Creepy

Every so often, when travelling around this fair city of London, you'll happen upon something so outstandingly creepy that you think you've stumbled into some bizarre 'reality' TV thing, or that someone is playing a very elaborate practical joke on the whole world.

For example, picture a man in his 30s. He has shoulder-length, curly ginger hair, a well-groomed moustache and a sliver of a beard gracing his chin. His fashion sense hovers dangerously close to Doctor Who. He's legally blind, and carries a white stick, but seems to rarely need it ('legally blind' is far from being truly blind). He wears a monocular on a cord around his neck.

Place this man on a crowded train - standing, quite deliberately, and declining any seat offered up by other passengers - then imagine him repeatedly singing the same couple of lines and the chorus of a certain song by The Beatles ('Hey Bulldog', if you want the specifics).

Observe as, whenever a blonde appears in his field of vision, the monocular is raised to one eye, so he can check her out properly.

Really?

Did I really see that today?

I'm sorry, but I did.

And I cannot unsee it.

And just to make it worse, when one (female) passenger offered him a seat before taking it herself, he then leaned over to ask her to do 'one small thing' for him: confirm which station the train was currently in. He named the station, you understand, she merely said "yes".

Creepy? I think so.

I mean, let's face it, there are sighted people who cannot tell what station they're in... One would expect a blind person to be counting them off from memory. It's a function. It helps them live as normal a life as they can hope for.

He didn't lift the monocular for her, though. She was a brunette.

In other news, another short term, holiday-cover job came to a close today - same place as last time - and was actually heaps of fun. There really isn't enough work involved in the first three days to warrant the attention of a full-timer. Were it not for some minimal design work, some troubleshooting and the necessity to exercise my inner fascist by badgering a problem client for a sign-off, I'd have been quite thoroughly bored.

Today, I had to chase in advertisements for next week's issue, and could have called that done by about 10.30-11am. Of course, some of the copy arrived, so I was able to check and process it. There were other tasks that popped up unexpectedly during the day, best described as 'miscellaneous', and it was interesting to note that people expected me to know how to do certain 'Thursday' tasks, despite the fact that I'd only worked there once before, and never on a Thursday.

Then again, it tends to be the case that people assume I know how to do everything because I do what I do know so well.

Ah, the tribulations of being awesome.

Further to the previous entry, about Metroid: Other M... it turns out I may not be able to get a 100% rating, because I've missed a missile tank in the main sector. It's somewhere in the lift shaft that gets you to the main, inter-sector lift shaft... a room that is basically semi-circular in plan view, and the missile tank appears to be behind the lift shaft, an area which is inaccessible. So it's either above or below, and I see no way of accessing either... Troublesome...

OK, I cheated...

...and looked up the very end of New Game Plus in Metroid: Other M. The 'something irreplaceable' is Adam Malkovich's helmet, left behind in all the action.

I'm very glad I did look it up because, as well as revealing how to get some of the trickier items, it showed me a quicker way of defeating the 'Power Bomb Doors' (which aren't doors!), and what awaits me if I actually intend to go for 100% completion.

Already, I have 100% in two of the five game areas, and an astonishingly low 33% in the last area to open up in the main game, so I've got an awful lot of catching up to do.

Actually getting to the very end may not be entirely necessary, so I'm not going to rush it. Just defeating the Metroid Queen and MB opens up Gallery Mode and Theatre Mode, the latter offering all the pre-rendered movie sequences in proper DVD scene menu style - you can 'Play All' and see 'Metroid: Other M, The Movie' (cleverly filling in the bits between movies with snippets of recorded gameplay), or dip in and choose the specific scenes (of which there are many). Clearly, completing the Plus game completes the movie with the after-credits extras, and each Power Bomb Door defeated seems to open up more artwork in Gallery Mode (or perhaps that's just filled out by increasing your percentage in area).

Still, much fun... I'm not really looking forward to 'the gauntlet' that serves as a run-up to the Plus game's final (for reals this time!) boss, or the timed escape (one of my most loathed gameplay features), but I think I should be able to do it...

Probably not this coming week, of course, but hopefully sometime soon.

New Game Plus

And so we have another momentous occasion this weekend. No, nothing to do with having a week's work in an office next week. Nothing to do with real life at all, in fact.

Today, I completed Metroid: Other M.

And, when I say 'completed', I mean the first run. Once the credits have rolled through, you're launched straight back into 'New Game Plus', in which you return to the Bottle Ship with all the weapons you gained during the first run, including the Power Bombs (received unannounced during the battle with the Metroid Queen) for a whole new - probably shorter - mission.

