Unflawed heroes need not apply

Around a year ago, I picked up a cheap as chips PS3 but I’ve struggled ever since to find exclusive games that interested me. The PS3 has actually had far more use as a media centre as opposed to a console, the exact opposite of the Xbox 360 which has so many fantastic exclusives, but limited appeal as a media centre.

Cue surprise hit, Uncharted. This was and still is a must-have title for any PS3 owner, showcasing some of the finest production values for a game. It’s received near perfect reviews and praise and when Naughty Dog dropped the bombshell of a sequel, I know I certainly jumped for joy.

The game had some big shoes to fill, laid out by its big brother, and its surpassed the first game in every conceivable way. Naughty Dog have listened to the criticisms and have taken them on board, without diluting the features that makes Uncharted what it is. They’ve removed all the stupid Six-Axis pad stuff and have made grenades far easier to throw in the middle of a firefight. They’ve mixed up the puzzles and gunfights, making both balanced and a refreshing change from each other when they occur. The multiplayer is a nice addition, and does not dilute the single player experience at all. In fact, to get the most out of the multiplayer game, one has to first complete the single player game to unlock various abilities to avoid being crippled immediately online. And the graphics, wow, the graphics! Easily best looking game of this generation by a country mile. The vistas are stunning and simply go on forever (do a slow 360 when you’re on top of the hotel).

The voice acting, dialogue, and animation are as tight as ever. All the characters are very believable, especially Nathan as the flawed hero that does make mistakes and doesn’t always do the right thing. The love triangle between him, Elena, and Chloe is also a joy to watch, with all three clearly trying to hide their affection.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to forcibly remove myself from the console because a game was eating up too much time, but each chapter of Uncharted 2 is perfectly crafted, seducing you to play just a little more. Uncharted 2 is game of the year material, through and through, and makes me proud to own a PS3. If you’re considering a PS3 purchase (Mike…), then this and the first Uncharted definitely deliver the goods.

Up, up and away!

We here in poor Blighty have had to wait nearly five months for Pixar’s latest movie to get a national release. I thought staggered releases across the world were a thing of the past, but it seems a few bean counters don’t quite agree with the one world policy.

I went to see Up with Lis and Em in 3D. Having spoken to Iain and Elsa who had recently seen it in 3D, I decided to give it a whirl to see how it would fare. The glasses you wear are just like the ones you get at themeparks, with the lenses designed to block out certain parts of the picture and not for others. The movie was preceded by an interactive 3D game, heavily sponsored by O2, though this was at the expense of the Pixar short that is usually shown before the main feature.

Up is an immensely likable movie. I’d like to believe there are some elements borrowed from Studio Ghibli’s Laputa, as well as Disney movies of yore (watch out for Dug’s tracking move). The animation is top notch, with the flesh transparency effect first introduced in Wall-e being perfected in this outing. The 3D effects are subtle, but offer incredible depth of field, especially in the South American scenes. There aren’t any dodgy things flying out of the screen at you like at themeparks, and you get used to novelty of wearing 3D glasses very quickly.

Overall, expect something as good as Monsters Inc, but not quite Toy Story levels of awesomeness.

Caaalm down, caaalm down!

Went to Liverpool with Andy C and Sam yesterday. Nice city from what we saw and has obviously had a lot of money lavished on it. The World Museum near Lime Street train station is a must-see for visitors and is entirely free, though we did make a donation because we enjoyed it so much.

Photos of the day can be found here.

25 – 26: the review

Thank you to everyone that passed on a birthday message, they all brought a smile to my face and was incredibly impressed at the people who fired them off at midnight on the dot!

So, I’m another year older but am I now wiser? The last twelve months have to be the most complicated of my life so far, with no particularly clear direction for many things.

Many of my relationships with people seemingly broke down this year. I’ve let a lot of people down and there’s little I can do to correct the situation. Some gave up on me and I’m guilty of giving up on others myself. Flipping relationships on their head, I’ve also met a large number of people and my head’s still spinning from the encounters.

Losing a much loved job was a significant low-point during the year. Being made redundant so early on into a flourishing career is something I would never wish upon others. It’s soul destroying and leaves you in a state of denial and panic, only to be followed by acceptance. However, being the optimistic and glass is half-full kind of guy I am, there’s a positive side to everything. There’s more to life than just being a suit, and many of the new faces and people I have gotten to know better would not have happened had I have not been laid-off.

I apologise if this entry does not make much sense at all, but it’s merely me verbalising what’s been going through my mind for the last few days. Tis also what happens when you’ve been drinking every day for ten days straight!…

Move over, Master Chief

Few gaming franchises have the testicular fortitude to release a spin-off which does not include its posterboy. Bungie and Microsoft have just today launched Halo 3: ODST, which is essentially Halo 2.5, a side story detailing the events prior to Halo 3.

You play a rookie with the ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers), sent into New Mombasa to clear it of Covenant hordes. The way the game plays is much more Halo 1 rather than 2 or 3; there’s no dual wielding, or use of equipment. There’s no Cortana-like AI guiding you along the way either, so it’s a very lonely and bleak game. Playing as a regular human soldier, you also feel much more vulnerable during the near pitch-black city sections.

One of the big complaints of the Halo series, and many other story based FPS games is how linear the gameplay is, i.e. you need to go through A, B, and C, before going to D, E, and F. ODST creates the illusion of being able to free roam using a hub world, where you then go off and unlock missions to further the story. This is all well and good, but you still need to do missions A, B, and C, before going on to D, E, and F. Oh well, at least with linearity, you never miss anything crucial.

