OMG M$ IS TEH SUXOR!

Sat here, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the Halo 3 beta to happen. Not much going on here. Just... waiting.

I thought I might pass the time by downloading the free Live Arcade game Microsoft have been touting. But that's not online either. Turns out it's only available in the states. Europe gets shat upon once again.

Never mind. I'll troll around for online petetions. Advanced old age is setting in at 26.

"Dear Sir, you suck. Yours sincerely, ZombieDave. p.s. Asshat."

My letters wil be the stuff of cranky old man legend.

What I did in May.

Seems I don't spend as much time as I used to in front of my computer. I'm sure a large part of this is down to the fact that I'm working my way through a huge glut of games that were rushed out to meet the end of the fiscal year. A brief summary:

Zelda: Twilight Pricess - A wizard did it.

God of War 2 - A giant pituitary retard in a skirt did it.

Crackdown (with added bonus shiny) - A giant pituitary retard in a tank got of his tank and did it. With a harpoon gun.

So that's what I've been up to. Games now have harpoon guns in them, and I'm not looking back. It's all harpoon gun, all the time for me. This means I can only ever play Crackdown and XIII.

Slightly less appealing is the demo of the Pirates of the Caribbean game. Just as it was looking like a game being a movie tie-in didn't automatically mean it was shit, this comes along. And it all starts so well. A little in-engine cutscene, Captain Jack looks like Captain Jack, moves like a drunk everything seems fine. Then you take control.

Suddenly Jack moves like he has a broom in him (he might do, it's Johnny Depp after all), and you engage in some horrible, horrible combat. Here's how combat works:

You press 'A' twice. The enemy turns away. You press 'A' again. The enemy falls over. Then you get hit by an off-screen enemy because the camera is in no way dynamic. And you have no way of knowing how many enemies are in the room, because they spawn offf camera. So, unless you spin the camera continually, you don't really know what's going on.

There are some vague attempts to expand the combat, but they're all equally clumsy. It's a piece of shit, basically. It might be aimed at kids, but that's no excuse.

Oh, and captain Jack speaks twice in the 20-minute demo. I couldn't quite tell if it was Johnny Depp doing the voice, as it sounded like it was recorded down a phone line. In the seventies. I don't think it was though.

I don't quite know why this bothers me, as it's not as if I would have ever bought this game, but it has. To sum up: it's a piece of shit.

It has come to my attention...

...that the country of my birth is being run by a homophobic religious demagogue and a man who believes violence to be a legitimate means of affecting change in government.

Who says Britain can't do US-style politics?

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.

A brief update

I'm very poor at writing consistently here. Not good for someone whose plans have nebulously been to earn money from his foul rantings for quite some time now.

Here's what's happened to me since I last posted:

I got an espresso machine. Directly linked to this, I now own a milk thermometer. Following logically from that, despite relative poverty and an absence of offspring, I am now the most middle-class person I know. Sorry about that, one and all.

I got a PSP. For those not in 'the know' this is a gaming machine that can be crammed full of media of all kinds. Anyone have widescreen vid files of Heroes? I want to watch it on my lunch break. Because I can. Apart from it's ability to store video, it's also full of Japanese madness. LocoRoco is a game made of pure joy. Actually crafted from the stuff. WipeOut Pure is not so bad either.

Almost nothing else. I got a year older, had a charming extended birthday weekend that involved considerably less cheap Australian beer and vomiting than last year, and generally relaxed. Tomorrrow I have to go back to work. I can see myself being considerably less relaxed after that.

Horribly, horribly wrong

Surely a sign of the end times.

I would not be surprised if they start hunting the most dangerous prey of all.

I was right all along...

Larping leads to crime and transvestitism.

I warned them, but would they listen? Now look where we are - transvestite elves all over Carrickfergus. Anyone could see it coming.

Hecker... Come Out To Play...

I've held off blogging this, simply because, what's the point? It's everywhere online at this point. But then, I am contrary.

The only reason I can see for him to do this is if he has a bet with other people at Maxis to get more than 5 million legitimate hits for the terms 'Hecker' and 'goddamn weasel from beyond all time and space'.

In other, non-ranty news, my friends David and Alison got married earlier today. Here's wishing them all the best.

Son of E3

Apart from a lack of imagination or any mathematical or programming ability, I could easily be a game designer. Which brings me around to thinking, when did GDC get hijacked?

