A scene from a supermarket in Harbin, China.

Ok ok ok, trivia time! Guess who?

Hitler.

I’ve never really liked those headphones they use on flights. They’re uncomfortable, ill-fitting and the sound’s almost always terrible. Then there are headphones used on my recent China Southern flight.

WTF is this? The ‘phones are completely wireless (har har!) and are basically hollow tubes of plastic moulded to a stethoscope-like form. Yup, the hollow, wireless tubes are not a mistake.

Each set of stetho…I mean, headphones come with white sponge cylinders that you’ve to fit over the ear area or risk poking out your eardrums (I think). There’s some  means to adjust the height of the headphones but I’m not too sure what use that is.

These headphones work by transporting and amplifying the sound from the holes in your armrest to your ears. It’s not like a modern day version of string-and-cups because that requires more technology. This is like a sound-hose. If you pull up the armrest and listen carefully, you can actually hear music coming out from it.

Ridiculous.

Or sheer genius.

I finished Ghost Trick this week and I think the game highlights an annoying trend in what games are lauded for these days. It scored a whopping 83 on Metacritic and has unanimously positive user reviews. The game’s visuals are very amazing and I daresay unheralded on a DS and that distracts from the lack of gameplay. I would consider this an adventure title in the genre of games like Space Ace. Simply put, Ghost Trick plays like a complete animation where events are triggered by performing the right (prompted) action that doesn’t stress you too much on dexterity and coordination speed.

The amount of art effort in there is crazy. Each scene seems custom-animated and scripted and it doesn’t seem like game events can be automated in the sense that actions yield different results in different scenes. Though impressive, that is my main grouse with the game flow. Objects sometimes react completely contrary to what is expected and the learning comes in the form of having to repeat scenes from the beginning to get the right solution. It’s homage to the old days of gaming where you wouldn’t know where a portal or a deadly enemy is until you are killed the first time and I’m sure a lot of people get the AHA! moment but it doesn’t make you feel smart at figuring out the solution because you’re prompted way too often. That AHA! moment happens because you’ve played that scene before and have seen the solution. It’s a cool mechanic in a way but would probably be more rewarding if they ease up on the prompts.

Towards the 3/4 mark, the game starts to introduce new mechanics to spice things up and there are some scenes where you get new abilities to learn ONLY for use during a scene or two. It feels rushed and artificial. That’s also when more prompts are added so you know exactly what you’re supposed to do with the newfound skills. That’s something I really hate too. I’m sure the prompts are added after playtesting results conclude that no one knows what’s going on. It’s the same with the story where everything important suddenly reveals itself (rather ridiculously too) towards the last quarter of the game in very lengthy cutscenes.

Being guided with text instruction throughout makes a game no-fail but it isn’t good design. I think the reason why people are engaged in it is because it’s instant gratification. You don’t need to be frustrated repeatedly or have to pause to think before ‘getting’ it. The smooth-as-Marvin-Gaye animations also help I’m sure because it’s eye candy and no one likes to be distracted from eye candy by unimportant things like pfft, gameplay right?

When it comes to being engaging without frustrating the player, I remember Freddi Fish being a great example of a good balance but my memories of it might be fogged by the ignorance of childhood.

I’ll be playing 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors next and from the first 10 minutes, it feels a bit boring too.

In a bid to be extra productive despite being pretty much crippled (will revert on the story), I spent the day cleaning out my server space of malware and installing and customizing Team-Uni’s shopfront.

<ADVERT BREAK>

If you’re still looking for a gift this Christmas to that hyperactive pal or that oh-so-smarmy, I-can-do-everything-better friend of yours, look no further than Team-Uni Unicycles. We’ve got the largest selection of unicycles in stock in the whole of Southeast Asia (and Singapore of course) and we deliver island-wide for free. Want advice? Ask away!

</ADVERT BREAK>

I appreciate how intuitive the WordPress template is and I find myself using the Thematic Framework (again) as a basis to start coding from. It’s simple, elegant and you can get a workable template pretty much right out of the metaphorical box. If nothing else, this time round, I’ve become acquinted with the use of Child Themes to customize WordPress with. Very useful and did I mention elegant yet?

My mobile phone service provider is a riot. There are now anti-spam laws which require advertisers to have an unsubscribe message with each SMS sent and you can complain to your service provider if you’re receiving unsolicited messages. There’s nothing much you can do though when your service provider’s the one spamming you.

Hey, at least they waited a week before trying their luck again!

I pre-ordered these Joe Ledbetter piggy banks at the last comic convention here and just got them over the weekend. Check out his blog here for more cool figures. I quite like the mutant bunnies too mostly because they’re 12″ each. They’d make great (expensive) lawn ornaments.

This started as a bit of a joke between some friends and I. We were talking about special (useless) talents.

This is funny because

1) All gamers have hair like that.

2) Little Big Planet 2 has been released for quite a while now so the guy in the comic has been playing an old game. WOLS.

3) The game forces you to play co-op to get all the customization options. Which means chances are, we’d have ALREADY seen his sackboy in a game.

When I was younger, I remember adults talking about how hard it is to keep up with the kids. As an adult, I know for a fact that it’s one thing to keep up with 11-year-olds, it’s another to keep up with 11-year-olds on unicycles.

This is how I’ve been spending – and will be spending – some of my Saturdays.

We’ve always talked about learning freestyle unicycling but our teachers have been limited to YouTube and the void deck cement – pain is a good teacher. We were acquainted very recently with some teachers from the Japanese school who introduced us to their Saturday morning sessions.

Our instructor is this sensible and very skilled primary school student who drills us in various basics. While the local primary schools are deathly afraid that their students would suffer the odd bruise, we’ve noticed that the Japanese seem to forgo kneeguards for increased agility on their unicycles. Tumbles are common but any seasoned unicyclist can tell you that sometimes, it’s precisely your guards that inhibit movement and cause some of the dumbest falls.

My aim eventually is to do this with ease. One of the girls tell us that it took her almost a year to perfect this and another to get to the point where she can pull out a leg in a yoga-esque pose. Naturally, they were all too fast to capture with a phone camera.

We Singaporeans have learnt most of our tricks from YouTube and haven’t much of a foundation to build upon. That’s why drills kill. Each session begins with a few rounds around the hall – forward, backwards, spins, variations of one-foot riding, then sprints. Each session lasts between 2 to 4 hours depending on how long you can go and I find myself struggling through the drills.

Progress comes fast though. Some of the kids whom I’ve seen riding wobbly a month ago are now comfortably riding backwards. I feel that my spins are more regular and controlled but nausea still sets in after a minute (think spinning yourself in a circle for 3. That’s the standard drill).

I should focus on learning to ride backwards properly. Then I’d learn skills in a Switch position (ie. with the other foot as master). Maybe after that I’d be able to get out from the sidelines.

For now though, I’m content with the dull ache in both calves every Sunday.