Penny For Your Thoughts
Life, music, games and computers.
Ridiculous Phishing Attempt
Jun 21st
Today I was the victim of a frankly ridiculous phishing attempt. I’ve had some pretty bad and obvious ones before — “I am a Nigerian prince. Please give me your bank details…” and suchlike — but this one really takes the biscuit.
Here is the complete e-mail, copied and pasted from my inbox:
ATTENTION,
warwick has notice that your webmail account has been compromised by
spammers by gaining access to your webmail account and have been using it
for illegal internet activities. You are requested to provide your current
login credentials to enable us reset your webmail account password
immediately to aviod abuse of your account.Current Username/ID:
Current Password:You shall be contacted with a new password upon completion and you are
advised to provide the above information or your account will be
terminated by the abuse team.Thank you for using warwick Webmail!
warwick Webmaster……………………………………………………………..
A number of people are receiving an email, which purports to be from the
University,
requesting that the user confirms their email account details – username
and password.
This is a ‘phishing’ email and is an attempt to capture personal information.ATTENTION,
warwick has notice that your webmail account has been compromised by
spammers by gaining access to your webmail account and have been using it
for illegal internet activities. You are requested to provide your current
login credentials to enable us reset your webmail account password
immediately to aviod abuse of your account.Current Username/ID:
Current Password:You shall be contacted with a new password upon completion and you are
advised to provide the above information or your account will be
terminated by the abuse team.Thank you for using warwick Webmail!
warwick Webmaster……………………………………………………………..
A number of people are receiving an email, which purports to be from the
University,
requesting that the user confirms their email account details – username
and password.
This is a ‘phishing’ email and is an attempt to capture personal information.
Emphasis mine. Repetition theirs.
Alan Wake
Jun 6th
Alan Wake is probably best described as an action-adventure/psychological thriller; its a third-person shooter with elements of The Twilight Zone, The X Files and — perhaps most importantly – Twin Peaks. The game follows an author with writer’s block, the eponymous Mr. A. Wake, as he struggles to find his wife and wrap his head around a number of strange visions that plague him shortly after his arrival in the town of Bright Falls. Despite its strange premise, the storyline is brilliantly crafted and actually makes some weird kind of sense — it also leaves you wanting and asking questions, which is no doubt how Remedy intend to sell the upcoming DLC.
This is not a game you should ever consider playing if you are the least bit afraid of the dark. Ever. During the day, everything is fine — as Wake, you are able to explore Bright Falls and learn more about its inhabitants. At night, however, everything changes and the very darkness itself comes alive, corrupting people and inanimate objects alike.
Oh Deer.
This is where Alan Wake’s major game mechanic, using light as a weapon, comes into play; anybody “taken” by the darkness is protected from harm until you have worn down their defenses with your torch. As simple as this sounds, it makes things very tense — even if your shotgun is full of ammo, it’s useless if your torch is out of batteries. The only sensible alternative, running away, is of no use either; the darkness is everywhere. Only in light can you be sure you won’t be ambushed.
The other thing that makes the game stand out is the manuscript pages that Wake is tasked with collecting. The events that befall Wake eerily reflect his newest novel, which he doesn’t remember writing, and so these pages offer a glimpse of what’s going to happen next. Removing the element of surprise sometimes makes a few of the game’s reveals less exciting, but mostly they increase suspense. For example, one page ends with “… and then I heard the chainsaw”; with no way of telling when the chainsaw is coming, it’s difficult to relax. It also encourages you to keep playing — though you know what is going to happen, you often don’t know why.
