I wasn't sure what to write, It looked ok, having played alot of 360 games lately such as dead space, bioshock, assasins creed etc i struggled to find it interesting visually, but the concept behind the whole 2nd life thing is "interesting" I haven't really gotten into it in enough depth to give a full evaluation, I played around with it briefly last year and after meeting a series of virtual chav's, (yes they exist here too!) and some annoying naked women who were going around performing sexual acts and strip-dancing, (yes they can do that too) I just thought to myself, "what the hell I am doing here?" and decided to stick with the real world, plus my home PC at the time was absolute garbage, (smashing it up a few months ago felt so good in such a bad way) which does not help! If your going to go on it make sure your on a decent machine!! not a garbage toaster like i was on! I don't know much about specs! The cool thing about 2nd life is that you can fly and teleport from place to place, but so far i've not found anything interesting that i would want to spend time looking at.
Customizing your avatar is fun, and you could easily spend hours faffing about it! I chose a basic avatar this time as last time I used second life i remember actually spending hours on this aspect! It's funny for me, how "exposed" you feel say for example if you took your avatars clothes off, stupid i know, but that avatar is representing you and i feel that some users could become totally sucked in to the place and just practically live there, after all you can build houses, sell cars and work!
when I was there the first time, there was a group of people i was talking to, some of them were giving me gifts, such as better hair, shoes etc which i thought was very nice of them, hell that doesn't happen in the real world! then a girl there took her clothes off and started erm spinning her "tassled tits" to put it frank! then she said she was off to work in this strip club(!) and who was coming to watch, a few of the guys there went with her and apparently they would have to pay real money to get in! I just thought the whole thing rather bizarre! I also went for a ride in someones car which was quite cool and the car could fly, so this person was in effect controlling my avatar which was pretty neat, I didn't have to hold down a shift key for example to stay in the car and we were talking along the way!
There's obviously alot more to 2nd life than meets the eye, and i think as technology advances it will become even better and of course everyone will have it as they do a mobile phone! or it could be that it will always just be an online virtual community such as facebook that some people will use and others won't, i mean alot of people, mainly the older generation are just starting to "get" using a computer and the internet, so will they absolutely hate 2nd life? or will they prefer the whole 3d environment aspect? one of the main things with it is that it just comes across as a game, so gamers will adapt to it straight away, whereas non-gamers will be drawn to the colourful environments and themes of escapism.
Speaking of games I was just playing the first silent hill game made in 1999 for the playstation that i paid £15 for on E-bay! I won't be playing anymore of it simply because the controls have advanced so much now that it's too frustrating to return to the old ways! I did this with the earlier resident evil games and a few others, paying a fortune to get them all, (as they are now advertised as "rare classics") but now they're just sat there, there's no way I'm going to play them cause i just find the controls so annoying! but i guess i just have them for collection sake.
Anyway I got to the part where you chase the girl into an alley way? go through the metal gate that says dogs beware? then they've done some really cool stuff with the camera angles and mood, so they have this creepy music and the camera keeps changing, (these are set cameras) so one minute it's behind you, then it's above you, or below your feet etc and your cutting from one scene to the next, as you journey through this strange angular alleyway, (it took me ages to get through it this time round, walking into walls, instead of turning left as I walk, the character just stops moving and turns to the left!) on one part the camera shakes as your coming around the corner which I thought was mega cool, It reminded me of a more recent title for the 360: "Alone in the dark" in which alot of inventive camera angles are used and as rubble and stuff is dropping alot as you play there is the camera shake thing too, (this game was highly frustrating due to awkward controls, but look at how bad they were back in the 90's! and we managed fine then, I could easily fly through such games but now due to the advances in controls it's almost impossible to step back and why would you want to?) then you get to the scary part in which you see a skinned corpse hanging on a railing then you are attacked and killed by 2 dwarf like obscenities.
Playing a while ago i felt no emotion whatsoever, I just thought the music was cool, and was more aware of the technological aspect of the game than anything else- absorbed in the game? no. When I played this back in 1999-2000 I remember being shit scared at this part! and when seeing the skinned body being shocked at it's grotesqueness! but looking at it now it was just a pixelated blob with angular edges and no detail! In bioshock all the dead bodies stay on the floor and you can kick them and they'll flop around, or you can shoot them in the face or set them on fire and throw them at things, (not that i enjoy that kind of thing...ok i do but that's the whole point of a game! lol) anyway my point, (I'm not sure that i even have one or what I'm talking about anymore) Is just how fast technology grows, that was made just before the millenium, a year later the PS2 arrives with games such as timesplitters, final fantasy, tombraider and then pushing the playstation to it's limit with the stunning "shadow of the collossus" and the visually breathtaking okami, (following in the footsteps of cartoonish style zelda- windwakers for the gamecube but adding a japanese scroll painting style of art) and then of course 2006 sees the release of the current range of games consoles, such as the x box 360, the wii and the playstation 3 introducing online and vicarious gaming. So Imagine what will be out there in the next 10 years! (que all the sci-fi films) anyway I'm going to close here, I've been rambling on for far too long!
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