Interview: Saint’s Row
by John Walker on Jul.25, 2006, under The Rest
As we approach the autumn, Saint’s Row creator Volition isn’t going to be the only development team making this argument. With Vivendi’s Scarface also due out in a couple of months, and also looking remarkably similar to the long-running law-breaking series, upbeat violence in freeform cities is going to be a recurring theme. Perhaps it really is a genre. Perhaps.
Follow-up interview for the Saint’s Row stuff on EG.
Review: Point Blank DS
by John Walker on Jul.24, 2006, under The Rest
Get yourself Point Blank DS – it will remind you of very good times, and bring a warm smile to your face as you recognise the many levels from the previous releases collected lovingly together. Your decision is already made. This review is for everyone else.
It’s been said before, but it can’t be said often enough: the reason the DS is great is because you can’t just port your game over to it. The PSP is a remarkable machine, replicating near-PS2 capabilities in a handheld device, but still, only replicating near-PS2 capabilities. The lazy developer wishing to port his tinpot cash-in across all systems gets to the DS and goes, “Oh crap.” Two screens, one of them a touch-screen, half as many buttons as the average joypad, and no analogue sticks whatsoever – it all means that anyone wishing to develop for it has to use their imagination.
I get all excited about the DS again, because it’s just so very, very lovely.
A Short Appeal
by John Walker on Jul.21, 2006, under The Rest
Ladies and gentlemen, please listen to this short appeal:
Every day a DS game belonging to John Walker goes missing. There are now tens of thousands of DS games wandering the streets, lonely, hungry and without love.
Please, if you know the whereabouts of any of the following DS games that belong to John Walker, then give generously, and return them to a home where they will receive love, and then eventual rejection and dust.
Project Rub (I think that might be Kieron)
Rub Rabbits (And again)
Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land
Lost In Blue
Thank you, and remember, for every DS game you return, you will receive over fifty billion pounds*
Goodnight.
*This might be a lie
PFFF-TFT
by John Walker on Jul.19, 2006, under The Rest
My earlier train journey was far more interesting. All the delays were as nothing when compared to the individual I met on the way to Guildford. She looked mid 20s, reasonably attractive but far too much make up, pretty olive skin. The conversation started when she asked if I knew what time the train arrived in Guildford. I showed her my scribbled piece of paper, and she mentioned the hot. I concurred that it was indeed hot, and she told me some nonsense about how it would be 39C the next day breaking records. She asked me how I was to be not working, and then in return I asked about her job.
“I’m a life coach.”
I really had no idea what a life coach might be. I assumed it was a service designed for those with too much money and not enough friends, such that someone could give them some common sense advice. Her description matched up to this, but without the cynicism. And then she said,
“…and TFT.”
Oh lord. I enquired. TFT is the practise of treating psychological conditions with… tapping!
I want to explain that as much as it might appear below that I was very rude to this person, I really was not. I asked permission before every challenge, and checked that I wasn’t upsetting or offending her throughout, and thanked her very much at the end for being prepared to be so frank, and listen to my being so frank. She did 90% of the talking, while I listened. And as harsh as my sentences appear typed out, they were delivered in a friendly manner, always polite (apart from the bit about mediums).
TFT “gives immediate relief for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD ), addictions, phobias, fears, and anxieties by directly treating the blockage in the energy flow created by a disturbing thought pattern. It virtually eliminates any negative feeling previously associated with a thought.”
In other words, it’s a magical way to deal with trauma that requires no effort or therapy! Hooray! It’s obviously instituted throughout the NHS, and has replaced therapy and counselling worldwide! Oh wait, hang on.
It is, of course, the work of con-artists, preying on the desperate or grieving and stealing their money while they’re vulnerable.
