The Boredom Blog

GBA Games

Gaming is boring my ass big-style at the moment although I have just finished a round of Tiger Woods on the PSP at 22 under par. I hit seven eagles and made every single fucking putt, it was like being in an odd golfing zone space and usually I'm dire at these games. So I bought some GBA games for the DS, here's some quickie impressions:

Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer - Lovely wave effects and surprisingly close gameplay to the bigger console equivalents. Very good graphics and sound and nice for a quick pick-up-and-play for 10 minute sessions. Not hugely varied though as it's just wave-based tricks to learn, but fun all the same, and only a tenner. 6/10.

Yoshi's Island - Addictive. Beautiful artwork with the graphics and the levels are immensely varied. Tons to do and see and perfect for a handheld. The only downer is that like most platformers, it can become frustrating, but luckily YI avoids any real nasty moments. 8/10.

Gradius Galaxies - One of the few shooters on the GBA (why aren't there many handheld shooters?? DS and PSP need more...). Quite playable but I found the controls a little lacking in subtlety. The graphics and sound are suitably faithful to what I can remember from the old Nemesis games, and it is kinda moreish. It's just a shame the gameplay lets it down a tad. 7/10.

Router Hell

So my router packed in last Wednesday which left me without home Internet for three whole days. I paniced at first because not being on-line felt like I was nearing a breakdown. It was actually stressful for a while. My usual tricks for resuscitating routers failed and so I resigned myself to a life of disgusting hell for at least a few days. My girlfriend had hinted that she might leave the country at this point.

Eventually I settled into life off-line and I have to say the recent heat-wave helped matters. I go a bit funny in the heat, like I'm seriously stoned. I call it "Beach Brain". I go a bit Californian and wonder around in my cheap-o Dirty Dog shades, a vest and board-shorts and generally drawl incomprehensibly whilst slouched either on a sofa or somewhere out in our small and messy (but quite nice) garden. For some odd reason I like to smoke cigars in the searing heat and eat eye-watering chilli-with-rice. It's just a big slow-motion thing, it's weird. I remember during my mid-20s taking several weeks off to go surfing round the South-West of England and it was solid sunshine for virtually the entire duration. By the end of it my mind was most certainly in a different place altogether. One of the reasons I want to buy somewhere out in Central America, fingers crossed.

Anyway, several calls to Netgear later, I finally got the router fixed. I had to hook-up via my 56k telephone line and download some firmware off their website. Everything's going hunky dory so far.

Better Mascis Piccie

Can't find any pictures of the Dinosaur Jr gig out there on the net although did see a song of theirs on the Download TV coverage the other night. Seemed to be enjoying themselves. Anyway, here's the only up-to-date-shot I can find:

Dinosaur Jr Live in London

I have just about recovered. It's been a little while since I've gone in quite so hard on a night out. The day started with muso-mate arriving at my door-step at 6pm clutching a selection of vinyl under his arm and a big grin on his face, and ended 12 hours later with an early-morning blue sky surreal mini-cab experience and inevitable collaspe into a coma. Mercifully the physical pain of the aftermath is over. Playing Ikaruga on the Gamecube (at the insistence of said 'friend') whilst still partially mash-up the following day is an experience I do not wish to repeat. It was like being spun in an office chair at 30 revolutions per second whilst watching the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey" on a virtual reality helmet with the sound track of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" soldered into my brain.

Anyway. Were Mascis and co any good? Answer, possibly the best gig I've been to in over ten years. The sound, fuck me, the sound. Mascis was himself suitably mythical. Sporting amazingly long grey hair, generally draped over his nonchelant face, and a black Adidas track-suit top, he let his effects pedals do the talking. The band said virtualy nothing for the whole gig, which I personally vastly prefer. My friend admitted to me whilst on the way to the venue that the night before he'd had a dream about a Fender Jazzmaster (he often dreams about guitars) and sure enough that particular tool of sonic mayhem focused our minds for nearly two hours. The audience was made up of about a 50/50 male/female split (my girlfriend and her friend are also huge Jr fans and were busy getting suitably cain'd throughout the set) with a nice mix of newcomers and 30-something indie-heads. I did spot a Black Sabbath Vol. 4 t-shirt in the audience and there were at least ten attempts at stage diving that were efficiently and kindly repelled by stage security. Very civilised.

Mascis On Stage 1997 - note the non-grey hair.

I don't know what the set-list was, I never really care. I do know that they only played material off the first three records apart from maybe one track and the excellent cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven". Lou Barlow, bassist and general indie-God, I suspect wont play anything post-1988. Which is the right decision. This was utter precision noise at work. Mascis' jarring riffage was delivered with controlled determination and literally engulfed the entire venue in sickly sweet distortion. It seemed to render a lot of people there unable to move. I don't know what fucking delay-effect peddle he uses, but at times the guitar took on a life of its own, repeating loops and amplified heaviosity with hardly a movement from Mascis. Often he simply stood looking down at the stage floor as this reverb echoed out from behind him, almost in a trance. I shrieked like a girl when he turned his back on the crowd and faced-down the Marshall stack, guitar held closely to the speakers and coaxed out a wave of crackled feedback that flew round The Forum like the demon-ghosts at the end of Indiana Jones. At one point I just stood in awe of the noise coming out of the Marshalls and early on my mate decided he seriously needed to be down the front for a closer inspection of the guitar-Gandalf's work. I didn't see him again until the venue emptied onto the Kentish Town street. Luckily my two lady chaperones kept the Red Stripes coming.

