But I wants it...

Or, to be grammatically correct, I want them. Gaming sneakers? That aren't entirely horrible designs? I must have them.

That's not Betty!

As I sit here, wondering how I'm from the same family as anyone who would watch Ugly Betty, I find myself thinking of a fun little game. If you catch anyone watching this show, repeatedly and insistently ask them "Is that Betty?" whenever someone who isn't the main character is on screen. If she is on screen, stay silent. I can now confirm that this drives them absolutely nuts. Great fun. The downside is that they think you're a shambling cretin.

Speaking of fun games, I've been playing a lot of GRAW 2. Or Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2, for those of you who aren't into the whole brevity thing. It's great, but you are fighting a ridiculously PC war. Basically any element of the war being morally dubious has been stripped away. It's hilariously clean-cut. Go USA! Despite that, it's great fun. There are a lot of set-pieces this time around, a lot of variety to the levels.

I've also been playing God of War 2, which thanks to the ineptitude of the folk at Currys in town, I've picked up a few days early. I've played about an hour of it, during which time my character has destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes (which was brought to life by Athena), been killed by Zeus, and clambered out of hell. It's pretty intense. It's staggeringly silly. It's on the PS2, but looks almost as good as anything on the new systems.

Oh, and in the first five minutes you kill, like, a hundred guys. I missed my calling in marketing. Though I can do better than one game I saw today, the sole selling point on the back being: "Game and manual in English!"

Yurgh...

I wish we had more knee-jerk right wing commentators in the UK. I'd love to hear Jack try to tie this to Counterstrike.

"He had trained for this in the game, which is why he was able to sever his penis so calmly. If you measure the trajectory of the spurts of blood back to the height of his mangled groin you can tell that his heart beat never got above 60 bpm."

In other news, the storm of inadequacy that is My Chemical Romance is on the TV right now. I'd never noticed before, but the singer looks suspiciously like Jack Dee.

Well, Kal-El, I guess you're just fucked

I'm not referring to Nicolas Cage's kid here (though your dad's a twat and your probably heading the same way: dem's the breaks), but to Superman himself.

A newly-discovered mineral from a mine in serbia has the exact chemical composition of Kryptonite as mentioned in Superman Returns.

It's not green though, it's red. Keep an eye out for evil Superman then. Don't go near any driving test centres any time soon.

100!

It's my 100th post, and of course the topic is... Jack 'Motherlovin' Spoonful' Thompson.

Jack has a habit of randomly trying to set various offices of the law onto anyone who disagrees with his lunatic rantings. This is almost everyone, and he has to sleep on a matress stuffed with his own shed hair at some point, so he tends to focus on those that bother him most.

In this case, Jack and I have something in common: we both hate forumites. Jack, however, thinks that if someone on the internet says a bad thing about you, you can set the FBI on them. If everyone knew about that little trick, each and every male in the US between the ages of 12 and 25 would be in jail right now.

Jack's targeting Kotaku, pretty much the only gaming blog to have professsional journalists working on it. That's a problem for Jack right there. They tend to be pretty thorough about things like telling the truth. Another problem that Jack has is that he can't tell a single comment on a forum from a sustained campaign of abuse. I'm pretty sure the FBI can.

Jack has occasionally claimed to be a lawyer of some kind (though he's dangerously close to being disbarred), something that requires some intelligence. What sort of intelligent man starts a letter "Dear FBI"?

My heartfelt congratulations go out to the guys at Kotaku. You've quite clearly broken him, and you stand a good chance of being the ones that finally take him down.

Work

A brief encounter with a gentle soul today:

Him: "I'm looking for books on the photographer Such-and-such."

Me: "We've one book on Such-and-such. This is it here."

Him "I see. Do you have any others?"

Sometimes words fail me. But not today! Cock.

For Jack, with careful consideration

When Rush Limbaugh is more liberal than you on any issue, pretty much all that's left to do is grow a little moustache and invade Poland.

And it quacks like a weasel...

Every cloud has a silver lining, and every tragedy has a grotesque right-wing opportunistic scrabble for publicity.

