Actually, It's Darkness

The Long Dark, Hinterland Studios, 2014

It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?

There goes another week off. Five Marches later I still have the same problem. When I'm not working I quickly slip into a nightshift pattern. It starts innocuously enough with Sunday evening extending to 2am. From there it cascades later and later and by Friday the only thing I can do to rectify it is to stay awake until Saturday afternoon and take a nap to see me through the evening. It's not so bad in March when Spring is breaking through, as it did today, and there's some daylight to play with; but when I went through this in January I probably suffered a shortfall of Vitamin-D. Ironic, then, I should spend the middle of the night playing The Long Dark. I am without a doubt late to this party. You know I'd judge you for it in an instant, so why not be the better man? Fact is, I've not had much time to play games - aside from GTA Online, but then I got bored of (and pissed off by) that last August. What I've done to compensate is subscribe to a couple of YouTube channels thereby gaming vicariously.

Police and Thieves

GTA San Andreas, promo artwork, 2004

It would be hard not to notice the landing of a new instalment of Grand Theft Auto if only because the media becomes saturated with moral panic articles on each launch. Not that this bothers Rockstar or Take 2 Interactive who make millions either way. As they say, any publicity is good publicity and it all feeds into the hype. However, in this day and age of aggressive promotion of entertainment products in which the first act of the script of an upcoming episode of an animated show is read by the voice artists at Comic-con and blockbuster films have almost year long mysterious viral marketing campaigns to engage fans, sometimes the meal is overcooked (see Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, et al). The first trailer for GTA V was released way back in November 2011 - almost two years before release - and since then we've been drip fed screenshots and cryptic twitter feeds with the expectation that the pressure will have risen so much that people will necessarily cream their pants the moment they so much as touch their copy. It might sound like I'm setting up for a scathing review. That is not the case - let's just not pretend this is the perfect game. Spoilers follow.

The Drift of Air

DeLorean DMC-12, foshie, 2007

Is there anything I haven't said about Gran Turismo 5 yet? I know it's an open-ended game, but you'd think with the impending arrival of the sixth instalment of the series I wouldn't be approaching ten thousand words about playing this game. It has been six months, though, since I last waffled on about activities prolonging my interest in the game beyond the core of beating A-Spec mode. I've gone through several phases of losing interest only to buy a new car and bring life back into using the wheel and pedals: I didn't play much after beating the 24 Hours of Le Mans until I dabbled with muscle cars last November and continued along with the novelty of the wheel and pedals, then designing eight custom tracks. After that, GT5 lost out to other concerns for a number of weeks. My interest came round again when I decided to try out some rides amongst Gran Turismo's copious garages. Perhaps you can guess.

Wake Up The City

Lego Chicago City View 2001, Otto Normalverbraucher, 2005

Like the photograph to the left, I had a large Lego city that eventually had to be packed away. Next week is thirteen years since it was boxed up when I moved out of my old house, and to date it's still in the basement buried under even more boxes of unpacked stuff. The thing about Lego is it takes up space. In my old room at the end of the 90s it was all set up on two spare paint tables - there isn't even room for half a table now. In a way Lego followed Scalectrix and Subbuteo in being replaced by digital products that could better emulate reality and required nothing more than a computer and a compact disc. In all the years I've missed building with Lego, SimCity has provided a constructive outlet.

New Terrain

SimCity (2013), Electronic Arts promotional screenshot

After ten years there's a new SimCity out (Societies doesn't count), but this is not an outright review of that game. At the start of March my internet connection died for several prolonged hours. After repeatedly trying to view several websites out of habit before realising they'd never load, I looked for something else to do. I hadn't played SimCity 3000 in nearly two years so I fired that up. What a good thing it is that always-online DRM hadn't been invented in 1999 because I would have been screwed as the new game even saves your cities in "the cloud". Since I last seriously played it, my city was populated by over a million sims and it had expanded almost to the limits without becoming one of those highly efficient cities designed by a player who has brutally calculated the placement of every building. My ideas about what a large city should look like are still firmly rooted in the skyline of Manhattan, hence I've kept the default building style in SC3K Unlimited. Only recently has London started racing for the clouds.

