Limbo is the tale of an unknown boy and his adventures through a dark world, literally. The protagonist is only a shadow with eyes and every place you visit is comprised from shadows and very dim lighting. The concept behind the story is ambiguous and open to heavy debate on the Internet (Is he in purgatory? Hell? Looking for his dead sister?), something which seems very popular these days. You begin by waking up on the grassy floor of a dark forest and follow the trail through undergrowth, trees, insect wildlife and a range habitats you see on Cracked lists. Roughly halfway through you reach a city and the game shifts from nature-based to cold and steel, which is less pleasing to the eye but it keeps the backgrounds from getting repetitive.

The controls are simple and fluent for the most part. You’ve got your movement through the analogue stick, your jump button and your basic action button. I found that the protagonist occasionally decided that doing what I wanted him to do was boring and jumped from a rope several times to his death occasionally, but besides this the controls were solid enough to not hamper gameplay. The grabbing and pushing/pulling of boxes is unproblematic and there are only a few times when it’s difficult to judge your jumping. As mentioned above the protagonist is unnamed (although I like to refer to him as “Reginald Noname”) and only seen through shadows – but you’ll learn to empathise and feel connected to him without even realising it.

If you step on a bear trap, it will close up and tear him in two. If he steps off a cliff and lands on spikes, he will be impaled. There’s a gore feature to disable this but I never used it – it punishes the player for their mistakes. Even though “Reginald” will respawn at the start of the puzzle, with plenty of frequent autosave spots, the image will remain with you. There are some horrific and memorable moments in the same, such as running into a common phobia the right size of the screen and wincing as it does horrible things to you. The entire game is packed with unique moments and anyone who completes it without looking at a walkthrough is a true gaming legend or a filthy liar. A lot of puzzles require thinking “outside the box”: here’s one example. There’s two switches, one which reverses the gravity on the floor and makes two giant obstructive blocks move up to the ceiling, allowing you to climb up past the first but becoming blocked behind the second. The second switch turns the ceiling into a magnet for the blocks. Your very wits and perception are the key – working out that one is higher than the other and using precision timing to get one stuck without the other being held on the ceiling too.

It’s a beautiful game but it’s not without fault. Playdead set out with several goals in mind, one of which being to have no tutorial. This is fair enough but after the number of times the boy has jumped off the rope without being told, I’m not even sure if the B (action) button should be held or toggled to grab the rope – and I’ve completed the game! The developer also stated that they wanted to avoid the mistake of repeating things and believe they accomplished this goal. Why the heck does the “brain worm” turn up four or five times then? Basically once in a while a worm will latch onto your head and make you unable to change direction until you work out what to do and manage to get it removed. It’s a neat idea at first but by the third time it just seems to pad out the section it’s involved in by making the player backtrack and avoid things. The lack of a clear story is often criticised but that just adds to the charm in places. It’s only a few hours long but the initial difficulty and hidden eggs increase this. There’s also an achievement for completing the whole thing without dying five times or more but let’s be reasonable here – that’s ten gamerscore points I’m never getting.

Limbo is one of those ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ games within the genre. If you enjoy platformers with a unique style and a certain level of challenge to it, you may enjoy it. If you have little patience and would prefer to shoot someone until long after you’ve run out of ammo, with no love or willingness to try new things, get out. Don’t come back without a sandwich.

The Pokemon Global Link is an online service that works with the Black and White games. The basic idea is that you connect your DS to the Internet, “tuck in” a Pokemon – that is putting them to bed and not “making them go to sleep”, which uploads the Pokemon to the Dream World. The Dream World itself is an in-browser minigame in which you take the Pokemon you put to sleep and go on crazy adventures, including growing berries, buying furniture with berries to decorate your house and hooking up with friends (not like that, you pervert).

The fourth option is to travel to an island where it takes on the form of a choose-your-way adventure and you encounter Pokemon along the way. You can help them by completing minigames, which vary from fun and easy to spamming the mouse button until you find their lost companion. I’m unsure of how many mini-games there are but the three I played seemed like fun. When you reach the end of the path (ten screens in any direction) you come up to the TREE OF DREAMS and by placing a berry you can pick one of your new friends to come home with you. Disconnecting from the Dream World allows this. For Pokemon fans it’s a solid idea and a lot of fun.

When it works.

I wasn’t aware that my Espeon’s dreams would occasionally crash and remanifest themselves. During my hour in the Dream World I was force-logged out no less than eight times, leaving me with only an Exeggcute at the end. I even met a Kangaskan twice, both of which I lost due to the crashing. Another annoying habit is that you can only play for an hour a day, to “conserve power” as the creepy lady with the lab coat tells me. I swear I was only on there about half an hour before she told me to bugger off.

