Killed in a Smiling Accident.

Twittermania seems to be sweeping the nation, both real and virtual; it’s in newspapers, on television and radio, even this “internet” thing, though I reckon that last one’s a passing fad. Of course there’s a backlash against anything receiving such attention (though with the speed of reaction these days, a phenomenon gaining mass notice and its accompanying backlash tend to arrive simultaneously, making it more of a sidelash I suppose), giving curmudgeons an excellent opportunity to rant about not caring what people had for breakfast. If you’re sick of the whole business already you might want to skip this post, but if you want to know what I had for breakfast then on with the Hegelian bermuda shorts and let’s surf the wave of Zeitgeist…

Actually I tend to skip breakfast, though I know I shouldn’t, and then have to spend most mornings fighting the temptation of a bacon roll. Anyway! Twitter. I first bumped into it a while back, with a couple of blogs having sidebars that contained the author’s Twitter feed, so I’d head off to their Twitter page and read some updates, then notice some messages (generally known as “tweets”, I believe, but I prefer “twits”) seemed to link to other people so I’d open that Twitter page, and it was all very confusing. Though Twitter itself asks “what are you doing?”, if all you do is respond appropriately a few times a day it actually would be the oft-mocked “what I had for breakfast” beast it can seem from the outside. No, the beauty of Twitter, as so much of this web-two-point-oh world, is in the interaction, so if you adopt my initial approach and just go and visit someone’s Twitter page, chances are a good chunk of it will appear to be utter gibberish, half a conversation at best. The syntax is fairly obvious, “@(username) Yes, but it’s better with jam!” is a reply to @(username), and depending on the precise clients of all involved you can then go to @(username)’s exact twit (if you’re lucky) or main Twitter page (if not so lucky, which you then have to scan to try and figure out what might go better with jam), but trying to follow conversations that way is like untangling a slinky.

What you really need to do is sign up to Twitter. I know, this may seem something of an obvious step, but I’m sure plenty of people are like me and just too apathetic to go to all the trouble of signing up to something (or manage an initial sign-up in a flurry of enthusiasm and profile updating, then never return and forget the password you used. And the username, after somebody had taken your first choice. And the e-mail address you gave to recover them. And indeed the URL of the whole site so you can’t go back there anyway.) Really, though, presuming you’ve been driven to Twitter because there’s someone there of interest to you, sign up and Follow them and anyone they’re talking to who seems interesting. Now you’ve got a Twitter feed that you can see on your own homepage, or via one of the plethora of specific clients available (I rather like TweetDeck, but there are at least six billion others, on every platform imaginable). This does a strange and magical thing: you’ll now only see twits you care about on this feed. Well, it would be strange and magical if Twitter somehow detected what you cared about, what actually happens is that you see messages from everybody you follow, but if somebody you *are* following sends a reply to somebody you *aren’t* following, you don’t see that. Instantly the half-conversations vanish!

It’s still worth browsing other people’s individual Twitter pages every now and then, as you might be missing out on fascinating (or indeed scandalous) conversations between people you’re following and people you aren’t, but chances are you’re not, and as you build up interesting Twitterers to follow you’ll probably make the odd update yourself (bowl of Shreddies this morning), or reply to their twits, and away you go.

I started out mostly following other game bloggers, and from them to others in the games industry, but with the recent wave of popularity more and more celebrities are beginning to Twit, leading to further curmudgeonliness on the cult of celebrity (“I don’t care what Jonathan Ross had for breakfast either!”) plus the suggestion that it’s just PR anyway. And for some it might be, but just as with all other Twitteristas if their twits don’t seem, or stop being, interesting, just don’t follow them. Call me a slavish follower of celebrity gossip, but I think it’s rather fun (in a borderline stalkerish way) to read Stephen Fry’s account of being stuck in a lift, followed by Graham Linehan parodying the event in almost-real time, then worrying he might have caused offence but Richard Herring telling him not to worry. Or Phil Jupitus causing Neil Innes to miss a train by misspelling “frittata”.

