So anyway,

So thats Day One of E3 2011 over and done with, I sat through the Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft conferences whilst they were broadcast live, then this morning I watched the Sony conference as I wasn’t staying up any later than I already had, I’m getting too old for that!

Microsoft have had the weakest E3 from what we’ve seen so far, they didn’t have any new hardware to show off, so their show became about the games and services they will be bringing to their XBox 360 over the next 18 months and really, it was all a little flat. For non-Kinect loving gamers there was very little to get excited about, Gears 3 looked like a safe bet, Ghost Recon Future Soldier looked good, Forza 4 was always a must have for me personally, Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary wasn’t really a surprise and didn’t look as well developed as I would have hoped, Tomb Raider looks pretty good although I think somebody was playing with Keeley Hawes’ naughty parts whilst she was recording for the role of Lara, Modern Warfare 3 is Modern Warfare 3 and there were some continuity errors (in my opinion) in the Halo 4 reveal.

Interesting implementations to the 360′s dashboard include YouTube, Bing search and live TV, although it remains to be seen how usable these are. They’ve already missed the boat somewhat by having a very limited Last.FM, Twitter and Facebook service available (all of which should be accessible through your guide button, in-game, in my opinion), and I can see the YouTube functionality being the same sort of deal as the services already offered, Bing only appears to work with Kinect and there’s no further details on the live TV stuff although Sky was mentioned in passing and I imagine that UK XBox 360 customers will have to have a Sky subscription to take advantage of that particular service from Microsoft much as you already do to watch sports on your XBox 360 despite the US having free access to ESPN.

The rest of the show was all about Kinect, and whilst there were some interesting things, such as the ability to scan yourself in and make your Avatar a true representation of the real you, and what appeared to be finger gesture recognition, it all looked rather gimmicky and tacked on whilst the games themselves looked like Eyetoy products with better graphcis, really wasn’t impressed. I have no issue with Microsoft pushing Kinect, nor with people buying it, there’s a few games on it and coming out for it that I’d buy because my daughter would enjoy them, but to turn up at E3 and show off so much stuff thats not for the kind of people who pay attention to the conference is really kind of suicidal on Microsofts part.

Next up was EA, and they really did get the ball running with a number of great looking games, almost all of which were known about. The additions to this years FIFA looked incredibly promising, with Social Networking options across all formats and versions of the game plus a bunch of engine additions that add depth and realism to match engines that could really make FIFA even more enjoyable to play. Mass Effect 3 looked as amazing as you’d expect considering the other two games in the series, the one everyone was waiting for, Battlefield 3, looked great graphically (they were running the PC version and deliberately showed someone using a mouse and keyboard playing the game to point that out) but I felt underwhelmed by the choice of level they chose to demonstrate the game. There’s no denying it showed the sheer size of the maps that will be offered up and it got to show off some great particle effects as the player controlled a tank, but other than that there was nothing to really wow the audience although that didn’t stop the customary whooping and hollering. The biggest surprise from EA was to unveil that Insomniac Games are working on a multiplatform title for them, and in my opinion, it looks like it could be quite good. It’s called Overstrike, and from what I can gather, its a arcadey squad-based shooter, probably with a large focus on co-op. EA’s conference was probably the best overall for the opening day, but it all felt a little safe really.

Ubisoft however was all over the place, I’m really not sure what impression I got from “Mr. Caffeine” the over excitable host of the French publishers show, but he did his job well and there was some games that I am looking forward to playing, most notably Rayman Origins which looks absolutely delightful and is something that has kind of been missing from this generation for those that have ignored Nintendo’s output for the “core” market. A game based on the TinTin license was announced, and during the build up to showing the game Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson spoke about the product, whilst they were doing so there was alot of concept art shown and I was getting excited at the idea of something that looked a little like the cartoons I watched as a kid, possibly 2D like Rayman Origins and even had it suggested to me that something like the original Prince of Persia games could suit the feel of TinTin perfectly, what we got however was 3D/2.5D visuals and whilst it looked good enough, I felt underwhelmed by the final appearance of the product and felt Ubisoft had missed a trick by taking this route for the game. We saw more of Ghost Recon, and whilst it looked good, I was hoping we’d get a new Rainbow Six. A new Brothers In Arms was confirmed, although its nothing like the series used to be and felt a little like Inglorious Basterds meets Team Fortress 2. Far Cry 3 looked absolutely stunning, its now back in the jungle and there was some absolutely amazing water effects going on, most notably when the lead character walks through a waterfall and through the mist being thrown up by the water he spots a guard. Uising the mist as cover he manages to take the guard out without being detected, I really enjoyed that bit and hope to see the environment being used even more throughout the game. Trackmania 2 made a small appearance and I can’t wait to play that as I do love Tracmania. Then we were shown two “casual” games in the shape of a new Raving Rabbids title which uses Kinect and Just Dance 3, again not my kind of thing, but at least Ubisoft managed to limit themselves to only brief showings of these titles.

