1. Stealing The Getaway from a slumbering friend’s house. The Getaway is a Playstation II game in which you get to drive around London and shoot people. The action is not as violent or as stylised as that in GTA Vics City, but the driving….oh the driving. It’s fantabulous. Makes me want to go and steal cars. Police cars if possible.
The makers have obviously spent a great deal of time mapping roads and shop fronts in London, which means that the player is immersed in a realistic looking immitation of the frustrating traffic of the capital, with things leaping out to remind you that you are on Piccadilly on the way to Hyde Park – ooh look it’s Tower Records. One-way systems, bollards, irritating raliings which prevent you veering left, and landmarks are all where they should be. I found myself driving between Bethnal Green and Frith Street last night. All of London’s frustrating detail is reproduced, although as a getaway driver, one is less inclined to stick to the left hand side of the road / pavement / policewoman’s foot when trying to make progress. And more likely to steal police cars, and hack down pedestrians.
I wrote a thesis once on the effects of videogames on their players. I can’t really remember what it said, but my latest evidence is clear: I bought Vice City. I got banned from driving a company hire car because of speeding fines, bus lane fines, and excess damage to the car. Some damage was allegedly from me driving into walls. Other damage was allegedly caused by driving through car parks over obstacles that were designed to deter (if not totally prevent) people driving over them. The visual images presented in The Getaway are more realistic than those in Vice City. I thoroughly expect to be ram-raiding shops in stolen cars by the end of March.
2. Will Self’s book – My Idea of Fun. A great book in which the central character has already discussed ripping off the head of a tramp and addressing himself to the corpse by page three. Thoroughly enjoyable and full of big words, like eidetic.
3. Happy hour at 9pm on a Sunday.