Happy Feet

Over the Christmas period, I watched the animated film Happy Feet. First of all before I go on, I must say that I really don’t like animated films cause they are just all the same but I had nothing better to do! It’s mainly because there’s always some sort of problem that occurs where they have to get themselves out of it and they always do in the end! I just wish for once that it wouldn’t happen, but no because it all fantasy everything always works out in the end, I mean the last Harry Potter film isn’t even out yet and I mean you know what’s going to happen, the good guys always come through and win and live happily ever after! So there’s not much point, the previews for these types of films are enough to see really. But anyway the story is about a bunch of penguins and in their world they all have the ability to sing, it’s more like a musical then it is a film, it may as well have been called the ice caps are alive with the sound of penguins, SERIOUSLY!

They try to rip off real songs throughout the film, I mean it’s good but it gets a bit tedious and they are practically singing about everything, it’s rare to hear them talk normally. Anyway it’s about a penguin named Mumble but before he was born his egg was dropped and now he is believed to be dumb because he can’t sing, but he does have one ability to move (or tap dance) very fast thus allowing him to create sound as sort of an alternative to not being able to sing. This in turn creates the problem that he won’t be able to find a mate because in this made up world the female penguins choose a male penguin if his song completes the females song and she of course likes him. The colony of penguins believe that its Mumble’s dancing that is causing a lack of food and is told to leave the colony because they all believe it’s his fault, in the end Mumble discovers that it’s the humans that are causing the famine and tries to warn there others, he first tried to convince them that’s it aliens and that there’s something else out there beyond the boundaries of the Antarctic. In the end the humans realise what they are doing and that they see how the penguins have been trying to communicate that to them and of course the penguins win and everything turns out fine!

You know for ONCE I would fucking love to see a main character die! I mean it would be so awesome, why it couldn’t have been that they all end up killing Mumble or better yet they wipe out the penguins all together and the bad guys (the humans in this case) win!

Besides the odd story line, one thing about these animated films is that I notice how the graphics are always slightly better than the ones in gaming. I mean don’t get me wrong but some games such as Super Mario Galaxy have all these big bright bold colours etc like they do in film but why is it because you’re playing a game the graphics don’t look as good as how they are appear in a running film? Like for example in cut scenes in games they always look better then what they look like in the actual game play? I never got that. Rant over. 

Task 6 - Writing About Games, Previews, Reviews, Commentary & Lies.

After looking at Kieron Gillan’s blog, I must say I didn’t even have a clue what he was talking about half the time with them big and fancy words he kept using, but tried to make best since out of it. First of all I think game reviewers in general face the issue of getting across more than “Is a game good or not?” for example In one part of his blog I think he tries to say how anyone could go out there and be a journalist and say yes this is good and this is bad etc which it what journalism used to be like? Instead of it being as simple as that there needs to be more to it, so now-a-days we have sort of break open a game, split it into millions of tiny pieces and analyse it bit by bit individually. I think he was getting across was that anyone could come straight out of college and just start saying what in their opinion is good and crap about a game forgetting everything they have learned through education. This could lead to controversy by giving false reviews. Not everyone is going to like a certain type of game but at the end of the day those that do like it and want to buy the next big release do matter and it all about getting the honest truth across for those that want to buy the next big game. In example the people paying the wages of the journalists for example newspapers or magazines companies etc are basically paying them to analyse a game in full depth and sell that to the reader. Another problem they face with this is that they can write whatever they want and they could be the best journalist in the world but as soon as the reader finally buys the game presses start on the controller, the talk of what they have heard shuts up and the real experience begins of what they think about it. Personally for myself I’ve seen people saying what utter crap a certain game is but personally playing the game can be a different matter and some games I’ve played in the past I’ve quite liked despite what others think.

Another problem what they face is how they personally feel about a game, for example if a journalist is asked to review a specific type of game they aren’t too keen on then the review isn’t going to be worth reading. I don’t personally know how the journalism industry works but if they do split it up into types of genres they work on then would get a lot more accurate response, but even so maybe a problem is they sometimes need more opinions on aspects a game holds.

