- Bobbins
15/12/2010
The Idol Dead
I rcently made this thing for this band, in return they are going to record the score for "Biohazard! - The Resident Evil Musical" (Although I havent told them that yet.)
08/12/2010
Retro Prefect - Christmas Games
Christmas is obviously the most important time of year as it’s the time when I get the most presents (double the amount of birthday and five times the amount at easter!) The games industry obviously knows this because 75% of the games released in the year come out just before Christmas, hence last week alone saw the release of Modern Duties: Will Smith Ops, Medal of Duties: Taliban Ops, Golden Sun 3: Djinn Ops and many other ops related games. However the games industry seems reluctant to make any games that feature Christmas, more than likely because of political correctness gone mad. Anyway here is a list of the top 5 games (only 5 games) which feature Christmas in some capacity. Just remember that having snow in a game doesn’t make it Christmassy because all games have snow levels – even Rayman: Raving Rabbis
Shenmue – If you play the game up to December then Christmas lights will spring up in Dobuita town centre. You may even spot Santy Claus forcing himself between toy capsule machines or getting into fist fights with the burger bear. Just like in real life the Shenmue December the 25th is extremely disappointing, no one gives you any presents AND if you have the job at the docks you still have to turn up for work. In many ways Ryo is like the boy that Santa Clause forgot, he never got any presents and his daddy had been killed by a man in a dress.
Christmas rating – Plasma Sword 2: Blitzens Revenge
Christmas Bonus - Shenmue sailor discussion
“Sailor location known?”
“Sailor location denied!”
“Identify Sailor?”
“Negative!”
Sonic Adventure – Yet again Dreamcast era Sega showed us the true meaning of Christmas by giving us presents, presents in the form of free DLC. If only they had invented ‘Sega points’ and charged 10.50 for downloadable Christmas outfits they probably wouldn’t have gone bankrupt. Essentially Sega is George Bailey only instead of trying to commit suicide they keep inventing new friends for Sonic. Eventually they will realise that no amount of Blaze the cat can destroy the simple joys of a pine tree mysteriously playing the NightS theme and whenever Sonic collects a ring in a game that doesn’t feature werehogs or Arthurian legend an Angel gets its wings. (Or at least a Chao)
Christmas Rating - Heavy Rain(Deer)
Christmas Bonus – New ideas for Sonic friends
Prentox the Vulture, Logarithm the studious porcupine and Uriko the Half Beast.
Christmas NightS into Dreams – A game so Christmassy that it even has Christmas in the title. Also it plays a Christmas medley while you play it, everything is made of candy canes and presents and all the unlockables are called “Christmas presents”. This would be the perfect Christmas game if only NightS: Journey into Dreams hadn’t changed our perception of the main character from a mute dream sprite to a transsexual jester.
Christmas Rating – 9 Lords a Leaping Lizards Mario adventure book.
Christmas Bonus – A fond reminiscence of NightS pinball on Sonic Adventure.
Dance Dance Revolution: Euro Mix – Does one Christmas song qualify a game as Christmassy? The real question is how many Christmas songs does Rock Band have? I don’t know as I have never played it but what I do know is that someone should start a Facebook campaign to get Silent Hill to Christmas number one.
Christmas Rating – Let it project Snowblind
Christmas Bonus – A Christmas joke
Q. What did you get for Christmas?
A. Presents!
The Sims 2 – You can potentially force your electronic slaves to have Christmas every day as there is no calendar in the Sims or if there is it is in Simlish so instead of Christmas it would be called “Melcranks”. EA went so far as to release a special Christmas edition of the Sims but so far as I could tell it was just the bog standard Sims with a houseplant reskinned as a Christmas tree. Still “Beggars can’t be juicsters” and its always fun to see a family dressed a teddy bears give each other presents while the youngest cries for help in a room with no doors or windows.
Christmas Rating – Merry Christmas (Warcraft is over)
The moral of the story is that more games should feature Christmas either in the form of DLC for Trauma Centre where you have to do a c-section in a stable or a game based on the Santa Clause 3 where you can press a button to make Jack Frost keep saying “I INVENTED CHILL!”
Today's Work - Games Reviews
Vagrant Puncher II
This may sound like a game about punching the homeless … and it is! Using the very latest in motion sensing technology the game accurately reads your attacks and then converts them into jerky animations of a man punching through his own coat. Hence the slogan of the game “Feel the vagrant – real punch intent”. This game has its fair share of problems – for example the motion for uppercut is very similar to the motion for pause menu but it’s certainly fun to get those homeless people off the streets. (By punching them). If I had any other criticisms it would be that the game cannot register kicks but I am assured this will be fixed in the downloadable content “Vagrant Puncher the extra missions – the ballad of Sam Leggers.”
8/10
Master of Rockets
This addictive I phone game puts you in the position of the master of the rockets as he directs the fireworks for bonfire night. (In America this game has been renamed Meister of the Rockets and instead of bonfire night it features Hogmanay.) This is done by lining up the different coloured rockets with your ‘kettle styler’ and then detonating them for high multiscore bonus. To add to the confusion you sometimes encounter Leod Rockets that cause the fireworks to defuse and must be styled out – just remember don’t let the rockets get to the top of the Euro zone or it’s game over! In many ways this game is like Fantavision except it is for the I phone where any old rubbish is acceptable because it only costs 59p.
6/10
Turbo Pitch Masters 5
Every year millions of footer fans look forward to the release of the new ‘Turbo Pitch Masters’ and let me tell you this one is set to be slightly better than the last! New features include “Phantasm mode” where you can have your footballers affect different phantasmagoria in order to curve the ball and a create a player mode with up to five different haircuts. (Short hair, bald head, ‘corn rows’, platinum dunce hat and comedy afro). Lest we forget that Turbo Pitch Masters 5 is also the only football game to feature all the official footer-men and footer teams from the 7-Up fun league as well as commentary from “Bonners” Trent. It really feels like you are watching the football when you hear Bonners give his classic quote “Has it happened – it has now!” There is even dream match mode where you can pit unlikely teams against each other such as the 1066 England Squadron VS Asterix.
9/10
Shaq II – Shaq in Action
The long awaited follow up to Shaq Fu, this game once again sees basketball star Shaquille O’Neil be thrust into another dimension by a china man. The main difference between that reality and this one is that everyone is rotoscoped and a mummy is the king. It would be terrible if a mummy was the king because all the stamps would be made of bandages! The most important aspect of Shaq II is that it now features online play so you can go “Shaq to Shaq” all over the world! Are there any more characters? Of course not because of online games now have less characters but I am reliably informed that a palette swap of Shaq named “Michael Jordanger” will be available on Xbox live for the price of 500 Microsoft points (2.70 in real money)
4/10
Hand Jive international edition
Yet another dance game for the Wii, does it work? Of course not as there is no way a Wii controller can tell if you are dancing. This is unimportant because it gives you a good opportunity to have all your mates round and have a good old laugh at their dancing. Surely that is the main point of computer games? You could of course just buy a revolver instead and shoot at the feet of strangers but that wouldn’t come with official licensed music from the Saturdays!
(The Saturdays are a sort of alternate universe version of Girls Aloud)
10/10
WVF Vs FFO – Attitude 2: Rage in the Cage
This game see’s all your favourite superstars from the WVF (World violence federation) and FFO (Famfrit Fighting Organisation) battle head to head in the ring. The main attraction of this new version is that it now has the rights to new wrestlemen such as “Muscles Boranger” and “Fenton ‘The Soda Drinker’ Fatherington”. That’s not to mention the new types of battles such as iron lung match, superstar bench rumble and rotating plinth royale. A usual fans of the WVF will remain amused with the high levels of fan service but everyone else will merely be bemused by the prospect of men slowly sitting on each other. The best bit is when you make your man run into the ropes a lot and the commentator starts saying “Into the ropes, off the ropes, he’s off the ropes, he’s going onto the ropes.”
