Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Now that I have never to play Rocksmith again (I have been doing anyway, but I do not have to which is a big psychological difference), it is probably time to express my overall thoughts on the game. As Sherlock Holmes would suggest, it might be best to know the worst of each other and see if that is tolerable than being sold on the shiny veneer.

Here is what I found annoying:

Automatic difficulty
This is not perfect. Take American Idiot. I did it with the full chords and got 58% mastery. But then the next time I played it, it had downgraded me to single notes. Not even the two note in-between stage, just all the way down. I hit 95% accuracy, but only got 28% mastery. Why would it do this?

At the end of a song a voice tells you how you did. But it is a bit silly. For example, if you do something really easy it will say “brilliant performance” even though you have not improved your skill. Fine I guess, it was pretty accurate. But when the game makes it harder and your accuracy drops to 70%, even though you might move your mastery of the song up 10% it will still say something far less encouraging like “needs more practice”. Again, true, but you have just got to the higher difficultly, what does it expect?

Learning
The lessons are of very little use. They are just too difficult. I cannot do the riffs they introduce – even if it is about something else. For example it might be a hammer-on lesson, but you have to jump around the fret board at the same time. This would be fine except the game is throwing me this stuff in the songs, so I have to go look it up elsewhere.

It cannot tell you what you are doing wrong. Take bends for example. I almost always miss my bends (apparently). But I do not know what I am doing wrong. Too much? Too little? Wrong pattern? Wrong speed? Oddly, on some songs I get “miss” followed immediately by “late” and these only come up after I have finished playing my bend.

Documentation
The chord book included in game is not much use. Nine times of out ten, I cannot find the chord I am looking for. I am fairly sure it is not in there. Of course there are a huge variety of chords, but it is not difficult to include lots of them. If you can build an entire game, you can stick a few more chord diagrams in there – indeed they must be in the same somewhere.

Bugs
It crashes from time to time.

The recommended song list is strange. At first, once I played a song it would move down the queue and give me some different recommendations. Then, 45 days in, it started making me play a song twice before it would move it down the list. No indication as to why.

Also the R.E.M. song pack appeared in my list, even though I had not bought it. This could be a commercial feature rather than a bug, but it only appears randomly. One time I turn it on and they are there, the next time they are gone, the next time they are back, etc.

Conclusion
I would totally recommend Rocksmith. It has its problems, but there is nothing else out there like it to compare to so they might be really difficult issues to overcome. Ultimately, it kept me engaged for the whole two months. The hardest part of learning an instrument, indeed some research suggests the only part, is committing the time to learning. Rocksmith managed to get me to do that.

Last Wednesday, Sherlock returned to our screens after two years.

It was an okay return. But I was less of a fan than most. Firstly there was the endless comic relief. I do not remember any from the first two series. It was a series detective show. Now you have Anderson is the crazy comic relief character. Not to mention everyone spent a great deal of time laughing at John’s mustache. Because anyone with a mustache must be an object of ridicule.

Secondly, the sweeping cinematographic changes made it feel like not-Sherlock to me. The first two series had a very distinctive style that stamped their brand on the episodes. This one departed from that significantly.

Thirdly, the mystery was not very good. It was almost an afterthought that they plugged into the story half way through. It was mostly about Sherlock turning up and all the personal drama surrounding that. You can say “that is fine, lots of shows do that”, but most shows produce more than three episodes per series. To waste one everyone hugging and making up, with a small mystery thrown in on the sidelines resulted in an episodes that felt crowded but unsatisfying to me.

That is not to say I did not enjoy it. It was very funny. But it did not possess the enthralling Sherlock qualities that I fell in love with.

I bought the HP Laserjet p1102w because it was rated by Which magazine as a best buy. I have no idea how. It is a truly appalling piece of kit.

• After 5 minutes it turns itself off. The documentation claims it goes to sleep, but sending something to print doesn’t wake it up. You have to turn it on by pressing the on button on the printer. Then send something else to print. Then it prints both the original document and the new document.
• The firewire doesn’t work with Mac so you are unable to adjust any of the settings.
• The paper jams frequently.
• There is no “go” button so when you fix the jam the only button you can press is the cancel print button that cancels your job.
• There is only one error light so you have no idea what is wrong.

I’m sending it back and replacing it with a Brother.

I’ve never walked out of a gig before because it was so bad. That is, until I went to see Tenacious D.

The gig was really late. It was billed as starting at 7pm but when I arrived at 8pm the support act was still on and didn’t disappear until 8:25. This meant it was nearly 9pm by the time Tenacious D took to the stage.

The venue certainly didn’t help. Leeds Academy sell more tickets than they actually have seats for on the balcony with the end result being that a lot of people are standing. Because you face down towards the stage, this means if you’re not right at the front you can’t see anything.

I could barely see Jack Black and when I tried to ask the staff where I could actually see the whole stage, which seemed a fair enough question for the £35 I paid, they physically pushed me away and just said “not there”.