A few years ago, the only news stories out of GDC would be about people getting drunk and being overheard badmouthing Sony at the bar. Now it seems to be a major launching point for new franchises. Why publishers have chosen what is meant to be a symposium on the curent nature of game development as a forum for large, elaborate press junkets I do not know, but I imagine if I was a developer, I wouldn't really want these people within 100 yards of the building, let alone swaggering around with their mighty marketing balls dragging on the floor.

I digress. The PS3 finally has an exclusive that I would actually want. Up until now, PS3 exclusives have taken the form of 'look at the dragon' or 'look, it's a first person shooter! Are you excited yet?'. But LittleBigPlanet is the first game I've seen for the PS3 that's actually interesting.

From what I can see in the trailers, you play one of a series of little felt dolls (including one in an Evil Knievel outfit!), and you build the world you occupy out of household items. You can then decorate it with any of the images on your hard drive. It's all controlled with the pad, can be shared online, looks amazing, and it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Once you've built you world, you can tear around it with other players. It's not clear whether or not you can put goals into your level or not, but I'm not really sure that matters.

On the other side of the coin, there's Playstation Home. This is the sort of 'lifestyle' nonsense that I truly hate. You get a virtual house in which to store trophies from your in-game achievements (which of course Sony said they were not going to have), fill with Sony branded virtual TV's and all the rest. A persistent online world full of glossy, dead-eyed avatars showing off imaginary consumer products? And I get to look at plenty of dynamic advertising for the privelage? No thanks.

Oh Eastern Europe...

Now if only someone can do this for Thatcher...

Wrong

I've been quite good about nicking other people's images, but this one had to go up. It's from the Perry Bible Fellowship, the bleakest webcomic since Red Meat.

And since I'm nicking the image from Kotaku, who in fact nicked it first, I don't have to feel too bad.

There will be no punching of the face in the uncanny valley

South Korea has established a charter laying out what is and isn't acceptable in human/robot interations.

Crucially, they haven't missed the fact that certain people will want to have sex with their robots, and deemed this unacceptable. Watch this space for news of the first pro-robot lovin' pressure group. It can't be far away.

Well splendid

There's been a small explosion of zombie-related news recently, and here's the latest.

I've got to wonder why he thought he needed an ambulance to move a corpse. Practical, sure, but it's not really going to help. Maybe he thought it was more dignified than wrapping dear ol' dad up in a carpet and popping him on the back seat. But if he was the sort of person who thought like that, he probably wouldn't have tried to reamnimate the two years-dead corpse of his father.

The danger of a damaged 'S' key.

Working with an unfamiliar and eccentric keyboard, I mis-typed my URL, and so wound up with this site of wonders.

For a moment, I was worried that He had found me, and in a wrath at all those things I said about him, had set about my blog with his flaming sword of appalling grammar.

It was not to be. The 's' key is stiff, and I can sleep safe from reprisals from G-d.

A retort

I had this comment left on a previous post:

"Superman on the brain? Or is the sickness making you see super special dreams?"

Ravings of a diseased mind this may have been, no doubt the single lucid image he could snatch from hours of his syphilitic hallucinations, but I feel compelled to answer my critic.

This is what happens when you have "Superman on the brain". And it is not pretty.

Les morts vivant

I need a new language to talk about the undead in...

Dead Rising Co-op? Yes, yes, and yes again. Co-op was the only thing missing from this title. Some things I imagine this might be used for:

Killing zombies with sports gear - hockey sticks and golf clubs, a side by side comparison.
Trolley dashes.
Synchronised lawnmower sprees.
Pie fights.

It'll jus' be some plain ol' zombie twattin' fun.

I'm now wondering what the secondary characters will look like...

Spiced ham

Found on my continued trek through the spamosphere:

Her expelled a catkin

Possibly my favourite yet. It sounds like a Deep South accusation of withcraft.

It has been brought to my attention...

...that the BBC have cut down the article linked in the previous post. It was not brought to my attention nicely.

Rest assured, buoyed by my unimpeachable integrity, that a BBC journalist did in fact throw a little sulky fit that the guy dressed as Superman in the aforementioned video did very little to help.

In other news, I have had all my hair cut off. I no longer resemble a resplendent viking. The current effect is more like an aging, disheveled punk trying to look respectable. Which is, I would say, appropriate.

Faster than a...

