You're so pretty and I'm so stupid...

This was Reuben's lyric that was playing to me on the bus in to work on Monday morning, this first sober morning which could be spent reflecting on the drunken adventures into Liquid - premier nightclub in Shrewsbury. Described by this guy Simon it's "...a bit like a prison". In despite of that, I was fortunate enough to meet two attractive girls on Saturday eve and Reuben were giving possibly the most concise summation of all (and I mean all) my crushes to date.

The plan of the evening was to go out for drinks in celebration of my mate Fletch's recent birthday. Off into Shrewsbury we went and bumping into Simon and Mark who I met the last time I was back in Shropshire on a fun camping adventure. They mentioned that they were heading to Liquid and whilst we make a quick detour where I once again got my glasses knocked off my face (man, the argument for contacts has never looked stronger), we headed over to Liquid to join the masses.

A digital camera is either a dangerous thing or a source of cliched snaps, and there was probably a healthy amount of both. There are many pictures of the evening now circling facebook - all I know is that I must have been pretty wasted as a. I can't remember the majority of these pics or time spent in liquid and b. I was pretty much giving the same, muppet-nobend-"I want to demonstrate how much of a good time I'm having" poses i.e. either sticking my tongue out, giving the horns, or both.

Moving on to the meat of this post and back to the two crushes I gained that night - my only wish is that I remembered more of the time in Liquid, for the majority of it, all I have to go on are these pics on facebook. One in particular involves Kym, the first of the crushes I would like to discuss, pretty much exposing her breasts with me giving the tongue and horns to the camera (again). Now I wish I could remember if there was anything I did to motivate this pic or whether it was just, hey it's a camera, let's do something kerazee. There are many comments saying that she exposed a nipple and the evidence I would argue is pretty conclusive, bless them the people that commented saying "I think we can see your boob Kym" - what they actually meant to say was nipple plus the fact is you could see the majority of them for the whole evening, which is probably the main (possible read: only) reason I was crushing on her; that and maybe the fact she had red hair, I blame Diggnation for the potential brainwashing, it seems all red haired laydees are now v attractive. That, or as I'm going to attempt to rationally argue that having very brightly coloured hair is very eye-catching, much like if a girl is wearing bright colours in the gym, they more often than not catch my eye. (I may have got away with it...)

Some of the few memories I had did involve telling Kelly that she looked really cute in a photo I took - she dismissed it of course, which is also a shame. As I've already discussed with my good friend Wilson, I put all my eggs in what turned out to be the wrong basket, and concentrated on Kym. At one point I remember asking her if she was single, to which she made the inductive step and replied that she's not interested. Well, it stunned me a little (surprisingly) to which led to a swappage of messages entered into our phones - the terrible thing is I cannot remember her response, although it was cool that she felt the need to explain herself more. It was probably along the lines of you're not my type, you're a nice guy an' all, the same old BS. Basically the only thing we had to go on was the physical attraction, impossible to hold a proper conversation in Liquid. It was a simple conflict of interests - I was very much interested in her, but she did not reciprocate, it's a common situation, and strangely enough I was cool with it.

And as I said, I can't remember a lot else at Liquid, except visiting the bar several times with Fletch to consume more shots with him, only for it to backfire and cause me to not be able to remember anything, really regretting that. That being said, it can't have been *too* bad, a lot of people I met there have since befriended me on facebook, so that's all cool. Actually, Kelly friended me and not the other way round. After being a little nosy checking out her profile, turns out that all the music she has listed I also like, so I actually have more in common with her, plus she's facially more attractive than Kym, and that's probably the largest check box of mine (to be rational and slightly cold for a moment).

Anyways, I need to message up Kelly if I can just put aside five minutes where I'm not getting completely distracted with something else. To bring it full circle, Reuben chanting away "You're so pretty and I'm so stupid", just reminded me like a sobering slap across the face, I've never (and I mean, never) have been properly intimate with a crush of mine, and that sucks, I mean, that really sucks.
I ask myself, perhaps these girls are only crushes as I determine them to be out of my league, and/or I get a serious case of bad nerves/hesitation (speaking of which, how is everyone enjoying the podcast? Oh no wait, I still haven't started recording any eps arg!)

I could go on, but it's late and I don't quite feel up to unravelling my inadequacies here. I'm sure there will be another time, but until then I'll be occasionally visiting places like Liquid doing my mock-dancing thang where noone understands it's done to be ironic, waiting for you to give me a smile.

