Solitude 

Biffy Clyro were the band to be watching this month. Not content with launching a single for the awesome “One One Word Comes To Mind” from their third album, Infinity Land, they played a UK tour (which has now moved into a small European leg) and did several radio sessions and signings along the way. Their Zane Lowe session featured one of the finest covers of their carrer, a very Biffy reworking of Franz Ferdinand’s biggest hit, “Take Me Out”. ‘Mon the Biffy.

Biffy were supported by Hell Is For Heroes. They also released a new single this month to promote their forthcoming album, “Transmit/Disrupt”. The single, “Models For The Programme”, included a very nice piece of limited edition pink vinyl.

The Mars Volta finally followed up mind-blowing debut album, “De-Loused in The Comatorium”, with an album whose track titles are equally bizarre. “Frances The Mute” is a 5-track masterpiece (split into 13 tracks on the CD listing for legal reasons), each containing distinct (and named) movements. The first four tracks sound essentially like an astonishing intro for 30-minute finale, Cassandra Geminni (yes that is the correct spelling.) Even this early on, a contender for album of the year.

Preparing to get back into full touring mode for their new album, Idlewild played a short acoustic set in Glasgow. Playing on the release date of the first single, “Love Steals Us From Loneliness”, the set mixed up old favourites with some new numbers. While the band have certainly moved away from their punk indie roots, the new sound is pleasant enough.

RockRage put up a number of band fonts, which should be a good resource for fan sites and those interested in typography (there are some very nice fonts in there).

Reel Big Fish announced that their new album will be called “We’re Not Happy Til You’re Not Happy”, which will include an update of one of their finer songs, “Beer”. Let’s hope they don’t ruin it.

Queens Of The Stone Age unveil their first single since the band suffered major line-up changes (basically, Nick and Mark left or were kicked out, depending on who you ask). “Little Sister” seems slightly toned down from previous work in terms of driving guitar riffs, but with drumming that suits the mellower sound.

The finale of this series on Games (which has taken far longer than the 5 days I had intended) is about the finest category of game known to man, the humble drinking game.

Now, those who know me are probably aware of my appreciation for the artform. What better way to share my knowledge of games to drink by than a post on some of the finer examples on Solitude.

Notes: For the purposes of these games “a drink” is defined in a unit which suits your tipple of choice. Generally, the preferred unit is the finger; the amount of drink that placing your finger around your glass would mark. This has the bonus of generally compensating for body mass since larger people tend to have larger fingers.

You will also require a deck of cards, with jokers, handy.

First game is the warm-up game, Odds And Evens. Sit in a circle and when it is your turn take a card from the deck which has been placed in the centre. If it is odd (this includes jacks and kings), you take a drink. If it is even (this includes queens), you don’t. Simple. Understand that this is a warm-up game. It’s not particularly interesting, but should be played at break neck speed. If it takes more than 2 minutes to go through all 52 cards, you’re playing it wrong.

Then there is the slightly more complicated main event: Fuck You. Again, sit in circle with the shuffled deck in the middle, taking cards in turn. This time each card represents a different action which must be performed:

Ace

Take one drink.

Two

Take two drinks.

Three

Take three drinks.

Four

The half card. We’ll come back to this.

Five

The players on your left and right both take a drink.

Six

The player on your right drinks.

Seven

The toilet card. We’ll come back to this.

Eight

The Fuck You card. We’ll come back to this also.

Nine

The player on your left drinks.

Ten

Everyone (including yourself) drinks.

Jack

Where it gets interesting. Nominate another player to take a drink.

Queen

Nominate another player to take 2 drinks.

King

Nominate another player to take 3 drinks.

Joker

Nominate another player to finish their glass, regardless of how much remains.

Fairly simple. Now those 3 cards we said we’d come back to: the 4, 7 and 8. If you draw any of those cards, take it and hide it immediately. You can keep them and play them when appropriate until all the cards in the deck are depleted (at which point all cards are returned).

If you have a 7, you may use it to go to the toilet at any point. This is the only way you are allowed to go. If you have a 4 and are nominated to take some drinks, you can play it and half the number you have to take. If you have an 8 and are nominated to take some drinks, you can play it and say “Fuck You”. The person who nominated you must now drink double what you would have had to otherwise.

