#8 (Not so) Beautiful Katamari

For a week I had the chance to play Beautiful Katamari for about a week. I only got one or two evenings to give the game a chance - I had only just received the instruments for Rock Band, the sunday before :s.

For those not in the know, the premise of the game is to take a "Katamari", essentially a ball which everything sticks to, and roll it about collecting other objects to increase the diameter of the ball/katamari, with each level giving you a target diameter to work towards. When you start out, you can only roll over very small objects, but as your Katamari increases in size, so too do the objects you can now collect, and this leads to an exponential growth - the first metre seems to take an age, but the following metres come thick and fast.

Right, let's get down to the nitty gritty, the game itself is very original, I've certainly not played a game like it. That being said, there have been previous games on older consoles which have done principally the same. I did actually believe that the game had been ported from an old console version gamecube/ps2 etc but the 360 version is actually a seperate game in it's own right.

Having to navigate my silly wide-headed character to a load/save house in the level hub is frankly lame and felt terribly backwards.

I only thought it was a port as, graphically this is not a next-gen game. All the objects are terribly angular and poorly textured, if they textured at all. And believe it or not, the game does get some terrible slow-down at times, oh dear huh?

Whilst it is the first Katamari game I've personally played, and as I've mentioned I've not played anything like this before, this iteration of the game has not done anything new with the formula if a quick look up on wikipedia is to believed. So in that respect, the game isn't next-gen. Another terribly annoying feature is the complete lack of auto-save, I mean WTF. Having to navigate my silly wide-headed character to a load/save house in the level hub is frankly lame and felt terribly backwards. It's not as if an autosave would be a contraversial feature to add. The game is broken into very distinctive levels which have to be accessed via the level hub so it would be super convenient to auotsave after finishing a level. I only complain as I assumed that this feature existed and quitted out (probably to go play Rock Band) and when returning to Beautiful Katamari, my progress had not been saved. LAME.

The gameplay itself is pretty cool, although I didn't seem to be very good - the King kept asking me why I bothered, well Kingsy, I might just pack it all in together. Now I only played a few evenings, I didn't complete the game, I got a few achievements for my trouble and at the time it was very fresh. My fear is that the game will get very same-y after a while as there's not a lot that can be done with the formula. One level had me collect "hot" things but that was probably one of the most frustrating levels I managed to play.

Overall, I would say that Beautiful Katamari is a good game, nothing special but unique enough to warrant a try, especially if like me you've not played any of the previous games in the series. It's worth a go but not without it's faults, especially when if you're looking for worthy games for your next-gen xbox 360.

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Red Hair Revelation

I've been meaning to put together the very first episode of Your New Favourite Podcast for what seems like ages, and thanks to unexpected events this week, it has still not been possible. So, I'm going to offer up the content of that planned episode in a blog post which I'm gonna put together over my lunch break.
I was going to cover a fair few subjects in the podcast, but here I'll stick to something which has been at the forefront of my mind for the last few days, well when I haven't been in a terrible mood, but that's gonna be left for another time.
I was in an absolutely fantastic mood at the start of the week, I was dropping some suggestive hints through my twitter tweets. The reason being that I've developed a crush - it's a good time at the moment, right before I become far too obsessive and self-destruct my chance.
Yes, an upside of this crush has been the elevated mood, it's strange (well maybe not that strange) that music seems to get me incredibly pumped, like it's never resonated so strongly it what seems like forever. That being said, I think doing some of the vocal stuff in Rock Band has also encouraged me to sing along with the songs.

I'm not going to go into the details about the crush here, it seems a little wrong to tell the Internet before I tell the poor girl. Anyways, I'm not sure it's just the crush, I've been feeling a little more susceptible, being more aware of the laydees, although it's probably down to last weekend's festivities, going out with the Kidderminster crowd. Friday evening consisted of a gathering in the infamous Red Man, and Saturday we went off to Wolverhampton for some alternative (read: metal) goodness at the Planet. The weekend was overall very good, although as I've felt before, I don't have much in common with a metal crowd. That being said, as mentioned above I was defintiely feeling attraction to a fair few girls over the two nights.
On top of the crush, there was Jill, one of Neo's exes on the Friday evening. Now, she came over late on in the evening and insisted on touching my fringe. I'd rather not have strangers coming up and entering my personal space like that, but there was nothing negative about it, if anything I only consider a good thing, my hair was obviously of such interest that she couldn't help but be curious.
On the Saturday, I remarked to Wilson via a typed message (it was far too loud inside the club) that this girl Deb (or Debs) was quite hot. Apparently that makes it 2 for 2, although it is possible to find some people attractive, but not actually fancy them. Plus on reflection she was a tocuh naked, and OMG she has red hair! For those not in the know, on DiggNation they covered a story where they found that people with red hair have the healthiest sex lives, and possibly more eyebrow-raising is that people who dye their hair red are subconsciously sending out a message that they are looking for a partner. So maybe that helps explain my initial thoughts towards Deb.