From the BBC, this delightful little story.

On top of the story itself, which is pure gold, I also enjoyed the affronted tone of the BBC article. It seems to be saying that, really the guy dressed as Superman should have done more to help.

This might just be common sense reaching out here, but a guy who hangs around driving schools dressed as Superman would be the absolute last person I would want to help me with anything.

For science!

A sociologist in America is making a controversial claim. According to this researcher, and bearing mind that this is only a theory, not everything bad in the world can be blamed on videogames. Let that sink in for a moment.

According to this paper, other factors such as a lack of parental involvement, social anxiety and alienation may, if anything, be more likely to contribute to violence than Sonic the Hedgehog.

What a strange and terrifying world.

Les Revenants

For the last couple of days I have been unwell. To be more accurate, I've been unwell for a few weeks now, but the last few days have seen me robbed of speech and balance. This is a problem. Those who know me I'm sure will have noticed that I'm a fan of both standing up and saying stuff.

Now, however, I am full of drugs. I put off going to the Co-op to get more ibuprofen until my voice was upgraded from 'barely audible' to 'Metallica roadie', for fear that they wouldn't hear me saying please and thankyou, and therefore think I was a rude little bastard.

And there is news that helps me shake offf my sickness. The news that Left 4 Dead is coming to Xbox 360. It's an online survival horror, with four humans against a horde of zombies. You can even play as the zombies.

It is chock fucking full of zombies.

Well, that's just swell...

I've shamelessly stolen this from those fine chaps at Gin and Tacos, politics blog and internet home of several burly Americans whose house I once slept in while they talked about 10,000 maniacs and vomited.

Ladies, gentlemen, may I present to you...

Conservapedia! The apparently 'much neeeded' Conservative Christian answer to WIkipedia. Did you know that many of the 2 million articles on Wikipedia were written by athiests? Did you know that an online digital knowledge base, written by the public, might occasionally show signs of bias? If you're shocked and appalled by these things, you need Conservapedia. Not only is it apparantly free of such bias, you can also read about all the great things Christianity has acheived, such as fighting against vaccination programs for children!. Hallelujah!

Don't worry, I'm not going off on the vaccination thing again.

I'm going to have to come out and be clear on this one. I hate these people. They argue strongly for the existence of the unicorn. The fact that people are willing to go on the record as arguing for the existence of unicorns really confirms a whole fucking bunch of things that I've previously suspected.

Spamalamadingdong.

Some choice slabs of spam, fresh from my inbox:

For the Northbound

Yes indeed. God bless the northbound.

She will be surprised you are a man

She usually is.

Loveliness half-mast

The first line of the worlds worst haiku.

That's it. Go about your business.

Back

As in, I am back. I haven't written anything for a few days, which makes me very sad indeed. But I've been ill, as I'm sure anyone reading this is very much aware of. In tonight's (maybe tomorrow's, depends how much Gears of War I play) update:

Hot Fuzz! It's like Shaun of the Dead, but not as good! But I'm compelled to like it because Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are like unto gods!

Why I can't buy any games this month! Why this is like castrating me!

Twitches I've developed since starting work at Borders! Part one: The face! Part two: Sphincters: many and various!

It's going to be a blast, I assure you.

There's good eat'n on that there Cthulhu...

Meanwhile, down in New Zealand, where killing people and wiping shit on them isn't a way of life, this happened.



Reuters reports that our dread lord from beyond all time and space tastes like scallops, and is great with lime and chilli. Ftagn!

And again, and again...

This is on CNN at the moment, and has been receiving a fairly large degree of coverage in the US media. I wish there was a day when I didn't have something like this to write about. Two kids kill a homeless man, then wipe their own crap on his corpse and poke him with a knife.

There was just enough reason left in their twisted head to know that if you mention the word 'videogame' to the police after something like this, it draws the attention away from you. Everyone loves a witch hunt! I'll be very keen to see if Jack Thompson steps into the fray with this one, particularly as the partner of one of the kids fathers has gone on record as saying it's just flat-out got fuck all to do with videogames.

I'm pretty sure he won't though. For Jack, one less homeless person is another tentative step towards his gleaming conservative paradise, where there will be no tramps, or black people, or any of that troublesome freedom of speech.

That's that...

Possibly the most disturbing use of the word contingency.

About as welcome of the use of 'insurgent'.

As if by magic...

