Whittlings

Soo, I’m well back and well rested from a great trip to California. I’ve finally gotten around to uploading all of my photos, though tagging the final 40% of them just became a bit to much of a chore, so I didn’t bother. In any case, I’d only feel obliged to geo-tag them all afterwards too; which would take forever.

My previous post was very brief simply because typing on the PSP is very slow. Think texting, and then half the possible speed. However, a decision to buy a rather pretty PSP (with a lovely Final Fantasy logo) on it was entirely justified by its support of Skype. O2 roaming charges to the US are an entirely ridiculous £2 per minute to make a call, and £1.50 to recieve one; but using Skype (which was available in nearly all of the hotels that we stayed at), cut that down to pittance.

Regardless, some photos from my time in California are below, enjoy:

For the summer, I’ve somehow winded up with working night shift back at Sainsburys for two nights a week. Having lost my letter, it was the only possible vacancy that they had left; and there’d have been no way I’d have taken it were it not for the £1.50 premium per hour. The main downside is, obviously, that it screws my already poor sleeping patterns even further. Boo.

I’ve also finally gotten around to playing MGS4, and am working through it slowly; not at all helped by the fact I sleep through nearly every day. Tomorrow is also being reserved for playing Pixeljunk: Eden, which lots of people seem to be raving about. I’m shallow enough to be drawn in by the prospect of Remote Play and Trophies (!!!), so it’s fortunate it’s fun too. I’m not exactly getting very far through the trophies in Super Stardust HD.

In other gaming; i34 is getting underway up in Stoneleigh Park in a couple of weeks time; and it has finally been confirmed as the venue for i35 in November. I’m now making it a priority to make as many people as possible going; namely compsoc, as we’re local anyway, and DiVAS for some silly pissup. Yay for Stoneleigh!

Wordpress updated to 2.6; though I made a booboo when clearing unmoderated spam comments and accidentally deleted every single comment. Oh well.

Namco will soon be re-energizing the PS3 version of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection with a new update coming March 18. The update is set to bring on a few changes by adding gameplay modes, DualShock 3 rumble support, and doing a little patching up of things all around.

The most notable addition to Tekken 5: DR is the Pickup Match Mode that let’s players continuously fight new opponents without having to switch back to the matching room. This change will probably make the experience feel more arcade-like as there’s a quicker transition from match to match. You can also change your match search settings after the brawl, just in case you want to face another type of opponent. Other tweaks call on the ability to create/display names for rooms, an added flag option for rooms which toggles certain search/fight conditions, an adjustment to the point allotment system, and match results are now unrecorded when Rank Match is set to off.

Strange. Having just gotten back from University, and fully armed with a brand-new via-eBay imported DS3, I decided to buy Tekken 5 (more because it wasn’t worth it with only the one controller). Rumble is quite definitely fully functional.

Source: PS3 Fanboy

Two years ago, Introversion released Darwinia, and it was an amazing game that made a lot of people very happy.
What made me even happier was the announcement and much more recent beta-test of Multiwinia (it was announced some time ago…) of the title as it moves towards release. Darwinia was apparently originally designed as a multiplayer title, so it seems strange that it’s taken quite to long to bring to multiplayer fruition.
Still, the game does look pretty absolutely awesome, and I can’t wait to play it.

There’s been a recent furore about this conservative american’s comments on Mass Effect on one of his recent blog postings.
He posted a rebuttal to his blog earlier.
There’s not much to say that hasn’t been said, but whereas the first post I just found funny, if a little saddening, that someone of Kevin’s apparent esteemed worth could be so wrong, the second just made me angry that he could continue to misrepresent the game so grossly.
He also did a radio show tonight in which he invited phone-ins. I attempted to keep a transcript but kept forgetting: as mesmerised as I was by his words.

�I�m not owning an xbox, it�s not something I�m concerned with. I have real things to do with my life, I have a family to feed and provide for.�
�Sincerely apologise� for breast comment.
�Beyond that, the substance was all correct�.
�For me personally [it�s the most sexually explicit game] I�ve ever seen�. Say�s the non-gamer.
�You can create, to some degree, custom bodies�.
�If the game is getting into the hands of 15 year olds then is are the regulations working?�
Explicit or implicit? �It depends on your definition of explicit.� �There was a little view of the [arse] and a flash of the breast… a hand through the crotch of the girl: female stimulation, if you will�.
�Yes. First of all I think it is always the parent�s responsibility first and foremost [...] the fact that we have this society in which we�re pushed more towards the more explicit, the pushing of the envelope in every regard when it comes to every type of material on the globe. Europe is more liberal [...] I don�t want to become Europe [!...] I don�t know that that�s where we want to set the bar for the whole of society. There are a great number of people across the country who share my values. Parents who say �I want to be the one who introduces my child to the idea of sex� [...] It appears to me that we are quickly evaporating the ability of the parent to limit and control what their children have access to.�
�Am I saying we set a federal guideline in place? Probably not. Can parents have a hand in this? Absolutely. Can regional communities put pressure on this issue [such that this sort of material can only be sold in a small shop down the end of the lot? I hope so!]�.
�It seems to me that we have an epidemic of non [...] enforcement of obscenity.�
�I lot of libertarians do not like the views of moderate viewpoint conservatives.�
�You can�t have legitimate freedom, you cannot have a legitimate moral free society [...] without standards and moral values. [...] Is this what happened with Mass Effect? No.�
�Libertarians really do want the influx of morally reprehensive material to be available! Do right minded people want that? No!�
�Our founders [...] understood from a very pure perception that democracy in a vacuum void of God would not work. This is why is cited thousands of times amongst the Founder�s early writings.�
�If you have to drive to the edge of town to buy a smutty game, then why not for a smutty video game?�

Edit: As this posting seems to have received a little attention, I can only update this to say that Kevin has apologised for his mis-interpretation of the game (a good thing), though he still disagrees with the nudity that is present in the game. Which given his consistent stance on TV and movie content, is fair enough; even if I entirely disagree, it’s an entirely valid opinion.

I’d suggest turning your ire towards Fox News’s rather embarrassing coverage of this issue a few days after; but that’s already blown over. Even the silly woman apologised (after she was Amazon bombed…)