She explained it to me in all its complexity (you tap and the bad feelings go away!), and I informed her that I am a sceptic, and I’m interested to ask her questions. She said she was up for this and interested to play. I was given permission to be straight with her. So I said that I cannot give any credence to TFT since there’s no such thing as “energy” flowing in the body, and there are no “acu points” (as demonstrated conclusively in a major study last year). I asked her why she didn’t want to see scientific proof for the practise before being prepared to charge people money for it. (All the sites that have attempted to make scientific justifications for TFT refer to “as yet unpublished” studies, that were conducted a decade ago, etc – all the usual obfuscatory bullshit). She told me that she didn’t need scientific proof, because she sees “results”. Her clients are all the proof she needs, because they have “miraculous recoveries”. I asked whether any apparent results could be a placebo effect, and she said the results were too powerful for that. I told her of the recent placebo studies performed for a new arthritis operation, where some taking part were only given incisions and no operations, and were able to walk afterward, when formerly wheelchair bound. She said, excitedly, that yes! Isn’t it amazing how the power of the mind can heal you, and that TFT channels this mind energy… She appeared unaware of this, and many, many other immediate contradictions in her logic.
So I asked about energy. What is it? “It’s a flow of universal energy in your body.” That clears that up then. Is it like blood, I asked somewhat rudely. “Yes! The oxygen being carried around your body is a part of it.” So it’s my circulatory system then? And I promise she replied, “I’m not really interested in the science.”
She told me at great length how science is overrated, and that these things may not be proved in our lifetime, but there are millions of people involved in alternative therapies, and so on. I pointed out that things being disproved somewhat precludes their being proved rather conveniently after we’re dead. She nodded. She did that a lot. When I said something that diametrically opposed her last assertion, her response was to nod in agreement. It was cleverly disarming. At one point I lost my composure and laughed out loud, which was rude. She was once more explaining how testing and so forth wasn’t necessary when her clients were instantly getting better, and then dismissed the alternative, making air quotes with her fingers, as “science”. I managed not to say, “I think ‘science’ is the term that makes those air quotes flitter away.” (I’m doubly proud of myself, as later in the day a lady selling me a cold drink at a stand said, “Oi’ve ga oran’, aa’le an’ wah’er, wha’ canna ge’ya?” and I didn’t reply, “A consonant?”) But I did giggle at this excellent moment.
When I suggested that TFT was hard to think of as anything but rubbish, with so-called results appearing from both placebo and the simple therapy of sharing a problem with a friendly stranger, she immediately personalised it with her uber-proof. The process claims to remove the emotion from a memory. And her father had died a couple of years ago, and she was so devastated and couldn’t cope for so long, but then she had TFT and now she can talk about him without bursting into tears. “I still have the memory, I can remember every single detail of his death, everything that was said, but I can talk about it without that awful knot of emotion inside me – the pain is gone.”
It’s a common practise amongst such con-artists (unwitting or not) to attempt to personalise something into a territory one must not question. But I’m a prick, so I carried on. I pointed out that what she’d described was the grieving process, but with someone tapping her at some point. That’s what happens when someone you love dies – you can’t cope for ages, and then slowly you come to terms with it, always miss them, but the memory becomes less raw and you move on. “Ok. That’s true,” she replied, “But it doesn’t explain how I can cure phobias.”
Astonishing.
I have been noticing recently that when people believe in one of these “alternative therapies”, they tend to believe in all of them. I explained this to her, pointing out that I was likely being very rude, and she was welcome to tell me to shut up at any point. She again insisted that she was enjoying the conversation and happy to go on. So I asked if I could name some other flim-flam and see if she believed in it.
First, astrology.
We’re living in an Aquarian year! That’s why everyone’s so inquisitive, so keen to learn more about themselves this year. “As opposed to last year when everyone said, ‘Who gives a shit who I am?! Let’s go swimming!'”. “Yes,” she said. “And next year it will be more powerful.” I was told how the position of Jupiter and Mars make a difference. The military planets. I asked her how they were inherently military, when they’d only been named after humans in the last few hundred years. “I know!” she said. “I just don’t know!”