I realised I hadn't written anything about religion for at least a couple days, but then, nothing had mangaged to stoke my intolerance fires to incandescant levels. Until now.

I can't really elaborate on this story. Someone is dead because they all took a little bit too much advice from their imaginary friend. I'd like to pin this on Romania being backwards, but it's not a backwards nation in any way. There are exorcists in many developed countries. Just fucking insane. With no apologies to Jack Thompson whatsoever. He's not done anything batshit in ages, so suggesting that belief in exorcism as is misguided as his slanted crusade is the closest I can get to bitching about him.

Gotta take your yucks where you can get 'em. I'd also like Gillian McKeith to sue me, so here goes:

Gillian McKeith is an absolute abomination. When she's not just gibberring incoherently, she's suing people for pointing out that the nonsense she tries to pass as common sense (Chlorphyll providing oxygen to the body? Anyone with the slightest grasp of science would see the problem there), is in fact, totally, utterly wrong. She's wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I am of course hoping that her crack team of lawyers sit typing 'Mckeith + wrong' into search engines all day, looking for someone with a grasp of human biology to sue, purely on that basis.

For a good laugh, I suggest reading the published form of her Phd thesis, full of interesting facts, including referencing 'Health Food Store News'.

I'm bored. So, Gillian Mckeith is either a lying, or an idiot. Either way, please try to sue me. Please.

Project Heroes

Suda 51 is my favourite wacky Japanese game developer. Possibly equal with Hideo Kojima, but definitely one of my favourites. Killer 7 was a work of mental genius. No game before or since has an ambulatory afro as a boss character.

The games industry would be in much better shape if there was more of a directorial culture. What's needed is people of clear vision, and genuinely dictatorial, mentally ill people in charge of millions upon millions of dollars. Just like the film industry.

The reckoning

There comes a time in a mans life when he must sit back and think "How much time and money is too much time and money to spend acquiring a Nerf sniper rifle?"

It's not available in the UK, and probably costs quite a lot to get shipped over here. But, on the other side of the coin, it's a Nerf sniper rifle.

This is possibly the greatest philosophical quandry mankind has ever faced.

How do these people get funding?

When I was leaving University, there were still occasional thoughts rattling around my brain about doing a Msc or Phd. Trouble was, I couldn't really find a research project of any value. Well, it turns out you really don't need to.

I'd love to read the paper this comes from, because it sounds like absolute nonsense. Of course, you can never rule anything out, but I remain dubious that you can make any real assumptions about someone's personality based on a few concentric rings of muscle. If you could, proctologists and psychotherapists would be the same thing.

The once and future king

Woke up this morning to find that my throat had closed over almost entirely, leaving my voice sounding like one of the uber-butch marines from Gears of War. So once again, I'm not at work. It's hard to provide customers with the help they so dearly need when everything you say sounds like "Get to the chopper!"

So I'm at home, reading. This, specifically. One of the big problems that the 360 launch caused was that releases for the original Xbox dried up. Not so with the PS2. Partly, and this is shown by the article, this is because of the higher proportion of Japanese games, which tend to have longer development cycle. But to a certain extent, it's because Sony hasn't abandoned the PS2 in the same way Microsoft did the Xbox.

The strange thing is, I find myself playing on the PS2 more than any other consoles at the moment. This certainly has not been the case for the majority of it's ugly, squalid lifespan, but I now realise it was squalid and ugly because it was a pupal stage, one that has now burst forth to reveal irridiscent wings. Long story short, Okami's out now, and Final Fantasy 12 will be on friday. They're the wings. It's a metaphor. Sorry.

There aren't many games on that list that I'm not interested in, mainly because I have a burgeoning interest in Japanese RPGs. I may need to stop going to work altogether if that's something I can easily support. I remember playing Red Star a few years ago, on Xbox I think. I distinctly remember enjoying it's old school beat 'em up/shoot 'em up hybrid shenanigans. I'd even consider Yakuza 2, as long as it doesn't have the crude stealth sections of the original. Persona 3 looks particualrly interesting, though it does have the greatest potential for fanfic yaoi. I shudder at the thought.

In other news, food for gamers? Because we need to be ghettoised further. I want it on the record that I do not trust any food that lists amongst it's ingredients 'toffee bits'.

Spammed up the spam hole

Two standout spam headlines today:

Ordeal butress

Sounds useful.

