Journal

Glad that one’s over

Friday April 12th 2002

What a weird week. I have to say that I’m glad it’s the weekend now, as there have been so many ups and downs I just want to have a rest from it all.

What sucks is that there were several good things that happened this week which would normally have made me pretty pleased. But these were tamed somewhat by some bad things that happened, to the extent that on a scale of bad and good the week has pretty much been a downer.

Today has been a departure from bad things, so far. I got my money back from that fraud thing that happened a few weeks ago. Quite pleased with that, really, as I was starting to worry that it was four hundred pounds I’d never see again.

I’ve also arrived at a point where I’m several days ahead of where I thought I’d be in my project at work. This is tops because I can now concentrate on doing some Very Cool Stuff ™ that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

Due to the above, next week could go pretty well, which would be a nice change. If it begins with the arrival of yet another Order That Time Forgot ™ from Scan Hardware, I might even jump for joy!

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Bookshelf

Tom Clancy’s Net Force: CyberNation

Tuesday April 9th 2002

Okay, in my defense, I don’t read a lot of books. I read a lot of magazines and I read a lot of stuff on the web, but for the most part the only books I read are programming books and the like.

Even so, I do feel kind of stupid doing the first update to this page in ages and discovering that the last thing I read was a Net Force novel. But hey, I kind of like them and I can finish them in a week or less which gives me more time for other geeky shit… like updating my website with self defacing remarks!

Anyhow, CyberNation is a pretty tame episode in the Net Force series. It ranks higher than Night Moves, but lower than Point of Impact which I’m tempted to read again at some point. The whole storyline this time around seems pretty formulaic, and I’m pretty sure that Steve Whatsisname, the ghostwriter, is running out of ideas now. I mean, every ten pages it’s some ludicrous VR scenario which although a nice idea five books ago, is starting to wear pretty thin on the ground now.

I dunno, maybe in producing Point of Impact he set the bar higher than he expected. I can recomend this book to folk who’ve read the previous ones, though – it brings some characters back to the fore, like General Howard, for instance. On the whole it’s a run of the mill example of the great concept that makes the foundations for the series.

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Game On

Planes, Trains* and Automobiles…

Tuesday April 9th 2002

Twisted Metal Black…. erm… where do I start… well, nowhere, actually. I owned it for less than 24 hours at the weekend there. Took it straight back to EB the next day and swapped it for two other games.

I’ve never done that before… heck, I even gave the terrible State of Emergency the benefit of the doubt (and I shouldn’t have). But it has to happen every once in a while, I suppose. You end up with a product so awful that the only thing to do is to return it or cut your losses and trade it in.

Not so with Ace Combat 4, for instance; I completed it the week before Easter and I’m pretty sure I’ll play it again on a rainy day. The rewards for completing the game were fantastic – you got to start over with all your planes and credits. It opened further sub missions, all the incidental music, and all the missions that made up the storyline, except you can play them individually at any difficulty level.

I haven’t had a game for ages that really rewarded you to this extent for completing it. Well done Namco!

* I was on a train at easter time. Sorry – best I could do for the headline :o)

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