Many Things Occur!

2011 Round-up

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

2011 Round-up

Related Posts: Gaming 2010

I didn’t enjoy 2011 but that’s not to say I didn’t have some fun. I’ve already rambled on about music up to August but the last few months of the year threw up a couple of gems in the form of Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming by M83 and Room(s) by Machinedrum. Machinedrum join James Blake as the real standouts of the year. This is where I imagined electronic music could go after Kid A came out.

My videogame obsession continues to take up a decreasing proportion of my free time. I played roughly 30 games (a few more if you count the explosion of indie bundles that filled out my Steam library but that I haven’t dug into yet) and finished 14. I played approximately 350 hours. That averages out at just under an hour per day. Reading, writing, evening classes and exercise all got in the way this year but I still squeezed in some outstanding games.

Dead Space 2 - Visceral Games (EA) 2011

Released in the first few weeks of the year I knew Dead Space 2 would remain a strong contender for game of the year. Atmospheric, well paced and technically and visually stunning, this game improved on the original in almost every way. It took a leaf from the Uncharted 2 design manual and built it’s tense action sequences around flawlessly directed set-pieces. It also drew on a few Kojima-style tricks to really inspire an emotional connection to the protagonist. Suspend your disbelief for a plot hole or two and you’re in for one of the best games of the generation. I played this game five times in the space of a few weeks and only fell one trophy short of the platinum.

Red Dead Redemption - Rockstar 2010

I steered away from this title back in 2009, both because I typically don’t like Rockstar’s open world formula, and because I simply didn’t have time for it. In a lull in early summer I picked it up on a whim, only to be blown away by the presentation, rich characterisation and surprisingly polished mechanics. A strong female support role was an unexpected pleasure considering this publisher’s track record. An early mission had me herding cattle on horseback. I’ve never felt quite so immersed in an environment; the baking sun, the dusty trail, the lowing of the cattle and the simple pleasure of weaving my way through the environment at a measured pace. I didn’t look back. Awe inspiring moments, such as the introduction of Mexico couldn’t prepare me for the game’s final act; a self-aware commentary on the limitations of in-game narrative. It’s among the best pieces of story telling I’ve experienced in an interactive medium.

Dark Souls - From Software (Namco) 2011

I only completed Demon’s Souls in 2011. I played for seventy hours over 12 months and had one of the most complete, internally consistent videogame experiences of my life. Read all about it here. Dark Souls feels like it’s predecessor but reduces the challenge somewhat through it’s new bonfire game-play mechanic. Breaking up the sprawling open world, bonfires act as re-spawn points after death but create a new risk/reward dynamic. Lighting a bonfire in the depths of a pitch-black cave may seem like a good idea, providing some respite, but die and you’ll find yourself re-spawning in that inhospitable setting repeatedly. The world is just as comprehensively designed as the 2010 classic but the lack of structure to your progress can be overwhelming. At 45 hours, without any assistance or resorting to looking for tips online, I’m taking a break and will come back to it later in the year.

Mortal Kombat - NetherRealm Studios (Warner Brothers) 2011

Who would have thought that the team who have been churning out uninspired sequels to Midway’s bloody classic all these years, could get back to basics and develop a game that not only captures what made the originals so appealing, but that they’d also create the best story mode a fighting game has ever seen. NetherRealm managed to swallow over 30 hours of my time this year. Most surprisingly, almost all of that time went on single player modes. This is a genuinely great piece of fan service and a legitimately good fighting game in it’s own right.

Beyond Good and Evil HD - Ubisoft 2011

Why does an eight year old game make it toward the top of my 2011 list? Hailing from that hallowed year, 2003, when Ratchet and Clank 2, Beyond Good and Evil and Prince of Persia Sands of Time all landed within a couple of weeks of each other it got largely overlooked at the time. In the intervening years it has gained a sort of mystical status and I was afraid that I’d built it up too much in my mind. As it turns out, the re-release was even better than I remembered. This is a really strong game and it made a number of tiny innovations that are now common place. The art-style is a little out there but if you can look past it you’ll find a game that successfully combined exploration, Zelda-style puzzles, an excellent simple combat system and engaging characters and story-telling. It was ahead of it’s time in 2003. Now, especially with the HD coat of paint, it feels right at home.