Strangely enough, during Sunday I was ironing a shirt ready for work and I popped on the TV to have some background noise/sights whilst I ironed. As it turned out Scrapheap Challenge was on. It used to be a staple of earlier years but I've outgrown it a little, although the odd episode every now and again is pretty enjoyable. Anyways, for the unintiated the show is hosted by Robert LLywelyn (Kryten from Red Dwarf) and Lisa Rogers. Now, the show has been running for quite some time - 10 years if Robert is to believed, and Lisa Rogers is still very attractive. She would be even more so, if she didn't put on the exaggerated voice to be more in fitting with the show. Anyways I was watching the show, this week's challenge was to build some boats. Now in tradition with the show, any boats built have had the tendency to either not work, or plod along really slowly. It turned out this week, that one of the teams had built a machine which could travel at a fair nick. Anyways, they had Lisa Rogers in a boat for the "trackside" view and once this speedy racer got going, they literally couldn't keep up and then the strange thing happened.

in fact she was looking out of my TV at me, who by now was transfixed onto her smile

The boat Lisa Rogers was in had to really push to keep up with the action, and there was Lisa staring into the camera, and she looked so incredibly cute. It was as if she wasn't staring at the camera, but in fact she was looking out of my TV at me, who by now was transfixed onto her smile. Her expression was of pure delight and excitement - like holding each other, swinging around in a meadow. It sounds ridicolous reading it back but it stunned me, but in a good way.

EDIT: I'm not sure if now knowing that red hair, whether that be natural or artifically created, is the indicator as described above is now affecting how I look at ladies now, but my head seems to turn in their direction much more. Actually on a recent trip back to Shropshire, there was one red-haired girl on the way down on Friday, and then another on the way home on the Sunday. Hell, even the lead female singer of my "solo" band (Bobion the 3rd! yeah!) in the World Tour on Rock Band had, until recently, red hair, mmmm.

On closing, I need to pluck up the courage to do something about this crush and maybe sometime soon I'll be able to put together episode 1 of the podcast. I'm sure once I get started it'll be easier to keep going.

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#4 Escapism

In my head, the idea for this post was more about all the different methods I use to "escape" my life, Master of Escapism was the original post title, although I might resurrect that post in some form, thanks to some recent revelations.
Anyways, I'm knocking out another Random Playlist, as I find that music is indeed my greatest tool of escapism, and also to help boost the number of RP posts, erm.
It's quite strange to think about it really, and I'm sure I can't be the only one, but I do feel a little naked if I'm walking out and about on my own without my music. Fortunately, the shame passes quickly, but it's true to state that my mp3 player ranks with wallet, keys and phone on the list of essentials that I cannot leave the house without (Actually that's the complete list! :S). I actually joke to myself that my mp3 player is actually a "life support" machine, as if you ever see me out and about, there's a very good chance I'm wired up to it, relying on it to continue living.

It might come as a shock to you all, but the sounds of the real world, on the whole, suck. And that goes double for the sounds you encounter on the daily commute. Cars, bikes, buses that drive past, shop alarms, hell other people, they are all noises which I want very badly to block out with my lurvely moosic.

but I do feel a little naked if I'm walking out and about on my own without my music

It's crazy that when the music disappears, whether it be through forgetfulness or a failed battery, I become hyper-aware of all the sounds of the real world, where before I've been happily oblivious. People chattering on the train, or even worse young children/babies, man they go right through me, as my Grandad would say.

The revelation came whilst I was doing some treadmill at the gym, and I looked down at my small player which I take to the gym (my iRiver is simply too bulky for it) and I was thinking how much my mood can be elevated through the right songs - how that a mood is elevated perhaps more than some (read: a lot of) people that I come into regular contact with.

The classic question: If you were stranded on a desert island, what 10 CDs would you limit yourself to taking. Well, screw that, I'll just take a mp3 player with a couple hundred gigs of music on and I'll be sorted. As an added bonus, the mp3 player would take up less space!

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We're all Frak ups!

So I've been slowly rewatching Battlestar Galactica over the last few weeks or so. Way back when (actually about a year ago :s) I was watching the updated Battlestar Galactica for the first time and hit a roadblock at the end of season 2 - there was nothing I felt in the story that inspired me to keep on watching. Following on from watching the simply awesome Totally Rad Show (which I still need to write a Podcast Review for, arg!), they are (obviously) big fans of the show and revealed to me, at least, that the fourth season of BSG will be the last.
I thought to myself, "hey, I'll push through onto season 3 and before I know it I would have seen it all. Now, back in the day I had some criticisms of the show, which can be found here. [As it turns out, it is the most popular post on the mirrored wordpress blog I started up a while back, but no longer maintain, so that's quite cool]. For those worried about spoilers, there are no big ones following that link, more the gist of the plot. There maybe some following the read more link, but hopefully not too big.


As of Monday evening, I rounded off the end of season 2, I had reached the point at which I didn't feel the need to carry on watching. The main reason is the terrible rushed ending. Not to throw out too big a spoiler, but in the last episode (I believe it's a double ep), they do the classic "One year later" halfway through. I didn't like it at all. It would seem more natural to have the one year later occur between the end of season two and start of season three, but then there wouldn't be the cliffhanger (be careful!)

