Cruising along with Skate 3
So, I went and got Skate 3 when it came out. I’ve been a big fan of the series since it started as the control system just seemed to make sense to me.
I’ve worked my way through the career mode, though I still have a few bits and bobs to finish off and the challenges provided were enough to keep my attention. The silly teenager that’s hidden in me will always love the hall of meat challenges, there’s something about rag dolling my character off of a roof and seeing him glow as bones are broken…it’s just a shame there is no local multiplayer for this, I wasted hours on Skate 2 with Paul and Scott flinging characters into buildings.
For future reference EA, we all understand that online multiplayer is a big thing, but some of us actually socialise with friends in the really real world and would like that catered for too (Burnout crash junctions are another long gone favourite).
Anyhow, I digress, the main point for me is the amount of time I’ve spent aimlessly skating around looking for lines, ledges and gaps. It’s like searching for the Holy Grail, that perfect line with a few tricks that all land spot on. There’s no urgency in my hunt, no panic, just a chilled out cruise around the environment with one beady eye on the scenery.
I’ve also found myself uploading video clips a lot more than in previous iterations of the game. I’ve spent untold amounts of time playing with camera angles and trying to make them look half tidy. Why? Why am I spending all this time trying to make it look all shiny? I have no idea what has compelled me to get involved with that, but hey, whatever it is I’m not complaining.
Maybe I should dust off my board and go skating in the real world more…it’s been a while.
Being lucky
So, last year, on a whim, I entered the Moonfruit MacBook pro competition. To summarise it, I had to tweet the hash tag #moonfruit and then the technical wizardry their end aggregated entries and pushed out a name at random. I was lucky enough to be drawn and for an hour or so I was inundated with tweets. Most were congratulatory, some were nasty, sore losers much!
It was a brilliant piece of marketing and the first time anything of that value had been given away on Twitter. On the downside, I wish I’d turned off all my email notifications from twitter as I must have had about 400 new emails by that evening.
I’ve had the MacBook for just under a year now and doubt I’ll ever buy a windows machine again. It’s a brilliantly intuitive bit of kit.
Fast forward to this year and powwownow ran a competition on Facebook to promote their conference calling service. The premise was simple, just become a fan and tell powwownow why you like using them. Quite simply, I explained that they do what they say they will without any hassle or fuss. This was a fair while ago and I had completely forgotten about entering when I got a tweet from them two weeks ago explaining that I had won an iPad.
I’m not entirely sure how they found my Twitter account (I suspect it’s listed somewhere on my facebook), but fair play, they found me. The shiny new toy arrived as I went away to Poland for the weekend and I’ve just now had a chance to play with it…still trying to work out what use it has and I’ll let you know when I work it out!
All in all I’ve been really lucky with competitions run through social networks, especially those giving away big shiny Apple products. So if you see any competitions for cars, houses or holidays floating around let me know!
Karma says I’m due for some bad luck soon. Hope not!
Urban Debris 