Wireless Speed Wheel

I’m not particularly into racing games, serious ones at least. I played Forza 3 to death but that’s about as far as it goes for ‘driving simulators’. I do however like arcade racers. It’s a genre that, despite the supposed ‘death of the arcades’ and massive popularity of serious racing games like Forza and Gran Turismo, hasn’t gone away. My current console of choice is the 360 and between retail games like Sega Rally Revo and XBLA titles like Daytona USA, Outrun Online Arcade and Hydro Thunder Hurricane there is quite a selection of games available.

A lot of ‘serious’ racing game fans will tell you that to get the full experience you need a wheel. Perhaps they’re right. For games like Forza and GT you don’t really get the whole simulation aspect by twiddling a thumb stick. But what about us arcade fans? From our point of view, enhancing realism isn’t really an issue but there is a good argument for using a wheel. Even arcade racing games use a steering wheel, so you could say that using one gives you a better arcade experience.

The question then becomes about the value of investing in a wheel. A good steering wheel like the now discontinued official Microsoft Racing Wheel will set you back over £100. Sure there are cheaper 3rd party options available but they generally have a reputation for flimsy build quality and generally being unfit for purpose. I would rather go without a wheel than get one of the 3rd party options and I can’t justify the expense of a good wheel to play a few XBLA titles. So what are we left with?

The Wireless Speed Wheel is what.

At about the price of a retail game it’s quite affordable and has the kind of build quality you’d expect from an official product. It’s much sturdier than you’d expect something so goofy looking to be. But is it any good?

Yes…mostly.

I got one a month or so ago and I didn’t really want to make my mind up about it until I’d really put it through its paces. I’ve tried it with a good selection of games and it’s really responsive. I’m not used to using a wheel so I found it very tricky to use at first but when I tried it with Forza 3 in cockpit view, the driver’s hands on-screen matched my actions very closely, so it was clear that any handling issues were down to the lumps of ham I call hands. I’ve gradually become accustomed to using it, even beating a few of my own times in Daytona with it, so I think I can use it just about as well as a controller now.

Even though I’m better at using the wheel it’s still very tiring to use. This is perhaps one of the wheel’s biggest flaws. Holding it out in front of you unsupported really gets your back aching after a while. This unfortunately isn’t the only flaw with the Speed Wheel. Not all games I tested it with worked as well as Forza and Daytona. Crazy Taxi for example was damn near unplayable with it, although it doesn’t specifically support a wheel and has no sensitivity adjustment so really that’s the game’s fault. In fact there are quite a few games that aren’t 100% compatible with this device due to what seems to be a truly award-winning oversight. It has no bumpers. Considering so many games use LB and RB for gear shifting and don’t allow you to change the controls, missing these buttons out seems like a questionable decision at best.

Out of my own game library this means I can’t play Sega Rally Revo with manual gears or Hydro Thunder Hurricane at all as it assigns the boost to the right bumper when it detects a steering wheel.

Despite this, I’m happy with the performance of the wheel overall. For arcade racing it’s a good compromise between the expensive wheels and the 3rd party rubbish. For me the bumper issue is annoying but not a complete deal breaker, but I know that for some people it will be. In fact it might become an issue for me further down the line if more games come out that don’t work with this device. But for now, I’m happy with it.

I think this device raises two questions. ‘Why are there no bumper buttons when so many racing games use them?’ and ‘why do some racing games not let you customise the controls?’

Candle Making – First Attempt

As somebody who enjoys the world of arts and crafts I’m always open to finding new things to do. I was at a local craft shop today looking at various starter kits and a candle making kit caught my eye. For a little while now I’ve been meaning to make some candle holders as a potential gift idea or something to sell at a craft fair. When I saw the candle making set I thought I would give it a try  as a way of opening up new avenues to explore. As well as making candle holders, I could also perhaps make some candles to go with them.

The basic process of making the candles was quite simple. Prepare the mould and the wick, melt some wax pellets in a double boiler, add some dye chips then pour into the mould, let it cool, top up the wax then let it cool again. I also added a bit of lavender oil to the wax to make scented candles. This is what I ended up with.

