Second Shot

Loser! Looooossseeeerrrr!!!

Henman! Heeeennn Maaaannnn!!

It’s the first Monday of Wimbledon 2007 and there’s a new look in town. Centre Court has had its roof taken off in preparation for the new motorised cover to be installed for next years tournament.

Andy Murray has wisely decided not to play due to wrist injury and so, once again, it falls to Tim Henman to provide us with the glimmer of hope that a Brit could win the Championship 2007.

And it’s been a pretty exciting and classic Henman match. There’s the usual average form, turning into a good run, then flip it on its head and Henman starts to lose several points, games and then consecutive sets. Then invert again every-so-often as he pulls a few fantastic shots out of nowhere, then gets his form back and raises the hopes of fans, but then decides to leave them hanging.

Finally, he’s now pulled it back. Two sets a piece against Carlos Moya, five games each, and a minimum of two games to determine who goes through. Four match points Henman had, couldn’t convert a single one but Moya was on form where he needed it. And then…

…the players decide to call it a day! The players themselves. Not the umpire. Gah, I don’t know. But what I do know is that watching Henman is most definitely good exercise for your heart. Back him or not, there’s nothing quite like a Henman match at Wimbledon.

As a side note, they’ve now incorporated Hawk-Eye into the matches. Players are allowed up to four ‘challenges’ each on calls by lines-people. Hawk-Eye will then show whether the ball was in or not, thereby removing all doubt. Now, my problem is that the Umpire is supposed to have ultimate rule and if neither the players nor the umpire can trust the lines-people, what is the point in having them. Or, in fact, the umpire themselves.

A classic example was a challenge made by Henman. The baselline lines-person wimpered an ‘out’, barely audible, but there was nothing from the umpire to reinstate that statement or to contradict it. It’s like they are waiting for the players to challenge, and if they don’t then the umpire will just say whatever. So what if the player is waiting for the umpire to make a decision? And especially so when the player doesn’t get the response they were expecting. No doubt it would be too late to challenge.

I just see this as removing all trust and authority from the umpire and lines-people. And at times, it doesn’t do any favours to the flow of the game; waiting for authoritive responses, challenging, watching the large TV screen showing Hawk-Eye to replay the points, people ‘ooohing’ like with the cricket TV screen relaying in/out. Sigh, it’s just not like the Wimbledon I remember back in the day.

Hot Fuzz has been released on DVD today and saw a surprising price of £10 from Tesco. Plus, you get a free manly Yorkie bar. Sold.

And it was also the day that Nick Frost and Edgar Wright were in Oxford Street’s HMV scrawling over other people’s just-bought DVD. My sister went there to see what it was all about, bumped into someone on the escalator and then found that they had finished the signing.

Turns out that without noticing, my sister had bumped into Nick Frost carrying a load of DVDs although she didn’t realise at the time. Still, would have been rude to interupt his shopping.

And don’t HMV have baskets?

This is what a proper 3D sandbox game should be like. Crackdown puts you in the shoes of a superhero Agent; bounding, shooting and driving you way around the three cities is a joy to behold.

Did I mention that I went to Hong Kong and Japan recently? No? Well, I did, and came back two or three weeks ago. It was absolutely amazing and I highly recommend that you go out there, at least to Hong Kong anyway.

Going to Japan was interesting although we didn’t really see a lot of the cultural side of things. As for the technology aspect, it’s not too much different from Hong Kong – maybe a few more larger shopping centres dedicated to specific things, but nothing you couldn’t find anywhere else.

Hong Kong was kind of how I remembered it, all those many years ago, but not quite vividly enough. So everything was kind of new to me. Odd, I know, but that’s how it was. Best things to recommend about Hong Kong are the food (delicious and cheap, as always), transport (cheap and super-clean, the latter due to the imposed fines for eating on the underground trains) and general niceness of the places visited. I don’t know if I could say it’s highly a bad thing, but the humidity hits you in the face, more so than the high temperatures. Oh, and when it rains, it pours. And everyone seems to be afraid of the rain and won’t venture out, only to stay within the covered porches of shopping centres and restaurants and therefore getting in the way of people, like me, wanting to get out there.

I was going to spend awhile posting about it, but can’t be bothered now. I do have something in mind, to share with you all, but that’ll have to wait until I get enough motivation to actually go about and start it. Anyway, I can’t wait to go out there again. Amazing.

Anyway, along with the general sight-seeing and family meetings out in Hong Kong, I decided to vaguely search out some aspects of gaming. I’ve actually written some articles for Gamesrant already, found here:

Special Report #1 from… Hong Kong
Special Report #2 from… Hong Kong
Special Report #3 from… Tokyo, Japan

…and I was thinking how much fun it would be to actually do such articles for other parts of the world. It’s definitely something that I will keep in my mind whenever I go travelling.

Finally, my latest review of the fantastic Osu! Takatae! Ouendan 2, the sequel to the amazing music-rhythm game Osu! Takatae! Ouendan (funnily enough).

Woo, all game’d out for now. Take care.

Oh, what a huge disappointment. This third (and final?) installment of PotC series seemed like a bit of a mish-mash of stories and ideas, none of which congealled together properly. Besides the premise of there being the upcoming onslaught of all pirates and those related (at least, that’s what I gathered), there didn’t seem to be much else going on other than faffing about.

I don’t think that I can use the excuse of having chosen the late screening (starting at 11pm, finishing at 2am) – which was for adults only yet the cinema still left the intermission section in, so it seemed like they cocked up the movie reels – because it wasn’t as if I was falling asleep and missing key speeches. It just didn’t feel like it was going anywhere.

And then the climatic battle at the end. Pish. An absolute waste of my two-and-half-hours of waiting.

But if you’ve already seen the other two on the big screen, then you might as well go and (potentially) round it all up with this one. It’s an okay jolly but nothing spectacular.