Pixel Junk Side-Scroller - Q Games (Sony Computer Entertainment) 2011

I’ve never swung so far, from under-whelmed to overwhelmed, with a game before. I’m not sure why I stuck with Sidescroller after that first frustrating half hour but stick with it I did, and the Q Games team managed to slowly deal out a finely tuned experience, one that revealed each new challenge only once I was ready for it. Carrying over some of the fluid dynamics elements that made Shooter so engaging, this is a much more tightly scripted game, recalling the pleasures of rote pattern recognition of old.

Xenoblade Chronicles - Monolith Soft (Nintendo) 2011

One of the Wii’s swansongs. The Last Story (2012) and Skyward Sword (which I’ve just started) are all that remain on my Wii to-do list after Xenoblade. Here is a game that draws on all that makes the JRPG great but that bravely dispenses with all the tapping that have been dragging the genre down for so many years. Fast travel and a quest log may seem obvious editions in this day and age but Xenoblade is the first JRPG I’ve played that really understands what gamers want. After an eventful and genuinely shocking opening act the story takes a little too long to get going, but the beautiful art design and breathtaking scope of the world keep the experience worthwhile throughout. The size of the environments comes at a cost however; this game looks terrible. The style, gameworld and themes have a lot in common with Final Fantasy 10 but though X is ten years old this year, it is by far the better looking of the two.

Resistance 3 - Insomniac Games (Sony Computer Entertainment) 2011

I didn’t buy this game. I didn’t want to buy this game. After Resistance 2 I was glad to hear that Insomniac were moving to a three-year development cycle but still I wasn’t optimistic. Luckily for me, Sony handed out promo copies at the Uncharted 3 preview event earlier in the year. When the holiday break rolled around I had some time on my hands and sat down with this and a Move on the casual setting. After a short period of acclimatisation Resistance 3 played this way was one of my favourite console FPS experiences. Fun, engaging and precise. The down-side? You can't relax, there’s no way to put the controller down for a moment without pausing. Otherwise, for someone like me who isn’t an FPS nut (R3 is actually the only FPS I played all year), I can’t recommend the Move interface enough.

(Dis?) Honorable Mentions

Uncharted 3 - Naughty Dog (Sony Computer Entertainment) 2011

I had unfairly high expectations. Uncharted 2 is my favourite game of this generation. Nothing about its world felt contrived and mechanically it was all but perfect. When I previewed Uncharted 3 in September, I made the classic mistake of giving the developer the benefit of the doubt. It seemed to be hitting all the same beats that the second game had and I assumed that they were holding back on something, that we would be surprised by the final product. I was wrong. Uncharted has reached the point where it’s writers include in-jokes to please fans, a sure sign of ebbing creativity. Ideas were introduced and never developed, whole locations were included purely because they made good tech-demos rather then because they progressed the plot and worst of all, mechanically the game took a step back. I believe it has been patched, but the shooting was so bad in the first week when I played through, that in certain sections I had to force myself to keep playing. Naughty Dog, I salute you. You have perfected a genuinely compelling way to tell stories in games, but it’s time to retire Nathan Drake. I look forward to The Last of Us.

Portal 2 - Valve (2011)

As with Uncharted 2, Portal holds a special place in my heart. Portal 2 improved on it’s predecessor in so many ways that I really want it to be up there with the year’s other stand out titles. But something was missing. A spark had gone out in the rush to one-up the originals story. I couldn’t have done any better but it’s obvious that Portal benefited from being a short focused, largely lonely experience and larger, zanier, Portal 2 simply couldn’t recapture the magic of the original.

Films of Note

Tree of Life

127 Hours

100 Mornings

The Straight Story

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The Odd Book

Quantum Man - Lawrence Krauss

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

Uncharted 3 Preview Event

2011-10-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

Uncharted 3 Preview Event
September 2011
Originally published on TheGamingLiberty.com

A strong-willed and resourceful Elena Fisher; a protective yet determined Nathan Drake; a high speed chase; a crash stranding an injured Drake in an inhospitable, wreckage-strewn landscape.

If this sounds familiar it's because the footage shown at last week’s Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception preview event in Dublin mirrored exactly the story beats of 2009's critically acclaimed Among Thieves. It may be that Naughty Dog's pulp fiction inspiration is starting to run dry, or it could be the development team playing their cards close to their chests. Uncharted has never been defined by its plot, rather it’s the strength of the moment to moment character interactions and hectic pacing that have lifted the series above the competition. There remains much to be revealed about Uncharted 3.