I’m not entirely sure why the limit is there, considering the number of online servers for different games, sites and the actual Pokemon trading service. Why would such a simple mini-game do this? Is it that they don’t want us grabbing hundreds of Pokemon at once? Surely a cap on the number of Pokemon you could send to the game per day would be a better solution?

It’s a pretty fun idea but it’s going to need a lot of work. Please stop crashing, Dream World. The servers were barely full, from what I saw on the management page. Please don’t turn my Espeon into a vegetable.

I suppose it’s ironic in that we didn’t really speak that much when I first joined Maverick. The script of my first show, ‘Spooked‘, intrigued me at first. Time travel, murder and ghosts? I was captivated by the idea. Roughly the third or fourth week you turned to me and told me that we were going to perform the whole show in eight minutes. It was at that moment that I both thought you were running on some insane level of creativity, and wondered where I could get me some of that (it worked though, and a LOT of people learned their lines that day). While I’d been doing drama and acting as a hobby for a few years before, I think I learnt more about confidence and using the stage during that one show than the entire time I had before. I had no idea just how amazing you were at the time though, not by a long shot.

It’s no secret (because just as you are known for storytelling, this is one story that I tend to tell a lot) that a few years ago, my appendix burst inside me and I narrowly survived. I was a wreck, physically and emotionally – life lost some of the shine that I’d come to expect from it. Then you happened. You included me in filming a scene for Wraith, even when I could barely stand. Despite the fact I wasn’t in the scene and I wasn’t familiar with your non-Maverick projects and schemes (of which there were clearly so many) you still got me involved. I remember the first major continuity error, almost breaking the table and throwing Briony off of the pier in Hamworthy in the dead of night to film one scene. This grouchy, miserable ex-hospital visitor began to feel good again. Naturally, I was hospitalised twice more since then but both times you continued to hang out with me, picking me up in the car and going on crazy adventures, to the point I spent more time in The Flat than at home. When it got to the point that Matty B would walk into the living room and expect me to be there, half asleep, it was guaranteed that we were having fun.

I remember watching videos with you of past Romania trips. I remember abducting Shandy, Joanna and Pickle and visiting London for the day, seeing Wicked, starting a toy fight with an employee in the basement of Hamleys, getting lost on the Underground and driving back in the dark. I remember your birthday, when Anthea took Shandy, you and me to your favourite restaurant and having a fantastic evening. There were the practical jokes (What? You asked for milk, two sugars…you wanted tea with that?) and making Tesco security guards paranoid at one in the morning. From dragging my laptop to every pub we could find to work on Wraith, to painting and working on set before shows, hunting caffiene in the morning, laughing as you swigged milk while driving me to the doctor, to teaching me how to remove lizard excrement from fabric (a skill that I still retain, oddly) there are a heck of a lot of memories.

The point was that I wasn’t family or anyone special. I was just someone who enjoyed drama and got tangled up in your adventures. That was who you were, you picked up people and gave them the confidence inside of them that they deserved. Every single person that went to the memorial became a better person for knowing you, and none of them would doubt that. It wasn’t until Sorin and Helen spoke that it really hit me. The thing I’ll miss the most isn’t the crazy antics or the fun we had (although it’s pretty close), but rather the shoulder. There were times that we’d just sit in the pub and really talk. You took an untrusting guy and told him everything, and the feeling was mutual. I’ve always had trouble opening up to people and telling them what’s really bothering me, but I could trust you. You took a lot of stress off of my mind and I like to think that I did the same for you. You accepted me for who I was. You understood. You were one of my best friends. It’s no secret that you preferred to help others rather than accepting help yourself, but I like to think that our methods worked.

When I decided to go to uni, I know you were a bit upset that our regular adventures would come to a halt. It was a tough decision and I owe you my thanks for convincing me to take the gap year to recover, with people that both cared and knew my medical history. There are so many things that I should thank you for, but I know that you’d tell me to stop and get the Dr Pepper from the kitchen. You listened. We drifted apart but the friendship was still there. While we haven’t really talked as much this last year or so, I still consider you one of my closest friends. You found love, you gave Sorin his life back. After hearing stories – of which I doubt there are endless more to hear, you weren’t just our friends – you were friends with the world and the world wasn’t good enough.

We’ll miss you, Gav. I hope you understand that, and I hope you’re proud that this tribute is long overdue.

