iPhone upgrades: These things are sent to try us

Reading around the Apple support forums, post-iOS 5 upgrades, there have been some amusing problems encountered by long-suffering iPhone owners. One of my favourites is that of Imogen Heap among others, who now has Google Maps in Chinese. I say amusing, because one day we will look back on this and laugh.

I had been trying to upgrade iTunes for about six months – but only intermittently, whenever Apple prompted me. I would click on ‘go on then’, wait while the software downloaded and installed - and then curse when my internet connection went down. I would then have to go through the laborious process of going back to a restore point and recreating my library, because old iTunes wouldn’t open up with the new library, which somehow slipped through the system restore net. I tried it a couple of times six months ago, and a couple of times since, so was becoming quite adept at having a backed up library ready to slip in ready before attempting to restart the program. I Googled my problem but could find very little on the support groups in the way of help.

When iOS 5 became available I decided I would solve this little problem. There must be a rational explanation. And I remembered that I was paying several pounds a month to Carphone Warehouse for some Geek Squad who would surely be able to help? I tried downloading the iTunes update, which of course was necessary before upgrading the phone. Lordy me if I didn’t lose my internet connection. System restore. What’s this? Apple network adapter. Just after the software download. Strange. Any way, system restore, drag the library in and everything back to normal. Try again. Lordy me again. No internet. My phone was working from the home hub so it wasn’t that. Definitely something to do with the download.

Time to call the Geek Squad. Got through quite quickly. No complaints there. ‘It must be your ISP.’ It’s not my ISP – my phone and my wife’s laptop are working quite happily on wi-fi from the home hub. ‘Apple don’t do anything to your computer, they just download software.’ But surely it looks as if  it is affecting my wi-fi network? Then I think he tried to blame my firewall, but that line fizzled out. ‘You should uninstall iTunes and reinstall it from scratch. Sounds like iTunes is corrupted. And by the way, we only deal with iPhone problems, so if the fault is with your computer, we can look into it for you but you’ll probably have to pay for a different policy.’ Thank you and goodbye.

I so nearly uninstalled iTunes. I wondered what the drawbacks would be. I’d lose quite a bit of data. Album covers? Podcasts? Fortunately I decided to give Google another go. Even more fortunately I hit on a thread with exactly my problem, including an answer. Thanks to TG10987 in the Apple support communities, I discovered that iTunes was indeed removing a network component. The cure was to uninstall my network adaptor and reboot, which reinstalled it – relatively smoothly – and thus restoring my laptop’s connection with the outside world. Deep joy.

Since then of course I have had to deal with none of my apps working (go to the app store, download an app, run it and then all the other apps work again); ringtones stopped working (deleted my personalised ones and reinstalled); random album covers have disappeared from my iPhone library and appear on the iTunes input screen as ‘artwork not modifiable’ (still working on it but it seems the only solution is to delete from the library, reinstall from my fortunately backed up archives on hard drive and resync to the phone); and whatever else the future has in store for me. Luckily it seems that lots of people have had similar problems, some more weird than others, so there is usually a tip from someone who has worked them out.

Oh well, onward and upward, but first I feel a complaint letter to Carphone Warehouse coming on.

We do like to take our iPhone beside the seaside

Enjoying a week in windswept North Cornwall. Used to have to prepare a bunch of things beforehand such as a printout of the five-day tide tables and weather forecasts. Would drive to a wi-fi enabled pub to check emails or update blogs. But here I am blogging, having checked the tides, the up-to-date weather forecast, the news, my emails, Facebook and Twitter! I can check where things are, phone numbers or opening times without getting off the settee. And to think a couple of years ago we couldn't even get Channel Five down here.

I take it all back

Two Samsungs later, I have succumbed to the lure of the iPhone. And it's bloody marvellous. At last they have sorted out mobile surfing. Both speed and convenience. And, unlike my last Samsung - a Tocco - which wasn't even any good at making phone calls or texting, I am at last again in love with my phone, which is once more my Bible, my almanac and my recipe book. Or something like that.

How to recover lost pictures from a corrupt xD card

Imagine my despair. I slip my xD card into the card reader and instead of the usual display, a strange column of folders and files, all named with a string of question marks, appears. I try rebooting. Clicking on My Computer, I find an empty drive where my pictures should be. I try plugging the reader into my laptop. Empty. I put the card back into the camera. No image - and if I try to take a picture, I get a series of warning beeps.

This is where the despair comes in. You see these weren't just any pictures. They were photographs taken at my granddaughter's birthday party. Especially requested by my daughter, who has only just begun talking to me again after I wrote her car off (don't ask), because she knew she would be too busy. The cake. The candles. The guests. The dancing. Seventy-odd pictures of general mayhem.