She’s a tarot practitioner. She can tell people things about them that she couldn’t possibly know! “I know how to do that too,” I replied. She was excited. “No,” I said, “I mean, I know how to cold read. I can do that trick. I know how you’re tricking people, and how you make it appear that you’re revealing that information.” At last she didn’t nod in agreement. After a couple of beats she went back to the magic of the universe, and the nature of energy, and how the cards can channel this. “No,” I repeated, “It’s cold reading.”
She then did a little bit of cold reading, not very subtly, as I brought up the next subject. Mediums.
It was fairly obvious I wasn’t about to be very tolerant of this one. She began slowly. “I do… I don’t… I have some. I have quite a few friends who are mediums, but I… I… I don’t believe in it.” I felt like this was permission for me to say, “Good, because it’s the most wretched, inhuman foulness I’ve encountered, preying on the recently bereaved to make money out of their grief. It disgusts me.” This was in no small part a reference to something she’d said earlier about how her clients are often, “Willing to try anything when they’re bereaved so will consider alternative therapies”. She said this as if it were a wonderful thing. I was then told about how she believes that once we “move on” we are completely moved on, and that you can’t speak to the dead. “I mean, I don’t need a medium to do it. I can speak to my dad. Not have a conversation!! But I can talk to him at any time, and he’ll reply. You know, a sign, a really clear sign.”
And then she mentioned angels. Angel therapy! We all have two! Two guardian angels each. Because, you know when you see a little kid laughing to themselves, or talking to nothing, or seeming like they’re listening? You know imaginary friends? They’re not imaginary! That’s guardian angels. But as we get older we are taught that we mustn’t believe in such things, and we lose contact. But she hasn’t – she talks to her guardian angels. And there are arch-angels too! Raphael, Gabriel, etc. “But those are Judeo-Christian angels,” I said confused. “How do you get those names?” “That’s right,” she said in her insane agreeing way. “And there’s Hindu gods too,” and went on to list a few.
And reiki too!
So like I thought, everything.
More than anything she informed me that she has no need for “science, or tests, or such things,” and what amazed me most was her absolute disinterest in learning how her own treatments worked. I asked, “Assuming you genuinely believe in your therapy, why don’t you get it scientifically examined, a solid double-blind test to prove that you are right, and encourage this treatment for others?” She told me that she wasn’t interested. She just knows it works. She doesn’t think it matters how, or why, but she sees those “miraculous results” in her clients. “We’re not allowed to say ‘cure’, but we see amazing change.”
I finished explaining that I worried that her clients would be harmed by not receiving the long-term therapy that someone with severe trauma might need. She agreed with me. It was like an “AWAY FOR LUNCH” sign had been hung across her brain. And now she was off to “meet one of your scientists!” “One of mine?” I asked. “Yes.”
“Well say hi from me then.” And she hopped off the train, accompanied by two angels and an awful lot of energy.
Phew, What A Torture!
by John Walker on Jul.19, 2006, under Rants
I think transport hates me.
Last night, coming back from a day in Guildford, my train to Reading was displayed on the board with the ominous claim that it would be 2 minutes late. I have detected a pattern when such short delays are displayed: they are lies. After a couple of minutes it was 3 minutes, and then 5, then 7. At one point there was a pre-recorded tannoy announcement that went, without pause:
“Passengers waiting for the ..21.13 train to ..Reading on platform ..8. We regret to announce that this service is running approximately ..seven minutes late. Passengers waiting for the ..21.13 train to ..Reading on platform ..8. We regret to announce that this service is running approximately ..eight minutes late. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
The delay was building up faster than they could announce it. We were then told that there was a platform alteration, and to head to platform 6, where the much delayed train to Redhill was sat. Our train then arrived at 21.30 (I was increasingly unlikely to make my connection in Reading at this point, and increasingly frustrated), and we got on board. It didn’t move. At 21.42 we were told to get off the train and go to platform 8 and get the 21.43 to Reading instead. Waiting on platform 8 again, we were then told to get back onto the train on platform 6. I asked which would be faster. The man replied, “The 21.43 is the faster train to Reading. It will be leaving after the 21.13 though, following it to Reading.” I replied, “If the 21.43 is to go faster than the 21.13, and go behind it, then there’s going to be a terrible crash.” Another man in a white shirt with a badge glared at me and snapped, “There isn’t going to be a 21.43 OKAY? This train [he points angrily to the one on platform 6] is knackered. The other train’s going to push this one there!”
