Portable Crack

In this review I will cover Civilization Revolution on iPhone OS (not iPad). Civ is one of my favourite games of all time - bettered only in the 4x genre by it's spiritual successor "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri". I have only ever played this on my battered 1st generation iPod Touch 8gb, so your experience is going to be better than mine, unless like me you're rocking the original touch, given that model is the lowest specced of all the iPhone OS family.

First things first, this is a poorly coded and unoptimised game. No multi-player, limited save slots, very bad battle scenes and a poorly thought out interface conspire against this title. However despite these clear flaws this game is a triumph, for one reason and one reason alone.

Portability.
I generally carry my Touch where ever I go. It fits in all but the tiniest pocket and is slim and light enough to not weigh one down. Consequently I can play Civilization whenever I feel like it. The Touch does so much more than mere gaming, like Twitter, T'internet and Lasf.fm, to name a few, which only adds to the near certainty of me carrying it with me. It also supports custom soundtracks, with or without sound effects. Crushing the foes of The English to some hardcore Drum&Bass or defending the integrity of the Aztec Empire to some free jazz are experiences everyone should have.

I have a PSP which is perhaps better suited to the complexities of the game with its button based control system, yet the bulk of the PSP means it just will not he taken with me on my travels anywhere like as much as the Touch. That there isn't a version of Civ. Rev. on the system is a travesty that will never be rectified, but given the bulk of even the Slim & Lite's compared to an iPhone and the fact the PSP games don't have custom soundtracks(I can think of 5 that do out of the entire PSP library) it is only a minor inconvenience.

The DS, to be fair to it, does have a version of Civ. Rev. that I've not played. The Sweet Lady has a DS so it's not beyond my reach, but the iPhone OS version was £2.99 – the DS version is a full price retail game, lacking in custom soundtracks in a device that is larger than my Touch.
So I play the iPhone OS version like a crack-head plays the crack pipe when it's dole day. The game-play remains Civ. at its core so I can't stay away. Having Civ available anywhere is bad for my social life and interpersonal relationships, but like all addicts I WANT MORE!

There is so much that could improve the game. So many many small tweaks.

*Multi-player. There are more and more iPhone OS devices in my circle of friends seemingly each month. I can think of ten friends with either an iPod touch or iPhone. Local WiFi or blue-tooth (not for me sadly with my geriatric Touch) multi-player just makes sense.
*Improved Battle Scenes. The animation for these is appallingly shoddy. Advance Wars on GBA had better battle animation and that was in 2001/02. It doesn't take much guys. Animation that would be sub-standard on the SNES is just not acceptable in 2010s. Update it please someone at 2K.


*Increase the save slots. The lowest storage that this game will encounter is 4gb on the lowest 2G iPhone. Ten save slots is just piss poor. Sloppy. Let me allocate a set amount for them. I'd happily set aside at least 100mb to Civ. Rev. for this sole purpose.
*Reduce interface Clutter. There is way too much wastage of screen space, too many icons that could be be steamlined as you can see:


*Port to Android – the hard buttons, trackball/trackpad and tasty OS make Civ a sure fire winner on Android, and the 2.2 update means it would work a treat.

I heartily recommend this game if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, albeit with a warning relating to its addictiveness.

General Election 2010 Part One

So it's time to pick a new section of the ruling elite in General Election 2010, which sounds like a EA Sports game: "React to tweets and blogs in this years fun political simulation, with ground breaking online features!" This time around the Liberal Democrats are being included in the party through the TV debates, which are really a political 'Westminster's got Talent'. This is ironic as the only government to ever show any sort of talent was in 1945, and most certainly not since 1979, the fateful year when Satan himself had a sex change, got a handbag and elected as Prime Minister.

So as the Liberals are back on the scene after nearly 100 hundred years seemingly shagging rent boys. There return is kind of inevitable, given the choice on offer by the Labservatives. On one side of the double ended dildo that is "first past the post" we have "The Third Duke of Cuntshire" Lord Smithjizz Twatface and the other Tony Blair's wanking hand. Anyone who isn't Adolf Hitler or Nick Griffin would look good compared to those two, even uncle Joe Stalin - who would at least sort out the manufacturing sector.

The TV debate did just that, with Clegg the LibDem leader coming out on top, while Brown and Cameron were busy seeing who could ejaculate the most over each other's response to the financial crisis, too busy to notice Clegg coming up behind them. There are two more debates to come and much could change in their wake.

Dave Cameron could be seen the same room as Tony Blair finally allowing us to see failures of the cloning process first hand; Dolly the Sheep has a lot to answer for.

















Gordon Brown may be pushed over the edge and go mental after being forced into another pointless PR exercise, garrotting a Sun journalist with his tie, then shoving a microphone down Nick Robinson's throat shouting "Soundbite this you smug four eyed fucker" over and over like a mantra of an insane Buddhistt Monk on a quest for vengeance..