I don't honestly know how this can even be possible, but Jack 'Looks Like a Man But is Really a Stack of Weasels in a Cheap Suit' Thompson was able to get on American TV to throw his two cents into the ring on the VA shootings. The worst mass shootings in US history. In order to make best use of this horrible event, Jack got straight onto Fox News (naturally) and singled out videogames as the cause.

I could just about understand this behaviour, if the guy responsible had even been named. But he hasn't. We (and Jack) do not yet know who he was. I could understand if he'd waited even a day before doing this. But he didn't, he decided to strike while the anvil was hot and peddle his twisted viewpoint on TV, this time trading off the deaths of (at present) 32 people.

Way to fucking go, Jack. You've graduated from being a misguided annoyance to being a man with a genuine lack of morals or respect for human life. Good for you.

Once again...

Good Lord, it's been a while.

I'm not very good at updating this with any degree of frequency. Since I know there at least five people mewling for the tiniest trickle of information from me, here we go. I'll try not to be so shoddy in future.

I have my first wiinjury, and by logical extension of that, a Wii. It's great. Not really got much in the way of software yet, but it's all been good fun so far. This doesn't mean I've abandoned my other platforms, oh no. Well, it kind of does in the case of the 360, though I have a suspicion I'll be back to that.

Gaming fun has mostly been from the handheld platforms at the moment. Mostly Portrait of Ruin on the DS, and Gitaroo Man on PSP. Gitaroo man is right up there in competition for the sweetest game ever created. It's not too saccharine though, it's just that Japanese naivete about it. For those who don't know, it's a rhythm action game in which you play a Japanese schoolboy who turns into a guitar-wielding superhero at various inopportune moments. And the guitar is kept somewhere within his dog. Obviously. So that's fine then.

This is quite possibly the best thing ever:



UCSC students built a four-storey Donkey Kong mural out of Post-it notes. They did this because they are true heroes.

So very fucking sick of this now

Let's imagine, for a moment, that we are mayor of New York City. Let's imagine that we have an awareness of that city's history, and how it has been portrayed in literature and on screen.

Let's say a videogame, spuriously based on New York City is to be released. That all data available on the game is from a short trailer. Let's say that the entire trailer is based on The French Connection, a film based on true events that occured in New York City.

What do you do? Do you sit back and wait for said game to be released, waiting until the facts are in, and a sane and sensible judgement can be passed? Or do you just throw words around, in a series of nonsensical press releases, with as little basis in actual fact as possible?

It's B folks, it's B.

What do PS3 and Soylent Green have in common?

The answer, predictably, is that they're made of people. And not in an interesting way, either, just in the ramblings of a demented Sony Executive. Now, this time it's not Jack Tretton, who has said some fairly 'interesting' things. This time it's Ray Maguire, or as I like to call him, 'Commander Batshit'.

"If you take what's considered to be the most expensive and the least expensive - consider the US with its massive land and cheap people. Then you look at the UK - a little island where rent and rates are at an absolute premium, and the cost of people is a lot more. "

Please, someone tell me. What does that even mean? That's meant to be an explanation as to why the PS3 costs more in the UK than almost everywhere else. He's managing director of Sony America, so it seeems that the further up the chain you go, the higher the class of lunatic you encounter. Presumably, if you get promoted far enough in Sony America, you get made President of the USA.

In other news, the PS3 has launched in the UK. I know this because I was in town getting software for virtually every other console - part of the joys of trade in. Found some genuine crap in local stores, but crap that's worth money. Took it into town and turned it into Japanese madness. The system works. I saw four people carrying PS3's on my way into town. Extrapolating, I guess that means they sold more of them than they've produced. I'll look into that. I may have miscalculated.

Apparently not many people have been buying software with the machines. Not entirely suprising, given the quality of the launch titles, but it really seems that a lot of people are buying it as a Blu-Ray player, just as people bought the original PS2 as a DVD player. Makes sense if you want one, it's very cheap compared to all other Blu-Ray players on the market.

In other news, I just made the best burger of all time. Seriously, it was truly the greatest. Just thought folk would want to know.

