They went and did it...

This makes me so happy I could cry.

Oh, and...

I should point out that one of the things I saw at Game On was the PS3. Probably one of the very first units in the country. It was running motorstorm, and for the entire time I was in that part of the hall, was played purely by two teenagers, who I think were Japanese. I mention this only because they seemed to be amused by our quaint and antiquated technology. In Japan they already have the PS4, which wires directly into the brain and into the testicles, for reasons they just will not explain.

For my part, I didn't get on. There was a queue for the whole 'next-gen' area, and I couldn't be fussed. Motorstorm looked OK, but had a pretty choppy framerate. I'm assuming that this was the downloadable demo made available for the North American launch of the machine, as the full release version is only out in Japan at the moment, and this was clearly in English. It looked like it could be fun, but it had some fairly poor graphics, and the framerate was unforgivably poor. I'm not leaping on the whole 30fps/60fps thing, but it looked plain ropey.

The Wii had a large crowd of young and old (literally, it seemed to be entirely kids playing with their parents), all of whom seemed to be enjoying it. It was only demonstrating Tennis from the Wii sports range, but it just kept people interested. It was strange and heartening to see people shunning the big mysterious PS3, which isn't out for at least three months, for the Wii, which is a commercially available machine. I guess it's still pretty new, but I'm going to be as flippant as I can.

On a similar note, how good is this?

Luhn-duhn

Wandering around our nation's capital today, as I so often do, I popped into the Science Museum and checked out the Game On Exhibition. I'd meant to go when it was first exhibited in the Barbican about five years back, and could probably have better justified it at that age. Ah well. It was a lovely blast of nostalgia, seeing some old arcade favourites for the first time in ages . Plenty of home machines too, and some that never really made it over here, like the PC engine, and the Virtual Boy (sadly not operational).

The tone was a bit peculiar. Admirably, the curators have chosen not to focus on the nostalgia element, setting it up as a serious history of the form. Whilst this was probably a sensible approach, it would have been nice to have a little more space dedicated to the true greats. You would have thought that NEC did as much for the industry as Nintendo, Sega and Sony, going on floor space alone.

Most of the machines were in pretty decent condition, surprising, given how much of the bad touch they must get from the hordes of kids. There were a few points during my time there where I was thinking "Oh God, don't do that!" as a small child drooled onto delicate circuitry. What they really need, instead of the army of stewards that currently patrol the floor, is Archer Maclean. Just him, on his own, tearing around the floor wailing like a banshee whenever someone manhandles the controls on Galaga a little bit too hard.

Another thing that surprised me was just how little there was in terms of non-games content. There was Jon Burgerman's Timeline, which is fantastic. Very reminiscent of Pete Fowler's artwork, this covers a huge wall as you enter the exhibition. It's pretty detailed, but I'm sure any serious gamer could pick holes in it. They usually can, for almost anything. There was a small exhibition on game sound, which wasn't working, and some little bits of game memoribilia, like the history of Nintendo gashapon that appeared a year or so back, all of which were worth a quick look, but were fairly insubstansial.

There are some nice bits of concept art, and a wall donated by Rockstar giving a rough layout of how they set about designing Grand Theft Auto 3. My favourite thing though, by a staggeringly long way, was this:



Max Payne's clothes. His actual clothes. They were scanned for the textures in the game. Max Fucking Payne's actual fucking clothes. It's fair to say, I was excited.

The noise of dolphins gagging

Just too good.

Dammit!

Even with the search terms ann+coulter+satan+slash+sociopath+farmers+market, I couldn't make it into the top ten on google. Just for emphasis: farmers market. How many fucking farmers markets does she go to?

The beast

Ann Coulter: Agent of Satan. If she was in any way honest, she'd be passing out business cards with that on. Having taken a look at her latest book came across two main points.

A: God is real, and believing in him gives you absolute moral authority to do whatever you want, because you're right, and therefore, no wait, who cares, I'm right because I love God.

B: People who believe in evolution should be burnt. The theory's had 150 years, and in all that time we haven't found the missing link. Why don't they just give up and believe in Jesus. Disregard the fact that Evolution is demonstrably occurring constantly, of course. My momma didn't raise no damn monkey!

She genuinely is the true face of evil. Somehow, the ramblings of an obvious sociopath have become required reading for a large portion of the American public. In the spirit of this, I decided the only thing to do was to find the most hideous Ann Coulter slash fiction the internet could vomit upon me. What surprised me was that there's so little of it. I would have expected at least a little Ann Coulter/Rush Limbaugh fiction. Nada. Zip.

