The Australian Internation Motor Show

It’s Australian International Motor Show time again. So I once again trekked down to Darling Harbour in Sydney to have a look at the latest and greatest the motoring world has to offer. The one thing that surprised me more than anything was the lack of echo friendly econo-boxes. While I understand that a pissy little electric hybrid nanny car is not the sexiest thing to plug your brand with, surely with all the doom and gloom, “oh my god the world is going to get hotter and spontaneously end” hippy craziness someone would have made a serious effort. Nope. There where however a lot of vague nods in the direction of eco friendliness. Which brings me to my first award of the show...

The Most Cynical Eco-Car Award

Holden takes this one out by tacking a ‘bio-fuel’ badge on their 6 litre, gas guzzling V8 wagon. For fucks sake why? No one expects a V8 to be environmentally friendly. I doubt the kind of demographic that gets up in the morning and decides they need a car with an engine bigger than their bathtub has saving the whales at the top of their priority list. If you care about trees and dolphins and such you buy a bloody Prius.

There where a few conspicuous absences from the show this year. In particular Jaguar, with a strong new line-up and a desperate need to rebuild the brand I would have expected them to make a solid showing. Other attendees boggle the minds. Sangyong’s are terrible. The whole word knows it. Putting pretty girls next to the cars just means people look at the pretty girls. It doesn’t make the cars look any better.

That brings me neatly onto the topic of booth girls. Worst of the show where easily the Bufori babes. Word of advice, if you are going to wear a shiny black skin suit:
1.Have the figure to pull it off, otherwise you look like a whale stuffed in a garbage bag. and;
2. Go commando, no matter how brief the brief it’s going to show and it isn’t a good look.

Best Booth Babes Award

Suzuki grabs the award from the best booth babes. Dressing them up in racing overalls was a nice change from the usual (and horribly clichéd) skimpy and/or skin tight outfits. Plus they not doubt saved a few quid on hiring fees. You don’t need a stunning body if you hide it in a race suit.

As for booths, Toyota once again set the bar for stupid booths. For starters its centre piece was the wall of boredom. A floor to ceiling stack of Aurions. If you have a product that, to be kind, looks like it was designed by a 3 years old by whacking a brick with a hammer a few times, you hide it. You don’t make a wall out of them that screams “only the over 60 need apply”. They also had a Prius, up on a pedestal, like it was some kind of highlight.

Mitsubishi also did the half arse and just used last year’s stand. Just with a lancer where the 380 was last year. LAME.

A few companies took the opportunity to launch new models at the show as well. Chief among them was Mitsubishi’s new Lancer Evolution, aka crazy hypo jap-car madness. It’s a good looking car that would no doubt be a hoot to drive and is easily affordable for the average corporate executive.

At the opposite end of the scale, Maserati rolled out their new Gran Turismo. Costing just slightly more than a 3 bedroom home in a nice inner west suburb, the GT garnered plenty of attention. Holden rolled out a Wagon version of their VE while HSV had a Ute ‘concept’ which we can pretty much guarantee is exactly the same as the production variant. Mercedes “debuted’ their new C-class, despite you being able to by them for months now and finally Ford.

Most Not New 'New' Model Award

Ford rocked up with a whole stands worth of Mondeo’s from Europe. Including and XR5 model that I can see people getting confused with the Focus XR5 in no time. But that isn’t what I want to pick on. Ford used the motor show to launch the new Cobra. The Cobra is, as far as I can tell, a Falcon GT with a white and blue paint job and a little cobra badge on the side. That is all. Some paint and a badge. Hell the paint doesn’t even count because you could already get white with blue stripes if you wanted too. If I were Ford I would have some serious worries that the best ‘new’ think I could come up with was a 5 year old model with a 30 year old badge.

Many would argue, including me, that one of the best reasons to attend the motor show (as apposed to your local dealer) is the concept cars. If you just want to look at average, run of the mill, standard, off-the shelf, every day models manufacturers have dealers available who will let you look at, sit in, drive and (assuming you have the spare credit) buy any car you want. What the dealers don’t have is cutting edge cars of the future on rotating pedestals. It’s here that the AIMS really disappointed.

There was a big fuck all in the way of cool concepts. Most of the cars that manufacturers tried to pass off as concepts were actually just production ready models with big wheels (sic Holden’s wagon concept).


BMW stood out from the crowd and really made an effort bringing both the ‘Concept CS’ and the X6 Concept to Sydney. The CS is a massive luxo-barge that is about twice as long and half as tall as your average car. Unfortunately, BMW have bought into the whole four door coupe rubbish. The d-e-f-i-n-i-t-i-o-n of a coupe is that it has TWO GODDAMN DOORS! Not three, not five and certainly not four. Why not call it a squashed sedan. It certainly looks like something heavy has been dropped on it. The X6 is a 4WD and is thus boring. Nothing to see there then.