Last night our uni course celebrated the launch of our short story anthology, “As We See It”. The event itself was fantastic thanks to everyone who put in the effort (they know who they are) and there wasn’t a negative moodlet in the room. Chris, Tina, me and Lil read our stories, the food was great and there was even a cake version of our book! It felt like a real accomplishment and I spent ten minutes chatting up talking to a journalist. Fun was had by all.

If curious, here’s the link on Amazon.

Braid

Enter Braid, a side-scrolling 2D platformer for Steam and the Xbox Live Arcade. This is the part where I summarise the story, but there’s a problem. Braid is an artsy-game, with a story open to mass-interpretation, fanboying and forum death threats. I won’t lie and say it’s impossible to understand – you play as a guy named Tim (who looks like a twelve year old schoolboy) and follow his search for his “princess” through five worlds. Each world isn’t a physical place as such – there’s a lot of philosophy. Don’t run off screaming about how it’s trying to be educational because the only thing you’re learning is how to appreciate it. For reasons explained through copious interpretation, Tim has the ability to rewind time (up to 8x speed) and undo his mistakes and even death itself. While this idea is far from original in gaming (see the magnificant Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for one example) it’s one that always delights. You can rewind time as much as you want with little consequence and there’s no health system – if you get injured, you have to rewind time. The opening world, “World 2″, is rather simple for the most part and allows you to play with your new found power.

Once you hit Worlds 3 to 6 you’ll discover that this game is twisted. Each new world focuses on a different aspect of time manipulation, each more devious than the last. These range from time shifting depending on your position in the level (walk left to reverse, right to progress) to some nasty shadow-Tim teamwork. I’ve often claimed that video gaming has become remarkably easy on average, compared to ten years ago, so you can imagine my delight when I say that Braid is hard. No, not “fifteen space marine orgy” hard. Braid is difficult and if you complete the entire thing, collecting all the jigsaw pieces without checking a Youtube guide or breaking down and crying, then you deserve some serious respect. Some of the puzzles are trial and error while some require very fast thinking. Some objects and enemies are unaffected by time manipulation – if you reverse time, they’ll keep doing what they’re doing. This level of parallel timelines is both interesting and challenging.

Visually, Braid is a wonder. There’s a vibrant pastel theme to the art, which can take on a variety of tones. The game’s “hub” is a dark and dingy house, where the streets behind are lit in both darkness and flame. It’s another game that looks cute and warm on the front, but as you delve deeper into the game you discover more sinister undertones than you could possibly imagine. Finding every jigsaw piece allows access to the final world, which should go down in history for an award in storytelling.

The game’s length is equal to both your patience and your intelligence. A reliable source tells me that the Xbox version has an achievement for fully completing it in fourty five minutes (EDIT – also present in the Steam version), but it takes hours of practice to complete the game the first time round. You have to think outside the box, a vast improvement to the average FPS these days where thinking outside the box involves “moving the cursor out of the box and unloading an ammo clip”. I miss gaming of this variety and a lot of the connotations and critique on gaming that Braid offers, especially through a Donkey Kong-inspired level known as “Jumpman” (see image above) that both challenges your perception as a gamer and your ability to think.

I picked up Braid for a couple of quid during a Steam sale, and it’s worth every penny. Keep an eye out next time Steam or the Xbox Live Arcade does a deal and you might just be pleasantly (and infuriantingly) surprised.

I’m compiling a list for both my personal information and to hopefully give you guys an idea of what a miserable little existence I find myself in, that I cannot devote more time to my reading.

UNFINISHED:
And Another Thing… – Eoin Colfer
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – (Jane Austen and) Seth Grahame-Smith
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft – H.P. Lovecraft
Needful Things – Stephen King
Wicked – Gregory Maguire
The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett

TO READ:
The Lost Symbol – Dan Brown
Doctor Who: Vanishing Point – Stephen Cole
Mrs Fry’s Diary – “Mrs Stephen Fry”
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel – Greg Keyes
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) – George R. R. Martin
The Shining – Stephen King
The Dead Zone – Stephen King
Firestarter - Stephen King
Nightmares and Dreamscapes – Stephen King
Insomnia – Stephen King
From A Buick 8 – Stephen King
Cell - Stephen King
Duma Key – Stephen King
Under the Dome – Stephen King
Son of a Witch - Gregory Maguire
Atonement - Ian McWean
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audren Niffenegger
The Complete Novels – George Orwell (read “Animal Farm” already)
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
The Light Fantastic – Terry Pratchett
Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

I have a lot of unread Stephen King, that’s for sure.