As you can see they’re far from perfect. I didn’t quite get the second pour right and the candle on the left had an air bubble in it, but they at least look like candles, which is a start. There is a bit of finesse involved in making a perfect candle, which I will have to develop with practice. It’s going to be a while before I’m making decent candle holders, so I’ve got time to improve.

I still have quite a lot of wax pellets and dye chips left so I can make a few more candles from this kit, after that I’ll start experimenting with different types of candle and most likely try recycling some of the old candles lying about in the garage.

What I’ve been playing instead of Skyrim

Skyrim came out last month and unlike a good percentage of my friends, I didn’t buy it. I thought I would wait until the game was patched before buying it. However as the latest patch adds some pretty major bugs, I’ll be waiting a little bit longer.

So here is what I’ve been playing instead!

Battlefield 3

Aside from wanting to wait for a patch. Battlefield 3 is another reason I’ve held out on Skyrim. Battlefield 3′s multiplayer that is. I don’t often play co-op games for various reasons but the Battlefield series has always managed to be one of the few games that gets team based multiplayer right. It remains one of the best multiplayer experiences you can have on any platform. I’ve played over 90 hours of Conquest mode (0 minutes of single player!) since release day which as you can imagine, hasn’t left much time for dragon slaying.

Having a good squad to play with really makes a difference with this game. Playing with randoms can be such a mixed experience and at times can be very frustrating. Some people just don’t seem to know how to PTFO. Since I don’t have a good squad to play with, I’ll settle for these guys.

Dodonpachi Resurrection

Doo dum what? I can hear some of you saying. Dodonpachi Resurrection (Daifukkatsu) is the latest in Cave’s flagship DonPachi series of vertical scrolling shooters. It got a UK release for Xbox 360 on the same day as Skyrim. Again, the release of this game informed my decision not to buy Skyrim. Skyrim will be on the shelves for years to come, whereas fairly low profile games like this tend to disappear quite quickly. I must confess I bought it more to support the release of shmups on the 360 rather than through loyalty to Cave. The Donpachi/DoDonPachi series has never really sat right with me because of it’s very strict enemy chaining based scoring system. They’re always fun enough games to play for their own sake but trying to play for score in them just doesn’t appeal to me as much as it does in a lot of other shmups, even other Cave shmups. It’s a good game but not entirely to my taste.

 

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

This is a game I’m about to stop playing instead of Skyrim, out of sheer frustration. Daggerfall, the second in the Elder Scrolls series (to which Skyrim is the fifth) is to this day one of the most ambitious RPGs ever made. I really, really want to like this game. It’s got so much going for it but it’s so incredibly buggy even when patched and the dungeons are just appalling. Even a basic Fighter’s Guild quest can involve hours of tedious crawling through labyrinthine, randomly generated dungeons with miles of identical corridors twisting round like spaghetti. Then you fall through the floor. Again.

With a slightly heavy heart, I’ll be putting this to rest and trying another DOS roleplaying game instead. Or, if I ever get round to tidying my desk so I can use my PC, Morrowind. If you want to try Daggerfall for yourself. Bethesda are giving it away for free on their website along with the original Elder Scrolls: Arena.

I’ll get Skyrim eventually, then probably make a few posts moaning about how I can’t mix and match armour anymore. Watch this space!

Carving a Wood Spirit

I’ve been expanding my craft skills recently. Partly to complement my day job and partly for my own pleasure.

As part of this I’ve been trying to improve my woodworking skills. I do a little bit of basic woodworking at work, mostly just shaping plywood for mosaic backboards but I thought I could probably do with learning a few other skills. I have a few ideas for some pretty conventional woodworking projects that I’ll be working on over the winter but I am also trying my hand at whittling and carving.

I got some Alder branches from a horticultural project the charity I work for runs and decided to use it to try out some whittling. From what I understand Alder is a reasonable carving wood when it’s green, not one of the usual woods of choice but it’s forgiving enough and dries to an interesting orange finish.

One of the most popular projects I’ve seen on the internet is carving a wood spirit. These usually take the form of a bearded old man carved into the face of a piece of wood. I saw a couple of good videos on youtube that explained the process of carving a simple wood spirit very well and decided to give it a go. After an evening of carving, this is what I came up with.