Most people were waiting for the big showing of the new Assassins Creed, which to be honest, looked as good as Assassins Creed always does when you watch someone else play it, but I always feel dissapointed when I actually get to have a go so I’m not really interested in that, however, I wouldn’t mind seeing a full release of the Another World inspired version of Assassins Creed they used to introduce the game, that looked pretty damn cool in my opinion, as did most of the other “Retro” versions of the games Ubisoft announced.

Last, but not least (that award goes to Microsofts conference), was Sony, showing at 1am GMT. After brief introductions to the PlayStation brand and Sony’s vision,  a playthrough of a pre-Alpha build of Killzone 3. Now I’ve not played a Killzone game since the first one, not having a PS3, but Killzone 3 looks like it could be pretty entertaining as far as modern console first-person shooters go. Obviously we’re well aware the colour pallette is very, very grey, thats something thats really not worth complaining about (although that won’t stop some people), but the lighting was rather impressive and it looked and felt alot less scripted than the Modern Warfare 3 playthrough and more exciting than the Battlefield 3 playthrough, if anything Sony chose the right stuff to show off as explosions and gun fire were going off left right and centre with plenty of events happening both in the foreground and in the distance of the players view. Sony’s focus for PS3 gaming appears to be to push 3D gaming, first party titles like Killzone 3 and Motorstorm Apocalypse have been developed for 3D TV’s whilst Gran Turismo 5 will have a 3D patch applied to it, third party titles will also receive the 3D treatment. Obviously, the 3D stuff is entirely optional, but I’m still not sold on the concept of 3D in general and can’t really see how it can add to a gameplay experience, but its another thing that Sony can stick on the box to their products as a selling point and it’ll bring some customers in who are interested in the technology I suppose. Two new collections will be available on PS3 in September and playable in 3D, these collections are Team Ico Collection (ICO and Shadow of the Colossus) and God of War Origins (both the PSP God of War titles).

PS3 will be getting exclusive content for a number of games, including the third Saints Row game, Bioshock Infinite will include the original game on the disc, an exclusive Star Trek game is in development to tie in with JJ Abrams second movie release. Now, I must say, it took a while to find the conference being shown in one piece, so things are a little muddled up. Being removed from the PlayStation console brand for so long (aside from my PSP) has meant I’ve missed out on the love that Uncharted has received. But watching the footage of Uncharted 3 I really can appreciate why people like it, it looks like everything that the software on the original PlayStation, and to some extent the PS2, was building up towards, in that it seems to have all the best elements of games such as Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid and Syphon Filter. Rest assured that when I do eventually get around to owning Sony’s current home console, I’ll be playing these games. In fact, the footage shown, of Drake escaping from a ship of some description (I assume its a Tanker, they’re always Tankers) reminds me of the original E3 trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2 when it showed Snake escaping from the Tanker (a part that wasn’t including in the final cut of the game). As for Resistance 3, I’m not sure how much its needed, there seems to be an air of indifference to the series in general and it feels like Sony’s focus is divided between that and Killzone even though they’re by seperate developers.

An interesting development is a PlayStation branded 3D TV, available for $499, that enables you to play multiplayer split-screen without actually splitting the display, instead it uses the 3D technology to broadcast two images, one for each player. Dust: 514 sounds interesting, its a tie-in to EVE Online, but I’m not entirely sure what it is. Gameplay footage shows it to be an FPS, but its links to EVE could suggest something a little deeper than that.

The thing we’ve all be waiting to see properly though is Sony’s new handheld, the NGP or as its been renamed Vita, we know what the hardware has and it looks bloody promising, and indeed exciting for someone such as myself who happens to be a big fan of the current PSP. Interestingly, the Vita has something that the PS3 doesn’t currently have, and that is party chat that can be used in or out of a game. Seeing the thing running Uncharted Golden Abyss is truly impressive and by giving the player the option of using standard controls or using the combination of the dual touch pads and sixaxis system everyone can play the game in whichever way they choose. One game on Vita that looks really interesting is Ruin, a dungeon crawler/Dungeon Keeper-clone type affair that challenges you to build and defend a dungeon against a multiplayer opponent or attack one created by someone else. Ruin can be played on the Vita or even on PS3 using cloud gaming and saving. Other Vita games shown were Mod Nation Racers and LittleBigPlanet, Wipeout 2048. LittleBigPlanet is the star of the show really, it looks as charming as ever, and now even more inventive than the previous versions, I’ll definetly be interested to see what its community can get out of it! Vita will launch this Autumn, the wi-fi only model will retail for 249Euros whilst the 3G & Wi-Fi will retail for 299Euros.

