Missing the Obvious: Easy Money

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

Note: like most articles on casual games, this article has been created with little research into the subject or my fellow commuters, much to their annoyance of hearing my iPad keyboard tapping.

Video games are the in the business of making money, correct? Well mostly, It’s the people that give you the games, the retailer, that want to make the money. Then it’s those huge publisher entities that distribute those games that enjoy the ol’ green paper. Then maybe, just maybe, the people that actually make the games, the developers, are next in the table. (That was sarcasm in case you thought otherwise)

pokemon red iOS games have changed that. Kind of. Apple still take money as the retailer and distributor. The developers can get more money, unless the studio is owned by one of those big publisher types. Why am I explaining this fairly obvious business and wealth distribution model? Because it baffles me, seeing as how much that piece of paper with the Queens Head/Pyramid with eye/local dictator on it is desired by all of these people and yet, they miss a very obvious easy money.

Retro games have slowly come in to the mobile fold over the past four years as technology has increased. Rockstar are probably the most commercially successful with the releasing of a back catalogue. Sega have released a few things at a far earlier stage in the mobile games market. But here is the one I’m really confused about. Pokemon.

Ok, let me point out the obvious flaws in my plan. This is a Nintendo exclusive and so they never release a game on other platforms really. There is probably a hilariously complex set of rights issues stopping not only a rival release but also a previous game. Also releasing on a mobile platform might belittle the sales and effectiveness of their consoles, most notably the 2DS and 3DS. So why would they want to do it?

pokemon blue red yellow 2

Simple. In the US, UK and Japan combined, Pokemon Red, Green and Blue (the original 1999 Gameboy releases) sold 23,810,000 copies approximately. So the reason to do this would be £47,381,900. I get that figure by working out that almost 24 million sales to the fair and modest figure of £1.99 on the App Store.

A mobile release of the original three games would cause such a nostalgia trip (remember most of these people with iPhone specifically probably had the game on the Gameboy) that you couldn’t resist. I couldn’t and I didn’t even have a Gameboy! The games are old enough not to dent anything that Nintendo are currently doing and it’s a very fat cash-in at a time where the company are arguably going to be on the back foot due to the now current generation’s ‘charge’ attack on the dazed gamer.

But those rights issues and competitor conflicts of interest – Nintendo would never allow a release of a Nintendo portable game on a mobile device at all. They would never… Oh wait. LOOPHOLE!!!

ace attorney 1I present the evidence that the company will allow games to go to competitors for sales by developers. You can sit there in the dock, poor Nintendo; pleading innocence and feigning ignorance, but take this: EVIDENCE!!!!! POW! Alex Wright Ace Attorney. This game has in fact been released twice on iOS, once as a big complete edition and before as an easier package with add-ons for the fairly non-modest price of around £8.

So we’re saying that actually Nintendo could release maybe a coloured upscaled Pokemon Red, Green and Blue? That they could actually charge a more fair and profitable £4.99 as a guess? That’s a possible £118,811,900 in sales. I’m pretty sure once presented with those hastily constructed figures, shareholders would make Nintendo find a way to make this happen.

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SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow Add-On Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

I’ll be honest here, which is the least you can expect from a game reviewer. I’m still playing this add-on as I write the review. In fact I’ve started a new city and I’m at 1,400 residents. Not only have I played it myself but I’ve watched others online and I feel I’m now at a stage to review this add-on to the most recent SimCity iteration with as little hypocritical finger pointing to be directed at myself.

Why hypocritical? Because I actually really like SimCity and without spoiling other articles like the fantastic games of the year feature, I am a big fan of the game in itself. However, I feel has been sadly overshadowed by the almost comically poor approach to launch and consumer satisfaction management from EA, that seems to be a problem not just exclusive to SimCity (Battlefield 4 anyone?).

Which is why I’m ultimately left feeling utterly disappointed. I’m from a generation where an add-on pack costs £15. It gives you new levels, it improves upon features that the main game had just got a bit wrong. It basically extended the playing life of that game. SimCity – Cities of Tomorrow tries to do that. It really does try. But I feel it ultimately does not succeed. Here’s why:

Firstly, it doesn’t really bring you anything new to the game. This is partly because additions have already come to the game. They’ve been trickled out slowly and have sweetened a deal that was originally seen as a bit sour. The additional maps and potential buildings that would make this a proper package have already been released. So while there is an excuse for how little this add-on has, it does raise a question of a justifiable price for it.

