Wintertime Blues

There’s several reasons I haven’t written anything on here, none of them actually any good.

Or maybe one is, in that I've just been too tired. This seems to happen every year, that I get to December and simply gas out and then head off home for Christmas week, where a few days of being fed by my mother replenishes my energy levels for another ten months or so. It’s pathetic, really, that I still need this at the age of 32.

There was also a fun few hours in hospital a bit ago, where I had a lump of plastic and metal shoved into my chest with no little force. The loop recorder (as they call it), is supposed to take a snap shot of my heart activity next time I have a black out, on the assumption someone I know is around to activate the thing with this little box thing I carry around with me. All I can say is that the process of putting it in may be the most painful experience of my life – but, hey, the girls love a scar. More importantly, a good friend of mine (who I hope reads this) is going through a hell of a lot worse at the moment, which puts my petty moaning into sharp relief.

What I have managed to do is a little bit of gaming, reading and listening to music.

The Last of Us
‘Citizen Kane of Gaming’, according to one review, which is a gross an overstatement as you’ll hear all year, for an experience that is essentially Resident Evil with a higher budget.

To it’s credit, the acting is excellent, especially Troy Baker as Joel, the male lead, and the storyline, although not exactly as amazing as Charlie Brooker makes out, is engaging to the degree that you keep playing through some somewhat atypical survival horror sections to see what happens next. That you spend the game playing as a man driven to amorality by virtue of just trying to survive in a world gone to shit is an interesting slant – especially as he makes no attempt to apologise or feel bad about his actions.

The Last of Us is about a linear a game I’ve played since Final Fantasy XIII (which also starred Troy Baker, funnily enough), which isn’t my cup o’tea most of the time, but it managed to look pretty enough to keep me interested and to it’s credit, the combat sections can provide some cool moments: blowing up a group of four armed-to-the-teeth soldiers with a well-placed nail bomb was a satisfying a game a moment as I’ve had all year.

Solid 8/10 experience for the whole package, but nowhere close to what the hype what have you believe – the game dynamics would get 6/10 from me on a good day.

Grand Theft Auto V
Call me shallow (because I am), but I bought right into the hype for this at the last moment. I had resolved to wait till the price come down a few months after release… but no, I ended up picking up on release and booking the following day off work to put in some serious time.

GTAV doesn’t give you much more leeway in the actual storyline than The Last of Us (bar one choice at the end which gives three different conclusions) but has a stronger perception of choice. Between missions, you’re free to explore a huge city, play games or just get up to the usual chaos you can in these games.

There’s issues with the storyline, in that Rockstar don’t seem to have got a handle on how to write good female characters. Like The Last of Us, there is a torture scene – but here, you have to take an active part rather than just watch. It made for an uncomfortable moment, but that’s the nature of the character you are playing at that time – he’s a complete psychopath with very little in the way of morals or grip on reality.

It hasn’t quite topped Vice City as my favourite GTA title, but it was a rewarding playthrough in any case, with plenty of laughs and moments of total awesomeness. More so than TLoU, it pushes games as a serious form of entertainment by sheer dint of how much it sold in the days after release – can only other medium compare with those figures?

Autobiography by Morrissey
Despite the likes of Private Eye getting all uptight about the sums being thrown around for the rights to this, Stretford Moz’s tome was among the most anticipated books of the year, surely?

As it was, we learn the guy sure can moan. It seems everyone in the world has at some point fucked him over, his mother excepted, or died young, though Elton John, of all people, leaves a positive impression in their single meeting. The details of his childhood are interesting, but there’s relatively little about the Smiths period – the man himself could justify this with the fact it made up only a small period of his life (five years), but it’s the part I would wager the majority of us are interested in. Apparently, he also remains in the dark as to why Johnny Marr quit.

What we do get is almost the same amount of space dedicated to the court case that pretty much put the mockers on the chance of there ever being a full Smiths reunion. Fair enough, it does appear Moz was done over by a vindictive judge, but he goes on, and on, and on. It sets a tone for a downhill slope, as his comeback ten years ago is described in a series of numbers of chart placings and attendance figures at gigs. The revelations of his romantic forays with men and women seem scant consolation for wading through the rest.

Catherine Wheel
I’ve actually made some inroads into writing a piece of this band, who are my favourite musical discovery of the year despite them not having released a note in over ten years. If I can sort my shit out, I'll try to finish my overview of their work.