The only thing I found was this, and it's the most brilliant spoof of all time. My personal favourite moment:

"But Ann Coulter is the only celebrity I’ve ever spotted at Farmer’s Market that I wound up fucking in the ass, hard."

A close second:

"I was a little hurt and, recognizing this, she softened just a shade as she reached for her purse to leave.
‘Hey.’
‘Yes?’ I asked.
‘Thanks for not staring at my adam’s apple.’
‘No problem.’

A very close second.

Oh those wags...

So, Sony got busted for their shitty marketing campaign. Apparently it's immoral to use viral marketing. I don't entirely agree with that, stuff like ilovebees is fun. However, when it just inept, as Sony's is (hey kids, we just made this suspiciously high-quality advert-like thing for the PSP because we're just big fans) it's a problem. So it's being legislated.

So long as someone slips in a rider clause that stops Nintendo ever releasing another "Willst though get the girl, or fight like one?", I can get behind that.

I call it a killamajig

This is just ravening insanity. Germany has long had an excessive culture of censorship (I can still remember getting Carmageddon and seeing the green blood. It didn't take a whole lot of research to find that this was the fault of German censorship), but this is really going too far. Imagine how easy it would be for a judge, probably never having played a game, to pass a sentence for some minor infraction of this law, and set a dangerous precedent.

I'm not sure whether this will ever make it into German law, or whether it will ever be enforced, but it's pretty terrifying. Crytek have made it clear that they will leave the country, should this law be passed. Probably wise, as it would essentially make every member of their staff a criminal, simply for manufacturing a piece of entertainment that any right thinking adult has the right to purchase and use.

I recognise that this is a response to two genuine tragedies, but it should be clear to even the most frothing of right-wing fanatics that it is an ill-thought, knee-jerk response. If someone is mentally unstable to the point that they could really even consider killing another human being, they will almost certainly find a trigger anywhere. I've been playing games since I was five years old, and I still don't know how to fire a gun. It's not analogous. Hopefully this will all blow over, as it has in the past. Given the nature of the current German government, though, I find this unlikely.

I'm a liberal...

...and I read this. To be honest, it's here so I can find it in the morning.

I hope it's still there. I've had a drink.

Sweet Criminy

My 360 died again. This is the second time I've had to have a courier whisk it from my hands and return it to Microsoft. I suspect the fault lies in the fact that the tortured soul of an orphan was not correctly bound to the motherboard during manufacture. I'd have thought Microsoft would have the finer points of infant sacrifice down pat by now. A shame. I'm not really sure what to do if it screws up again. I guess I can only hope that what they send me back is one of the apparently more reliable, more recently manufactured base units.

It couldn't really have come at a worse time, as of course the Wii launches today. I didn't have any spare cash, and so don't have one of these spifffing little devices. I quite enjoy midnight launches, apart from the constant fear of mugging. The fact that I haven't got the hardware rankles slightly. The fact that there's a new Zelda game available that I don't have the capacity to play - that's heartbreaking. I only really have my Gamecube to play at the moment, though at least this means I might actually finish Chibi Robo.

If anyone's in the market for some relatively healthy human body parts (I'm looking at you, Microsoft), then I can carve up my housemate. I need about £300 for a decent Wii setup. Anyone for a liver?

Not to labour the point...

I gave Call of Duty 3 another go. In one ten minute play session, I watched half my squad walk through a wall, and was seemingly assasinated by a sentient packing crate (I assume that this was an enemy clipping through a crate, but all I saw was a wooden box with a muzzle flash). You can no longer jump from crouching (which makes precisely absolutely zero practical fucking sense) and, sin of all sins, none of the cutscenes can be skipped - and the one from the start of the level plays every time you load.

Also, you can no longer perform the screw jump attack, and Mother Brain is no longer the bad guy. She has been replaced by a new character called Hitler.

But isn't that where Batman lives?

Today I tried to play Project Gotham 3. This is the third time I've tried to play it.

Every 6 months or so, I decide that I can't be as bad as I remember, and give the latest version of Project Gotham a go. If you include MSR, I've been doing this for about five years now. Every time I boot it up I have the same seriously misplaced optimism that I will one day finish a single race. This has yet to happen. If anyone were to see me play this, they would assume that not only had I never played a video game, but also that I had no thumbs.

This is the last time, I swear.