Like Soldiers Believe They're in Control of the War

Part Three of Three.

My flag proposal for Theta Battalion, January 2007

I could have published this final part of my series looking back at the history of CyberNations at any time, however last Sunday was the sixth anniversary of the end of the Third Great War. Two months after the conclusion of GWIII I ceased being a student spending time playing a game rather than studying and exited a sixth month stint of unemployment. After that I never really knew what was going on in the Cyberverse or Digiterra or whatever you want to call it. Unable to stay up into the night when the largely American dominated game was most active I consequently fell out of the loop on events and the reason for the latest war. Last year, after I became the oldest and longest continuous member of the NPO, a fellow member working on the CNwiki entry asked me why, given my in-game age, I didn't have all the ribbons for all the wars the alliance had fought in. This is why, and a lot of time unless I'm attacked I don't really know there's a war on. Undoubtedly one of the reasons the age of players is so young is because such massively multiplayer online games require a lot of free time to invest. Until I read about the war that ended last month I'll remain completely oblivious as to the reasons my warchest was depleted by €100 million. Lately given the move toward squad based combat, the demands for greater activity, and adherence to alliance-wide development plans I've felt far more estranged from the game. Last week I thought about quitting - something I've never even considered in seven long years. Even what I think of as recent CN history is a distant collective memory now. Let's recall it...

Rapid Racer

The Duel: Test Drive II, 1989

After I finished the Le Mans 24 Hours in May I considered Gran Turismo 5 done and dusted. When I picked it back up in November last year I started messing around in arcade mode trying out different handicaps. Traction control and anti-lock braking are driving aids and are supposed to be disabled eventually like training wheels, but the majority of players seem to race with them enabled - disabling them, especially online, effectively make them handicaps. This wasn't enough to perpetuate the novelty and once I received the G27 racing wheel I had to learn how to use a clutch and H-pattern gearbox. I mastered that quickly and moved onto heel-toe shifting which, again in time, I mastered. I ditched racing tyres for slippery sports tyres when driving street cars and adjusted to that. Everything can be adapted to. You could argue the Ferrari F40 in all its jolting twitchy instability is a car that could be tamed in a way. While you can certainly learn the F40's behaviour and catch the back drifting out before spinning, it can never become a boring car. It can be frustrating. I quit the Nürburgring 4 Hours last year because it was just too demanding to constantly reign it in on the Nordschleife while trying to create a lead over the second place runner. You have to be hyper-vigilant on a roller-coaster track that sends it in any combination of directions and that's why making it through a lap is rewarding. It's a shame the F40's rival, the Porsche 959, is contractually absent along with the rest of the Porsche stable. It's also a shame the 911 GT1 isn't able to go up against the CLK-GTR, but then they never made a classic game about those two. The Nordschleife, too, is just another sequence of turns you can memorise given enough practice. Hence I've been delving into the Course Maker again to produce another four circuits. I still vacillate between desiring high-speed straight and narrow tracks and twisty rural roads of the variety that might have been seen in Test Drive II. I realise describing corners can be repetitive given the limited vocabulary which is why I've been thinking about buying a video capture device so I can upload the best lap replays to YouTube. It certainly would help interested downloaders to see them in action, or rather to see them as the scene of the action.

