On to Dublin

Aidan: You ever been to Ireland, Alan?
Alan: No, no. I’d love to go.
Aidan: It amazes me when people say that and it’s only forty-nine quid on a plane.
Alan: Yeah, I think that’s what puts me off. Well, that’s the smalltalk, now let’s get down to business. Now, your programme – [bad Irish accent] What’s de big oidea?

I’m Alan Partridge (1997)

Episode 5 – To Kill A Mocking Alan

Ireland was uncharted territory for me as it was, I was very surprised to learn, for a lot of people I knew. As a result, this little exchange went through my head every time and pretty much brought a smirk to my face every time.

Inflation may have changed the prices in the last 18 years but the sense of it is still correct – the costs of visiting Ireland are far from prohibitive. And planes are transport I try to avoid when I can and so I took the train. And boat.

The ever brilliant seat61 explains that there are two ways to take the train to Dublin and I chose the rail and sail option via Holyhead which meant a Sunday morning, 8am, start at Euston for the train. It takes a while but it should not be as frustrating as flying which involves, in my case, a long trip to the airport followed by a huge wait and faff to board the plane. The packing into a pressurised container with stressed people is also not huge fun, and this is then (though I do love the views at approach and landing) to be followed by customs and whatever weird transport is needed to get to the city centre on the other side. That extra time is not enjoyable, and usually not cheap either (unless LHR or LCY) so I avoid it where possible. There is also a less restrictive luggage policy – no worries about 100ml of liquids and getting things to fit into a particular bag^[1].

Train travel is so pleasant – or it can be but so often isn't in the UK nowadays. And very rarely on the weekends is it running as it should with a decent service. Virgin Trains rarely provide a decent service in my experience and so I went to Euston expecting annoyance and that is what I got^[2]. There was a huge queue to get onto the train from 15 minutes or so before. Tickets were being checked very slowly and the time for the train was approaching – there was a football match between Liverpool and Manchester United on the day and there were many fans using the train to go up to Liverpool… as they do most weekends. I also needed to change train to get to Holyhead as there seems not be a direct service on Sundays so after a change at Crewe, I took another train which was calm, peaceful and came with wonderful scenery attached to it on the way to Holyhead.

The train station at Holyhead is directly connected to the ferry port and so it is very easy to check in and board as a foot passenger from the train. On board, there is lots of space and a fair few things to do too – but first I wanted to check if they were showing the football. Judging by the noise and congregation, they were showing it in the bar so I settled down to watch for a less than happy experience^[3]. Once the game was over, I had a look around the open parts of the ferry and it was pretty spacious – a nice space in which to travel. I had about an hour and a half after the game finished so I found a quiet area outside the cinema to play some games. Being able to stretch out is nice and there were places to do so without having to buy food and drink. The only issue on this particular crossing were the numbers of kids (by which I mean under the age of 18) wandering about and that tension of people of that age being “hard” and aggressive and listening to pretty rubbish music on their phones. But there was still plenty of space to escape – the match probably made me more annoyed than I would otherwise have been.

Once we arrived at Dublin ferry port, it was a fairly quick disembarkation to the outside world, quicker still without passport control, whereupon I got a bus to the city centre. The bus was almost empty as there seems to be few foot passengers in total and even many of those probably make their own way from the port – so I went upstairs with my bag to see what I could see. It takes about twenty minutes into town and the bus is timetabled with the ferry so it is hard to miss unless you really mess it up. The overall trip is pretty stress-free and would be even more so if I had known the details. I had been travelling from 8am to about 6pm but when so much of it is uneventfully sitting, it is quite easy to fill that time.

Once I was in Dublin that night, I checked in to my Bed and Breakfast which was a short walk from the city centre, had dinner and then had a saunter to the Liffey. I noticed quite a lot of young Europeans that seemed to have made themselves feel at home staffing the cafes and bars – a European city.

^{1. This trip was my first with a travelling combination of a new compact camera and new tablet – replacing a netbook and SLR – which should make packing a lot easier anyway.↩}

^{2. This is not an unexpected rush and in any sensibly run world, there would be scope to have more services for busier days – I think this is not possible in the wonderfully fragmented world of post-privatisation British trains As the time for departure arrived, I had got onto the train but not to my seat as the aisles were full of people – like a commuter service at rush hour. I made my way to my reserved seat and asked someone to move. They did so without fuss but they then had to stand all the way for two and a half hours. It was cramped and uncomfortable with rival fans travelling together (without trouble, it must be said) but it really is appallingly run. The Pendolino which VT use regularly is quite an uncomfortable train anyway – how they have managed to advertise it as a “better” train is the majesty of glossy PR trumping what people actually feel. It works too – there was a campaign to keep gifting Virgin Trains loads of public money to run trains on the West Coast Main Line (the cash cow of the national rail network) in spite of the positives of the service – the best maintained track in the country – being nothing to do with Virgin. And now they have been gifted the East Coast Main Line service too – a service which was so unprofitable that the previous operating company, NXEC, walked away from it as they could not make money from it. The “dead hand of the state” then had to take over as the operator of last resort and managed to then be the best run and operated line in the country – which reflected badly on other providers and the overall policy of privatisation. So what does a government do when moaning about the public service deficit and owning a service that lowers that deficit? It re-tenders to the lively hands of enterprise.↩}