A step back

So I finally got to play Call of Duty 3 today. I'm a little annoyed by the whole affair. It looks better, but only just. There are some major improvements, such as facial detail and animation, and texture quality is a fair bit higher. But there are also some things that have been poorly implemented. The depth of field effect you get when you aim is good, but can be pretty damn annoying when the game decides you're focusing on something other than the mean ol' man in front of you. It's chaotic enough without unfinished graphical effects making life harder for you.

There are more cut scenes. A lot more. There a lot of very clumsily scripted parts, to be honest. Least favourite so far: spotting targets for a tank. Just clumsy, and fairly pointless.

I knew things weren't going to go well when I had to restart the very first checkpoint because of a game-breaking bug (couldn't use melee attack, and so couldn't complete the tutorial). In the hour or so that I've played, I've repeatedly been stuck on the scenery, and had to restart.

There's a lot to like in the game, and I think it will be a very good game, when it's finished. But we're a few updates away from that yet. Let PC gamers play broken games. For a console, how about just waiting until it works?

Doing it right

The new Halo 3 trailer is available now, from the internet. It's also on Marketplace, which allows you to watch it on your television, through your Xbox. Ah hah. I can be wry.

It's pretty good. It's all CG, but does a pretty good job of getting the adrenalin going. Still, it doesn't match up to the sheer, ridiculous majesty of the halo 2 trailer.

The Halo music alone can reduce me to a quivering wreck of excitement and shame.

Making with the happy

I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang again this evening, probably the 10th time since it came out on DVD. It has become my dependable warm 'n' fuzzy film for background noise. What does it say about me that my background noise is blisteringly post-modern? Probably that I'm like, deep, man.

I keep noticing little bits and pieces about the movie. I can't believe that I didn't notice before tonight that Perry's phone is playing 'I Will Survive' as it's ringtone. I chuckled to myself. Not heartily, but I chuckled. Brilliant little nod to the ending.

I love that movie.

Razorlight...

...Please stop. You are The Proclaimers with different accents. That is all.

Sweet Lord

I finally got through the application process for the Shadowrun beta. One part of the criteria they're using to pick applicants is 'willingness to participate in forums'. Now, I've never liked forums for the most part, as giving people license to say anything in an almost entirely anonymous fashion seems to bring out the very worst in the vast majority of people. People have claimed the increase in blogging, friends sites, etc is the main reason the signal:noise ratio of the internet is ever-worsening. It's not. Huge, huge sprawling forums (where by law, at least seventeen participants must have Dragonball Z-themed names), rapidly filling with the worst sort of tripe imaginable are the cause.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying: if wading hip-deep in nerd spray is the cost of participating in the beta, then I don't want to do it. Today it was revealed that the Halo 3 multiplayer beta would have a similar process. The idea of playing Halo 3, lets face it, anything up to a year and a half early is appealling. Dealing with a rabid Halo 3 forum: good lord no. I can wait, thanks all the same.

New ways of p(l)aying

I was sat pondering, as I so often do, what sort of a game to purchase next. A shot of the Ninja Gaiden update for the PS3 made me think of popping into Gamestation and picking up a cheap copy of Ninja Gaiden Black, on the assumption that this, the third time I would have purchased essentially the same game, the camera would work, and I wouldn't be reduced to tears at a series of inexplicable, unpreventable deaths that occured whilst my character was off-screen. At least that was the theory.

Then I saw that an online Co-op version of Double Dragon was being released on Live Arcade. That kind of made the decision for me - I would spend the miniscule amount of spare cash that Christmas allows me on Microsoft Points. Double Dragon isn't up yet (I don't know if Live Arcade Wednesdays are still in effect, but there have been shiny new things the last few Wednesdays) but I bought the new Oblivion expansion pack, and look forward to getting myself lost in that again. It also means I can throw myself into the cheaper, smaller bits and pieces I've been stockpiling for the time that I deem it neccesary to return to the game. I know it'll take away large chunks of my time. I kind of relish that though.

I'm also trying to sign up for the Shadowrun beta test on Live, but Microsoft Connect keeps crapping out on me. No huge loss if I can't, as by all accounts it's not great, but I would like to get a few beta tests under my belt, just to see how the whole process works.

So...

I just applied for a job writing for a proper gaming website. I'm terrified at the very idea of having to do this without being able to rely upon the word fuck, the phrase twatbottles and of course lots of italics. There is also a possibility that I would have to work at least partially clothed.