The Glass Road

DUNLOP Corner Le mans Sarthe, julien.reboulet, 2011

It's been years since I watched Formula One. I stumbled across it at the age of nine one Sunday morning and saw Martin Brundle do a barrel-roll at the start of the 1996 Australian Grand Prix. From then on I tuned in every race weekend supporting Damon Hill's championship run against the evil Darth Vader Michael Schumacher, even getting up at 5am for final race in Japan. I stayed with the sport through to about 2002 when my interest waned concurrent with Schumacher's domination. Contrast that with my favourite season of 1999 when Schumacher was absent with injury for several months and it looked like (almost) anyone could win - even the scrappy underdogs, Jordan. I was rooting for Heinz-Harald Frentzen that year. The era was also the last days of the privateer teams before they were all seemingly bought up by factory teams, or at least their grid spots were to avoid the costly registration process with the FIA (hence, Tyrrell became BAR became Honda became Brawn GP became Mercedes GP within the space of twelve years). Of the private teams, only McLaren and Williams have survived largely because Mercedes and BMW, respectively, turned them into semi-factory teams in the recent past. Interestingly, 1999 was also the year of the first Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit designed by one Herman Tilke.

We're Going To Be Friends

Part Two of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, January 2007

On the seventh anniversary of the founding of Star City I compiled and republished my memoirs on NationStates during what looked like the long drawn-out dying days of that game. I'm unable to speculate if that's the case with CyberNations today, on the seventh anniversary of Hvamsfjordhur, as I've never been as involved in the politics of the latter as in the former. That's largely due to the mechanics of the game and the location of its servers in the US which has always resulted in a certain American domination. As update was scheduled at midnight Central Standard Time it meant the command structures of the alliances were firmly entrenched in timezones that would result in all the action happening whilst I was in bed. NationStates never had that because it lacked any realtime interaction between nations.

Personally, CyberNations came to an early peak with the era of the Great Wars. Unlike the Citrus and Polar wars, the Great Wars pulled in almost every alliance into the conflict. Yet at the end of the first instalment of this series the global powers were at peace. Where alliances were not treatied, they were at least signatories of non-aggression pacts. So how was the stability shattered? How is it ever shattered?

When The Levee Breaks

Part Two of Three.

The Liberation Flag of The Proletariat Coalition (November 2011)

No better time to pick up where I left off than the tenth anniversary of the founding of Star City. Hard to believe.

When I originally wrote my NationStates memoirs the game was entering its twilight period and it didn't look like the dawn would follow. Another site was then in ascendence and the former star site blew off its outer shell and began to contract. At the time, and on this blog, I voiced a hope that an exodus of players might at least alter the balance of power in some long-running conflicts rather than the game just become very very quiet. It looked like the latter transpired because for about five years my activity fell to the absolute minimum of logging in to prevent deletion. Of the more than a dozen puppets I maintained at the height of the game I now only have two functioning as informal ambassadors - Isla Pena in the Allied States of EuroIslanders and Dotjxraomm in the AntiCapitalist Alliance. Though it felt like centuries had passed, the game was declining after three years.

Road to Nowhere

Nürburgring map, Public Domain, 1964

Way back when Gran Turismo 2 divided its main screen into North, South, East, and West cities I imagined a future instalment of the series in which you drove to each dealership and the home and garage were actual places and not just menus. When Test Drive Unlimited turned up it should have been my dream made real, but the arcade style of racing doesn't appeal to me especially when it assumes the cloak of realism with licensed vehicles. The fact I was playing the crappy PS2 port at the time didn't help. With the RPG elements present in GT5 it seems like the premier PlayStation racing game missed the boat there, which cannot be true since Polyphony Digital never gets anything wrong. Cue statement contradicting this.

Possibly more annoying than failed shifts stranding you in neutral is GT5's course maker. As with the FIFA series and Subbuteo, some lay the virtual demise of Scalectrix at the likes of the Formula One series and GT. One of the great things about Scalectrix was the freedom to create whatever track layout you wanted - limited by space and budget, of course. I had always wanted to create a bridge span across the stairs of my old bedroom but couldn't given the amount of pocket money I'd have to blow on extra track pieces (the exact same reason I couldn't expand my Lego train set). So you'd think GT5, free of such limitations, could provide an actual course maker and not a random corner generator.