Trying to Hard to Be Different Award

Lexus showed up with their IS-F Concept, which is a sports sedan. Yep no marketing hullabaloo here, It’s a IS250 with a great big V8 shafted under the bonnet. It’s got huge breaks, lowered ‘sports’ suspension and 3 more tailpipes than it probably needs. The tail pipes are worth talking about. Someone at Lexus’s design department was obviously bored or stoned or both and decided to stack the quad pipes on either side of the rear bumper. It screams, “we are trying too hard”. Thus the award.

Finally it wouldn’t be a review of a motor show without picking a worst of show. Nissan used to be a cool Company. They used to make neat sports cars and have a solid reputation. Not any more. Not after this…

Worst of Show

What idiot though sticking a pink micro on their stand was a good idea. Worse, what idiot thought it would be ‘better’ with a WHITE INTERIOR! I am sure the blue rinse set will love this thing but I can’t see the over 100 female demographic flocking to the motor show to check out all the sweet new rides. If it was a motor scooter show maybe.

Taken as a whole this year’s AIMS was a big disappointment. While it was good to see car makers pretty much ignoring the whole eco-car crap (case in point Mercedes who had a 5.5 litre V8, a 6.3 Litre V8 or, if your really into your carbon emission a twin turbo V12 at their booth) it was disappointing the number of manufacturers that have ditched cool, irresponsible rocket cars in favour of cars only your grandma’s grandma could love.

Till next year.

G.

I Passed

Says it all really.

One down four to go.

Dammit

I had class tonight. Three and a half hours of mind-melting, brain-numbing, soul-crushing, Cliché-inducing class.

Don't the damn instructors have anywhere better to be! Surely they have family that miss them or beer to drink or games to play or therapists to see or... something. Anything has to be better than sitting in a room droning on about accounting to 16 people who JUST DON'T GIVE A SHIT!

They even have the gall to make the damn things compulsory. Why? If I want to skip class and miserably fail because I don't know any of the content, isn't that my prerogative? Isn't that some kind of academic Darwinism at work?

I think it would actually be better if you LOST marks for attending class. Obviously the brightest students, who can work things out for themselves, shouldn't be punished by being forced to go to a class an listen to someone tell them what they already know.

Plus, it would add an exciting tactical element to the course. Struggling with a concept? Do you concede the 5 marks to attend class and gamble that the extra tuition will help you make them up in the final or do you wing it? How much more exciting it that.

Hot fucking damn I think i am on to something.

Add cash prizes and a "Sale of the Century" style final exam and study could almost be fun.

Think about it.

DTN.

Portable Ops

Right, a post that isn’t some kind of review. What the fuck!

I thought now, typing this on a train, would be a good time to give a big thumbs up to whoever it was that decided we should be able to lug our computers around with us and thus complete work in any place we happen to be. Its damn handy to be able to just pick up your laptop and work (I mean, blog) anywhere you happen to be. Well for an hour or two at least.

That leads me to a big thumbs down to whoever it was that was meant to build the tiny little portable nuclear reactors we need to keep a laptop going for a reasonable amount of time. Someone dropped the ball there. Instead we are struck with batteries which generally last for about as long as it takes to type up a long and important document and generally fail just before you hit save.

A lot of newer laptops have ‘battery management software’ which is supposed to ‘intelligently manage power consumption’. What it appears to do is turn the laptop off if you don’t do anything for a while. It probably uses more power working out when to turn off the power than it saves. This fantastic software also lets you know when your computer is about to run out of battery and die on you.

Nothing warms my heart more than seeing a little box pop up in th middle of your screen saying “Battery power is low. Save all work im...”. That’s as far as I have gotten cause then the fucking battery goes flat.

Real useful warning that is. The warning is apparently supposed to appear at 10% battery life remaining. So either the software thinks the laptop has a useable battery life of about 10 seconds, which clearly isn’t the case cause I can’t type ‘that’ fast, OR The software has an incredibly loose interpretation of 10%. 10% is fucking 10%. If you have 2 hours of battery life then 10% left would be 12 minutes, not 2 fucking seconds.

The moral of the story, bash on your save button like schizophrenic chimp.

DTN.

Heavenly Sword

I get the feeling Heavenly Sword is meant to be Sony’s big spring blockbuster for the PS3. While is isn’t going to sell consoles like Halo 3 has for the 360 it’s still a solid game.

The game sits firmly in the Slash-a-thon-hack-fest genre that is epitomised by the God of War games. I bring up God of War for two reasons, firstly it’s the benchmark when it comes to slash happy kill fests and second, because Heavenly Sword takes a few pages from the God of War play book, quite a few pages.

In Heavenly Sword you play as Nariko, a female warrior who suffers from the typical gaming female’s limited wardrobe. Luckily the developers avoided the temptation to also give her tits larger than her head. Instead she has about 3 meters of bright red hair. I’m not sure why someone who carries a sword around all day can’t cut her damn hair.

After a brief introduction that serves as the tutorial, you get your hands on the ‘Heavenly Sword’ which is really two swords almost all of the time. You can wield the sword in three modes, speed (two swords and do fast but pathetically attacks), power (one sword and wield it like a drunk with a 4 by 2) and ranged (God of War mode) .