8/10
Today's Work - Lets Dactor
Here is a good thing to do – confuse a thing with another thing of the same name for comic effect. i.e. I tried watching the X-Factor but was very disappointed as it was nothing like the comics and didn’t even feature the Multiple Man! Unfortunately this never happened. What did happen is that I don’t own a television any more so I don’t have to watch shit like this. (And might I take the opportunity to thank all the major TV channels for destroying their business model by providing ad free programming on their respective websites without making us pay a TV license. ) Here are my guesses about what is happening on the X-factor right now, if someone would like to confirm my suspicions I would be most grateful.
Behold (optic blast)
Judges
Simon Callow – Simon Callow is a popular actor having appeared in both Doctor Who (as Charles Dickens) AND Street Fighter the Movie (as a nervous boat salesman) a career path mirrored by Kylie Minogue ( Waitress and Cammy) and Christopher Eccleston (Doctor and Vulcano Rosso). However he also owns all the music in the world and he uses this power to make withering remarks at potential pop stars. “That was the worst thing I have ever heard and I once heard a man being paper clipped to a fan”. Even now Callow uses his media empire to manipulate members of the public into watching his nonsense television shows and buying his CD’s. The archenemy of Simon Callow is Napster.
Louis Walsh – Much like Louis from Inspector Morse Louis Walsh is totally useless. What is the point of him other than that he can always convince Westlife to appear on the final episode and sing a duet with his character. Louis Walsh is well rubbish.
Cheryl Cole – Aww lovely Cheryl Cole commonly held to be the sexiest woman in the entire universe but lest we forget that she is a massive racist who assaulted a woman over a Chupa Chup lolly. Her main role is to cry when people sing ballads and never say anything negative so that people don’t remember was a hateful, violent woman she really is.
Minouge – Minouge is a giant spider from the future who absorbs the souls of young men in order to keep looking youthful. The proof of this is her bony elbows and the fact that her whole face opens up into a giant mouth like the Manjini from Resident Evil 5. Apart from this her main job is to make inappropriate sexual comments about the male contestants. It’s a shame the male judges aren’t allowed to comment on how much they would like to ‘destroy’ the young girls that enter, but then the looks on the face of Simon Callow say it all. (Looks of lust). I don’t think Minouge ever speaks she just makes noises like a fox with a bottle trappedin its throat.
Contestants
Henry Dent – Henry Dent is a bland youngster who has a mysterious fog instead of a face and white noise instead of opinions. He comes from a salt of the earth (common) background and his main concerns are telling everyone how much he loves his Nan and how he wants to win the X-Factor in memory of his dead Kestrel. Everyone thinks he is ‘lovely’ because he looks like he is going to cry whenever he sings – this is actually because he cannot remember the words and has to concentrate to avoid toppling over sideways. In reality Henry severely beats his girlfriend as he is too stupid to articulate his feelings of anger in other more constructive ways i.e. by making a blog that nobody reads. In the press he is known as Hezzer.
Song – A song about his mother (by Westlife)
Style - Robot with experimental emotion chip.
Chance of winning – High (Provided no one finds out about all the prostitutes he has slept with.)
Blyth Fennnington – Blyth looks a lot like Henry apart from his receding hair which he covers up with a variety of trilbies and flat caps. His main weakness is that he is middle class and so the public consider him arrogant for his ability to construct a proper sentence. Halfway through the series he will attempt to become more likeable by crying when he see’s his parents, however their living room furniture is far too tasteful and people hate him even more.
Song – A big band version of absolutely everything.
Style – Competent
Change of winning – Slim
Reticule – After being given such a stupid name by his parents the only job Reticule could ever do is ‘pop star’. He tried applying for other jobs but the forms always say “First Name” “Last Name” but he only has one name and that name is Reticule. Furthermore Reticule also has silly hair and a suit made of clovers, these were nothing to do with his parents but as the saying goes “In for a penny crayon, in for a pound sterling”. Everyone hates him except for students who think he is leg end mega lolls. However he can never win because the only people that actually vote in the X-Factor are middle aged women and sex offenders under house arrest.
Song – A song he wrote himself called “Caught in the Reticule”
Style – Volume and Sparkles.
Chance of winning – Slim (unless you consider a permanent marquis at Butlins a victory)
Dario Tassimo – Dario is the token foreign entry and he is mainly only allowed in because he is useless and it lets everyone laugh at foreigners without being accused of racism. Even though his foreign clowning is the most entertaining aspect of the show people are absolutely furious that he continues to progress in the competition while really dull people who are technically better singers are knocked out as no one can remember their names. This is all a scheme by Simon Callow to add a bit of drama to proceedings and provide a pretext for some pretend arguments between the judges. (Probably leading to Louis Walsh storming off for a week) Dario isn’t that bothered about winning the competition, he just wants to stay in the country long enough to get his asylum papers through and then its back to his Dodrio ranch.
Song – Something ‘well random’ from the 90’s.
Style – Hilariously un English
Chance of winning – Nil
Charlemagne Potts – A screechy woman with a big nose and the ability to cry almost constantly. She gets on everyone’s nerves but people feel duty bound to vote for her because she is good at doing many different notes. She will eventually be voted out when she tries to do a ‘sexy dance’ which disturbs the nation.
Song – Ballad (of Bilbo Baggins)
Style – Insane lyrical trills.
Chance of winning – Fair to Middler
Ferrous Mews – Metal Gear Solid 2 tells the story of Raiden an attempt to replicate the legendary hero Solid Snake by artificially shaping the events of his life to match those of the ‘Shadow Moses’ incident. It is also the story of how people are idiots because they say Raiden is rubbish even though he had EXACTLY THE SAME abilities as snake AND had nicer hair. “Blah blah too many whiney codec conversations” have you ever played Metal Gear Solid? Half the game is Snake blathering on down his codec “I wish I hadn’t killed my dad even though it turns out he wasn’t really my dad and I didn’t actually kill him etc” AND he doesn’t get to wave a samurai sword about.
Anyway Ferrous Mews is a similar attempt to replicate Cheryl Cole, however these attempts always fail because no one is allowed to mention how she committed a racist assault even though it is a core part of her personality. Much like Cheryl, Ferrous is considered ‘good hearted’ because she keeps going on about whatever shit northern town she is from.
Song – That song Cheryl Cole did about being dressed as M.Bison.
Style – CQC
Chance of winning – Fission Mailed.
Sh8Zm – Sh8Zm follow the X-Factor tradition of ugly girl bands with rubbish names featuring X’s and Z’s. That is because girls are rubbish at thinking of names for things and always have stupid ideas like using the first letter of each name or thinking they are better looking than they actually are. The individual members of Sh8Zm are virtually unknown because TV producers still haven’t found a way to build a compelling narrative for a group the same way they have for working class dunderheads with poorly uncles. Sh8Zm will be at the bottom of the league tables for weeks and will eventually be forced out to the surprise of no one. That’s what they get for putting four part harmonies into songs meant to be sung by one man.
Song – All by myself
Style – Walking forward in sync
Chance of winning – Unlikely
Jazzbot – Jazzbot are a sort of mowtown tribute act who spend much of their time walking down stairs. They like to put rapping bits in theirs songs to prove that they are ‘Final Fight: Streetwise” even though in reality they all come from Devon. Jazzbot suffer the same narrative problems as Sh8Zm but stay in the competition a little longer because women think they are ‘well fit’. The main gimmick of Jazzbot is that CJ has blades for arms.
Song – Reach Out (I’ll be there) but with a rap in the middle
Style – Boys 2 Men Lite
Chance of winning - Average
James Tamworth – At 10 years old James is the youngest person in England. The fact that he can even open his mouth at all is amazing so for him to be able to sing is the equivalent of a dog with psychic powers. We are supposed to feel sorry for James because someone was mean to him at school but it probably serves him right for being a precocious twat. Secretly we are all willing him to fail and get sent back to school where he will get his head kicked in by bullies AND be several months behind in his GCSE work, that’ll learn him to try and make something of his life. Near the end of the series there will be a bit where he goes back to school and people will be cheering and holding up banners and then you think that must be lies because if someone from my school did quite well in the x-factor I would be jealous of them and would probably try to cut out their vocal chords with a shoe.
Song – Where is love?
Style – Simpering stage school brat.
Chance of winning – Depend entirely on when his voice breaks.
