Richard's Online Journal

[23/09/08] Citizen Journalism

“Wow! I can’t wait to get online and find out what it is!”

(To answer the question: A massive, building-shaking fire just down the road from our office, with the bad taste to burn on a day when I didn’t have my good camera. Touched up iPhone pics just aren’t the same...)

[16/05/08] Reviewspotting

(UPDATE: Note to the legions currently looking for the Lercyi puzzle solution - it’s down here. You’re welcome.)

Pokedex #42: The Emperor’s New Review

Without knowing anything about the actual reviewer, this is the kind of review you get when a reviewer is having absolutely no fun, but is terrified it might be their fault. Key signs to look for include going phenomenally over the top in describing irrelevant bits of the game, such as how the inventory works, or how the character is controlled (hint: point and click), with all actual opinions phrased using the word ‘you’.

In short, the dreaded words: “If you like this sort of thing, you’ll like this.”

Brrr. Feel the shiver run down your spine…

“Though the sci-fi setting is different to many point-and-click adventures and the objects that you pick up and interact with are of a futuristic-design, many of the puzzles follow the same vein as other games in the genre. That means you can expect to be solving the likes of key code puzzles and numerical codes, riddles and mechanical conundrums as well as combining objects so that you can progress.”

Yes, and you interact with it using your hands! Note the word ‘many’, just in case there’s something really original later on, and the sheer lack of detail. Didn’t mention something? Didn’t want to spoil it. This is copy at its absolute emptiest, good for nothing except that in the event of the developer/publisher/PR bunny getting angry about the review, there’s nothing that can be pointed out as an actual inaccuracy. Well. With the exception of compliments like “should appeal to lovers of the genre and sci-fi fans looking for a challenging adventure and interesting story-line”, because Perry Rhodan is one of the dullest adventures to hit the market since Frogwares first spawned.

Not that anyone ever complains about that.

Reviews like this just aren’t any bloody use at all. Other fun things to look out for: all the (amusingly watermarked) screenshots come from Games Press, and all of them are from the first hour of the adventure. Now, In fairness, I used a pic from one of the starting locations for my review too, but only because I forgot to reinstall FRAPS on my computer after my last system crash and didn’t realise until the last minute.

Next time: “Capital PunIshment”, where a merely mediocre game gets sacrificed on the altar of a writer’s really, really hilarious joke. For examples, see damn near every retro game review on YouTube, except guys like these, who are pretty darn good.

“We’re totally talking about stuff.” “Yup. In the future.”

To turn all this away from being a random, entirely pointless rant, here’s an actual puzzle from the game, which says more than any review really needs. Here’s the setup: You need to get your boss’ computer password, and the only hint is that it’s the name of one of the model ships in his office. Of those ships, one is missing a piece with most of its name on it, with a giant “PUZZLE HERE!” arrow pointing to the gap.

How do you solve this tricky problem?

From the context, it’s obvious that the missing piece has been eaten by his cleaning robot, but even though you’ve already been told that they can be put into ‘blow’ mode, you can’t do that. Damn designer. You might also reasonably expect to find the information in the Hall Of Infodumps nearby, which is supposedly there to give you the information on who the hell Perry Rhodan and friends actually are, but again, no. That would be sensible, and is therefore banned from the Perry Rhodan design bible.

Instead, you have to head across to the other side of the complex, where a technician can fix up a control panel, and send all the cleaning robots outside. For no reason, the friendly guards lose their minds at the sight of these ubiquitous droids showing up, and start running around like headless chickens. You go up and the droid you’re looking for has been conveniently blown open, because Roombas are scary. Whatever. Now you have the name, right?  It’s something like ‘Lerci-i-lercyi’, I can’t be bothered to dig out the disc and check, but it doesn’t matter. Puzzle solved!

Except for one problem. You type that into the computer and… no, it doesn’t do anything. Try it again. Try it without the hyphens? Try it as one word? Try the first word? Try putting spaces instead of the dashes? Try screaming abuse at your monitor?