The battle with the game's (sorta) final boss is probably the most annoying of the lot and, frankly, I found most of the boss battles annoying as there's no real hint system, and the method for taking each one down is unique to that creature. Sure, there's much usage of Charge Shots for each one, but the use of bombs, missiles or super missles is never really explained beforehand and, for players like me, that means an awful lot of death and frustration, followed by a quick look at a walkthrough or a Let's Play to explain the correct method.

And, even then, my technique sucks. The Metroid Queen shoots out first one Metroid, then two, then three... and, unless you take out each wave quickly, you end up surrounded by six of the little bastards, each of whom can suddenly divebomb you and sap huge amounts of health before you can transform into Morph Ball mode and bomb them into letting you go.

But, still, the end of the first run is suitably epic (read: a long movie sequence), with a little bit of player-controlled action (read: an annoying first-person targetting sequence with no clear goal) in the middle.

I know there was a lot of controversy about Samus' first speaking role in a Metroid game, but I'm one of the supporters. There was a video, made by a fan, explaining how Other M does not, in fact, ruin the character of Samus because she was never 'stoic', she just didn't have any dialogue. While I would opine that the voice acting could have been... how I can put this?.. a little less narcoleptic, the character they created for Samus was very human and believable. The punk kid who felt like she had something to prove because she was the only girl in her team, and aliens killed her parents, grows to become a lone bounty-hunter after a disagreement with her CO/father figure. Meeting up with him on this mission again reminds her of everything they shared - good and bad. It's OK for this 'all-powerful space hero' to show some self-doubt, let alone outright fear in the face of the creature who killed her family... who wouldn't?

The title always puzzled me and, thankfully, it's explained very well at the end, but skip this paragraph if you're spoiler-averse: The game's intro presents a new perspective on the climactic battle between Samus and Mother Brain from one of the SNES Metroid games, and 'MB' becomes something of a recurring motif thereafter. The person in charge of the research on the Bottle Ship is Madeline Bergman, she creates and artificial intelligence to mimmic Mother Brain's telepathic control of the Metroids. This AI is called 'MB', and is eventually installed into an android, which takes the name 'Melissa Bergman'... hence becoming the 'other M' Bergman.

The final movie, before the credits rolled, almost made me shed a tear or two, with Samus giving a deliberately uncharacteristic thumbs-up "in case Adam was watching", followed by the appearance of a silhouette of her traditional thumbs-down, courtesy of former team-mate Anthony, made me think - just for a moment - that Adam Malkovich had somehow survived.

Then again, when 'New Game Plus' begins, Samus informs us that she's headed back to the Bottle Ship to rescue "something that can't be replaced"... And until I complete New Game Plus, I won't know what that is unless I watch a Let's Play of that...

So, anyway... that means I've now completed:

Another Code: R

Western Heroes (debatable - I still think it just crashed)

Muramasa: Demon Blade (Kisuke's story #1)

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (first run, Lost Love ending)

Metroid: Other M (first run)

Which is pretty respectable... and also suggests that games have become easier over the years... I know the first two are actually aimed at kids (hell, the first even comes across like a reading course), and I played Muramasa in 'easy mode' (if there truly is such a thing in that game) but, bar one particularly challenging part, the Wii Silent Hill game is fairly easy to complete, though getting 100% would be tricky, and Other M, as previously mentioned, has some exceptionally tricky bosses which suddenly become quite easy when you know how to defeat them. Not completely easy... but easy enough...

If I remember correctly, all of those games except Western Heroes have a 'New Game Plus'... Muramasa has a completely different story, and Shattered Memories has 3 different 'standard' endings, but completing the game once unlocks the 'UFO' ending. It's always nice when there's a reason to return to a game, rather than just shelve it or trade it in.

In other news, I'm becoming typically terrified about my week of temping... even though I've worked there once before. I know it'll be fine once I get there, but I'm becoming a bundle of nerves in the lead-up.

Possibly a symptom of this was the nightmare I had last night, which played out like a Halloween sequel. Police were investigating a murder (or murders) and determined that the culprit was none other than Michael Myers... but they hadn't reckoned on the fact that he was living in the building they were using as the headquarters for their investigation... so, in typical fashion, the police officers were systematically (and brutally) murdered themselves. Don't remember too many other details... but it woke me up at around 6.30... though I had little trouble getting back to sleep afterward.