Nick Clegg will turn up at the second debate dressed like a forty year old female English teacher, smoking a crack pipe whilst throwing packets of miaow-miaow at the TV audience singing songs from West Side Story.

What is far more likely is Labservative turning on the new boys and either destroying Clegg in a blaze of well argued strongly reasoned political critique which coming from these two vacuous colostomy bags of the political establishment. The other option is that they come off looking worse for picking on plucky Clegg, struggling against the despoilers of our nation. Tune in next week to find out.
Or don't give them the oxygen of legitimacy. Don't watch it. Vote Green!

Liberalism and Green Politics

In the individualism of Liberalism there is not a natural affinity to absorb green ideas, as there is in Socialism(Socialism rejects Capitalism just as the 'Green Orthodoxy' does) or Conservatism(though both Liberalism and Conservatism both favour capitalism, Liberalism does so as a philosophical belief rather than the pragmatism of Conservatism. Conservatism also traditionally has an affinity to the rural and conservation issues, even if they are counter-intuitive to the 'Green Orthodoxy' such as support for Hunting). The economic aspects of Neo-Liberalism is blamed by many Greens for the present ecological crisis and Liberal economic ideas are at the core of this ideology. The ideas at the root of liberalism: the Social Contract and Utilitarianism are anthropocentric to the core, and as such create an ideological gap with Green Politics. Liberalism is a product of the enlightenment, and as such it inherits a intellectual legacy, one of Cartesian dichotomies, of man and nature as separate entities(Marcel Wissenburg, Liberalism from “Poltical Theory and the Ecological Challenge, edited by Andrew Dobson and Robyn Eckersley” page 20). This creates an ‘otherness’ to nature which predisposes man to it’s exploitation. Yet despite these ideological distances from Green Politics, Liberalism has plurality and mass participation at its core; these are values that are key to Green Politics and often part of it. Plurality both creates a space for Green Politics and facilitates its ongoing legitimacy while mass participation validates Green Politics through the widespread civil organisations, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. The openness of Liberal politics is a key facilitator of Green politics, and given the widespread penetration of Liberal values in the Western and developing world is important in its ongoing spread.

Michael Foot R.I.P.

Michael Foot, former Labour Leader, has died. This is a sad day.

Star Trek 2009

The 2009 film was spectacular in every way. The Blu-Ray I have of it is one of my treasured possesions. The action, the story, the coincidences were all amazing. But what's not amazing are Trekkie internet naysayers.
The original Star Trek series was a SciFi that was serious in nature, but that was also pure entertainment. This is a factor that serious Trekkies seem to forget when slating the reboot film. The original Kirk galavanted around the Galaxy, shagging Aliens, disregarding rules, getting into fist fights with #Klingons, firing Phasers and generally being the"Coolest White Man to Ever Live". The Reboot Kirk is exaclty the same in my opinion, almost a facsimilie. He sleeps with Green Aliens, takes on 5 goons in a bar brawl, commits near-mutiny, fires phasers and has a fist fight or few with some Romulans. As for the Timeline shennanigans it seems to me that this root of criticism is childish and petty. Time travel was a key feature in many episodes/films of the #StarTrek, so why can't it be part of the Kirk/Spock origin story?

Mind Melt

Why is it that when I have loads of University work my brain decides to go on holiday? When there's nothing to be done it overflows with ideas. Now it's crunch time and I'm interlectually blank. Fail.

Atheists

It is often said the idea of original sin, of christian morality, of religious morality, was and is a straight jacket of domination of man by man. This hierachy, this control, is not that of faith, but of structures imposed by elites to control the masses. In this way the religious creeds of man are no different to consumerism or Marxism-Leninism. The origins of Christianity are obscured in the vast slave owning imperium of the Roman Empire. The rise of Islam was subsumed in the Caliphate.

The outright denunciation and rejection of religion (here is wikipedia's list of atheist philosophers, http://tinyurl.com/yko85ke) has a broad base which ranges from scientists like Richard Dawkins to anarchists like Murray Bookchin. All united in their opposition to the validity of religion, opposition based on the false and corrupted versions of religion, dominated by states and elite control. Richard Dawkins for example sees religion as "both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence." The possibility of extremism is a feature of secular societies, and the largest mass murderers in history, Stalin and Mao were committed atheists.
That Christians should never commit acts of vengeance or violence, that they should forgive. Quakers have non-hierachial structures, and worship in self-reflexive silence but religion is wrong. That Hari-Krishna's give food to the hungry, that nuns nurse the sick seems to be irrelevant to the atheists.

The intolerance required to take so narrow minded a view is a reflection of the view of religion these atheists have, and in doing so they undermine the validity of there opinions. For there is validity. Religious Fundamentalism is surely a cause of human misery and suffering. Given the humanitarian message of most religion, to plant suicide bombs, or hang homosexuals corruption of the principles the fundamentalists claim to maintain. In many cases religious fundamentalism is a cover for social conservatism and patriachy.