It's official - Wii Fit is now a part of my life. Every day at around 7PM, I jump onto the Wii Balance Board and get my BMI reading. The picture above was the first BMI reading I got from it, and I was kind of shocked. Obese? Me? Overweight, yep. I am that. Not obese though. Obese? Thing must be broken. Yet I look down and see the developer belly which was hewn from countless late-nighters and an infinite conveyor belt of takeaway meals. Actually, the way Wii Fit shows you your BMI is kind of horrendous if you're weight conscious - your Mii is on screen and thin to start with, but slowly expands as the BMI increases. The end flourish is a comedy sound effect which does nothing to help the fact that there's a cartoon version of yourself on screen looking pretty fat and miserable.
Wii Fit has helped me in the past two weeks or so to a much more nicer BMI of 30.15 - I yearn for the day when I'm not in the painfully red obese oblong and am sitting in the pink glow of being overweight. It's still not a good place to be, but a hell of a lot better than obese. I've been on the thing often as well as complimenting the workouts with some running again. Ah, I've missed the running. I am determined to lose this gut though. Half my wardrobe now is unwearable - I've got slim-fit hipster jeans slowly getting covered in dust, and shirts which don't button up the way they were designed.
I was extremely lucky to pick up Wii Fit though - I somehow managed to get to PC World the exact moment they got stock in (and ironically it was after a 3km run..!) and now I'm getting serious with some rhythm boxing courtesy of a trainer Mii who sounds a lot like Jason Stratham. It's crazy I come out of those workouts with a sweat on, but it all helps. I've also cut out completely the chocolate and sweets. Biscuits? None of that sweet cakey nonsense for me. I've forsaken my treats for a gutless body. Is it natural to be doing this? I guess I just don't want to bounce as much these days.
I went for my annual visit with my optician at the weekend - although my optician has now become a Scottish fella with worse eyesight than me. Could this even be possible? He managed to put myself at ease with all the wacky things which are currently happening with my eyes. I have floaters - one main one for each eye - which drift into vision sometimes to say hello. I hate floaters. I also have the joylessness of seeing light sources shimmer in a next-gen-bloom-kind-of-way - it was a nice novelty to begin with, walking home with a dreamlike sheen over all. Now? It's kind of bloody irritating, evenmoreso when I was out running one night and not only were the lights all shimmery, but there was mist about - which only seemed to make the effect much worse. Oh, and the glasses constantly steaming up through my exertions too. So, yep. I hate my vision.
Mr. Optician also told me of the things to expect if (when?) one of my retinas decides to detach itself from the back of the eyeball. My old optician told me that I should expect a "curtain effect", though the new optician was a lot more descriptive - expect plenty more floaters than usual (like shitloads more) followed by flashes of white light and then the dreaded curtain effect. When that happens, I should phone them up without hesitation. I've been told that this is what you would expect if you are short of sight. On the good news side of things, he did mention that my eyesight hasn't changed that much - although his final test (a new one I didn't experience last year) proved I may soon need *two* sets of glasses - one for reading and one for normal everyday activity.
Getting old sucks. So does the prospect of spending money on spectacles - although my healthcare covers £200 of it all, so I decided to get a new pair anyway and also a pair of sunglasses in lieu of the pair I lost when I was training for the GNR a few years back. I did feel like not taking my vision for granted when I left there, so I decided to watch Watchmen at the wonderous Tyneside Cinema. Verdict? Really enjoyed it, although I've not read the book in a while so maybe when I re-read the book, I can get angry with the film like half of the critics out there. There were some very brilliant bits in the movie though, and there was some pretty impressive gore too, especially the scrap in the alleyway. People who have seen the movie will know exactly what I mean.
What else? Wheelman is going to be out next week! I'm quite excited about this - feedback on the demo has been majorly positive. There are still the naysayers out there, but we've got the majority and that'll do us. The game should be out the 25th (I've seen 24th somewhere though...) in the US and the 27th in the UK. To celebrate this, Ubisoft have produced a brand new trailer which - quite frankly - kicks serious booty -
Now Ubisoft produce some lovely trailers - they have a knack of marrying mainstream music with the action (check out these trailers for Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed and try and tell me otherwise, oh doubter of things!) and the above is no exception. I think it puts Wheelman firmly in the "fun" department. "Look, it's not a seriously gritty thing like GTA4. It lets you shunt cars, spin 180 and shoot shit and leap from car to car with gay abandon!". This trailer has got a lot of positive feedback, though I think it's interesting that the Midway logo has been toned down somewhat - you can see it at the end, but you need to squint a bit.
I think that says a lot about the company in this day and age. I can imagine the marketing men of Ubisoft getting together and realising that the Midway logo is a negative than a positive. This is sad news, though perhaps unsurprising given the slow descent which has been happening. Vin's also interviewed very, very briefly for GameTrailers TV (Note the caption for the interview doesn't mention Midway Newcastle) and it's pretty much telling that Vin doesn't really seem to know too much about the game. I've crunched on that motherfucker for over a year, the least he can do is know a bit more about it.
Vin recently appeared on a French chat show for Fast and Furious, and looked kind of unsettled when Wheelman was shown on big screens and one of the hosts handed him a controller. The result? Vin bouncing off walls and spectacularly ending the demonstration slamming into a roadblock. Thankfully a cop car exploded and the audience went crazy. Thank god for that exploding cop car, or else it would have looked kind of stupid. The host then showed Vin "how it should be done". Vin tried to rescue the situation describing the "Reverse Cyclone" (It's actually called The Cyclone, Vin) by getting up out of his chair and turning on the spot while shooting an imaginary pistol.
So, yep. I get the feeling that Vin would rather talk more about the new Riddick game than Wheelman - that's the impression I get. Has Wheelman changed from the original vision of a straight-laced GTA clone - in Vin's eyes? Is he pissed off that you can do all that fun arcadey stuff? I'm extremely glad we didn't go down the GTA4 route of chore-like gameplay and the seriousness of it all. GTA San Andreas had parachutes and jetpacks. What happened?
I think Wheelman will do well at retail - I think there's been that turnaround we've all hoped for when the gamers of the world realise what we're not trying to be. "GTA4 Meets Burnout" seems like a good description. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks - review scores (the ones I've heard of have been very favourable), the game's release, sales figures and that possibility of a sequel. If we get to do a sequel, I wouldn't mind at all - it'll be great to see where else we can take the franchise and add the things that we wanted to, but couldn't.
It'll be interesting to see if Vin's on board too - or at least care enough for a sequel. Maybe if we have an unlockable Riddick skin, he'd be interested.
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