John Walker's Electronic House

The first thing people say when they see pointy clicky adventure Hotel Dusk is, ‘That looks like the video by AHA from the 80s!’ So it’s the first thing I’ve said too, so it can be mentioned, and now forgotten. Far more interesting is examining how Hotel Dusk’s animated pencil sketches look without coincidental comparison, but it does at least provide a vivid reference point for those who haven’t seen it running.

It’s all about me on EG today!

Interesting, if a bit flawed, DS adventure.

Start

Nothing makes me swear like Trackmania. The language that’s come out of my mouth over the last few days would wilt a field of the sturdiest flowers. My little kitten has been blushing through his fur and jumping from the desk in horror at the new words his cute widdle ears have been learning. And indeed the new combinations of words. I think the phrase about which I am most proud so far has been “cockflaps”. Let alone the astonishing stringing together of all manner of foulness as I’ve failed to make a jump for the forty-seventh time in a row. As if a sailor were bred with a… oh, um… PUS-FILLED BUM-SHI…

Almost a concept review!

There’s a reason god doesn’t allow respawning.

Tom Bramwell’s excellent What’s New column is finally back on Eurogamer. It’s always fantastically funny, and well worth your eyes. It’s one of those columns that’s so easy to forget to read, and should probably have an RSS feed of its very own. But for this one at least, I’m here to remind you. Oh, and the previous one too.

Today, a week from his last jab, Dex is now a big enough boy to be allowed outside.

So closely monitored by Craig and me, the monkey took his first steps in a land with no ceiling. Excitement abounds.

(As for the state of our patio/garden, talk to the letting agents, who keep promising to take all the previous occupants’ rubbish away).

Craig and his magic camera captured this tonight.

Click for a bigger version.

Or click here for one with which you could wallpaper your house.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, and was reminded to when discussing with Kim the difficulties that come with teaching Hamlet to teenagers. (Kim’s a remarkable teacher – I’ve seen her at work, and she has an ability to connect with minds and communicate difficult subjects that I wish most my teachers would have known a fraction of).

Slings & Arrows is one of the most wonderful television programmes to have been made, and yet you’ve never heard of it. Made and broadcast in Canada, it’s only been broadcast on the Sundance Channel in the US, and never in the UK. Why never is a mystery (to which a possible answer might be something to do with Celebrity Come Dancing and Deal Or No Deal). [EDIT: Apparently it has, kind of. See comments]

It’s about a theatre in fictional Canadian town, New Burbage, and the New Burbage Theatre Festival – a season of plays put on twice a year, seen from both the perspective of the actors and crew, and the management. Paul Gross plays Geoffrey Tennant, a former member of the company who left almost a decade after a nervous breakdown during a performance of Hamlet. It was, we are told, the greatest portrayal of Hamlet since Burton. But it only lasted two and a half performances. Now Tennant, after some time in an asylum, is attempting to direct a run-down theatre company in something like a village hall, with no money and lots of debts. Back in the city, his former director, the perfectly camp Oliver Welles, is attempting to put on Hamlet once more. Jaded, mostly drunk, and having lost all fight against the corporate sponsors of his theatre, he has a medium-strong cast (including one or two terrible actors), and a male Hollywood action star looking to add a serious role to his resume.

By the end of the first episode Welles is dead, but not quite as dead as Tennant would like. Cajoled into coming back to fill in for Welles temporarily, Tennant finds that his former director hasn’t really left the building, and is instead haunting him as a ghost. (Paul Gross presumably has it in his contract that he must be haunted by grumpy old men in all his roles). And so, with the ghosts of his past literally hanging around him, Tennant sets about creating Hamlet from these scraps.