To cut a long story slightly less long, I spent the next 48 hours googling and downloading like crazy, searching for various combinations of 'data recovery', 'free software' and 'corrupt xD card'. The first program I found, Data Doctor Recovery Memory Card (A bit of a mouthful, and I would have thought it should be called Doctor Data Recovery, but what do I know?) if nothing else gave me hope. There on the card it showed me a load of jpegs taken on September 20. But I had to send about £20 to be able to see and save those pictures. Coincidentally that's how much the good folk at Fuji wanted per card to transfer my mangled pics and save them on a CD. Which seems a bit steep when it's their card/camera that's mangled my pics. Another program - RecoverPlus Pro - also said it wanted money before I could save the pictures but it was cheaper so I gave it a try. Astonishingly, it put all the pictures into a cache which I could copy! The bad news was that it seemed able only to find files that I had deleted. My birthday party pics were nowhere to be seen.

But this story does have a happy ending. A good 36 hours after I had begun my journey, by googling 'data recovery xd card' I chanced upon the Digital Inspiration blog, which had a review of a couple of programs, one of which was ZAR, and the encouraging sentence: 'While ZAR 8.0 is a commercial product, the picture recovery features are free and fully functional even inside the trial version.' I downloaded it and by golly it was true. The site says it works with Windows 98SE which is a fib - but at least it works with XP. The program is indeed intended for hardcore data recovery, but it is also a life-saver. Run it and select a source device such as a camera memory card, it clicks and whirrs for a little while and then presents you with what it has found, which in my case was 70-odd pictures taken at my granddaughter's birthday party. Gentle reader, I can sleep again!

The Large Hadron Collider

This is superb. Hopefully the writer's sense of humour is not ill-judged. I might get back to you on October 22...

It's just as well mobiles are for phoning, because they're rubbish for surfing

My E-Ludditeness increases daily.

Don't believe a word they tell you about web-surfing on your mobile phone. I have long thought they were rubbish for browsing and my recent experiences have proved myself right.

Upgraded my mobile phone to a shiny new Samsung. Have always gone for Motorola before, but thought a change might do me good. Discovered that I could get a month's free web-browsing on evenings and weekends. Took it up, despite finding it rubbish in the past. Thought they might have sorted out the problems - delays in downloading pages, rubbish when they do download, etc.

Imagine my surprise when the service turned out to be every bit as bad as I remember it. Apart from the sluggishness and minuteness of the whole exercise, it all seems to be about money. Get the weather report for free, but pay if you want five days' weather. High spot of the month was coming across the availabilty of three free music tracks - which I took them up on. Great - except they all play at half-speed. I have no settings to change, and it is not possible to do anything with the tracks on my laptop because they are rights-protected.

My mobile phone is my Bible, my prayerbook and my almanac. As well as using it to make and receive phone calls and texts, I use it to tell the time, to check when I am working, as a memo recorder and all sorts. But when it comes to surfing the web, no thanks.

And if it's to make a restaurant reservation, call a cab or find out where I am, it's easier to make like ET and phone home...

Review: Xara Xtreme Pro 4

Let's first get the complaints out of the way. Xara Xtreme Pro 4 won't install under Windows 98SE. I know it said version 3 wouldn't - but it did, and I have been happily using it for the past year without problems. Version 4 won't even try to install it - so at least I still have v3 running on my PC. But I have had to resort to the laptop - which runs XP - which is a drag - but what an enjoyable drag.

Another minor irritation is the slow speed with which it renders text attributes - you might think they forgot about text when they were souping up the graphics capabilities. But no - I particularly like the way the text tool enables you to see your text in different fonts as you hover over the font names. And XXP4 now enables you to flow text round objects, which as with most Xtreme features can be done on the fly.

And it is still an incredibly useful (and fast) graphics tool, with several nifty features in the new version. My favourite is the excellent panoramic photo-stitching plug-in, which does everything: detects the overlap and join positions, reduces fish-eye or focal length distortions, and blends, for example, any dramatic color changes in the sky. I threw together five shots taken at Port Isaac in north Cornwall and let Xara Xtreme Pro do the rest. Within a minute, there was my panorama. You can hopefully see my quick attempt here. Printed, it looks amazing, and I'm not boasting about my picture-taking abilities here.

As ever there are tutorials and demos at the Xara website, hints and tips at the Xara Xone and plenty of usefull stuff on YouTube. Just search for Xara Xtreme.