Pedal Fury

Clutch disc, Public Domain

As I said in November, I've spent 14 years playing the Gran Turismo series. And as I said in July 2011, for the sake of simplicity most racing games ignore the existence of clutches. Well now let the two combine, for I have spent the last five days getting to grips with the Logitech G27 racing wheel.

One of the reasons for getting a wheel (aside from further immersion) is that for a few months now I've been watching Valdudes' Gran Turismo videos on YouTube and Twitch and secretly coveting a place in a subscriber race (which also explains my venturing into the open lobby). One of the near requirements is a racing wheel, simply due to the greater control over one's virtual vehicle - which is a kind of shibboleth for competent participants. In my own opinion I've mastered the art of driving with the controller. Aside from the joypad being too crude to recover from the majority tailspins, the right analogue stick offers a close approximation of the pedals - I can quite easily feed the accelerator on exits in the absence of traction control (TCS) and graduate the brakes on entry in the absence of anti-lock brakes (ABS). Some people are unbelievably still using the □ and ╳ buttons, and with all the assists turned on the kiddies must think GT is bloody Mario Kart. If you're going to let the computer do everything for you then you might as well play the game in B-Spec mode.

From The East / From The South

Chevrolet Camaro Z28 1969

In the fourteen years I've played the various instalments of Gran Turismo I've never really taken a shine to American cars. The first game was heavily skewed towards Japanese makes and even skewed toward particular models - just how many Skylines is enough? GT is often cited as a cause for increased grey imports at the turn of the millennium and back then it was all about Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions, Subaru Imprezas, and Nissan R34 Skylines. My dream car at the time was an Impreza 22B. Being twelve years old at the time, the closest I could get to that dream was a treasured copy of Car magazine with the 22B as its cover story ("Catch 22-B"). The Japanese four doors that were dominating rallying at the time were seen as powerful and nimble yet practical family cars. In comparison, the American manufacturers (the Big Three: GM, Ford, Chrysler) had split personalities across the domestic and international markets. General Motors and Ford had their autonomous European operations, and whilst some of their modern models were present in GT2 (Astra Touring Car, Ford RS2000), domestic US models were largely absent and thought of as gas-guzzling lumps of metal that could just about turn left if given enough space (ie, NASCAR). There were really only two US performance vehicles that could rival the Japanese domination - the Chevrolet Corvette C4 and the Chrysler/Dodge Viper GTS, which was really only one until the C5: the Viper.

Learn to Fly

Fireman Sam 2, Myrrien, 2008

After playing a racing game like Gran Turismo 5 I'm always drawn back to Grand Theft Auto for the freedom of the road. After finishing Le Mans I went back to messing about in GTAIV but became bored of going on rampages and aimlessly driving about (especially since it lacks the expansive countryside of San Andreas). I used to do the taxi missions for some mindless escapism in SA, but IV removed that gameplay mode so having completed the vigilante missions and quite enjoyed playing the police I was reminded of back in the days of Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear there was a total conversion mod (The Temporary Tango) that completely flipped the game on it's head. Rather than playing the titular antiterrorism military unit you became the terrorists whom you combat in the first half of the game. It was very weird to gun down the good guys in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and didn't get any less disconcerting through the other missions. I then wondered if someone had similarly flipped GTAIV around. Although no-one has made a true total conversion mod that presents Niko's story from the perspective of law enforcement (because that's quite an undertaking), there is a mod that uses the Rockstar Advanced Gaming Engine as a foundation for something like a police force simulator - LCPD First Response.

Then The March Led To Assault

Part One of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, February 2006

Let it never be said I'm not in it for the long haul. January marked nine years on NationStates and six on CyberNations (never the twain shall be mentioned on respective sites). In these online games two or three years are the equivalent of real world centuries; so not only am I old, I'm very old, and old people like to tell stories. When I republished my NS memoirs back in 2010 I stated that I didn't believe I had much to say when it came to my time on CyberNations as a member of the New Pacific Order. However, when the NPO marked it's sixth anniversary in January, I and twenty-five other senior members were asked by the media corps to comment on the evolution of the alliance in those years. As the oldest remaining member and fifth oldest nation in the world, I realised the more I responded with claims to have nothing interesting to say the more I started alluding to actual opinions and insights into those six years.