Co-lead designer on the Uncharted series Richard Lamarchand was in Dublin last week to provide a taste of two scenarios from the game. Relaxed and amiable, both during his presentation and in conversation; the defining impression he gave was of enthusiasm for his team and for the series. If the footage shown didn’t highlight anything particularly new, it did allow Lemarchand to neatly address a number of complaints levelled the game’s predecessor. He opened with footage previously shown at E3 (see the full video below), a clip which seemed chosen to address Among Thieves’s shortcomings; one-on-one boss encounters and legibility of the environment. The brief scene set at an airport showed how lighting, colour and other key visual cues are used to guide the player towards their destination. The clip ended with a mini-boss battle, a short fist-fight involving interaction with the environment which sidestepped the frustration seen in some of the second game’s boss battles.

Taking the series namesake literally, the new desert environment demoed live on stage was set in the unmapped southern expanse of the Arabian Peninsula. Set towards the end of the game the brief glimpse we got of this vast yet detailed wasteland was enough to demonstrate subtle improvements to Drake’s animation, to the lighting and particle effects and most impressively, to draw-distance.

Lemarchand spoke about the importance of grounding the player in the world, whether through animation, environmental effects or dialogue. When speaking to him briefly before the event he stressed the importance of multi-disciplinary development at Naughty Dog; combing art, technology, design and writing to create a cohesive experience. The desert setting stretched to the horizon however an exhausted Drake could only make his way to nearby ruins. His animation expressed his condition clearly and there were hints of desperation in his voice. Finer details such as the movement of sand across the dunes in response to Drake’s footsteps really served to set the character into the landscape. Lemarchand described Uncharted’s pacing to me less in terms of peaks and troughs and more like a series of crests and sudden drops; a saw-tooth design providing players with short breaks while keeping them on their toes. This was in evidence as a brief period of exploration gave way to a gun-fight; Drake stumbling across enemies and suddenly into combat.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception - Desert Village Campaign Gameplay HD, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Our hands-on time with the game was multiplayer only. With an even playing field of low level opponents it was easy to get a feel for how the speed and verticality of Uncharted’s maps provide a different experience. The emphasis on melee combat and ability to grab players and toss them off ledges is lifted directly from single player but is indicative of the range of options available to skilled players. Sneaking up on Lemarchand and performing a neck-snapping takedown was one of the highlights of the event for me.

The few minutes gameplay we saw were enough to illustrate that this is a team perfecting their style of game; swift-paced but with a fine attention to detail. In addressing some of the previous installment’s issues they are making the series accessible to an even wider audience. With a strong cast of characters and an array of environments and gameplay scenarios yet to be revealed, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is shaping up to be a real high point of this Christmas season.

Screenshots/videos via www.thegamingliberty.com from a variety of sources. Check the site out; those guys are doing good work.

Garden wind-down.

2011-09-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

It looks like summer's over. We've gotten very little from the garden over the last couple of months other than an amazing crop of salad leaves who quickly grew larger than we could eat and upon going to flower became largely non-delicious. A good number of green tomatoes will become a tasty chutney over the next couple of weeks but that's about it.

The bed seems to be growing food quite happily and the compost heap is mulching away at a reasonable rate for next year. It's great to have the space too; a couple of sunny mornings and tasty barbecues have been enjoyed with a tasty beer or coffee to wash it all down. Now that the growing season is coming to an end the research quest begins for picking next year's crops and growing from seeds over winter.

More photos.

August to August 2010 to 2011

2011-09-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

As I sat down to write, I imagined bemoaning the exhausting and desultory year I’ve experienced while waxing on about the contrasting pleasures of the new and original music I’ve used in order to offset the horrors of life. As it happens however, I can’t be bothered.

The years come and go; life gets harder or easier with time. Priorities change and we need to change along with them or wallow in the past without hope. The changes this country has experienced over the past few years are reflected in the lives of every single resident and though we may find ourselves thrown off the easy course we’d imagined our lives following there is nothing to be done but to discover a different one until the next great reshuffle necessitates another correction.

With the changing situation of our lives comes a shift in world view and accompanying change in tastes and artistic trends. The electro stylings that began to creep into my playlist last year and the year before have now become the norm. Technology too has changed the way I find and understand the music that takes up so large a portion of my life. Expense has put live music largely out of reach but my discovery of legal music sharing/listening sites such as Grooveshark has been transformative. I’ve gone from bemoaning the lack of new and interesting music to being overwhelmed by it. More new sounds than ever before have passed through my headphones this year.

