Swallow this
A group of us from the office did a pretty cool thing last night.
We headed off to a sugar cane estate near Umdloti to watch the swallows. You see, there’s a patch of wetland there that attracts hundreds of thousands of the migratory birds in the Southern Hemisphere’s Summer months (they’ve fled down to Africa to escape the European Winter).
It’s become something of a new Natal tradition to go up there at sunset, and watch the flocks while having a picnic or enjoying a glass of wine. As the sun sets the birds plunge en masse into the wetlands reeds and the show is over.
For anyone who is interested, I recommend going on a night when the sky is clear, and taking binoculars to really get a close-up look. Also, you don’t have much longer to enjoy the spectacle. Autumn chill is in the air and these guys will be heading back to Europe soon.
Anyway, today, in theory, 2 pop culture items should be arriving at my house: the Season 1-5 box set of Family Guy (which Paul and I have joint custody of), and a copy of Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, which GEAR has sent me to review. There are pros and cons to this, however. On the pro side, the game is only retailing in South Africa from 16 March, so I’m getting to play it before the rest of the country. To quote Glenn Quagmire, ‘Oooh yeaaah.’
However, I’m not sure yet of my review’s deadline. I know game reviewers don’t necessarily play a game fully before writing their article (particularly if the game debuts inconveniently close to review submission time). And some games are just too expansive to cover fully in that time. Oblivion was one such example.
Immortal Throne adds a further 15 hours of gameplay onto the original, and I’ll have to play the game from scratch (well, wade through 10+ levels at least) to properly comment on the new Dream Mastery class of character.
That’s a lot to cover in a weekend which is already pretty full of activities, including Pro 20 cricket on Friday night at Kingsmead (Durbanites, you’re invited!), hunting for a wedding outfit on Saturday morning, and probably heading up to the farm again. I’d really prefer to review the game for the next issue deadline, so I can get to grips with its content properly. However, with magazines working 2 months ahead of schedule, that means the review would only appear in the June issue... a long way away.
The best solution I can think of is to structure a review based on my knowledge of the expansion’s content, and then slot in my quality judgements once I’ve played a bit.
Meanwhile, I wait for my deadline answer. Thank goodness I’ve got my column pretty much out the way.
We headed off to a sugar cane estate near Umdloti to watch the swallows. You see, there’s a patch of wetland there that attracts hundreds of thousands of the migratory birds in the Southern Hemisphere’s Summer months (they’ve fled down to Africa to escape the European Winter).
It’s become something of a new Natal tradition to go up there at sunset, and watch the flocks while having a picnic or enjoying a glass of wine. As the sun sets the birds plunge en masse into the wetlands reeds and the show is over.
For anyone who is interested, I recommend going on a night when the sky is clear, and taking binoculars to really get a close-up look. Also, you don’t have much longer to enjoy the spectacle. Autumn chill is in the air and these guys will be heading back to Europe soon.
Anyway, today, in theory, 2 pop culture items should be arriving at my house: the Season 1-5 box set of Family Guy (which Paul and I have joint custody of), and a copy of Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, which GEAR has sent me to review. There are pros and cons to this, however. On the pro side, the game is only retailing in South Africa from 16 March, so I’m getting to play it before the rest of the country. To quote Glenn Quagmire, ‘Oooh yeaaah.’
However, I’m not sure yet of my review’s deadline. I know game reviewers don’t necessarily play a game fully before writing their article (particularly if the game debuts inconveniently close to review submission time). And some games are just too expansive to cover fully in that time. Oblivion was one such example.
Immortal Throne adds a further 15 hours of gameplay onto the original, and I’ll have to play the game from scratch (well, wade through 10+ levels at least) to properly comment on the new Dream Mastery class of character.
That’s a lot to cover in a weekend which is already pretty full of activities, including Pro 20 cricket on Friday night at Kingsmead (Durbanites, you’re invited!), hunting for a wedding outfit on Saturday morning, and probably heading up to the farm again. I’d really prefer to review the game for the next issue deadline, so I can get to grips with its content properly. However, with magazines working 2 months ahead of schedule, that means the review would only appear in the June issue... a long way away.
The best solution I can think of is to structure a review based on my knowledge of the expansion’s content, and then slot in my quality judgements once I’ve played a bit.
Meanwhile, I wait for my deadline answer. Thank goodness I’ve got my column pretty much out the way.
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