To explain these additions a little more, the game has gone all high tech. Now there is an additional element in the game you can make called “Omega.” This can lead you down two roads: filthy industrial development and mega income, or a clean high-rise educational utopian vision. There are a few things that have been “futurised” as well. You get to build new Megatowers which are constructed in blocks of different game areas (commercial, residential, industrial, educational, etc) and these correspond to whichever path you decide to go down. Other new buildings include water pumps, cleaner energy/waste disposal and a neat high altitude road for connecting the “Megatowers” you construct in whichever vision you choose.

Which is where I come on to a second point. Visually, the game has always been very good. The Megatowers look stunning. The High wealth academy towers look like beautiful futuristic havens of success, almost like they are right out of the movie Elysium. But personally, I feel they pale in comparison to the dirty, high industrial Omega franchises, which have a air of Blade Runner about them. Dark, dingy buildings splattered with neon and look incredibly imposing and dystopian once put together. Visually the futurised areas also change. New house, industry and commercial building models appear, the roads have a texture that you could use to play Blockbusters on and it all looks rather swell. Even the low wealth houses with laser fences that look like dinosaur pens from Jurassic Park.

The problem though is that this is where the fun ends. Not enough of the game has changed for these really to make a difference to the overall gameplay, or to reinvigorate the gameplay sufficiently. After nearly a year playing the game that has been heavily criticised for its limited scope in building and creating the vast metropolis’s it’s famed for, all this add-on really does is give a slightly fresh lick of paint and another few buildings to try and squeeze in to an already busy and tricky economical system. Cities of Tomorrow integrates in to the existing framework so you start the game, region, road layout, city planning and everything else just like you already would. You then do the slow process of waiting to grow, timing your expansion and how to substitute the wealth factor of your residents. Overall there is zero difference between how you play the game in either the add-on or basic game. At least not enough in the early stages to warrant it being a useful part of the game and even then, it just solves some problems later on at a cost of potential building space.

Which leads me to my final gripe and it’s a gripe for anyone who’s ever heard the name Dr.Vu… You STILL can’t turn it off. Of all the additions that have been released, there is no option to deselect them from your gameplay, this included. Once you’ve installed it, you won’t be able to go back. Of course you can just not select anything from the add on, but the bubbles will pop up, your GUI will be changed and you’ll forever be clicking “No Thanks” while screaming “I DON’T GIVE A FLYING MONKEY’S MATURING INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO ABOUT DOCTOR SODDING VU!”

I’m now at 2,300 residents. The game has also made me demolish a whole row of abandoned houses, which doesn’t seem to be repopulating. My residents are unhappy, sick and I can’t get enough money because the Omega is costing too much in imported materials to produce. I’m stuck in a rather boring looking grid system town with a few trees, a couple of parks and some flat looking shopping areas… I might as well have just visited Milton Keynes.

Summary

An outrageously overpriced add-on pack (unless it’s on sale) that adds very little to the game except a lick of paint and a new resource challenge. Completely devalued by the constant release of additional content for free, although it does look rather cool.

Good Points

– Make your own Blade Runner city

– Rather satisfying clean energy and a few fresh building models.

Bad Points

– Very little change to the game

– Makes other game strategies a bit redundant

– Can’t turn it off

– Too much money.

Why a 5?

Because even though I love the game a lot, even I can’t justify the price for the lack of content and small gameplay life extension it gives.

TheIndieJar: Starbound Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

Look, it’s not Terraria, OK? Yes it looks a lot like Terraria, it feels like Terraria, it plays like Terraria and so on, but its not Terraria. We got that? Good! Let’s begin.

Starbound is a lot like Terraria. This early access Steam title has grown fond in the hearts of indie gamers and YouTubers a mere two weeks into its release. If there is one thing you can say about a game that is very close to an already successful game, it’s that you can jump right in and know what to do.

starbound 2In this case you can choose from a number of races and random options to explore the procedurally generated worlds below. Yes, worlds. Starbound has the potential to be absolutely huge. Your main aim of the game is crafting and surviving in this retro style 2D crafter/platformer that looks like the inside of Hunter S. Thompson’s head – very trippy environments, completely alien, all with their own quirks and monstrous horrors. You craft to survive and find fuel to power your spaceship so you can explore everything. It’s a bit like Spore in that sense, only hopefully without the need for a future add-on pack to make that game mode even remotely interesting.