This is all totally personal, of course, your mileage may vary, you may approach Twitter in an entirely different way (I’m rambling quite enough without getting into re-tweets and direct messages and hashtags and twitter spam), the value of twits can go up as well as down, your followers are at risk if you do not keep up twittering etc. I imagine most people reading this will already have been Twitting away for months if not years anyway, but if you haven’t yet dipped a toe in the Twit-o-pool, why not give it a shot? If you’re desperately keen to follow me some other bugger got to “zoso” first so I’m zosoz, but I’d start with someone far more interesting if I were you.

PS: Fancied kedgeree but would take too long plus had no kippers. Went with toast instead (no jam).

Thanks to the efforts of a snowplough, a military surplus aerosan, a couple of Sno-Cats and a team of huskies, a courier finally managed to traverse the 20 miles of blinding white tundra to deliver my new graphics card, hurrah! After LotRO and some other games ran tolerably well on the old card I’d shoved in as a temporary measure, I almost had second thoughts and contemplated making do with that for a while ’til a full PC upgrade, but then firing up Grand Theft Auto IV (which I hadn’t even tried on the old card, just in case it melted and left me entirely graphic-less) it was perfectly happy to rack the resolution up to 1680×1050, so I’m much happier now (obviously that’s only with “Medium” texture quality, I believe “High” requires the as-yet rarely seen Cross-Octo-SLI-fire, where you run four HD4870X2s and four GTX295s in a single rig). Only question now is: Fallout 3 or GTAIV? (Or LotRO while Welcome Back Week is still on, or WAR?) (Or Guitar Hero?) Hmm. Spider Solitaire it is!

Cyberpunk 2020. A marvelous pen and paper role-playing game that I spent far too many of my cyberpunk fanboy years playing with friends.

Elevenish years from now is 2020.

It seems to me that the real world won’t look anything like the one portrayed in the RPG, Gibson’s Neuromancer or Stephenson’s Snow Crash in the archetypal year of all things cyber and punk.

Will our MMOs look vastly different from what they do today? Will they play differently? Will MMOs even exist in eleven years time?

We’ve had five years since World of Warcraft was released, think about what has changed in that time, how things have developed, adapted, evolved.

Anything significant?

Really?

Eleven years is not that far away. I have a feeling that the Metaverse won’t be waiting for us when we get there.

So what with hitting the level cap in World of Warcraft with my shaman and not feeling the Love of the Lich King enough to want to do the whole thing over again with my level seventy druid or paladin, I was left somewhat hanging by my fingertips from a small shrub atop the cliff of MMO ambivalence, a glance down past my dangling feet showed the jagged rocks of end-level reputation grind, around which was wrapped the angry endless repetitive wash of the Sea of Raids.

Luckily for me there were many hands on, uh, hand, to reach down to my precarious position and lift me up and back onto the enduring yet precarious path of MMO enthusiasm that we brave adventurers wend our way carefully along as we negotiate said cliff of MMO ambivalence; sometimes we step from the path and the sharp drop into ennui awaits, but there are always stalwart folk who can be relied upon to reach out to us and pull us free from our gloom, to once more tread the endless enjoyable path of MMO experience.

Such a time was this, and this time to mbp and Khan who encouraged me some time ago before I even realised I was veering from the path, and more recently to blog commenter unwise, I offer thanks for the encouragement to try Lord of the Rings Online again, because I’ve been following the path for a week or so now, and I’m very much enjoying its winding and meandering ups and downs.

Also thanks to Van Hemlock, Jon, Shuttler, Teppo and the others of that collective whose constant tweets, blog posts and podcast musings were as a siren song guiding me away from treacherous MMO time-sinks and towards safer terrain.

And also thanks to anyone whom I may have forgotten. And sorry. And hello, how have you been?