Preceding all of this, Jack Tretton launched a lengthy apology aimed at everybody from editors of websites through retaillers, developers and publishers, to the consumers. It was a nice touch, but I think with the Welcome Back pack and everything thats happened since the PlayStation Network was hacked, Sony have apologised enough, but thats my opinion, obviously some will never forgive or forget.

Sorry, what “core” gamers? You mean like “hardcore” or is this another element of pigeon holing? It’s not the first time we’ve heard Nintendo say this, they used the phrase at last years E3 and if memory serves me correctly, they also used it at the previous one. They’ve used the term to announce titles such as Sin & Punishment 2, and yet the belief is that somehow the Wii (and DS) are for “casual” gamers, I’m not entirely sure where that comes from, was the Ps2 deemed as such because it had so much shovelware? No, it wasn’t. So why the Wii and DS? Because the presumably have a lack of “core/hardcore” games, no the reason is because those consoles lack a certain amount of games that are currently being hoovered up by the masses, those being online multiplayer based first person shooters. The best titles to own on Nintendo platforms are generally the same sorts of games that have generally always been the best sorts of games to own on Nintendo platforms, namely those designed and developed by Nintendo, with a few exceptions from the likes of Capcom and more recently the madness of a genius like Suda51.

How are games like Super Mario Galaxy/Mario Galaxy 2, Mario Kart Wii, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Monster Hunter Tri, Donkey Kong Country Returns, No More Heroes, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and the aforementioned Sin & Punishment 2 any less “hardcore” than Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo: Reach, Mass Effect or my personal current addictions, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together or Frozen Synapse? They’re really not, admittedly most of them aren’t far off what we were playing last generation and in some cases the generation before that, but most of the games I listed that were regarded as “core” titles are very similar to games that PC games (and console gamers for that matter) have also been playing for years.

What about on the other side of the coin, why is the Wii considered Casual for having Just Dance, when the XBox 360 has Dance Central and Sony have been producing games in the Sing It series since the middle of the PlayStation 2′s lifespan? Why is it okay for “core” gamers to accept and adore Rock Band but not accept any of those titles? It’s hypocrisy really, bought on by a need to feel better than somebody else or belong to a certain group of people and is fueled by marketing types that are pretty much telling you how you should behave if you want to belong to a certain group.

Maybe its the fact I’m turning 27 that makes me feel like this, maybe its that because I’ve grown up with videogames I feel comfortable with them being a part of my life and am happy to see people playing a wide variety of games on various platforms. Prior to the two of us coming together, my fiance dabbled in whatever games came her way, be it platformers bought for her brother on their PlayStation or sinking hours into The Sims, she had cravings for Zelda: Majora’s Mask from what she’s told me, but the pricing of Nintendo’s cartridges at the time meant she never got to play it.

Why don’t we try and pigeonhole her? She’s a big fan of Fantasy based Western RPG’s like Oblivion, Dragon Age and Lord of the Rings Online, to name only 3, she had a mild addiction to playing Rainbow Six (Black Arrow on the original XBox and Vegas 1 on the 360) but she also finds alot of enjoyment in what has been deemed “casual” titles like Farmville (she enjoyed it enough that she talked me into starting a farm to help her out and I must admit for a while I enjoyed it, but soon grew bored of doing the same thing all the time, as did she). In short, most people look at something and immediately think its not for them because it doesn’t really fit in with things they’ve already established is to their liking, they’ll take a risk from time to time, but only if someone they know has somehow deemed it okay to do so, i.e. its a security thing amongst their peers/community.

Fuck that, embrace all you see, try it once, it won’t hurt. I used to be almost afraid of food, I stuck to frozen products that I already knew I liked because I’d always eaten them. Frozen pizza, frozen pork sausages (only pork), frozen joints of meat etc, obviously I cooked them. As I became more comfortable with myself (and I genuinely think moving away from my home town may have helped with that) I started to experiment more, now if I go to Subway I ask for olives and peppers if I have a Steak and Cheese sub, it may not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to me. In our food cupboards we have jars full of pulses that we soak (not the jars, the pulses… duh) and mix in with foods, nothing beats adding chick pea’s to a curry or lentils to a pot roast! If I can help it, I’ll cook with Scotch Bonnet Peppers, Ginger, Lime or various other things which add flavours and scents to my food.

And I’m the same with my media consumption, something like Frozen Synapse would have probably passed me by completely if I’d only gotten properly into videogames with this generation, although obviously I can’t say that for definate. But what I’m really trying to say is that we limit what we expose ourselves too much (and by that I’m not encouraging anyone to go outside and expose themselves publicly, thats illegal) and its about time we shed labels and just enjoyed what people are trying to offer us!

