John Topley's Weblog

Media

This section of the site is where I give my totally subjective opinion of media I've experienced recently. Specifically, computer games that I've played on my Nintendo GameCube, music that I've listened to (either on CD or live), books that I've read and websites that I've visited. Each review concludes with my rating out of five, where five is the highest score.

As with the rest of the content on this site, if you agree or disagree with me then you can leave a comment for all to read.

Game

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Star Wars Rogue Squadron: Rogue Leader II

Saturday, 21 June 2003

This is the game that led to my impulse purchase of a Nintendo GameCube. I've never really been a dedicated gamer. I used to play games on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum because that's what you did and because it was well, fun. I played the odd driving game and first person shoot–em–up on the PC (Doom, Rise of the Triads, Quake, Jedi Knight, you know the games I'm talking about) but I always felt that I should be doing something more productive such as honing my programming skills. Games consoles had never appealed to me until I saw some screen shots of the new Star Wars game for the GameCube on the BBC News website of all places. I was blown away by how far games had advanced since I last looked, and that fact combined with having a soft spot for Star Wars anyway, meant that I had to have it!

Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II sees you piloting a number of familiar craft on ten missions at various locations in the Star Wars universe. Some locations are from the films, a few are new for this game. You start off on a training mission flying around Tatooine with various objectives to complete. Naturally I skipped this mission and went straight into the first level proper, which sees you at the end of A New Hope, flying an X–Wing fighter over the surface of the Death Star. This is a nice level because it's not hard and it showcases the amazing graphics in the game.

Once you've blown up the first Death Star, you're confronted by the full range of enemy machinery from the original film trilogy. The range of craft available for you to pilot is amazing and each ship is very well detailed and rendered. You can use a snowspeeder to take on AT–AT walkers on the ice planet Hoth, a B–Wing bomber to attack an Imperial Star Destroyer and you even get to fly the Millenium Falcon! Later on in the game, you also get the chance to fly the odd Imperial spaceship.

The game missions are sufficiently varied to maintain interest and there are lots of upgrades to your ship to be sought out. Sometimes I find myself flying around just looking at the scenary because it's so beautifully done. My favourite mission is probably Vengence on Kothlis because it opens with a really enjoyable dogfight against lots of TIE fighters and because it requires you to switch ships a few times.

The disc includes some really nice extras such as a documentary on the making of the game, as well as galleries of the artwork and in–game music. This game really showcases the GameCube's abilities and apparently the follow–up game will include this game in its entirety but playable by two players. Bring it on! 5/5.

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Music

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The Divine Comedy Live at the London Palladium

Thursday, 29 April 2004

This is the fourth time I've had the pleasure of seeing The Divine Comedy live. The previous performances saw songwriter, singer and occasional live musician Neil Hannon backed by a conventional rock band set up. This time he had an orchestra to support him, as befitted the venue.

For this concert on the 26th April, I was lucky enough to have a front row seat. There was no support act and about ten minutes after the scheduled start time of 19:45, a slightly nervous man came to the microphone and announced that the performance was being filmed for a forthcoming DVD (the group's first). The audience were excited by this announcement when the orchestra walked on stage and began playing the instrumental Laika's Theme. Then a slightly pallid looking—it was probably the lighting—and suited Neil Hannon appeared and launched into the song Absent Friends, from the new album of the same name.

In Search Of Happiness followed, which contains an instrumental passage that British readers may recognise from the BBC television series Tomorrow's World. Neil introduced those on stage with him during this part. The rest of the first half consisted of old favourites such as Becoming More Like Alfie interwoven with tracks from Absent Friends, all performed flawlessly. The songs were punctuated by the occasional comic interlude, including a quip about an annual leaf collecting holiday in Bavaria! Neil confessed to being nervous about telling jokes in London, because there are always professional comedians in the audience—and this night was no exception.

After the intermission, Neil returned to the stage wearing a different suit and a pair of sunglasses, and treated us to an electrifying National Express. There was even audience participation at this point, with Neil jumping down from the stage and getting various embarrased people to sing “National Express” during the song's coda. It was all good fun. For a fairly small guy Mr Hannon can certainly belt out the songs.

Divine Comedy classics Generation Sex and a lovely jazz version of Songs of Love enthralled the audience, as did my personal highlight of the evening, the dark, brooding and hypnotic Mutual Friend. Neil managed to forget some of the words to old song Neptune's Daughter, but the band played on and as he said, seven albums is a lot of material to remember.

This grandiose affair could have been expected to have been a showcase for the new album, but it was also a vehicle for the “shit-load of songs” (Neil's words) in the group's back catalogue. At the end of the show everyone on stage got a richly-deserved standing ovation. This was one of the best gigs I've ever been to and my hands were raw from clapping. I commend you to buy the DVD when it comes out and will say the same even if it turns out that I've been edited out! 5/5.

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Print

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Digital Retro by Gordon Laing

Saturday, 16 April 2005

Hands up who remembers their first computer? I do, it was a 16K ZX Spectrum that my Dad bought directly from Sinclair Research in 1982. I was fortunate enough to be at the right age in the early 1980s, during the middle of the home computing boom. All my friends had Spectrums or ZX81s and some even had more serious looking computers such as Commodore 64s. It was an exciting time to be growing up, during an era when—certainly to the eight year old me—it felt like we were on the cusp of the future.

Digital Retro is a lavishly produced, large format book that is simply stuffed full of pictures of old and obsolete computers. It covers 44 machines over 192 pages, from the MITS Altair 8800 of 1975, through to 1988's exclusive NeXTCube. For anyone who was interested in such things at the time, this book is a real nostalgia trip. In addition to the well-chosen pictures, there are also a brief accompanying narratives that give the company history and tell you what happened next, plus some interesting trivia nuggets.

The sturdy BBC Model B microcomputer that was the staple of computer science lessons in British secondary education in the 1980s is here, as well as the obscure machine that used to sit unloved in the corner of the computing classroom at my school. It turns out it was a Sharp MZ-80K. We used to play Elite before the lessons started (and sometimes during, I have to admit!) until the teacher used to flip the master power switch off. The sudden repeated removal of electricity didn't seem to have an adverse effect on the BBC Model Bs. Computers were built to last in those days.

All the Sinclair machines are featured and my beloved ZX Spectrum is pictured with the full range of official accessories, including the ill-fated Microdrive tape storage device. I vaguely remember eagerly awaiting for the constantly delayed Microdrive to be launched, because I was so fed up with the unreliability of using a cassette player as a data storage device! It seemed that the quality of a game was in direct inverse proportion to the chances of loading it successfully.

The book includes all the seminal machines on the incredible computing journey that led us to where we are today. I mentioned the Altair but there's also the Apple II, the original IBM PC and the 1984 Apple Macintosh—none of which have ever been part of my life! These computers are all well-documented and it's much more interesting to see and read about the obscura, like 1983's Oric-1. I remember seeing an Oric-1 in the stationery store WH Smith's and thinking that it was really cool because you could get it to play four realistic sound effects, a phenomenon actually documented in Digital Retro.

Apparently some of the machines pictured in the book aren't original, but I'm not enough of an expert to have noticed this. Others have criticised it for being short on text, but I think that misses the point, which is that Digital Retro is a coffee table book that's made to be dipped into. If anything, I would have liked to have seen more pictures, in particular some screenshots would have been good. In spite of this, Digital Retro is a lovingly-put together book that will jog more than a few memories if you were into computers during the era it documents. 4/5.

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Web

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