It’s hardly perfect but then I’m an absolute beginner. Looking at a photograph really shows up all the imperfections that you don’t notice when holding it in your hand but overall I’m quite pleased with the result. I’ve learnt quite a bit from making this and it’ll serve as a good benchmark for future projects.

I’ve got a few ideas for carving projects written down and I’ve built up a little stockpile of branches so watch this space for more carvings.

A Few Games I’ve Been Meaning to Mention…

…but never got round to it.

Vanquish

I was drawn to this game shortly before its release when I heard about comparisons to P.N.03, one of my favourite Gamecube games. Sadly after playing the demo I was less than impressed. Rather than being like Capcom’s largely forgotten and criminally underrated classic, Vanquish felt a lot more like Gears of War with a scoring system. I picked up the full game when it was heavily discounted a few months ago, determined to give it another shot and see if I could see in it what everyone else could but I had failed to in the demo. After a full play-through my opinion of the game improved quite a lot but it never really wowed me. It was very flashy and the scoring system helped to add a bit of depth to the shooting but it never really broke out of the cover shooter mould. Vanquish is good for the type of game that it is, but it isn’t what I was hoping for.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane

When you ask for a list of the best games on the N64 and Sega Dreamcast, chances are the original Hydro Thunder will appear on one or both lists. When a sequel came out on XBLA during 2010′s Summer of Arcade promotion I was excited at the prospect of playing another Hydro Thunder game. As it turned out I didn’t end up buying it until around the new year, partly due to some discouragement from well meaning gaming chums and because I spent the summer playing almost nothing but Monday Night Combat. When I got round to playing it I wished I’d tried it sooner. Although it wasn’t developed by the original team, it manages to capture the spirit of its predecessor very well. When I first played it I got a real feeling that I was playing a Dreamcast-era game. It’s colourful, challenging and great in multiplayer. Thankfully it also has a pretty decent community on Xbox Live. It isn’t perfect, the single player mode has a little too much focus on the less interesting secondary game modes and some of the tracks aren’t quite up to the standard of the original but overall it’s a really solid arcade racer, something which can’t be taken for granted these days.

Some other games in brief.

Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage

• Brawler.
• Decent Dynasty Warriors type game nicely modified to fit the theme.
• Much better than Dynasty Warriors Gundam.

Wartech – Senko no Ronde

• Versus shoot ‘em up.
• Think Virtual On meets Change Air Blade.
• I wish I could get to grips with it. I’m even worse at it than I am at Virtual On.

Skydrift

• Arcade racer.
• Closest thing to a new Plane Crazy we’ve managed to get. A bit of a let down sadly.
• Really great in multiplayer but I’ve had a lot of trouble getting a game online, not many people are playing it.
• No single race option in single player, just tournaments.

Bug box

I bought some new tools recently, so in order to justify owning them i’ve spent the last two evenings in the garage making something. A bug box for the garden.

In case you’re wondering what it’s actually for, it’s a place for insects to shelter over the winter. In particular, bug boxes are aimed at ladybirds, lacewings and solitary bees who provide positive benefits to a garden in the warmer months.

It’s not a very neat bug box, because it was thrown together from scraps that were lying around in the garage. The sides are actually made from a rather badly warped plank which is why the box is so wonky looking. Well, one of the reasons why anyway. The whole thing is butted together quite simply and screwed into place. As this is going to be on the ground I thought it could do with some legs to keep it in place in the soil. These are shouldered for a bit of extra stability and held in place with glue and panel pins.

Hopefully the local insect life will look past the rather ramshackle appearance of the box and take up residence in there over the coming winter.

The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror.

When H.P. Lovecraft died in 1937 he left behind a series of unfinished stories in various forms and stages of completion. August Derleth, the original Lovecraft fanboy, took it upon himself to finish these stories and publish them as a posthumous collaboration. 10 of these tales are collected in a paperback that was given to me a few months ago by a fellow pulp enthusiast. This particular collection is entitled The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror. I believe they’re available in other anthologies, although they’re not typically included in standard H.P. Lovecraft collections.

As this is an old anthology that’s long since out of print, I thought I would go through each of the stories included within rather than looking at the collection as a whole.