In all seriousness, I want that job really quite desperately.

Sour Defeat

So, it turns out Lost Planet multiplayer isn't that good. I'd not go so far as to say it's dire, but the controls are spongy and unpleasant. It's also the easiest game since Quake 2 to just sit around and spawn camp in. There are so few spawn points, it seems, that you can die, and sit there waiting for someone else to spawn there (a matter of seconds) to get a quick and easy kill.

It's a shame, as I love the grappling hook dynamic (I've been a fan of grappling hooks ever since Bionic Commando on the NES), and I really enjoyed the single player demo. The single player has the same controls, but it doesn't matter so much, as your enemies are simply stupid and numerous. The single player feels like someone made a mod for Resi 4 that shoved Starship Troopers on top of it. Which is a good thing.

I'll still buy it. But I was really looking forward to a decent Multiplayer experience. So I'm sticking with Gears of War for a while on that one, it would seem. Playing a bit more of that today (having finished it on Hardcore), and it's still brilliant. It's the only game I've come across where real-world tactics can be easily and effectively implemented at short range. No jumping around, no circle-strafing, just being shot and thumped. I love the fact that it's 4 vs 4 (at least in warzone, which is all I'm going to be playing), meaning that it never gets too chaotic. I like my shooting ugly alien things to be tactical. Or my shooting grizzled bandana-sporting cliches. You know, whatever suits.

Gears Multiplayer

I put off playing this for quite a while, wary of the phenomenon of 'raging jackasses' that has blighted Xbox Live ever since frat boys realised that this Halo thing was quite good fun.

So I went on this afternoon, fairly safe in the assumption that anyone playing would be British (nearly right) and therefore not make me want to wrench my own head off through sheer frustration. And it's fantastic. If anything, it's slower paced than the single player, and you really, really have to make use of cover. I did suck for quite a bit, but redeemed myself by taking out the entire other team in one round. Two headshots, one chainsaw death, and a mighty kerb stomp to finish the whole thing off. There's no reason to post this, of course, save for the fact that it'll definitely cheer me up every time I look at it.

Another thing that I really liked about Gears multiplayer was that it uses the full version of the game engine. The last three or four games I've played on live have all had a cut-down or ccompletely different engine. It's lovely to see a multiplayer game that still actually looks good.

Now I'm going to check out the Lost Planet multiplayer. I loved the E3 demo that went up in the summer, so I have high hopes for this. Capcom, of course, not being known for shoddy multiplayer experiences.

And another thing...

Apparently the PS3 is no longer some sort of hypothetical joke, and has moved into the realm of being an actual joke. What's suprised me is how little noise the launch has made. It's barely noticeable, even in the gaming press. I looked on the BBC website this morning, and there was no sign of anything on the US launch. There was however, a natty article on the Wii right there on the front page.

Sony, having heavily criticised everything their competitors have ever done in a hilariously bullish manner, came out with this today, which is just hilarious. What's that Jack? The Wii has no backwards compatability? I think there are a few folks at the back who didn't hear you. Just brilliant. When your Vice President basically just comes out and lies, in a manner that's going to be fairly obvious to anyone reading WIRED FUCKING MAGAZINE, of all things, then you are in trouble. Now, he probably didn't do it deliberately, but if he doesn't know the facts (it plays all Gamecube games Jack, even takes the controllers and memory cards) then he shouldn't be speaking on the topic. And since he's being interviewed by the nature of backwards compatability by the premier tech magazine on the newsstands, you'd hope it's the sort of thing he'd brush up on. And since it isn't... why is this man Vice President of Sony America? Surely he'd be better off in some sort of circus, or masturbating for loose change down at the docks? I'm just putting it out there.

Resistance: Fall of Man is the only launch title getting any good press, which is unsurprising. An Untold Legends sequel? Really? Hmm... no. There seems to be a real dearth of quality software for Sony machines. It was four years into the lifespan of the PS2 before I bought one, and I'm someone who will pretty much buy a console for that one game i cannot be without. I still don't have a PSP. I'll let you know how my PS3 is circa 2009.

Gears of War

Well, it's arrived in the UK. And it's good. Really good, in fact. Beyond the hype, this is really one of the most polished games I've ever played. It's not complex - you move into cover, you shoot, you move again. But it does that really well. I've been playing it for about 5 hours now, and my eyes are getting a little bleary, I'm starting to think about real world problems in terms of flanking them. There's a good chance that if someone's in my way tomorrow, I'm going to run behind the nearest car and start pelting them with whatever comes to hand.