Mary Felton – Mary Felton battles for female equality by being fat from eating too much cake and wearing unflattering dresses. She is described as having a powerful voice but in reality she just has a big mouth from eating many big pieces of food and the ability to shout loudly gained from ordering many Happy Meals in crowded McDonalds. In later life she will be involved in a scandal where she flays the skin of the bones of a man by shouting at him very loudly.
Song – Goldfinger
Style – Banshee Wail
Chance of winning – A fat woman has already won the X-Factor so it probably won’t happen again.
David Renquist – Poor David has spent over 50 years working as a bin man/coalminer/phone sex operative but his real passion has always been singing. He does get paid work singing in pubs on a Saturday night but the patrons are more interested in drinking their pints! He looks mournfully at the camera and pleads “I just want to sing to an audience who are actually listening; this is my last chance…”.
Song – Mustang Sally
Style – Neil Diamond having spent 50 years sorting through broken glass and used nappies.
Chance of winning – Simon Callow would never allow it as he is old and therefore not good value for money.
Behold (optic blast)
Judges
Simon Callow – Simon Callow is a popular actor having appeared in both Doctor Who (as Charles Dickens) AND Street Fighter the Movie (as a nervous boat salesman) a career path mirrored by Kylie Minogue ( Waitress and Cammy) and Christopher Eccleston (Doctor and Vulcano Rosso). However he also owns all the music in the world and he uses this power to make withering remarks at potential pop stars. “That was the worst thing I have ever heard and I once heard a man being paper clipped to a fan”. Even now Callow uses his media empire to manipulate members of the public into watching his nonsense television shows and buying his CD’s. The archenemy of Simon Callow is Napster.
Louis Walsh – Much like Louis from Inspector Morse Louis Walsh is totally useless. What is the point of him other than that he can always convince Westlife to appear on the final episode and sing a duet with his character. Louis Walsh is well rubbish.
Cheryl Cole – Aww lovely Cheryl Cole commonly held to be the sexiest woman in the entire universe but lest we forget that she is a massive racist who assaulted a woman over a Chupa Chup lolly. Her main role is to cry when people sing ballads and never say anything negative so that people don’t remember was a hateful, violent woman she really is.
Minouge – Minouge is a giant spider from the future who absorbs the souls of young men in order to keep looking youthful. The proof of this is her bony elbows and the fact that her whole face opens up into a giant mouth like the Manjini from Resident Evil 5. Apart from this her main job is to make inappropriate sexual comments about the male contestants. It’s a shame the male judges aren’t allowed to comment on how much they would like to ‘destroy’ the young girls that enter, but then the looks on the face of Simon Callow say it all. (Looks of lust). I don’t think Minouge ever speaks she just makes noises like a fox with a bottle trappedin its throat.
Contestants
Henry Dent – Henry Dent is a bland youngster who has a mysterious fog instead of a face and white noise instead of opinions. He comes from a salt of the earth (common) background and his main concerns are telling everyone how much he loves his Nan and how he wants to win the X-Factor in memory of his dead Kestrel. Everyone thinks he is ‘lovely’ because he looks like he is going to cry whenever he sings – this is actually because he cannot remember the words and has to concentrate to avoid toppling over sideways. In reality Henry severely beats his girlfriend as he is too stupid to articulate his feelings of anger in other more constructive ways i.e. by making a blog that nobody reads. In the press he is known as Hezzer.
Song – A song about his mother (by Westlife)
Style - Robot with experimental emotion chip.
Chance of winning – High (Provided no one finds out about all the prostitutes he has slept with.)
Blyth Fennnington – Blyth looks a lot like Henry apart from his receding hair which he covers up with a variety of trilbies and flat caps. His main weakness is that he is middle class and so the public consider him arrogant for his ability to construct a proper sentence. Halfway through the series he will attempt to become more likeable by crying when he see’s his parents, however their living room furniture is far too tasteful and people hate him even more.
Song – A big band version of absolutely everything.
Style – Competent
Change of winning – Slim
Reticule – After being given such a stupid name by his parents the only job Reticule could ever do is ‘pop star’. He tried applying for other jobs but the forms always say “First Name” “Last Name” but he only has one name and that name is Reticule. Furthermore Reticule also has silly hair and a suit made of clovers, these were nothing to do with his parents but as the saying goes “In for a penny crayon, in for a pound sterling”. Everyone hates him except for students who think he is leg end mega lolls. However he can never win because the only people that actually vote in the X-Factor are middle aged women and sex offenders under house arrest.
Song – A song he wrote himself called “Caught in the Reticule”
Style – Volume and Sparkles.
Chance of winning – Slim (unless you consider a permanent marquis at Butlins a victory)
Dario Tassimo – Dario is the token foreign entry and he is mainly only allowed in because he is useless and it lets everyone laugh at foreigners without being accused of racism. Even though his foreign clowning is the most entertaining aspect of the show people are absolutely furious that he continues to progress in the competition while really dull people who are technically better singers are knocked out as no one can remember their names. This is all a scheme by Simon Callow to add a bit of drama to proceedings and provide a pretext for some pretend arguments between the judges. (Probably leading to Louis Walsh storming off for a week) Dario isn’t that bothered about winning the competition, he just wants to stay in the country long enough to get his asylum papers through and then its back to his Dodrio ranch.
Song – Something ‘well random’ from the 90’s.
Style – Hilariously un English
Chance of winning – Nil
Charlemagne Potts – A screechy woman with a big nose and the ability to cry almost constantly. She gets on everyone’s nerves but people feel duty bound to vote for her because she is good at doing many different notes. She will eventually be voted out when she tries to do a ‘sexy dance’ which disturbs the nation.
Song – Ballad (of Bilbo Baggins)
Style – Insane lyrical trills.
Chance of winning – Fair to Middler
Ferrous Mews – Metal Gear Solid 2 tells the story of Raiden an attempt to replicate the legendary hero Solid Snake by artificially shaping the events of his life to match those of the ‘Shadow Moses’ incident. It is also the story of how people are idiots because they say Raiden is rubbish even though he had EXACTLY THE SAME abilities as snake AND had nicer hair. “Blah blah too many whiney codec conversations” have you ever played Metal Gear Solid? Half the game is Snake blathering on down his codec “I wish I hadn’t killed my dad even though it turns out he wasn’t really my dad and I didn’t actually kill him etc” AND he doesn’t get to wave a samurai sword about.
Anyway Ferrous Mews is a similar attempt to replicate Cheryl Cole, however these attempts always fail because no one is allowed to mention how she committed a racist assault even though it is a core part of her personality. Much like Cheryl, Ferrous is considered ‘good hearted’ because she keeps going on about whatever shit northern town she is from.
Song – That song Cheryl Cole did about being dressed as M.Bison.
Style – CQC
Chance of winning – Fission Mailed.
Sh8Zm – Sh8Zm follow the X-Factor tradition of ugly girl bands with rubbish names featuring X’s and Z’s. That is because girls are rubbish at thinking of names for things and always have stupid ideas like using the first letter of each name or thinking they are better looking than they actually are. The individual members of Sh8Zm are virtually unknown because TV producers still haven’t found a way to build a compelling narrative for a group the same way they have for working class dunderheads with poorly uncles. Sh8Zm will be at the bottom of the league tables for weeks and will eventually be forced out to the surprise of no one. That’s what they get for putting four part harmonies into songs meant to be sung by one man.
Song – All by myself
Style – Walking forward in sync
Chance of winning – Unlikely
Jazzbot – Jazzbot are a sort of mowtown tribute act who spend much of their time walking down stairs. They like to put rapping bits in theirs songs to prove that they are ‘Final Fight: Streetwise” even though in reality they all come from Devon. Jazzbot suffer the same narrative problems as Sh8Zm but stay in the competition a little longer because women think they are ‘well fit’. The main gimmick of Jazzbot is that CJ has blades for arms.
