Gone Home

I had a single job today. Dreaded doing it however because it was in a whole new realm of social awkwardness. For our Uni short film we needed to get a photograph of an old lady in some apparel I bought from a charity shop, of course this also involves me asking a total stranger to dress up and pose happily for me. It took me 30 minutes of fake browsing to pluck up the courage to ask, but they were very happy to actually do it. Guess you can always depend on the kindness of strangers.

The other, not so important thing I did today was get around to playing 'Gone Home.' An indie game that really made headlines when it first came out earlier this year due to how it tells a story through a video game in a way that is impossible in any other medium. It got exceptionally high review scores. Been excited to experience this for a little while now and now that I finally got to sit down and play the game the New York Times called ' the greatest video game love story ever told.' I can say that I was underwhelmed. Which really sucks because I wanted to fall in love with this game so badly but there was just some things in my mind that held me back. Without giving anything away about the plot, I will say that the game gives the player a lot of respect and it is an achievement in terms of narrative in a video game... But that's also it's biggest weakness. If you took the same basic plot and put it in a book or a film then it'd be mediocre. A lot of game critics are saying that it's brilliant due how it takes strides to improve narrative in games as a medium. Main issue is, the medium is still in it infancy. It's like being given the consolation prize in a creative writing competition because you wrote the whole thing in gravy rather than ink - your story was ok, but the judges appreciate your quirk. 

Short rant over. Here's a nice picture of me in town from last night with my housemate and two friends. Best thing about this photo was Louis' facebook comment: 'Jesus, Theo's wearing braces.'