Lewis Hamilton\’s 2011 Monaco Grand Prix post-race interview

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. Hamilton was clearly making a joke out of things, at least on the surface anyway, but oen does have to question if part of him believes that he is being singled out because he is black, especially after events in Spain a few years back. If this is the case, and only he can answer that, then he only has to take a look around the rest of the grid at examples as to why that belief is wrong. On the grid this year are a Japanese driver (Kobayashi) and an Indian driver (Karthikeyan). Kobayashi has been “investigated” by the Stewards as often as Hamilton has this season, what is his response? “It’s just one of those things that happens when you push” or something to that effect, he could easily bring up his minority status. Likewise, Karthikeyan could blame his lack of good drives (he last drove for Jordan when they pretty much had no money and were waiting for a take over bid) on his race, especially as there’s only ever been one other Indian F1 driver, that being Karun Chandhock who raced for the same team that currently employs Karthikeyan now, he lost his drive to someone who could bring more sponsorship money to the table (first Sakon Yamamoto then later Christian Klien, whilst Bruno Senna kept his seat despite finishing far less often than Karun). With the FIA (and in particular Bernie Ecclestone) seemingly desperate to break F1 into new markets around the world, a claim of racism from one of their top drivers, even in jest, is incredibly damaging to the sport, not only that its disrespectful towards pretty much every single black motorsports competitor and enthusiast out there.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, the biggest talking point for me is his comments about his passes (or attempts) on Massa and Maldonado, whom he pretty much declares stupid.

First up is the shunt on Massa, which saw Hamilton receive a drive-through penalty. For those that don’t follow the sport, this means that he has to drive through the pit-lane without stopping for fresh tyres, essentially adding 20 seconds onto his lap time. Anyway, as he approached the Loew hairpin he dived to the inside of Massa’s Ferrari, Massa turned in early but its unclear as to whether he was covering Lewis or moving out of the back of Webber. Even so, three cars, essentially side by side, into Loew do not go, Massa was left with no where to go and found Lewis in his side pods and his front wing hitting Webbers left rear, to me it was all a bit clumsy for both Massa and Hamilton (with Webber being mostly unaffected), and essentially a racing incident and whilst I agree with Hamilton that punishment was unfair, I do think he shouldn’t of been there, at that exact moment and that to blame Massa for the incident is overlooking his own inadequacies, those being that whilst he’s great at do or die overtaking maneouvre’s, he never feels he’s at fault when they back fire, essentially he seems to be of the mind set that everyone should move out of his way.

This is a personality trait he shares with one of the greats, that being Ayrton Senna, but what Hamilton appears to fail to realise is that Senna got himself into alot of trouble for such maneouvres too, and was often punished (although admittedly he was also unfairly treated by the then President of the FIA who favoured fellow Frenchman Alain Prost). Hamilton’s driving stylre is why he’s loved by so many, and why he’s so entertaining to watch, but he has to realise that driving in such a manner comes with its own set of issues, so whilst someone like Button will always have trouble passing his opponent on the circuit, someone like Hamilton risks ruining his own race, or worse somebody elses as he did with Maldonado.

Maldonado is the guy I feel for most in all of this. He’s come into F1 with having the reputation that he’s only in the Williams because of sponsorship money and that he unfairly displaced Hulkenberg, and I understand that view, but pretty much all season he appears to out performed his team-mate Rubens Barrichello (who’s spent most of the season bitching about his Williams) and in my eyes has shown that he’s deserving of his seat at the struggling team. He was well into the points by the time Hamilton tried a rather risky move to overtake which went wrong and saw Hamilton end the Colombian’s race with only a few laps remaining, Hamilton was quite rightly punished for the move (although he blames Maldonado for something or other) and given a 20 second time penalty after the race.

So coming back to Hamilton’s comments about the proposed intelligence of his fellow competitors, its difficult to take anything away from that other than arrogance and disrepesct towards the other drivers on the grid, something that won’t make him particularly popular in the paddock. In the Massa incident, he shares equal blame, maybe more as he was the only one who could have backed out from it, in the case of the Maldonado crash, he has to accept that he is the one to blame, he rushed in, desperate to make up another position after an absolutely dismal weekend where very little went right for him and it backfired to some degree.

Elsewhere in the race, I personally think we were denied an absolute classic finale because of the FIA’s rulings. After the crash involving Alguersuari, Petrov and Sutil (which also involved Hamilton to some degree, but he was merely a passenger), the race was stopped and the drivers made their way to the start finish straigtht. Fine, I think everyone was happy at the prospect of another 6 laps. However, by allowing the teams to work on the cars (replacing the damaged rear wing on Hamilton’s car after a Torro Rosso shunted him in the incident that stopped the race in the first place, and everyone putting on fresh tyres) we were denied the action that had been unfolding prior to the event being stopped, that being Vettel beginning to show signs of struggling on the tyres he’d had on since lap 19 with Alonso right on his tail with tyres that were 25 laps younger and then Button on his tail with even fresher tyres.

