Console fun.

A busy Saturday, some quick shopping in the morning. A poke from Invisible about going to London, which I still had to sadly decline (sounds like they had some fun) and then the stuff I had to postpone from last weekend.

Family on Sunday, the Bratii were inclined to play the Simpsons, but I couldn't be arsed so I asked it they would like to try the demo of Burnout Paradise I had installed, two hours later and they were still having fun (yes I did make them take some breaks); Major enjoyed trying to wreck the car in as stylish a manner as possible and even managed to jump the car towards the sea off the 'world' before being reset back on the road in pristine condition. His favourite tactic was hitting boost while driving straight at an oncoming vehicle and then trying to dodge past to one side, which sometime worked; he also started to get the hang of drifting to turn corners.

Minor on the other hand was trying not to get wrecked, with smaller hands he had difficulty using the left analogue stick and the L2 brake so tended to brake in a straight line, amusingly he discovered the e-brake (square) 100+ degree turn by accident as well as the first-person (triangle) view. He had fun boosting up ramps drifting off the edge and slamming into the walls.

Everyone made some ramp jumps and broke some billboards; everybody got in some Super Jumps; everybody found the Auto-Repair, boost-refill Gas Stations and some shortcuts; and everybody got fed-up of listening to DJ Atomica.

Onto the Simpsons, Minor got the first level tutorial with Homer and with some coaxing got through just fine. Major got the Bartman in the museum level, couldn't get the hang of camera control with the right analogue stick and was thus left at times unable to see where he was supposed to be going.

Annoyance set in over some of the hints, the Bartman climbing icon appearing when he's jumped onto some climbing vines, the Homer icon when he's already in position, the camera getting stuck on physical objects when he's turning it; silly little things that should have been ironed out in the testing phase.

A couple of sections really started to frustrate. He missed the pop-up instructions informing him that Robo-Bart could shoot through glass a consequence of having the confirm and jump commands on the same button; couldn't see the enemy Curny (sp?) in the next section and thus didn't realise he had to shoot the targets through the glass next to him to force him through the exhibits. In the space section he managed to climb the wall and jump/glide with the air vents onto the upturned Shuttle, but a lack of depth perception on the screen and the poor camera angle meant he kept missing the jump onto the pole. Four attempts and he finally made it over, which activated/shook the foundation lowering a block that meant you could now both skip the glides and get Homer up to the top. He missed the fact that the block had gone (poor camera again) and when trying to jump off the pole near the top hit Bart's head on a crowning block that just dropped him to the ground; making him think he had to go back through the entire glide/vent system. Whining ensued, so we stopped there.

I decided that we'd spent too much time on the PS3 and instead we went through a load of my old PS2 magazine demo discs, and he loaded up the boot with about 40 of them. He's just come off a two-month PS2 ban so I'm sure he'll OD on these; they're only limited demos so fine for a short attention span and it'll save him money on buying games that turn out to be crap.

Minor seems to have similar tastes to me, and neglected some specially prepared sandwiches for nibbling at plain Crostinis; this prompted talk of supermarkets and the fact they shop at Tesco in Kiddy. Bratii Pater bemoaned the lack of variety in the Tesco curry section - chicken, chicken , or chicken, the lack of variety ready-meals, and that you can't buy just one naan bread or a small pack of poppadoms. I tried to lure him over the dark side of Sainsbury's pointing out the greater variety and the fact that it's next to Maplin; but the simple fact that he perceives Tesco as cheaper is a large setback.

Talk moved onto video games, what with Major's hyperness over the demo discs, and the flaws in the Simpsons game. I mentioned Soul Reaver on the PS1 and its doing away of loading screens, The Darkness and how you could look down and see your own body and cast a shadow, Half-Life²'s physics engine and we questioned why some games had these things and others didn't. Why don't you cast a shadow in Half-Life²? Why do we still have loading screens when a PS1 game managed to remove them? As my mother put it "Why don't these games look at the others and do the same thing?", it's a good question.

I gave two answers the first was that they're making their own game engines and concentrating on just one aspect, a seamless experience in Soul Reaver, light and shadow in The Darkness, and physics in HL2 so don't have time to add in the rest. The second answer was akin to the reason we get inundated with First Person Shooters, that's what the audience want, that's what they're used to, and they don't notice the fiddly bits.

When was the last time you read a review and they mentioned the loading screens (unless overly long), the fact that you can't see yourself or cast a shadow in a FPS. I think it's only now we're getting to the point where the games are getting closer to reality and we're starting to notice the discrepancies. Game developers take note, we're catching on to sloppy shortcuts.