It's not a perfect game. The uber-butch voice acting is occasionally hilarious. That's about it though, in terms of problems. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but assuming I can see tonight, that's what I'll be up to.

Oh, and one of your guns has a chainsaw on it and another is an orbital satellite. Shit yeah!

Lumines

And the great microtransactions debate marches onwards. My two cents (or Microsoft points - sometimes, I'm so witty I have to have a little sit down and a biscuit).

I was one of the many who bought Lumines on Live Arcade when it was released a week or two ago. Having played the demo, which quite clearly contained all the information about how the game was structured, in terms of the base pack and advance pack, I wasn't too surprised when this turned out to be exactly how it was released. A lot of people were very surprised indeed, however, and have been exceptionally vocal in their disgust.

It's one of the more expensive games on Live arcade, with the base pack weighing in at 1200 points, or about £10. Having spent £30 on meteos, which has about the same amount of content, this seemed like a pretty good deal to me. You get your straightforward, unending falling blocks mode, timed, vs, missions, puzzle, and all that jazz. You can play multiplayer locally or online (I'll admit, this was originally going to be excluded). This costs £10. Meteos - £30, same stuff. You see where this is going?

Now, the PSP version of Lumines - also £30 - had a little more. Some more levels, another mode, i believe. You can get the equivalent for another 600 points, or £5 on Live Arcade. So, to recap: £10 + £5 = £15 = Cost of Lumines on Xbox 360. £30 = cost of same game on PSP. And yet, people still believe that we're somehow being made fools of. That things are being withheld. And so, the toys come flying from the pram. Regardless of the fact that the two downloads together exceed the maximum allowed download size for an Arcade title (something I'm not fond of - Symphony of the Night had better have the full soundtrack, or the internet may collapse from sheer nerd rage), paying half the original price of a game - especially one as good as Lumines, which has been hailed as a modern classic by pretty much anyone who's around to hail such things, is not unfair.

It basically boils down to this: do you believe someone should be paid for their work? I think they should. I don't think the amount charged, in general, for Live Arcade games is excessive. I would probably buy more if they weighed in at the 400 point mark. But it does not upset me to part with the cost of four or five pints of beer to play one of the finest puzzle games ever made from now until the robots come to kill us all.

I'm not buying the Madonna pack. If anything, the game is more complete without it.

Splinter Cell

Anyone who knows me will know that I've spent the best part of the last two years playing Splinter Cell virtually non-stop. The single player game has never really done it for me THAT much. They're good, but not outstanding. However, the multiplayer that first appeared in Pandora Tomorrow grabbed me with some force, and helped me get over the fact that Ghost Recon didn't really love me anymore (until GRAW, anyway - you came crawling back, didn't you, you little tart?)



So then, a new Splinter Cell. I've been playing it for a few days now, and so far haven't been let down. The single player seems to have taken a little bit of a step back from Chaos Theory, but the A.I. is massively improved - case in point, they no longer fall for the same traps over and over again. A hired goon might go for basic distractions, such as whistling, but soldiers won't. They find you and kill you. So the improved A.I. kind of balances out the return to a more linear structure - no multiple routes anymore, but you do have to think harder about how to clear each section.

The actual 'Double Agent' part of the game seems to be window dressing. I'm hearing various things bandied about that it actually plays a greater part in the Xbox version of the game, but here in 360-land, it doesn't make a a huge difference. Screw up too much for one side, and it's instant game over. Pretty much the same as 'screw up for one side, and it's instant game over', which is how the series has worked in the past. The fact that the Xbox version is so different is starting to worry me, because I just don't have the willpower not to get it, should it turn out to be different enough to warrant it. I'm also concerned that different enough may actually turn out to be only slightly.

I've played a bit of multiplayer, and it's quite clearly a very different beast from previous games. It's still Spy on Merc, but spies no longer have a raft of gadgets, nor can they engage in any close combat, other than grabbing the mercs and breaking their necks. So you have a dichotomy between one very hard to execute, but one-hit-kills manouver, and lots of very, very killy bullets. Spies can no longer really afford to be anywhere near as aggressive as they could before. Similarly, mercs no longer have the defensive gadgetry they had previously, meaning they have to move around a lot more, and actually find the spies to kill them. I'm not going to pretend I won't miss the soft thud of a distant mine going off, but it's not put me off the new game.