Song – Reach Out (I’ll be there) but with a rap in the middle
Style – Boys 2 Men Lite
Chance of winning - Average
James Tamworth – At 10 years old James is the youngest person in England. The fact that he can even open his mouth at all is amazing so for him to be able to sing is the equivalent of a dog with psychic powers. We are supposed to feel sorry for James because someone was mean to him at school but it probably serves him right for being a precocious twat. Secretly we are all willing him to fail and get sent back to school where he will get his head kicked in by bullies AND be several months behind in his GCSE work, that’ll learn him to try and make something of his life. Near the end of the series there will be a bit where he goes back to school and people will be cheering and holding up banners and then you think that must be lies because if someone from my school did quite well in the x-factor I would be jealous of them and would probably try to cut out their vocal chords with a shoe.
Song – Where is love?
Style – Simpering stage school brat.
Chance of winning – Depend entirely on when his voice breaks.
Mary Felton – Mary Felton battles for female equality by being fat from eating too much cake and wearing unflattering dresses. She is described as having a powerful voice but in reality she just has a big mouth from eating many big pieces of food and the ability to shout loudly gained from ordering many Happy Meals in crowded McDonalds. In later life she will be involved in a scandal where she flays the skin of the bones of a man by shouting at him very loudly.
Song – Goldfinger
Style – Banshee Wail
Chance of winning – A fat woman has already won the X-Factor so it probably won’t happen again.
David Renquist – Poor David has spent over 50 years working as a bin man/coalminer/phone sex operative but his real passion has always been singing. He does get paid work singing in pubs on a Saturday night but the patrons are more interested in drinking their pints! He looks mournfully at the camera and pleads “I just want to sing to an audience who are actually listening; this is my last chance…”.
Song – Mustang Sally
Style – Neil Diamond having spent 50 years sorting through broken glass and used nappies.
Chance of winning – Simon Callow would never allow it as he is old and therefore not good value for money.
Today's Work - Tockenheim Tucks In
Lord Lawton is getting ready to tuck into his Christmas feast in the grand hall of Lawton manor, however things are soon to go from Lawton to Crimeton!
Lord Lawton: Forthsooth I cannae wait te get me mitts on that plump Christmas goose.
Chef Barkington brings in the goose with all the trimmings on a big silver platter.
Chef Barkington: Alez! Wud you like a slice of the goose monsieur?
Lord Lawton: With ool spood an dinnae spyre the horses!
Lord Lawton is soon tucking into the Christmas delights but it soon becomes apparent that he has ‘bitten off more than he can chew’ quite literally as there was a big bit of lead in the goose!
Lord Lawton: Ach nae ahm chocking….grag grag…
He slumps face first into the Christmas feast.
Chef Barkington: Alez! Mein feast is ruined…..and Lord Lawton is coup detat!
Jenrox the craggy butler: I will use my rock powers to summon the constabulary, be wary this will be an ‘earth shaking’ event!
He uses his earthquake powers to send a message to Tockenheim who is soon at the scene courtesy of his trademark ‘Tockencopter;.
Contsable Cogsworthy: Oh heck it looks like somebody done put lead in the Christmas feast, I’ve heard of ‘lead in the pencil’ but this takes the cakes.
Tockenheim: Quiet Cogsworthy, I have already devised who done the deed.
Constable Cogsworthy: But sir you haven’t even looked at the crime scene…
Tockenheim: Well I can’t be bothered, the Christmas edition for Nethanials Whims is on and I don’t want to miss the bit where Nethanial is dressed as the green lantern. Anyway the man to arrest is obviously Farmer Fothergill as he purposely fed his goose lead to make them heavier. Everyone knows you pay more for the biggest goose – just look at scrooge. Anyway I think you’ll find that Farmer Fothergill invested heavily in lead at the start of the year and also he hates Lord Lawton because he was trying to turn his farm into a Foyles War theme park.
Constable Cogsworthy: I’ll go arrest him right away sir!
At this moment Mimi Flambard bursts into the room
Mimi: I wouldn’t bother Tockenheim you see….Farmer Fothergill IS DEAD!
Cogsworthy: But how?
Tockenheim: He must have also eaten some of the lead lined goose, everyone knows that Farmer Fothergill is notoriously bad at telling his geese apart!
Mimi: Then who got the leadless goose?
Tockenheim: I think its Tockentime for me to leave before they all try to ‘cook my goose’
Fin
13/11/2010
Today's Work - Deano Levison, the life of a rent a chair Barber.
Deano Levison is the foremost barber and chair rental technician in the North West.
“Everybody thought I was mad at first. After all who wants to rent a chair? Everybody already has chairs don’t they? There is a famous saying in Barbery and that is ‘The only thing more than hairs is chairs!’. That is to say people like to have nice hair cuts but they can always wear hats, if someone wants to sit down the need a chair. What else are they going to sit on?”
I pointed out the existence of the chaise lounge and Deano went a strange colour “Technically a chaise lounge is for reclining on, there is no proper lumbar support. If you want your spine pinging out of your back like a watch spring then be my guest!” I could see I had a hit a raw nerve so I quickly asked him how he managed to rent out so many chairs. (He was holding his scissors in a violent manner and I was afraid he was going to try and trim more than my fringe!)
“You can’t go straight into chair rentals, you have to talk to the customer a bit first, get to know them see where they might need a chair. For example if someone mentions they have an aunt you can rent them a chair in case the aunt comes round for tea. You cant have an elderly aunt sitting on the floor as she would complain to your mother and then you would get a right earful. It’s easiest when they say they are getting married because people always need chairs for weddings and you can tell them scare stories about the time your cousin Bertram gone married and there wasn’t enough chairs so the bride imploded. That didn’t actually happen but if you tell a story with enough conviction people will believe anything. People tend to believe anything you tell them about chairs anyway because they are such a sturdy and reliable object, you can’t imagine them being deceitful like you could a computer desk. I once told a man that chairs were actually held up by magic and the legs were just for show. On that occasion he didn’t believe me but that’s the inception that proves the fool.”
Deano went on at length about the various chair related lies he had told, I asked him if he considered this to be false advertising. Again he started waving the scissors around…
“Look if you want to get OFCOM (Oligarchy for convincing original men) involved then go ahead and they’ll find that these lies are all ironic. If people choose to believe them then that’s there business but some people believe the moon is made of moon rocks and you don’t see OFCOM getting involved in that!”
I go on to ask Deano about the different types of chair he has available, I wasn’t very interested but again he was coming at me with a dangerous intent.
“Types of chair? Are you jesting with me!? There is only one types of chair here and that is known as CHAIR. Four legs and a seat my friend and then a back rest for the important support. If you don’t support your back who’s going to support you? In the case of Gloria Estefan a large iron rod but we aren’t all pop stars. The pricing structures of the chairs are as follows
1 Chair – 1 Pfennig a day
3 Chairs – 3 Pfennig’s every two days
5 Chairs – 7 pund a week
10 Chairs (Known as the Deano Bonanza) - 22 punds a month and 1.95 delivery.”
“The thing about barbery/chair rentals is that sometimes you get people coming into the shop who don’t even want to have a hair cut but you HAVE to have a hair cut if you want to rent some chairs. Once I even scalped a bald man because he was so desperate for a sit down, the thing is that under his bald head their was lots of trapped hair that had spent years trying to get out. The moral of the story is that baldness is caused by gluing up the holes on your hair with chemicals. That man had worked in a chemical factory and had bet a man that sticking his head in the chemicals would have no ill effects. He didn’t win the bet and he had to wear hats all the time. I’m always telling this story because it’s important that people don’t just go away with a haircut and some chairs, they also go away with a sound knowledge of proper health and safety. I know a lot of people think that its political correctness gone mad but my Granddad fell over a railing in the times before railings had fences around them.”
I came away from Deano’s emporium with a heavy heart. The entire time I was there he never once spoke of cutting any actual hair. One wonders why he doesn’t just go into chair rental full time; I got the feeling that his true love was chairs but that this might be considered too effeminate by the local community. His words of wisdom rung in my ears “Chairs over hairs but bears can bewares”
23/10/2010
Do I keep having to explain these things?