The music is clearly Halo, but lacks any of the tunes heard in any of the other games, sounding almost like Halo meets Resident Evil; it’s haunting and fits the dark and brooding atmosphere presented to the player.

There is a new multiplayer mode, called Firefight. It is essentially a clone of Gears of War 2’s Horde mode, where you face wave after wave of increasingly tough enemies. I’ve not had a chance to play this mode yet, due to wanting to get the campaign finished though I will post my findings later.

All in all, a welcome addition to the Halo universe (much more so than Halo Wars). If I have to make one complaint, it’s that Bungie really need to work on their models for women because they look FUGLY. The female lead of the game is made out to be eye-candy amongst the ODST team, but Christ, lady looks like a dude!

Oh, also netted myself a freebie last night from Gamestation’s midnight launch. Only twenty or so of us turned up, and the store manager decided to reward our loyalty with a fetching ODST t-shirt. It’s superbly made and better than some t-shirts I’ve spent hard earned money on!

The job centre is a depressing place

Finally signed on for job seeker’s allowance, especially with everybody saying that I should considering I’d paid taxes previously for such an occasion.

The guy in front of me looked like he was on death’s doorstep, clearly quite drunk and it was only 2pm. All the staff were really nice, probably happy to see the place so busy thus keeping them in employment!

Mr Yu goes to London town

Because WordPress was flaking out on me last night, you poor folks will only get the lite version of this blog entry (it was a fully-fledged proper entry, with photos and formatting!).

Photos of my London trip can be found here.

District 9

After a hard day’s running for Elsa, and a hard day’s photography/providing moral support from Iain and I, we indulged in our favourite past-time of visiting the cinema. We were all keen to check out District 9, me especially because I thought it was an Independence Day clone based on the movie poster, only to be corrected and told what it was actually about.

I loved the story, finding it very refreshing. I also loved how it was set in South Africa as opposed to somewhere in the US, giving it an instant arthouse feel. I can’t really say anymore without spoiling things, so will only share that you should check it out if you have a spare evening and fancy catching a flick at the cinema.

Tech talk

Thought I’d take a moment out of my busy (catching up on sleep and meetings) schedule to talk about some things in the tech world that have recently caught my attention.

For the keen eyed out there, you’ll notice from the photo above that I have acquired a new telephoto lens, bolstering my repertoire to four: 17-85mm, 50mm, 70-300, and a shitty kit lens where I slapped a macro filter on it restoring some of its dignity. The 70-300 was had for less than eBay retail prices, thanks to some hefty negotiation (read: bullying) in the Aber branch of Jessops. I popped into the store on the bank holiday Monday just gone, and enquired about their stock levels. Discovering they had four in stock, I quizzed them about how many they were likely to sell in the next three months, to which they answered “zero”. Having stock lying around, unsold, is a huge burden on companies, so I proposed the idea that if they were to give me an additional 10% discount on top of their bank holiday sale, I’d take one off their hands right there and then. The store manager reluctantly agreed and whilst I was being cheeky, I also blagged a free UV filter for the lens too.

It’s a great lens to have, and is actually lighter than my 17-85 due to the simpler glass structures inside. It produces a similar result to my 50mm prime lens, though is far more useful and is actually pretty decent at macro photography too (been taking loads of photos of my watch as test shots). In low light, the autofocus mechnism hunts around a lot but that’s to be expected. There’s two levels of stabilisation; level 1 for general purpose in all directions and level 2 which allows for panning vertically and horizontally.

Also picked up a cheap official lens hood for my 17-85mm lens and man, do I regret not buying one from the get-go! It’s helped with colour richness immediately, giving sunlight a lovely golden glow that was missing before.

The second of my tech talks, we’re gonna focus on Apple’s latest iteration of OS X: Snow Leopard. I managed to bag a copy from Amazon for less than retail (do we detect a theme here?) and after all my teaching assignments had been printed and backed up, I did an upgrade install on my Mac. It only took around 20 minutes versus the normal 40 minutes, and actually does a wipe and install and then restores personal files from Time Machine. Upon first inspection, everything feels faster, though there are varying degrees of speed here. Things like Dashboard, Mail, and Quicktime Player X open lickety split. Things like Photoshop CS3 and Office 2008 take about the same time to open up. And whilst we’re talking about Photoshop and Office, Snow Leopard also causes these two programs to crash regularly. All I would have to do is open a photo for inclusion in PowerPoint, or a photo for editing in Photoshop and poof, they’ll both randomly quit on me. My printer also stopped working and because it wasn’t officially supported in Leopard, there’s no chance in hell that it’ll be sorted to work in Snow Leopard. A couple of the refinements are quite nice, such as a more mature Exposé and Finder, but they’re no bloody good if it doesn’t work properly as an operating system to begin with! I’ll wait until 10.6.2 or 10.6.3 before I indulge again, hoping that they’ve sorted out some of these issues by then.

Inglourious Basterds

For my homecoming, I went to see Tarantino’s latest flick, “Inglourious Basterds”, with Daniel last night. Had wanted to see this for ages but due to the TESOL course and nowhere in Aber getting it in until later this month, it was back to Brum to catch it.

I won’t spoil it for anybody who hasn’t seen it yet, so just a few brief thoughts. I enjoyed the movie and it was clearly Tarantino, through and through. The ecclectic dialogue to the random shots of feet, it has his signature all over it. But at the same time, it doesn’t quite feel right either. The dialogue whilst intriguing, feels somewhat laboured, and the two parallel storylines don’t feel quite as clever as those seen in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. I don’t think it’ll be a classic of its time, unlike the rest of Tarantino’s back catalogue, though definitely enjoyable nonetheless as a cinema visit.