Everything is so utterly perfect. To give an example, the weakest aspect of Studio 60 is not the sketches, but the show’s depency on your believing its show-within is the funniest thing on American television. Clearly no one believes this, as they’ve yet to show us a glimpse of a convincingly funny sketch (maybe apart from that Dateline one). Slings & Arrows asks us to believe that Tennant, Welles, and lead actress Ellen Fanshaw put on the greatest Hamlet in decades, and then goes on to make you believe that they very much could have.

This is perhaps a large part due to a good number of the cast being involved in the real world Stratford Festival, and putting on Shakespeare productions for years. The programme was created by the wondrous Mark McKinney (former Kid in the Hall, also playing the pathetically malleable (and wonderfully named) Richard Smith-Jones, the theatre’s business manager), Susan Coyne (playwright and actress) and comedian Bob Martin. They all play characters in the show, and write most the scripts.

What makes it truly great, beyond the stunning acting, fantastically funny scenes, and joyful interplay between Tennant and Welles, is the passion for the plays. Series one (each series has a very British six episodes) is about Hamlet, with a splash of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, series two MacBeth, and the as yet unreleased (and therefore unseen by me) series three about King Lear. It is at its most magical when Tennant is helping an actor gain an understanding of his/her character, or trying to present choices for how to approach a scene. Two of my favourites are below.

This first clip is Tennant trying to convince the ghastly actor playing Ophelia to understand the madness her songs are meant to portray. Bear with her insanely annoying spinning for the first minute, and then wait for the spinal shivers as Tennant gets going.

The second is Tennant working with Hollywood star Jack Crew, attempting to get him to finally stop improvising his lines into modern language, and reveal the actor he believes Crew can be.

Speculation over the future of the adventure game has possibly become the most tiresome dialogue within the videogaming press. In fact, even introductions pointing this out are cliché-ridden territory, and deserving of a sunken heart. So I’m sorry. Does it help if I point out that for once, I might have a positive suggestion, rather than forcing out half-laughs at another vapid attempt to resurrect decade old rabbit and dog jokes?

The problem is, the genre is suffering from the same wasting disease as the Conservative Party. It so desperately wants to appear up-to-date, relevant to a new generation, but cannot escape its own dated core. Every corporate redesign, younger-faced spokesperson or ill-advised PR event on a bouncy castle only serves to highlight quite how out of place it looks. So, unless the FPS suddenly invades Iraq and starts introducing ID cards, there doesn’t appear much hope for the traditional adventure game ever regaining a hold in a modern market. Solution: be something new.

A genuinely interesting development for adventure games.

STOP THE MUSIC

This is everywhere, but it’s still worth the link.

The DS is not safe. How to protect your children from paedophiles… especially in cars!

And in a small miracle, Penny Arcade manage funny.

Seems like it’s time for a television update, what with nearly all the shows back up and running, and how much these entries annoy Nick. I’m not going to go through everything – just the things I have new thoughts on. (OMGSPOILZERRZZZ all the way through – really, don’t read about anything you might want to watch, apart from My Boys).

Studio 60 – NBC

What has happened? From the best show on television before Christmas, to something I’m not sure I’d be bothered if I missed. Please, let this be a three show blip. Let it be the evil of sweeps week combined with network pressure. But don’t let this turgid, cliched tripe be the direction Sorkin’s choosing to head in.

First of all, I could not care less about whether Matt and Harriet get together. I have no reason to care! They’ve been broken up since the start, and all we’ve seen is them snipe at each other. How am I invested in this? How am I supposed to have an emotional investment in whether they break up or get back? Dear God, all I want is for them both to shut up about it.

Then Danny and Jordan. Once more, huh? Four weeks ago Danny announces entirely out of the blue that he’s in love with her, despite their almost having never had a conversation beyond sarcastic remarks, and now I’m supposed to believe they’re crazy about each other? No! This is what happens in shitty romcoms – not dramas by the best writer in television. And getting trapped on a roof together? Pointing out that it’s a trite cliche doesn’t stop it from being a trite cliche, Sorkin. It’s a statement saying, “I know this is terrible writing, and I’m leaving it in anyway.”