But schema my pontiff

Nonsensical, but it sounds like it might inconvenience him.

And again...

As is becoming pretty much par for the course, a video game has been implicated in a crime, this time Gran Turismo. What's interesting is that, despite both men being cleared of death by dangerous driving, the fact that one of played a racing videogame has been singled out in this report.

It's clear that both of these men were idiots to be driving in such a fashion. And the judge's comments regarding the monitor in the car are in no way unreasonable. What bothers me about this artice is the 'games of death' featurette at the bottom, presented out of context, and with very little explanation. If I didn't know any better, I'd think a right-wing newspaper was being deliberately misleading and reactionary.

Lets address these points then, shall we? Original article in bold, my comments in italics.

Killer games

Manhunt Players earn points for killing people in a horrific manner. Implicated in the 2004 murder of Stefan Pakeerah, 14

Implicated by the Daily Mail, not by the police. The Daily Mail still has very little to do with judicial proceedings in this contry, to my eternal relief. The hysteria started on the basis of the victim's mother saying, and this is a direct quote "I think I heard some of his friends say he was obsessed with that game.", referring to the killer, Warren LeBlanc. It transpired however, that the killer had not played the game and did not own it, but the victim did, despite being under 18. The police and judge ruled out any link to the game, in the case of the police this was publicly, through the media. The Daily Mail didn't cover this though, despite having given two front pages to the story that week. So, in other words, bunkum.

Carmaggedon Racing game where players can run over pedestrians. Was initially refused a certificate by the censor in Britain

The crucial term being initially. It was later granted a license. It was still a little bit naff, however. Also, this game is over ten years old, doesn't run on most modern PCs, and therefore is unlikely to be much of a threat to society.

Canis Canem Players are encouraged to torment homeless people and be violent and abusive to vulnerable youngsters

Blatantly untrue. From the first encounter with the homeless character in this game, you befriend him, and his sections of game act as tutorials. Whilst there is a large amount of violence in the game, it's incredibly tame. The point of the game is not to bully the other kids, but to unite the various cliques and end the bullying at the school. It seems churlish to point out that The Times also got the name of the game wrong, but there, I did it anyway.

Prejudiced and lazy journalism? Slanted reporting? In a NewsCorp paper? You can see where I'm going with this...

That's the stuff

It's been about for a while, this whole interwub business, but finally this series of tubes has ceased to be pure potential, and has crystalized into it's final, luminous form.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you:

The true purpose of the internet.

A faint glimmer of hope

Another blow for creationism, as Kansas, a state traditionally associated with batshit educational practices, has had the teaching of creationism or intelligent design banned from school.

Now we just need California to do the same.

A plea for sanity

I would like to encourage all sane and rational folk to buy a copy of Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. You don't even necessarily need to read it, as it's basically a list of things that are common sense, such as:

Religion is the single most damaging factor in modern society.
The majority of Americans are frothing fundamental Christians.
The world is insane.

If, like me, you had a firm grip on these facts for a while now, then the book will provide the comforting glow of recognition. This is not why I suggest people buy it though. Everyone needs to buy a copy and send it to a publically-funded organisation in America, so we can prevent things like this from ever happening again.

You need to register for that article, so if you can't be bothered, here's a summary. In 2005, scientists developed a vaccine against the human papillomavirus, a very that every person carries on their skin. During sex, deposits of this virus are left in the vagina. It's fairly benign, as far as viruses go, but as with any virus, it can mutate cells via random insertion of DNA. The more exposure to the virus, the greater the risk of mutation, which is why the earlier a woman becomes sexually active is linked to an increased likelihood of cervical cancer.

The vaccine was 100 percent effective, meaning that cervical cancer could be effectively wiped out. There would still be some cases, but this would be close to a 100% reduction of cervical cancer. Just to reiterate, this is the closest we've ever come to a cure for cancer. It's cheap to produce, and could be rolled out to every girl at age 12, and prevent the suffering of millions.

So why is there not a nationwide vaccination program? Because it has been blocked by Christian pro-abstinence groups. They consider the increased risk of cancer to be a tremendous incentive for discouraging unmarried sex. The fact that you can get cervical cancer all the same from married sex seems to have passed them by. Not that I would ever genuinely wish it upon any one, but these people (I can only assume that they're male) need to have their loved ones suffer from this, and know that it could have been prevented. That is is their fault, directly, that their loved one is dying, dead, or has had their womb removed. They need this to happen, so they know what they have inflicted on future generations. I would strongly recommend anyone suffering from cervical cancer should contact these folk, and let them know about their suffering. I would also sugggest that they spare no detail. Conservative Christians can be a little bit sqeamish about the female reproductive system.