So where does it go wrong? Well, Alan Wake’s biggest fault is probably that it seemed to have been delayed forever. For anybody who, like me, pre-ordered the game three years ago, there is absolutely no way that it will ever be able to live up to what it could/should have been. It is impossible to wait that long without developing unrealistic expectations. There were a few things that got to me, but I’m probably being really picky…
The first complaint relates to one of the many diversions from the game’s main storyline, namely the ability to watch a series of Twilight Zone-esque programs called “Night Springs”. These live action shorts are quite entertaining, but they don’t feel very polished. For some unknown reason, Remedy employed two separate groups of people — voice actors and “likenesses” — which results in everything looking (and feeling) fake. It is bad enough that the lip sync is out, but the fact that facial expressions do not match vocal delivery is impossible to ignore.
It’s also difficult to understand why the game both punishes and rewards you for exploration. As mentioned previously, the darkness is everywhere, and straying too far off the beaten track usually results in an ambush. When running low on ammo, or when growing bored of fighting, it’s often tempting to stick to the paths and run towards the next light. On the other hand, ammo caches, radios, TVs, coffee thermoses and manuscript pages are always well hidden; if you want to collect everything, you should be prepared to shine your light at every wall, explore every nook and cranny, and fend off more taken than you can shake a torch at.
Finally, I found myself growing increasingly annoyed with Alan’s inability to read his own manuscript pages with any believability. As he is an author, I would have expected his story-telling skills to be a little better; it is unfortunate that each page is read in dull, monotone voice. Whether it be a prophetic revelation, suspenseful build-up or a shocking detail about his wife’s fate, Wake reacts in exactly the same way (ie not at all).
Despite these three points, Alan Wake remains enjoyable and, at times, shit-your-pants-on-the-edge-of-your-seat. Furthermore, it seems as though it will have a great deal of replay value, as at least half of the manuscript pages can only be found on the Nightmare difficulty. Having not read them yet, it is difficult for me to comment, but I imagine that they will offer more insight into the game’s events (and presumably its finale, to boot).
In short, this game is a definite must-have for anybody with a taste for the extra-ordinary. The psychological thriller aspect may not be to everybody’s taste, however, so the uncertain should try before they buy.
Doctor Who: The Adventure Games – City of the Daleks
Jun 4th
Free downloadable games rarely look so good.
So, today marks the release of the first in the Doctor Who: The Adventure Games series, named City of the Daleks. Funded by BBC license fees, available for free download (in the UK), executive produced by Steven Moffat and Charles Cecil, developed by Sumo Digital… everything sounds brilliant on paper. Unfortunately, the reality isn’t quite what one would hope.
I should probably mention before I go any further that I have only experienced the game running under Wine 1.2 on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. A few of the negative points that follow, particularly those regarding bugs and glitches, may not be valid when running the game “properly”, but it’s difficult for me to say.
The Good
- The storyline is typical of Moffat’s new Doctor, exploring some of the more interesting possibilities of time travel.
- It’s a point-n’-click adventure, which is a sensible choice for a Doctor Who game.
- Rotoscoping Smith and Gillan has resulted in characters that move semi-realistically.
- There are a number of real-world and Doctor Who facts strewn through the game as collectables.
- It’s free, and the storyline is presumably canon.
The Bad
- The textures are a little ropey in places.
- The lip sync is just awful.
- The vocals are pretty poor. Though Smith and Gillan have done an alright job, the voices and characters just seem… disjointed.
- The controls are mostly mouse-based which makes the camera very difficult to, well, control.
- The gameplay isn’t really anything special.
I understand that the game is supposed to be accessible to gamers of all ages. I also appreciate that the game’s target audience are all considerably younger than me. But I don’t think that’s any excuse for repetitive gameplay, “puzzles” that don’t require any real thought or out-of-place minigames. The vast majority of the game consists of pointing the Sonic Screwdriver at things and stealthily avoiding Dalek’s vision cones; the rest sees the Doctor dragging small circles through a laser maze or hacking into computers by symbol matching.
That being said, hardcore Doctor Who fans will no doubt see the series through to completion regardless. Sure, the game isn’t fantastic… but it does present an opportunity to spend a few more hours with Amy and the Doctor. If we’re lucky, this first game is simply supposed to serve as an introduction — I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the next three will grow progressively harder.
