Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in ,

In the lead up to Christmas I find myself going through my back catalogue of games simply looking for things to kill time.

This, coupled with the new “Xbox Originals” download section on Xbox Live lead me to rediscover one of my favourite games ever; Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy in the US and Canada).

One of the weirdest games I’ve ever played, Fahrenheit is basically an interactive movie in which you control both a killer on the run and the two cops trying to catch him. Following in your own footsteps searching for evidence is strangely rewarding, especially since you have to constantly watch how stressed your characters are becoming and ensure you balance being a good cop with being a good criminal.

Everything is relatively fast-paced with timers even dictating how long you can wait before picking a conversation option, and action scenes are controlled via what was once a new concept; timed button sequences.

With multiple endings, an involving storyline and a genuinely new gaming experience, Fahrenheit is a bargain at only 1200 Microsoft Points (approx £12). If you have an Xbox 360, buy this game.

But prepare yourself for a 3.3GB download.

John "The Sweeney" Pennycook

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in

For the first time ever, driven by boredom, I decided to run a YouTube search on my own name. The result was rather surprising and, frankly, a bit rubbish, but it made me laugh.

Here it is:

I think it’s made even funnier by the fact it looks like “I” am being interviewed by Trisk.

Mass Effect: Update

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in

I promised an update on Mass Effect when I’d finished it a second time, and here I finally am. It only took me 8 hours to complete on the Hardcore difficulty setting, though I admit that it was definitely a challenge over the previous playthrough. It would have taken me just as long as the previous one had I taken the time to go through all the side missions and such, but I still feel a little disappointed that the core missions only make up 8 hours of gameplay.

As far as the achievements are concerned, I’m rather annoyed; despite the game having been out for almost a month now, there have still been no patches to fix the achievements that can only be granted at the end of the game.

I received my achievement for a second playthrough, but not one for completing it on a harder difficulty. If that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve also missed out on the three achievements I was promised for using the same squad members throughout the entire game.

All in all, Mass Effect Playthrough 2 was still an enjoyable experience, but I’d definitely recommend leaving it a little longer than I did for anybody looking to do it. Not only will the game feel fresher and the storyline a little less familiar, but Bioware might have gotten around to fixing the achievements.

The Golden Compass

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in ,

Before I actually say anything about this film, I must say I’m a little disappointed that it was released under the name The Golden Compass; if we can re-name The Philosopher’s Stone just for an American release, why can’t they re-name this film for our benefit? Northern Lights is a better name, anyway.

Having only just returned from the cinema, I’d definitely recommend it over any of the other children’s fantasy books-turned-films. The child-acting from first-timer Dakota is pretty terrible at times, but it’s still on a par with that of the first Harry Potter offering and doesn’t get in the way of the story too much.

For fans of His Dark Materials changes to the script may be a little disappointing; Dust and parallel universes are explained in detail during the opening moments of the film, the Church’s role is downsized, the events of the book are re-ordered and the ending has been changed significantly.

It’s still a film that everybody should see, if only to snap people out of their Harry Potter fandom and get them interested in Phillip Pullman’s works, but it could have been much improved by following the original a little more closely.

Here’s hoping the film makes enough money to encourage New Line to pick up the second book and eventually finish the trilogy… and that fans of the series make enough of an uproar about its failings that The Subtle Knife turns out a little better.

Potteries Museum, Hanley

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in

Today was my first complete day at my girlfriend’s house in Stoke-on-Trent. We went to Hanley for a little bit of Christmas shopping and then, as we are wont to do, went to the local museum to have a look around.

None of this is particularly surprising, but some of the things we saw in the museum definitely were.

For example, in the “Seeing Slavery” exhibit there was a wall on which children could pin their thoughts about slavery. Amidst the expected and cliche “Slavery is wrong!”‘s and “Silly slavery – by Santa Clause” there was one answer that caught us off guard:


Note his age; 15. 15, and already making cynical comments about how we are all slaves to the government. It makes me wonder what changes the government is making to the national curriculum; surely people aren’t supposed to be learning that at such a young age? It seems more of an AS level subject to me.