Review: Opera 9.2 - free open-source web browser

E-Luddites rejoice! You too can have Explorer 7's tabbed browsing, recover closed tabs, download BitTorrents and subscribe to RSS feeds all without upgrading to Windows XP - let alone Windows Vista. Opera 9.2 has all this and more and not only works in 98SE but even in 95.

Opera even has a similar feature to MSIE's Quick Tabs - it calls it Speed Dial. You can have thumbnails of your nine most frequently visited sites on one screen. Close a tab by mistake? Click on the little waste bin and any tabs that you have closed are available to reopen. I find newsfeed readers quickly get clogged up, especially if I forget to run them - or even if I am away from my desktop for a while. But Opera is ideal for RSS fees that only deliver items once a week, such as radio show podcasts. And to be able to download a Bit Torrent (now why on earth would I want to do that?) without opening yet another programme is truly nifty.

Because it is open source there are all kinds of developers working on extras - it calls them Widgets - that add to your browsing experience. And they're all free. The main categories are Web Developer, Fun and Games, Time and Date, Radio and Music, and News, which gives you some idea of the type of add-ons they produce. I have running on mine a very useful scientific calculator, a to-do list and a world clock.

Opera - music to my browsing senses. Bytes Rebooted score: 9/10

Xara Xtreme Pro

If you don't want to hear about my problems, you might want to skip to the second paragraph, because I am about to explain why it has taken me quite a while to get round to writing this review. When I first installed the program, I virtually lost the use of my PC. At first I put this down to problems with the software, but then I found that the system crashes I was having - and believe me they were serious system crashes - were not specific to Xara Xtreme Pro, they were caused by a cranky driver. Eventually I got round to using the program, fooling around with it as much as I could and I even got as far as liking it, and what should happen when I booted up my PC to sit down and write my review? I was told to run Windows setup! Having sorted that one out - by moving my ram modules for which I certainly can't blame Xara - I was then presented with a CMOS checksum error. As you might perceive, I sorted that out too. All of which I share with you only so that you know it is not all fun and frolics being a software reviewer. There is a lot of heartache. And joy of course.

Which is what Xara Xtreme Pro is, once you get the hang of it. Because whatever they may say about its intuitive interface and how easy to use it is - the hang of it takes a while to get. If you don't use Photoshop you will stare at the screen in bewilderment, and if you do you will wonder why your usual shortcuts don't work. But stop doing things automatically, give it time and practice and above all use the wealth of information on the CD and online, and a whole new world of creativity will be opened up to you. You can even modify the keyboard shortcuts!

The simple picture editor bundled with XXP performs well. Double-click on a photo opened in the program and you can easily carry out tasks such as cropping, enhancement, level adjustment and red-eye reduction. And you don't have to worry about changing your original picture because XXP doesn't mess around with that at all. This leads to other benefits apart from avoiding the risk of losing cherished digital heirlooms. Because XXP embeds your original jpeg and holds on to it, you don't lose any image quality with repeated resolution changes, and the eventual file, even though it might contain numerous copies of the original, is far smaller than you get with most similar programs.

XXP itself enables you to create anything from web buttons and logos to multi-page newsletters. It has the Pantone and colour separation support that you would expect in professional print-related software, as well as being able to import and export pdf and Photoshop files. And you can create and export Flash animation.

A highlight of XXP is real-time adjustment - or Live Preview as Xara calls it. The tasks you can carry out on drawings, such as transparency, blending or bevels, are all carried out on the main screen, which changes depending on what you are doing, so there are no preview windows or fiddly pallettes to contend with. So for example you see your selected object change colour as you drag the colour-fill pipette over the document. And of course because XXP uses vector graphics rather than bitmaps you get no loss of definition as you increase in size.

To test Xara Xtreme Pro in not exactly laboratory conditions I tried my hand at various different uses, including animation, some photo-manipulation and a collage: in each case to see what I could do with a spare half hour or so. The animation in fact I did in 12 minutes. You can see the results here. In each case what you see is the result of very quick work - imagine what I could have achieved if I had taken a bit more time and therefore a bit more care.

But the real beauty of Xara Xtreme Pro is I guess the price. For a family or a small business that needs a drawing program with bitmap capabilities, in other words for anyone with a website, it's a must-have.

Xara Xtreme Pro costs US$199 - order it from the Xara website and they will bill you the equivalent - approximately £100 in the UK. And don't forget to check out the tutorials, tips and artwork in the Xara Xone. Bytes: Rebooted score - 9/10.