By 1. stopping the race (which couldn’t be avoided as Petrov was in the car for a prolonged period of time) and 2. allowing the teams to repair damaged cars and replace damaged tyres and then re-starting under the safety car the end to the race essentially became a procession. Okay we had the Hamilton-Maldonado incident and Webber managed to snatch fourth from Kobayashi, but we didn’t get to see Vettel potentially put on a dislay akin to Ayrton Senna at the same circuit in 1992 when he managed to hold Nigel Mansell off . Or a couple of other potential incidents such as Alonso/Button taking the lead through differing circumstances, after all, six or seven laps in any motorsport, especially at the end of the race, could result in absolutely anything happening. As it happened, the FIA’s regulations practically handed the win to Vettel.

First off, I used to kind of enjoy Tim Rogers when back in the first few years at GamesTM, I quickly developed the feeling that he was a little too self absorbed for my liking. Now I understand as a columnist/videogames blogger, you kind of have to be, but I get the impression that Rogers enjoys writing in such a manner a little too much. I’ll admit its tongue in cheek, but does such an article need to reference himself and his supposed connection to the games industry quite so much?

By doing so, he begins to lose the reader not to mention losing sight of his point, which appears to be that Square-Enix (formerly Squaresoft) have lost sight of whats made them succesful and also refuse to listen to their fanbase. So what does he believe made them succesful? “accidents”, or as the case actually is, taking a risk. Thats the basis of all initial success, no one got initial success by being safe, but you can’t take risks all the time, you have to realise your strengths and play to that. Something that Square-Enix have tried to do, although for such an extended period of time with very little experimentation and risk taking that its begun to grate.

Let’s not forget, the game he’s slating the most in the linked article, Final Fantasy XIII, managed to achieve “XBox Classics” status, at least it did in the European PAL territory anyway, the brand still sells. I own a copy, as I do most Final Fantasy games, I own at least one version of each of the main instalments in the series aside from III (I did own the DS remake, it got stolen) and V, oh and XI but I don’t really count that as a main game, it carries the roman numeral because at the time Square-Enix weren’t really experimenting with different idea’s carrying the Final Fantasy suffix really.

Final Fantasy XIII is really, the first time the fans have turned on the company for not trying something different. Lets not forget that the core gameplay of the series remained unchanged for a long long time, the battle system was essentially the same until XII, with a few tweaks here and there to make the game force you into a different tactical approach in order to make another 80 hour epic actually playable, thus we got different idea’s such as the Materia system in Final Fantasy VII and the Junctioning system in VIII. They then experimented with different story telling methods, such as IX’s Active Time Events which took you to little side stories that helped flesh out the bigger story or provided short moments of amusement. XII shook things up completely. But the thing that made these games enjoyable was their want for you to explore, for you to be immersed in the Fantasy.

In my opinion, the change to acted cut-scenes in X was the beginning of the end in this respect, by removing the simple action of press X in order to advance conversation and removing the voice from the players mind (and Tidus’ voice still makes me shudder) that element of immersion was removed, it was only a small thing, some might say insignificant, but by telling me that the characters acted and sounded like this, the element of this being my Fantasy tale was taken away from me. XII rectified this a little, it was still cut-scene and voice acter heavy, but the world was so hugely populated that it was somehow more immersive.

XIII however, with its linear and overtly long introductory sequence with its insistant need to hold your hand and stop the action to tell you whats happening every few moments makes the game more of a viewing experience rather than an interactive. I’ve honestly not gotten very far into it, certainly not through this section, I’m on disc 2 and about 16 hours in but it takes alot of wanting for me to even try and progress through it, counter that with my Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection save file, 18 hours in (in a much shorter period of time, and on a handheld where I’m also juggling Tactics Ogre: Lets Us Cling Together;22 hours in) where I usually have the battery begin to run out on me before I stop playing and you can probably guess how much I’m enjoying the overall experience.

Which is a shame, as I think the battle system is probably the most tactical and impressive yet, it feels like Atlus’ Persona battle system, only a little more advance and more reliant on pre-planning rather and having various back up plans rather than just reacting to any given situation by immediately contacting your external support to find out the enemies weakness (and thats not a criticsm of Persona in anyway, long time readers of anything I’ve written or whatever will know I adore Persona 3).