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The closeness to Terraria does make the game feel quite repetitive by association. You yet again have to start a game with nothing and construct your way through painfully slow tools to then build things up for yourself. And an annoying quirk of the beta release is that updates to the game may delete the characters you’ve been playing with. You’ll also have to get used to a slightly different set of controls and after a while, remembering that it isn’t Terraria will eventually be pointless.

It does have some positives over its comparison sibling. Animations are better on some things (cutting down trees that actually fall down is very satisfying), the multi platform availability is a big bonus and, in the beta stage at least, constant updates will keep the game a bit more alive. Compared to Terraria’s long awaited but rather large patch, a consistent release of new material could help the fans to stay. There is one thing that these games and genre have really excelled at. Soundtracks. Starbound’s is a beautiful mix of compositions that accentuate how lonely and alien the game world is, and if anything the atmosphere that it creates helps separate it from the more childish one that Terraria provides. You can even listen to these on their website and I highly recommend that you do.

starbound 1

I want to play more and need to play more. There’s so much potential and possibility, especially with its almost infinite procedural generation, that you could really get lost in it. It is certainly worth getting and enjoying, even at the beta stage, but it is a game that you would probably only like if you were really in to the craft/platform idea and weren’t bored of it already. For any real longevity I’d feel that you’d have to be quite a hardcore gamer. But as far as introductions go, it’s incredibly smooth, incredibly easy, quite funny and very, very playable. All in all, it’s a very promising start for the beta but it does need something to just give it a bit more of its own identity.

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Why Can’t We Lose? – A Treatise on Multiplayer Gaming Behaviour

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

The other day, I was minding my own business, driving a tense 3-lap multiplayer race in a Williams at Brazil on F1 2013. I was running second and my teammate was ahead. I was catching. Turn 4, the Descida do Lago saw my teammate miss the corner entirely, going off in a straight line and promptly disconnecting. Here was my chance for my first victory. No one had deliberately smashed me off the road yet, or missed braking at a corner due to lag. Somehow I was slow coming out of turn 11 and the Lotus of “random number 1” closed in. I held the racing line all the way to the final kink in the start-finish straight. My opponent moved to undercut me using the pit lane entrance. I held the line (which uses that part of the track), making my car wide with minimal movement and blocking his path. I crossed the line, I felt relieved and ecstatic.

Those of you who’ve played a Codemasters F1 quick race will know how infuriating it is and almost impossible to win due to other players. So after I left the game, I was surprised to find a message on my Xbox Live account from none other than “random number 1” which read, quite literally, as such:

“y the f%@k did you block me i was goin to win you d*$k”

Call-of-Duty-Ghosts-Multiplayer 2Far be it for me to rise to this and point out that this person had not only missed his lesson on how to spell but also the lesson on the ethos of motor racing (virtual or otherwise), I simply blocked his communication. But it played on me, why this person was so intent that I’d wronged them, and why the win was so important to either of us. I was reminded of a Call of Duty: Ghosts livestream I watched last week with a well-known YouTube gamer. He’d had a very good game and at the end of the match (which his team won 75-46) one of the opposing team, “random number 2,” voiced his discontent at his other teammate’s kill/death ratio as follows:

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“Really? 2-15 and 5-19, get the f%@k off you guys f@%king suck. You guys are f%@king garbage.”

It occurred to me that the necessity to win completely obliterated the desire to win for these people and as such the enjoyment in playing a game. So much so that people will shift any kind of blame away from themselves, or refuse to concede that luck or skill did not favour them at that particular moment. This isn’t confidence and self-belief in refusing to fail, but more of a childish response with very little concept of failure and over inflated self-entitlement. So what is it about games (multiplayer modes in particular) that make some people revert to a very basic childhood behavioural trait?