This is the single most twisted application of twisted Christian morality that I have ever encountered, which is saying something, given that I come from Northern Ireland. That one person could consider this is surprising. That the American government could listen to a group of these lunatics, and agree with them, suggests that these people are not only dangerously deluded, but financially powerful as well. And that scares the crap out of me. Because, coming from a rational standpoint, this isn't a dubious decision, morally. It's evil. It's flat-out evil. No two ways about it. In an attempt to scare a few teenagers out of having sex, they are directly responisble for the slow, painful deaths of 3700 women in the US per year. And I don't know about you, but that makes me feel physically sick.

If you're wondering why this vaccine isn't available outside of US, that's because it was developed with public funding in the US, and the patent should therefore be owned by the US governement. Way to fucking go.

God Bless America

As seen on CNN, this headline:

Boy, 3, on fire runs into tree crying for mom

I cannot get the link to work, but hey.

I do like the 'You've Been Framed'-style presentation of what is probably the major defining event in this child's life.

Not again...

I'd assumed when I 'relaunched' (connected to internet, upgraded to Google, started rambling about spam) that I would be able to update on a daily basis simply by writing something pithy about spam. I hadn't thought that I would be able to post on a negative article about games each and every day.

Here's today's. Kids banned from exercising because they're imitating games? Games are rough and kids are getting hurt? Usually, the form these rants of mine take are: several vaguely moderate sentences, then a punchline. Not today.

This is fucking madness. When I was a kid, I fell over and hurt myself. This was because I was tearing around the place pretending top be Optimus Prime, Batman, or whatever the hell had been on Saturday morning television that week.

It has taken a different form. Instead of kids explaining to teachers that they are 'playing Batman' , they're playing at being from whatever the fuck videogame kids like these days. And this scares the raging bejeesus out of people.

Here's the thing. Kids run about. They fall over, push each other, pull each others hair, fall out, make up, and all the other htings kids do. It has been so since time immerorial. If these people genuinely believe they have a place in the education of young children, why don't they learn the basic fucking principles of child development? This kind of competetive play is absolutely vital for developing motor skills, social skills, and to a large degree, self-confidence.

Without a hint of hyperbole, this makes me angry to the point where I am shaking and feel physically ill.

Out of Spam headers already?

Todays Spam tagline:

Porous.

Almost pure in it's understated simplicity, it raises more questions than it answers. I like it, but I don't like like it.

You clearly don't know Jack

Previously I mentioned how Jack Tretton, Sony's VP of Marketing for the US, and effective mouthpiece for that territory, was perhaps a little unclear on some of his facts, staing how the Wii was not backwards-compatable. The fact that the Wii reads Gamecube discs in addition to it's own, downloads games from every Nintendo home console before it, can play Megadrive and PC Engine games, and has the capacity to have this feature set expanded in future, had apaprently passed him by. This is an unfortunate slip if you are say, a farmer. But to be fair, if you're a farmer chances are it doesn't really interest or concern you.

The trouble comes when you are the VP of Marketing for Sony America. It's a bit of a problem then, because you've just proved that you're a complete imbecile, in a very public, Tech-savvy environment, namely Wired magazine, or Time for nerds, as it's often called. Once. By me.

You'd think, 'once bitten, twice shy', right. Not with Jack. He just blunders on, oblivious of the fact that, while Sony have always seemed arrogant, under his helmsmanship, they now seem both arrogant and stupid. I wouldn't be surprised if Phil Harrison, Executive Snake Oil Development Officer for Europe, started to pretend that the guys in the US were a different Sony, rather than deal with the fallout.

I want his job. I'm clearly more articulate, and with his constant attempts at sabotage, I clearly have more love for Sony.

Doubledonkeyspamtasticelastic

Or, Spam then.

Today's winner by a country mile:

I hasten to add that the potential problem lies not with the raft but with the valve itself.

Why? I'm honestly not sure that a water-borne vessel needs a device that exists solely to let liquid through, but that could just be me.

What's wrong with plain ol' quim?

This is everwhere, so chances no-one read it are pretty slim. It's just a shame it didn't happen in the UK.