Review: Disney's Chicken Little: Ace in Action for PS2

Disney's Chicken Little: Ace in Action is not so much a film tie-in as a game of the game in the film. It stars the superheroes of the "movie within the movie" finale of the Disney film, Chicken Little. Bear with me - it is fun. Chicken Little and his friends Runt, Abby and Fish appear in cut-scenes throughout, or as voice-overs, because the idea behind it is that it is them that are actually playing the game. Chicken Little describes it as "the prequel to the game loosely based on the movie that was loosely based on our lives". So at least it doesn't take itself too seriously.

There are four worlds to explore over 24 different missions, with a variety of weapons and employing a variety of evasion tactics. Depending on the mission, you control Ace on foot, Runt driving a tank or Abby piloting a hovership through space or across land. In each case you battle increasingly horrid robots, and come under attack from truncheons, guns and lasers. Collect credits by shooting everything in sight and you can buy stuff to make your task easier.

Voice talent can make or break a videogame, because no matter how great the graphics are, a third rate ham actor repeating the same few sentences for half an hour can rather spoil the effect. The best bit about this game is that Ace is voiced by the amazing Adam West - milking every last drop of super-hero bravado out of his part, just as he did as Batman in the Sixties television series, and doing a grand job of making it all very amusing.

Disney's Chicken Little: Ace in Action was developed by Avalanche Software and published by Buena Vista Games. Bytes Online score: 7/10

Review: Made Man for PS2

First announced in May 2004, Made Man has taken a little longer in the making than expected, due to the shutdown of Acclaim Studios, its original developer. But no matter - its action spans three decades, and gangsters will never go out of fashion. In this case the gangsters are mafiosi - when you are "made" you are accepted into their world.

Made Man was developed in conjunction with a couple of real-life wise-guys, one who was a high-ranking made man himself and the other a writer who just knows a lot about them. But whether this gives an authenticity to the game - as claimed by the PR machine - is a bit doubtful. You never actually fear for your life as your fingers and thumbs go to work. After all - it's a computer game!

Basically all you have to do is kill everyone you meet - except friends or innocent bystanders of course - before they kill you. Perhaps there is more to the plot further on, but hey, I'm only on the second level. I see many late nights ahead. And if former Mafia boss Bill Bonnano says, "Made Man is about as close to really being in the mob as a game can be. You turn your back on the wrong person, that's it, game over," am I really going to argue with him?

But what of the game's features? "Jump to cover" enables you to hide quickly behind the nearest crate or wall and fire from comparative safety. Always handy. As you progress through the game you pick up a variety of weapons. There are times when you need a sawn-off shotgun and others where a sniper's rifle is the weapon of choice. Naturally. The gameplay is intuitive and there is enough non-linearity in the storyline to make it worth returning to scenarios to try shooting from different positions to improve your game.

Visually it's great, but the key to the atmosphere is the music - which is right on the button. A little Motown from the jukebox puts you right in that 1960s truck stop. The Doors-like lead guitar under the Vietnam sequences is straight out of Apocalypse Now.

I am having a great time with it. Full of violence, gore and swearing, so not for kids, but for responsible, well-balanced adults it's a hoot. And yes, it has been well worth the wait.

Made Man was developed by Silverback Studios and published by Mastertronic. Bytes Online score: 8/10

Where have all the CD players gone?

I only ask because my CD player recently packed up, and I wanted a replacement. You would think that Canary Wharf would have an abundance. Dixons, now currys.digital, had nothing. And John Lewis, in its expanding hi-tech department, had even less. Both had lots of MP3 players. But CD players? "I think they are aiming at making everything smaller," the v-pleasant-and-trying-to-be-helpful-but-let's-face-it-not-helping-me-at-all assistant in John Lewis told me. I pointed out that I would go right to the top and complain to Mr Lewis himself. I have an MP3 player. But I have a lot of CDs that I just want to pick up on a whim and listen to on the train to work. I don't want first to have to rip them and transfer them to my Jukebox. So I want a CD player. I have found one online at Argos, but I am wondering whether I ought to buy two, in case they stop selling them as well! It is unfair that as far as John Lewis is concerned, only people with access to the Web can now listen to recorded music. Discuss...

Webview: The Blue Meanies strike again

Amateur guitarists can be placed into two distinct groups. A buys a CD, listens to the songs, choses a couple to learn and then plays them for friends. A might write the words and music down, using chord symbols or even tablature, so she can show B how to play them. B buys a CD, choses a couple of songs he wishes he could play, meets up with A and with her help, also learns the songs.