Not that it was a specular spectacle to behold anyway. With the description of a stripped-back acoustic session I expected an atmosphere that felt intimate and low-key. What they actually seemed to mean was that Jack and Kyle simply cannot keep up anymore.

Between every song there would be a few minutes of silence while they tried to get their breath back, had a drink and towelled off their sweating faces. No continuation, no stage presence, it could barely be called a show.

After half an hour I just couldn’t take anymore. Heart-breaking.

I can’t stop listening to Lady Gaga’s new album. It is excellent.

It is a bit of a departure from her previous albums is that it is almost a rock opera. But that is probably being far too generous as it is nowhere near as polished as say American Idiot. But there is a loose journey that progresses through the album.

It is probably not an album for those that aren’t already Gaga fans. But for those that are, you won’t be disappointed.

On the Saturday evening we stayed at the Belgrave Hotel in London. Or at least one of them. According to the internet there are two in London with that name, so for clarification it was the one on Belgrave Street.

It was okay for what it was. It had a big TV that I was able to watch the Grand Prix on on the Sunday morning (luckily it was on BBC, as they only had limited Sky Sports like most hotels seem to) and the shower was nice. The room was what you would expect from a London hotel though – pretty tiny. The wifi was unusably slow when I tried it also.

I recently stayed at the Arora Hotel in Manchester. Given I paid £220 for a room, I have to say I was very disappointed. Especially as that was room only, breakfast was an extra £28. Things I didn’t like about it:

• There was no manual in the room explaining things like breakfast times, how the room worked, how to use the internet, etc
• The room was very warm and the cooling system didn’t seem to do anything
• Despite this, the cooling system continued to make a noise all night
• The windows didn’t open very far
• The wifi didn’t work properly as far as I could tell. I was supposed to get 30 minutes free (there was a charge for using it longer) but when I connected to the wifi network, it wouldn’t let me select hotel guest and any other option required me to login
• There was no 3G signal, so I couldn’t hotspot on my phone
• The heated towel rail did not work
• The shower was very weak

The “Cloud 9” bed was okay, but nothing amazing. It did have some nice features – there was a bidet in the bathroom and the breakfast was good. Overall, I was quite disappointed though.

Further to my rant about Bristol Cameras recently, the new new tripod is finally in my possession and seems to be holding up quite well.

I’m sure I’m that told on the ball head as it is more complicated than simply setting up and having a flat platform. It takes it easier on an uneven surface of course, but it still rather fiddly.

It has a lot of nice features though. All the legs work independently, and the foam padding really makes a difference in the cold. The feed unscrew so you can replace them with spikes (though you have to buy those extra) and there is a retractable hook in the bottom of the centre column for hanging weights/bags to. The legs also have three different settings for how far out they are.

The centre column itself comes all the way up, and then you can even swivel it up to 90 degrees out flat as shown in the picture. It has a pan-only mode too.

As mentioned I got the Giottos ball head version two with it that while fiddly, seems to do its job. It has a pan mode as well, a quick release head and two spirit levels, though they’re a bit slow to move and hard to see once you have the camera on there.

So far I’m pretty happy with it.

Recently I bought myself a new tripod. I ordered through Bristol Cameras as they were one of the few retailers that said they had what I wanted.

My first experience wasn’t great. I had originally ordered a lens cap from Amazon, but they kept sending me emails saying there was a delay in stock arriving (they never said they had any in but I wasn’t in a hurry), so in the end I cancelled it and ordered from Bristol Cameras instead.

After doing that I got an email from them saying they didn’t have any in, the item had been discontinued and they could replace it with something else but they had no idea when the replacement would be arriving. They don’t have online cancellations, so I had to phone them up and cancel.

This time, when I ordered, I waited four days before they attached a note to my order saying that the item had been discontinued and they didn’t have any, but recommended a replacement item with similar features.

This cost £50 more so I had to phone them up again and make another payment over the phone.

Having done this, the item took another two weeks to arrive. I finally got my tripod, or at least a version similar to what I had ordered, 19 days after placing the original order.

On the positive side, they did answer their phone both times I’ve called them, and here was no big queue, they answered pretty much straight away. But it has felt like a bit of an ordeal, and I think they should be more honest and with no stock information, lead times are a bit of a mystery.

While in Helsinki we stayed at Hotel Haven.

I was expecting the rooms to be really small, as they are shown so on the virtual tours. However, it seems that is only for sea room views; our room was quite large.

Positive points:

• Good size room
• Very well furnished
• The wifi was included and didn’t come with any stupid login system – you just got the WPA2 code, connected as many devices as you liked and you’re on permanently
• TV in the bathroom
• Shower had a massaging shower head
• Breakfast was good
• Staff were helpful
• It was very quiet
• The beds were very comfortable and I got some brilliant night’s sleep
• The curtains did a great job of keeping the light out

Points for improvement:

• Our TV slash entertainment system didn’t work on the first night
• The bed was two single beds joined together
• The windows didn’t open

Overall, it was a really enjoyable stay and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back.

Photos:

Video review: