Kack handed

Faced with the prospect of a long plane journey, I decided to pop into Game to see if I could find something to while away the hours. I didn't want to spend too much, but was looking for something which might have good playability, and something which would appeal to my childish nature. Either a war shoot-em up, a GTA thing or a footy game.

Ultimately, I held two pre-owned PSP games in my hand, and thought for a few moments about which one to go for. One was Liberty City Stories, the other FIFA 08 and at last decided on the latter at £7.99. Which so far seems to have been a big mistake. Needless to say, I had to choose City as my team, and went straight into kick-off mode. The little chip drew an opponent at random, and who else could it be but Tottenham?

There doesn't appear to be a tutorial mode, so the game was away immediately, and I quickly became thankful that Kasper Schmeichel appeared to operate on auto-pilot. I was unable to move out of my own half and survived the first half at 0-0 whilst sitting on the toilet. I paused the game, washed and dried my hands and sat down to concentrate fully on the second period. I was a goal down within ten virtual minutes, then another 5 minutes later, all the time surviving countless other chances, and was powerless to do anything to stop the North Londoners' advances. Keane bagged his hat trick with 10 minutes remaining, my players were impotently sliding and running all over the place, and whenever we did get the ball, we instantly gave it away again. Quite realistic actually.

We ended up losing 4-0, with Robbie Keane scoring all four, and not one solitary shot on goal by the mighty Citizens. I put this down to my own lack of experience, and the fact that Tottenham were likely to have been programmed as one of the better teams in the competition, so decided instead to launch into a simulation of the Barclays Premier League. Bolton were our first opponents - at home - and although there was some small promise in the early stages, we conceded a comical own goal on the stroke of half time when Schmeichel dropped the ball under no pressure and Dunne trickled it over the line. The Clive Tildesley voice kept saying "Speed..." for some unknown reason, and we were soon down to a further two (Kevin Davies) goals midway through the second half. I was so frantically trying to do something - anything - to stop the rot that I accidentally pushed the power switch off with my hand. I didn't bother switching it on again.

Darling happy anniversary

Another milestone, and it makes building up a blog history all the more attractive. A sense of perspective may be imparted by comparing one's current state of mind to that recorded in the past, as I'm sure Proust must once have said. I only wish I had been keeping this thing years before I actually did. About 25 years, to be exact.

It is now 12 months since I started my current job, and, reading back over my post a year ago, it's revoltingly cliched (not the post, I hasten to add, but the sentiment I'm about to speak of) but L.P. Hartley's opening salvo from the Go-Between rings true.

As for the future... I've often thought of using the game of Brick Breaker on the Blackberry as some kind of metaphor for management skills. There are countless decisions to be made in each game - go for the little rolling 'laser' barrel and risk the ball dropping off the bottom of the screen, or play conservative and miss the bonus? And, er, that's it. Apart from the fact that there are some seriously mad people playing this game. Apparently, as the Blackberry is mostly used by people in IT and in management, the game of Brick Breaker - and the incredibly sad community of people who have been playing a single game of it for several months (!) - attracts a certain type of clientele. So maybe not such a great idea for a concept after all then. I could have sworn that it had more legs than that the last time I sat on the tube clicking the little paddle back and forth. Ah well.

Perhaps a more apposite - though admittedly somewhat hackneyed - metaphor for life in the corporate jungle would be the greatest game of all. Chess. A game where I am far from the greatest player of all, despite years of practice and the odd library book. I even used to watch those programmes on BBC2 (The Master Game with Nigel Short, as my extensive research has revealed) during the Garry Kasparov/Bobby Fischer golden years, but was never really able to fully grasp the tactics. Thanks to one of those library books, I was always pretty reasonable in the opening stages (except when I suffered Fool's Mate against the teacher my first time at the school Chess Club when I was 13 or so. A very public, very nerdy, humiliation it was too. Come to think of it, this was just another example of the sadism displayed by many of those who have taught me. Did he really need to prove himself against such a callow youth? Anyway, no point in dwelling on these things, I suppose) with my Nimzo-Indian defence and some good knight work. I always fade miserably however in the middle and end-game, and am invariably left scratching my head as to what to do, leading to silly mistakes and the ultimate slow death.

