John Walker's Electronic House

New review up on Eurogamer, for one of the most lovely DS games yet.

The title is enough to let you know everything about this game. It’s gorgeous, elaborate, and silly. It’s a game that can only work on the DS, and celebrates all that’s engaging and esoteric about the medium.

Professor Layton is a top-hat-wearing fellow who has a penchant for puzzle-solving. He has heard word about a mysterious village containing a special puzzle revolving around an object called The Golden Apple. Travelling with his young companion, Luke, he enters the curious village to discover a town populated by people obsessed with puzzles, and a lot of peculiar secrets. It’s a puzzle game, but with one heck of a story.

The best reason to vote Obama so far, America-o-readers:

2007 was missing something incredibly important: a new Mountain Goats album.

2008 will not be so cruel. Here’s the video for the first single:

Also, Darnielle’s song for Super Tuesday here.

Some people are terrible at hugging, their bodies apparently entirely constructed of elbows, awkward and certainly not comforting. Or worse, there’s the false hug, the lazy loose-armed obligatory greeting hug. But wonderful are real hugs, two people holding each other for a moment.

In Bath on Saturday, I saw a man holding a sign reading, “FREE HUGS”. I stood and watched for a while, my first thought being, “What’s he selling?”, my second, “What’s his alterior motive.”

These are fairly sad thoughts. And far moreso after I realised that he was simply hugging anyone who wanted it. He didn’t speak to people who didn’t talk to him first, he didn’t whisper a secret message in their ear afterward. He simply hugged them.

What moved me more was quite how real these hugs were. The difference here: neither person knew the other.

Many tourists were seeing it as a novelty, having photographs taken and making sure the sign was in shot. But the majority of people were stopping, barely saying a word, and then being warmly hugged, and walking away. It seemed these people needed it. They wouldn’t walk away giggling, or making a joke about it to their friends. Some did. But so many just took the hug that was on offer.

Some people can watch a magic trick and be dazzled and delighted by the spectacle. That’s most people. I can’t enjoy a magic trick properly until I know how it’s done, and then I get so much more from watching it performed. I wanted to know why he was doing this, what motivated this street altruism. So I went up and asked him, and with his permission recorded his answers. Throughout this he was being asked for hugs, stopping between questions to hug those that had stopped nearby. I’ve edited out a lot of the gaps, but importantly, there were a lot. (Sorry about the horrible quality – for some reason in converting to mp3 it muffles and clicks).

The Free Hugger, existing on the internet under the name Wot Gorilla, has details about his hugging here.

Go hug for free.

A new occasional column I’m doing for Eurogamer has its first entry posted. It’s a round-up of Japanese DS games that aren’t seeing releases in the West.

It begins like this:

It seems that anyone I worked with in the radio days is doomed.

I only met Jeremy Beadle very briefly, but it seems enough for the apparent curse I have. He was producing the dreadful (but very popular) OK! To Talk on Talk Radio – an OK! magazine-sponsored celebrity somethingorother, that was part of Dear Kelvin’s plans for the station. It meant that Beadle would be in the Talk office a couple of days a week at the point I was working day shifts.

I guess Ok! To Talk captured the Beadle Confusion. Every radio or television project he was involved with was two things: utterly hateful, and a massive ratings success. And because of this, I think he’s fairly villified. However, speak to anyone who worked with him on anything, and they’ll tell you what an extraordinary nice guy he was. I don’t know about nice – I never felt entirely comfortable around him – but he was ferociously clever. The sort of clever that you have to respect. He knew how to create television that would work, and saw no reason to let notions of quality get in the way. Which I think was a great shame. Were he less canny and more creative, he might have produced some fantastic stuff.

The show segment I was working on was a consumer complaints sort of thing – Watchdog on the radio – that when it first started wasn’t quite working. It didn’t gel, and it wasn’t good radio. Beadle one day in the office walked over to the team and said, “Call it Scambusters”. And they did. And it immediately took off. Not just because it was a catchy, silly name, but because it gave the hour an identity. Quickly they realised their three producers (oh, remember when radio shows had three producers?) were called Tom, Richard and Harry, and it became “Scambusters, With Tom, Dick, and Harry”. The behaviour on the show changed – they started adding increasing amounts of nonsense, including sound effects, on-air arguments between the team, and some excellent irritating treatment of companies who were screwing people over. (For instance, we’d phone the CEO of Time/Tiny computers on air every single day, finding new ways to lie our way past his secretary, and then ask him the same question – ooh, he hated us). It was a nice thing to work on – we got people their money back, or their goods replaced. And we got to piss off the bastards at Time/Tiny. And it all sprang out of one simple name change. And that seemed to be Beadle’s schtick – an uncanny knowledge of what works.

So I only blabber on to say, don’t only remember him as the cock who presented Beadle’s About. He was a really brainy guy, who just didn’t seem to have much care how he used it. Dunno if that’s a good thing of course.

Could people I met in radio stations stop dying now please? It feels like a really grotesque form of name-dropping.

I think it’s only inappropriate to finish: A big hand for Jeremy Beadle.

My good friend Kim is once more risking life, limb and mostly blisters, as she takes on a walk to raise money for Susan G Komen For The Cure. Kim explains,

“So here I am in a new city. I’m back in Philadelphia, and mom and I are participating in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day. While the Avon Walk was 39.3 miles over two days, the 3-day is just that—60 miles over three days! Much as I did for the Avon Walk, I plan on making every mile of this one.”

So, give her money. Well, not her, but people who spend money making the lives of those with breast cancer easier, and fund projects to hopefully prevent women from dying stupidly early, via her.

We’ve got to do this for the boobies, people. So give what you can.

If everyone who reads this blog on a daily basis gave $10 (a measly £5), Kim would make her target immediately.

Change, does not roll in, on the wheels of inevitability.
But comes through continuous struggle.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor.
It must be demanded by the oppressed.

Exciting times are afoot. Hacker group Anonymous have announced a full on war with The Church of Scientology cult.

It all began over this:

(continue reading…)

After a strange morning of my blog going mad, updating to the latest WordPress seems to have fixed that. So now I can tell you all about a new piece up on Eurogamer, discussing the completely lovely Crayon Physics Deluxe.

In my house we have a phrase. Well, in my house we have about four hundred phrases, including, “Mmmm-mmmm, so good”, “That light bulb had one day left ’til retirement”, and “Shotgun!” But today we’re discussing “PHYSICS!”

This phrase is shouted at specific moments, rather than some sort of Oxbridge version of Tourette’s. It’s when we drop something, or something falls over, or the cat falls off his elaborate cat tree. Anything that exhibits the properties of gravity will be met by this cheer. And why? Because physics are best. And that, in a big way, is why Crayon Physics Deluxe is looking so great.

Best comment so far:

“I tried the demo and found it charming but nothing more than a tech demo. And a simple one if that. Charm can only go so far.”

I tried some baked beans once, but they were only baked beans, which is a bit of a major failing I think.

Gots me a review on EG this afternoon.

It’s the completely splendid, spend my entire time playing, has replaced sleep, Illust Logic + Colourful Logic.

Hudson Soft does it again. Picross, done perfectly. Trying to fathom the logic of UK games publishers, and that none of them have picked up the Hudson Soft Puzzle Series, will only hurt your brain. A collection of the most sublime puzzlers, fearfully and wonderfully made, so very perfect for the DS. It only gets more bemusing when you realise that most of these games – Sudoku, Akari, Kakuro, Picross, and of course Slitherlink – appear in national newspapers, magazines and probably the backs of shampoo bottles. Do they not like making money or something?