So that was, in my usual rambling way, an introduction to the fact that I have returned to Turbine’s take on Tolkien’s lands of legend, and that I have been enjoying it a great deal. Having a level twenty six dwarf Guardian and a level twenty four dwarf Minstrel I did, naturally, roll an entirely new character for my return to the middle of the earth! Wait, wrong adventure; a new character for my return to Middle Earth! Having rolled a couple of support classes previously, and having nobody to support in my surreptitious return to Lord of the Rings Online, I decided to roll a DPS class, specifically one that could a) do a little bit of many things, and b) shock horror, be a dwarf. The obvious choice, and what I plumped for fairly quickly, was the Champion, a class which can dual wield; use a bow, albeit for nothing more than pulling duty, or perhaps finishing off a running, low health straggler; wield two-handed weapons; wear heavy armour and use heavy shields and thus, at a push, off-tank in groups. In short, they can do a little bit of everything, but one thing they do very well is damage. Lots and lots of damage.

Attentive readers of the blog will know from previous posts that I’m a healer at heart, I love undertaking that role of doing the job that many others don’t like, combined with the fact that I’m keeping people going, being a team player, and a shoulder for others to stand upon to attain greater heights. Listeners of the podcast will know that I sang a great deal when playing Guitar Hero World Tour with Zoso, Elf and our other mutual friend, not because I like singing particularly, and certainly not because I’m good at it, but because it’s something I can do well enough to allow others to take on the front line roles. It’s possibly altruism, a learned perversity as opposed to genuine generosity of character, but it makes me happy and allows others to be happy, and so I don’t fret over the fact too much.

However, when going solo, do as the soloers do. Roll a DPS machine.

My Champion is level seventeen at the moment; I’ve covered old ground, but it was fresh enough that although I knew where to go and what to do it was anything but dull. The class is new, and that keeps things interesting, and I’ve taken a more active interest in crafting, although it’s still not really my thing. Last but by no means least, I’m soaking up the formidable atmosphere whilst enjoying the many tweaks and titbits that Turbine have added since I was last here.

I’ll be sure to report on the ups and downs as I go, hopefully with some comparison to my recent levelling experience in Blizzard’s latest offering. As to what I’m doing in World of Warcraft – and to be sure I’m still poking and picking at the scab that has formed over the wound that is WoW’s idea of end-game content – I’ll save that for another time, and perhaps another format…

After letting the dust settle for a couple of days, I believe I can confidently and officially state that I have no idea exactly what the business model of Star Wars: The Old Republic will be, and therefore I am either outraged or delighted by it, and will definitely be playing it and supporting BioWare’s innovative and brilliant plans or possibly boycotting this hideous abomination, and urge you all to do the same. Huh, bang goes that idea for a rant. Fortunately SOE stepped in to the breach with the Station Cash announcement, though really I’m fairly agnostic on the whole RMT business, by which I mean I believe it’s inherently impossible to know the ultimate nature of such transactions due to our natural inability to verify any experience except through another subjective experience (I’m hoping if I repeat that enough it’ll become a catchphrase, and people will shout it at me in the street.) Vaguely seriously, as with so much else I think it’s pretty daft dealing in absolutes like “RMT is evil and I’ll never touch a game with microtransactions!”; if done reasonably so you’re not having to pump pound coins into a slot in your PC every couple of minutes, why not? I doubt very much the subscription model is going to vanish, and some alternatives perhaps geared more towards shorter “dip in” sessions would be interesting to try.

Though I can’t get terribly worked up about RMT, there was something in that slashdot piece that drove me to green-inked blog madness. In the comments, an EQ player points out “Money, Time… what’s the difference”, and someone replies:

There is quite a difference. Money cannot buy authenticity. Authenticity in the game is built by spending the time in the game, having, as people above have mentioned, experiences in the game. To have worked through things like that ‘builds character’, as Calvin’s father might say. Someone who buys a character, or buys stuff, got it ‘the cheap way’–he is not authentic. Think about a person who has a lot of money and goes out to become a ‘real cowboy’–He buys the horses, the land, the hat, expensive spurs, all the saddling and bridling, etc.–all a a premium because they’re ‘authentic’. Then he puts them all on and goes to try to hang out with ‘real’ cowboys. “Look at me,” he says, “I’m a real cowboy–all my things are authentic cowboy.” Of course, then the real cowboys laugh and tell him to keep thinking that, and to keep paying them to be his friend. Or they just beat the horse-shit out of him.

