John Walker's Electronic House

Manipulating Dan Flavin’s art to our own ends, resulting in The Man’s condemnation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Perhaps it’s a job for trade descriptions. The box says “Spyro: Shadow Legacy”, and nothing else. Platform game then, right? Stick it in the DS, switch it on, wait for the interminably long splash screens to finish their agonizing, glacial display, and then… it’s an RPG?

Which could be a delightful surprise – don’t get me wrong. But still, when you’ve got a kajillion kids buying your game because they want to leap the purple dragon around fast-moving worlds, collecting crap, and probably at some point going through an underwater section and then a bit on some clouds, you’d think you’d call this one: Spyro: Shadow Legacy – AN RPG ADVENTURE (that isn’t a platform game). And then all those tartrazine-addled ADD-ites will be well-warned to stay away.

Keeping Sundays special, my Spyro review appears on EG.

John Walker says he has foiled a terrorist attack in the final stages of its preparation, after 8,000 people were arrested in Bath and Bristol.
By Chief Terrorism Reporter John Walker

John Walker spokesman John Walker stated that John Walker had averted a “potentially catastrophic attack that would have killed every child and puppy on Earth”.

Anti-terror organisation John Walker explained that John Walker’s last-second arrests are the only reason that a terror attack that no one has ever heard of, nor has ever been warned of, has been stopped, but that it definitely would have happened if it weren’t for John Walker.

“John Walker’s work has given us an extention to our lives before the inevitable destruction of all mankind at the hands of evil terrorism,” said John Walker representative John Walker.

Police chief John Walker warned, “We should all live in permanent fear of these terrorist attacks that definitely are about to happen all the time. It is only thanks to the work of John Walker that we managed to escape it this time.”

There is proof of an interventionist God. The most remarkable crash to date, locking up all sound from my PC into a sampled loop, freezing all controls, forcing a hard-reboot, has spectacularly rendered Starship Troopers unbootable. I am free, free to write the review.

It didn’t start well, either. But before we get to that, it’s time for a quick check that everyone’s in line when it comes to the film this FPS is based upon. Verhoeven’s film is, and this cannot be stressed enough for the hard of thinking, a SATIRE. The problem is, satire requires thought from your audience. Do your satire well enough, and those who aren’t willing to engage their brain will confuse themselves, and start pronouncing the film as pro-war, all-American, or as has often been the case, fascist. To give Verhoeven his credit, he wasn’t exactly subtle about it. The superb spoof propaganda adverts provide belly laughs, and really ought to make the point ever-so-slightly clear. But it’s never better than when people attempt to speak the truth of the situation, and are drowned out by the gung-ho nonsense from the main cast. And it has Doogie Howser in it.

Forgot to link this earlier today.

Brian coming this weekend.

Charity linked me to this excellent radio station last night. They were playing excellent, amusing obscure songs, linked by a cute Canadian girl rambling enticingly. Songs like, oh, how about the theme music from Bubble Bobble remixed. Oh yes.

As the song played, I found myself becoming nervous that at any moment the music would speed up, and the terrifying white skull of DEATH would appear. A powerfully visceral response. And then as I worried it, it happened. And I realised, I have only one way to describe the monstrosity that would appear when Alastair Caple and I would take too long on a level: The Hurry Up Monster.

“Quickly, the Hurry Up Monster will come in a second!” one of our ten year-old mouths would cry in fear, dreading the abrupt violence of the evil beast, as it ripped across the screen in sweeping diagonals, ethereally passing through the platforms without care. It was our imminent death, supported by its crazed music, driving our joystick fingers into a frenzy of baddy consumption, hoping against hope that an umbrella would maybe fall. The Hurry Up Monster. He has no other name.

Which set me thinking about the other piece of long term damage computer games caused me in my youth. Brought up playing text adventures, literally on my father’s knee, I was introduced to the concept of adventure games from the earliest possible age. (We would playtest them for Level 9, the game I specifically remember proofing at the age of probably eight being Ingrid’s Back). There was a convention in text adventures that you only needed to type in the first four letters of any word. If you wanted to get the bucket, you’d type,

> GET BUCK

But very few of the input commands were longer than four letters. GET, PICK, LOOK, MOVE, PUSH, PULL, OPEN… And EXAM. Throughout my childhood, I believed the word ‘exam’ to mean not only a test, but also to examine. “I’ll exam the piece of paper for clues,” was a perfectly acceptable sentence. And the thing is, it still is. I have no problem with that – ‘exam’ means look. It just does. I’m not sure I should be too widely chastised for this infant-stupidity living on into adulthood – exam as we understand it is obviously an abbreviation of ‘examination’ – it’s all the same etymology. I don’t see why I shouldn’t keep it.

