Christmas Holidays & New Year

Well another Christmas has come and gone, coupled with the start to another new

year.

Christmas

Christmas generally starts to feel less and less special as you grow older, but this year's Christmas and the surrounding days still felt very special to me.

This was mainly due to two main reasons:

The first reason was that I spent the majority of the time with my family. To me the Christmas holiday doesn't really begin until the tree is put up as a family, with classic Christmas music playing in the background. (The Best Christmas Album In the World Ever! Which contains classic songs like 'Happy Xmas', 'I wish it could be Christmas Everyday', 'I believe in father Christmas', A Spaceman Came Travelling', and so on). Unfortunately since we've had the tree many years, some of the lights have begun to stop working. The overall effect of the tree, however, is still very impressive.

 

Christmas itself was a very festive occasion, all of the relatives came round, to eat and drink and be merry. We also played some new board games, beginning with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and Harry Potter Scene It.

Friends

The second reason was that I met up with two of my good friends Mike and Ste, after not seeing them for months due to each of us going to different universities in different parts of England.

The three of us went to Cineworld to see the new Tron film, Tron: Legacy. I found the film to be enjoyable, although in hindsight I wish I'd have watched the original Tron film before seeing the new sequel. That would have given me a different perspective on the movie. I still knew of Tron, mainly from the popular Lightcycle game, which has been re-made in many forms.

After the movie we returned to my house to relax and play some video games. We played our traditional matches of Super Smash Bros Brawl, with me reprising my usual role as Kirby, Mike as Ganondorf, and Ste as Marth or Pit.

After a dozen or more matches we switched to playing Halo Reach, the newest game in the Halo series. Reach is a prequel to the rest of the series, and adds many new multiplayer features.

To begin with Me, Mike and Ste played some online games of Rumble Pit (a selection of free for all gamemodes). Mike had the advantage since he'd played Reach at University with his flatmates. It was the first time me or Ste had played Reach, and we did quite badly until we got used to the differences in Reach compared to the other Halo games. The most obvious difference is the addition of classes called, 'loadouts' in most game modes. Each 'loadout' comes with pre-defined weapons and a single special ability.

These abilities range from; sprinting, active camouflage, jetpacks, a radar jammer and temporary invincibility. Me and Ste really enjoyed trying out the jetpack. Flying around the map was an excellent way to traverse the map, and get the jump literally, on ground dwelling enemies. Unfortunately the jetpack is relatively slow, so the player flying around in the sky is a massive target, and is often picked off from afar for an easy kill.

After a few matches we switched to the new and improved Forge map creation tool, now named Forgeworld.

Forgeworld

Forgeworld allows the player to create custom multiplayer maps by selecting and placing developer created objects onto the game map.

The variety of the objects is truly staggering, the player has near limitless possibilities with the wide range of pieces Forgeworld provides.

To begin with me, Mike and Ste began by exploring the default blank map itself. We were all very surprised by the absolutely massive size of the map itself. Next we spawned in some weapons and vehicles and had a deathmatch of sorts, with Ste taking on the role of making a small base area for us to fight in. Soon the base began to take a different shape, a giant ramp leading to the heavens, an excellent sniping position, to prey on those players, far, far below.

Without me or Mike really realising it, Ste continued developing what soon turned into a racetrack, although not exactly the typical image of a racetrack. Suspended way, way up in the air, with no sides or barriers, it was a very perilous racecourse. Falling off meant restarting the entire course, which became an issue as the course continued to grow.

I hope to record a video of the finished racetrack using Reach's video editing features to be posted in a future blog post. (After the new year we made a second and probably better designed racetrack, so I'll try and post a video of that also).

New Year

I rang in the new year in a quiet way, with my family. We watched Toy Story 3, which I found to be a very entertaining, yet emotional movie, which definitely tugged on my heartstrings.

I don't want to spoil the plot of the movie, so I'll just heartily recommend that you buy the DVD and watch it if you haven't already.

Thanks for reading. :)

P.S. After writing this, I realise how far behind I've managed to fall with my blog posting. I also remembered how much I love the Christmas holiday, and how it's probably my favourite time of year, hence why I got so incredibly sidetracked. Well I plan to update my blog regularly again from now on.