Buh?

Guess who got The Orange Box today?

(the answer is me, I did)

Guess who was confused by the fact that the box included the Finnish instruction manual rather than the English one for no obvious reason?

(again, it was me)

L'amusent

I have no idea if that's real French or not. But it should be.

Anyway, you know how skips have those little signs on the sides - "LEVEL LOAD ONLY" and "NO FIRES"? I saw one today where an enterprising builder had altered them to read "EVIL TOADS ONLY" and "NO FRILS".

Well, it made me chuckle.

On aesthetics

I have long maintained that for a video game to achieve true beauty, it should avoid attempting photo-realistic graphics and instead devise its own particular stylised look (see: Ōkami, The Wind Waker etcetera).

Tomb Raider Underworld may be forcing me to rethink this view. I keep getting distracted on the Thailand level and going, "ooooh, lookit the pretty undergrowth."

So, in conclusion: curse you, Lara Croft.

(On a side note, I'm rather impressed with the new graphical touch wherein Lara gets grimier as you scramble about the place but going for a dip cleans her off, but there's no way to mention it without sounding like a massive pervert.)

THE ONE-TWO PUNCH!!

I picked up BioShock today.

So far I have:

• stared blankly at the screen because the graphics were so good I thought I was still watching the intro movie and didn't realise I'd actually started playing the game
• examined some wet bricks closely because the graphics are that good
• been given goosebumps by the voyage into Rapture
  
• been startled by a whale
• sworn out loud several times as things blew up
• sworn out loud several times as unpleasant things attacked me
• been really, really, really creeped out in general
• decided that the hype was accurate and this is a strong contender for Best Game Ever

And I've only played it for twenty minutes. Blimey.

Money will be spent

I am currently concocting a plan to purchase an Xbox 360 this week (most likely tomorrow). My parents are away in Prague and I always find it easier to spend large amounts of money when I have no one to justify it to for a day or two. My eventual justifications this time will involve my personal attempts to kick-start the world economy, I should think. At any rate, do not be surprised if I never update my blog again because I am too busy throwing cars about or stuffing ketchup bottles into zombies' mouths.

I am also planning a novel, because the creative side of my brain (which I thought was killed off altogether by the efforts of the creative writing course at Aberystwyth) has roused itself from its death-like stupor and been demanding exercise recently. It is proving quite hard to martial my thoughts into some sort of coherent planning form, but at present it looks like the resultant work will be 60% exploration of Celtic myth and 40% footling around. Its one talking point thus far is that the love interest only has one hand. Don't ask me why, but when I was thunking up characters a pretty redhead with no left hand named Sarah strolled into my frontal lobes more or less fully-formed.

(It should be noted at this point that by "novel" I mean "lengthy piece of prose that will never leave the boundaries of my computer screen and probably be read by a maximum of two people, one of whom will just be feigning interest".)