Money cannot buy authenticity.

Now obviously there’s the nub of a point there. “Authenticity” (whatever that’s supposed to be) is built by spending time in game, having experiences in game, great, agree with that, yup (skipping over nuances like the fact that in MMOGs there’s often a lot of grind, and there isn’t much more “authentic” about one character that killed a billion rats using the same basic three attacks as another who killed ten rats, but the former’s got the “Amazing Rat Killer” badge and a bunch of purple loot with a 1/10000 drop rate). But then the cowboy analogy. “People in glass houses” and that, I’m sure there’s enough bad analogies on this site (some deliberate, though), but dear god what is it with people deploying rubbish analogies to support simple concepts? “Experienced gamers wouldn’t respect someone who just bought a high level character”, is that a huge challenge to grasp? “Nope, you totally lost me there, as a slashdot reader I’m intimately familiar with cowboys but have no experience of these ‘online games’ of which you speak, maybe if you put it in cowboy terms that would help?”

Just remember, a good analogy is like making love to a beautiful woman: you take two elements, propose that they have a relationship, and take care that the attribute of the first that you’re transposing to the second doesn’t render your argument invalid.

Onwards then with our little sojourn on memory lane. The second (and final, I promise) look at the various search terms that we’ve found amusing over the vast rolling plain of time that is the ten months that this blog has been running. So pull-up a fire, throw another log on the comfy chair and snuggle down in your favourite cake as you nibble on a festive jumper, and we will continue our reminiscences:

“how many times can you shapeshift into a cat (if your into those types of things)?”

Zoso: Seven. If you’re not into those types of things, eight hundred and six.

Melmoth: I can only assume that ‘shapeshift’ is someone’s very strange attempt at a euphemism. In which case, generally the cat will shred your testicles when it’s had enough.

“phoenix gate what do you do with the flag”

Melmoth: Run with it! You run, and you run, and run and run and run and run, and you keeping running and running until you get to Mourkain Temple. Then you drop the flag and get on with playing a decent scenario.

“warhammer online magus floating disc removal”

Melmoth: Sorry, you can’t remove it, you’re stuck with it. Negotiating latrines is left as an exercise for the reader.

Zoso: So, Mr Magus, you’d removed all your clothes in order to secure these “achievements”, and then you just happened to “slip” and “fall” on your disc? No, no, we’re not here to judge, the doctor will be down shortly.

“are we individuals?”

Melmoth: Yes! We are all individuals! I’m an individual and so is my wife.

Zoso: A: We are Devo!

“male female warhammer bug”

Melmoth: Mythic have confirmed that there will be male and female sexes when they release the new insect race, but nobody will be able to tell which is which, not even the bugs themselves.

“smiling how long can we do it.”

Melmoth: Four hundred years! Or two days. Or ten weeks! Or an hour. The Guinness World record for continuous smiling is seventeen days, eleven hours and twenty three minutes, and was only halted when the challenger’s face fell off.

“updated wii from dvd on accident”

Melmoth: I probably couldn’t help you even if I knew what the hell you’d managed to do.

“you must be this high “world of warcraft”"

Melmoth: There are no known height restrictions for playing World of Warcraft. However, there is as yet no conclusive study as to how much crack cocaine needs to be consumed before a person can stomach the incessant end-game grind.

“asses are made to bear and so are you (what does it mean?)”

Melmoth: It means that I like pretentious post titles.

“disguise tips”

Melmoth: I always veer towards a Brian Blessed beard, glasses, deerstalker and an over-sized trench coat with a pillow stuffed down the front.

Zoso: I shapeshift into a cat (if I’m into that type of thing).

“i break things by accident”

Melmoth: Congratulations, you are clumsy! Had you instead told us that you break things on purpose, you would be a vandal. Thank you for taking the ‘Am I A Vandal Or Simply Clumsy?’ online personality test.

“i love her”

Melmoth: That’s… that’s not so much a search term, but a statement of fact. If you’re hoping Google will confirm that for you, well, maybe you need to search for “I need expert medical help” next.