I'm hopeful that this new multiplayer will be sufficiently appealling that it will draw in more players than previous editions. Whilst I love the last two games, it was often a deeply frustrating experience trying to find a game. After about six months you could guarantee the only players you would find would be either people still playing purely because they could cheat and win (mercs now categorically cannot get into the spies' spawn zones, thank the lord) or they'd be playing it for the first time, and would be pretty much certain never to play it again after a rich, full evening of not really knowing why they died.

As I say, here's hoping. It's a great game.

Halloween

Updated: Photos have been organised, and put into the correct orrientations for those who care about such things. The thumbnails are still of dubious orientation (insert Grant gag here), but the photos themselves will display correctly. Find them here.



"You watched it. You can't un-watch it!"

In today's news...

Megaman cleared of murder. Not a headline I was expecting to see. In other news, Sir Arthur cleared of indecent exposure.

The rough and the smooth (some thoughts on taking them)

So, it's going to cost £45 for a complete Wii controller. This is not a particularly good thing, particuarly in terms of luring in new gamers. The base unit is cheap, and games haven't had the artificial £10 "hey kids, welcome to the future" markup that Xbox 360 games have, so I can just about cope with it personally, but it hauls Wii gaming by the gonads out of the mainstream, and dumps it in the naughty corner with the Oric enthusiasts. I think this might harm Nintendo more than naming it's console after an aqueous solution of urea.

But here's the rub. It's going to cost trivial, inconsequential amounts to play classic games. £5 for a perfect port of a SNES game? To play on my great big TV? On a classic (styled) pad that isn't knackered and covered in 12 years of pad skank?

Yes, I'll take some of that. I'm a big fan of Live Arcade, but the games really aren't there yet. A back catalogue of Nintendo and Sega games? That'll do boys, that'll do.

Dead Rising

I've put off writing about this, because I wanted to have some non-zombie related news to post first, purely for my own sake of mind.

In essence, Dead Rising is superb. It's really everything a next gen game should be. It does something the previous generation couldn't - namely enormous hordes of the shambling undead - and straps it to a finely-honed game mechanic. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a complex game, but it does what it does really well.

I've seen it compared to Resident Evil, which seems a bit lazy to me. It is made by Capcom, and it does feature Zombies, but it couldn't really be more different. The best comparison I have for it is Spider-Man 2. It's a game full of simple tasks, and getting from one point to another is really the only challenge in the game. The point is, if you make getting from one point to another interesting and entertaining enough, you have a great game.

There are faults - ally AI is poor to the point of maddening, and the time pressure means you've very little time to experiment with the various weapons on the first run through (unless you don't care about saving anyone, in which case I reccommend stocking up on shower heads and just having yourself a ball).

At the end of the day though, any faults can be forgiven with the sort of quality on display here. Well worth getting a 360 for.

Time for Wii.

Apologies for the pun. With that out of the way...

It's been given a date, so that means it's actually coming. It's been given a price - £180. This seems to have induced the quickest backlash in the history, because this is about £30 more than the US bundle. But people have forgotten acouple of things:

1. The price for the American release doesn't include sales tax. The UK does. So our American cousins will actually be paying more than the stated $250.

2. We always get fucked in the eye a little bit in Europe. It 'getting fucked in the eye' terms, we're not doing too badly here. We've usually had to wait much longer than three weeks, AND pay much more than the other major territories. I really fail to see what the problem is.

Perhaps people have been spoiled by the 360 worldwide launch. Although this was met with much screaming and gnashing of teeth at the time. It was said that Microsoft should have waited until they could put out more units on the first day. As far as I'm concerned, the system worked perfectly - I got mine on day one, all my friends had to wait. I could phone them any time of the day or night and gloat. And I did. Absolutely perfect.

It's coming. It looks great. You don't even have to open the curtains to find out what the weather is.

You had me at braaaaaains....

Every site I access today seems to have advertising for Dead Rising on it. There seems to be some sort of video, and it's slowing everything down.

Why are they trying to sell this to me? I bought a 360 the best part of a year ago, purely based on my insatiable lust for this game. Tomorrow it shall be here, and I may just burst with pure zombie love.

It begins...

Despite the title, this blog has very little to do with zombies, or only as much as the life of the average mid-twenties, middle-class white guy does. Which is to say, everything.

Apart from zombies, and their infernal allies, evil clowns, I will mostly be writing about movies and video games. Sadly, these are the things I give the most consideration.