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and satisfying, but nope. No, what you’re meant to do is head into your own office and scan the stupid ship on your desktop scanner rather than the convenient one you’ve got round your wrist, at which point the computer politely tells you that since nobody could pronounce the ship’s name, everyone instead calls it ‘Leclerc’. And Perry Rhodan smacks his forehead and goes “Of course!”

Damn you to hell, Perry Rhodan. To hell...

But if you like this sort of thing, you’ll probably like it.

It has gameplay and everything.

[01/05/08] %&$£ing Toilet Seats Again

From the BBC’s Blindly Obvious Department:

Some computer keyboards harbour more harmful bacteria than a toilet seat, research has suggested.

Oh, good grief, not this old yawner again. Yes. Yes, keyboards are dirtier than toilet seats, the reason being that toilet seats are not dirty. By reading this site, your buttocks are automatically not only declared officially clean, but also surprisingly fragrant. But not somewhere that germs particularly congregate. The floor? Ick central. Under the bowl? Nice knowing you. The seat? You could eat your dinner off it, and I’m reliably informed that there are clubs in Soho where you can do considerably more than that.

Any company that releases any bit of marketing comparing the cleanliness of toilets and any second entity, but especially keyboards, ever frakking again will find this out soon. I’ve already petitioned the government to enforce a new ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy, where the strikes are conducted with a length of birch, and the ‘out’ to be outed from consisting of the entire of civilised society.

You have been warned, lazy press release writers. The revolution begins shortly.

[07/12/07] Spilling Be

Getting letters and e-mail is great. It’s not so hot when you’re dealing with an increasing pile of drive-by smirking about a typo or glitch on the third page of a four page feature. It’s fine when someone’s spotted something funny (nobody in the office noticed that we’d printed a picture of a ‘SEX AMBULANCE’ in a story about Essex, for instance). It’s fine if there’s a serious flub that needs to be corrected. It’s fine if the letter writer disagrees with an argument. No problem at all with that kind of thing.

But usually it’s just a missing apostrophe, or a character substitution, or something equally trivial, and really, what’s the point? What do the people sending these emails expect? A groveling apolohy, written in blood? The whole print run to be pulped and replaced with a corrected version? The writer to immediately jump into a time machine, rush back, and fix it, like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap?

My time machine is reserved for far more exciting errands. Ask my pal Beethoven.

Sigh. At the very least, they could throw in a few words of comment along with the “Aha! Gotcha!” bit. Something to make it seem that it had more impact than an English essay under a particularly anal English teacher’s evil red pen.

One thing that probably won’t come as a surprise - every time I get one of these letters, there’s always at least one glaring oopsie buried in the righteous indignation. Oddly, the accuracy hounds never seem to appreciate having this pointed out to them.

In short, feedback is essential. One of the toughest parts about being a writer is that most things you do get very little response, and getting nice comments is one of the best ways of reminding yourself that everything you do isn’t just being shot into a black hole somewhere in a distant galaxy. It’s good to hear from readers, even if just a quick “Thanks, I enjoyed that article” or “Did you know...”

But please. Talk about the work, or the subject.

Not the bloody typos.

(The official typo of this post was the word ‘apolohy’. If you were planning to crow about spotting it, please slap yourself around the face and neck with a small shovel. A spade will also be acceptable. Best to avoid the pitchfork...)

[30/11/07] On Game Scoring

All this fuss over Kane and Lynch (The last post poked fun at the story, but it’s worth pointing out that nobody involved has outright said what happened, so everything’s still very much guesswork and secret-source level gossip), and subsequent talk about scoring, really makes me nostalgic for Daily Radar’s wonderful system.

Scores, in a word, are useless. No matter how you try to explain your workings, nobody listens. Even if you think 6/10 means ‘mediocre, but okay if you’re into this kind of game’, most people are going to see it as a fail. Especially since most people talk about scores without even mentioning the review text itself. For my money, the best rating system around remains poor old deceased DR’s - which went something like this:

Dud. Miss. Hit. Direct Hit.

And that was it. Technically, not that far different to a score out of five. But much better as a stamp to put on the end of a review, and much less prone to mis-interpretation. And since ‘Miss’ especially could be anything from ‘doesn’t do anything new’ to ‘tries but fails’, it’s much harder to go off on one without taking the text into account.