Is this iPod charging? I don't even know.

Since I’ve been temporarily banned from FileFront by n0e, due to my outlandish misdemeanors, I might as well write a blog, something I’ve yet again neglected to do for some time.

Ah, where to start, it’s been a funny old week. I think the most random event was the tram derailment, which suffice to say was “interesting” – never before have I witnessed such awesome stupidity, it was, my friends, truly epic. If any of you have any budding aspirations to become a tram driver, I seriously reccomend reversing on spring loaded points and hitting a overhead stantion. It’s hilarious fun.

I could go into a full blown rant about this but, eh, I don’t think I care anymore. I just love the fact that millions of our pounds were spent on a pointless new branch line that runs 650 yards, adds 10 minutes to my journey, and results in derailments on the second day of opening. This must be that “better Metrolink” that was coming. I really enjoy having to derail, then take the 33 bus, over the old system.

Anyway, enough of that. I’m sure everyone was excitied to learn that the Sheepeep, Darkclone and I met up this past weekend like the internet nerds we are for Mr. Clone’s epic birthday party doodar. There have been many frequently asked questions about this event so I thought I might summerise them here for the sake of nothing else to write about;

• We don’t call each other our usernames in real life.
• Sheep really does have pointlesly long yet awesome hair.
• I really do have none.
• Darkclone also has hair. Infact I’m quite bitter about the hair. I WANT HAIR.
• I get on with Sheep about as well in real life as I do on “the interweb” – in other words, not at all. =P
• PRECIOUS EGG-O-MATIC HOVERCRAFT
• It was a good lulz.
• Yes, every reader of this blog was together the same time, except McDermott Cube.

Finally, I need some answers on a postcard. I actually went to the trouble of purchasng an iPod some time ago (second hand, of course) and now I can’t seem to charge it. I think it’s been charging off USB for the past 3 hours but it still won’t turn on. What the hell do I do with it? I want to listen to choonz in the office. We have an iPod dock, you know. We’re a cool section.

For the record, this does not indicate any affiliation to Steve Jobs or his faulty products, I merely purchased it as a favour to someone. The fact I can’t get it working should speak volumes about it.

FOR THE CAUSE XXX

~Danny

BioShock: Infinite is a mistake.

It’s no secret that I, like most people, am a huge fan of BioShock. I don’t really need to repeat why it’s so amazing, but if you have no idea what I am on about, you need to go and immerse yourself in this amazing world right now.

It’s quite surprising, then, that I’ve titled this post the way I have done. When the third installment in the BioShock series was announced, I took a few moments to consume what I was seeing, and I immediately expressed concerns. This has surprised a few people, but I’m going to take a moment now to explain just exactly why this game, or rather, it’s title, is a mistake.

Rapture, the setting of the previous two titles, is a very distinctive world. It’s been very carefully thought out by Ken Levine and his team, and it’s probably the most impressive playing environment I’ve ever experienced. I’ll be the first to admit that most FPS games are the setting and storyline equivalent of a very poor B movie, with notable exceptions, but if BioShock was a feature film, it would probably be one of the best of all time (there is actually a film adaptation in the works, but it remains to be seen how it compares. I don’t need to bring up the disastrous track record of game to movie transitions).

The game is set in the floating city of Columbia.

The one thing that does strike me about the universe, however, is that it seems somehow plausable. I know the concept of an “underwater city” built on 1940′s technology is impossible, but it does somehow feel believable.  Suspension of disbelief comes naturally to Rapture, at no point have I ever questioned it’s setting. It feels natural and, I suppose if you had unlimited resources, I’d go so far as to say it’s plausable. Infact the idea that there might be a secret city in the ocean like Rapture is very alluring.

This new title is set in a city called Columbia.  Apart from being a pretty unimaginative name, there is one major detail about it that is in total contrast to Rapture. It’s floating in the sky on giant hot air balloons.

This is a problem. It’s completely implausible on many levels; it makes no sense to fly a city in this way, the ammount of fuel required to keep such a city in the air makes no sense. Bad weather would destroy such a city in a moment. Everyone’s going to know it’s there because you can see it from the ground. It’s just bonkers in every single way.

The idea behind Columbia is that it’s a sort of “death ray” – fine, but you wouldn’t build an entire city. It lacks that feeling of “hey, you know, this kinda feels real” that rapture gives you, and that is the mistake. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is going to be a bad game. I’m not even saying it’s a bad setting, or a bad storyline, but the problem is this: BioShock Infinate.

Now if the game had been titled something else, I wouldn’t be typing this. I’m a fan of steampunk and, stand alone, I like the concept. But, even if the stories are not linked, the titles are. By putting this city in the same universe as Rapture, the former has now been tainted. I’m worried that this game will take away some of the magic Rapture gives me, by shattering the illusion, and that would be very sad.

Why too much spare time is dangerous.