Which kind of sums up where I am now, professionally speaking. Head on chin, staring at a multitude of options ahead of me and unsure as to what my next move should be. No doubt I'll be concentrating on the bishop and won't notice that I've left my queen horribly exposed. Or perhaps I'll just carry on with Brick Breaker and see if I can best my top score of 14,240, which now seems horribly inadequate also.

We shall see.

Vinegar strokes

Amidst all the talk of foundations shaking in Wall Street and in the Square Mile, I thought it would be nice to escape for a while to the fantasy land of Wii, where it has been interesting to read about the lawsuit in regard to the motion detection technology so beloved of fat families throughout the developed world. I am a late adopter of the fabulous fun to be had from this thang, and am defiantly retro in my undying love of Mario Kart, which I remember from the SNES days and nights wasted (oh yeah!) in Old Street.

I have a mobile phone with its own motion sensing (from the Sony website, I quote: "It's all in your moves. With Shake control, you select a song from your playlist randomly at the flick of your wrist") capabilities - a Sony Ericsson W580i - which is, on the whole, rubbish (battery life is very poor, and I feel like a 13 year old carrying it around) but which nevertheless has an interesting feature. It detects motion. After a few simple configurations (much simpler than setting up a cycle computer) you can work out your walking or running speed and the phone then monitors your activity. It calculates the number of steps and miles walked or run and the quantity of calories burned, has the capability of downloading to CSV, and even awards you medals. Fantastic! I have a silver for being a 'Wanderer' and a gold for 'Round the World', but so far the 'Fitness' and 'Jogger' sections have remained medal free.

I have developed a habit of watching the counter as I walk - just to verify the accuracy of the metrics. There are some irritations, but on the whole it seems to be reasonably on the button. I like it when the counter clicks on as I walk, and have even been known to increase my pace to see what effect this has, but sometimes the thing just freezes. Yesterday, for example, the counter reached 11,107 steps, and so I slowed to a stop, desperately trying to make it hit 11,111, but it stuck there, 4 steps back! I walked a little, then restarted the application, but was infuriated to see that it had jumped straight to 11,115.

I don't know how the phone detects motion, and I have spent the odd evening in the kitchen furiously pumping my arms back and forth to see if and how it registers that. Natch, one thing leads to another, and I thought that there ought to be a masturbation setting on the phone. I'd be sure to get a gold medal at least.

Curses

I am a diletante. Not afraid to say it. I quite like video games, but (with the exception of some seriously old school stuff like Space Invaders or Asteroids and to an extent Defender, and even then - back in the day - I wasn't anywhere near the top performer, despite spending god knows how many lunch hours and 10p pieces from my mum in the leisure centre cafe, but I did reach a kind of unconscious competence in the end) I was never particularly good at them.

I have recently been loaned a copy of Grand Theft Auto - Vice City Stories by one of the guys at work to try out on my daughter's newly purchased PSP. First impressions were generally good. I found the game much richer than any I'd tried previously. There were a few cheap laughs with a strong whiff of racism hidden beneath the veil of irony, and the odd cliche. The animation leaves a bit to be desired, but the music is good, and I like the ability to switch radio channels.

My main beef, though, and this is the same with Prince of Persia, Warrior Within also (though god knows this game has enough other faults, which is probably a discussion for another day) is that it's too easy to get stuck in a rut. You carry out some difficult task, which has to be followed up by some other stuff, making your 'stamina' ebb away, and if you're unsuccessful you're forced to return to the beginning of the level to repeat the difficult task. I find myself losing interest (and patience) rather rapidly and then trying to enter houses or randomly punch people in the street. Good fun for a while, though it soon becomes tiresome. My other problem is that, through the countless efforts I've made at beating Shaydee in PoP WW I have caused the R1 button (which functions as a 'block' command) on my rumble pad to occasionally stick, because I have been holding it in so hard. At crucial moments I end up lying on the floor refusing to respond to my commands and getting stabbed repeatedly till I die.