Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

These days it seems that every time I find something slightly unique and special half the world is already talking about it on Youtube, Facebook or Reddit. I wouldn't call myself a trendy person so I doubt that I am particularly sensitive to the zeitgeist but I am beginning to wonder if it is actually possible to hold a individual opinion about something any more. Some years ago my wife and I took a bit of time to come up with a special name for our first child. We picked a name that was beautiful and had some family significance. It was also an unusual and uncommon name. Or so we thought. It was only later that we realised that this long forgotten name had somehow caught the public imagination and had bubbled up to be one of the top ten names of that year. This year I found my gaming tastes swaying towards more challenging titles. I talk about that in this blog post  in which I surmise that "My age and gaming history allow me to overlook fancy graphics and current fashi...

Warning: This post is nothing to do with games but it is an issue that agitates me greatly. It concerns a matter of European and Irish law which is intended to protect the rights of workers but which has the unintended consequence of causing great injustice to those folks it is actually intended to help. It is a directive of European law (European Council Directive 1999/70/EC) that "Contracts of an indefinite duration are, and will continue to be, the general form of employment relationship between employers and workers".  Permanent employees and those on contracts of indefinite duration enjoy many legal protections. They cannot be fired without reason for example. I guess the purpose of the directive to is ensure that employers aren't trying to get around these protections by hiring folks on a series of short term contracts. In Ireland the consequences of this directive are that an employer can only hire someone on fixed term contracts for a maximum of four years an...

Like many gamers I am looking forward to Steam's post Christmas sale. It is a great opportunity to pad out ones gaming library with some bargains. Valve generally adds a bit of showmanship with holiday achievements and such so it is always a fun event event though I never seem to have quite as much free time for gaming over the holiday period anticipated. What then for the also rans of digital game distribution? Surely the overwhelming dominance of Steam must send them into pits of despair as they consider that what should be their best selling period of the year is so completely overshadowed by the looming behemoth that is the Steam Sale. Well this year I am pleased to note that the GoGs, Gamestop's,  Game Flys and other distributors are not sitting back and waiting for Steam to roll over their Yuletide hopes and dreams. In a masterful display of competitive strategy they are getting their retaliation in first by holding substantial sales before Christmas. In my case at...

Despite the relative lack of activity on this blog I am still playing. For the record here are the games that have been stealing my time: Dark Souls: Extraordinary Game, despite the barely adequate PC port this has won itself a place on my list of greatest games of all time. I eventually had to force myself to stop playing after three weeks of total immersion. XCom Enemy Unknown: Playing and enjoying this. I seem to have got a handle on the tactical side of things and I can hold my own in battles (playing on normal) but the overall strategy side still confuses me. Everything seems to cost more that I can afford and take longer than I have to wait. Three countries have already given up on me and I haven't even got to the alien base yet. Hard Reset: Old school shooter with modern graphics from some of people who made painkiller. This is pretty entertaining although unforgiving checkpoint placement makes it more difficult than it should be. The abandoned city backdrops became v...

Humble's latest bundle is not very indie comprising a bunch of AAA titles from developer THQ. The internet being the internet is awash with comments both positive and negative. The negatives are complaining because THQ isn't an indie, beause the games have DRM, because the games won't run on Linux and because hey  it's the internet, people complain about everything. The positive's are just generally happy that such a great bunch of games is being made available so cheaply. It really is a solid gold bundle by the way and if you don't have any of these games I recommend snapping it up immediately. Some of the more reflective commenters are talking about the fact that THQ hasn't been doing very well financially in recent times (despite making some excellent games) and wondering if this move smacks of inspiration or desperation on the company's behalf. Whatever the motivation behind it the move appears to be a big success pulling in $2 million in less t...

I had to endure two hours of annoying distraction from a Siri using passenger on a recent train journey. I have long been of the opinion that talking to your phone (as opposed to talking to a human through your phone) is a gimmick. I dismissed the voice search capability of my Android phone after no more than five minutes of playing with it and that train journey convinced me that Apple's secret Siri sauce has not made the experience of talking to a machine any more palatable. It was bad enough that we other passengers had to endure the Iphone user's loud and often misinterpreted commands to their phone but they had set up the device so that every single response was also relayed in an annoying computer voice even to the point of reading entire emails aloud. It was late, I was tired after a day of business meetings and despite Hollywood stereotypes we Irish are not a confrontational lot so I did my best to ignore the distraction and catch a bit of sleep on the journey home...

Dark Souls has an interesting take on the consensual / non consensual pvp issue. When you try to play the challenging single player campaign non- consensual pvp happens when another player invades your game world and generally messes up you plans by killing you. On the other hand  you cannot be invaded unless you choose to adopt "human form" (normally you have the appearance of a zombie like corpse) so being human is like a pvp flag that you can turn on if you are willing to risk invasions. On the other other hand human form offers some unique in game advantages. You can only summon the help of friendly players and npc allies to help you (co-op) while in human form for example and human form also allows you to upgrade bonfires (think checkpoints) to effectively double your healing capacity. The net result is that even the most pvp adverse players are likely to risk being human from time to time. So is pvp consensual or not? Strictly speaking it is entirely consensual becau...