One final thing is that he internet is now providing a lot better and easier way of getting game reviews, those that write out what they think about something and publish it in a paper  won’t be seen by the entire world, that’s why I think more journalists are working for online sites on the internet because it’s just faster. I mean with the internet you can read up and get an overall rating quickly of a game, including more access to images and even videos, where as a magazine is just something to read on the go or for those without internet. A magazine you would have to keep paying out for each month or week when if you have internet its right there and free and most gamers are more likely to have internet cause games are mostly played at home anyway.  It’s kind of getting off topic but I personally think that the internet is now taking over the world, no magazine will ever beat the internet from now on, no matter how good the reviews are written. I remember buying a game last year and the guy behind the till asked me if I wanted the official guide for it. I said “No I’ve got the internet.” He then replied with “Well the problem is you’re not going to have it there right in front of you while playing.” In which I thought “What exactly is stopping playing the game and having my laptop right next to me? That’s what I usually do.!” With the internet you’ve got the source of all human knowledge at your fingertips! No guide is going to be better than that!

Reviews give honest people’s opinions and are ranked of how good they are, I mean there’s no denying that now-a-days video game companies are all competing against each other to make ‘the best’. It’s just adding competition out of everything, when really if they all worked to together and put their ideas together they’d always be making the best. I guess it’s just how the business world works and in this case the journalists are sort of saying “yes this is good and this is not” and giving each game a ranking of what they feel is appropriate. They way they rank a game (in my mind) is how something in the real world is compared to the game itself. It’s basically a comparison in today’s world of how realistic they match up, for example a real world sports game would be rank of the level of how realistic, where as a fantasy such as Mario would be ranked on how unrealistic it is? But above all I don’t think the reviews are worth anything, to me it’s all about putting the controller in your hand and experiencing the game play. Like Keiron said when that happens you forget all the reviews you read, images and videos you’ve seen and finally see what it’s like first hand, only then you can truly know if it lives up to your expectations or not, which is true, I’m sure everyone has played a bad game in the past and got rid of it or played a good game and kept it or vice versa. In all they can write about anything and give it a 10/10 but when you play it yourself you might value it as a 0/10.

I never heard of New Game Journalism until now, but after reading what it is, I’ve seen how it’s a clever idea. I think now-a-days games are becoming more and more realistic and by relating everything to the real world is probably the way forward. Before games had all these new fancy graphics etc is was more or less the case of writing what a game does and what it doesn’t do to depict what makes it a great game. Now it’s a little more complicated than that now, we’re living in an age where the computing power is getting better and better with each passing month making it possible to create bigger and better things and from videos and theory’s I’ve seen and read about, we’re getting to point where technology is starting to take over and everything is done by machine. I think it’s good how we are now relating things to real life experiences compared to the computer game world. It sort of allows us to keep track of how we are actually getting better, is everything ‘perfect’ to how it is in reality within the gaming world? I think one good quality of NGJ is how we can be more critical and accurate about things, constantly comparing things to one another eventually solving problems and questions in the gaming world. All the questions haven’t been answered in the gaming world which makes it interesting to study, where as all the questions in film or music etc have more or less all been answered to the point where it’s boring (If I say so myself). It can be scary to think about what we may achieve in the future but NGJ puts everything under the microscope and can try to unlock the answers. I still think reviews are pointless but maybe they are a way of having a better understanding and contributing towards things in the future. What I’m trying to say is that gaming is primarily based on technology and that we’re going further and further down the route of making them as real as possible so maybe constantly analysing the technology against the real world is the best thing to do to unlock all these answers we haven’t found yet? More qualities that it has, is that it focuses on the gamers themselves instead of just the games by being more personal about it which makes it somewhat more entertaining.

One thing in gaming everyone mostly does is that they look at a game as whole rather than breaking apart everything bit by bit. There’s games journalism and reviews and apart from that I could only find the story line scripts for games which depending on the type of game people may not take that into account that much, they’ll just want to shoot the heads off aliens and get to the last level as quick as possible as best they can by looking at the bigger picture. When I think of something I never sort put it together as the big picture because in that sense there’s not that much you can say about a game and then people will disagree with you and controversy is caused when you say something is just good or not good. I like to look at things more subjectively like many of the reviewers do now-a-days, they take all the parts of the game and then analyse each one and sort of try to say what parts abut it you may find good and what may not be so good. It’s hard to describe aspects of different games because we all like different things. By breaking a game a part I could say what I personally like about it but that will vary from one person to the next, to keep on top of this I like to say everything from both points of views then there’s no argument and I’m not being one sided. It might be being too technical about things but at the same time always think that the whole mind map about a game is a better way of putting it together by adding every idea you can think of into it rather than always going for the bigger  but more simpler picture where there isn’t as much. I think most people prefer the bigger picture because they just want to sit back and play a game because they think it’s awesome, when behind the scenes there’s a lot more to it that should be put into consideration cause it’s the smaller parts that all fit together to make a game. You can look at a game and not think much of it until you actually play it from there on you can start asking questions of it, were as I like to seek the more complicated questions that haven’t been thought of and answer them myself, this way I can know just about everything rather than the basics and it feels like I’ve accomplished a lot more but you’ve got to have the time to do it, it’s almost as if being a gamer is like being a reviewer in some ways, you try to split everything apart and answer all the questions you can find instead of just looking at something and saying “yes that’s good and that’s not” cause anyone could do that getting both points of view opens more to talk about and that way you gain more knowledge and further more a better opinion or why something could or could not be good for you! The New Games Journalism basically tells you why something is or isn’t good for you as a fan of various games titles or people interested in different types of genres in which it does by relating it to experience therefore giving it a more accurate approach. You can see how NGJ is a better and cleverer way of reviewing games but I still think that playing first hand is overall better than reading.