As far as I’ve found, none of the psychological studies (and there are some very damning, ill researched and downright deliberately discrediting studies out there) actually take in to account adults in the effects of playing video games, at least not past the age of 21. Most studies revolve around teenagers and children, which to me is quite shocking. As I started searching the general psychological consensus on this kind of “must win” mentality, all of the studies revolved around children playing games. Not video games in particular but all games. A blog I found pointed out “children take great pleasure in their victory – and in our defeat.” With young children, “one typically encounters a fantasised self possessing a staggering array of abilities, virtues and talents.”

superman-kid

I’m sure that all of us at one point pretended we could fly and did so by running with our arm raised in front of us. It never occurred to us that we couldn’t actually fly and were actually just running around. Until someone – probably a maths swot that no one ever liked but in 25 years time became the most attractive, intelligent and happiest person (if stereotypes are anything to go by) – pointed out that we couldn’t fly and just looked stupid. To which we all replied, “No I don’t” and carried on. But the shame and sense of failure we had resonated and slowed our running down to a crawl. We had lost this battle of imagination against reality and suitably picked up our imaginary cape and licked our wounds.

But the key word there when it comes to video games is “lost”. Video games by definition do not reflect winning or losing. Yet the nature of games involves a player having to beat something. A scenario, points, challenge, antagonist… Whatever it is, you feel that you are achieving a landmark victory in the battle against the artificially created obstacles in your way. When you do, you get an endorphin rush that satisfies you. You cannot however lose. You may stumble, you may rage quit, you may even put a game to the side to cook dinner, or get married or something crazy. But you never, ever lose. At worst, you only delay winning. Of course there are a couple of exceptions but for the most part that is the case. So, back to the psychology, how do you teach someone to lose, gracefully or otherwise? After all it is a highly important aspect of our development of maturity and continuation of life, no? The blog I found suggests not “lectures” or “strict reinforcement” but “practice” and “emulation of admired adults.”

MLGSA1-2012-DRG-victoryWhen it comes to video games and especially broadcasted gaming the level of positive role models are extremely low. There are very little examples of dignified communication between players. If you’ve ever watched a competitive MLG FPS tournament or some such event, and seen how the competitors speak to each other and act, dignity isn’t an applicable word. Dignitas is probably more applicable. Unlike the multiplayer days of old which involve two people looking at the same screen in the same personal space, the disconnection of physical players takes away an important factor in your behavioural response, that of being judged poorly by the other person.

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Which is what leads me here to my conclusion in this fairly ambiguous treatise. One of the reasons it is so important to win – to the level of being personally insulted by those who experience defeat with you – is due to the fact that there are little to zero positive role models currently to communicate this important life aspect of how to lose, in an environment specifically tailored to solely winning.

The other reason is that these people are simply tools.

However, until we can teach these players to treat and react to other players as if they are in the same room as them and get them to behave accordingly, I’m just going to have to put up with the constant abuse of my poor online gaming skills and continue hitting that “block” button.

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Links: PsychologyToday

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GTA San Andreas coming to Mobile in December

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

gta san andreas mobile

It was only a matter of time before we all jumped back in to Los Santos after finishing GTA V. What you didn’t know is that you’ll also jump back in time around twenty years… Well, you could have guessed.

Following in the footsteps of both GTA 3 and Vice City, GTA San Andreas is getting remastered and coming to mobile devices this Christmas. Whilst we look forward to this new generation, Rockstar are allowing us to skip back in time to the previous one and arguably the biggest game of the PS2/Xbox era.

Once again the graphics get a revamp that even puts those consoles to shame nowadays and all of the musical goodies that came with it (just listen to West Coast Classics on GTA V if you’re unsure of how awesome it is). Touch controls will allow you to return to Grove Street and take the return of CJ from funeral visitor to San Andreas lynchpin. I can’t wait to see the better looking versions of San Fierro (San Francisco) and lose all of my money in the parody neon lights of Los Venturas.

So, this December, your iOS device, Android, Windows Mobile and Amazon Kindle will get a whole lot more awesome (violent, colourful, musical – awesome) and full controller support apparently. We’ll give you more when we get it.

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Link: Rockstar

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Minecraft 1.7 Update – The Beauty of Nature-Cubed

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

minecraft 3

Minecraft has had an exciting time of it lately, at least in the PC market. User modifications have expanded the game to mind bending degrees (a look at a Yogscast upload list will show you how mad this has become). Customised single player adventure games have turned this into almost an indie game-making kit, much like Half Life 2 did for FPS create-your-owns. In the PC market, it’s had new pretenders challenge it like Terraria and Cube World, both of which are equally successful, enjoyably different games in their own right and are still evolving.

minecraft 2Yet even with its own rapid expansion to the mobile market, the merchandise industry, consoles and of course conventions and the ability to make stars out of YouTube gamers, Mojang are still looking out for us – the player. Even though the game is on full release, updates have come to fix bugs and add new content to the game at NO ADDITIONAL COST (read it and weep, EA) and this latest one is a biggie.