Zoso: Google understands. Google says “there, there”, and would put a comforting arm around your shoulder, only Google is afraid it has no arms.

Melmoth: Also, Google knows that you don’t like friends to touch you.

“wii fit waste of money”

Melmoth: Again, are you asking or telling? Because Google really doesn’t give a flying frogspawn what you think. You do know this, yes?

Zoso: Google disagrees, Google rather enjoyed it. Google reduced its BMI by 2.47 through rigorous yoga.

“guild banks are rubbish in world of warcraft”

Zoso: Google thanks you for the information. Google will avoid using them, then.

“im stuck on act 1 at 27% in far cry 2″

Zoso: Google is sorry to hear that. Google suggests you Google for a walkthrough.

“great adventures i’ve had”

Melmoth: I certainly wish you good luck in finding the website that tells you all the great adventures that you had, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere.

Zoso: Previous searches possibly included “who am I?”, “where am I?” and “have you seen my trousers?”

“grats thanks”

Melmoth: You’re welcome.

“i love to accept my reward”

Melmoth: As the winner of Best Kiasa Search Term 2008, I award you the prestigious Frightened Rabid Skunk with Diarrhoea.

Zoso: “Learn”, I think you’ll find. Unless it isn’t a mondegreen, in which case Google agrees, Google loves to accept its reward too.

“killed over guitar hero”

Melmoth: I’m pretty sure we didn’t make a post about our last Guitar Hero get together, did we? That Google search engine is really very clever.

“who leaves strictly come dancing 29th november 2008″

Melmoth: My money is on Clement Attlee.

“to make a flaming torch”

Melmoth: Take one torch; here’s one I made earlier. Now – and this is the tricky part – set fire to it.

“survivors bonekickers”

Melmoth: Are both utterly rubbish and an embarrassment to the nation. I suggest trying Dead Set or IT Crowd to correct the balance.

Zoso: Survivors isn’t that bad. Apart from the writers inexplicable failure to kill Abby Grant despite so many opportunities.

“space chimps review kermode”

Zoso: They said “he gives all bitter, middle-aged film critics a bad name”. But they quite liked his stuff with The Dodge Brothers.

Melmoth: Space chimps would make the best reviewers, not least because anything they didn’t like could be vaporised by their orbital review station.

“low level bright wizard cape”

Melmoth: The year’s must have fashion item for the discerning Black Orc was indeed a noob Bright Wizard dangling down their back.

“melmoth”

Melmoth: Wait! This is the Best Kiasa Search Term 2008, give me back that Frightened Rabid Skunk with Diarrhoea, you.

December; Christmas fast approaches, and a young man’s mind turns to stockings, roasting nuts and steaming slabs of meat being shoved into eager waiting mouths.

It may well be a time to feast and make merry but it is, unfortunately, not traditionally a time to sit quietly in peace, and blog about games that you haven’t been playing because you’ve been out shopping for the hundredth time trying to find the right colour socks for old uncle Bodger.

So apologies for the lack of updates this month, normal service will hopefully resume in the new year.

In the meantime, we’ve decided to do what every entertainment medium does around Christmas: harp on about the past year, and run repeats.

So without further ado, we’ve been through the logs for kiasa.org for the past (most of a) year and picked out our favourite search terms that have led to the site, the first batch of which follow for your reading delectation:

“all the thing druids can turn into”

Melmoth: So many druids in so many games, but the druid I know – the World of Warcraft one – can turn into a bear, a cat, a different cat, a freaky looking seal, a bird, and potentially an owlkin or a tree. Despite popular belief, they do not, however, turn in to articulated lorries, ambulances or Volkswagen Beetles, and hence telling a druid to “transform and roll out” will normally earn you a sharp claw to the gluteus maximus.

Zoso: When is a Druid not a Druid? When it turns into a side street! Wait, I think I told it wrong…

“discovery channel shapeshifters”

Melmoth: To the best of my knowledge there are no creatures who can transform themselves into the discovery channel.

“far cry 2 can you get killed by hippos”

Melmoth: Definitely. Watch out for their snipers, hippos are notorious fat lazy campers.

