Origami in the rain

If we head back to 1982 a certain sci-fi noir movie, namely Blade Runner, had an oppressive dark and wet environment. I have been reminded of this movie, a number of times, as I have been 'playing' my way through the rain sodden chapters of Heavy Rain. But it's not just the rain theme that both these entertainment vessels swell with. The way Origami is used as a form of character-taunting and also character-defining moments in both Heavy Rain and Blade Runner, lead me to believe that David Cage must be a fan of the '80s movie.

In Blade Runner, the unicorn is the last of a series of origami figures that Gaff uses to taunt Deckard.

  Ethan Mars is tested with the aid of a number of origami figures created by the serial killer holding his son.

I've been trying hard to think of other movies or even videogames that uses the theme of Origami throughout but I just can't think of one - any thoughts?

Noticings, Blu-ray and ApocalyPS3

Yesterday was a bad day for the 'fat' PS3. But as the old saying goes, 'all PR is good PR' or is that just silly? Should I ask Ashley Cole or John Terry?

Now I own one of these PS3 models and have Heavy Rain waiting to be revisited. I'd also just decided to make the move into building a Blu-ray collection of my choice movies - I currently only own The Dark Knight & Dark City - and so ordered Blade Runner(Director's Cut) and Watchmen(Director's Cut) plus preordered Minority Report. To add to that, I have just been sent the Halo Legends and Dante's Inferno animated movies on Blu-ray to review. I was happily gearing this year towards being my first Blu-ray year proper when Sony decide to throw a small CPU bug into the mix. Luckily I didn't try logging into PSN or even turning on my PS3 yesterday but it does make one wonder what else Sony have overlooked. It's also made me consider buying a stand-alone Blu-ray player when I hadn't considered it before. Hmm.

Onto Flickr. I've been yearning to find a use for my account for a few years now and finally I think Noticings could end the yearning and also put my iPhone's camera to better use.

Noticings is a game based around your own photography posted to your Flickr account with uploaded photos being public and geotagged. The rules and scoring for Noticings can be viewed here and my first submission is here.

Poetry retrospective #2

Happy St. David's Day!

Cut Along The Punk Line*

It was what was incomplete
It was your hate and nothing I could recommend
It was time to draw blood from teeth
It was the height of time suspended
It was time to lose those sheep
Just to follow me
It was me recommended.

*written between 1994 - 1996, unpublished.

The lights go out during Darksiders

 

Recieved my copy of Darksiders today and although this title has had a patch since release, I happened on a bug(see the screenshot above). It reminded me of the times I'd be playing World of Warcraft, or any recent MMO, and I enter a location only to find my character spinning around in a virtual 'dark room'. On this occassion I had just lept from a ledge in the Library section of the Prologue, when the ground beneath War's feet fell away into darkness. The building was also torn away, revealing a 360 degree skyline.

So the patch to rectify the screen tearing problems on the 360 look to have removed the problem by eliminating the in-game environments themselves?! 

Kinda unique way of solving a problem!

Chomp! Chomp! OK, Heavy Rain it is then...

I had been working on a nice long post, cataloging my reasons behind why I will no longer occupy space in either multiplayer or MMO landscapes, when my PC/Blogger decided to rip the words from my screen and munch happily away. Left with an auto-saved 'blank page', I just didn't have the heart to re-write the post from my notes. Call me lazy but I knew I'd luck-out trying to contain the same feeling and purpose in a re-written post. And so after completing the original Bioshock(contender for my best gaming experience of the last decade), I decided I'd spin out the Heavy Rain yarn which has kept me well away from posting.

I hope that game developers don't forgo the importance of storytelling in videogames for the throwaway importance of multiplayer. You only have to look at the number of recent game servers that are being closed down by EA to see that the multiplayer option is becoming an overused and often weak, commercial ploy. I'd rather see more games developed with the soloist in mind, like Heavy Rain, Bioshock and Uncharted Drake's Fortune(as my recent gaming examples show)than another CoD multiplayer clone.