Game reviewers sort of put pressure on the gaming market for different companies to sell their games, but I think the press maybe actually helping the companies make their games better by criticising them so they can improve next time around, it’s a cycle of previewing then trying and then reviewing each time, kind of like trial and error almost for the industries, the people writing about it have to know just as much, if not MORE than the people actually working to complete the final finished game to come out and say what they think of it and to rank it on sort of table they’ve devised themselves. I think it’s crazy but it just shows how they are now thinking beyond just the limits of the game itself but the player playing the game is taken into account along with the feelings you get when you experience the game play compared to something in reality by bringing it to life a bit more which is more entertaining. It’s funny because as companies battle to sell their games, the media is battling to sell their best reviews.

I don’t know if what I’ve said makes any sense but that’s just the way I see the link between Games companies and the media.

Lockwood Publishing & Outso Lecture 08/12/10

The guest lecture from Lockwood publishing and Outso was more or less the same information as what the previous guys have come in and told us about. They basically came in and talk about what they have achieved from studying and graduating on the same course as us. They went on for a while about how they went and did some work in their 2^nd and 3^rd years of the course working for two companies that honestly I’ve never heard of before and I not sure many others may have heard of before. It was intriguing to know how popular one of the companies has only been around for 4 years but in that time has built up a good reputation and just two years ago was when it started to produce games and gain that better reputation. Reminds me of the Game Art course itself and how it hasn’t been around that long and yet it comes as far as the House of Commons wanting to the work from the course (or something like that as Chris put it).  But it’s amazing in such a short amount of time something can become so popular, the way it’s going this course will be up there as the best in the world, which I think it is already to be honest. It shows how much dedication has gone into it and like how the company the guest was talking about has gotten far and she went onto explain (like we’ve been told before) how much every member of staff that work there in Europe are so committed to their work and are always look for better ways to produce work.

Of course we all know that it’s no walk in the park to become a success in the industry, we was all shown this week actually how much more effort we all have to put in to get far in this course. It no joke to those who take their work seriously and they are always going to be rewarded the most since we’re all simply giving it ‘adequate’ and inadequate performances at the moment in the first year. One them talked about how she’s an Art manager for one for the companies and how she gets to help with coming up with all the idea for the games they make, in particular she gets to come up with mini game ideas. They showed some videos for the games they made which looked cool, one of them was a golf game set in a jungle and they all helped design the settings for the game and some of the concepts. These games are sold on the PlayStation Network for Sony, which is the equalivant of Xbox Live and how you can spend points on there to download mini games. Another game had a Halloween type of theme to it and the game was meant for release by that particular event, so it also sort of shows how they work to deadlines, I mean every game works to deadlines but however they must be a lot of planning far before that to make sure the game however how small it is, that there is enough time to produce such game for when it should be released, and the whole mind map of everything to think about within the production itself.

One other thing Sophia talked about was how presentation is important, just lately we’ve been given a lot of information about presenting work in class, which is a whole big part of Art and game production, it basically has to look good and at an interview you have to present it well and sell as much as you can really to the interviewer, she even said how she gets tons of emails which are just a waste of her time because they haven’t presented it well, the links to their web sites or she simply cannot find a person’s portfolio which is all down to the person trying to get in contact. It’s important and it’s sort of taught a bit about presenting in time for our presentations that take place next month, as much as we’re all dreading showing our work to all three years, it’s kind of important even if it is for about 5 minutes. I remember my interview for the course early this year, it was nerve wrecking but at the same time I just drifted into it and sold as much as I could even though my portfolio was a bit all over the place, I explained as much as possible it was over quite quickly, but most importantly it was successful which I’m grateful of, and with an idea of how hard the course actually is now, I’m going to have to step it up even more. A lot of hard work is ahead but like I’ve heard and seen in the lectures and with the guests working on projects with companies that are globally famous, doing more will make it, or at least should make it all pay off in the end.