“friend not wanting me to touch them”

Melmoth: Are you hoping that we can perhaps give you advice on how to touch your friend without their knowing it? Or advice on how to persuade them to let you touch them, maybe? Have you tried washing your hands? Have you tried not touching yourself first?

“gaming peed himself”

Zoso: Surely lesson number one of end game raiding is the empty coke bottle, no?

Melmoth: I like the way they changed ‘myself’ to ‘himself’ to cover their tracks. “Yeah, it was my buddy. Really. I’m just searching on the Internet for anti-pee advice because I’m a concerned friend”. Uh huh.

“great adventure in getting killed”

Melmoth: Yes, that can certainly be the case. We all love great adventure, not so hot on the getting killed part, though.

“guitar hero aerosmith guitar limited edition bundle ps2″

Melmoth: But does it have a guitar?

“ironbreaker helmet and hair”

Melmoth: Helmet hair is a nightmare for Ironbreakers, I can only recommend a very good hair gel, or a short-crop hairstyle.

“scariest nutters in england”

Melmoth: Google’s search engine is really quite eerily accurate.

Zoso: I don’t know about “scariest”, though, I mean there’s Nutter “Scary” Bates, Scariest Nutter (East Sussex Regional Winner 1986 – 2004) for a start. And Geoffrey Howe.

“dwarf ironbreaker good levelers?”

Zoso: I’m afraid not, no, they really don’t have a strong position on suffrage or religious toleration.

“wimplebottom”

Melmoth: A wimple is worn on the head at all times. It is only worn around the bottom at certain exclusive gentlemen’s clubs in London.

“world of warcraft accidents”

Melmoth: I think this is just ‘gaming peed himself’ trying a different tack.

“zoso wizard”

Melmoth: Yes he is. He’s also a member of a wandering troupe of chartered surveyors, a former Ravenmaster and the current Easter Bunny.

“catherine tate illuminati”

Melmoth: The Catherine Tate Illuminati are a highly overrated and publicly over exposed sub-branch of the Illuminati.

Zoso: I don’t believe they’re bovvered, though.

“dungeons and dragons item straight jacket”

Zoso: I think he means straitjacket. Unless 4e has really expanded item classifications to include sexuality.

Melmoth: Generally worn by any dungeon master who has tried to run a game with Zoso and myself as player characters.

“free online man and woman dating”

Zoso: You’ll be wanting the bi jacket.

Having just listened to the folks over at Channel Massive lamenting in their podcast #66 the fact that MMOs these days are being perverted and twisted away from their original concept of another world in which to adventure, socialise and immerse oneself, and have instead become all about gaming achievement, I am inclined to take a suppositionary meander down the quiet leafy byway that is MMO Evolution Lane.

You see, it was not too long ago that I foisted myself upon the innocent and upstanding folks of the Van Hemlock podcast in their episode recorded at the Eurogamer Expo, where, as well as repeating the phrase ‘War Twat’ far too often, I also posed the question (about 33:33 in, for the stalkers out there) as to whether MMOs will succeed on consoles.

The answer from the panellists was that MMOs would indeed succeed on the consoles, with a few tweaks to the games in order for them to translate well: “Get rid of the grind”, “Make it drop-in”, “Streamline the UI”, “Must be playing for fun”.

As such, and with the thought that MMOs are apparently being twisted by the player base into something different to what they were originally, my question changes to: will MMOs succeeding on the consoles destroy the MMO as we traditionally know it? Essentially, are MMOs coming to the consoles now purely because consoles have evolved enough to be able to handle an MMO, or are they coming to the consoles because they have (d)evolved to such an extent that they will now appeal to the drop-in, streamlined, Xbox Gamer Card achievement generation?

I have to wonder if we’re about to see the evolution of a genre, or the creation of a new genre at the expense of the old one.

