and who wouldn’t
there is something special about this video. if it was made in cg with super realistic textures and silky smooth animation then no one would blink an eye.
but they didn’t, it must have taken a very long time (as i’m sure cg would have) but the creativity in the effects is pretty amazing.
on an off note, some of the video replies are super lame (e.g. the flying chinese food), 2006 was an excellent year for youtube. now it’s just getting cluttered by american kids (who say “dude” and “awesome” way too much) and people who want to be music “stars”. yes it is a good platform to show videos, but it’s getting polluted by kids and their mobile phone videos with crap setup stunts and pointless clips.
I went to the opera last night, to see Carmen. It was on at the Royal Opera House, and was my second opera (the first being Wagner’s Lohengrin also in Covent Garden).
As you may have realised I quite like the theatre, with a strong preference for musicals. So not being an Opera fan was only down to me not experiencing it, i figuered i would enjoy the production side of things is nothing else. When I saw my first Opera I didn’t really enjoy it, it was a little long winded and generally too long. I was told that Lohengrin was not an easy Opera and not ideal as a first try. The sets were simplistic and the tunes too unfamiliar (though the famous wedding march features in it)
Over all I wasn’t impressed, but it didnt put me off, and i was willing to try again. Carmen features very well known songs and familiar music, so that was one recommended for me to try. The other is Puccini’s La Boheme, as its story is the base of one of my favorite modern musicals Rent.
So I accepted an invitation to go and see Carmen. The production was huge, I remember counting the people on stage at one point and got lost at 40 (they move about quite a bit). The stage was enormous, very deep, the sets were simple yet dramatic, but quite static with few changes.
The Opera had surtitles with translations but they were far from word from word. So while they were singing only one line was on the screen suggesting they were repeating themselves. My other half is a dab had at French and was saying that they were not always repeating.
I confess I fell asleep for a few moments in the first act, and had to work very hard to stay awake through the rest of it. Which is very hard with releaxing music in a dark setting with songs I couldnt follow.
The story is pretty basic, a soldier falls in love with a gypsy girl (Carmen), she leads him astray from the army, then she falls in love with a bull fighter (or something) I also think she falls in love with others or others fall in love with her. It’s literally on sight, people see her then start singing their love. The soldier get jelous and then begs for her love again, she doesn’t give it so he stabs and kills her.
There was a postive from the evening, I have deduced that Opera is not my thing. I gave it a try twice and i just don’t get it or appreciate it. Oh well, still plenty of musicals for me to see.
I think it has even put me off going to see La Boheme, I just dont think I could hack it.
We had our Christmas do on friday, a Cluedo type game. Good fun, each had to dress up like our character, and then we had a limo off to various locations with little clues along the way. One of the tasks was to spend £20 in Harvey Nicks buying a gift for a randomly selected player, I picked Reverend Green and went to the children’s dept and got a dirty look and a firm “NO” when i asked if they had children’s underwear.
Good fun.
Anyway, i know one of you wanted to see a pic, so there it is. Enjoy.
K, so after 5 days of waiting in for delivery (each time being told it would arrive) i couldn’t play the “it will be sent tomorrow” game anymore, and went to the depot to pick up my wii.
So, what do i think of it?
Quite a lot actually. I was apprehensive about the motion control and how sensitive it actually could be, and the answer is very. It registers pretty much everything, twists, pitches, swings, lifts, pushes, pulls etc etc. The packaging is very nice and quite sophisticated, almost up to apple standards. The unit looks heavily inspired by apple products, simple and white. It’s about the size of an external disk drive, but it does have quite a large power brick to hide behind the telly.
First things first, get it online. Pretty easy (having the settings on a trusty piece of paper), works with my hidden WEP encrypted wireless network, though the router had to be set to work on both 802.11b and 802.11g as it was previously set on hi speed. A quick download and an update, then i set up my Mii. A fun little avatar creation package, but not useless as they appear in some games (wii play and wii sports) and also act as a “save file” for some games.
Then onto wii sports, tried tennis first, swishing and thrashing around aimlessly. Same with bowling. It is not the fabulous motion tracking device that gives you 1:1 motion control. I to thought that you swing the racket like a real racket, and in a sense you do, but in reality the ball is not in your living room (as much as you want it to be) and you can’t jump in the air and smashing a pretend ball down simply because the ball is on screen, not in your room. You are controlling the dude on screen, you swing when the ball gets near your character, you can twist the remote (as you would a racket) to add spin and the timing when you hit the ball determines the direction.
Bowling is my fave game so far, hold the remote up to your chest, press the trigger swing back and release, easy. But the skill lies in the power and spin you put on the ball (power = speed of your swing, spin = the twist of your wrist as you swing forwards)
Wii sports is basically a tech demo bundled with the console to show potential, but some of the games are very playable, and certainly with multiplayer you can play for hours.
I also purchased Zelda, the game was getting amazing reviews, so thought i would give it a try. I have never really played 3D Zelda before, but I have played the game boy versions…. I think all of them. The controls of Zelda are very different from the gameplay of wii sports. And for good reason, your arm would seriously ache if you had to swing the remote each time you wanted to flash your sword. You flick your wrist to do one sword move, press the target button and swing to do another and to do Links famous spin attack you wave the Nunchuck controller left and right. You guide Link (on foot, on horseback and in dog form) with the joystick on the Nunchuck remote, and you can do many other things with the remote. You fire your arrows and sling shot with the pointer (aiming the remote on screen) you can fish with it, target far off NPCs or items etc etc. It is very easy to get used to and in the 5 hours of play, didn’t get wrist ache, but there is enough motion control to engross you and you will find yourself over-flicking your wrist when in trouble and franticly pulling off a spin attack at the last moment.
I wont go to go far into a review, its a huge game (which i have just started). I was more curious of the controls, and it plays well.
I have Need for Speed but not tried that yet, having to much fun with Zelda and bowling.
Wii Play is basically a bunch of mini games demoing what the remote can do. I only got it as it comes with a spare remote. But the shooting game and billiards is fun and the other games show great potential in future games.
To summarise. The Wii does live up to its hype, and it had a lot of hype to live up to. Graphics wise its not a 360 or PS3, you can get 720×480 (dvd quality) with separate component (RGB) cables but they are more rare than the wiis. People describe the graphics as gamecube 1.5 (not that i had a gamecube) but people are not buying this because it can render fabrics, water and skin textures perfectly, they are buying it because it is next generation gameplay. It’s easy to play, very natural and great fun, with a excellent range of launch games, things are looking very promising for the wii. Nintendo deserves great praise for investing brainpower in making things more fun and more universal rather than simply more realistic.
Give it a wiirl
I was due today to have super sore arms from all the frantic waving playing on a new shiney Nintendo Wii. Alas Argos fucked up and failed to meet their promise of deliver at launch.
Oh well, have reported them to ASA, and they also got some bad BBC press. I know it sounds very petty, but I would not have ordered with Argos if they didn’t put up a special page on their site saying that they would deliver at launch. Shit happens but don’t make claims you have no control over.
Oh well, should still get it before christmas.
Went sailing at the weekend, yes we were crazy to go out in the middle of december. And yes it was very cold, Saturday more than sunday. I actually slept in my thermals on Saturday night.
Oh well, work Christmas do on Friday, should be fun.
Be good.