We’ve all suffered from exhaustion, the point where the daily drudgery of working life becomes too much. I recently reached this point when I discovered that I was spending so much time working or worrying about it, I had no time for myself, or my other projects. I decided to hatch a cunning plan. I would book two weeks away from work, and use the time to catch up with everything I’ve fallen behind on, relax, and have some fun.

The only problem is, whenever you actually have spare time, you never use it particularly wisely. I’ve been on holiday for nearly five days now, and I’ve yet to do a single thing that I planned too. It’s taken me this long just to start writing this blog.

Without a deadline, the human body seems to go into some kind of “chill-out” mode. Whereas my life before was wake up, shower, change, grab my lunch and quickly run to the train station for a full day’s work, I now wake up after midday, and don’t leave my bed until gone one.

There are other strange symptoms to this, too. For example, I find myself distracted by things which I would otherwise consider relatively trivial. Not content with reskinning the FileFront Forums completely, or creating threads like this, I caught myself trying to partition my hard drive so I could install Ubuntu onto my computer. I have no idea why I wanted to do this, because it’s a shockingly poor operating system these days that doesn’t work with a single device that I own, yet I nearly did it. I then moved onto trying to install Mac OS X. I figured this too much effort to do, so I then thought about installing Windows XP, so I could reskin it to look like Mac OS X.

I finally snapped out of it and did something useful, but for a moment I was nearly going to throw away an entire evening on something meaningless and stupid.

Despite all this free time, I also find myself even lazier than I was before. Rather than going out to the shops to restock when my fridge is empty and I feel hungry, I keep going back every 10 minutes or so to see if there’s an uneaten sausage that I’ve somehow missed. I then return to the living room to play more Fallout 3 before realising I am hungry again, and going for another look.

Ultimately though, isn’t this what holidays are all about? Relaxing? Being able to take your sweet old time about everything? Who cares that I’ll never get anything done, I’ll worry about that when I go back to work.

Retro Review: Theme Hospital

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, it’s time for a refreshing dose of Retro Review, the half-column blog-thing which takes the very best of the worst of computing history, regurgitates it a little bit, and spits it back out.

I’m pretty sure you’re all going to remember this one, today I’m taking a nostalgic look at Theme Hospital. For those who decided they preferred the shade of a large bolder during the late 1990′s, Theme Hospital was a simulation game that, as the title suggests, allowed the player to build and run their own hospital.

The game was developed by Bullfrog Entertainment, who had huge success with an earlier title, Theme Park. Creating and running your own theme park, of course, is a very appealing idea. Theme parks are, by their very nature, creative places. Bold, colourful, musical, loud, and in general, designing a theme park is quite a lot of fun. I’m sure we’ve all at one time or another caught ourselves daydreaming about an idea for a theme park ride that we’d like to create.

So, to build on the success of Theme Park, Bullfrog decided to create a new game in the same vain, and what better place to set your much anticipated sequel than…..in a hospital…. the one place nobody ever wants to go. I don’t think many people daydream about designing their own hospital ward, as a general rule of thumb, except perhaps Katie Price, but there wasn’t a “disastrous plastic surgery” ward in the game, so that doesn’t count.

Despite this initial setback, Theme Hospital does actually provide some fun, with it’s strange surreal humor. Patience who come to your hospital suffer from all sorts of strange illnesses, including Bloaty Head, Slack Tongue, Fractured Bones, Serious Radiation, Hairyitis and Baldness, something I’m suffering from quite badly at the moment.

The layout of this hospital is dumb.

Unfortunately the size and shape of the hospitals in the game are so bloody awkward, I often feel like killing the patients instead of trying to cure them.  All rooms have to be a certain size and shape, and invariably there’s either too much or too little room to fit everything in. The result is strange dead ends, blocked areas and passages that Bloaty Head sufferers get lost down, before they curl up into a ball, and die.

But never-mind, there are some other awesome aspects to this game. Did you know for example, all the competing hospitals in the game are named after famous computers, mostly fictional ones? There’s one called Deep Thought, from ‘ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, and then there’s ‘Colossus’, the British supercomputers used to break German codes during World War II. My favourites however are HAL, named after Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Holly, who is of course the computer in the British sitcom Red Dwarf.

There really isn’t a lot to say about this game. You basically just keep building rooms and treating people, with increasing difficulty, until you reach the final level, where you’re instantly swarmed with 20,000 patients, an earthquake, and have to build a hospital in a building shaped like a hideously deformed penis.

Just incase that isn’t enough hospital fun though, Codemasters and DR studios released their rip-off version, Hospital Tycoon, in 2007.  Basically a Theme Hospital for the 21st century, it features almost identical gameplay, but with fancy graphics, no sense of humor, and a lack of nostalga value. And that makes it worthless. And that’s why you’ve never heard of it before.

Danny’s Retro Rating:

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