Mar/090
Shaun White Snowboarding for the Wii balance board
Shaun White on the cover of Rolling Stone
If you haven't yet bought yourself a Wii and got the balance board for Wii fit, then you should immediately do so, of course.
But if you have a balance board, you'll be wondering what the best game is to play on it. Obviously the Wii fit game itself is second to none; engaging, but a tiny bit serious to make it much fun.
The solution is Shaun White's Snowboarding. Firstly it's easy to learn the basic board controls. Using your feet to ollie and change your balance feels very natural and adding tweaks and tricks with the controller in your hand is an easy progression.
As is usual for the genre you have to get to a fair standard in order to unlock most of the more fun stuff, but this can all be done within the first few hours of game play. There is a co-operative mode for party play and dinner parties.
In short, there's hours of game play for the 50 quid cover price, and that game play is satisfyingly reliant on skillful balancing on the wii balance board. To really unlock the full potential of this game it probably helps to be 12 years old, but even us 33 year old geezers can bust a double back flip or two without putting our real backs out.
Nov/080
Brothers in Arms on the Wii (Game Review)
I have a new game for the Wii this week. Brothers in Arms, Road to Hill 30. A World War II first person shooter, it differs from old favorites like Call of Duty with it's focus on command strategy. Essentially, as well as being able to run around and shoot ze Germans, you can also command other groups of soldiers (fire-teams, assault teams & amour) to help you complete your missions. For instance to take a machine gun emplacement, you can move a fire-team into place to lay down suppressing fire, then out-flank the position with your assault team and enemy and destroy the enemy position. It's an excellent game. Addictive, engaging and fun to play. The story is as follows:
Brothers in Arms is based on the true story of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the famed 101st Airborne Division who were dropped behind German Lines on D-Day. The game is based on the historical Mission Albany (misnamed as "Operation Chicago" in the game), in which the player has to complete true to life missions of the 101st.
On the downside, the Wii controller system isn't best designed for this kind of game and it can be annoyingly finicky to control your own viewpoint. Also the Wii just isn't QUITE powerful enough to run the gaming engine as smoothly as it would work on an XBox 360 and game-play can be a little jumpy.
But on the very positive side, these kind of games are only really played once or twice all the way through and The Road to Hill 30 comes as part of a 2 game pack, called Brothers in Arms Double Time. So when I've finished taking Hill 30 in a week or 2, I've then got a whole new game, 'Earned in Blood' to play. And then - once I'm REALLY good at the game there is the brand new offering which has just been released: Hells Highway.
Screenshots:
Aug/081
Left, Right, Jump
I was wasting time in the office by playing with the Wii and discovered that you can buy & download ancient console games that you can play on your TV.
I got Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog broke ground by adding the element of speed to the standard platform formula and introduced other unique elements as well, such as the loops, springboards, high-speed devices, and the rings now permanently associated with the Sonic game series, which is still thriving)
Strange that with all these amazing Wii games to play I end up spending my afternoon happily beating the shit out of Dr Robotnik again a decade or so since I last played it. The game is so simple. Left, Right, jump are the only controls. It's so fast, so colourful, so addictive; in the way that only something of real genius had to have been in order to open a brand new market back in 1991.
Aug/081
Wii’s ARE good, but iphones……
iPhones are amazing. I've finally got one after a frustrating wait since they came on the market last last year. Now that it's half the price, twice as fast and you can insure the thing against loss or breaking it, my wait is finally over.
The advertising strapline for the new 3G iPhone here in France is "L'iPhone que vous attendiez", which means "The iPhone you've been waiting for". Never a truer word written.