The Survivor

This is a reasonable story, if a little predictable. An antiquarian leases out an interesting old house, intending to learn about its origins and the life of it’s previous inhabitant and finds more than he bargained for. Quite derivative in form and with more than a smattering of unnecessary references to other aspects of the ‘Lovecraft Mythos’, something which most of the stories in this anthology are guilty of. This is probably down to Derleth’s contribution. The big twist was visible long before the end of the story, but Derleth decided to add a final paragraph explaining everything, something else he does throughout the anthology.

Wentworth’s Day

This reminded me a lot of The Picture in the House. In Wentworth’s Day a salesman seeks shelter from a storm in a farmhouse occupied by an old man who seems eccentric but harmless enough. He keeps mentioning a debt owed to a deceased friend which was due to be collected that night. And then a skeleton popped out!

The Peabody Heritage

More spooky old houses! Inherited property is a recurring theme in Lovecraft’s work. If anybody reading this inherits a house in rural New England, stay away from it! The Peabody Heritage is one of the best stories included in The Shuttered Room… It shares a few elements with The Dreams in the Witch House but isn’t directly related. It’s a lot less muddled than its predecessor and in some ways a more satisfying story. It could probably have been improved by either removing some of the Dreams in the Witch House elements or expanding upon them to make the story stand out on it’s on a bit better.

The Gable Window

Another spooky inherited house with hidden secrets.  I don’t have a great deal to say about this one. It was okay but I think it fizzled out just as it was starting to get going. The description on the back of the book made it sound a lot more exciting than it was.

The Ancestor

The Ancestor explores another of Lovecraft’s recurring themes, ancestral memory. This is also one of the better of these unfinished tales. A scientist’s attempts to explore the memory of his ancestors stored in his genes but ends up doing more than just seeing through their eyes. It all ends rather abruptly unfortunately and with another of Derleth’s epilogues.

The Shadow out of Space

This reads a lot like a re-write of one of the best Lovecraft stories, The Shadow out of Time. The plot follows a very similar pattern but the details have been changed to accommodate Derleth’s own views on the Old Ones and the battle between the ‘good’ Elder Gods and the ‘evil’ Great Old Ones. Much of the story contradicts The Shadow out of Time and almost all of it fails to match up to it’s superior predecessor.

The Lamp of Alhazred

This is by far my favourite of this group of stories. It features a character that seems to be an analog for Lovecraft himself who inherits an old magic lamp from his grandfather. It’s not really a horror story at all but rather a quite touching tribute by Derleth to his friend. If you only read one of these stories, make it this one.

The Fisherman of Falcon Point

The Fisherman of Falcon Point  is a very short tale concerning the strange happenings in and around Innsmouth and how a good deed doesn’t go unrewarded, even by Deep Ones. An interesting little aside but not an especially memorable one.

The Dark Brotherhood

I struggled to get through this one. Seven Edgar Allan Poe lookalikes and Derleth’s weird re-imagining of The Great Race of Yith. Skip it.

The Shuttered Room

Another spooky inherited house tale! To me, The Shuttered Room represents a real waste of potential. At heart it’s a good story but it suffers from being set in Dunwich and even features the Whately family of The Dunwich Horror fame. The Dunwich setting adds nothing, it would have been a much better story had it not been quite clumsily connected to The Dunwich Horror  and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I’m putting this down to Derleth trying to lean too heavily on Lovecraft’s most well known works.

Overall I wouldn’t count any of these stories among Lovecraft’s best but some of them are worth reading. Derleth has a few annoying habits such as endlessly namedropping other aspects of the Lovecraft mythos and adding explanatory paragraphs at the end of stories, hammering out all sense of subtlety to the endings.

In the Garden with the 52B

Right now I should be writing an entry about the birdwatching and photography trip I was planning to take today. Unfortunately I forgot to charge my camera so I ended up staying at home. Instead I went into the garden to use up the remaining battery life in my camera by taking some macro shots.