Now of course, there are two types of applications for the iPod and this has extended to the Blackberry, being pay-to-download ones that usually cost less than two quid (but requires hours of awkward pauses as you mistrust the company to take such a small amount from your credit card) or the free ones. We’re all about the free. I’ve only ever bought one mobile application my entire life and that was the stonkingly brilliant Peggle for the iPod Touch, but besides that paying for the “convenience” just isn’t worth it. You have to consider the marketing range for the iPod: while this applies less to the Blackberry, it’s still worth nothing that spoiled fourteen year olds who receive the Gift of Apple for their birthday, Christmas present or payment for ritual sacrifice do not normally have the funds or attention span to pay for apps, and this is something that older generations seem to respect and follow. So without further ado, here’s a hand-picked selection of various Blackberry applications accompanied by a personal opinion and either praise or scathing criticism. (Note – I’m using a Blackberry Bold of some description and some forms of these applications will no doubt exist on other formats.)

Twitter
Probably the most worthwhile application for a mobile device, this allows you to “tweet” from wherever your Blackberry happens to tango with a network signal. The functionality covers most of the basics – you can send and receive tweets, directly message people, receive spam from one of Twitter’s many bots, create lists, delete lists by accident and search for trending topics. One advantage of using this application as opposed to sitting at a computer (besides the mobile convenience you smartarses) is that if you include the @ symbol in a message while composing it, suggestions will pop up alphabetically to save you typing in the multiple underscore and accented symbols that the 1337P30P13 use nowadays. However, this feature is buggy and occasionally refuses to bring up said menu – typically if you’re trying to show it to someone. This application is alive and will eat you while you sleep. For the price, it’s worthwhile to any Blackberry-wielding Twitter-user: and bollocks for anyone else.

Facebook
In order to use this application efficiently, you have to leave it logged in. In addition to breaking the laws of nature and somehow managing to drain the Blackberry’s pitiful battery life even faster than normal, this application is still unreliable, inferior to actually using Facebook on a computer and the only possible advantage it carries is being able to “insta-poke” people back so when the notifications don’t bug out and fail to appear, you can convince that wonderful fifty-eight year old virgin with the picture of a teenage blonde to eventually meet up for the most awkward coffee you’ve ever had.

Foursquare
Foursquare is essentially an application designed to help people stalk you. Every registered venue or public place in a location – of which there must be a crack team filling in the gaps by the speed they fill up – can be “checked in” to by a user of the application. The person who checks in can leave advice, helpful comments or rude emoticons for other people and the person who checks in the most at a place within a certain period of time is deemed “mayor” and becomes eligible for a 1% chance of winning a free t-shirt or buying two sandwiches for the price of three in one of the four places in the UK that actually uses this thing. Of course the application itself is slightly unreliable, laggy, requires constant maintenance, bedtime stories, your firstborn child and I suspect the only reason people use it once the original fad wears off is either to collect “badges” (because you’re not safe from achievement hunting even with your phone) or because they actually have friends who use it.

Flixster
It works, shows you upcoming films, ratings and has a decent search function. If you can’t find a network it’ll even link you to the actual Flixster website so you can-no, network’s still down. Bummer. You can also give the application permission to find your current GPS location in order to locate nearby cinemas and check booking times. It’s not working for me at time of writing, so good luck.

Who Is It?
This application seems like one of those pointless ones until you realise what it’s actually doing. For those not in the know or who own a Blackberry and have had the light replaced with a M.I.B. Neuralizer, whenever you receive a message or phone call on one of the former device, it forces a glaring repeating red light into your eyes, blinding the young and elderly and triggering a nuclear launch sequence miles away. This application allows you to choose ten people and set a non-red colour to each one, magically transforming the blinding red into another equally blinding colour (white, green, dark blue, light blue,purple, orange, yellow, burgandy, pink or…lighter pink) whenever that person demands the money you owe them. There’s no real positive or negative to this – if you’re anything like me you’ll forget who is what colour. The application’s setup menu is haunted by an advert for ten more colours but considering you’ll rarely have to look at the damn thing it’s okay.

FallDown/Copter/Hangman/Snake/BubbleBreaker etc
Blackberry games tend to all guarantee three things. One, they’re normally a cut version of a paid version or have paid add-ons available for purchase. Two, they’re crawling with adverts for similarly money leechers – in fact I’ve seen the same advert page after dying in one game on another, lazy buggers. Three, the reviews page is of no use unless you wish to fill your Blackberry PIN (friends) list with complete strangers because you have no actual friends and eventually plan a big meet up involving an even bigger awkward meeting for coffee. The only exception to this paragraph are potentially the games already loaded onto the device: I’m a sucker for Solitaire, Word Mole makes me feel smart and I can squint at Sudoku all day long without sacrificing my firstborn child, which is good because Foursquare still has him.