The game play itself is pretty good. Having the three different styles mixes things up a bit and you can’t really get away with the traditional random button mash. The different styles work best against different enemies forcing you to use all three. You can also build up power by playing ‘stylishly’. Saving up your power lets you unleash a collection of instant kill moves that launch a pretty neat little cut scene. While this is cool the first time, they quickly get old.

You also get to play a few sections as a strange girl with cat ears and a makeup malfunction called Kai. There is probably some plot element to explain her strangeness but I didn’t really pay that much attention. She likes to play ‘twing-twang’, which sounds like it has potential but is actually just lame shooting. When shooting you can ‘ after-touch’ the arrows using the six-axis and guide the missile directly to your target. It’s kind of cool drifting an arrow into an opponent’s face, it makes the Kai sections very slow and ridiculously easy. So lets forget about her and get back to the slashing.

Like God of War, the game makes extensive use of ‘quick buttons’. The implementation here is a little harsh though. You generally get bugger all time to press the buttons and in several boss battles, failing to get it right means the boss gets a ton of health back and you get to do it all again. Beating the same boss into submission over and over again because you missed one button isn’t fun. Luckily later in the game the whole concept is pretty much abandoned and you get to go back to just bashing things. WIN!

The game has been widely criticised for being short. This is a bit of a blessing really. I don’t really like games that drag on for 250 hours, especially when 245 of those hours are mind numbing filler. While Heavenly Sword is short, probably too short, at least none of it feels like it’s there just to pad the game out.

The short length of the game means the story really doesn’t develop all that well and stay pretty shallow. But then you don’t really play this kind of game for the story.

Presentation is excellent, this is easily one of the prettiest games on the PS3. The voice acting and cut scenes are incredible for a game. It’s just a pity that the story doesn’t have any real substance to back up the excellent presentation.

Given how rapidly you can finish this one I recommend a rental.

DTN.

New Faces

You may have noticed something ... you may not, especially if you have eyes.

Some people do show an incredibly ability to be almost completely oblivious to things that are right in front of their faces but pay huge amounts of attention to things they can't even see like God and freedom. Pay attention people!

Anyway... *cough* I now have a new domain www.hopelesslyinsolvent.com, which is cool.

To celebrate I made a nice new header. I am not 100% happy with it at the moment but it is getting late and i can't be stuffed fiddling with it any more.

I plan on re-doing the entire layout in the neat future.

Seriously, pay more attention.

DTN.

Halo 3

So... Halo 3 is finally here and if the Microsoft hype machine is to be believed this is an event on par with Jesus rising from the dead or that whole 9/11 hullabaloo.

The hype surrounding Halo 3 is so extreme that I can’t see how the game could ever live up to it. That hasn't stopped a million fan boys (and girls) from doing their darnedest to believe it has though

So, how does it stack up.

It should be abundantly clear by now that I am not overly impressed. I can’t help but feel that we’ve been through all this before, twice. Halo 3 is just Halo 2 with prettier graphics. Sure there is some new game play but it's pretty much Halo 2 with bells on.

This hasn’t stopped all and sundry raving about it. IGN were especially excited, dubbing Halo “the most fun first-person shooter on the planet”. They didn’t stop there though, also raving that Halo is “to die for in 1080p”. Only it isn’t. Bungie fessed up that the game actually only runs at 640p. IGN could at least do their damn homework.

Oh but it doesn’t stop there... Gamespy went so far as to say “Halo 3 is the reason the Xbox 360 exists”. WHAT!. What about all the other games. Why didn't they just call it the Halo 3 box then.

There are so many over the top reviews, Microsoft are going to have trouble fitting all the quotes on the ‘platinum’ edition box.

I can only assume that these reviewers have never played any other First Person Shooters. If you are looking for a FPS with a seminal story, go play Half Life 2 and its Episodes or Bioshock. If you want graphics (even on the 360) try Gears of War or The Darkness. For multi-player I don’t think anything has yet topped the classics, Quake 3 and UT2K4.

Just to clarify, by no means is Halo 3 a bad game, in fact it is a pretty damn good game. But it's a bit short, it's graphics aren't impressive, it's story doesn't so much end as stop and it's gameplay feels just like the last 2 halo's and teh world has moved on since then. It doesn’t deserve the mindless praise that it has received. It’s almost on par with the mindless hype that it received before its launch.

I also have to pick at the crazy accessories you can get with this game. First the game comes in 3 different versions, including a $150 version with a bloody great plastic helmet included (No you can’t wear it, that would have been cool). There is also the special Halo 3 Xbox which, inexplicably, doesn’t come with a copy of the game. You pay $160 extra for some green and gold paint.

There are also special controllers, a special headset, a box to put your accessories in and probably a kitchen sink if you look hard enough. All of it suitably overpriced.

I can’t help but feel Halo 4 is inevitable. Halo 3 has been confirmed as the biggest entertainment release in history and I can’t see Microsoft leaving that money train at the station.

Cheers

DTN.