Black Hawk Down

I liked the film Black Hawk Down, it was a little hard to understand what they were attempting to do in the film but from what I understand is that the U.S soldiers were trying to catch two people in Somalia. The mission in which should have taken just 30 minutes went into an ongoing war for over 18 hours. Basically all that is shown throughout the course of the movie is guns blazing, violence, blood flying everywhere, and the sounds of helicopters etc. One thing I liked about the movie was how the director Ridley Scott drew out every single scene of the film and how accurate each one looked when viewed while watching the actual film. He basically only used a magic markers and highlighting pens to make the purposed scenes.

It’s really surprising that it is based on a true story; the mission starts with the trying to track down and get into the building to capture the two men. This starts at around mid-day to evening and goes on right through the night to early morning the next day. Some of the scenes were very gory and can really strike a lot of fear into anyone planning on going into the army, or just even tells you about what soldiers in the past have faced and the horror of how some of them have been severely injured and even died. One thing that was good about the scenery was the landscapes, buildings and objects around them. It was very dark all the way through the film, and at night it was very green as if we were watching the Matrix or something. I guess the green sort of gives the impression of night vision through the eyes of a soldier fighting at night. Some of the perspective views were really nice to watch when they in a helicopter, from the sunlight of the day time to the night then back to the early morning. They captured the scenes really well and the set that they used was made to look like they were really fighting in Africa.

They found some of the buildings of what they wanted to use in the setting for the film. They had to slightly edit some of the set like the buildings and the base camp for the soldiers. In the extra parts of the DVD they went on to explain how they carefully selected different parts of the areas they were looking at for the scenes and editing them to get them to blend in with the setting more for the film, some of them they thought were okay just use as they were like one particular building that looked like it was being constructed but was just left the way it was. In the DVD they even said that people would actually think they were filming in Somalia, when in fact they weren’t. It was just the time they spent adding the detail, planning everything and adding accurately capturing everything Ridley Scott had draw. It sort of tells you a lot of how what goes into the production of film making but at the same time it can all be related to game production to with the scenes and the artwork, the times and deadlines, and film capturing with the cameras, it’s quite like watching the DVD extra’s for The Lord of the Rings and they way they would find locations to use as backgrounds and imagery for their film, the costumes that they would create and repeat over and over again getting different sizes and such. They wanted to make the film look authentic and it honestly did look like they were engaging in battle within the streets of Somalia.

In The Lord of the Rings movie they knew the task at hand was to re-create a great historical piece of English folk law from a book into a movie. Not an easy task , but the time they spent on it and seeing all of the details of what went into producing them films can really be appreciated when watching behind the scenes footage just like Black Hawk Down the task was to re-create a real life event, so when they pick a deadline for such a film they really have to not stop working. People sometimes only watch films because of the actors and like to see how they perform in the roles they are given within the film which is definitely one of the most important parts, in Black Hawk Down they gave the roles to hundreds if not thousands of different people from different countries and cultures from all over the globe. It seems like a lot of effort but it’s actually a good way of making it more authentic, but the more authentic a piece of work is the better it pays off or at least should pay off in the end. They way Ridley Scott had produced so many sketches/story boards of the timeline between start and end of the film seemed like a lot but actually seeing his works produced as accurate as they were in the actual movie was amazing, what I found even more amazing was how he had just produced them with the magic markers, they weren’t exactly spot on perfect every time, but they at least 95 percent there every time. The cinematography in the film was great, from just imaging and knowing what all the scene in the movie were going to be like Ridley knew almost instantly which angles, zoom and placement of the camera he wanted them all to be at. This converted into game production would be knowing possibly where a level starts and ends, what do you see first, what do you see during the game play, what you see at the end, what do you see in the cut scenes and even what kind of interface you see when you even load a game and the menu screen comes up, or even when the game is paused. The aesthetics are all important just as much as the way something works and plays weather it would be in film or game etc. Getting a good grip of the story and were it wants to be set is what is basically needed first to then go on and then make the important decisions as to how it’s all going to look, like an Art director would etc asking the questions of “Is it this or that, which works better? For this type of situation.”

