The Importance of Being Idle

Assorted Madness

So I'm really pissed off because Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" has only place somewhere in the low seventies in some stupid bit of list TV thats on now (One Hundred Greatest Albums, Channel 4). Now I would normally argue that "Songs..." is the greatest record ever made (because it is!), and I didn't expect it to place highly in such a list (I fully expect the Beatles to "win", and either with Revolver or Sgt Pepper - I doubt I'll ever know though, cos I'll probably in bed before the end of the show), but the low 70s is very irritating. And to see Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" even lower... I despair. The problem with all this list TV, and there is so much of it about these days, is that the public are the ones who decide, and as we all know, the public are fucking retards (yeah I work with the public, you can tell can't you?). So I guess I should be pleased they've charted at all.
Cue next rant!
Racing games. I've been playing a lot of Midnight Club 3 in the past couple of days, and it's got me thinking, which is never a good idea... First up, I have to confess that I like the whole tuner/street race game thing. I like racing games, I like pimpin' my rides (The Fast And The Furious has a lot to answer for) so combining the two things is a natural. I'm really enjoying MC3 as well, but I have a couple of issues. Firstly, the thing I (and I suspect many other people) enjoy about racing games, is that they require skill. You need to learn the track, learn how the car handles, how to drive the optimal lap and how to extend that over the length of a race. Its about obsession and precision. Neither of these things are rewarded in the street racers, cos there is traffic everywhere! Traffic adds a disturbing random element to the whole proceeding. You can be driving a brilliant race, and then have some idiot piece of moving scenery pull out in front of you and *bam* race over. Now I'll admit that there is a thrill to all this city driving too, but I think it also dilutes the racing experience, reducing it more to the level of reaction gaming. Secondly, car upgrades. Now the performance thing is pretty obvious, you need to make your car faster and handle better to win progressively harder races. I got that. Its the visual upgrades I don't get, at least in MC3, because there is absolutely in game reason to pimp your ride out, other than that you want to. Now I'll admit there can be a purity of experience in that, just making my car look cool cos I want it to look cool, but as a game surely you miss a trick by not challenging/rewarding the player for and and every in game activity. NFSU gives you a reason to continually upgrade (enhanced reputation leading to greater reward and different opportunities), whereas nothing I've seen in MC3 motivates you to do that. My cars haven't visually been changed since I first tricked them out, simply because I made them look cool to start with (or at least I think they're cool ;p) and I've not been motivated to spend my hard earned winnings on trivia when there are important performance upgrades to buy. I am really enjoying the game though, its just sometimes things lead me to think about games and game design, and MC3 is being one of those things.
My towels are all hard and nasty. It was a nice day (and not having a tumble dryer) I put my towels out in the sun to dry, and they just never dry nicely like that. In fact the tumble dryer is the only way to get the nice fluffy kind of dry towel, or at least the only way I know. If anyone knows of a non-machinery related way to achieve this same effect, then please let me know. Who knows, maybe the fluffy towel only came into existence with the wide-spread adoption of tumble dryers...
Okay I'll finish up today with yet another musical recommendation, this time "Some Cities" by Doves. If you are in need of convincing I suggest firing up whatever file sharing utility you favour and looking for either "Black and White Town" or "Snowden". If you're not sold after that, then there's no hope for you. Or maybe you just have a radically different musical taste than I do!

posted by BadMonkey @ 9:02 PM