I think this is beginning to get a little long now, its certainly beginning to head away from my original feelings that whilst I agree that Square-Enix have lost sight of what initially made them succesful, I do think that a return to that kind of business is nigh on impossible for a company of their size. They need to find a balance between releasing safe games, of which I think Final Fantasy XIII is one regardless of the ridiculous amounts of assetts that were created during its development period, and taking risks with other titles (Dissidia perhaps) and then somehow combining the two to make their safer titles that little bit more interesting for the player so that we all keep investing in their products to  see just what they are going to do next, we can all say we want Final Fantasy VII remade all we want, and it’ll probably happen eventually, but as soon as it does, people will bitch that all it is is a remake of a game originally released in the mid-90s thats not actually aged all that well.

I’m also reluctant to discuss events in Japan right now, luckily I don’t really know anybody out there, but the whole thing is incredibly saddening and it looks as if the country cannot catch a break at the moment with constant Quakes (they’re predicting another big one within the next 3 days) the tidal waves, the issues with the nuclear power stations and Volcano’s seemingly waking up. Its highly ridiculous and a god fearing person would probably question if Japan has done something to anger a particular deity, I’m not a god fearing person, I’m not even sure I’m a god believing person, but I do find the sheer destruction that this Earth can produce staggeringly frightening and awe inspiring both at the same time.

I also find the idiocy we Humans can spiel to be staggeringly frightening, but never awe inspiring. Case in point the disgusting comments in some quarters that these events are some kind of retribution for an attack (from a forced hand…) some 60 odd years ago, conveniently forgetting the “victims” actions pre and post that particular event. The broadcasting also depresses me, I do want to know whats going on, and I find the whole thing surrounding the nuclear power stations infinitely intriguing, but I’m at pains to read or watch anything because of the sheer amount of scare mongering being distributed by the press at this point in time. I find it highly ridiculous to be honest, we know what a Nuclear explosion can do, but none of these sources seems to factor in the differences between something like Chernobyl and whats happening in Japan right now. They’re treating the two reactors and the situations surrounding them as one and the same which is incredibly discrediting to the Japanese not to mention illogical and mildly insulting to anybody with even the slightest knowledge of what happened in the Ukraine 25 years ago.

The Nuclear situation in Japan obviously has the potential to be devastating, but lets not get carried away here. From the very moment things weren’t quite right, the Japanese have acted sensibly and lessons learned from Chernobyl have thus far been applied. Theres been no huge cover up, enough information has been released to keep everyone informed without causing widespread panic. But lets just see how this pans out shall we? The “explosion” we’ve seen thus far was apparently a release of pressure caused by the steam turbine not being able to vent properly and not, as many people seem to assume, the reactor itself exploding. The power station shut down immediately after the earthquake happened and hasn’t been burning away, releasing nuclear poisons into the air like at Chernobyl, and the scientists and government moved immediately to ease and repair the situation instead of trying to hide it for three days like the USSR did.

Of course, that may be because of the sheer amount of news coverage we are exposed to on a daily basis now. After all its pretty hard to hide anything such as that now, but we can’t tar the Japanese with the same brush as the USSR government and its military just because the world is a different place now.

Anyway, I did say I wasn’t going to discuss it for now, but, well I’ve gone and done that haven’t I?

I send all of my hope to those in Japan who are currently suffering from the consequences of a Natural Disaster, and to those who have friends and family who happen to be there.

We have a team of players that we’re told, and indeed can see, have bags of potential, but all it ever remains is potential and its hard to put a finger on why that is.

In less than a fortnight we’ve lost a cup final, been utterly shown up in Europe and then been knocked out of the FA Cup because we lack any forward momentum. I genuinely believe, with some proper penetration and a focused attack on the United goal today would have seen us score.  But as we’ve seen far too often this season, unless the box is pretty much empty, we don’t take a chance on goal.

Credit to United, they weathered our possession and beat us on the counter, exactly the same methods we used when last succesful.

I can’t be the only one out there who thinks Arsenal aren’t a “beautiful” team to watch. It hurts to say such a thing about the club I love but when all of your play involves static passing and no real movement, or as I’ve already said, penetration through the oppositions defence, thats not really entertaining football, its a training regime.

Theres just so many reasons why we muddle along, injuries are one, and I don’t think thats just because of rough playing teams, there is something genuinely wrong with the bodies of players wearing Arsenal shirts. Van Persie, our key attacking player, is actually made from incredibly cheap glass, he makes Darren Anderton look the epitome of human fitness, how can you rely on a player like that?

Another aspect is our players, some just don’t seem to be at the standard required or just not pulling their weight. Diaby shines hot and cold, most often cold, Denilson can’t pass the ball forwards, can’t tackle and can’t track back, he’s easily muscled off the ball. He’s not a holding midfielder, he’s not an attacking midfielder, hes just a midfielder who really doesn’t offer anything except a name on the team sheet. Rosicky used to be an excellent player, nicknamed Little Mozart, he offered trickery, passion, a plethora of passes and absolutely loved taking a chance at goal whenever he saw it, all of that appears to be missing from his game which is incredibly sad to see.