“The Update That Changed The World” is no small claim, but Minecraft 1.7 really has done just that. It’s own world that is. Earlier this year, horses were implemented in to the game, mainly because these were one of the most popular/requested modifications and, much like Valve, Mojang noticed this and helped implement it. Now however the biomes you find have evolved, the world is much more sensibly generated than previous versions and the items for construction or “crafting” have become more varied.

Biome wise there have been new areas added; a savannah (no lions yet) with wonderful acacia trees, a roofed forest which contains a brand new, bigger and darker oak tree, Ice Spikes that look like you could build wonderful fantasy palaces in them, a new Mega Tiaga with new dirty toilet-brown Podzol blocks and natural mossy cobblestone and the fantastic (and much requested) Mesa biome. All of which add a lovely and much needed visual touch up to the game, along with lots of new flowers to spruce up your gardens.

minecraft 1One of the big things though with these biomes is how they generate. No more will you skip from desert to extreme snow. The game now makes things a bit more sensible and tries to group things by temperature. If you’re in a snowy area then the next areas around you are going to be colder biomes until you get to the warmer ones, like the plains and so on. And the same goes hot for places like deserts and mesas – the further away you get, the colder it will get.

Another addition is the inclusion of stained glass. Many Minecraft fans have wanted this since it was teased as an April Fool by Mojang, but now you can have different coloured glass and, for the most part, it does look rather lush.

However, if like me you’ve been playing Minecraft for a while casually, or even if you’re someone that makes a career out of it, this does feel like a precursor to Minecraft 2.0. The new live streaming feature revealed at Minecon (where you press one button to instantly Livestream to twitch.tv) is now available, which creates an exciting new possibility for those wanting to share their experiences, although still in testing at the moment. It very clear that Mojang knows the success and survival of the game is catering to not only the fans, but the people who share their experience of it online.

minecraft feat

It’s surely only a matter of time until the game expands to make use of those empty oceans; bringing some new creatures in (friendly or otherwise), introduce multiple uses to some stagnant blocks and find something that makes redstone less technically confusing. But until then, this will quench your metaphorical thirst to explore brave and strange new procedurally generated worlds and admire the beauty of nature-cubed.

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Narrative Health Symptomns

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

I haven’t paid a lot of attention to this blog in a while. This may be painfully obvious to my one follower, but excuses aside I have been rather busy working and earning. Mainly so I can spend some time writing with some financial security (desperately search for a job).

Anyway, enough of that. I’m writing two things right now. The first is a sitcom that I’m about to send to producers. I’ve got a lot of faith in it, purely on the basis that others that have read it/helped me with it also have that faith. I’ve also spent some time around screenwriters at Q&A events and heard advice and stories, so I think I’m best positioned to have confidence in it. The second thing is still in my brain forming but will make up the basis of a stand-up show.

One things I’ve noticed about my comedy is that I’m much more of a narrative comic. I need time to develop an overall arc and punctuate it with smaller anecdotal quips. I find that the traditional starter five minute “spray and pray set” – as I think of it – is quite constricting. I’ve never been that kind of funny guy. So I’ve come up with an overall theme and a few anecdotes have come because of it. Although I’m yet to decide which bits are funny and which are me being a curmudgeonus shit.

Like right now for example, I’m in a hospital. Don’t worry I’m fine, just your usual run of the mill appointment. But the building I’m in has a TB clinic on the bottom floor. I find this weird knowing how contagious it is to have it at a level where the reception desk is. Especially seeming I’m on the 6th floor for my breast reduction… I mean run-of-the-mill appointment.

But I have been having this crisis that only appears when you turn 30. Which is where you realise that youth has gone. That doesn’t mean I think I’m old, but I’m now painfully aware that I’ve lost that invincible feeling you have as a younger person. When I was 22 my main worry about my health was whether Sprite and Wine Gums was the best hangover cure I could get before work on a Saturday morning (as an aside, it wasn’t a bad one). Now on the other hand my paranoia dictates my approach to this and I’m wondering if my Doctor would turn me away for a prostate exam due to my age and me realising I don’t get enough sleep.