Gentlemen, activate the retardamopod!

Brief update:

Saw Casino Royale. Apart from the scene of the woman riding up the beach on a white horse, it was much less camp than most Bond movies. That scene, however, was as camp as all the rest put together. I digress. I liked it. It was gritty, had a pretty decent plot. Looked nice, all the rest. The last 20 minutes were flaccid, right up until the point where it becomes clear that Bond likes nothing better than to put on a spiffy suit and torture someone for fun. That he is, in the literal sense of the term, mad as a sackful of stoats. And suddenly, all the other Bond films make sense.

Venezuelans are also insane: A group of Venezuelan religious leaders are trying to block the sale of Mercenaries 2, a game that, if past performance is anything to go by, precisely seven people will buy, on these grounds:

"Our concern is that this game will only deepen an already antagonistic relationship between the U.S. and Venezuelan governments".

That's right, the game will cause the U.S. government to reassess it's stance on Venezuela. I'll just let that sink in for a moment.

Did I mention that quote was from a letter to Bono? Because it was. And so, the prosecution rests. Ladies, gentlemen of the jury. Venezuelans are insane.

Ta Da

Apparently, playing racing games will make you a bad driver. Most of the report here is common sense, but the thing I find troubling is the part where it states that drivers who play games are likely to have slower reaction times.

This goes against virtually every other study in the field (there are some particularly convincing reports on the benefits of gaming in boosting the skill of surgeons). I wonder if the study group used one of the Need For Speed games? They bear about as much resemblance to driving as they do to clay pigeon shooting.

The Vomit Leprechauns

St. Patricks day, and Cambridge's take on festivities for the day has left me with one thought:

Everything is covered in diabolical fluids.

Possibly the least pleasant trip up Mill Road I have ever had.

Water on Mars?

Uh...yeah. Quite a bit, as it turns out. So, that's that then.

In about a years time, the 'life on Mars' question will be settled when sattelites discover a mile-thick layer of elephants.

Warren Ellis gets subtle

Every single thing Warren Ellis has had published by Avatar Press, up until this point, has been an absolute piece of crap. No exceptions. Avatar seems to exist purely to publish Warren Ellis concepts that no-one else will touch.

This one could be a little different. It's typical Ellis high-concept stuff. But it might just not suck. And I only say that because it should be familiar territory for him from Planetary and half a dozen other things he's written. He usually seems more energised when he's riffing on pulp classics.

Aaaww....

...ain't it sweet? Little Mii wedding cake toppers. It'd almost be worth going through all the rigmarole of a wedding just to get the chance to repeatedly and insistently explain to friends and relatives why your cake looks 'a bit crappy'. Almost.

In other news, I have just seen Tara Palmer-Tompkinson and Claudia Winkleman side-by-side (thankfully muted) on some Comic Relief thing. I am struck by this thought: could British television get any less glamorous? Unless Lenny Henry drops his kecks and craps on the stage, I'm guessing no.

The OED, a late entry

Wankoutrement

n.

1. Accessory or item of dress for one who is a wanker.

2. Item of clothing used as an outwards sign of aggression, wealth, and imagined art-school kudos.

example

"Did you see the wankoutrements on that guy? He had the afghan scarf, low-ride trousers, rimless sunglasses and the ironic belt buckle. He nearly had the full set!

Ok mankind...

...you get to stay.

Something that cool has postponed my scouring of the Earth for at least six months.

I've been told

I've in fact been ordered to blog the fact that Commodore is back. The person who did this is fairly secure in his knowledge that the Amiga 500 was my primary means of playing games for about 7 years. I try not to wallow in nostalgia, but I can safely say, having seen those images, that should I ever buy a PC, it'll be one with a huge 'C' sign cut into the side.

Doesn't hurt that they're ridiculously high-spec gaming PC's either. I know that it's a fairly cynical, Atari-style manipulation of a much-beloved and tragically defunct brand, but damn. Anything that has Ghost Recon and the Commodore logo on the case is essentially the Alpha and the Omega of my gamesplaying existence.