Other players are just frustrating, Arshavin being the key figure amongst them. But for me the most frustrating element has to be our lack of diversity in our play. We only play one way, if it doesn’t work, we continue doing that until the whistle blows at full time, even the introduction of substitutes makes no difference. Ignoring Nicklas Bendtner’s ego, and I admit it is pretty highly ridiculous,  but he is not the same kind of player as Robin van Persie, and nor is Marouanne Chamakh, so what is the point of playing a style of game that is suited to the non-walking Dutchmen?

Likewise, whats the point in keep trying to pass the ball around the box if none of your players take shots from that range, or move from their positions in an attempt to make space. Arsenal fans frequently complain about teams parking the bus,  so to speak, but we make them park the bus, we don’t try and force them to chase the ball or their man in an attempt to unlock a defense, we pass and hope rather than pass and move. We also try and thread the ball through all of the time, rather than trying to take the ball wide and around a defence.

In short, we’re predictable and Arsene Wenger seems to be making no effort to change that, and whilst that applies, we’ll always remain on the edge of winning something but never actually achieving it.

With the finale of the previous season pretty fresh in my mind, I sat down with a bowl of Chilli Beef Ramen to watch the first episode of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig this lunchtime.

To start of with, the previous opening titles had to grow on me, I wasn’t too sure about the music and I certainly didn’t like the CGI footage, the latter is still something I’m not keen on, it feels at odds with the rest of the show (even though the rest of the show features a fair bit of CGI, its not as cheap looking or ham-fisted as the intro sequence). The title track, Inner Universe, really grew on me by the end of the series and did its job of making me prepared for each episode exactly as it should.

The new intro though, I feel absolutely nothing for, I can’t put my finger on it as I don’t dislike it, but don’t like it either. I’m glad its animated now (well, mostly, the Tachikoma’s certainly looked CGI) and theres alot more focus on the whole of Section 9, but I dunno, maybe my opinion will be swayed one way or the other as the series progresses, I certainly think the tone and mood of the 1st Gig’s plotlines helped me enjoy that particular intro more.

As for the episode itself. I’m already impressed with the amount of screen time Ishikawa seemed to get, and there’s an extra element to Togusa’s personality which makes me feel he’s not entirely completely comfortable with Section 9 anymore, probably due to the way he was treated in the time period between the unit being closed down and re-opened again at the end of the 1st Gig.

This makes me very happy indeed, I wanted some fleshing out of some of the other characters, particularly Togusa (probably because I’m a family man myself and we don’t see enough of them in anime which seems to be heavily focused on teenagers most of the time) and Ishikawa (although the only reason I have for wanting more of this guy is because I think he looks badass).

We’ve already been introduced to what I think will be a major returning group within the series, The Individual Eleven, whom are made out to be a terrorist cell in this first episode but beyond that we don’t know anymore, which is great, I like it when we’re drip fed information. Far too often a series will spill alot of detail all at once about the “enemy”, sometimes they keep all their cards close to their chest till the end and it can feel like they’ve released this information at such a late point because they didn’t know where they were going with the individuals or group involved. Based on the whole Laughing Man case from last term, I can see the creators giving us the right amount of correct and incorrect information as the series progresses, although I hope they get the mix of core plot and side plot episodes better alligned this time around.

16 hours isn’t really a lot of time for most RPG’s, but by then, you’ve got the general gist of whats available to the player. You know the battle system, you know most of the characters and you know how the game works at its most basic level and have begun learning the intricacies that will give you an advantage throughout the rest of the game.

I’ve probably mentioned that I’m playing Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together on the PSP, for those that don’t know what that is, it’s a Final Fantasy Tactics/Disgaea style game, and it’s absolutely divine. Every single aspect of the game, from its visuals, to its script and the technical side of its battle and class systems are an absolute joy to experience, put it this way, it’s a definite contender for my Game of the Year already.

Enough of that though, my point here is that today I discovered yet another layer on this Tactics Ogre onion. You see, Square Enix aren’t just happy to provide a deep and enriching class system and character ability customisation menu’s, plus a plotline that has multiple branching points and optional additional characters. They’ve also decided to hide away complete sections of optional routes for the player to take.

I only discovered this today, and I’ve not even been able to look through to try to find it for myself, but thanks to a certain individual on an internet forum I frequent, whom probably doesn’t even read this, I’ve found out that deep within the Warren Report (a sort of Bibliography of everything in the game, plus additional text documents that add to the lore of the world) you can unlock optional sections on the map to go and battle through.