I enjoy a ‘joke’ as much as the next man. Just the other day I quoted the following to the draft board
Q. Why did the man go into town?
A. Because he was ‘on the loose’.
However there are times when jokes can go too far. Times like last Christmas when we ended up having ‘Rage Against the Machine’ as number one. I’m sure it was very amusing to get one over on ‘the man’ and nobody likes Simon Cowell but did we really need to encourage that particular band? The irony of the situation is that the song went to number oen by itunes downloads which could only be played on the very ‘machines’ the band were trying to rage against. The moral of the story is 1. The British public are idiots even when they try to do something clever. 2. Instead of an awful X-Factor single as number one we had to have an awful none X-factor single as number one AND the kind of people that read Kerrang! (The voice of rock) were allowed to go around feeling all superior. I once read a copy of Kerrang! and it is EXACTLY like Smash Hits except the men on the posters are wearing eyeliner and the comic makes no sense.
Pandora: “I’m going to the rock concert”
Pandora’s friend: “Radical!”
Pandora: “SIGH!”
With this in mind I was extremely displeased to see that a Facebook campaign has been started to get ‘Surfin Bird’ to number one this year. Because that would be WELL RANDOM and MEGA LOLZ because it was on an episode of Family Guy ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO. Do we really want the rest of the world to think we are that far behind the thrust of popular culture? Why don’t we all just dress up as The Mask and announce “Smooookkkkiiiiinnnn” in unison and that can be Christmas number one. If this is how the rest of the country wants to behave then that’s FINE but we will lose the right to act all aloof at Eurovision and then the fact that we always lose really badly will become a NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT. We’ll probably end up having to start some more wars just to look better than whatever bit of Eastern Europe Resident Evil 4 was set in.
Here are some facts
1. Getting something else to Christmas number one won’t ‘Wipe the smile of his face’ as the campaign won’t sway people who were already going to buy that single. It just means more people have bought a different single on itunes which is probably owned by some subsidiary of Simon Cowell’s music factory anyway. (Simon Cowell personally owns the rights to all music.) Essentially he is still going to make a big pile of gold coins and get lots of free publicity.
2. That episode of Family Guy isn’t really that funny and on repeated viewings becomes downright irritating. The best bit of family guy is the two vaudeville men who say “You know what’s dead Vaudeville and TV’s the box they buried it in…” and then the other one plays the piano. Unfortunately they ruined that joke by killing them off and then making one of them a paedophile. The other good joke is when Peter gets hit by a piano and then he walks all funny like a concertina but that just made me want to watch a roadrunner cartoon.
3. I watched a Roadrunner cartoon where Wylie Coyote was trying to shoot a bow and arrow at Roadrunner but it went wrong because Coyotes don’t have fingers and there was a bit of rock at the edge of a cliff that snapped off and I said “I bet that bit of rock hits him on the head”….and it did!
4. The best thing to do would actually be to buy lots of copies of the single and then murder someone because the Daily Mails would say the single was evil and should be banned.
However if you will insist on having a ‘chart battle’ then someone needs to make a song about how Cheryl Cole is actually quite plain looking and also that she once assaulted someone in a toilet because she is a racist. Also it should feature this joke “No one escapes from Cheryl Tweedy’s farm” Maybe the song would go like this…
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The Woman the authorities came to blame
For something that she definitely done
But she got off with it, because she was voted
The sexiest woman in the woooooorrrrllllddd.
Q. Why did the man go into town?
A. Because he was ‘on the loose’.
However there are times when jokes can go too far. Times like last Christmas when we ended up having ‘Rage Against the Machine’ as number one. I’m sure it was very amusing to get one over on ‘the man’ and nobody likes Simon Cowell but did we really need to encourage that particular band? The irony of the situation is that the song went to number oen by itunes downloads which could only be played on the very ‘machines’ the band were trying to rage against. The moral of the story is 1. The British public are idiots even when they try to do something clever. 2. Instead of an awful X-Factor single as number one we had to have an awful none X-factor single as number one AND the kind of people that read Kerrang! (The voice of rock) were allowed to go around feeling all superior. I once read a copy of Kerrang! and it is EXACTLY like Smash Hits except the men on the posters are wearing eyeliner and the comic makes no sense.
Pandora: “I’m going to the rock concert”
Pandora’s friend: “Radical!”
Pandora: “SIGH!”
With this in mind I was extremely displeased to see that a Facebook campaign has been started to get ‘Surfin Bird’ to number one this year. Because that would be WELL RANDOM and MEGA LOLZ because it was on an episode of Family Guy ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO. Do we really want the rest of the world to think we are that far behind the thrust of popular culture? Why don’t we all just dress up as The Mask and announce “Smooookkkkiiiiinnnn” in unison and that can be Christmas number one. If this is how the rest of the country wants to behave then that’s FINE but we will lose the right to act all aloof at Eurovision and then the fact that we always lose really badly will become a NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT. We’ll probably end up having to start some more wars just to look better than whatever bit of Eastern Europe Resident Evil 4 was set in.
Here are some facts
1. Getting something else to Christmas number one won’t ‘Wipe the smile of his face’ as the campaign won’t sway people who were already going to buy that single. It just means more people have bought a different single on itunes which is probably owned by some subsidiary of Simon Cowell’s music factory anyway. (Simon Cowell personally owns the rights to all music.) Essentially he is still going to make a big pile of gold coins and get lots of free publicity.
2. That episode of Family Guy isn’t really that funny and on repeated viewings becomes downright irritating. The best bit of family guy is the two vaudeville men who say “You know what’s dead Vaudeville and TV’s the box they buried it in…” and then the other one plays the piano. Unfortunately they ruined that joke by killing them off and then making one of them a paedophile. The other good joke is when Peter gets hit by a piano and then he walks all funny like a concertina but that just made me want to watch a roadrunner cartoon.
3. I watched a Roadrunner cartoon where Wylie Coyote was trying to shoot a bow and arrow at Roadrunner but it went wrong because Coyotes don’t have fingers and there was a bit of rock at the edge of a cliff that snapped off and I said “I bet that bit of rock hits him on the head”….and it did!
4. The best thing to do would actually be to buy lots of copies of the single and then murder someone because the Daily Mails would say the single was evil and should be banned.
However if you will insist on having a ‘chart battle’ then someone needs to make a song about how Cheryl Cole is actually quite plain looking and also that she once assaulted someone in a toilet because she is a racist. Also it should feature this joke “No one escapes from Cheryl Tweedy’s farm” Maybe the song would go like this…
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The Woman the authorities came to blame
For something that she definitely done
But she got off with it, because she was voted
The sexiest woman in the woooooorrrrllllddd.
Today's Work - Questions answered by a Sex Uncle.
Q. How come in pantomimes there is always an extraneous character called ‘buttons’ who is wearing many ‘buttons’ on his clothes? I find it very disturbing as he is often leering over the main princess saying “There there cinders why not come here for a cuddle?”
A. Because buttons is like the man from Quantum Leap except instead of going through time he goes to different fairy stories. (He teleports by pressing the buttons on his coat.) Also instead of helping people he just sings the theme tune from Neighbours while a ghost is killing people.
Buttons: “Oh noes I didn’t seeing the ghost AND Brother Barry has gone missing”
Brother Paul: “You owes me five punds!”
Buttons: “He’s a fine Jew!”
Q. How comes at the circus they aren’t allowed to fight Lions anymore?
A. Because there is no such thing as Lions.
Q. How come once I went to see a pantomime which had Super Mario in it but they never mentioned it in the 25th Anniversary Super Mario advert?
A. That is because no famous people have ever played a computer game and they had to tell them what to say i.e. “It’s well good when Mario finds the Master Sword” or “My best bit of Mario is how he says ‘Lots to do for Mario!’” Also the Mario featured in that pantomime was probably not official sanctioned by Nintendo as he shoved several children quite roughly.
At least he didn’t jump on their heads!
(He did.)
Q. Why did Uncle Pete put a note in my lunchbox saying “I have told the people at the pantomime it is your birthday and they will get you up on stage” so that I had to spend all of the pantomime in fear?
A. Because Uncle Pete never wanted children and he resents you!
Q. How come pantomime is called a good part of British culture even though nobody likes it?
A. Because British people are stupid!
Q. How come the Pantomime of Aladdin is racist against Chinese people but the film Aladdin is not racist against Arabian people even though Disney himself was a terrible racist?