You will note that they both bought the artists' CD. There might have been a lyric sheet with the CD, which wouldn't have cost extra and which would have been a help with learning the songs. They looked around for music but there is not a lot published - and even less is published in tablature, which is a system of notation based on a visual representation of the six strings of the guitar. But they found loads of it on the Internet, where like-minded individuals post and download tablature and song lyrics on a variety of websites.

But not any more...

The Blue Meanies have struck again. The National Music Publishers' Association and the Music Publishers' Association have threatened numerous tablature sharing sites, including Olga and Guitar Tabs Universe, with legal action on the basis that sharing tablature constitutes copyright infringement. As Guitar Tabs manager Rob Balch says: "When you are jamming with a friend and you show him/her the chords for a song you heard on the radio, is that copyright infringement? What about if you helped him/her remember the chord progression or riff by writing it down on, say, a napkin?"

I am neither a thief nor a dealer in stolen goods. The music industry couldn't even be bothered to publish tabs until they suddenly realised their potential as a "revenue stream". Most music books still just have words, standard notation and chord diagrams. But tablature is much easier to follow. And it is big on the internet, which as everyone knows was set up for the free exchange of information. We need to stop corporations from chosing which information we can share.

According to David Israelite, president of NMPA, unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature "deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing." Olga has been around since 1992, so it sounds as if Sir Paul McCartney can expect a divorce payout from Heather.

BBC News says that Cathal Woods, who runs Olga, plans to fight the order: "They're forcing everyone off the net but as far as I know they don't have anything that would fill the need for guitar tab online. My other objection is that for the music publishing companies, it's as if the internet never happened. The internet changes everything and we need to think about what's permissible in the context of the internet."

To join the effort to fight for the freedom to tab and share, check out the Music Student and Teacher Association, MuSATO.

Webview: The Daily Static

Still here. Sort of. If you are ever in need of a laugh, one can usually be found at The Daily Static, a series of comic strips based on the world of software support. There is often a running gag for a few days, so it's usually worth looking back at the strips for the previous week. I particularly liked the pay-off in the strip for Aug 5, about speech recognition software. Check it out...

Reviews: The Bible Game and Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for PS2

So I could do it justice, I did try actually to play The Bible Game -- honest! But when it comes to honesty, Street Fighter Alpha Anthology is way ahead of Crave Entertainment's use of the Old Testament to make a quick buck, and it was a great relief to exercise my fingers on the real thing. Because, let's face it, the challenge games in TBG are just variations on the usual theme. You may appear to be destroying Goliath, Pharaoh's snakes or the Tower of Babel, but you are still raising Cain -- though it's only pixels on a screen. Crave managed to get advertising space -- sorry, an item -- on Fox News, extolling the virtues of a game children can be left to play without their parents worrying. And according to the accompanying press release: "you can feel good about kids playing video games". I for one don't feel good about kids wasting their time with bland tripe.

TBG takes the form of a TV game show, Do Unto Others, and the catchphrases such as "let there be light" lend it an air of authenticity, but that's where the entertainment ends. Trivia questions with minimal scope for learning are interspersed with fairly useless mini-games requiring minimal use of the keypad. And the "wrath of God" makes you lose all your points. Anyone for a lesson in humility?

With SFAA on the other hand you just have a jolly good fight. Surely this is what God made arcade games for! Good old Ryu and Ken are on hand to fight their way through battles that really test your keypad skills -- and when you get blown away by a guy called Sodom, the irony is complete. Just as it says on the tin, all the Street Fighter Alpha games are on one disc, as well as Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix, so you can play away to your adrenal glands' content. Graphics and moves naturally get more complex with each new game. You actually work up a bit of a sweat, so I reckon it could even be used as an aerobic aid -- which is more than I can say for TBG.

As The Bible Game stands more chance of being banned by Left-wing councils that do not want to give offence to non-Christians, its marketing potential is high. But play it and you won't want have anything to do with those boring Christians. Me, I'm off to get beaten to a pulp by a schoolgirl in a sailor suit. Anyone for a lesson in humility?

The Bible Game is published by 505 Gamestreet with an RRP of £29.99. Street Fighter Alpha Anthology is published by Capcom and is available from Amazon or HMV Online for £14.99. Bytes Online scores: TBG 3/10, SFAA 7/10.

DVD News: Star Wars

In case, like Eliot, you have lost your original videotape, the very first Star Wars movie is being released later this year with bonus material, including the original "1977 theatrical version".

Click on the above link for more information and to pre-order through Amazon.

This message has been brought to you to prove this blog is still operational!

