Since I tried a pair of Predators (TM) (C) (All Rights Reserved.) (please don't sue me) when I was a kid, I've never really stepped (Aha!) outside of Adidas. They're the right size, but more importantly, the right shape (I have what can generously be described as wide feet) and that counts for a lot when you're running around.
How much does it count for?
The right side has taken a beating
The boots are mostly fine, so I'll just get a set of insoles and re-use them for training or something.
I've had these boots for about a year and this wear and tear is the result of training three times a week with one game a week, which makes these a decent pair of boots in my books. The shell is fine on both, it's the in-soles that've had it. I'll replace those in the future, which will give me two pairs of boots because I've now got a shiny new pair of Canterbury something or others (TM) (C) (All Rights Reserved.).
And they actually fit pretty well. They feel fractionally heavier than the ones you see above, but they have the same wide touch along the balls of the feet and they don't taper too heavily at the toe which is nice for us abnormals. The stud arrangement seems fine for a hard grass surface, so I expect them to perform well on 3G too. I haven't tried them on wet ground, but I could see the heels clogging up which is an annoyance, but one shared with all blade designs, (or at least I find it is) so take that as you may.
I did get a small blister on the back of my heels from not tightening them properly. Whenever I wear a new pair I tend to leave them slightly loose at first, to work out the stiffness in the material, before moving on to proper lacing. That caused the blister, so don't fret if you're thinking of purchasing them.
Looking good so far.
So would I recommend them? If you have an Adidas foot (wider feet, wider toe profile, prefer a more supported arch than Nike offer) I would say they're a solid choice. The arch feels slightly lower than Adidas who tend to offer more support, but they're a world away from the Nike boots I've tried, which have arch support bordering on the masochistic. Nike shoes are for hooves, not feet.
I can't really comment on their long-term comfiness or their durability yet because I haven't worn them enough, but early indications are good.
Brand loyalty makes sense with boots where it doesn't with other items. Each manufacturer has a test foot they keep locked away in a vault, that they bring out for new designs. If their test foot is a plaster mould of a sheep footprint (as is the case with Nike) then your foot is obviously not going to fit. Internal designs don't change much, so you can be fairly certain a new shoe in the same range will fit if the previous pair did. At least that's been my experience over the years.
Canterbury have made a smart choice in basing their design off human feet instead of bovine or pachyderm trotters like some of the competition, and these seem to be a pretty decent pair of boots. If you want to save fifty quid on the Adidas competition, head on down to your local sports shop and try these on. You might end up liking them!
It's a map showing Tokyo (I live in 'Funabashi,' if you're interested) showing the town relative to other places on Earth. It covers things like surface area, relative population density and so on, and gives you a visual representation of just how massive this place is.
Obviously, being English the overlay of Tokyo onto the map of England was the one that struck me most. Absolutely, utterly bonkers.
So I've written a few times about the stagnation of technology in the personal computing sector. Mainly the relative lack of innovation in the field of graphics, but occasionally in other areas too.
With the introduction of VR (something I am desperate to jump into) in the coming months I believe there will be a leap forward, both in raw tech and the usage of it. Naysayers will point to the dismal failure of 3D and dismiss it off-hand, but there are several crucial differences between 3D TV's and the headsets used for VR. The only downside is how long they've taken to bring the physical items to market, or rather, how far in advance they advertised their products and how much hyperbole they induced. They started too early and the result is a slight dip of interest just as launch is rounding the corner. Certainly not ideal.
Anyway, I'll save that talk for another day because I'm listening to music right now.
Music and sound are always the things that set the tone, and add the cherries to the top of any audio/visual work. Movies are always praised for their sound, but rarely are they about the sound. The same is true for games, where graphics rule the roost and with the exception of a brief period around the mid to late 2000's they always have. In fact I would argue that sound is something that you can point to as having been pretty solid throughout the history of computer entertainment, with the advent of modern chiptunes drawing a direct line to the limited audio chipsets of yore.