I wasn’t really expecting much in the way of usable results. Firstly I’m using some pretty old glass. The only macro lens I have that I can mount on my D-SLR is an old Tamron 52B. It’s a good quality lens but it’s manual focus and very difficult to use on my 450D, especially as I was using it with a 2x teleconverter and no focusing rails. Secondly and perhaps most importantly, I really don’t have an eye for macro photography. Even less so than for all other kinds of photography, which I’m frankly a rank amateur at.

Despite all of this I actually managed to get a couple of fairly decent photos by my standards. They’re really nothing to shout about but they’re at least fairly sharp and probably won’t make anyone’s eyes bleed too much. Out of 57 shots taken I managed to upload 8 to my Flickr account. most of the others were either focused incorrectly or duplicates. I took a lot more than I needed to because it’s really hard to judge the quality from the back of the camera, especially when you’re dealing with razor thin depth of field.

Here’s a selection of what I took. They’re all on my Flickr in higher resolutions.

As much as my own skill is lacking, I can’t fault the lens. For a 3rd party lens that was first manufactured in 1979 it’s really good quality, even disregarding its age it’s still a good lens. It cost me less than Canon’s current cheapest lenses and it really punches above its weight in both build and optical quality. It’s almost entirely metal and the focusing is very smooth and precise. Optically it’s very hard to find significant fault with it either. Here is a 100% crop from one of the photos I took today. It was taken at iso1600 so I could shoot at a fast enough shutter speed to be sure of arresting any camera shake or tiny movements of the fly.

The noise reduction kills a bit of detail, the 450D doesn’t have the most impressive high iso capability but it’s still a commendable performance from both camera and lens.

Maybe one day I’ll learn to compose a decent still life or interesting flower shot and be able to really make the most of this lens.

Making the most of Oblivion

I recently managed to polish off the last of Oblivion‘s achievements so I thought this would be a good time to talk about the game and how to get more out of playing it. I’m not going to discuss the quality of the game, that’s been done to death and I think there’s merit to the arguments of both the pro and anti-Oblivion camps. I’m also not going to touch the PC vs console issue with a ten foot pole. Yes, I played Oblivion on the 360, I don’t care if that makes me some kind of casual 30fps scrub, I play Morrowind and Daggerfall on the PC so make of that what you will.

I’ll kick things off with the only piece of power gaming advice I’ll ever give for this game. If you’re worried about the difficulty scaling and just want to finish the game, under-level. If you never go to sleep, you’ll never level up and the difficulty will never increase. Your skills will still increase though so your character will still become stronger. The only downside to under-levelling is that you can’t access higher level equipment and all levelled quest rewards and enchanted items will be at their minimum. I really only recommend doing this if you’re desperate to beat the main quest with minimal effort.

Now, onto the real advice. For most of this I’ll be saying The Elder Scrolls rather than Oblivion because this advice could just as easily be applied to Morrowind or Daggerfall.

 

There is no right or wrong way to play

Well, there is but right and wrong are relative in the Elder Scrolls series, it comes down to easier and harder ways to play. Power-levelled tank-mages will always be more successful than more dedicated character builds but they’re not the only way to play and far from the most entertaining characters to use. The Elder Scrolls has always stressed that you can do whatever you want to do and there’s always a message in the front of the manual to this effect. If you want to build a bard and put him in heavy armour and arm him with a warhammer even though neither of these are covered by his major skills, go ahead! You won’t have an easy time of it but if that’s how you envision your character, it’s your choice.

I have a friend who said she didn’t like Oblivion and just messed around stealing horses and then gave up. She thought she couldn’t get into the game, but actually she couldn’t have been truer to the spirit of it. The Elder Scrolls provides you with a world and leaves it up to you to decide how to interact with it. It’s a true roleplaying game series, there’s more to it than following the story and making the numbers bigger.

 

Don’t feel you have to do everything with one character, or at all.

This leads on from the previous point. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Don’t feel like joining the Mage’s Guild? Don’t bother! Don’t think the Dark Brotherhood fits  in with the vision you had of your character? Just walk away. I find it a bit silly that one person would be the Champion of Cyrodil, the master of the Thieves Guild and the Arch-Mage but a lot of people are quite happy to use one character for everything. Those people are entitled to do that but I think they’re missing out on a lot. Oblivion has 21 standard classes so why tank-mage your way through everything?