Review: Mindscape Kakuro for PC

There are two main reasons why you should not buy, let alone install, the latest release from Mindscape on your PC. First, you will get nothing done. If you have not yet been bitten by the Kakuro or Sudoku bugs, you have presumably been plane-wrecked on an uncharted island, live on some far-flung planet in a time that Dr Who has not yet visited - or maybe you just don't get the daily papers.

Kakuro and Sudoku are basically number puzzles, using the numbers 1 to 9 on grids of squares where no number is repeated in a line. What happens then depends on which game you are playing. They were devised in Japan and are guaranteed to hook you in, chew you up and spit you out.

The software - Mindscape Sudoku comes as a bonus CD with Mindscape Kakuro - gives you a virtually unlimited range of Kakuro and Sudoku puzzles all the way up to grids of 16x16 squares - which is about as mind-blowing as you would want these games. There are few bells and whistles, but with classic puzzles like this, who needs them? The options are things such as difficulty levels, fonts, colours or background graphics. And, more usefully, practice and "pencil" modes which help you learn the game.

You can even print the puzzles out and take them to work with you - you need never buy another newspaper again. Which is the other reason why you should not buy, let alone install, the latest release from Mindscape on your PC. I will be out of a day job. But if you really want to, go ahead. It seems a bit weird comparing a puzzle such as Kakuro with a whole imaginary world such as 24, but at this price, you won't find a better game this year...

Mindscape Kakuro is published by Mindscape at £9.99. Bytes: Rebooted score 9/10 (because you can always go one better.)

24: The Game for PS2

Pa-Dink, Pa-Ding, Pa-Dink, Pa-Ding… If you understand this peculiar reference you probably own this game already, and good for you! This is one of the best uses of a film/TV licence in a video game to date, and everything oozes 24: from the use of split screen, the infamous clock (Pa-Dink!) and the likeness and voice talent of every actor involved in the show from seasons 2 and 3. 24: The Game is set snugly in-between, and the story is intriguing and just the right side of ridiculous to please the most ardent fan.

But let’s not get carried away: strip away the awesome 24 appeal and what is left? Sadly, a marginally above-average platformer, with sometimes excellent/sometimes buggy graphics, a plethora of game-play modes and mini-games that will distract some and bore others; a great score (when it’s there); lacklustre driving mission; some so-so stealth missions; a decent targeting system and artificial intelligence like machinegun fodder from the worst Bond film.

If the idea was to make the player feel like Jack Bauer then they sure as hell made a good effort, and 24 fans will have a great time for the eight hours or so it’ll take to complete, and fans can add a point to my final score. But you’ll be grateful it’s not real-time. Maybe I’m being harsh, the game is certainly serviceable as an action shooter… but it’s already a crowded market. I think I have been spoiled by Resident Evil 4.

Review by Eliot Gurrin. 24: The Game is developed and published by SCEE. Bytes: Rebooted score: 5/10.

Webview: The Reith Lectures

So what if it pays its DJs too much money, the BBC has done a great job this year of presenting the Reith Lectures. The annual event - aim: to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation - is archived on the corporation's web site back to 1999, both to read or to listen to, but what I like particularly about this year's series, apart from presenter Daniel Barenboim, is that each lecture is available as a podcast for seven days after its original broadcast, so I can download it, transfer it to my Pure DAB radio or Creative Jukebox (nb no mention here of an iPod!) and listen to it at my leisure, invariably on the train on my way to work. Don't know about the rest of the nation, but my intellectual and cultural life is certainly enriched.

Review: Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams for PS2

I have to admit to being new to the Onimusha series. This one picks up 15 years after Nobunaga's annihilation, as his successor Hideyoshi aligns himself to the dark side. But you don't need to have played the earlier instalments to have a terrific game. Especially as this time it's played out in three dimensions, with incredibly detailed graphics over a huge environment - which is of course mainly down to the evolution of the silicon chip.

Gameplay is wonderful - you get to know the characters and learn their moves while actually playing, and you get a lot of excitement while moving the story along. You play the part of Soki, a young and powerful warrior, along with several others, each with their own field of expertise, that he meets along the way. There is one rather annoying little upside down creature who should have been left in Pokemon or wherever he was found, but you can't have everything.

The baddies - the Genma demons - are highly skeletal, not very nice, and the bosses are even more nasty, but you just have to move those fingers quicker.

The field of play is non-linear, so there is plenty of scope for exploration of the environment. Graphics are fantastic and incorporate real Japanese drawings, architecture and costumes, which all add to the authentic flavour of the game. With a variety of mini-games and challenges on the way, this is a highly entertaining addition to the Onimusha series and the PS2 stable.