You can listen to the entire* playlist here.

Helplessness Blues - The Fleet Foxes
Helplessness Blues (2011)

Civilian - Wye Oak
Civillian (2011)

A Battle Hymn for Children - The Faint
Faciinatiion (2008)

Help I’m Alive - Metric
Fantacies (2008)

The Wilhelm Scream - James Blake
James Blake (2011)

Montazuma - The Fleet Foxes
Helplessness Blues (2011)

Empire Ants - Gorillaz
Plastic Beach (2010)

Madder Red - Yeasayer
Old Blood (2007)

Mushaboom - Fiest
Let It Die (2004)

Fulcrum and Lever - The Faint
Faciinatiion (2008)

Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People*
Torches (2011)

The Ever-changing Spectrum of a Lie - The Joy Formidible
The Big Roar (2011)

Genki Shank - Adebisi Shank
This Is the Second Album of a Band Called Asebisi Shank (2010)

Intimate - Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles II (2010)

There Is No There - The Books
The Lemon of Pink (2003)

Cameras - Matt and Kim (Awesome video)
Sidewalks (2010)

With Your Friends - Skrillex
My Name Is Skrillex (2010)

*No longer available on Grooveshark.com

Also of note:

Films
The Tree of Life
Apocalypse Now

Books
Eating Animals

Games
Enslaved
Dead Space 2
Mortal Kombat
Portal 2
Red Dead Redemption

The search for the ultimate veggie burger! Part 2.

2011-07-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

The quest continues:

Ingredients
Mixed Beans 400g can
Plum Tomatoes 3
Peanuts 120g
Breadcrumbs 225g
Onion 1 med finely chopped
Green chilli 0.5 thinly sliced
Chilli powder 2 tsp
Garlic 1 clove chopped and ground
Tomato puree 4 tsp
Half egg
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp garam masala

Method
Roasted Tomato quarters
Fried onion garlic and chili.
Made 6 small patties from the mix.

Result
Still too dense
Peanuts were a little burned (don't cook on too high a heat)
Lacking in flavour - Needs more kick

Suggestions for part 3
Use small can of chick peas - These will be drier.
Try adding baking powder to lift the mix and allow to stand rather than cooking straight away.
Take roasted tomatos and make into sauce with a little sweet chili sauce for flavour
Add a whole egg.
Add grated carrot.
Toast breadcrumbs to dry out the mixture.
Lime?

Garden Progress!

2011-07-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks in and things are looking up. Even if it is a little late to start planting things now I can get everything ready for spring.

Photo update here.

New House. New Garden.

2011-07-12T01:13:00.000-07:00

Moving to Glasnevin may mean no more walking to town or spontanious trips to Mulligan's in Stoneybetter but it does mean I have an awesome garden and by awesome, I mean disused and weedy. I'm going to track my progress, with Laura's help, turning our small patch of ground into something we can be proud of.

Here's how it looked on arrival:

More photos can be found here.

Demon's Souls Retrospective

2011-07-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

After a full year and 70 hours I finally finished Demon's Souls with my level 83 Royal female mage. That's the most nerdly thing I've ever written. The following is an update of the article I wrote not long after setting out in the game.

Game guides, hints and tips are usually a last resort for me; I try only to turn to them when the alternative is giving up completely. Others try the min-max approach, taking the shortest path through the most content; a style of play that can completely undermine a game’s atmosphere. Reading a guide as I play can have the same effect.

Occasionally however, a game comes along that almost requires the player to seek help. The European release of Demon's Souls (Black Phantom Edition) came packaged with a basic strategy guide made up of excerpts from the game's excellent Wiki page. Rather than diminish the experience, having a guide is complimentary to the game’s philosophy. People constantly help each other out in Demon's Souls, leaving messages within the world to warn or attract attention, recommending each other’s hints or summoning fellow gamers to help in difficult situations. The wiki is a distillation of all the knowledge that has built up around the medieval world of Boletaria and the guide is designed to provide first-time players with the information required to complete their initial play-through; to teach them the skills they need to go out on their own.