I look at games like GTA IV, Saints Row 2 and Oblivion and I find a glimmer of hope in the future MMOs on the console. These are still sandbox games, adventurous in scope and nature, and they live equally well in the hearts of PC gamers and console gamers alike. The first two games do cater to the achievement crowd though; don’t get me wrong, however, achievements can be a good thing if done well, they can encourage players to attempt feats they may not normally have bothered with, to explore places they may not thought to have looked, but they can also be used to encourage behaviour which is the antithesis of what it means to devote oneself to an MMO.

Console MMOs will undoubtedly succeed, but I am a little concerned as to the nature of their success, and whether it will come at the cost of the genre that I have known and loved, that future MMOs will be little more than glorified clones of Pacman, with players gobbling down pellets of XP as fast as they can in order to achieve the high score.

A variety of witterings for your delectation and cogitation today, so let’s begin with a little DIY activity. For today’s activity you will need: one PC; one DVI to HDMI cable with bandwidth enough for 1080p signal transfers; one Xbox; one HDMI to HDMI cable; one ‘modest’ of size TV capable of true 1920×1080 1080p resolution with one to one pixel scanning, I can recommend the one that I have recently purchased, the Toshiba Regza 32XV555DB; and a nice cup of tea.

Connect the PC to one of the TV’s HDMI inputs using the DVI to HDMI cable. Select said HDMI input on the TV and, if your TV is like the one I have, pick the mode which gives a one-to-one pixel scan, thus bypassing overscan and all those other funky post-processing features that TVs tend to apply to video signals to make them look delicious and lustrous, but which make a PC signal look like an 8-bit render of Picasso’s Three Musicians. For me this was enabled by selecting either of the Game or PC modes of operation on the appropriate input. Next, ensure that the sharpness level is suitably low, this option may make the lines of Bruce Campbell’s chin look as though it could cut through sheet steel when you’re viewing him in Army of Darkness, but when you are trying to read a PC display all it will do is make any text look blurred and ugly. I have set my sharpness level to zero (in fact the PC mode automagically sets this for you, I discovered the problem because I was originally using the Game mode which is meant for consoles and thus keeps the sharpness level set high), but it may be worth playing with the level to see if you can improve text rendering with modest levels of sharpness set; however, it’s not worth worrying too much as the output is quite splendid regardless. Bear in mind that the idea of this is mainly with respect to the PC being used as a gaming machine, it’s not an ideal solution for hours of lengthy text processing, say, because a TV is never going to be as good as an equivalent sized monitor. Essentially though, I wanted a general purpose screen that I could play PC games and console games on and which was suitably large in size. Getting a similar size of screen as a monitor, such as the 30″ Apple Cinema Display, would have meant a lot more cost, more faff with trying to get both the console and the PC easily connected, and when using the PC, running the screen at a native resolution that is insanely high such that my lowly gaming rig would struggle to run many of today’s games at any decent sort of frame rate. So far my idea has worked wonderfully for what I wanted: the PC output looks great, it’s not perfect, but understand when I say this that I’m trying to address those hardcore PC aficionados who would scoff at running a 1920×1080 resolution on a display of 32″. In actuality, and practically speaking, it looks marvellous, with the couple of games that I’ve played so far, World of Goo and World of Warcraft (still waiting for the crossover World of Goocraft), looking fantastic. One further word of advice: in games such as World of Warcraft you should make use of the UI scaling to increase the size of the overall UI display first before trying to tweak individual fonts to be of a size that is more legible. I spent an age tweaking the fonts on all my various UI elements before realising that the stats on my character pane were still quite small and hard to make out and that there was no option to increase those fonts. Inspiration struck shortly thereafter, like a Verigan’s Fist to the back of the head, and I adjusted the UI scale. And then spent ages reducing all the fonts back to how they were originally. The result: splendid World of Warcraft views in 32-inch-o-vision which, when you’re sitting at the screen as though it were a PC monitor, is really quite impressive.

You may drink your cup of tea now, or save it for later. I shall drink mine now.

Ahhhh, lovely.

