Thank You VG247.com!

Earlier today gaming news site www.vg247.com had a competition (of sorts) to win a copy of Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition. Copies were awarded to the posters of the 500th, 1000th, 1500th and 2000th comments of the article – and here is my winning 1000th post:

Yup, that’s right, Jizz. Jizz won me £39.99 worth of Bioware RPG.

If you’re into games and you’ve never heard of vg247 I suggest you check it out, it’s a quality gaming news site. Recently the site and its editor Pat Garratt won a triplet of awards in recognition of their awesomeness, so if my recommendation doesn’t carry enough weight, maybe that will.

So thanks very much vg247 for the game and for being proper all round awesome. Oh, and I’ll be gunning for that PS3/Borderlands prize you’re giving away on Wednesday

freedoms_stain, never wins stuff, but won this stuff , out

New Look

Decided to go for a new template. It’s still a work in progress, for example I haven’t managed to get adding comments to work under the posts themselves, instead clicking add comment will give you a blogger pop-up for commenting. So you can still comment, but it’ll be slightly different.

Still not 100% certain if I’m sticking with this one, I like a lot of things about it, but some things a wee bit less. The text and links are all a bit monotone. I might have another editing session on the XML tomorrow or next week, right now I fucking hate the stuff and am quite happy to leave it be as it is for a while.

Credit where it’s due, I got the template here: http://www.geckoandfly.com/2007/05/11/emire-blogger-xml-template/ Very thankful to all those involved in the templates creation, and thanks for letting me use it for free.

If you look closely at the geckoandfly demo and my blog you’ll see I adjusted the links, the sizes of text and widths of things. Getting it all to match up was an absolute nightmare. I’d like to see about making the post titles bigger, but again, it can wait.

freedoms_stain, not great with code, out.

What I’d Like To See

…is a proper full ATP Tour Tennis game – preferably on Wii. Me and my girlfriend have a Wii, and we have EA’s Grand Slam Tennis for it, it’s pretty fun, but the entire season is reduced right down to the four Grand Slam events (and only from R32 – 5 matches, rather than R128 – 7 matches) with each Slam preceded by a few single-match warm-up events.

The reality of professional Tennis is slightly more complicated. Yeah, the Grand Slams are the highlights and pinnacle of the sport, but they are but 4 events in a Tour consisting of dozens. Aside from missing out dozens of Tour events, Grand Slam Tennis also ignores the rankings side of Tennis. I reckon the ultimate virtual Tennis experience would more accurately replicate the ATP Tour, bringing together the Slams, the Masters 1000 series, the ATP 500 and 250 series, maybe not the entire tour, but enough to let the player compete in 18-24 tournaments.

ATP rankings are calculated from a players best 18 results, for the top 30 players their rankings must include their results from all 4 Slams and 8 of the 9 Masters tournaments, even if they have better point scores from smaller tournaments, plus their best results from up to 4 ATP 500 tournaments and best results from 2 ATP 250 tournaments. Players who fail to qualify for Slams or Masters substitute with ATP 250’s or Challenger tournaments.

It gets deeper than that, but for a game, I reckon they could stick with the Top 30 format, if you suck so bad you don’t qualify for Tournaments they can always let you have a Wildcard .

Aside from the tournaments it’d be nice to have a few more current players. Grand Slam Tennis has a small collection of current Top 20 players (around 8 for the men) plus a collection of legends extending back to to the McEnroe-Borg era. I reckon it wouldn’t be unreasonable for game developers to model the full current top 20 (maybe even 30), maybe equal that number with legends, they can then “top up” the numbers with made up players – possibly even randomly generated players, so that there’s a full roster of players for playing a full 128 man Grand Slam draw.

When you consider the hundreds of players modelled for large scale team games like FIFA soccer or Madden NFL etc etc, I don’t think asking for 40-60 real Tennis players is beyond the realms of feasible possibility.

I think it would be way more fun to measure my skill and achievements through rankings rather than titles alone, particularly if there are only 4 titles to be had, plus a ranking based system levies the possibility of replicating the ATP Tour Finals, which would also be pretty cool.

I haven’t mentioned the WTA, I don’t particularly understand the women's ranking system, it’s different from the ATP system, but I don’t suppose it would be that difficult to combine the women's tour into the same game.