This change is probably brought on by the maturity that comes with a furthering career, family responsibilities, financial planning and… Wait, I have none of those. Where does this come from?

TB has been easily curable since around the time of the Second World War. But it is on the rise again. Before this, it was just one of those things that was likely to happen to you so you jut got on with life and didn’t give a shit about it. Now, most people my age were inoculated so it’s not a problem at all and therefore, people don’t give a shit about it. Yet six floors below me is a clinic for a highly contagious disease and I’m sat here wondering if getting a qualified practitioner to rectally probe me is a sensible investment in life!

Somewhere between the age of 25 and now, my life must have taken a very strange turn…

FYI, it’s Movember next month and the time to grow hilarious poor facial hair. But it’s also the time to raise awareness of Prostate and Testicular Cancers and Mental Health issues in men. Especially seeming the lifestyles we all lead and the stresses of living we have without ever having a full medical unless our employment obliges us to, maybe 30 is a good time to start thinking about things.

See what I did there? Narrative.

Link: http://uk.movember.com/

Comedy Voice: Version One

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

It is really important as a new comedian to find your voice. Of course, if you were writing my twitter profile, that would be burgeoning comedian, not new. Let me just point out the description of that word, as provided by google.

Verb
1. Begin to grow or increase rapidly; flourish: “manufacturers are keen to cash in on the burgeoning demand”.
2. Put forth young shoots; bud.

To start with, I’m not sure I’m particularly happy with being referred to as a potential performance career choice as a flower. Not only that but more of a Stuart Hall style flower in the case of number 2. (Those of you who got that joke probably just sucked your teeth like you’re a mechanic giving the bad news on a 16 year old cars’ MOT.)

I do tell bad jokes, and occasionally, controversial jokes. It’s my thing, it’s what I’ve been brought up and practiced in. But very rarely do I do it on stage. Probably because I’m a tad scared. However, point number 1 says that I need to grow rapidly in order to refer to myself this way.

So, next time I’m on stage, I’ll introduce myself thusly:
‘Hi, I’m Sean Cleaver and I’m classed as a burgeoning comedian. Which means I will begin to grow or increase rapidly. So don’t panic, if that happens then it is just a fear erection. However if I move on to the second meaning, “Put Forth Young Shoots” then this is a fair warning to anyone in the front row. If you heckle me, it’s bukkake time.’

Which, if that joke goes out before our PM David Cameron bans all pornography online, most of you will understand. Which brings me on to porn.

This week David Cameron expressed a wish to violate some probable human rights by denying us, the people, access to the more seedier and disturbing parts of the internet. Without first putting in an awkward telephone call to our internet provider saying that it’s for research purposes only.

Of course what Cameron doesn’t realise is that his “hug a hoodie” mantra is going to be like Captain Kirk fighting a Gorn lizard monster once he denies the hoodies option to masturbate into a calm frenzy, working off the several cans of taurine laced beverages he’d consumed that morning between McDonalds breakfasts.

Of course the one upshot of this is that maybe, just maybe, facebook might be forced to ban or block the several thousand inappropriate images that mothers keep putting up on their timelines of children, and therefore mine. Not only ridding me of a personal annoyance, but also the acknowledgement of the personal burgeoning’s of the aforementioned hoodie.

So my voice, I tend to feel after a few gigs and writing cast offs, is one of social commentary, satire and occasional penis jokes. Which, in the least phallic way possible, I’m happy to be rising to the occasion for.

More soon… That’s the writing I’m talking about, not anything else.

Gaming Cubed: Trapped in a Box of Jealousy.

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

Cube World has arrived.

This annoys me.

Why? Well for one, I can’t play it yet as I’m a Mac user (DAMMMMMMNNNNN YOUUUUUUU!!!!). But two, and possibly the more important issue, my friends are playing it without me. To do so, they have left the other cube behind that we’ve recently started, that of Minecraft. This means I am missing out on a huge amount of fun… Or so I thought.