So I was thinking about the soundtracks that made the entertainment of 2015 compelling for me, and there were a few standout offerings.
The first I'll highlight is this:
This is classic James Bond, or as near as you can come without infringing on copyright. It's a great song to listen to for the voice alone, but the lyrics work particularly well with the story of the game(s). Often I'll listen to a movie theme and wonder whether I watched the movie the song is supposed to represent. Quantum of Solace, for example, is nonsensical to me. I will concede that it's entirely possible that I'm just me being thick with that example though. This track is different, it is MGS5 for me. I wonder what that says about my feelings on the game as a whole...
The next is a game I haven't even played:
This is a game about space trucking and space shooting. Or rather, truckin' an' shootin'.
Regardless of where or when I hear this, it makes me think of haulin' grimy goods and 'spice,' which is testament to how well the music does its job. But I also just like listening to it whenever I've got a spare few minutes and need to get something done. This is gettin' it done music.
I then had to think about the other music I've been listening to that's from games this year, and after a quick think I came up some more tracks from Rebel Galaxy, and then, I remembered this is the year of Hotline Miami 2, which follows up from a trippy prequel that had pounding dance music designed to pep you up. I listened to the OST for Miami 2 and was pretty disappointed, it's nowhere near as good as I remember it being. Not a patch on the first.
Your mileage may vary.
I moved on and found the Undertale OST, a game that I intensely disliked (and am the only person on the planet to do so). It has a cutesy chiptune soundtrack that manages to play well with the themes of the game and also be relatively inoffensive in its own right. It's not something I would sit down and listen to for the sake of enjoying sound, but if I'm working on something else and want an accompaniment I consider loading it up.
Do not take this to be a tacit endorsement of the game.
Next on the list was something I hadn't even considered, but a podcast convinced me to take a listen. It's a game from Nintendo, which means it carries certain expectations (that it'll be cutesy and sugary to the point of absolute toxicity) that I'm glad to say it dodges.
It's still pretty light, but it also gets reallyweird which is something I can appreciate.
Take a listen to that and tell me your brain isn't in a thousand pieces on the floor. That's some obscure use of an electric keyboard right there. If only I could have figured out how to do this in music class.
The only problem is that it's so strange I'd struggle to do anything while listening to it, and I certainly wouldn't sit down to 'appreciate,' it, so it falls into that area of the venn diagram where there be dragons. At once energetic and charming, but nigh impossible to listen to.
And then I thought about the heavy hitters in the music world, the Halo guys. The ones responsible for stuff like this:
Easily one of the most recognisable soundtracks in games, and an absolutely fantastic thing to listen to, even if you're not one of us.
This year saw the release of Halo 5, (called five even though it's about the 8934783957th game with a Halo name on it) which should have been another landmark moment in orchestral scores.
But it wasn't really.
It starts with the theme tune for the game, which is cheap, but frankly an excellent way to remind people of what is about to happen. After that quick introduction it jumps into the new arrangements, which are still excellent, but not quite what the original trilogy were.
It's not even fatigue, because no one else does it like this studio, and they only release a new game every couple of years (random mobile phone games and barefaced cash grabs notwithstanding). It's also not boredom within the album itself because the songs are different enough to be entertaining over the two or so hours. It's something else. Unfortunately, I don't have the vocabulary of music or the will to learn it, so I will forever be unable to articulate why.
The new GTA came out on PC this year, but that's primarily licensed music that doesn't really do anything for me. A lot of people talk about the soundtracks to these games, but being licensed, they're just songs with no meaning to me.
Special mention to Final Fantasy 14, the online one. I've started dabbling with it this year and I've been absolutely charmed, not least because of the music. It's orchestral in the same way as Halo, but takes aim at an entirely different area of the brain. Just like the original Bungie scores, it hits, and is worth listening to.
And that just about wraps up my thoughts on game music for this year. It was a year of banner releases, giving us the biggest names, a host of new titles and on the whole, a slew of great soundtracks to listen to.
Even during lean gaming years the music tends to be great, but last year delivered on all fronts. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2016.