I loved Studio 60 for the passion Matt and Danny had for their television programme. Now the show lies all but forgotten, a lame background for miserably unfunny stories about wild animals stuck under the stage (American Humane are just, like, so annoying, man! Trying to protect animals, the bastards. They’re not PETA, Sorkin, you great twat), or Saved By The Bell level sitcom idiocy like Tom’s date confusion. There wasn’t a single thread running through the recent two-parter that wasn’t ghastly. Of course the banter was fun, often funny, because Sorkin does good dialogue. But that’s not going to paper over the ravines in the leftovers of the plot. AND THE FORIEGN MAN SPEAKS ENGLISH ALL ALONG!!! Good God.

My Boys – TBS

There were no reasons for having high hopes for this one. With the hateful 10 Items or Less (it’s “fewer”, cretins) on right after it, and the channel not exactly renowned for its original programming, there was little reason to think it would be any good. And the pilot episode wasn’t exactly stunning. But there was enough to keep me, and I mean me, intrigued. Set in Chicago, it’s about a female sports writer for the Chicago Sun Times, covering the Cubs. So yes, wrong team, but at least the right sport. The show’s gimmick is central character PJ’s baseball metaphor based narration, and unsurprisingly, this is the weakest part. Each episode is somewhat laboriously likened to some aspect of team management, the team being her group of male friends. Seeming to play poker about nine nights a week, they sit around PJ’s apartment, or hang out at the local bar, and banter at one another. And here it shines. The cast is superb, and while they take a few episodes to click, once in place they are an extremely believable group. Jordana Spiro (who has apparently been in CSI) plays PJ, and while she’s a teeny bit to girly to fit the character perfectly, mostly does a fine job. The guys are comprised of relative unknowns, mostly from comedy acting backgrounds, and Jim Gaffigan who is perhaps relatively unknown as well, but is one of the funniest stand ups currently working, and has starred in a bunch of short-lived sitcoms and whorish ad campaigns.

There’s nothing outstandingly original about the stories, mostly focused on relationship making and breaking, but it’s the fine chatter, and excellent timing from the cast that make it well worth seeing the full thirteen. There’s more coming in the summer, and for those who can trick their internets into believing it’s in America, or those who really are, the whole lot can be seen here.

Heroes – NBC

Just keeps on being fabulous. I’m still feeling smug about being the one who predicted this one, while everyone poo-pooed it around me.

House – Fox

The predictions made by all was that this would run out of steam as it ran out of medical mysteries. It seemed a fair prediction. It was hard to guess that the medical nonsense would take a back seat to the far more compelling nature of House’s continued descent into narcisism and misery. This week’s, for instance, with some rubbish about a Romany teenager with the usual chain of exploding internal organs was a complete throwaway in its eventual solution. Because far more interesting was how House would win back his disabled parking spot from the new wheelchair-bound member of staff. And you knew he would. The mid-season arc came to the most amazing conclusion, taking House further down in your estimations, and yet, at the same time, much further up. He’s one of the very few genuine anti-heroes television has to offer, with seemingly no redeeming features, and yet how could you be anywhere but on his side?

Scrubs – NBC

…had a musical! And like Buffy before it, rather than using it as an easy gimmick, it’s a proper plot-advancing episode, and one of the funniest in all six years.

And now, of course, it’s not.

And the snow’s gone already, thanks to the miserble rain, and now intense sun.

It is, of course, law that I may not enjoy snow, ever. Where I grew up in Guildford, you could see the town’s borders each winter, outlined by the edge of the snowfall in all the surrounding areas. And now, I pick Bath, where the snow never falls. But wait! Last night it did! Last night upwards of seven flakes of snow fell on the town, before committing miserable, slush-based suicide straight away.

In Chippenham, but twenty minutes from here, they’re reporting several inches of snow. Bath got half a millimetre.

Conclusion: God hates me.