Because we've missed out on 'The Mimsy Monologues'.

In terms of oblique and wholly unneccesary synonyms, we're still kicking your ass, America.

We're No. 1! We're No. 1!

A late entrant

Consider this to be...

5. Not at Mackerel

Well, of course not.

A spot of Spam

Decisions, decisions. I'm not sure how to do this. I have four very, very strong candidates for today's spam tagline. I may put this to a public vote, but since I know you're reading this, and never leaving comments, I'm not sure that's wise. Regardless, today's choices:

1. That or Mincemeat.

Leaves it open. It's not phrased as a question, and what that is is never made clear. I like to think that is something that's not only a delicious and practical pie filling, but also something that, should you desire such a thing, make sweet love to. Just like mincemeat.

2. The fore-feet are larger than the hind ones, are round, proportionate in size, strong, thickly padded, and covered with short hard hair.

Seriously. Just wow. How did they come up with that.

It even sounds more erotic than mincemeat, if anything.

3. His at Rufus.

Deconstructionist. Fuck language, fuck structure. Stick it to the grammatical man!

4. My Centrix be Saginaw.

Not English, nor any language I speak.

People; you have the power, elect this Spammy champion, and leave a single fucking mark on this page that is not my own!

Viva la revolucion!

Perversion at 22khz

I'm glad to see that the United States media can be as frenzied as our own in inventing, and publicising, new ways in which people will molest your children. OK, fair enough, this story come not only from the notoriously "fair and balanced" Fox News, but Fox News Milwaukee, which is less a state, and more an assortment of farm machinery with senate representation.

It's not as bad as it is here. But even so, this is pretty stupid. As has been pointed out, Pictochat has never been used for anything other than sending pictures of penises to one another. It seem that Fox News are the only people unaware of this. The thought of a mall full of seedy looking men, all propossitioning one another, does amuse me however.

Dumb customers

About 5 days ago:

Woman: Will this DVD play in the U.S?
Me: No, I'm afraid not, it's region 2, it'll only play in Europe.
Woman: Then why does it say Universal on the case?

Give me one good reason why shop assistants shouldn't be licensed to sterilize members of the general public.

Okami (oh my).

A little over three years ago, I bought a PS2. This was pretty much with the express intention of getting Okami when it came out.

Today, it arrived in the post. A lot can happen in three years, but it's good to know that I am still the sort of idiot manchild that can get very, very excited about a game in which you play a Japanese sun God, taken the form of a wolf.

It basically takes the Zelda-style gain attribute/open new area model, and puts an RPG-lite levelling system on top of it. If you've played any of the 3D Zelda games, you'll be right at home. One of the genuinely original ideas in the game is also one of the best, however.

You can pause the game at any point and draw directly onto the background, creating swordstrokes, changing the time of day, causing the environment to bloom, and so on. You can even incorporate this into combat, which is welcome.

The presentation is stunning. When the level is strongly back-lit, you can see the grain of the paper the whole game is taking place on. There are thick, strong lines around each character. It's cel-shading, but possibly the best yet. The music is wonderful.

Along with Shadow of the Collosus, this is one of the few games that makes owning a PS2 worthwhile.

Spam o' t' day.

Attain Jellyfish.

The body of the text was unclear as to:

How the jellyfish are to be attained.
What dread purpose this serves.
Crucially, how many I need.

It did, however, present me with some rather interesting share options. I am, apparently, to buy now.

Book of Revelations

And it came to pass, and I enjoyed 2 EA games in one day.

I have made no bones about the fact that I like Fight Night on 360. It's a genuinely decent, nuanced fighting game. There's no buttton mashing, because there are pretty much no buttons involved. If you lost, it's because you're not as good as the other guy. That's rare in a beat 'em up. There's usually the option just to hammer 'n' hope. I lived with a blind friend of mine for a few years, Ed, and he could easily beat anyone at Mortal Kombat on the N64.

Yada yada. At the end of the day. I like, and bought, an EA game. If you're a serious gamer, they are The Enemy. EA have long represented the death of ideas, and all that. But Fight Night is great.