I can see why the Artists in general are paid more than game designers, because there’s so much to think about but overall and they are responsible for the biggest proportion of how everything looks in the final finished asset. Just like what we’re learning in game production it you’re always thinking about what your designing and texturing, where the lighting should be, what angle should the object or scene be viewed from for the best possible outcome, presenting what it is your looking at and how you’re sort trying to sell what it is to the audience to make them impressed with what you have worked on and achieved and of course make tons of money out of it (Ha-ha). The people that all behind the making of films and game are the most important, because it wouldn’t all be possible without them in the first place cause let’s face it a professional game or film couldn’t be made with just actors and voice actors now could it? The ones who come up with all the ideas should take most of the credit although the actor did produce good quality roles and made it really believable that they were U.S army soldiers with the way they handled the situations they were in, some of the funny parts of the film, in and around the camp and the connection between them and the story line itself was just as authentic as the settings produced which really adds to the movie as a whole making it more believable as if this is the way it would happen in reality, like the way we would make something in 3D and we’d render it over and over to portray how it would look in reality. I think it’s about the way we’d interact like creating a setting/background and the way we visualise it and ask the question of “How does this make us feel?” just like when we’re watching the film, playing a game or even painting a picture, there always some sort of connection there, like the feel, the sound or even the scent of it, which we have get right in order to get as many people into what has being produced. Even things like trailers for films and games are important because that’s what can catch people onto wanting to play or watch something and that’s sort of what I’ve learnt about watching this film.

Y1 S1 T5 - A History Of Computer Games - Part 4 - My Personal Gaming History

My gaming history began in around about 1994 when I had the Sega Master System; I only had two games for it, being Sonic the Hedgehog (that was preloaded on the console) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as a separate game. I remember trying to beat the levels as best I could and it took awhile to get far in the game and even my mum could find all the crystals you were suppose to collect in the game and get to the last stage, but it wasn’t till years later I worked out how to beat the final boss. A bright colourful bit game that’ll live long in my memory although I do forget this was the first actually game I played quite a lot.

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (1991) & 2 (1992)

In 1996 the PlayStation was the biggest thing on the market and everyone wanted it. After seeing one of my aunts boyfriend play and own one I could only want one myself, however I was always a bit scared to play in case I would lose, but eventually you realise losing just makes you human. The first game I played was Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation; it was such a good game and one of the best of its time, the bright beautiful colours of game are something I’ll never forget and even still play the game today (downloaded on my PSP).  Another game was Destruction Derby, it came with the console and was the second game I played on the console, basically it’s just a bunch of cars in a circle and you have to crash into each other to gain points... weird I know. I remember spending hours trying to beat the levels in Crash, it’s definitely my most memorable game and still to this day I regard it as one of the best. It’s kind of addictive, you basically just got to smash boxes, collect apples, beat bonuses, unlock a couple of secrets and beat bosses to, very simple just like all the great games of the past were. I can always remember seeing it when I got it for Christmas the first time, the start of the very first level and music that plays with it is one thing that will always stick in my head.

Crash Bandicoot (1996) & Destruction Derby (1995)

After a few years around 1997/98 more games started to release such as Spyro, which was similar to Crash although it is by the same developers, and again you would in this game collect treasure, beat bonuses and bosses and rescue dragon, simple as! Other games at the time were very addictive to, I remember each week I would beg my mum or grandparents to buy me the new PlayStation magazine, I didn’t care about the magazine to be honest it was all about the demo discs that came with them. They would be a few new games on them to play before the release of each one and I would literally spend hours just playing the demo games, games like Tekken 2, Worms, Medievil, Pac-Man etc would be so fun to play and I would try over and over again to get as far in the game as possible before the time was up and the demo ended. At that time I was well into playing the fighting game Tekken 2, (never played the first one) but the demo was so good it kind of sucks you in to eventually nagging for your parents to buy you the full game, being a violent fighting game however I couldn’t buy it so I had to wait for my birthday, and with the full game there’s so much more you can do making it even better, a game I still play today.

Spyro the Dragon (1998) & Tekken 2 (1996) 

The games Worms and Medievil on the PlayStation were British games, something you don’t really see too much now-a-days, Medievil was a game were you would go around collecting weapons and items, unlocking paths, beating bosses and slicing off a few zombie heads, a bit extreme for the age I was playing it at but again addictive and fun and one I still play today! Worm was more of a war type of game, but not as violent as it had a cartoonish style to it, basically you would try to fire guns, grenades and bazookas at each other trying to kill one another in a 2D style battle field, I don’t play this anymore (not available for download) but other variations of the game have been released still in 2D to this day although there was one 3D variation on the Xbox but I didn’t like it much.