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams is published by Capcom. Bytes: Rebooted score: 8/10

Review: Bust-a-Move for Nintendo DS

The Bust-a-Move series of games has enjoyed a long and fruitful life on various consoles over the past ten years. Taking the characters from the popular Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Island games and putting them in a puzzler seems to have paid off. The latest instalment brings the classic style of Bust-a-Move gameplay to the DS with excellent results. You use the stylus on the bottom screen to shoot multicoloured balls (catapult-style) into the top screen. When you stick three balls of the same colour together they disappear and the game ends when the top screen is clear.

The Bust-a-Move style gameplay works well on the DS's touch-screen. Though many might find it a little too sensitive at first, it offers excellent, highly accurate aiming which is absolutely necessary in trying to get the quickest times and the highest scores. There are more than two hundred different puzzles to solve, and a great wireless multi-player, but sadly the package is quite sparse after that. The other thing that should be said is that Bust-a-Move is entering a crowded market on the DS, and probably won't offer much to people who already own games like Meteos and Zoo Keeper (or those who are saving up for Tetris!)

All in all, a worthy, albeit vanilla, Bust-a-Move title for the DS that fans or puzzle fans in general will enjoy.

Review by Eliot Gurrin. Bust-a-Move was developed by Taito/Happy Happening and costs £29.99. Bytes: Rebooted score 7/10

Review: Noddy and the Magic Clock for PC

The post-Christmas lull is over. But before I get involved in fantasy and ultra-violence, here's a couple of games of fantasy and ultra-niceness for the little ones.

Noddy and the Magic Clock is based on the television series about the updated character and his pals, using sequences from the actual show. It is highly entertaining, helping to keep three to six-year-olds' attention while they play games and solve puzzles, while unbeknown to them their parents can test and exercise their children's powers of logic and memory, colour and shape.

The game is both colourful and musical, keeping the child's attention between the puzzles, such as catching eggs in a basket or putting cogs of the right size and colour on to a machine that then works. And if they have problems, they can click on PC Plod, who is always on hand to help out.

In the same vein, Babar and the Royal Coin Caper uses the cartoon elephant to test your children while keeping them amused. With this one, some of the games seem a little obscure - by which I mean even I didn't understand them, and I'm umpteen years old. And despite releasing it for the British market, they couldn't be bothered to translate the letter Z into English. Zee, indeed. Still, if nothing else it is a great way to teach your children mouse and cursor skills without having to kill vampires!

Noddy and the Magic Clock and Babar and the Royal Coin Caper are both published by Mindscape at £9.99. (Click on the title of this review for a link to the dedicated site.)

Review: Resident Evil 4 for PS2

My son Eliot occasionally used to ghost-write reviews for my column if the games involved were his particular favourites. From Street Fighter through to Devil May Cry, as he was born with a silver controller in his hand I saw no reason why not to bow down to his superior knowledge or ability, except in spelling. So, may I introduce a review by, fresh from university with a First in Film and Television Production, the one and only Eliot Gurrin...

Being a huge fan of the Resident Evil series, ever since it first began on the PlayStation back in 1996, I was a little worried upon hearing of Resident Evil 4’s overhaul in the game play department. What about the awkward controls; tricky camera angles; the item box; truly weird puzzles; would they all be gone? Granted – a dodgy control scheme isn’t the first
thing you would want to carry across for a sequel, but after nearly a decade surely it wouldn’t seem right to change it (besides, when you do manage to dodge a zombie with those clunky controls, you really feel like you’ve earned it!). And, of course, I was wrong to worry – Resident Evil 4 is still very much a Resident Evil game (amazing graphics; terrifying, suspenseful game play; hammy dialogue) and undoubtedly the pinnacle of the series.

The long and interesting story is one the best aspects of the game, and it’s accessible to anybody new to the series (and this is a great place to start). Leon Kennedy, a survivor from RE2, visits a remote European town in search of the president’s kidnapped daughter, but it seems the local townsfolk don’t take kindly to strangers, and don’t seem to be "quite right" themselves.

What follows is one of the most cinematic experiences you could ever have playing a video game. The game is a little more action-based than its predecessors, providing area-sensitive damage (shoot a "zombie" in the knee and they’ll trip), an over-the-shoulder camera for aiming, and some amazing interactivity: you can choose whether to open a door silently or burst in, for example, and you can use your environment to fight off the hoards (yep, hoards) of enemies. Needless to say, it looks wonderful and sounds amazing.

Not only does this game breathe new life into the series but, most important of all, it’s a scary, enjoyable romp from start to finish with a bunch of extra content to make it worth a play through. So enjoy, and prepare to enter the survival-horror genre once again.