I'm going to struggle to convey just how good it is. I wanted to say that it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I've always found that a bit of stupid phrase. Sliced bread really isn't all that. The iPhone is the best thing since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
OK. Here are the top 3 coolest things about my new toy:
1. Interweb access.
Not only does connect to the Internet via 3G through the mobile network, which is so much quicker than the old GPRS i used to use on my Pocket PC a few years ago, but the device has wireless networking built in. This means that if you happen to be in range of a wi-fi connection, at home for instance, then the iphone will use the that to connect to the Internet, making downloads as fast as they are on your computer. That's all well and good, but the older web browsers on hand held devices were..... in a word..... shit. Safari on the iPhone is brilliant. You see the web as it is supposed to look. Smaller of course, but that's where the squidgy, pinchy touch interface comes in. The iPhone has brought the Internet onto a mobile, handheld device in a truly usable and useful way for the first time.
2. GPS
It's got built in GPS (Global Positioning). Awesome. First the iPhone checks with the mobile network to get your location, then it goes on the interweb and gets the google map for the area and drops a pin on your exact position. It's amazingly accurate. I was hooning down the motorway to Geneva the other day and Sarah had the map application open. The little blue dot was totally moving down the little map of the motorway. So clever. I've even got another little bit of software which allows you to track the route you've been taking over time, then publish it as a google earth file. So come the winter when I'm ski-touring again, I'll be able to create accurate maps of touring routes all over the valley. Or if I need to get choppered off the mountain, I'll just email the helicopter pilot my exact location.
3. More Applications
There's tons and tons of useful/cool or simply crappy time-wasting applications you can download and muck about with on the iPhone. F'instance I've got a French English dictionary which not only finds the exact words I need quickly when I'm talking to the bank manager in French, but also conjugates the verbs so that I can use and learn more accurate French. Numbers are always hard in another language, so I just type in 11900 and read off "onze mille neuf cents" in words. I can use the "remote" app to control my itunes based sound system in my office over my wireless network from the bath. And and and..... well, to be honest I could go on all day.
So obviously I'm getting carried away & perhaps geeking out a little bit, but trust me - this thing is good. This thing is a glimpse of the near future. It's so very close to being able to replace a laptop for people who don't really need the power of a laptop, but just need a communications device for email, Internet and to mess around with photos etc. The only thing that stops it being that right now is a slight lack of processing power due to it's size, and the lack of a good typing interface that makes it possible to input large amounts of text if you were trying to write a long email or type a document on a train or something. Limitations which I have no doubt will be addressed over the next few years.
Aug/080
Wii’s are good
So the rest of the wedding went off without a hitch and was a thoroughly brilliant couple of days. From the (very) Catholic, if slightly chaotic church service to the supper & excellent speaches made by my dad & the groom, it was definitely my favorite wedding I've ever been to. I just heard from my sister who finally having a bit of time to relax and get used to her new married-ness, and is spending the time usefully by getting totally into the Wii my girlfriend & I gave them as a wedding gift. They even used a load of the shop vouchers they got to go out and bling up their setup with a Wii Fit board and the skiing game :)
It was great to have the whole family together. Not only my sisters and I all with our partners but also the other family and friends that you realise you see far too little of. Like my indomitable Aunty Carol for instance. It's been years since I've seen her and she's still not sure if I'm taking the mickey by calling her 'aunty'. It's what I've always called her and I guess I always will.
Aug/080
Having no internet
I'm quite enjoying the fact that the internet is broken up at Corin's chalet. It's been a very long time since I've spent so much time away from the online world.
I thought that would give me lots of time to do all the offline work I've got - filmmaking, photography, writing etc. But then I bought a Nintendo Wii with a Wii Fit and Namco's brilliant Family Ski game with which you can use the balance board to ski about. It's brilliant. By far the best gaming experience I've ever had. And that includes Halo on the XBox. The best bit is that playing the Wii is that you are always standing up, moving. OK, so it's not as much excersise as going out for a run but it is better than being sat motionless on a sofa for hours on end.
So never having tried one before I went out and bought one, I'm already a big fan of the Wii & can't wait to see how my girlfriend likes it when she's back. And playing golf with my dad! Can't wait for that either.