So, EA, finger out, proper Tennis game please, and if you could sort out bounce detection on any future Tennis games you may develop, that’d be lovely, nothing worse than losing the point on a ball you made because the game registered a double bounce when the player could only visibly detect one.

freedoms_stain, better than Helen at Grand Slam Tennis (although not as good at real live Tennis ), out!

'Just A Little Further'

It's a concept most Gamers are familiar with, even if they don't think about it in those terms. It's all too easy when you're playing something compelling just to keep going a little bit further "just to the next save point" then "ok, ok, the next save point" then "ok, right, honestly, just to the end of this chapter/level/section" and on and on til it's three in the morning and your vision has gone fuzzy and your fingers are cramped...

 

<.<

 

>.>

 

Last night it happened to me (again), I was playing the latest Fallout 3 DLC, Mothership Zeta. Your character gets abducted by Aliens, the nasty probing kind, of course it isn't long before you escape your cell and get the opportunity to frolic through the Alien spacecraft wreaking havoc left right and center, and with some brand new shiny alien doohickeys to boot.

 

It's a rather linear affair in truth, you start at a, got to b, kill stuff, then you can do c, d and e in whatever order you'd like before proceeding to f, but that's the sort of gameplay that lends itself to that 'just a little further' behaviour. There's a goal to reach, then another, then another, and you're either enjoying yourself so much or desperate to see what happens or what's at the end of the goal that you keep going and going until rationality or tiredness kick in and gets the better of you, well, one of those or you reach the ultimate end...

 

I didn't reach the end of Mothership Zeta last night, it really was getting late, though admittedly I do have to thank my girlfriend, who needed a chat, if she hadn't been texting me there's a good chance I would have powered through heedless of how late it was getting and ended up sleeping in, as it was her regular messages distracted me from the game and kept me aware of the time. Just another reason to treasure her

 

I think the worst (or best, depending on your perspective) case of 'Just a little further' I've ever experienced came in the form of Valve's Portal, a portal based first person puzzle game. Portal shipped in a compendium of valve developed games called The Orange Box (chances are if you don't know that then you're not a gamer, thus probably stopped reading before the end of the first sentence and the elaboration is pretty much wasted...). My main interest in the box was HL2: Episode 2, the continuation of the misadventures of heroic physicist Gordon Freeman in his (practically) single handed effort to resist the enslavement of mankind by otherworldly beings known as "The Combine". I was late to the party with The Orange Box, I was rather skint when it came out, and couldn't really justify the cost of a five title boxset of which I already owned two of the titles and had next to no interest in a third (TF2), so I was aware of the Portal hype, but had yet to experience it. I played Ep2 for a couple of hours until I decided it was probably bedtime, but before I hit the hay I thought I'd give Portal a go. Roughly four hours later some time after 3am I had completed the game.

 

Portal is unique, Portal is intriguing, and Portal is challenging. Three factors that will keep you going further and further until the unexpected end. First there's the story element, you're some sort of prisoner, or patient, or test subject who wakes up in a glass box, is given an experimental device that creates portals and is run through a number of challenge rooms to test the device, and, apparently, yourself. Your only contact throughout the event is with a computer with a bit of a personality disorder and a penchant for lying about cake-based rewards (debatable). The "Who, where, what, why?" aspect keeps you progressing forward because no back story is given and the only way to get answers is to go forward. Going forward involves solving the challenges, which start of light and get increasingly demanding of your observational skills and creativity - they're also really fucking fun. So everything about the game draws you forward.

 

The thing that really caught me though was the fact that the challenges only make up maybe half to two thirds of the game, so when I escaped the challenge rooms and started roaming around behind the scenes I understandably assumed the end was nigh and not that there was another hour and a half or so of game ahead of me. So I just kept going until I reached the end. And I had a damned good time doing it.

 

Some months later during a piss-up at a friends house me and a mate played through the game (while completely pished) on xbox360. We took turns each on the pad and finished it by a respectable 4am, although no one remembers when we started

 

I love gaming, but sometimes I hate how it can grip me.

 

freedoms_stain, no doubt spending this evening completing Mothership Zeta, out.

Must Talk More Tennis!