I find it almost unbelievable that it’s been over eleven years since the whole Y2K/Millennium Bug crisis, the year 2000, a supposedly significant portion of time. Looking back it doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished much; passing my GCSEs and A Levels, getting into uni and kicking death in the face have all been recent things, i.e. less than five years. That’s probably due to our limited memories of our childhood but to be able to summarise your life in an eleven year period in less than a sentence is both an inevitability and a pessimistic skill. Hopefully in the next eleven years (keeping the theme up) I’ll have some more distinct recognition to my name, hopefully starting with finishing uni and getting this novel published. I’ve been having doubts about if anyone would like the idea but they’re probably just nervous self-pity parties.

Feedback from our first marked module was good. I got a first for an essay, something new to me at university, and generally positive feedback from the presentation I gave as part of a group. I’m moving on to a new module soon involving adapting for the screen. It was a difficult choice between that and Sci Fi/Dystopia fiction but I personally see more opportunity to be had from knowing how to work with a script – I’ve always been curious about the process between reading a book and watching a television/film adaptation.

Gaming has taken a back seat with uni work, but I’ve recently been enjoying Super Meat Boy on the Xbox Live Arcade. It looks and plays like a tough platformer, complete with the modern gaming feature of “wall jumping”, and the presentation is fantastic. The problem I have with a lot of video games these days is that they pose little challenge or replay value: Super Meat Boy covers both by being frustratingly difficult, addictive and unlocking an entire new world and dark versions of every other level in the game after completion. Plus the antagonist is a fetus in a jar with a tuxedo. What’s not to like?

Not sure what else to say, so back to the grind I guess. I leave you with this image, which makes me crack up everytime. One of the words is rude, so make sure your boss isn’t looking! (I know, rebellious)

Now that I’ve depressed you all long enough so that the promise to start blogging again is believable, I’ll get it out of the way. Happy holidays, and I hope you all have a good excuse for a happy new year. Your families too, if you’re on good terms with them. If not, may that be resolved by this time next year.

It may come as a complete and utter surprise that I’ve not done as much work this holiday as I planned to. There’s no real reason as such for it, it’s just that being at home tend to bring back memories, flashbacks of a more distracting time surrounded by friends and family, all of which are less gullible than someone reading this who doesn’t believe I’m just lazy. Don’t worry, the ratio of laziness to procrastination is something like 70:30. Honest.

I have a yearly tradition of going over my New Years resolutions, and this year is no different. So, let’s do it!

Resolutions from 2010:
1) Blog more.
2) Write more in my spare time.
3) Get off meds.
4) Cut down on the cheese.

Without a doubt, I have flat out completely failed my resolutions this time round. I haven’t been keeping up with my blog: something obvious by the fact I only had to scroll down the first page of my blo to find these resolutions. I suppose I have been writing more in general, but a lot of that is “forced” for uni. Nevertheless, I’m clinging to that victory. As for meds, no progress. In regards to cheese, I’ve actually cut down since my stomach has been getting worse. In a way, these are small shallow victories but looking at that list, I’ve come to release a more accurate list for this year.

Resolutions for 2011:
1) Blog more regularly.
2) Keep better contact with old friends.
3) Finish my novel this year.
4) Begin reviewing regularly.
5) Visit Emma.

See? More creative this time round. Only one of them is a variation of the original, because I consider that important as it stands. I enjoy blogging and reviewing and plan to do a lot more of both from now on. One thing I’ve failed at this year is keeping in touch with my old friends, who I love and consider to be awesome. Please don’t think I’ve been rejecting you or anything, scheduling is hard and I just suck in that respect. Hoping to change this in the future. I am also dedicated to actually finishing my novel this year. It must be done. As for the fifth one, let’s just say that I made an amazing new friend this year (one of many) who I plan on going to visit in person because, to quote the Umbrella Academy, “it simply must be done!”

I don’t feel like I’ve made many positive changes the last year, aside from some academic work. Hopefully this year will be brighter, more useful and when I’ve finished uni midway, I really hope that things will land in a positive place for both me and everyone I know.

I lied and must say it again. I’m really hoping that this year looks up for everyone. Happy New Year to all of you and your families, make the most of it.

My brother, ladies and gentlemen. Truly, my moving out has not had a positive effect on his sanity.