A. Because of political correctness gone mad and also because Walt Disney had built a large underwater city which he was living in at the time. (He had forgot Arabs were real)
Q. How comes that puppet shows are always performs by professors, doctors and other esteemed members of society?
A. Because glove puppets are actually very difficult to operate on account of working three fingers independently is actually impossible. Also think about this, one time I saw a puppet show where only one man was in the puppet box but there were THREE puppets moving at the same time. How was this achieved? (The three puppets were Mr Punch, the Crocodile and Ronan the Accuser.) One time Jonas Bruner got a puppet show for his birthday but all the puppets had strange plastic faces so we were unwilling to investigate further.
Q. When is a Viking not a Viking?
A. When he’s a Viscount!
Q. How come the pantomime I went to see about Huckleberry Hound wasn’t advertised as “Yogi Bear” even though it featured copious amounts of Yogi Bear and Yogi Bear is arguably the more famous of the Hannah Barbara properties.
A. I have no answer to this; perhaps the marketing people behind the pantomime were fools. Ironically most of the merchandise available was Yogi Bear related so actual fans of Huckleberry Hound would have been disappointed.
Q. When I went to see Rainbow live there was a bit where Zippy was singing ‘Any dream will do’ but instead of the proper words he said “I close my eyes…..and I fall over!” Many years later I sung this to my wife and she thought it was the funniest thing I had ever said. I wonder what is wrong with my wife as I have said much wittier things i.e.
“You could say he was sizing her up!” Personally I think my marriage cannot last much longer if this is how she is going to act.
A. Maybe you should try remembering some other things that happened at pantomimes and see how she reacts. For example you could recount the time you went to see Sooty and they said “Nightie Night…Pyjama Pyjama” or when he had a hammer and said “Hit the nail in when I nod my head” and then Sooty hit him in the face with the hammer.
Q. I went to see a play called Dragon Island and it featured many interesting dragon puppets and a man with long blonde hair. However it had little to do with the mighty max playset of the same name. Shouldn’t the copyright laws in this country be better enforced?
A. Even if the trading standards people had the resources to crack down on plays named after Mighty Max play sets people would just download them off the internet instead. Personally I recommend ‘Magus’ again it has nothing to do with the lava monster playset but does feature a brilliant comic turn from Ohmid Djalili.
A. Because buttons is like the man from Quantum Leap except instead of going through time he goes to different fairy stories. (He teleports by pressing the buttons on his coat.) Also instead of helping people he just sings the theme tune from Neighbours while a ghost is killing people.
Buttons: “Oh noes I didn’t seeing the ghost AND Brother Barry has gone missing”
Brother Paul: “You owes me five punds!”
Buttons: “He’s a fine Jew!”
Q. How comes at the circus they aren’t allowed to fight Lions anymore?
A. Because there is no such thing as Lions.
Q. How come once I went to see a pantomime which had Super Mario in it but they never mentioned it in the 25th Anniversary Super Mario advert?
A. That is because no famous people have ever played a computer game and they had to tell them what to say i.e. “It’s well good when Mario finds the Master Sword” or “My best bit of Mario is how he says ‘Lots to do for Mario!’” Also the Mario featured in that pantomime was probably not official sanctioned by Nintendo as he shoved several children quite roughly.
At least he didn’t jump on their heads!
(He did.)
Q. Why did Uncle Pete put a note in my lunchbox saying “I have told the people at the pantomime it is your birthday and they will get you up on stage” so that I had to spend all of the pantomime in fear?
A. Because Uncle Pete never wanted children and he resents you!
Q. How come pantomime is called a good part of British culture even though nobody likes it?
A. Because British people are stupid!
Q. How come the Pantomime of Aladdin is racist against Chinese people but the film Aladdin is not racist against Arabian people even though Disney himself was a terrible racist?
A. Because of political correctness gone mad and also because Walt Disney had built a large underwater city which he was living in at the time. (He had forgot Arabs were real)
Q. How comes that puppet shows are always performs by professors, doctors and other esteemed members of society?
A. Because glove puppets are actually very difficult to operate on account of working three fingers independently is actually impossible. Also think about this, one time I saw a puppet show where only one man was in the puppet box but there were THREE puppets moving at the same time. How was this achieved? (The three puppets were Mr Punch, the Crocodile and Ronan the Accuser.) One time Jonas Bruner got a puppet show for his birthday but all the puppets had strange plastic faces so we were unwilling to investigate further.
Q. When is a Viking not a Viking?
A. When he’s a Viscount!
Q. How come the pantomime I went to see about Huckleberry Hound wasn’t advertised as “Yogi Bear” even though it featured copious amounts of Yogi Bear and Yogi Bear is arguably the more famous of the Hannah Barbara properties.
A. I have no answer to this; perhaps the marketing people behind the pantomime were fools. Ironically most of the merchandise available was Yogi Bear related so actual fans of Huckleberry Hound would have been disappointed.
Q. When I went to see Rainbow live there was a bit where Zippy was singing ‘Any dream will do’ but instead of the proper words he said “I close my eyes…..and I fall over!” Many years later I sung this to my wife and she thought it was the funniest thing I had ever said. I wonder what is wrong with my wife as I have said much wittier things i.e.
“You could say he was sizing her up!” Personally I think my marriage cannot last much longer if this is how she is going to act.
A. Maybe you should try remembering some other things that happened at pantomimes and see how she reacts. For example you could recount the time you went to see Sooty and they said “Nightie Night…Pyjama Pyjama” or when he had a hammer and said “Hit the nail in when I nod my head” and then Sooty hit him in the face with the hammer.
Q. I went to see a play called Dragon Island and it featured many interesting dragon puppets and a man with long blonde hair. However it had little to do with the mighty max playset of the same name. Shouldn’t the copyright laws in this country be better enforced?
A. Even if the trading standards people had the resources to crack down on plays named after Mighty Max play sets people would just download them off the internet instead. Personally I recommend ‘Magus’ again it has nothing to do with the lava monster playset but does feature a brilliant comic turn from Ohmid Djalili.
16/10/2010
Today's Work - Inspector Tockenheim 2.
Inspector Tockenheim hedges his bets - an Inspector Tockenheim mystery.
High society lady of leisure Mimi Flambard is tottering home from a busy day of drinking cocktails and having an affair with the tennis instructor. Her attitude is soon to go from ‘devil may care’ to ‘devil may cry 3: Dante’s awakening’ as something is terribly amiss.
Mimi: “Cripes!”
She continues to shriek incoherently making loud remarks such as “I am aghast and rozzers ahead” that is until Fentrox the robot gamekeeper comes running.
Fentrox: “I understand from your screaming that you are in some sort of distress. Maybe you should share the problem as a problem shared is a problem not shouted about.”
Mimi: “Just look Fentrox….my prize hedge….”
We can now see that the front privet hedge of Flambard Manor has been decimated to within an inch of its life. A terrible act of vandalism as it took several months to grow and Mimi thought that a Tuki Tuki bird was living in it. Actually this was all a story made up by her husband to cover up his affair. (The maid was hiding half dressed in the hedge making a Tuki noise of a different sort!)
Fentrox: “Initiating emergency procedures.”
He scoops up Mimi in his robotic pipe arms and then phones the police with his in built robo-phone.
Cut to titles
If you are the victim of crime
Then call on Tockenheim
He has everything he needs
To uncover naughty deeds
Tockenheim – man of the hour
Tockenheim – the villains do cower
Tocken-time for justice!
If you have suffered from rape
He won’t let the rapist escape
He tries to lock them up in a jail
Sometimes they get shot with his rail (gun)
Tockenheim – man of the hour
Tockenheim – the villains do cower
Tocken-time for justice!
If you see that drugs are for sale
Or you witness attempted blackmail
Tockenheim is the man you can call
For help in stopping a bear knuckle brawl
Tockenheim – man of the hour
Tockenheim – the villains do cower
Tocken-time for justice!
Tocken-time for JUSTICE
Tockenheim has arrived at the scene of the crime along with his faithful assistant Constable Cogsworthy. He is waving his illuminate pendant over the hedge.
Cogsworthy: “Cor blimey Mr Tockenhem, it seems a right shame that someone would want to wreck such an andsome looking piece of topiary. Shall I go look for clues?”