You know, I think the last time I mentioned Tennis on here was way back before the final in Montreal, which was? August? Something like that (I could find out in like 3 seconds but I’m not going to). So Murray won that, which was cool. The very next week he had to defend his Masters title in Cincinnati, unfortunately losing in the SF to Federer, which basically resulted in no net gain of points over last year since he just swapped his results for the two competitions.

Next up was the US Open, big hopes for Murray there, runner up there last year, expect him to reach the final… Crashes out in the 4th round to Marin Cilic. Pretty disappointing result there, though it did turn out that he had developed a wrist injury which has caused him to pull out of the Asian tournaments he was due to play this week and next – so I suppose we can forgive him.

The big shock at the US Open was of course the defeat of Roger Federer in his attempt for a 6th straight US Open title by new boy Juan Martin Del Potro. Excellent result for Del Potro, and interestingly his first and only title higher than the ATP 500 series. So good for him, 5 set matches against the greatest player of all time have got to be gruelling,  and Del Potro really pulled out some fantastic Tennis after a shaky start.

So, following the US Open we come to the Asian season, unfortunately Federer pulled out of the whole season with exhaustion, hopefully he’ll be fit for the Tour Finals in London next month. Similarly Andy Murray ended up pulling out of both the tournaments he was scheduled to play in Asia, including the Shanghai Masters which starts next week and is worth a cool 1000 ranking points to the winner – points Murray could really use after losing a rather large whack of points at the US Open by failing to meet or exceed last years result.

The Davis Cup… Britain has won The Davis Cup 9 times. Last time? 1936. The Davis Cup is split into tiers, Britain has been competing in the 2nd tier for the last year – poorly. So poorly in fact that we had to face and beat Poland to avoid relegation to the 3rd tier. We did not beat Poland. Davis Cup ties are a best of 5 affair, 4 singles matches and a doubles. As our only Top 10, Top 20, Top 100, or even Top 190 men's player Andy Murray was of course asked to play, which he did, injured wrist and all. Murray competed in two singles rubbers and the doubles, winning both the singles and losing the doubles (with Ross Hutchins). Unfortunately Dan Evans was unable to muster the single win required to keep us afloat in the 2nd tier and down to the 3rd we go. Britain can’t keep riding Andy Murray to keep the Davis Cup team afloat, hopefully the next year in the 3rd tier will give the other British players on the team the experience necessary to compete at that level, while Murray gets on with his singles career.

It’s not all doom and gloom for British Tennis though, Elena Baltacha finally broke the women's top 100, as did Katie O’Brien, and one of our men's doubles teams picked up their first ATP title which saw them break into the top 100 doubles rankings – unfortunately their names escape me for the moment :s

Nadal is back in action in Asia, looks like the abdominal injuries he was suffering from in the run-up to and during the US Open series are healed up, he has been ploughing through in Beijing, an ATP 500 event, and as the top player left in the draw looks poised to take the Beijing title and become hot favourite at Shanghai – Nadal in fact has an unbeaten streak for events in Shanghai (including his Olympic Gold last year).

Del Potro suffered a slightly embarrassing first round loss at the ATP 500 in Tokyo, not a good return to the game after your first Grand Slam win, hopefully he’ll be back on form for Shanghai, give Nadal someone to be afraid of – after all Del Potro eliminated Nadal at both Montreal and the US Open this year – albeit an injured Nadal.

Last of all for now there is the matter of the Tour finals, Federer, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic and Del Potro have all qualified, but there are still three more spots left in the draw. It rather looks like Andy Roddick will be taking the 6th spot due to his >1000 point cushion over the rest of the field below him in the rankings, but the guys sitting from 7 to around 12 in the rankings are packed pretty tightly together, and the 1500 points available in Tokyo/Beijing and Shanghai could be crucial to those guys.

Of course there may be additional spots available if either or both of Federer and Murray are unfit to play – Federer will probably be fine, he just needs rest, Murray on the other hand has a fucked up wrist which leaves a question mark hovering over whether it’ll be healed in time – fingers crossed. Murray had an impressive run at the finals last year winning all 3 of his round-robin matches (including against Federer) before being ousted in the Semis – hopefully this year he can make the final.

freedoms_stain, Tennis’d out, out.