(At the time of writing, the game is only available for Windows machines, but the game runs perfectly well under Wine. it wouldn’t surprise me if Mac users unwilling to wait for the official port were able to do the same under Darwine. UK readers can grab themselves a copy at the BBC website — the rest of you will just have to wait.)
Bright Falls – The Prequel to Alan Wake
May 15th
The deer is dear to me.
Yesterday I started playing Alan Wake – the unboxing and review of which will be appearing here shortly — but have taken a break in order to catch up with (and finish) the six-episode live-action miniseries Bright Falls.
The series is very reminiscent of David Lynch’s masterpiece, Twin Peaks, and is a prime example of a game tie-in done well. It introduces a few of the game’s characters and locations, and makes it very clear that strange things are happening in Bright Falls even before Alan Wake arrives.
I’d be lying if I said that I understood everything that was going on, but that’s just an excuse to watch it all again. Whether you’re interested in Alan Wake, a fan of Twin Peaks or maybe even both, it’s well worth a look.
For anybody lucky enough to have Silverlight, you can view all six episodes (and some additional bonus goodies) by pointing your browser at the official Xbox website.
If, like me, Silverlight is out of the question for you, Machinima.com has helpfully uploaded all of the videos to Youtube:
- Episode One – Oh Deer
- Episode Two – Time Flies
- Episode Three – Lights Out
- Episode Four – Local Flavor
- Episode Five – Off the Record
- Episode Six – Clearcut
I haven’t added up the times exactly, but it shouldn’t take more than 40 minutes to rock through them all. Enjoy!
Final Fantasy XIII
Apr 28th
Believe it or not, this logo actually makes sense.
Well, it’s taken me the best part of two months, but I finally fancy writing my review for Final Fantasy XIII. The only reason that it’s taken this long is that I don’t usually like to cast judgement on a game I’m not finished with — but I think that after spending 60 hours with FFXIII I’ve probably learned everything I’m going to need. And yes, I am still playing it… which makes a welcome change from the last two eight-hour games I got for the same price.
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past twenty years, FFXIII is the thirteenth instalment in the popular J-RPG franchise from Square-Enix. As with most J-RPGs, the storyline is pretty cliche; the story sees a seemingly workaday group of people get swept up in an evil plot, granted magical powers and eventually fight to save their planet from destruction. The details are different, sure, but there’s nothing ground-breaking in story-telling terms. In fact, I’d probably even go so far as to say that the plot and its characters are not as memorable as those from previous Final Fantasy games. The lone possible exception to this rule is the game’s protagonist — Lightning — who is pretty striking (if you’ll excuse the pun).
A quick run-down of those things that make FFXIII different, then:
- Restriction
One of the best things (in my opinion) about J-RPGs is the freedom; at some point in the game, usually about half way through, you find yourself an airship and gain the ability to revisit all of the towns and locales you’ve passed through before. This freedom is unfortunately missing from most of FFXIII. Of the game’s six characters, only three of them can take part in battles at any given time. Of those three, you can only control one — who you are stuck with until the battle is finished. Each “Chapter” of the game comes with a level cap, presumably to discourage you from grinding, and it’s impossible to max out your characters until you’ve defeated the final boss. There are no towns or villages to speak of, no real NPC interaction, your hand is held tightly as the game drags you down a set path… I could go on.
- Battle System
First FFXII, now FFXIII — it seems that Square-Enix is more than happy to kill the original turn-based battle systems that worked so well in previous games. That isn’t to say that FFXIII’s battle system is bad, necessarily, but it does take some time getting used to. At the beginning of the game, your characters are confined to three “paradigm roles” each, which limits your selection of battle strategies considerably. Thankfully, this restriction is limited after about 30 hours. Unfortunately, up until this point, the best tactic seems too often to be: hammer away on the “Auto-Battle” command until whatever you’re fighting falls over.