Oh, silly old me! How dare I have not known that this would be the case after being told to change platforms four times in 15 minutes?! The train eventually left about 22.00, meaning I was to be missing even the following train to Bath. Which was, of course, delayed by 7 minu… 15 minut… 23 minutes.
And it was all because: the trains were too hot. Not designed to run in snow or rain or leafy conditions, the trains are also not designed for sunny weather. I am looking forward to, “We apologise for the delay. This is due to the overly mild conditions.”
Preview: Saint’s Row
by John Walker on Jul.18, 2006, under The Rest
There are, however, two decent arguments in its favour:
1) If you make something very similar to something very good, you make something that could possibly be very good.
2) And if you do it on next-gen tech, and add in the multiplayer that was so sorely missed in San Andreas, you justify a fair amount of attention.
Blythering Man
by John Walker on Jul.17, 2006, under The Rest
I love people who are much better at writing than me, and I also HATE THEM.
Jon Blyth, who for some reason writes for that dreadful rag PC Zone, is one such bastard. He makes me feel a bit ashamed that I try. And never more so than with the extra 460% more effort he put into bitching about idiot pedestrians and people who have umbrellas.
I think I might have gone all gay now, and want to kiss him on the lips.
A Complaint: Virgin Atlantic
by John Walker on Jul.16, 2006, under Rants
Dear Virgin Atlantic,
I am writing regarding the flight VS019 on the 11th July 2006. Yes, that one.
I understand the flight has already entered legend amongst your staff. This letter should come as little surprise.
Due to leave at 11.00, we were boarded promptly after 10.30, and I took my seat in the economy section. While your airline is by far the best in terms of in-flight entertainment, food and service for the economy flier, it is of course one of the least generous with regards to seat space, and as such we were all squeezed into our narrow gaps and awaited the rather daunting prospect of an 11 hour flight to San Francisco.
The captain came on the tannoy to announce that there would be a “three minute delay” as we waited for a space in which to take off.
Half an hour later the captain decided he might as well say something else. There was a problem with the plane. They would get back to us with more information very soon.
Half an hour later we were once more considered worthy of being spoken to. We’d been on board for an hour and a half now, and had only taxied a few hundred yards. It didn’t feel well enough on our way to receive so little information. The engineers need to take us back to a gate to check the plane. We were soon being towed back to where we started.
Roughly another half hour passed, and we were then told that the engineers would be back with an estimate in “ten to fifteen minutes”.
Fourty-five minutes later the captain found time in his busy schedule to give an announcement. It was a problem with the hydraulics. It would take between three to four hours to fix. We would have to leave the plane. It was, by this point, 13.15. Buses were on their way.
The buses arrived to pick us up at 16.15.
At no point was an explanation given. In fact, at one point two hours went past without an announcement. The cabin crew said they knew nothing, which appeared true. That the door to the plane was open from 13.15 onward would suggest that at any point any member of the plane’s crew could have escaped to seek explanation. Oh, and the plane’s air conditioning broke at about 13.30.
By 15.00, having been on the plane for four hours, the personal air blowers began to blow only hot air. It was extremely hot on the plane. Fortunately at this point it occurred to the crew to offer us water. No food, of course, because it was needed for the flight, and where on earth would they find more aeroplane food at an airport?!
After a number of passengers suggested that they might want to turn on the in-flight entertainment if we weren’t going to be either flying or getting off the plane, it was announced that they would! Hooray! At least we could watch one of the 50 movies or many television programmes to pass the time… No, of course not. Only the Virgin promotional travel programme was put on. I believe SEVEN times in a row.