Worm Armageddon (1999) & Medievil (1998)

In 1997 Crash Bandicoot 2 was released, in my opinion this was the best of the Crash games, I can’t enough of this game and again I still do play it A LOT. Basically a better more updated version of the first game, some cool music, great game play and an enjoyable experience trying to unlock more things making it more challenging. Just a year later the PlayStation 2 was released, now I never nagged anyone to buy me it, at first I thought it was too expensive and that no one would buy me it anyway. I wasn’t bothered by it and I was mostly enjoying the games on the PlayStation like Rayman and Medievil 2. Rayman is again another classic I still play today and has a very nice clean and bold cartoon style to it, it’s a very brightly coloured game and again it’s amazing how the all the best and classic games we love are always simple, this one you’d rescue creatures and beat a levels and bosses, there was really nothing more to it than that, a good side scrolling 2D game. There was another good side scrolling game I played called Pandemonium, it was in 3D however but addictive you’d basically try to reach the end of each of the 15 levels and beat ONLY 3 bosses in the entire game. There was a second game but it was really just the same thing, like Medievil 2 same as the first. One thing about Rayman 2 I liked was how it went from 2D to 3D in the second game, a bit different but they captured just right and it’s still a great franchise even today.

Crash Bandicoot 2 (1998) & Rayman (1995)

There were other 3D games I liked, like Gex , Croc and Pac-Man World but in the sequel games they would just repeat what they had done in the previous game or games with just a few updates. Kind of like what did with Crash 3, just an updated version of Crash 2 or Tekken 3 just another update from Tekken 2. You can really say that any game (which is just about every game) were you collect things is just an updated version of Pac-Man in thousands of various formats and ways of playing. After Crash 3 they made a Crash racing game, which is quite addictive to left the story line as it was sorting ending the series. When I finally got a PlayStation 2 I couldn’t wait to play the new Crash game for it however I didn’t find it as good as the rest with its new graphics and things but still okay. I couldn’t wait to play Spyro either but it wasn’t good at all, there was just something about all these new and ‘improved’ that was unfulfilling.

Crash Bandicoot 3 (1998) & Tekken 3 (1998)

I then moved onto the Game Boy Colour, games like Mario, Wario, Donkey Kong and Pokemon were probably the most awesome games I’ve ever played. I still collect all these types of Nintendo games today; I find that these games are just something that has stuck with me. When you look at the Nintendo section in any game store you feel like a kid in a candy store, with its bright bold colours on the shelves, it’s just attractive to you, but the Japanese found this as a good marketing scheme for the likes of Pokemon, were they would sell to kids by making games and cards and other merchandise, enticing them to own them all. Nintendo would go on to make a Game Boy Advance with better graphics and eventually releasing all of the older games for the Nintendo Entertainment System released in the eighties on these smaller consoles, this is one thing I like about Nintendo is how they go back to the good old days of gaming and still continue to build on the older games but keeping the same classic aspects and concepts of them that made them so great, like beating everyone level in the original Mario game from 1985 or collecting Pokemon still the same way from 1996. It’s just the addictiveness I think is what they try to bring out more and more finding new ways to do so and as if evolving these games to be bigger and better each time. Even now you can download the old games of the Nintendo 64 (which I never owned) right to your Wii console via internet, of course you have to pay but it’s not even 1/4^th of the price you would have when the original games were brought out back in the day, but it’s the fact that when re-playing all these old games after so many years, it gives that nice nostalgic feeling of playing and being there back in the day of 1985 or 1996 or whenever. Nintendo felt they had to release an updated version of the Game Boy Advance twice, just like there Nintendo DS console, they released one and updated it 3 times and are about to released a 3D one in the near future. I have all these consoles and again the games that have been produced for them have that same nostalgic feeling to them as they are more or less updates of the versions bought out on the previous handheld consoles.

The Childhood Dream Of The 90's. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow (1996/1998)

In 2003 I got a Nintendo GameCube. The console had a lot of great titles, and a lot of re-makes such as Mario Party and Super Smash Brothers again very addictive but much more complicated than the classic games obviously, but they have that same style of play as the originals that makes you want to come back to it again and again like Super Mario 64 was remade for the Nintendo DS and then other games such as Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii are very similar in terms of gameplay and visual style. I eventually got an Xbox in 2004, but I didn’t find the games too fun to play, just like the PS2, by 2006 I more or less found my Xbox and PS2 gathering dust and I only used them to play football games, which now a days I only have ever used my Xbox 360 for football games since 2007 (when I got it). The graphics are good on the Xbox but I’m put off by all these different various titles they have and that everyone buys, I don’t want to try any of them simply because if I buy and play one I’ll want to buy and play them all and I’d rather save the things I do like... Nintendo. In 2005 I got the Sony PlayStation Portable, the new handheld PlayStation was very good at its time but I found that it didn’t really last that long and a few years later down the line people are not playing this console as much. I remember getting it an playing Medievil Resurrection, basically just a remake of the first game for the PlayStation but with its fancy new graphics and such... GOOD but not as good as the original. It’s hard to remake an already fantastic game, you have to get it just right I guess.