- Weapon / Accessories Upgrades
FFXIII has one of the most in-depth upgrade systems I’ve ever seen. Almost every item that you find on your travels has an amount of EXP associated with it, which can be used to upgrade accessories and/or weapons; a ring providing +15% Earth Resistance may, eventually, evolve into a completely different ring providing +40% Earth Resistance, for example. This system is the only way to gain stronger weapons (including each character’s Ultimate Weapon), so its use is essential.
The tone of this review has been surprisingly negative so far — surprising because I’m still playing the game. A large chunk of it lacks in freedom, as I’ve said, but everything changes rather suddenly in Chapter 11 (of 13). You find yourself thrown from the planet where the rest of the storyline took place to a world called Pulse (which serves as FFXIII’s World Map) and just told to get on with it. The change was too sudden for me; having been left to my own devices, I promptly got lost and died. Several times. But eventually I figured out where I was going, how to work the teleporters and how to accept missions; the difficulty had been ramped up considerably and things were starting to get interesting.
There are 64 optional bounty-hunter style missions to undertake on Pulse, which is the reason I’m still grinding away. These sorts of missions might not be to everybody’s tastes, but I found them a pleasant distraction. Attempting them in order seems the most sensible idea, and gives you a handy method of levelling up; in addition to counting towards an achievement/trophy, each mission offers useful rewards and experience that help prepare you for the next.
So, what am I trying to say? Probably that Final Fantasy XIII disappoints in a few places, but that it’s still brilliant. The characters may not be that memorable, the dialogue may be filled with nonsense and the game may feel very cramped and restricted for the first 30 hours, but the hours that follow; the exploration of Pulse; the high-definition FMVs; and the musical score easily make up for all of the game’s faults.
It’s made me even hungrier for a high-definition remake of Final Fantasy VII, to boot. What? A man can dream…
Why I Hate the #debill
Apr 8th
Well, the ayes have it, the ayes have it; the Digital Economy Bill looks set to become the Digital Economy Act. A bad day for all users of the internet throughout the UK.
My upset has nothing to do with my support for legalised filesharing — though I do believe that copyright is in dire need of reform and that filesharing creates rather than destroys markets, that’s an issue to be covered another day in a different blog post.
I am more concerned with the fact that the measures outlined in the bill will not work. Thanks to anonymity networks like Tor, illegal filesharing through otherwise legal technologies (such as BitTorrent and YouTube), the “dynamic” IP addresses in use by most ISPs and an inability to adequately protect ones own wireless connection from serious attacks, we’ve been placed at the top of a slippery slope.
All that this bill will accomplish is pushing illegal filesharing further underground, forcing it to invent new untrackable technologies and/or abuse existing old ones. It is only a matter of time before the big “creative industries” realise that their sales have not gone up and that their profits have not increased. It is only a matter of time before they claim that nobody purchased Lily Allen’s new album because of people trading files via e-mail, posting DVDs and USB sticks to one another via smail mail, and recording their own MP3s from low-quality media streams. The suggestion that people don’t want to buy crap music they can hear for free every day on the radio is apparently too radical.
The answer to these problems? More legislation pushed through by people who do not understand the internet and less freedom for its users.
I’m also very uncomfortable with the way that copyright infringement through non-filesharing means are not mentioned (or, if they are, I’ve yet to hear about it). Where is the crackdown on the lending of books and CDs? Where is the legislation that says it is illegal to create copies of television shows you have watched and distribute them to your friends? Presumably the bill would not have passed, had the elderly been aware they’d have their VHS players confiscated.
Excuse me, whilst I write another letter to my MP.
God of War III
Apr 6th
God of War III (apparently) marks the end of the God of War trilogy. It follows Kratos, the “Ghost of Sparta”, as he finally gets his revenge for everything that happened across the course of the first two games. What this means, essentially, is that you get to kill everything and anything that stands in your way — Titans, Gods, slave girls… Anything that looks like it might bleed is probably worth a stabbing.