I think it might have been at around 15.00 that we were told we’d be receiving vouchers for when (if) we got back to the terminal with which we could get meals. We were told by the cabin crew at one point that the ground staff had told them the delay was due to their needing to print out the vouchers. They arrived, soon after 16.00, handed out one by one by a total of two people. They were hand written. And for an astonishing £10. Have you ever bought a meal in an airport? No, I didn’t think so.
Once we had received our scrap of paper with “£10” scrawled on it, we were released onto the buses. They took us back to the departure terminal… No of course they didn’t! They took all 450 of us to a line for a baggage check in a corridor with no ventilation or air conditioning! That’s right – a baggage check! Because while on the plane, about a third of the passengers had been fashioning knives and bombs from toilet tissue and in-flight entertainment magazines, and a decent proportion of them could easily have finished. Well, that line only lasted about 45 minutes, and once our bags had been rechecked for all improvised WMDs, we were let loose to splash out on ten pounds of food. Two sandwiches and a cup of coffee later I laid back satiated… Sorry, I mean, wandered around aimlessly, hot and miserable and so frustrated at the appalling lack of information. After a couple of hours I thought to go to the Virgin information desk to see if anything was known.
“Gate 25.”
“But there’s nothing on the board.”
“Gate 25.”
“When will it take off?”
“When everyone gets on.”
“But it’s not on the board!”
“Gate 25.”
I check the board, but it was not there. I told people I recognised from our earlier five and a half hours sat on the plane the news, and the rest of my party, and made my way to Gate 25 where I informed the staff that they had failed to TELL ANYONE THAT THE SODDING FLIGHT WAS READY. They put it on the boards. We filled the plane.
“We apologise for the delay, and any inconvenience this might have caused,” read the new captain off his piece of paper.
The entire plane joined in a chorus of disgusted laughter and booing.
Ten and a half hours later we arrived in San Francisco, nine hours late.
Yours sincerely,
John Walker
A Complaint: Ibis Hotel, Heathrow
by John Walker on Jul.15, 2006, under Rants
Dear the Ibis Hotel, Heathrow,
Burn yourself down.
I was recently unfortunate enough to stay for a night at your “hotel” without even having committed a crime. Despite the immediately pleasant appearance of your foyer, this illusion was immediately shattered by the inability of the person stationed at the check-in desk to speak English. Please don’t mistake me for one of those repulsive individuals who demands that everyone be fluent in English everywhere I go, but I think I can test my liberal nature to the point of wanting someone whose job it is to speak to people who walk into the hotel to be able to speak to people who walk into the hotel. After eventually finding someone with whom to exchange rudimentary grunts, I was told that my booking reference was no use to the hotel for finding my booking, and instead had to make phonecalls to people to find entirely extraneous information regarding the booking before my existence would be accepted. (Later, when colleagues arrived, I gave them the secret information for receiving their rooms, only for them to have the booking reference read back to them).
Entering my room, and indeed almost exiting it again in the same step, I was overwhelmed by how the £70/night was being spent. Not only did the room stretch wide enough to accomodate the single bed, but it also had a table! Perched atop the cupboard in the corner was a colour television! There was a bathroom! Really, it was very exciting. Which made it slightly more disappointing to learn that the bed’s mattress was apparently made of wood, the television worked only when physically assaulted (the remote did not work at all), and the bathroom contained no ventilation, no shower curtain, and no seal or division between the bedroom such that the bedroom’s carpet had been merrily absorbing water escaping from the one foot high bath beneath the curtainless shower for many years. And the sink smelt of sewerage. Not a bit stinky, but of sewerage. And the shower gel dispensor on the wall was empty.
