Monthly Archives: July 2003

Birthday Weekend

Tuesday July 15th 2003

After the sombre events of Friday were out of the way, the weekend turned out to be quite pleasant. Very low key compared to a year ago, though, when we moved house and had my birthday party the day after.

On Saturday night my mum treated me, Fliss, and family to a quality meal at the Dumbuck Hotel. Top food, although the service was lacking and we ended up waiting 20 minutes for a round of drinks.

Then on Sunday I spent some time in the scorching sun trying to get Andrew to catch a football. This is not an easy task, believe me – Andrew has hand-eye co-ordination that only Stevie Wonder would envy. Still, he managed to catch a few… with the emphisis on few… and was definately improving by the time we saught shelter from the heat. (No doubt he’ll be back to square one by the next time I visit – which is this weekend for Hazel & Ian’s engagement party!)

Sunday evening was taken up by the fairly smooth drive back home – I’m actually getting quite efficient at it now, although we did have to stop for fuel this time.

For Monday I had taken the day off work, which we filled with shopping and a visit to Argos to buy my birthday treats – a skateboard ramp and a weight bench. True to form, the ramp wasn’t in stock, but I got my weight bench for ?60.

The construction process took ages, though – and it’s not as if it was too complicated. Two hours of toil ended on a sour note when I found that the very final frickin’ pieces were missing! Two spacer/washer things required for the butterfly attachments were absent from the bag, so I have to call the manufacturer to get them sent to me.

Fliss had fired up a barbeque while I was building the weight bench, so we had some charred & uncooked food for dinner before retiring to play EyeToy for the rest of the evening. Not a bad way to end my birthday weekend, even if the rest didn’t go to plan :o)

Troubled times

Tuesday July 8th 2003

I haven’t been updating as much recently due to a bit of a persistant migraine I’ve had for over a week. Too much screen time as usual, I’m afraid, so I decided not to use the PC at home to help me get rid of the headache.

Add to this the sad news that Fliss‘ mother had passed away and there just isn’t really much to talk about with any enthusiasm at the moment.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Starsky & Hutch

Wednesday July 2nd 2003

Fliss and I have spent some time on this retro-style driving and shooting game. It’s a novel combination of genres and for the most part it does work well.

One of you takes control of the famous red car with the white flash from the 70’s series, while the other takes control of an on-screen target which allows them to shoot at power-ups, vehicles, traffic lights, and other odds and ends as the need arises. Coolest of all is the cop badge – shoot one, or drive through it to trigger a cut scene, usually a large explosion or a truck barreling its way out of control towards you.

The gameplay can be frantic, as you’ll not only be trying to complete the primary and secondary objectives to complete the mission (or “episode”), but you’ll have to perform plenty of gnarly driving antics in order to keep your viewing figures healthy, too. If they drop to zero it doesn’t matter how close you are to catching the baddies, it’s game over.

Although it’s a clever game dynamic, the viewing figures are undoubtedly fudged depending on the mission. Some of the point to point stuff is so lacking in excitement that the streets are littered with viewer boosting icons to shoot in order to keep your counter healthy. However, getting shot or running over pedestrians will also have your audience switching over to Quincy MD.

If you can keep the viewers enthralled then you can set about catching the bad guys. This involves chasing them down on the road and then filling them with enough lead to sink a battleship before their vehicle of choice comes to a hault.

For the first “Series” of missions it’s not particularly hard to finish them all without breaking too much of a sweat. Sure, there are some manic moments, but once the co-driver gets the hang of shooting when their sights are constantly moving, and the driver holds it steady for long range efforts, most missions can be dispatched pretty easily, allowing you time to look for hidden goodies within the well presented city streets.