Tockenheim: “Cogsworthy you are as foolish as you are boggle eyed. I do not need to look for clues as my illuminate pendant will find out all the answers.
Cogsworthy: “That’s amazing Tockenheim!”
Tockenheim: “Shut up Cogsworthy, I have now deciphered who did the deed.”
Mimi: “Then who was it Inspector?”
Tockenheim: “I think you know who it was! It was you yourself Mimi Flambard who wrecked the hedge!”
Mimi: “Your right it WAS me but how did you ever know!?”
Tockenheim: “The answer was simple really, I’m surprised no one else guessed.”
Cogsworthy: “But Inspector I’m not sure I understand…”
Tockenheim: “Of course you don’t Cogsworthy, of course you don’t.”
Alls well that ends well because destroying your own hedge isn’t against the law.
Fin.
07/10/2010
Retro Prefect: Gears of War.
I also do things on retro prefect, the home of Jonas Bruner and not updating since August.
My first attempt at enjoying ‘popular’ computer games resulted in me firing my copy of Modern Warfare onto the dual carriageway.* So you would think I would have more sense than to dive back into the ‘American Shooting’ genre that makes up 90% of the Xbox catalogue. However I am nothing if not ‘sense-less’ and so dived straight into playing the most popular Xbox game that isn’t Halo of all time – Gears of War.
Right away I should say that Gears of War is probably the most homoerotic game I have ever played, a bold claim considering I used to own pit fighter. A less experienced reviewer might claim it was the most homoerotic thing they had never experienced, but they obviously don’t remember the time that guy kept putting his arm around them and telling them how funny they were. I’m guessing the main market for this game is sexually confused teenage boys who enjoy seeing men’s veins bulging out of their thick necks. You can definitely identify with the characters as the entire game revolves around them trying to deny their homosexuality by pointing phallic objects at other big men or getting inside them with chainsaws. I’m glad to say that by the end of the game the four main characters have killed enough men to feel comfortable rolling around on the grass with each other and having a bit of a play fight. The moral of the story is that there is nothing wrong with being gay but watching four fantasy muscle men kill things does not make you gay because violence is excellent – especially violence against equally muscular men.
Just remember, because this is a modern game you have to do everything as a ‘squad’ because one person fighting all those monsters would be a ludicrous proposition but one person and three unreliable idiots doing it is perfectly feasible. Your ‘Squad’ does change a little bit, but mostly you know that it can never go over four so if an extra person joins you someone else is going to get ‘done in’. This seems to happen early on in the game to demonstrate how bad war is (very bad) but near the end it doesn’t happen because of marketing. So who are the members of your muscleman squad? Allow me to introduce them and pretend they have distinct personalities.
Mark – Mark is the main character who starts of in prison for unknown crimes. (Killing his wife) however in times of war they need every man they can get, especially men who have spent all their time in prison taking steroids and learning how to talk in a gruff voice. Luckily Mark already has lots of war experience (from killing his wife) and it doesn’t take him long to get back into the swing of things. His main motivation is to escape the memory of so many prison rapes by throwing grenades into big holes.
Dom – Dom’s real name is Dominic but he likes to go by ‘Dom’ in honour of Dom Jolly. He is the main assistant of Mark and spends a lot of time looking at him adoringly. He dose mention that he has a wife but if he can’t be that bothered about her or he wouldn’t be spending all his time hanging around with men.
Whiney Man – I can’t remember the name of the whiney man because he wasn’t grotesquely muscular enough to be worth remembering. He does however look an awful lot like Cid from FF7 only instead of swearing and driving space ships with faulty oxygen tanks he makes fantastic wisecracks. The whiney man seems to spend a lot of time making funny jokes about how there are not enough women about but secretly he’s just making sure everyone is on the same page. (The page of man love)
Coal – In my humble opinion Coal is the most hateful character in all of computer games, even more so than the prince from Warrior Within. He looks absurdly inhuman even compared to his muscle-bound comrades but more importantly he is VERY ugly. Coal loves killing things and he is often found telling everyone about how great he is at fighting and how he can’t wait to find some more men to ‘get’ with his chainsaw gun. One day he will realise that he can connect with men in ways other than fighting them but until that day comes he remains the world’s most irritating virtual space soldier.
The game itself is basically Phantasy Star Online but instead of RPG elements you can stand behind things and instead of leaving behind meseta the enemies leave behind blood. Also every character is a ranger. It is most like Phantasy Star Online in that enemies keep appearing from nowhere and then the music goes “ten ten ten ten TEN TEN TEN” to make the atmosphere more tense. Also a lot of the levels are underground caves so you could play those and pretend you were on the caves level of Phantasy Star Online or you could just play the caves level of Phantasy Star Online. The choice is up to you.
Fans of Gears of War (Known as Gearophiles) might accuse me of being slightly unfair as the main point of the game are its cooperative elements. i.e. yet another game relying on your own social interactions to make up for its failings. I tried playing the co-op with Brother Jonas Bruner but he was constantly getting killed or trying to chainsaw me in the back. If anything it was even less fun as was continually making racist remarks or talking about Saint Seiya: The Hades.
My main disappointment with this game was that because it was called ‘Gears of War’ I thought all the enemies would be cog robots and gear operated spiders. However the enemies aren’t cog robots at all they are just more muscular men. Furthermore the heroes work for an organisation called COG but they do not seem to operate any clockwork style machinery. The only cog you ever see is the one representing the mysterious health system, what’s wrong with a health bar epic megagames? Also why is the ability to run named ‘roadie run’? how is it different from normal running?
Overall I give this game a COG soldier out of an annoying car bit.
* Thought for the day: Does Call of Duty have anything to do with Call of Juarez? Also how come the spellchecker accepts Juarez as a word?
My first attempt at enjoying ‘popular’ computer games resulted in me firing my copy of Modern Warfare onto the dual carriageway.* So you would think I would have more sense than to dive back into the ‘American Shooting’ genre that makes up 90% of the Xbox catalogue. However I am nothing if not ‘sense-less’ and so dived straight into playing the most popular Xbox game that isn’t Halo of all time – Gears of War.
Right away I should say that Gears of War is probably the most homoerotic game I have ever played, a bold claim considering I used to own pit fighter. A less experienced reviewer might claim it was the most homoerotic thing they had never experienced, but they obviously don’t remember the time that guy kept putting his arm around them and telling them how funny they were. I’m guessing the main market for this game is sexually confused teenage boys who enjoy seeing men’s veins bulging out of their thick necks. You can definitely identify with the characters as the entire game revolves around them trying to deny their homosexuality by pointing phallic objects at other big men or getting inside them with chainsaws. I’m glad to say that by the end of the game the four main characters have killed enough men to feel comfortable rolling around on the grass with each other and having a bit of a play fight. The moral of the story is that there is nothing wrong with being gay but watching four fantasy muscle men kill things does not make you gay because violence is excellent – especially violence against equally muscular men.
Just remember, because this is a modern game you have to do everything as a ‘squad’ because one person fighting all those monsters would be a ludicrous proposition but one person and three unreliable idiots doing it is perfectly feasible. Your ‘Squad’ does change a little bit, but mostly you know that it can never go over four so if an extra person joins you someone else is going to get ‘done in’. This seems to happen early on in the game to demonstrate how bad war is (very bad) but near the end it doesn’t happen because of marketing. So who are the members of your muscleman squad? Allow me to introduce them and pretend they have distinct personalities.
Mark – Mark is the main character who starts of in prison for unknown crimes. (Killing his wife) however in times of war they need every man they can get, especially men who have spent all their time in prison taking steroids and learning how to talk in a gruff voice. Luckily Mark already has lots of war experience (from killing his wife) and it doesn’t take him long to get back into the swing of things. His main motivation is to escape the memory of so many prison rapes by throwing grenades into big holes.
Dom – Dom’s real name is Dominic but he likes to go by ‘Dom’ in honour of Dom Jolly. He is the main assistant of Mark and spends a lot of time looking at him adoringly. He dose mention that he has a wife but if he can’t be that bothered about her or he wouldn’t be spending all his time hanging around with men.