I bravely reapproached your front desk (once again getting into the lift that so terrifyingly stopped between floors before violently shuddering and clunking into place) to ask if my television remote could get new batteries, and if the shower gel could be replaced so I could have a shower. I was met once more by the young man whose linguistic skills lay abroad. He was determined, however, and despite not understanding anything I was saying, stuck firm to nodding and looking around in panic. Realising that my only chance of receiving a response was to ask a series of ever-more complicated questions until he was forced to fetch someone else, I executed this beautifully. Speaking to a new person, I was told to go to my room and wait. The conversation went like this (and I promise this is true):
Me: Do I really need to be in my room for this to be done?
Him: Someone will be up with you shortly.
Me: Do I really need to be in my room for someone to replace the shower gel?
Him: Someone will be right up, sir.
Me: I’m asking, do I need to be in the room?
Him: Are you going somewhere?
Me: I was just going to have a drink in the bar. [I point behind me to the bar]
Him: Come and find me when you get back and I’ll send someone up with you.
Me: I’m only asking you to replace the shower gel in my room. Can you do that while I’m in the bar?
Him: When you get back, come and find me and I’ll get someone to help you.
Me: Right. Let’s do it now. I want to get it done now.
Him: Huh?
Me: It’s obviously too complicated. Let’s do this now.
Him: Ok sir, come and find me when you get back.
Me: I’m sorry, where am I GOING?
Him: You said you were going out. [He points toward the entrance]
Me: No. No I didn’t. I said I was going to get a drink at the bar. But now I want to do this right now.
Him: You’re not going out?
Me: No. Never have been. Can we do this now?
Him: Wait there, I’ll get what you need.
[I wait for five minutes. He reappears carrying a remote control and a box containing the device that goes in the gel dispensor]
Him: Do you know how to fit this?
[I was reasonably surprised by this. I don’t really enjoy the weird servant-like nature of maids in hotels. It makes me feel creepy. But I also sort of think that hotels might not expect the guests to do their own maid service when they’re paying £70/night. I should also say, I wasn’t being a prick here. I’d actually thought to try and figure out how to fix the shower gel dispensor for myself earlier, and discovered that I could find no way to open it, even after pulling various parts off]
Me: No. I don’t know how to fit it.
Him: Oh. Well, I’ll come up then.
[He stands still]
[I wait]
[He stands still some more]
Me: So I guess I’ll just do it then.
[He hands me the gel box and the remote]
Him: Have a good evening, sir.
So I take the box upstairs with me, and after another failed attempt to get into the device on the wall, I pathetically operate the gel sachet outside of its protective coating, much like trying to milk a jellyfish. The new remote doesn’t work either.
It was a hot night, and the room, pleasingly, had an air conditioning unit. I switched it on to cool the room, and it began some sort of improvised drumming, banging and clicking, switching itself off and on, faster and slower, all the while thumping and rattling. Leaving it to sing to itself, and hopefully cool the room down, I went to the bar. Returning, the noises it made were still impossibily silly, and so I switched it off in order to attempt sleep. However, it was remarkably hot, and the only window in the room was the double paned box on the wall. I was pleased that someone had at least removed the iron bars that would have obscured access in most other prisons, but there was still an unremovable tie that prevented the internal window from opening more than four inches. The window beyond, another six inches into the wall, was able to open inward as far as the first window would allow, but both were designed to swing shut if left unattended. Fortunately, my improvisionational skills as second to none, and I was able to fashion a device to keep them both open using only the two plastic teaspoons found upon my room’s table.
Of course the reason for the window’s being double-thick was to dull the noise of the airport outside, and it is only reasonable that having them open would allow this disturbance in. It’s perhaps less reasonable that this noise should be more soothing and certainly less loud than the air conditioning unit. After almost two hours’ sleep it was time to get up, and get the hell out.
I promise you I have stayed in more luxurious and comfortable youth hostels. Your hotel is abysmal. As a colleague pointed out, when idiotic tabloid newspapers scream, “PRISONS ARE LIKE A HOTEL”, if they are anything like yours then Amnesty International have far more work on their hands than I had ever realised.
Yours sincerely,
John Walker