"In the end there will be only chaos..."
Perhaps I just came to the franchise a little too late, but God of War III didn’t really live up to my expectations. Hold your winged horses, fanboys — give me a chance to explain. There are a lot of reasons to like GoW3.
For one, it is one of the most brutal games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing; it’s very difficult to describe how satisfying it is to rip the horn off of a Chimaera and then stab it through its brain, or to repeatedly punch somebody in the face until the screen is completely splattered with their blood. I think it’s something that probably speaks to everybody at some level, though — my mum (who doesn’t like games) insisted on being present for most of my playthrough simply because it was so gruesome.
The immense scale of some of the creatures and environments is also worth a mention. Think Shadow of the Colossus, but bigger. One boss fight pits you up against a titan, whose fingernails are easily ten times the size of Kratos. At other times, a simple camera zoom-out or pan makes you realise that every single level you’ve visited is part of a much larger whole; that the huge chain you’re climbing really does stretch from Hades to the top of Mount Olympus…
Unfortunately, by the time that I really started to get into the game, I knew that it was almost over. My stats were (mostly) maxed out, a bloody trail of Gods had been left in my wake and I had only been playing for eight hours. Eight. Now, I know that this criticism seems unfair — my recent review of Heavy Rain made plenty of excuses about why its length didn’t matter — but I can’t help but feel that the game would have been better if it were longer.
Perhaps the harder difficulties and Olympus Challenges will add a lot of replay value (or be so frustratingly difficult that an eight hour playthrough needs to be stretched across months of real time), but that’s something I can’t really comment upon at this point.
My recommendation to people who haven’t yet bought God of War III would be to wait for the God of War Collection available for pre-order at all good online retailers. The price difference isn’t that much, but you’ll get at least three times as much fun out of it. That, and that you should definitely pretend it doesn’t rip off Max Payne at all.
Heavy Rain
Feb 28th
The long-awaited spiritual sequel to Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, has finally arrived. Whether or not it was worth the wait seems to be a matter of opinion, but I am sitting quite comfortably on the “Of course, are you out of your mind?” side of the fence. For anybody hearing about Quantic Dream’s masterpiece for the first time, a quick recap…
Heavy Rain is being marketed less as a game and more as an “interactive drama”. The story follows four characters, each chasing a serial killer known as ‘The Origami Killer’ for his or her own reasons; Ethan Mars, a father whose son has been kidnapped; Scott Shelby, a private investigator who has been hired by the families of the killer’s victims; Norman Jayden, an FBI agent working alongside the police to crack the case; and Madison Paige, a photographer-cum-journalist doing some investigative reporting. The gameplay consists almost entirely of quick-time events, ranging from mundane tasks like pouring juice and cooking eggs to edge-of-your-seat fight scenes.
Sound fun? Well, it isn’t — but that’s not a criticism. It’s not much fun to watch when you’re not playing it, either — but that’s not a criticism. Like its predeccessor, Heavy Rain is completely unlike most other games; rather than playing it for the satisfaction of seeing somebody’s head explode or handing somebody’s ass to them online, you play it because you are engaged in the storyline. You play it because the mundane tasks you perform make you feel like the character is real — because you feel empathy for them. I admit, it’s tempting to see Heavy Rain as a work of art, and most of what I’ve said is already plastered all over every review site and gaming magazine known to man.
But fear not, skeptics — I’ll be the first to admit that Heavy Rain does have some faults:
- Inconsistent Voice Acting
Owing almost entirely to the fact that you are in direct control of what your character says, what they think and how they react to certain situations, some of the voice acting comes across as entirely wrong and broken. Early in the game, when your son goes missing, you can press “X” to call his name. Being caught up in the game as I was, I pressed the button regularly and was disappointed to hear Ethan’s cries cycle through the same three variations of “Jason!”. Entirely my fault, granted, but giving the player the ability to ruin the mood of the scene was a bad move.