As with all guides however it has a dark side. For six months, just hours from Demon’s Souls finale, I became reluctant to play on. Amid the depth of Demon’s Souls world and mechanics it can be hard to remember just to have fun. Worried that I hadn’t done enough and paralysed by the knowledge that it takes as many as five play-throughs to see all of the game’s content I was concerned that I should do as much as possible before the final encounter. The lengths I went to to plan out my progress managed to overpower the core strengths of the game; the intuitive combat, the subtle in-game storytelling and the risk-reward balance of progress.

Video game designers walk a fine tightrope; an overly structured experience can diminish player investment while an overly diverse one risks becoming unplayable. One of the most interesting experiences I've had in gaming came in Bethesda’s 2008 classic Fallout 3. In the opening hours the player is asked to detonate the nuclear bomb at the heart of the town of Megaton. Upon declining the offer (as I did) the gamer is warned that their choice will have consequences. Weeks later, rooting around an abandoned garage in the game’s expansive representation of a devastated Washington DC I was attacked unprovoked by a group of mercenaries. In the pocket of their leader I found a contract on my life taken out by one Mr. Tenpenny. At that point in the story the name meant nothing to me. Upon returning to Fallout many months later I was again wandering the wastes when I located a remote tower-block; an inexplicably intact structure amid the desolation named Tenpenny Tower. After talking my way inside I discovered that Tenpenny was behind the bomb plot back in Megaton. Although well out of character for me, I decided to eliminate him. If he wanted me dead, I wanted him dead. I wanted him out of my game-world. I managed to sweet-talk my way to his penthouse and take him out where he sat on his balcony, all without alerting security. I didn’t even talk to the man.

All of this occurred by accident. The designers create the series of events but the player determines the outcome. And my assassination had consequences; I missed out on content later in the game. Killing Tenpenny also complicated politics within the tower, making it impossible to resolve problems between the residents and the refugees outside. If I had turned to a guide and tried to complete every quest, I couldn’t have had this experience with the game. It’s the freedom of choice that comes only from gaming that remains one of the core reasons I play.

Demon’s Souls isn’t story-driven in the way that Fallout was; as time went by I found myself becoming overly dependent on the guide. Demon's Souls is renowned for its difficulty and the sprawling diversity of the game’s class system and character creator have put many players off so I used it first to determine the best character to start with and to get me through the first boss. Later I found myself turning to it more and more often. The game is at its best however when played blind where every item is vital and you never know what's around the next corner. When I finally hit my stride and decided to strike out on my own, the result was one of the most rewarding sessions I've had with a game yet.

I found myself in the bowels of the Stonefang mines with ten thousand souls (the game’s currency) under my belt and a crippling fear that if I progressed, I'd lose everything. Taking risks as necessary, I'd worked my way carefully through the caves with shield at the ready and staff raised to take down enemies from afar. I'd survived countless falls, explosions and ambush attacks and those 10,000 souls were my reward; enough, after 90 minutes play, to level up a couple of my stats.

I stood facing a gateway barred by a green fog. It’s the sort of landmark that in traditional gaming parlance might indicate a new area or hopefully a checkpoint. In Demon's Souls it simply makes it impossible to foresee what waits around the next corner. Faced with up to an hour's trek to regain my hard earned spoils if I died in the next room, I turned back from the fog and made my way through unknown territory to take the lift I'd passed earlier to return to the surface. Rather than look at the guide and plough on I turned back towards the safety of the game’s hub world to save my game. In a world populated by architectural wonders, towering dragons and epic battles simply finding my way back was probably my favorite moment. It’s a feeling quite different from the one I had in Fallout; careful retreat rather than triumphant vengeance but at its core the experience remains the same. The decisions taken and the plans well executed were freedoms afforded to me by the quality of the games’ designs.

In reality I’m unlikely to finish this game once more, let alone another five times. Remembering that game-play is more important than competing every last side-quest I finally finished Demon’s Souls last weekend; an extraordinarily satisfying achievement. We often complain about modern releases being too easy, that they hold our hands or funnel us down linear paths too frequently. Demon’s Souls is different. It’s difficult because it requires you to plan ahead, and to take responsibility for your actions, to measure risk against potential reward and turn away from a battle if you’re not yet ready for it. It’s a concept that has put many off the game but I would urge anyone who enjoys immersive gaming to give From Software’s masterpiece a chance while the servers are still live. Much of the challenge comes from not knowing what to expect and in this interactive medium there’s no loftier praise to level at a game.

The search for the ultimate veggie burger! Part 1.