^{3. The match was Liverpool vs Manchester United – a tense game at the best of times but the score was a hammering. And Steven Gerrard also got very stupidly sent off after a few seconds on the pitch to kill any hopes of a comeback. As a game, it was depressing but I found the act of watching football with so many other people arguably more depressing. Liverpool and Manchester United are big teams and they have big followings in Ireland too –which mainly derive from the many Irish in both cities (Liverpool and Manchester). As a result, there were many fans of all ages and they basically all made me cringe watching the game. I used to watch a lot of football in pubs and it was not too bad with friends but I hated watching when there were more people – not because of the numbers but because you suddenly had to hear the thought processes of football fans. It is even worse at World Cup time as you then also have to hear the thoughts (there is no process….) of non-fans watching the game. Watching this game reminded me – that thought was most always just “get it in there” or “get stuck in”. I guess we just like different aspects of the game…↩}

Monument Valley

I was told about Monument Valley quite a while ago - and warned it was pretty short. On sale at 49p, that is not a terrible price for a few hours of enjoyment and it is apparently a pretty clever game. It has also been ludicrously well received with plenty of awards and lots of sales - a rarity in these freemium times.

The point of Monument Valley is to use the 2D image to pass over a 3D space and in that sense it reminded me of Echochrome (a fairly early era PS3 game by SCEJ which allowed you to traverse the paths with a change of perspective) rather a lot. Monument Valley is a mobile game and so it has the obvious control method of the touchscreen and it is also a relatively simple method. I don't normally play mobile games but I know a lot of people think that they have matured a lot (and you can, of course, now play ports of some older blockbuster titles such as GTA and R-Type) so I was happy to give it a go. But only after quite a lot of faff to get it installed on my mobile which required quite a lot of retries.

The art style is simple and clean and you are presented with a path to a goal which you must walk to - simply with a tap to where on the path you want to go. It is clear, later on, that the wayfinding goes beyond just straight lines so you can click the final destination that you want after clearing/making the path. The path is made by moving levers (using the touchscreen directly) and/or tripping switches with your character. Most of the puzzles, as they are, involve moving levers and platforms so that using the screen view, it looks like there is a clear path.

The art direction, as you can see, is nice and clear - with a story book feel and like a coloured version of Echochrome. It is apparently inspired my Escher and Japanese woodprints. The sounds are stark and there is an ambient soundscape which reminded me a lot of Fez as there is a slight background sound and the levers and switches result in big movements of large stone platforms and this sound is similar. Also, level completions and level select has a similar ambient soundscape.

The game itself probably took me a couple of hours to complete over 10 levels and the puzzles do get a little more involved over that time. The main issue is that they never get particularly tricky and there are not really enough variations or opportunities to be wrong. As a result, you never feel right. It is not the kind of game that allows you to solve levels in different ways, it is quite prescriptive and so it felt, throughout, like a marginally interactive story. The controls made me feel a little detached as the tap to walk mechanic just means that you don't have to do much, solve the puzzles until you have a path and then press the final door. This is later broken down into multiscreen levels but I never felt that the levels were taxing and felt uninvolved in the whole thing. Later, you do have some "crow" like enemies but even they do not appear to do much other than provide annoying cawing.

Overall, the style and idea of the game is quite good but it feels quite a lot like a prototype rather than a full game and has the sense of the training section of a more full game. There are more levels that can be purchased (and I have not done so - it didn't grab me sufficiently) and so it may have a lot more scope but it is unlikely that I will ever find out. Unfortunately, whilst playing it, I thought mainly of the unfulfilled potential of this game and that I much preferred the Echochrome method of being "clever". That, as a game, had a little more variety and was not hampered by the control method which therefore allowed you to get things a little wrong with having so much more freedom. That would be hugely frustrating on a touchscreen mobile game, but that is still how I would judge the game experiences.

Now, I cannot be sure that this is not how mobile games work, simple and always with a sense of progress - this is quite a regular feature of games generally but it felt like a time waster. Maybe that is all it was. Maybe that is all these things are ever meant to be.

I played Monument Valley on Android (shop link) and it is available on other platforms which you can see here: (Main developer page)