Blog contributed by Eliot Gurrin. Resident Evil 4 is developed and published by Capcom. Bytes: Rebooted score - 9/10

Review: Diplomacy for PC

If you are into turgid, slow-moving games, and have too much spare time and space on your hard drive, this could be the game for you. It is based on the popular board game of the same name, which I must admit never appealed to me, so I suppose this game was on a hiding to nothing as far as I was concerned. The title of this article gives you a link to Richard Sharp’s interesting and authoritative book about the original game, which I gather achieved cult status. Intriguingly, Sharp writes: "Try to surround yourself with people who trust you, then let them down; find an ally who will gladly die for you and see that he does just that." So I gave it a go...

A map of Europe is your chess board for this turn-based strategy game. There is a tutorial if you don’t want to take the time to read the manual, and take it from me, you’ll need to do one or the other because otherwise you’ll click on buttons and wonder what if anything is happening. There is nothing intuitive about the game play. And the repetitive grunts, ahems and coughs while the computer makes all the turns are so irritating I found it difficult to play for more than half an hour.

With the graphics capabilities afforded by modern-day PCs, you’d have thought they could do better than a three-dimensional view of arrows moving round a two-dimensional board. You might as well just get the board out, except that I suppose you can play on your own, or over the Internet. But I couldn’t play on my own, the coughs and grunts proved too much for me!

Perhaps I have missed the point, but I can’t help feeling that time spent learning how to play this game is time wasted. I certainly can’t see myself bothering to play a whole game - it takes five hours! I suppose the only thing we can be thankful for is that they have left Europe as being made up of only seven countries - just think how much longer it would take, and how long the grunts and ahems would go on for if they had brought it up to date.

Diplomacy is developed by Paradox Interactive and published by Mindscape. Bytes: Rebooted score - 2/10

Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for PS2

And <SPOILER!>just like Aslan</SPOILER!>, Bytes will now resurrect itself as Bytes: Rebooted, a regular if not weekly blog dedicated to games, Internet and software news and reviews. So it seems appropriate for my first review to take a look at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, out now for PS2, PC, GBA and Nintendo DS, with GameCube and Xbox versions to follow in 2006.

First, a confession. I might be a bit biased. I have loved C. S. Lewis’s novel for as long as I can remember. But which way am I biased? If I didn’t think the movie paid enough respect to the book, that might turn me against this game. Fortunately, both film and game look excellent.

The game is to some extent the same old same old. Solve puzzles. Collect coins. Collect special tokens. Acquire skills. But because the story moves on at quite a pace, you get a sense of the narrative driving you on. And it does get harder - and more exciting - as the game progresses. So you do get a sense of adventure, a sense of a challenge. And you do keep getting that feeling that it is two o’clock in the morning, much too late to be trying to work out how to get over this particular obstacle so you can complete the level, save and get to bed. And it all gets that extra special kick out of the fabulous landscape of Narnia and of course the atmospheric music.

Tapping on the R1 button enables you to chose which of the characters you want to take the lead, which is handy as they each have different skills. At the end of each level you are rated from poor to excellent, and you can move on or go back and try to increase your score. So it’s a game you can come back to again and again.

The only bit where I feel they go too far with the adaptation is the slalom. I don’t remember a rollercoaster ride being in the novel, not one with coins all the way down, and it’s probably been written into the film so that it can be in the game. It’s a bit more Sonic the Hedgehog than Aslan the Lion. But I suppose that’s the downside of living in the 21st century. The clips in the game certainly make you want to see the movie. Great fun, and I don’t think it would be fair to expect this particular part of the Narnia franchise to deliver a moral message. Let’s just say it’s a better than average adventure and a better than average film tie-in.

I will finish with a comment which I love by Andrew Rilstone, a C. S. Lewis enthusiast, on the current Narnia hype: "Recently, the newspapers have been talking about C. S. Lewis, because there is a new movie coming out, starring New Zealand and a computer." Enough said.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is developed by Traveller’s Tales and published by Buena Vista. Bytes: Rebooted score - 9/10

Introduction

My original blog dried up when my ISP stopped allowing uploads to my website unless I used the dedicated telephone number. Most of my posts were done at work, so that was of no use to me at all. Earlier this year I "went broadband" and decided I should resume blogging, which I could do in draft form, just using the ISP's number when I uploaded. When I logged on, I found that Blogger now offered free web space - so I can blog at will! All those wasted years...

So now I shall commit myself to a resurrection, and appropriately will review The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe next week.