Super Smash Brothers Melee (2002) & Super Mario Galaxy (2007)

By 2006 I got the Nintendo Wii which revolutionised gaming with its new way of controlling what’s happening on screen, a way of getting gamers more active so not everyone is sat playing games while eating and gaining weight. The dream of playing your old favourite games came true along with it, when Nintendo released older versions of games for the new controller introducing a whole new way to play your old games! (It can sound confusing). Making newer games with different things to do in them I guess can be hard because there’s only so much you can really do, until it reaches the point where you might as well say: “F*ck it, let’s just make an entirely new game”, in some cases I think they deliberately don’t add things into new games just to make them better for the next game they release in a few years time so they can say: “Here’s the new improvement” when they could have just put the improvement into the last game but it’s all a marketing strategy to gain more profit? Well that’s what I think anyway. I play a lot of football games now a days like FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer and Football Manager, what I think attracts me to them it that it’s all basically the same thing over and over again (11 v 11 men on a field) and you get sucked into it, they have very tight deadlines as the only have a year to update these games and released them worldwide and they so realistic. I remember playing my first football video game, it was pretty good but I guess some games like this you have to follow the sport in reality to fully enjoy it.

FIFA 11 (2010) & Pro Evolution Soccer  2011 (2010)

What I would like to see in the future is to see more of the old games, because there’s really not much more we can do at the moment, the 10^th generation of video games is going to be here for a long time to come until they figure out a new way to play and improve video games. With Xbox Kinect just being released it sort of opens up a whole world of possibilities within the gaming industry, there’s so much that can be done now! I mean you physically don’t need a controller anymore to play a game, and that’s the absolute limit! I mean how can you possibly get better then not need a controller anymore?! I think we’ve reached a point the gaming timeline were we can’t possibly get any more better then we have so we’re just waiting for computer power to get better until we are capable of producing something that’s more complex but able to do what we can do now but even better and more awesome than ever before. ‘Cause that’s what it’s more or less about, I think the expectations of gaming are getting higher and higher but maybe now too high? So high that we can’t possibly think of anything else more to do, it’s just a matter of waiting now. What I would love to see in the meantime, is to take the technology we have now such as not needing a controller and sue that to play the old games we use to love and remake them for the new technology. Keep the old way of how the games work, play and update them slightly but revive them into the new technological world we now live in compared to 10, 15, 20, 25 or even 30 years ago! Giving those old games the chance to live up to their full potential buy seeing how they would play in the new age, imagine playing Super Mario from 1985 without a controller, it would be crazy but it’s now possible for us to achieve that. Imagine playing Call of Duty or Assassins Creed 25 years ago, it would be sh*t! It’d be in 2D and just not playable because it just simply needs to be in 3D and free roaming to live up to the game designers potential and the technology now a day’s allows it to do that, the best you could of got 25 years ago was indeed the likes of Mario and Pac-Man etc because it was so limited, complicated and all in 8bit.

Super Mario World (1985) & Xbox Kinect (2010)

It is nice how on the PlayStation Network (PSN) has a lot of the older generation games to download to your PS3 console and PSP but I find that I hardly ever use my PlayStation 3 for new games, it's mainly all the older games I use it for to play on. With High Definition Graphics and Blue-Ray it's gonna be a long time I'll have to wait till I can Buy a PS4 cause this simply can't get any better in the near future... or can they?

Memento – Film #3

This film can be very confusing once first watched however it is quite clever how they made it. Basically it is split up into two different parts, one in a black and white showing events and then the colour parts of the movie are showing the parts leading up to the event. It shows it in a way of how the main character Leonard sees things and his confusion of what actually is going on. It’s based around how Leonard and his wife were attacked. His wife was raped and killed and he was knocked out unconscious causing him to have amnesia. Leonard believes there was a second attacker when the incident happened named John G, in which he sets out find and kill as the police don’t believe that.