What an amazing development idea, often these text heavy encyclopedia’s of the games world are overlooked by the player, unless that player is truly a fan of the game or the series it belongs to, but by hiding such a thing away, probably knowing that it would spread around internet forums and blogs, the development team are rewarding the player for spending hours reading and researching this richly developed world (and honestly, its absolutely stunning in its detail, each of the characters is truly believable and the story comes across as much more mature than anything I ever recall playing) with extra segments of gameplay that will no doubt help make later sections of the game a little easier as your classes will take on extra experience and skill points enabling you to develop your squad further making you much stronger in battle.

Brilliant.

So I’ve got an odd blog today, all concerning my games collection. You see I don’t really know what is the best manner to keep it stored, its fairly sizeable and scattered through various places throughout the house. The main bulk is obviously in our lounge area, we bought a filing cabinet years ago when the local Littlewoods was closing down and selling everything off, the taxi fare to get it home was actually more expensive. One draw is for important stuff like bills etc, but the rest is taken up by games. This is a full-on, shoulder height, metal filing cabinet, the kind you see in offices up and down the country, its an absolute eye-sore sitting in the corner of our living room, but its doing a fairly important job. However, thats not the entire collection of games, its not even every game in the living room, one of our DVD shelves is taken up by games, the shelf area under my desk is full to bursting and I also bought a DVD rack to host some more. DS games are piled on the floor down the side of the TV.

Not only that but all of my original XBox games and PSP are living in the bedroom, and all my cartridge based media is in the loft. In short, with all our CD’s, DVD’s, books and comics, our house looks a bit like an independant record store down some dingy side-alley. I’m not really that bothered by it, its mostly tidy and if anybody struggles to accept these things are part of our lives, then they don’t really accept us/me.

The great thing is any body who visits, and whom I trust, can cherry pick a game from roughly two decades of software, and I’m sure I’m not the only gamer out there who has such a collection, in fact I know for definite that I’m not, my collection just doesn’t tend to have as much OCD-esque attention to how its kept like some people I’ve seen, and thats not even getting onto those who only collect sealed games and refuse to open them, that one gets me pretty wound up and I may have to cover that another time.

Today’s blog is discussing Arsenal, in particular the possible aftermath of tonights game against Barcelona. Now I’d absolutely love us to win tonight, why wouldn’t I? and we have a bloody great chance to do so. But even if we don’t, hell even if we finish the season trophyless, I’d still call this season a success, in an odd sort of way.

Why? Well, losing to Barcelona is really nothing to be ashamed of, nor was the League Cup final loss to Birmingham. The manner in which we did lose wasn’t particularly brilliant, but Birmingham also played out of their skins, lets not forget that. We’ve also been on Manchester United’s tails all season long and all of this has been achieved under the cloud of uncertainty of the future of our captain, injuries all over the place (admittedly a regular thing at Arsenal) and some players that don’t really seem to be pulling their weight or haven’t developed enough.

Not only are we in a strong position in the league, have reached our first final since 2006 and have shown that we can beat Barcelona. But we have seen the emergence of Jack Wilshere as a young player who has really put his name down for serious consideration for a starting spot each and every game. Arsenal fans have known about the lad for a while now, but its great to see that hype and belief turn into something real. We’ve also seen Samir Nasri step up this season, he’s admitted in the past that consistency is his major problem and he appears to be addressing that, and whilst our defence still has some issues it looks to be more of a training and habit kind of fix rather than personel now that we have a promising looking, mostly reliable keeper in Szczesny, plus a choice of three centre-backs who can all do a proper job in the shapes of Djourou, Koscielny and Vermaelen (once the latter’s ligament issues are sorted out that is).

I do think we need to make some more additions and offload some weight. Song remains my favourite player at Arsenal but we do need someone to compete with him for that spot in the team (I’m not one for “backups” I prefer to see two good players compete for a spot), Diaby has shown he can’t remain fit enough or keep his head in shape long enough to challenge for that spot properly and Denilson seems to have stopped offering the team anything other than sideways passes this season. Rosicky also seems to offer very little in the position Wenger likes to play him in, still, I wouldn’t mind him being dropped back to a DM role as he likes to get stuck in a bit and offers a bit of maturity and experience at all levels.

We also seem to really struggle without Van Persie, Bendtner and Chamakh aren’t natural strikers, they’re more like target men, so we don’t seem to be as incisive going forwards with either of those two on the pitch, and I think its maybe time Wenger took serious consideration to using Walcott as a striker rather than a winger.

I think with the squad that we have jumping into the transfer market head first isn’t strictly needed, although its always great to bring in somebody who’s proven themselves elsewhere, but I do think Wenger needs to look at some of the players we have at Arsenal, how he can best use them to our advantage and whether or not it would be better for them or us if they were moved on.