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#9 Lost by name, Lost by nature

So I altered my LoveFilm queue to introduce games back into the mix. I have about 10 games in the "games" queue (how did I ever come up with that name?!), most are to boost my gamerscore with easy achievements and others are games which I've been meaning to try but don't really want to fork out the cash for. Now, what I was hoping to get was the new Civilization Revolutions, but instead I got Lost: Via Domus.

Now, first off this game is unsuitable for anyone who is not a fan of Lost. I will also say that you're got to be pretty familiar with the main events of the story, because this game visits them but does not explain a lot of the exposition required to fully understand how the people in the fiction got from A to B. I'll try and keep the spoilers down but no promises.

So first off, what genre does the Lost game fall into? I hear you cry. Well it probably fits under the RPG category, although part of me wants to be bold and say it's reminiscent of the point and click adventures of yesteryear but more about that later.

Imagine if a secondary school student wrote some really bad fan fiction set in the Lost universe and that is the level of sophistication we're talking here

Speaking of yesteryear, that links me smoothly onto the visuals, and there is something horribly prev-gen about this game. Granted the environments are adequately rendered, nothing amazing for this generation, and technically quite small and constrictive, get ready to meet your old friend, Mr invisible wall.
Moving on, and the main motivation for playing the game is of course the excitement brought about from being dropped into the Lost universe. Want to play Jack or Kate? Bad luck I'm sorry, you play some side character just to ensure that the plot laid out in the TV show remains untouched.
Looking at the characters in more depth, and this is where you would hope the game would excel, capturing the likeness and personality of the characters you've all enjoying watching. Sadly, that isn't the case. To be fair the characters in-game are recognisable against their real-life counterparts, but a lot more work could have been put in, particularly with the animation of the characters; the horrible head bobs and jerky hand/arm gestures accompany every sentence, and don't get me started on the speech. As if I haven't knocked this poor game enough already, the game creators were not able to get all the original voice talent, the actual dialogue in this game is terribly woeful. Imagine if a secondary school student wrote some really bad fan fiction set in the Lost universe and that is the level of sophistication we're talking here. It might be an unfair comparison but the game is similar in pacing to Mass Effect, where there are extended conversation sections and then action set-pieces. Where Mass Effect has some of the most realistic facial animations, sophisticated dialogue trees and genuinely deep and interesting characters, Lost has none. It's pretty lame (but useful when in a hurry), that there is a tab of dialogue options which will guarantee that your progress in the current episode moves ahead. Don't bother with the other crap...

Hilariously there was this interchange where I was asking Sawyer to trade, and he would first go: "Do you want to trade or what? I haven't got all day?" ...to which I cancelled and Sawyer departs saying, "I'm here all day." WTF. Little screwy.

Your character is a journalist, I won't go into any more detail for those who still want to play after how I slated it just, but it does allow for some photo-taking gameplay - the most interesting of which being the flashbacks where you have to snap the correct photo from a torn up photograph. Shame, it is a little too easy, especially when the flashbacks last about a minute and you seemingly have as many do-overs as you need. Other noteworthy photo opportunities are clearly signposted by the object being labelled with a button press and some popup text "...might be worth photo..." - you're right!

The other core gameplay revolves around some action! yeah! The parts in between the hatch, black rock etc involve moving from marker to marker and have them point out the direction you need to travel, so there's no real exploration of the island. There's also the black smoke you come across, and in the tamer moments, you simply hop into the large reeds to hide - it was used like once or twice in the show so that's enough justification to have many of these spots equidistant from each other, how convenient! The action really hots up in the "chase scenes" which actually is very reminiscent of Crash Bandicoot levels I remember from the PS one days. You have the option to either jump a log or slide under a err... log. The only difference between this and Crash is that you're running away from the camera and not into it, so it's even easier, sigh.

I've slated the game, but there are *a few* pluses. If you can get over the bad writing, then this is technically the best Lost game out there (as it's the only one!), so for super die-hard fans that want to absorb anything Lost related, then this is a must have. When starting each new episode, the game offers a flashback FMV sequence, very much like the show, especially with the immortal slow-floating "LOST" moving close and eventually past the camera - the presentation here is very slick so that's pretty cool. The main character Elliot (mini-spoiler) has had a lot of attention, particularly facially, and is therefore arguably the best modelled character, it's a shame that the characters you actually care about haven't had as much care taken.

In closing, The game is pretty thin on the ground, and probably lives up to the low expectations which are given to licenced games like these. Being a fan of Lost, I had to give it a try, again not expecting a great deal. I could go on but in short the writing's a bit sucky, the game mechanics very simple, but look it as a fairly comfortable 900-1000 achievement points as I did and you might actually come away with something from it.

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