This stuffed deer certainly was not amused:


I don’t know how often I’ll be posting about my Stoke visit, but if funny and interesting things keep happening you can expect an update at least once every couple of days.

AmeCon

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in

One of my fellow Gaia moderators drew my attention to AmeCon today; apparently it’s the largest anime convention in the UK.


I’m not sure if I’m going to go, as the dates (August 8th – August10th) may be conflicting with holidays and university friends visiting me at home over the summer, but having never been to one before I must say that I’m very tempted. The opportunity to meet the moderators I talk to most days would be pretty awesome, after all.

I’ve been into anime for several years now and I’d never heard of this convention, so hopefully this’ll help somebody else discover it. Spread the word!

Libero Issue 01 – Closing Time

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in ,

Well, now that I have a working website and a blog with which to post about updates, I figured that now would be as good a time as any to attempt to generate some interest in Libero project and put some of my work out there.

I don’t have any finished panelwork, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable posting any of Hannah’s concept sketches without her permission, so all I’m going to be providing for the moment is scripts.

The first issue of Libero, titled “Closing Time” is very much an introduction to the character of Seth and the slums of Vern in which lives. You’ll also see Boxah, and catch a glimpse of Robin Enigma of the MPD.

See the Script

If you like what you’ve read, then watch this space for future updates, or check out the main Libero website for more information.

Mass Effect

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in ,

Mass Effect is a game for the Xbox360 developed by Bioware — whom you may recognise as the developers of Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire — and one that I finished at 2am this morning. It’s an RPG and similar to Bioware’s past efforts in many ways; it boasts romance subplots, a storyline full of twists and turns and a Paragon/Renegade system that allows your character to be good, evil, or anywhere in between.

It looks like this:


You may ask why I’m bigging it up considering that it’s already been out for about a week and Bioware probably don’t need any help meeting their sales targets, but I genuinely think that it’s a good game (though not flawless) and there might be somebody for whom my opinions come in handy.

As you can probably tell from the screenshot, Mass Effect has graphics that you’d expect of a 360 game. The soundtrack and voice acting are equally impressive, the battle system is intuitive and I really can’t fault anything in any of these areas, so I’m not going to waste time with a lengthy and unhelpful description.

The problems with the game can probably be summed up in a couple of simple points, as there aren’t many of them:

  • Length: It took me only 22 hours to complete on my first playthrough, and I was purposely trying to hold off completing it too fast by completing all the sidequests.
  • Repetitiveness: Though you can explore the “entire galaxy” and visit a multitude of planets, the majority of them are barren except for a few points of minor interest. You spend most of the game riding around in a vehicle looking for things to do; not particularly exciting.
  • Illusion of Choice: Lots of the games decisions seem as though they’ve been pre-determined. One example that springs to mind is when you have to choose to arrest or shoot an alien criminal; if you arrest him, he tries to escape and you have to shoot him anyway.

However, despite these problems, Mass Effect is still a good enough game that I started a brand new save at 8am. With about 7 different classes, a wide range of background stories for your character to adopt and 3 difficulty settings, the game’s length doesn’t seem quite so important.

As for whether the repetitive nature of side-missions will get in the way of my enjoyment of repeated playthroughs… You’ll have to ask me in about 20 hours.

From SquirrelMail to Gmail

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in

My girlfriend recently expressed her hatred for the Warwick University WebMail system. It’s slow and bulky, has to be emptied regularly if you’re using it as your main e-mail account, and gets spammed regularly with e-mails from Employer Connect. It didn’t take long to convert her to Gmail, and the aim of this blog post is to help other people to do the same.