The station, Less Than 3, continued to play excellent obscurities. Charity and I enjoyed the emitting madness. And then, after peculiar covers, odd remixes, and unsigned bands, there came from nowhere… Journey – Don’t Stop Believein’.

Here’s the new rule. ALL films MUST end with Journey’s Don’t Stop Believein’ playing over the credits. And more specifically, ALL films MUST finish with the cast turning to look at one another, laughing, and then freeze-framing, with Journey fading in. Without exception.

I don’t care if it’s a movie about the plight of an oppressed people and their eventual slaughter – whoever’s alive by the end must turn, laugh, and freeze. “…Just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world…”

And retrospectively too. End of Shadowlands, Anthony Hopkins must see the lighter side of the death of his wife, turn to camera, laugh, and freeze. “..He took the midnight train goin’ aaaaaaaaaneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewhere…”

All Quiet On The Western Front. As the 15/16 year olds march over the fields, superimposed over the graves of the 17/18 year olds we’ve just spent three hours watching die, they must find that certain pluck, turn, laugh, freeze, “…It goes on and on and on and on…”

We discovered as we listened that we were two of only 32 people tuning in. The station’s a week old, and is pleasingly amateur. Anyway, if everyone here tuned in, it would not only give them a shock, but you might find yourself with some splendid nonsense to listen to/write about.

Someone told me, and I can’t remember who it was now, that being 28 means you can no longer be a Blue Peter presenter.

So today my hopes are dashed. Happy birthday to me.

What would be a nice birthday present would be a Sox win in the next three hours, meaning that not only will I be able to get four hours’ sleep before getting up to head to Guildford for the day, but also be able to go to sleep at nighttime thereafter.

Last night’s Game 3 was insane, going into a 14th inning, or as I like to call it, past 7am. I slipped into a coma before the final run by Chicago, but have a vague dream-like consciousness of the winning home run from Mr Stupid Hair at the top of the 14th.

(This is the only time you’ll hear me talk of any sport, so hush Gillen, once every fifty years is manageable).

Also, many happy returns also to the No. 1 Celebrity Games Journalist Of All Time Ever, the extremely lovely Stuart Campbell.

Now people, show me your love.

It was Enid Blyton who had me fall in love with adventure. It’s easy to mock the crazed old loon, and indeed it’s necessary to look harshly upon her casual racism, but even though she wasn’t a particularly good wordsmith, she could sure as hell tell a story.

The Famous Five is the name that leaps first to most people’s minds, but for me the stand out stories were the short-lived tales of The Adventurous Four, and the …Of Adventure books. Both The Adventurous Four, and The Valley Of Adventure, featured stories of children stranded in the wild, foraging to survive. There was something primal, a base response in my under-developed mind that made these stories vivid and romantic, such that I dreamed of being the survivor of a crashed plane in a lost valley, or washing up with a shipwreck onto the beach of a deserted island. Of course, these locations would be re-appropriated by my maturing imagination a few years later, this time with one more survivor to keep me company. And even today such a circumstance fulfils the role of “my happy place”. Lost In Blue would thus seem just about the most perfect subject ever.

The latest in my flurry of DS reviews. All extremely interesting games.

So with all of this control left on my computer, what should I post or edit from John’s blog? Mwahahaa!
Or should I be nice and log out?
-KM in Chicago

Pick up your DS. Hold it above your head. Walk outside. Go somewhere busy. Now shout: “I LOVE THIS LITTLE GUY!” Then go back home.

Kirby: Canvas Curse works. Works. It’s… it’s so damn close to perfect it squeaks when you walk past it. Here’s the game for you: you have a pink ball, and you draw lines for it to roll along. There’s your game. Thank you please.

This one snuck up from nowhere, straight into third place on the Eurogamer front page. Which is a shame, as it deserves a bit more attention than that. The game I mean, not the review. The review deserves only some attention.

Nineteen hours of travel later, to return to a place I want to be about 24% as much as the place I left, I also have no idea what’s wrong with the comments. I guess something is up with Ice. Which unfortunately means it won’t ever be fixed because Nick would have to admit that something was wrong with it.

In the meantime, they appear to load if you wait long enough. Posting them appears more pot luck. If you desperately need to say something, I’m occasionally able to log in to my Master Editing Web Castle (as is the case right now, what with being able to post something) and will edit comments in manually if you email them to me. Although they’ll have to be compliments about how incredibly great I am, and about how you know exactly how I can go about securing an ideal job in Chicago and moving there, to be worth the effort.

Meantime, I’m going to be sulking and plotting over here.