Today I grabbed the demo for Def Jam: Icon. And it's pretty damn good as well. I liked the previous two (pretty much putting paid to the first two paragraphs of 'oh, yeah, I guess I've heard of EA), and this one is very, very different. It's made by EA Chicago, the team behind Fight Night, and it shows. The previous games were essentially wrestling titles (I think they were developed by Yukes), but this is more of a brawler. It takes a lot of the Fight Night ideas, the risk/reward structure of heavy blows and counters. It's also fucking wierd. The background bounces around in time with the music, which isn't as distracting as it might sound. But the deep background is a series of angular sprite planes, looking like a German expressionist movie set. Occcasionally you get hit with a fire extinguisher by an elderly Korean man.

Basically, they've taken an overblown, ridiculously macho idea, and turned it into the oddest fighting game since JoJo's Bizarre adventure. I may have to buy it. To use special moves, you hold down the left trigger, and move the right stick as though you were scratching a record. It fits the subject, and it's also delightfully batshit.

The other game is the new NBA Street. It's also very good, but I haven't played it enough to rant to the same degree. It's very fast, OTT, and very street. I don't even know what that means.

And lo,

I am returneth. Returned. Whatever.

I have the internet back, and here's what's in store in the coming days:

Ideas for horrible little sketches.

A collection of dumb customer service anecdotes.

Best of all: a collection of the daftest and most surreal subject headers spammers are using to beat my filters. To get you started:

Spinach Outage.

I'm confused. Is my spinach temporarily down, or do I have (whisper it) homosexual spinach?

Once I find out, I'll be sure to update.

Hallelujah!

Bigot prime has chimed in on the whole games and violence debate. If the head of the Catholic Church is calling for a crackdown, well, that just makes me feel all warm 'n' fuzzy inside. I'm pretty sure he's unaware of this, but every time I do something the Church dissaproves of, I get a ruddy glow about the head and neck, and a tingling of the loins. I never thought the Pope would improve my gamesplaying experience.

What an age, etc...

Ahhh...

Bisto sauces. What fresh hell is this?

Please folks, it's not that goddamn hard. Learn to cook.

No, really, fuck off.

I briefly mentioned that the German government has often been disturbingly reactionary about censorship, but this takes the piss. It's fine for you to carry out your confused moralistic crusading in your own country, but please do not share it with the rest of us. The rest of Europe hasn't taken kindly to German politicians trying to inflict their philosophies upon us in the past.

Censorship, and the outright banning of games, is not the way to protect children. Children do not need protection from the publishers and retailers who make up the videogame industry. These people are not forcing anyone to buy the games. If a game is violent, it has a recommended or restricted age limit applied to it. So how do kids get hold of violent games? Quite simple - their parents buy them for them, through ignorance or an unwillingness to say 'no' and actually discipline their child.

When I worked at Gamestation, the number of times I told a parent that the game they were buying was unsuitable for their child, only to be told that 'they see worse on TV' or similar, frankly beggars belief. People buying GTA: Vice City, for absolute strangers, just because they handed them money on the streets and told them that the big mean men in the games store wouldn't give them their game. Of course, we didn't sell it to any of these guys either, but there's no guarantee that they weren't going to another store and doing the same thing.

Responsibility for the consumption of facets of our culture, be they games, films, art, abso-fucking-lutely anything, lies with the individual, or the parents, if they're a minor. In trying to legislate for these things, you are essentially abandoning any hope that people can decide upon anything for themselves, or even raise their kids.

Oh well.

Well, that's the end of civilisation

Reading back through the nonsense written here, you caould be mistaken for thinking that I work for Microsoft, given the frothing levels of 360 love on display. But today's news just takes the biscuit. The fact that the 360 will soon be streaming TV tickles me for precisely this reason:

I now have no reason at all to get a PC. With TV coming through the 360, and fullscreen Youtube coming though the Wii, it's not going to be easy to leave the house.

I've heard these devices also play videogames. What an age we live in.

Oh Boris, you're my favourite Tory.

From Gamesindustry.biz, Boris Johnson speaks out on videogames:

"These possessions are not so much an index of wealth as a cause of ignorance and underachievement and, yes, poverty," he continued.

"The nippers are bleeping and zapping in speechless rapture, their passive faces washed in explosions and gore. They sit for so long that their souls seem to have been sucked down the cathode ray tube.

"They become like blinking lizards, motionless, absorbed, only the twitching of their hands showing they are still conscious. These machines teach them nothing. They stimulate no ratiocination, discovery or feat of memory."

In other news, Boris is pretty sure there were more cats when he was a boy.

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.