Finally, connect the Xbox up to the PC; I think this is fairly straightforward and needs no further elucidation. Select the one-to-one mapping mode; the 32XV555DB, for example, has a Game mode which does this and also selects various preset picture levels determined to give a shiny default gaming experience. The Xbox is also a new addition to my hardware stable, and for the few moments that I’ve managed to play Fable 2 – after faffing around trying to set up an Xbox live account, and then purchasing some Microsoft points, and then trying not to spend all those points on a hundred thousand various icon packs for my gamer tag – I’ve been mightily impressed with this high definition console gaming that all the cool kids have been raving about for years.

Here endeth today’s activity.

In other news I’m on to chapter four of World of Goo. It really is a most delightful game, well worth your investment if you enjoy puzzle games of any sort. It’s beautifully presented, funny, charming, clever and unassuming. Don’t be fooled by the modest exterior, underneath the surface lies a very thoughtful game in both story and structure. There’s a demo to be found on the 2D Boy website, and a brilliant review, as always, on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It’s available from 2D Boy themselves, on Steam and also on Penny Arcade’s Greenhouse. Support your indie game developers!

Speaking of indie games, I witnessed another fantastic one whilst bumbling around with various other gaming ne’er-do-wells at the Limited Van EuroHemlock Expo-dition event earlier in the week. It is called Plain Sight and is an excellent little multiplayer combat game where players control Lode-Runner-like characters around a 3D Super-Mario-Galaxy-like world and attempt to ‘boost’ into one another to kill the opposing player and gain themselves a point. Self-destructing your own character at any point claims any points you have accumulated, and if you manage to take out other players in the resulting explosion you earn yourself a multiplier to those points for each person so killed; however, if you are killed before you claim your points then those points are lost to you. Thus the game has a clever risk-vs-reward sub-element of play alongside the more overarching frantic but generic deathmatch game. It’s well worth checking out, and despite what blathering reporting you might hear from me on a certain podcast about War Twat being the game of the show for its curious naming convention, I was actually in agreement with Elf that Plain Sight was easily the game that we got the most visceral pleasure from out of all the games at the show. For me the Farcry 2 tournament had nothing on the comparatively tiny Plain Sight frag-fest that was going on right next door. Be sure to keep an eye on the game, it should be coming out sometime in February according to one of the developers whom, in a comedy moment of confused conversation, we initially mistook for someone asking us how to play the game, when in actuality he was trying to tell us how it worked, because unsurprisingly we hadn’t gleaned the whole story from randomly flailing about for a few minutes. Sorry sir! Anyhoo, I give this game the Melmoth Seal of Magnificence, which despite having just made up, you should take as the highest order of gaming recommendation known to man.

In World of Warcraft the eximious Elf is hopefully going to join me for some Old World dungeon duoing; we’re planning on taking a look into Blackrock Spire, and then perhaps trying out some of the early Outlands dungeons to see how far we can push ourselves now that we have our new and improved, pimped out and pumped up, Wrath of the Lich King characters. We’re still trying to get m’colleague to join us, but he is valiantly resisting the temptation of the Dark Side of the MMO force at the moment, instead sticking it out with Warhammer Online despite another wave of bloggers leaving, or considering leaving if things don’t improve soon.

And at some point I should probably try to find time to play a little bit more of Fable 2, apparently it’s Quite Good.

Just a quickie before I head off for a few days from tomorrow; popped up to London today for the Eurogamer Expo and to meet up with assorted members of the Virgin Worlds collective and others. A splendidly game-tastic Expo which I’d suggest you head along to if you like that sort of thing, only the tickets are all sold out, so don’t. Inevitable heavy interest around the Big Games made them a bit difficult to play, but they generally look most impressive. There was even an MMO there! And one I’m rather interested in, Jumpgate: Evolution. Unfortunately, taking over a spaceship randomly flying around in space wasn’t the best way of being introduced to things, and I never found something to shoot. Looks pretty, though. For all the fun of the games, though, better still was heading off to the pub en masse and pontificating on Life, The Universe and Everything Connected With Games. Look out for the end results on a podcast near you, if the Recording Wizard can extract any usable audio, at which point we’ll find out that what seemed like an erudite deconstruction of the gaming industry as a whole was really just a load of people going “y’know wassh realllly good… that game with the… y’know… the thingsh, thash brilliant that”.