- Pretty Short
I can’t give an accurate time (since the game doesn’t provide one), but the game has taken me less than two days of play to complete. This may not be too big a deal, if it proves to be as replayable as I hope, but otherwise I feel a little cheated. I wasn’t expecting a 40-hour epic, but I could have sworn Fahrenheit was longer… And that cost me less than £10.
- Major Technical Bugs
In my short time with Heavy Rain, I have experienced the following faults (in no particular order): temporary loss of all sound, speech delays that wouldn’t look out of place in a badly-dubbed kung-fu film, video freezes, children walking directly through my character and seemingly random interruptions to internal monologues. At one point, Jayden’s ARI glasses flew off his face, folded themselves in mid-air and placed themselves neatly in his coat pocket — pretty hard to ignore.
That said, ignoring most of the above is exactly what I’m going to decide to do. Why? Because the storyline is brilliant, full of twists and its conclusion depends entirely on how you play the game; because it deals with some very mature themes and proves conclusively that games are not “just for kids”; because it’s going to be a game that everybody talks about for years to come; and because the installation process includes an origami how-to for the bird on the box. Heavy Rain is a work of sheer genius, and should not be missed.
Variadic Macros and CUDA
Feb 27th
Again, a relatively obvious tool for those who are more experienced with C than I, but this is something I recently stumbled across and found very useful.
One of my major annoyances with CUDA is the way that device emulation works — you go through your code, writing printf statements here and there, compile for device emulation and everything’s fine. But remove your -deviceemu and everything goes horribly wrong, as device functions cannot call host functions. Until now, my only way around the error has been to comment out all of my print statements, which is pretty arduous.
The answer lies with a variadic macro. Define something like this at the top of your CUDA files, or the top of a generic header file included everywhere:
#ifdef DEVICEEMU
#define debug(format, ...) printf(format, ## __VA_ARGS__)
#else
#define debug(format, ...)
#endif
With this in place, where you would have used printf("Some output = %d.\n", variable), debug("Some output = %d.\n", variable) will do exactly the same thing. If -D DEVICEEMU is passed as an argument to nvcc, all calls to debug will be replaced by suitable (and working) printf statements. If it isn’t, they are all replaced by empty lines and the compiler just skips over them.
A few quick changes to your Makefile and everything’s pretty much automatic. Thanks, variadic macros!
Bioshock 2: Special Edition Unboxing
Feb 8th
I got a nice surprise when I came home this evening; my special edition Bioshock 2 had been left with a neighbour whilst I was out. Not only is it massive (much bigger than I thought it would be, for some reason), but it is also quite possibly the most special collector’s edition I’ve ever had the pleasure of owning. I thought the Assassin’s Creed II box was nice, but this is almost beyond words.
The Box
I’ve got no idea why there is a butterfly or moth made of handprints on it, but I’m hoping that it will become clear as I play the game. They may be Little Sister handprints, but that’s purely speculation on my part.
So pretty...
The Record
Lifting the butterfly lid off reveals “I Am Rapture, Rapture Is Me”, a 12″ vinyl of the Bioshock orchestral score. I don’t actually own a record player, but I don’t care. It makes sense.
I want to listen to it. 
The Book
But wait, there’s more! 168 pages more, to be precise. Concept art, level designs, posters, it’s all there. The rolled-up paper next to it are 3 “vintage Rapture advertisements” that I’ve not dared unwrap yet; I’m not allowed posters in my room this year, so will save them for my next house.
It's hardback, too.
The CD (and Game)
After all that, seeing the game box sitting snugly in its velvet box (did I mention it was velvet?) is almost anti-climactic… Until you find the CD sitting underneath, that is! The CD is perhaps the coolest one I’ve ever laid eyes upon — it’s actually been printed to look like a very small vinyl.
I should probably play this, now.
Gorgeous, isn't it?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading into Rapture. See you soon…