2011-07-05T16:02:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a garden I'm going to have to have a BBBQ, thusly:

Ingredients
Butter Beans 400g can
Plum Tomatoes 3
Peanuts 60g
Breadcrumbs 225g
Onion 1 med finely chopped
Red chilli 0.5 thinly sliced
Chilli powder 2 tsp
Garlic 1 clove chopped and ground
Tomato puree 2 tsp

Method
Roasted peanuts with salt and sunflower oil (10 min)
Roasted tomatoes with chilli powder, pepper, honey and olive oil (20 min)

Result
Mix too wet
Cooked burgers too dense
Onion and garlic flavours too strong
Not enough spice
Peanuts are perfect flavour!

Suggestions for part 2
Use mixed beans or chickpeas (drier)
Roast tomatoes and garlic together on larger roasting tray for longer at lower temp with sugar
Double peanut quantity
Toast breadcrumbs and increase quantity by half
Fry onion and chilli
Use whole reg chilli or consider green chilli
Double tomato puree
Add half egg
Add 2 tsp cumin
Add 1 tsp garam masala
Add grated carrot
Make smaller patties.

My Living Room

2011-07-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Laura's fish tank the living room is a far more interesting place:

Songs of the week: Ongoing

2011-06-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

Regular updates to my Songs of the Week playlist can be found here:

http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Song+Of+The+Week/50958130

My bizarrely diverse tastes continue. From twitter:

Song of the Week # 6,7&8...I couldn't narrow the latest Gorillaz album down to just one song: http://j.mp/lYm4CA

Song of the Week #5: http://tinyurl.com/5s8m47x Skrillex (from that Uncharted3 trailer), like Daft Punk in the old days.

Song of the week #4: Here's 'Like O, Like H' because I can't quite pick a Gorillaz song yet: http://tinyurl.com/6gwqypx

Song of the Week #3

2011-04-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

Keeping up the female vocalist trend. This is Civilian by Wye Oak:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/Civilian/3nir3p?src=5

Spiritual Semantics

2011-04-09T04:09:00.000-07:00

Why start a personal blog if you're not going to use it? If the things I come across in my day to day trawl of the internet are worthy of a tweet or of posting to Facebook then perhaps they are worthy of some comment:

Recent Twitter/Facebook links behind this post:
Lawrence Krauss - A Universe from Nothing
Point of Inquiry - Spirituality: Friend or Foe
The Science Network - AC Grayling Interview

It always worries me how inarticulate I am when it comes to the things I feel most strongly about. In some ways however it may be a form of self-preservation. As anyone subjected to my disjointed ramblings will attest, it is likely that when given the opportunity to talk, my discourse will be peppered with contemptuous chagrin towards the ever-growing stupidity of the human race. I'd be friendless if I found it easier to talk to people.

It is said that the foibles one finds so disagreeable in others reflect one's own perceived short-comings. That may be the case as regards my feelings towards Richard Dawkins. Though supporting his goals, and understanding his anger towards religion and the institutions that promote it, I find his means personally distasteful; he strikes me as a self important blow-hard who's approach to education is more likely to find the approval of sycophantic head-nodders on his lecture circuit than to open the minds of those lost to religious dogmaticism. I imagine I would come across as equally forceful and tactless if I spoke out more often.

Why bring this up now? Recently Martin Rees was awarded the 2011 Templeton prize for making an exceptional contribution to investigating life's spiritual dimension (Guardian.co.uk), in itself worthy of note; every human has at some point experienced wonder and awe in contemplation of the universe. The word spiritual may be laden down with supernatural connotations but it seems to me appropriate when used to express that feeling. It's very possible that both science and religion share common ancestry. Just listen to Lawrence Krauss' emotional discussion of his understanding of the universe for a sense of the experience science can provide.

Dawkin's himself has voiced his appreciation of this in discussion with Krauss. Though I may worry about Dawkin's overly augmentative approach to education I have to agree with him on this one. If the Templeton prize is awarded to those seeking to "comprehend the many and diverse manifestations of the Divine" should an enlightened scientist accept it? I should point out here that Rees is himself an atheist, though one who favours the society religion has provided for us; it seems disingenuous for anyone who does not believe in the supernatural to, if not support, then at least create space for discussion on the matter. The Guardian's piece refers to his belief that scientists "should not stray into theological territory that they don't understand".