The effects of the 4 and 8 can be chained for interesting effect. In fact, I’ve seen all four 8’s chained together. Not pretty.

And that is “Fuck You”.

Finally, there is the Family Guy Drinking Game. Put on an episode of the classic TV show and drink any time any of the following events occur:

• Stu acts camp or tries to kill Lois.
• Peter does or says something stupid.
• Brian says something sarcastic.
• Quagmire says “Al-right”.
• There is a flashback or cut away of any sort.
• The evil monkey appears.

Twenty minutes of drinking, two minutes of plot. The most hardcore drinking game that doesn’t involve bleach or anti-personnel mines.

That is all.

Monopoly. Pretty much everyone has played it at some point. We here at Solitude think it’s the king of all boardgames (although it can’t match Uno or Downfall in the broader scope of games) and were curious as to other peoples tactics. A quick survey revealed some interesting approaches:

• Medium Is The Message - the orange and red blocks are the properties to get with this tactic. They form a significant chunk of the board and are quite a good building block. Not too pricey, good returns.
• Scattergun - Grab at least one from every set and force everyone to operate through you. If you can stop sets being consolidated by players, you can control who makes progress in the game. Not a good long term tactic though, as you yourself don’t have any great capital.
• Favourite Colour - Simply pick the properties who belong to set colours that you like. Not the most tactical of all tactics, but in the particular instance of this person it might pay off. Incidentally, they went for blue, pink and yellow; good strong corner and some more diverse, upscale property.
• The Middle Man - Buy both utilities and all four train stations. This provides a large income when it pays off, but leaves your empire a little scattered for my liking.
• Rich Hostages - Get Park Lane and Mayfair. In my opinion, these properties are next to worthless on their own (until the endgame) but are great bargaining chips as so many other players want them. People like to appear opulent, so capitalise on it.
• Poor Man’s Row - The brown and blue properties of the first side are key. Snap them up early while people are clamouring for more ambitious streets and then build as many hotels as the house rules allow on them. Suddenly dirt cheap properties become the scourge of everyone.
• They’re Not Making It Anymore - They don’t make land anymore, so buy everything you can. Absolutely without regard. Similar to Scattergun, the greater risk of bankruptcy is balanced by the chances you might just get a set.

My final suggestion is to not buy more than two stations. The returns on them just aren’t worth it. If you’re buying a side or a corner, get the stations that are nearby but no more.

Any other tactics?

Before Christmas, the Nintendo DS was released in Japan. Not just another handheld, it represents a real evolution in the way in which people will play games; the first genuine game-changer since the original Gameboy.

Here is a product that has been designed to give users a significantly new experience, by providing them with new toys in hardware from the eponymous dual screen, to the touch screen and stylus, to the microphone, and the wireless hardware. Already people are coming up with innovate uses for these. Band Brothers turns any nearby systems into instruments for mini jam sessions (only one copy of the game is needed, the rest are suppled wirelessly). The new Wario Ware game is as mad as ever, mixing candle-blowing games (through the mic) with snow-boarding (touch screen), and getting progressively sillier. Metroid: Hunters, although the controls are being re-jigged, should be using the touch screen for first person aiming, beating mice for accuracy.

The hardware and software deliver a revolutionary experience. The price point is right. Support is coming from all corners. Know what? It doesn’t matter a bit.

The Sony PSP is coming. It doesn’t do anything particularly new in terms of gaming. It plays games, it has wireless, it has memory cards, and it has a very nice screen (you need to see one of these in action to understand just how nice). It’s not better, it doesn’t do anything significantly new, but it will win.

When Sony breached the mass-market for gaming a few years ago, they guaranteed themselves years of success. Each new machine is hailed as magnificent, whether it looks like a black heater or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s notoriously hard to develop for, or the controller is really quite poor and not up to scratch compared to a competitor’s previous generation. They can make it kill the battery in 2-3 hours and people will still clamour for it (as is the case with several prominent PSP launch titles). Until Sony shoot themselves in the foot through bad marketing (unlikely) or being stupidly restrictive with licensing (Nintendo’s own folly, but certainly more likely), they will own it.

Sadly, the masses equate Sony with cool and Nintendo with kids. No amount of revolution will take the crown.