How it happens is that Leonard kills the guy named John .G in the beginning part of the movie, but it tells a story throughout of Leonards confusion. Leonard in order to remember anything must write down, take a photo or even tattoo things onto his body to remember what everything is and who everyone is. He meets a woman called Natalie who her boyfriend is Jimmy Grantz (or John G) who doesn’t treat her right at all. She understands his condition and helps him by giving Leonard the license plate number so Leonard can get tattooed on himself as he remembers this is one of the things he had written down and what he’s looking for. Up to this point I was very confused as to what was going on, I basically understood that Leonard is looking for this man to kill but I wasn’t sure how it was going to happen, however there was another character named Teddy who claims to be helping Leonard in his investigation to track down John G but in the end Teddy just basically tell Leonard that Jimmy is the John G he is looking for in an attempt to end this never ending search for the real attacker.

Leonard doesn’t trust Teddy however, but then Teddy starts to tell how Leonard is confusing his life with a guy called Sammy who also amnesia and how Sammy’s wife tried to help him by continually asking him for her daily injections which caused her to die, when in actual fact it was Leonards wife that died from overdose and not Sammy’s wife cause Sammy was a con artist? (Very confusing!)

In the end Leonard takes down Teddy’s licence plate number just the way he did with Jimmy and killed him. Leonard burns the photo of Jimmy’s body after realising it’s not the real John G and after all that we realise that actually Leonard had already killed the real John G over a year ago, but I guess he just couldn’t remember. It took a while for me to get my head around it but that’s pretty much how the story goes, in the end I kind of felt slightly disappointed by how we went through all that to find out that he’s already killed the real guy he’s after, but it was a really good movie. It built up bit by bit from the attack and through the process of what the amnesia has done to Leonard by him constantly trying to remember everything and that it’s set up a never ending quest to find John G because he simply can’t remember killing him and that his wife actually survived the attack but he gets confused between what happened with his own wife and Sammy’s wife and how he’s confused between his own amnesia and Sammy’s amnesia (or something like that) having met Sammy before the attack.  I think it’s one of them films where you have to watch it about 20 times before you actually get it or if you read up about it, it can become a bit clearer. You can see why it is a good film and they way they showed it coming from Leonards perspective was good so it’s as your putting yourself in his position with the transitions between black and white and colour showing you what happens at the end of the movie at the beginning. It build up a suspense of what’s going to happen next and what Leonard tries to work out in order to get the man he wants to kill.

I think I’d have to watch it again to understand it a bit better because it makes you want to write everything that happens down just like Leonard in order to know who, what, when, where, why and how cause it can make you as confused as he is to be honest.

Airplane! - Film #2

I’ve seen this film like a million times before but every time I watch it I find it just as funnier than the last time I did. It follows the guy Ted Striker an ex-pilot during the war who is now scared to so much as look at an airplane. It sort of follows more of a love story between him and Elaine he met back during the war. He gain the courage to go after her (as she’s an air stewardess) and gets on the plane that’s about to take off.

From the very start of the film a whole series of funny events happen, such as striker reminiscing about the way he met Elaine and such as crazy way they danced or how two girls were brutally fighting each other in the pub they met which you wouldn’t expect. The funny things are what make the movie what it is and they funniness is just about every scene. Eventually leading up to the part where they discover there was a problem with the food on board the plane and everyone who ate fish get’s badly ill including the pilots! This cause them to activate the automatic pilot... that is a blow up doll, it’s just hilariously funny. Eventually this means that there is no pilot able to fly the plane and someone is going to have to fly the plane after the automatic pilot deflates.

Striker is the only one on the plane who is capable enough of landing it safely with the experience he had back in the war. If it wasn’t enough getting on a plane he must now control and land it safely with everyone on the plane depending on him. The funny parts of the film are what make it and the story much more exciting, it just makes you  forget all the boring seriousness of other films and just generally enjoy a film with wild antics but at the same time have a somewhat story line between the two main characters that makes you want to know what happens in the end with a background behind it all that supports it but in that same comedic way like the rest of the movie that makes you enjoy it all the way through.

You just sort of feel attached to every character in some way or another because you just love everything that’s going on and you can’t wait to see what joke or laughable thing is going to happen next. It sort of takes the piss out of all them cliché tragic love stories you see too much in movies and turns it into something fun to watch, I guess some would even class this as a romantic comedy on some level. It just makes you smile all the way through it and I know the first time I watched it, it was almost impossible to stop laughing and especially for its time when it was released I could imagine thousands of people at the cinema laughing just as hard as we still are today. I think it’s one of them classics that you come back to watch over and over again in time and it doesn’t get boring.