Ultimately perhaps this is just an issue of semantics. If spirituality is an experience common to all of humanity, irrespective of their belief in the supernatural then scientists shouldn't allow their perspicacity to be diminished through co-option of the language by religious groups. If however the word is tied to the divine then perhaps it is a concept best left behind by scientists.

So what's the alternative to Martin Rees placating 'can't we all just get along' or Richard Dawkins' more aggressive 'you're ignorant' approach. How about employing some of the rational constructive debate upon which science has always been based? Point of Inquiry, a secular humanist podcast from the US covered this subject in no small detail in their recent show inviting an advocate and a detractor of the use of the term spirituality in science to speak on the matter. The podcast is the reason I started this post. It's well balanced arguments echo the sort of conversations I've been having all my life with my sister on the matter. Both speakers make clear cogent arguments capable of swaying the listener. Point of Inquiry's absolute objectivity in this matter is to be applauded and I'd recommend the podcast to anyone.

On a related note, while I'm plying the wares of far better orators than I, The Science Network has an interview with philosopher AC Grayling discussing the subject including what may be a veiled reference to Rees about 5:30 minutes in. Grayling also articulates why he believes we should at the very least think about what we do/eat/believe in a more succinct manner than I've yet been able to manage.

Song of the Week

2011-04-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

I've started posting my musical habbits to Twitter as I go using Grooveshark.com. Just one song from the cacophony each week. I'll add a link to the playlist in the side bar soon but I'll post the twitter updates here too for good measure.

Last week it was The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie by The Joy Formidable, this week it's a song from the soundtrack to the excellent 500 Days of Summer; Mushaboom by Fiest.

Song of the Week on Grooveshark

Winter 10/11

2011-03-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

The approach of April means we're heading for summer. Time to wrap up that Winter photo album and move on. Here are the last few months in still image form including such highlights as: the winter of doom, beautiful crisp mornings, Charlivelle Castle Tullamore, Amsterdam, Madrid and fish tanks with musical accompaniment from And so I Watch You From Afar, Gemma Hayes, Arcade Fire and Joan as Police Woman.

Gaming 2010

2011-01-16T12:33:00.000-08:00

For me, August typically marks the end of the year; as the bright fresh evenings of summer give way to dark warm winter’s nights spent wrapped up indoors. Each year, for the past eight or so, I've recorded my mood, my thoughts, my changing fortunes with an August to August, a play-list summarising the music that defined the previous twelve months. Music is the one constant throughout my year; no matter what else changes my insatiable dependence on it remains true and at year’s end the Electric Picnic serves as my pagan winter festival celebrating the passage of one long year into the next. It’s a concept carried over from school no doubt; a year leading up to the freedoms of Summer ending with the jarring transition back to the regimented monotony of the education system. Even now, free for at least the time being, from the regularities of institutionalised education I’m trapped in that annual cycle by that tradition.

Gaming, my other great hobby, is different; it remains tied to the Gregorian calendar. 2010 seemed to hint that the industry is moving towards a more widespread annual release schedule, closer to that of the music or film industries than the traditional feast or famine cycle of gaming; a glut of releases in the run up to Christmas followed by a dearth of new content throughout the remainder of the year. A constant stream of entertaining and original content came out each month in 2010, and every month brought it’s own reason to get excited. Come year’s end in fact the Christmas line-up seemed a little light, with publishers no doubt scared into submission by the behemoth that is the annual Call of Duty title. Though as with music, the concept of a Christmas number one seems lost under the onslaught of mass marketing, December and January remain a time for ruminating on the best of the best from the past year.So just like last year it’s time to take a look at my year in gaming.

I used to be normal. Pre-2007 my interest in games was purely recreational. Back then I played largely single-player titles and considering my purchases were limited to between one and six per year that meant that gaming proportionally took up very little of my time. A new console would bring a burst of enthusiasm and perhaps two busy years gaming before a lull. But this current generation has managed to buck that trend. Now no longer tied to five year console cycles, developers seem more likely to take risks with their projects, developing character arcs across trilogies and riffing off or perfecting mechanics throughout series. That's not to say that original content didn't arise in the PS2 era but it was often the exception that proved the rule. Likewise it would be foolish to assume that this time round every release is gold but this willingness coupled with the graphical and technical excellence to recreate virtually any setting has led to a turning point point for the industry. The sheer volume of quality releases since I bought into this generation in 2007 has turned gaming from a casual pursuit to my primary cultural entertainment outlet.