"Sludgefeast", the tune I'd been waiting for, was a life-changing experience. I wont see this song quite the same again. It was so absolutely heavy and filthy I couldn't quite believe it. The Sabbath-esque main riff just plain blew me away and the hilarity of the stoner vocals just made perfect sense in a live context. Even the thrash-metal ending had pretty 20 year old women head-banging. Excellent. Was that album really released in 1987? Jesus H. It took on epic proportions, "Kracked" and "The Lung" screamed out with hardly restrained dementia. An encore of "Freak Scene" had the whole place bouncing up and down in exhausted mania. It's not dissimilar to Lemmy's twisted trick of having Motorhead bang out "Ace of Spades" and "Overkill" as encores. It beats the audience into a bloody mess of submission. We left The Forum elated and ears buzzing, girlfriend bought a pink Dinosaur Jr t-shirt, and we all headed to the pub next door for a rapid pint. Ended up leaving her friend's flat absolutely crushed in the stark light of 5am Friday morning after she DJ'd us our very own indie-night. Wonderful. A message to all modern bands, get your fucking act together NOW.

Macs Turn To Dark Side

Steve Jobs announced at WWDC2005 today that Apple will be migrating fully to Intel within 18 months. The Internet has gone quiet for a bit.

Dinosaur Jr on Thursday

Seeing the legends that are Dinosaur Jr on Thursday at The Forum in London.

Seriously pumped for this and am fully expecting my face to be torn off in a hail of amplified feedback. Word from the USA is that the new (original) line-up is seriously kicking ass and unlike the rather lame Pixies reunion, are re-capturing their old power and noise. Well, Murph's back on drums, what more do you need to know. Hope they bang out 'Freak Scene' and 'Sludgefeast'. Stoner Rock, er, Rocks!!1!!

PSP One Week In

Been hitting the PSP hard over the past week. I'm impressed with it no doubt, but I have some reservations I'd like to get out of the way first:

UMD - I honestly believe this is a mixed bag. I like the minidisc-like casing as it means you can chuck them around untidily without any fear of scratch of loss. I'm always scared of losing the tiny DS carts for example, they're perhaps too small. However, something about UMD doesn't feel right in a portable. The loading times even for something quick like Lumines are a pain for the intolerably impatient like me, and in games like Tiger Woods there are significant waits. I also wonder what the effect on battery life is for UMD intensive games. Solid-state all the way man.

Music and Movies - The Music capabilities of the PSP are a non-starter for me as I already own an iPod and as a result have a lot of non-MP3 music. Other people I know who own PSPs have the same issue, they wont be using it a portable MP3 player. For movie playback the news is much better as it's very good indeed. On the Mac platform one can use iPSP and ffmpegX to create PSP movies and transfer them over to the memory stick and it's surprisingly quick and easy. The quality of the playback is also second-to-none, so this is a genuinely new 'thing'. What worries me though are the memory stick duos. 1Gb sticks are expensive and to carry around even a few movies is gonna cost a lot of wonga on memory cards. Can't help feeling Compact Flash or SD would have made this a little easier on the old wallet.

Analogue Stick - Great inclusion as it makes Tiger Woods and Wipeout Pure a very tactile experience. It's just in the wrong fucking place to be entirely comfortable during extended play sessions. Those snap-on Dual Shock Joypad harness things do ease the hand cramp a little.

Speaker Sound - Is just a bit shit. Headphone output is a must.

Internet Access - Having hooked the PSP up to my wireless gateway and uploaded to new firmware and stuff, it's something of a slap in the face not to be able to browse the net. This would be fabulous and despite the Wipeout Pure browser hack to get on-line, I'd much rather Sony got a decent browser out for the PSP. Hurry up please. :-)

They're my only gripes and they are I admit, churlish. The sheer quality of the screen and overall package is undeniable. Watching the sweep through of a Tiger Woods course is something to behold on this tiny machine and likewise racing around at breakneck speed on Wipeout Pure feels like you've got a PS2 in the palm of your hand, it's both slightly odd and incredibly right all at once. I've never really particularly understood handheld gaming but I am beginning to now. The ability to simply pick-up-and-play, have a sess, then put it down in sleep-mode is fabbo. No cables, no arguments over the telly, and you can play in bed or on a train or plane. The PSP desperately needs more games if it's to be ubiquitous. The European release line-up looks amazingly poor for a machine that will be a year old by then. Then there's also the question of price and whether it'll get bounced by the next-gen rush. Time will tell how this pans out I guess, I'm certainly not gonna predict shit.