Some classes are better suited to certain questlines than others. The main quest favours the combat and more offensive mage classes, thieves guild and dark brotherhood favour stealth, mages guild favours magic etc. So why not build a couple of characters and use them for different questlines? It adds variety and adds to the roleplaying.

I’m far from being a stickler for roleplay but I like to build a consistent character. I didn’t think my main character, a Wood Elf Archer, would join the Dark Brotherhood. He might have enjoyed a bit of petty, and somewhat less petty, theft but he was no murderer so I rolled a new character just so I could play that questline. Same with the Knights of the Nine expansion. My main character’s nimble fingers and preference for bows over swords and maces wouldn’t really make him a suitable choice to fulfill the paladin type role of the Divine Crusader so I used another new character.

If you feel like you have to do everything in the game, prepare for a long long long long long journey. You could feasibly do everything in Oblivion  but it would take you a long time, a lot less time than it would take to do everything in Morrowind but a long time nonetheless.

 

Take your time, explore, avoid fast travel as much as possible.

Fast travel is convenient but there are a lot of advantages to not using it. Firstly, you’ll get to see a lot more of the game world, come across more locations and side quests and be able to take in more of the scenery. Secondly, you’ll improve your skills a lot more by travelling manually. Running from place to place will improve your athletics, hopping around will improve your acrobatics, getting jumped by bandits and wild animals will improve your combat skills.

Using horses can get you around Cyrodil quicker than running and still let you explore, but you still won’t be increasing your athletics, plus they’re very expensive and you can use that gold on more useful things. If you want a fast character, you’re going to have to run everywhere. Eventually you’ll be able run as fast as a horse anyway so it won’t matter.

 

None of this is definitive advice. I’m far from a leading authority on Oblivion let alone The Elder Scrolls as a whole. But I’ve put a lot of time into these games and done an awful lot of reading into how they work so I’m not just throwing out random thoughts here. Just give Oblivion another shot if you didn’t like it but take my advice into account and you should maybe get a little something more from the game. The most important thing to remember is to play it how you want to, if that means ignoring my advice entirely, thats fine too as long as you’re having fun.

Child of Eden

Child of Eden was released on Friday and I think I’ve put enough time into it over the last few days to talk about it a little.

If you don’t know about Child of Eden, it’s a rather abstract rail shooter produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of the outstanding Dreamcast/PS2 game, Rez to which this is a spiritual successor.

I’m a big fan of Rez so I found it hard to resist going out on Friday to pick this game up. For me to buy a game on day one is a bit of a rarity. The last time I did it was for Deathsmiles in February and before that you’d probably have to go all the way back to King of Fighters XI in 2007. This should give you a clue as to how much I was anticipating Child of Eden.

With the demand for increasingly artistic and cinematic games, some developers forget that they’re making a game. What made Rez so good was that although it pushed all sorts of creative boundaries and was a real spectacle to look at and listen to, it was a really solid game underneath. Mizuguchi hasn’t forgotten that with Child of Eden. For all the stunning visuals and the Genki Rockets soundtrack it’s still a real video game. It has a scoring system, it requires skill to play well and you can replay it over and over. It would have been very easy to turn Child of Eden into a vaguely interactive light-show but it’s stayed true to its rail shooter roots and that’s what makes it an absolute triumph.

If you didn’t play Rez and have only seen the E3 trailer for Child of Eden you still might not know what the hell this game is about. The video below has some sample gameplay which I will explain.

It’s not that clear what’s going on because whoever’s playing it isn’t very good but it’s actually very simple. You fly through a pre-determined level and face waves of enemies that you highlight with your targeter and shoot down, targeting more than one enemy at a time gives you a higher score. You can shoot a maximum of eight enemies at once with your main shot, and shooting them in time to the beat of the music gives you a score multiplier. You also have a secondary rapid fire weapon for destroying certain types of enemy and shooting down missiles. You can play the game with either a control pad or waggle your arms about like a prat with Kinect.

I didn’t think we’d ever see another game like Rez and I’m so glad to have been proven wrong. If you’re still not sold, try Rez HD on XBLA to get a taste of what you’ll find in Child of Eden at a fraction of the price.