Yes, this series is moving on far slower than I said it would. I blame university. Anyway, today I’m going to link to a series of very different games.

• Game And Watch Emulators - Several slices of classic twitch gaming. I thoroughly recommend Donkey Kong Jr., a game which gave me hours of pleasure as a child. Incidentally, I still have the originals of most of these. These are, unfortunately, Windows only executables.
• Puzzle Bobble - Or Bust A Move if you prefer the non-European title. A flawless recreation of Taito’s fast moving, precision puzzler that spawned a dozen clones (Flash).
• Grid Game - Pretty, simple, frustratingly addictive; all signs of a good puzzle game. On my first go, I managed a chain of 1407. I’ve yet to beat it and it’s annoying me enough to keep trying. Actually, I take that back: just as I was writing this post I managed 2364. Eat that, Derek.
• Prince Of Persia: Special Edition - A new adventure in the vein of the original Prince Of Persia. Shame that it has a time limit. The controls are as shite as ever.

Enjoy. Next up: handhelds.

(Editorial note: yes, I spacked up the title. It should be part 2 and a constraint in my CMS stops me from changing it immediately. It will remain as it is anyway, for permalink consistency).

Twelve years ago or so, Christmas morning, little Johnny excitedly rips through his presents. Among them, a shining bastion of a console: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES to its friends. Super Mario World was the game to playing, and play it he did. Here was a game that was a truly a step beyond what had gone before. Not because of its richer graphics (although the sadder among us no doubt remember the mode 7 rotation and dozens of background layers) did it stand above previous titles.

No, it stood out because it brought a rich new set of toys to play with: yoshi, spinning worlds, the ghost houses and lots more. The whole generation of games was full of innovation (see Pilotwings and F-Zero for examples).

Eight years ago or so, another generation was under way. This time Johnny thought Super Mario 64 was the most revolutionary game. It represented a real step forward in so many areas. Worlds seemed to be real for the first time, various skills allowed exploration in small steps, and Johnny felt more involved than ever. Mario was a genuine avatar.

A few years ago, we got another generation. This time, however, there was no major upheaval. Sure, there were great games, but nothing substantially different. More solid lighting, certainly. Better effects. A huge increase in the number of polygons on screen. None of that really mattered though, it wasn’t all that different. Somewhere in the transition between hardware periods revolution had been killed in the pursuit of realism.

The pursuit of realism had long been a goal, and an admirable one at that. An obvious argument is that the more we recognise the worlds we see in games the easier they are to empathise with and enjoy. Are games necessarily about that though? Does it really matter if we immediately recognise the game world as being similar to our own? Simply put, no.

As far back as games have existed, there have always been large levels of abstraction graphically that were profoundly easy to cope with. Pong, Pac Man, Centipede. Hell, games have been around for centuries that have one foot in reality but are marvellously abstract. Checkers, Go, Chess. We don’t need things to be completely familiar to enjoy them.

That this pursuit of realism has all but killed innovation graphically (with the exception of a few rare titles) is not important though. More consistent rules and better toys (the gravity gun from Half Life 2), tiny graphical details (being able to see the weave on clothing, for example), opponents who better realise their role; immersion is the new revolution.

Where Mario World gave us a few wooden trains to play with, Grand Theft Auto gave us the complete Hornby back catalogue (and enough explosives to destroy it). Wolfenstein might have left us shoot monsters, it’s Halo 2 which lets us play with them. While Johnny might not remember this generation as being all that different from the last superficially, it is. He just needs to immerse himself.

Games have never been a major topic on Solitude, save links to flash games and the odd comment about how something has been eating up my time. Given that I’ve been playing games a lot longer than I’ve been interested in web design, computing, music and the other things I’ve been writing about of late, this is a somewhat odd state of affairs.

While the amount of time I spend playing games has been heavily marginalised (very low priority after all), I still like to follow what’s going on and understand significant issues in the gaming world. (Yes, I am an Edge reader).

So, the next series of posts are going to focus on several gaming related issues. Expect focus to be thrown on the current handheld battles, the pursuit of realism, net gaming (yes, more flash), and possibly some other non-video game topics in the wider world of gaming (of which I have almost no interest).

Non-gamers: switch off for a week.