The Rising Tide to New York City Did They Ride Into The Street

Send us your brightest, your smartest, your most intelligent,
Yearning to breathe free and submit to our authority,
Watch us trick them into wiping rich people's asses,
While we convince them it's a land of opportunity.

JULY IV
MDCCLXXVI

Engraving on the Statue of Happiness, GTAIV

Risky Ride

Peugeot 908 on Ligne Droite des Hunaudières

Last summer I was busy catching up with Gran Turismo 4 and wrote that the endurance races offered there represented the apex of the racing simulation. Well now I've caught up to Gran Turismo 5 and there's a new apex. I'd actually been waiting for the price to drop but the PS3 was sitting idle for weeks at a time and I had a week off coming up, so I decided £15 wasn't really that much - the original GT cost me (read, parents) £40.

A Design For Life / The Messerschmitt Twins

Electron micrograph of Bacteriophages, Public Domain

Today is exactly a decade since I finished my first play of Metal Gear Solid 2. Or it would have been if I had finished this for the 17th of March.

To begin with, we're not quite what you'd call human.

Back in the 90s I had a lot of shareware and (unbeknownst to me) pirated games. When the PS/1 was replaced with an Aptiva in 1998, I set about porting my stuff via floppy disk. The instant A Drive engaged the screen cut to a blue and red DOS prompt warning me that a virus had been detected. To put it mildly, this was not the most encouraging thing to happen with the brand new computer, as I had a legacy of breaking the old one. This was my first experience with an anti-virus programme and I had never even considered that all those dodgy floppies might be riddled with anything other than the files I put on it. The particular viruses that were detected by Norton (of cross-armed fame) are long forgotten, but in the following years I was captivated by the idea that there's something almost alive in the digital world - unseen technological analogues to our organic processes.

Running Blind Through Killing Fields, Bred To Kill Them All

First Person Shooter, rimblas, 2009

As revealed at the end of my long-simmering rant against Sony, I unexpectedly recently received a PlayStation 3 as a birthday present. The bundled game was Resistance 3. I'm not one for First Person Shooters. I never experienced the revelation of Wolfenstein 3D because it would never work on my old computer; and I never actually bothered to play the second coming of the FPS, Half Life, despite having purchased it. The last shooter to grace my shelf was Rising Sun eight years ago - the poor quality of which (save for a few interesting moments) pretty much killed any enthusiasm I had off the back of the success of Frontline. Only a particular subgenre of the FPS has ever really appealed to me - the tactical shooter.

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

Playstation 2 Collection, PseudoGil, 2007

When the PlayStation 2 was launched I had to wait a year before my parents could afford one for my birthday, and even then I had to go without a Christmas present that year because it was that expensive (around £250). Flash forward seven years and the old console had succumbed to drive failure. My parents bought me a replacement slim PS2 which cost only £80. With the release of the PS3 in 2006 I was hoping to follow a few series into the next generation: Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5, et al. As always, the launch price was ridiculously expensive and none of the launch titles interested me, so I waited and saved - every year I put my Christmas tips into my 'PS3 fund' and every year there's a new reason not to buy one.

By last Christmas I made enough to afford one, not due to lack of tips over three seasons, but because the price has barely moved. At the time of writing it appears the cheapest model has finally dropped under £200. I imagine that won't last as Sony will employ the same trick they've been using for five years - halt production, swap out the hard drives for larger ones, restart production and slap the old price tag on them. Given how bloody long it has taken for the price point to decrease, adjusted for half a decade's inflation it probably hasn't at all.