I’ve been watching videos online of course, especially BdoubleO100 on YouTube, to find out what exactly I’m missing. I’ve also witnessed my friends play (although the heat of a small room with two PC’s really isn’t worth it). So far all I can gleam from it is that I will get very bored of this very quickly. Why? Because it’s a cube version of World of Warcraft, et al. Now, I’m currently playing a few games, am desperate for Maxis to hurry up with the Mac release of SimCity, and have very little money. So affording an MMO fee right now is out of the question. But my friends, who are currently playing the low res, independent and customisable MMORPG Cube World, don’t play MMO’s.

I’ve been a WoW and EVE subscriber a few times. My friends don’t have time to play those, or don’t care. I personally get very bored being the anti-social lone ranger I am when I have no friends to play with. So I eventually leave. Now I’m left out of this new indie gaming revolution and by the time I get round to it, they’ll totally be bored of it. So I’m incredibly jealous because I’ll be missing out on all the fun.

Right now, I want to play F1 2012  online with someone, I need to work my way through the Assassin’s Creed series which I ashamedly haven’t had any time for AND want to do more Minecraft online with friends/curse EA for the inventible continuing SimCity Mac delays.

So you can take your “very good for an alpha release game with the small team behind it” and SHOVE IT! *Cries like being the last boy picked for the school sports teams*

Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

One thing you have to appreciate about reading and contemplating a Neil Gaiman novel for adults is that he is not writing for adults. One of the great talents that Gaiman has is locating our inner child, after all, adults are nothing more than big children. The inner child is what drives us to engage in fiction, to quest for knowledge and to lose ourselves in make believe. Gaiman has the incredibly ability in his writing to find that part of us and engage with it.

Now this particular book doesn’t actually stand as an adult book. Not really, compared to American Gods anyway. But then neither does Neverwhere or Stardust either, though they are written a lot more viscerally. In fact there is a scene in Ocean that an earlier Gaiman would have gone over the top with. A scene of a sexual nature that really does look at upon such things with innocent childish eyes rather than those of the narrators’ true maturity and reflection. Even with the protagonist being older and remembering the story, everything is narrated in a voice that one can only achieve in real life via mass inebriation or running the risk of being sectioned. But it is pulled off so beautifully. Even if you yourself have no relative appreciation of growing up in the sticks with the magic of nature and its hidden goodies, you can still relate to the tone of voice.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman.

Which is where I get a slight bit critical, and this may be because of how much this has been billed as an ‘adult’ book and because I’d not long read American Gods, quite possibly Gaiman’s most adult novel. The prose, whilst still beautifully imaginative and screaming its way off your inner voice’s tongue like sliding down a velour sofa and giving a static shock to the nearest unsuspecting target, does feel different. Maybe because the character is a forty-something man being a seven year old boy struggling with how memory really does betray you and desperate to escape. But it feels like it is a tad forced, maybe? Possibly too aware of the problems that such a dialogue presents, Gaiman honestly and innocently recreates the voice of our character and his motivations beautifully, but at the sacrifice of some of the extraordinary turns of phrase and dialogue he is most certainly famed for.

Having said this, his villain, the evil childminding nanny of many a family movie, doesn’t get nearly enough page time, nor ever comes across as inherently evil. Mainly because she isn’t but the lines blur between her being the antagonist and the child’s opinion of something he just doesn’t like. Which doesn’t make her that strong, unlike the heroine of the piece who is mysterious by her absence when you think the story naturally devises ways to drop her in, and her ability to instill complete trust in a boy scared but reflectively underwhelmed by the proportion of magic before him. A magic that is well presented in the book physically with its lovely cover which feels great and much more tactile than a hardback book deserves to be.

I am a fan of course of Gaiman’s work, which makes this review a little harder to judge critically, but it is most certainly not without its merits and is very good at what it does. However, if you’re expecting a darkly gothic darkly humours masterpiece, this isn’t going to feed that desire fully. But it will certainly keep you going and is a great story to enjoy with your family and to personally indulge in a little childhood nostalgia. Whilst it is Gaiman with his finger on the literary trigger, he keeps us on the edge waiting to hit us with the speeding bullet that will amaze and confound us as readers of his work.

4/5 – Definitely read this lament to our forgotten pasts and enjoy the jolt memory lane will give your brain chemicals. Fun for the family to read, but if you want something harder then dip into the back catalogue now conveniently reissued.