If you don’t know what Gmail is (and haven’t already clicked the link to it above), it is an e-mail system operated by Google. Unlike SquirrelMail, it allows you to access e-mails from all your accounts, archive and search them. It currently has around 5GB of storage per account (a figure that’s rising every day) meaning that you never have to delete an e-mail. The size means you can even use it as online web storage, by e-mailing yourself back-ups of your work and other such things, or using add-ons specially designed to make your Gmail account appear to your computer as another harddrive!

And now we begin. I’m going to assume that you have both your Warwick Webmail and Gmail accounts set up; if you don’t have a Gmail account then you can get one by clicking here and following the instructions.

Forwarding Your E-Mail
The first thing to do is forward your Warwick e-mail to Gmail; this will allow you to read your e-mail there instead.

  1. Log in to Warwick WebMail.
  2. Click “Options” on the bar at the top.
  3. Click “Message Filters” in the new Options menu.
  4. Click “New Rule” and make selections as pictured here, though with your new Gmail address filled in.
  5. Uncheck”Keep a local copy” if you never want to visit WebMail again. Keep it checked if you’re happy for it to keep backups (but remember you’ll need to empty it from time to time).
  6. Click “Add New Rule”.

You’re done! All e-mail sent to your @warwick.ac.uk address will now be received by your @googlemail.com address. But Gmail’s capable of much more; read on if you want to be able to send messages from @warwick.ac.uk as well.

Getting Gmail to Send University E-mail
This is where Gmail really puts other Webmail to shame; you can use it to send e-mails that appear as though they were sent from your @warwick.ac.uk address (or any other e-mail address that you have, in fact).

  1. Log in to Gmail.
  2. Click “Settings” in the top right corner.
  3. Click the “Accounts” tab in the settings menu.
  4. Click “Add another email address” and fill in your details.
  5. Google will e-mail your Warwick WebMail account with a verification code, but this will be sent directly to your Gmail account anyway. Just copy it when it arrives into the verification box.

And again, you’re done! Now, when using Gmail to compose an e-mail, you will have the option of selecting different e-mail addresses from a drop-down box. Whether you want people to receive an e-mail from @googlemail.com or @warwick.ac.uk, it’s up to you.

Gmail, Labels and Filters
Labels in Gmail are basically a way of splitting your e-mails into groups, to make searching them easier. This section is concerned with how to label all your university e-mails with a “University” label, so you can keep them separate from your other e-mail.

  1. In Gmail, click “Settings” in the top right corner.
  2. Click the “Labels” tab in the settings menu.
  3. Create a new label called “University” (we’ll configure how it works in a second).
  4. Click the “Filters” tab in the settings menu.
  5. Click “Create a new filter”.
  6. Fill in your @warwick.ac.uk address in the “To” box and click “Next Step >”.
  7. Check “Apply the label”: and select your University label from the drop-down.
  8. Click “Create filter”.

Done! You should now see a green box to the left of your e-mail listing called “Labels”, containing a link called “University”; if you click it, you’ll instantly be shown all your University e-mail.

That’s about it, really; any more accounts, labels and filters you want to add are going to be specific to you and therefore its hard to write about them. But experiment and play around; there’s lots of awesome things it can do. For example, you can write a filter that takes any e-mail Facebook ever sends you and puts it in a separate inbox, or instantly deletes e-mails from people you don’t like.

I hope that this has been helpful to at least one person. If it’s been helpful to you, please comment!

A New Beginning

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4 years ago
by John Pennycook in

My old blog was quite frankly an embarrassment. And now it is gone, doomed to an existence in Google’s cache.

I realised that this space could actually be used for something useful; somewhere for me to write about my thoughts, give brief reviews on games I play, recommend music I find, share things I find dotted around the internet and showcase some of my other projects (to ensure I actually stay on top of them).

You never know, it might even end up being interesting to read. If there’s anybody out there who is still subscribed to this blog for updates, or anybody that’s stumbled across it by accident, watch this space!

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