Recent years have seen developers expand on what have always been my favourite aspects of gaming (lateral thought, puzzle-solving, dexterity and story-telling) with choice, exploration and improvements to pacing, environmental staging and set-design can combine to engender in the player a real emotional connection to both protagonist and setting. The desire to come back to the myriad annual sequels while also seeking out new original experiences means that it’s very easy to sink countless hours into sitting on your couch at the expense of almost everything else. It’s less an addiction and more being overwhelmed by the shear volume of worthwhile content. The time I spent covering games for the guys at Gamezbox.ie too was a time sink; one which meant not always playing the games I wanted to. So at the start of 2010 I tasked myself with counting all those countless hours and documenting just how many games I played and how much of my life was dedicated to them.

In 2010 I played a rather ridiculous 40 individual games across a range of systems from home console to PC to hand-helds. Of those, I played 24 to completion (or to their logical conclusion in the case of virtually endless modern handheld titles). It was a year of time intensive games such as Fallout 3, Mass Effect One and Two, Final Fantasy XIII and Demon’s Souls but also of quick burst gaming on iOS such as Flight Control or Tilt to Live. Some games disappointed (Final Fantasy XIII and the long awaited Alan Wake included) while other’s surprised such as Bayonetta and Enslaved; both excelling in their chosen genres.

In total I invested a whopping 524 hours gaming, the vast majority of those (447) at home. Of those just over 300 were spent on PS3 where I played a total of 16 games. Just two of those games (FFXIII and Demon’s Souls) alone accounted for 120 hours of the total. My iPod touch was the most extensively used hand-held last year clocking in at 52 hours approximately. All this may seem excessive but lets look at it in some context. Gaming is now my primary source of entertainment. The number of films watched or books I read pales into insignificance so most of my down-time is spent gaming. All that time averages out at 1.43 hours per day, not bad considering the average Irish person watches 3.3 hours of TV each day. I rarely watch more than one during dinner so it would appear my time spent in front of a TV is actually well shy of the average at 2.43 hours total.

So what about cost? Everybody knows that at €60 for many new releases, gaming can be an expensive pursuit. A rough approximation of my total expenditure comes in at €570, in or around €1.60 per hour spent playing. That too doesn't seem excessive to me. In fact it came as a pleasant surprise. I typically budget for just over €1000 per year on entertainment so having games take up only half of that allotment allows plenty of cash for expensive undertakings such as trips to the cinema.

Most importantly though 2010 was a year where I found some balance in gaming. A year when I came to accept that I can’t play ever major new game and that sometimes a sequel to even your most beloved of series’ isn't always deserving of attention over new and innovative titles. I stepped back too from writing about games in order to have more time to enjoy them recreationally and though there my not always be people to talk to who share my passion about gaming, there has never been a more exciting time to be interested in this arena; watching a whole new medium find its feet, stretch its wings and create whole new ways to engage and inspire is an honour I hope to enjoy for as long as my thumbs can possibly hold out.

Padr

August to August 2009 - 2010

2010-09-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

My favourite tunes from the past year.
In no particular order other than most aurally pleasing:

My Girls - Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavillion (2010)

Treats - Sleigh Bells
Treats (2010)

Sprawl II (Moutains Beyond Mountains) - Arcade Fire
The Suburbs (2010)

Beauty School - Deftones
Diamond Eyes (2010)

Far - Coheed and Cambria
Year of the Black Rainbow (2010)

Afraid of Everyone - The National
High Violet (2010)

White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes (2009)

Stranger than Kindness - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Your Funeral...My Trial (1986)

Cosmic Love - Florence + the Machine
Lungs (2009)

Born and Raised - Alexisonfire
Old Crows/Young Cardinals (2009)

Get Out - Circa Survive
Blue Sky Noise (2010)

Ready to Start - Arcade Fire
The Suburbs (2010)

The Black Rainbow - Coheed and Cambria
The Year of the Black Rainbow (2010)

Also of interest:

Gaming:
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Bayonetta
Bit.Trip Beat
Heavy Rain
Mass Effect
Demon's Souls
Assassin's Creed 2
Braid
Limbo
Plants vs. Zombies

Books:
The Road

Film:
Inception
A Single Man
Serephine
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
This is England
Up

Scribbles

2010-07-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

It's humorous doodle time!

I hope to update this album as i go but who knows...