On a more flippant note, what the hell is going on with their stationary. It seems all documents have had their corners removed and it pisses the crap out of me (which apparently has been defined as one of my sayings now). Firstly there's the simple loss of space on a document lost to these corners, it doesn't make sense to just lose the corners, it would still require something rectangular to store it all in, or are they going to cut the corners off them as well?!? What happens when they staple documents together? They obviously can't use the corner cos there isn't one.
More importantly, it seems like it was an aesthetic decision to give the show a distinct "other worldly" feel. It's a change for change's sake, if only to remind us, hey these are people, but they're not from Earth, so how can we make them different? You can just imagine the board meeting:

"hey, let's cut off all the corners from the books!"
"Yes! Great! and while we're at it, let's paint all their skin green!..."

The same can be said for the naming of the twelve colonies, yes we all got it almost immediately, they're named after the contellations of the zodiac. There was a lame scene where they revealed the "old world" names for them - Caprica,

What happens when they staple documents together?

or Capricorn, dun dun duurn! ZOMFG! All they did was swap out the end of the names with A's or On's. Lame.

I think I even saw an octagonal data disc one episode, now that just doesn't make any sense with respect to how a disc is read, i.e. it's rotated about its central axis, so logically a circle would give the most area for a defined radius compared with other shapes. Come on, humanity here is a space-faring race, even we have worked that out long ago.

That being said, Battlestar Galactica is one of the best sci-fi shows I've watched/watching. It is sci-fi but has grounded feel to it, and thankfully avoids very convenient future tech solutions which Stargate became incredibly guilty - too much mention of out of phase bollocks. "Why don't they fall through the floor?!"

Latest: I've watched the first few episodes of season three, and it's actually been pretty good for the most part, although I was left feeling a little sceptical now they managed to return the status quo it seems *rubs chin* oh well. I may throw out some more thoughts after finishing watching season four, but following the twitters of the TRS guys do not hold a lot of hope for season four *looks worried*

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All The Small Things

All The Small Things first go (Rock Band)
Originally uploaded by jimiminar

Another short 'n' sweet Rock Band post. After a brief chat with my good buddy Will, purchasing some extra songs for Rock Band seems like a really good idea, so amongst the two songs I bought was "All the Small Things" by Blink 182 of course. (the other song was Buddy Holly - Weezer =hawt!).

Anyways, I took on both songs in a custom setlist in the Band World Tour as the now hall-of-fame famous Bobion the 3rd, i.e. me on guitar and vocals, and they were the results. Pretty chuffed at that, and the guitar is pretty simple so no reason I can't 100% that in the near future.

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A Photo a day...

Keeps the Camera Fairy away... erm, yeah that'll work. But if I can talk seriously for a moment, I came across a cool article through Digg (EDIT: it turns out, I didn't digg it back in the day, I've just dugg it now :S). The article in question highlighted the efforts of this guy, what he had done was to take a photo every day, right up until he died. The photos picked out in the article are very striking, my respect goes out to the guy for keeping up the photo a day especially in the hardship later on.

What an absolutely cool idea, it has been done before, famously there's those guys that have taken a self-portrait every day and formed a video of it, seeing how their hair changes and how they slowly get older - although strangely enough their expression never seems to change.

Anyways, I've been toying with the idea of getting a new digital camera since, well, my current one stopped working.

although strangely enough their expression never seems to change

I've posted a few photos to the blog and of course my flickr but they have come from my phone and as we can see from the evidence, the quality is quite poor. I've taken what I've described as "graffiti" snaps - just random pictures of things that amuse or amaze me whilst I'm out of my travels. I was thinking of carrying on and doing the same but with a digital camera. Now the camera I would be aim to get would ideally be quite small, more importantly very slim so I can easily put it into my pocket. It would have to have a fair optical zoom and some kind of auto-steady feature to negate my shaking hands (see my latest rock band pic).
Unfortunately at the moment my budget does not extend to a luxury purchase such as a digital camera, maybe it'll be a birthday treat from me, but as soon as I have it it would be something very cool to start up. Expect more "graffiti" pics, maybe some random takes on my travels and I'll probs throw in some self-portraits for good measure.

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So... Rock Band is awesome if you didn't know

100% Vox on Paranoid (Medium)
Originally uploaded by jimiminar

I want to do a whole post on the awesomeness of Rock Band but whilst working through the vocal solo tour on medium, I managed to snap this, pretty proud of that.

EDIT: I've since attempted Paranoid in Bobion the 3rd's (a band made up solely of me, lol) World Tour, so did this song Guitar @ medium + Vocals @ Medium and I got 100% on the vocals there. If memory serves me, I got about 98% on the guitar. Anyways, couldn't get a snap of that as it was half way through a 4 song set.
So if people don't believe me I'll have to give the song another go and produce proof like this baby.
Here's trying to be proudtive this weekend but finding it very hard with the distraction of the multitude of instruments that now lie scattered across my living room :s

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