitbollock cunting blackhole twat blue thing arse fuck”. It was bad enough earlier when I was doing a Frank Finlay Witchsmeller Pursuiveant impression and he proceeded to spend the next ten minutes shouting “MILK! BLOODY MILK!” at the cat.

On a lighter note, Ian Blair is out of the job and someone is making Sigue Sigue Sputnik: The Game for the RR competition. Both of these things make me very happy indeed.

Oh yeah, I also transcribed the lyrics to The Imperfect List and dumped them up here for some ill apparant reason.

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Horrific

Written by oddbob   1 Comment


I sometimes like to believe that I’m quite immune to hype. Obviously, I’m not. I’m human (contrary to what some people believe) and just as much a sucker as the next person.

If I truly were immune to hype then there’s no way on Earth I’d have suddenly got the desire to own a PS3 (I’m not daft enough to actually go out and buy one yet though) having looked at some of the photo mode stuff from Wipeout HD earlier this fine evening. Studio Liverpool appear to have done an absolute phenomenal job on the look of the game and well, what can I say, I’m an absolute sucker for the pretties.

That’s absolutely nothing compared to how one small announcement can make me go from curious passive observer of a game to need, now in the space of a few short paragraphs. I’ve just been browsing my usual array of RSS feeds and the obligatory megadump from Game|Life came through. I’ll happily confess I was already ears perked up over Dead Space thanks to a number of fine postings from the good chaps at RPS (note to self: remember to put the links back up again this weekend) and some intriguing video’s but hey, no-one prepared me for this.

Yeah, that’s how easy I am. Put Dario Argento in a game and I’m sold. Even if La Terza Madre wasn’t quite the film I’d hoped (it was alright, started off well then went downhill towards the end), now Nigel Kneale isn’t about and Carpenter insists on making the same film repeatedly there’s only Argento and Romero left doing stuff I get genuinely excited about. Yes, I was the one person who really enjoyed Land Of The Dead - I’m pretending Diary doesn’t exist, ok?

Logically, I know it’s just a voice over. More that it’s also just a voice over in a version of the game I couldn’t hope to understand a word of with it being in Italian. It’s still Argento and that’s enough to get me a little moist in the nethers. And developers? I’d really like a game in an Argento style but I guess it’s not going to happen whilst games are still subjects of witch hunting even if our very own Matthew Hopkins is now out for the count-ish. A guy can dream…

Christ, I am easy aren’t I?

Also, this article needs more links embedded… :s

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Illustrated Tips For The Hard Of Developing #1

Written by oddbob   2 Comments


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