Whiney Man – I can’t remember the name of the whiney man because he wasn’t grotesquely muscular enough to be worth remembering. He does however look an awful lot like Cid from FF7 only instead of swearing and driving space ships with faulty oxygen tanks he makes fantastic wisecracks. The whiney man seems to spend a lot of time making funny jokes about how there are not enough women about but secretly he’s just making sure everyone is on the same page. (The page of man love)
Coal – In my humble opinion Coal is the most hateful character in all of computer games, even more so than the prince from Warrior Within. He looks absurdly inhuman even compared to his muscle-bound comrades but more importantly he is VERY ugly. Coal loves killing things and he is often found telling everyone about how great he is at fighting and how he can’t wait to find some more men to ‘get’ with his chainsaw gun. One day he will realise that he can connect with men in ways other than fighting them but until that day comes he remains the world’s most irritating virtual space soldier.
The game itself is basically Phantasy Star Online but instead of RPG elements you can stand behind things and instead of leaving behind meseta the enemies leave behind blood. Also every character is a ranger. It is most like Phantasy Star Online in that enemies keep appearing from nowhere and then the music goes “ten ten ten ten TEN TEN TEN” to make the atmosphere more tense. Also a lot of the levels are underground caves so you could play those and pretend you were on the caves level of Phantasy Star Online or you could just play the caves level of Phantasy Star Online. The choice is up to you.
Fans of Gears of War (Known as Gearophiles) might accuse me of being slightly unfair as the main point of the game are its cooperative elements. i.e. yet another game relying on your own social interactions to make up for its failings. I tried playing the co-op with Brother Jonas Bruner but he was constantly getting killed or trying to chainsaw me in the back. If anything it was even less fun as was continually making racist remarks or talking about Saint Seiya: The Hades.
My main disappointment with this game was that because it was called ‘Gears of War’ I thought all the enemies would be cog robots and gear operated spiders. However the enemies aren’t cog robots at all they are just more muscular men. Furthermore the heroes work for an organisation called COG but they do not seem to operate any clockwork style machinery. The only cog you ever see is the one representing the mysterious health system, what’s wrong with a health bar epic megagames? Also why is the ability to run named ‘roadie run’? how is it different from normal running?
Overall I give this game a COG soldier out of an annoying car bit.
* Thought for the day: Does Call of Duty have anything to do with Call of Juarez? Also how come the spellchecker accepts Juarez as a word?
06/10/2010
Today's Work - The Heroic Man Funf character guide.
Heroic Man Funf’s official heroic justice brigade.
The strong men of good who fight the battle against all forces of evil, they have a strong admin department and good rates of pay. The only downside is that Heroic Man Funf never does any work and often goes home at dinner time – if anyone else did that they would be sacked! One rule for the bosses and another for the little people.
Heroic Man Funf – When Young fenders takes up his magic sword he becomes Heroic Man Funf the most powerful man of the area. With his new found powers he wages war on enemies, it’s certainly lucky that the enemies did not make their attacks before he discovered his magic sword! His main irritation in life is that nobody realises that Young Fenders is actually Heroic Man Funf even though they look exactly the same except for Young Fenders is wearing a practical outfit and Heroic Man Funf is wearing pants. The only thing that pants are practical for is battling! In episode 33 (Heroic Man Funf meets Wonder Lisa) he marries his own cousin, however this episode has been reedited into a Christmas special where they just give each other presents.
Catchphrase – “Welcome to the FUNFfair!”
Blast Man – Blast Man is Heroic Man Funf’s most cheerful ally and he always stands by his side in the face of dangers. Ironically Blast Man has no respect for Young fenders because he is always messing everything up i.e. knocking all the brooms over in a broom cupboard. Blast Man gets his fighting ability form his ‘Blasting Suit’ which is made up of some guns sewn onto a tabard. The secret past of Blast Man is that he used to be a dinner lady.
Catchphrase – “I’m blasting all over your face”
Borrenger – Borrenger is the faithful steed of Heroic Man Funf in the form of a humorous talking Panther. He often makes wisecracks that annoy Heroic Man Funf and sometimes he goes too far and Heroic Man Funf has to teach him a lesson. For example in episode 46 (Cried and Senju Kits) Borrenger says Heroic Man Funf should go on a diet. In retaliation Heroic Man Funf smashes a dinner plate onto his head. Eventually Borrenger will understand that the morale of Heroic Man Funf is an important factor in the battle against evil. The alter ego of Borrenger is Borrenger not wearing a hat.
Catchphrase – “Plates…why’d it have to be plates?”
Squator – Squator is a man overcoming his severe mental difficulties to play a good part in society. You see he may not understand complex equations but what he does understand is his own powers of squatting down low and then springing up at high speeds. At first Heroic Man Funf and his comrades wouldn’t let Squator be on his team as they thought his abilities sounded useless and had negative preconceptions about mental illness. They certainly changed their minds after Squator managed to head butt Heroic Man Funf in the face with a well times squat attacked. Squator’s comrades still suspect that he may one day kill a prostitute by accident but until that day they are happy to fight slightly behind him and continue to avoid socialising with him.
Catchphrase – “Too squat to candle!”
Lyra – Lyra is the token woman friend of Heroic Man Funf. She likes to think she has equal battle abilities to the men but in reality she is constantly getting kidnapped / falling off ledges and Heroic Man Funf only keeps her around to prove he isn’t gay. Lyra fights with an assortment of girly weapons such as whips/bola’s/oversized boomerang but none of them are really doing any serious damage. Lyra is the daughter of Blast Man which certainly creates some awkward situations. (Involving Blast Man thinking that Lyra looks like his wife only less ravaged by time.)
Catchphrase – “Save me Heroic Man Funf!”
Clacker Man – Clacker man is a useless robot made of cogs. He is always getting wound down or having his arms fall off. The only good thing about Clacker man is that he often gets in the enemies way when they are trying to hit more useful heroes and also he can make sparks come out his chest. Clacker Man has a real human head which sports a handsome moustache.
Catchphrase – “Lets get back on Clack!”
Fargo – Fargo is Heroic Man Funf’s wizard friend who uses his magic in the battle against evil. He never paid attention at wizarding school and so his only qualification is a national diploma in foundation sorcery. He told Heroic Man Funf that it was the equivalent to three A-Levels but if that was the case why didn’t he just do A-Levels instead? And why do his spells always go wrong in hilarious ways? For example in episode 15 (A mixerly whiz up) Fargo is trying to make a magic cake but he accidentally turns Heroic Man Funf gay. This caused some ‘sticky situations’ between Heroic Man Funf and Graggle Man but in the end Fargo was able to set everything ‘STRAIGHT’!
Catchphrase – “I’ll Fargo to any lengths!”
Graggle Man – Graggle Man is the most reliable of Heroic Man Funf’s comrades, mostly because he is made of stones! This means he can withstand even a mighty blow from an enemy and also that he has to eat magma to get a hot meal. Graggle Man’s only weakness is his quick temper which can often cause him problems such as the time he ruined a dinner party by accusing his wife of having an affair.
Catchphrase – “Stone the crows!”
Winger Man – Winger man is a member of the mystical beak tribe and sports a lovely pair of wings. These often prove useful to Winger Man as he will fly over the top of baddies and drop broken glass on them. (He gets the broken glass from the recycler bins). Winger man is often heard complaining about the price of air travel when going abroad, you may think he could just fly himself to Spain but as Winger Man says “Have you ever tried walking to Scotland! (Presuming you don’t already live in Scotland)
Catchphrase – “Have you ever tried walking to Scotland?”
Hand Man - Whenever Heroic Man Funf ‘needs a hand’ then Hand man is always there to lend a ‘helping hand’. You could say he is very ‘handy’ to have around. You always have to ‘hand it’ to Hand Man because he is a very ‘safe pair of hand’ whenever there is a problem. Hand Man’s power is having oversized hands which he used to ‘hand out’ justice.
Catchphrase – “Hand, Drawn and Quartered!”
Foliage Man – Foliage man is a hunter with a strong connection to nature. He thinks respect for nature is very important, especially when you are sneaking upon bears and killing them for fun. Because of his nature based experience Foliage Man is an expert and camouflage i.e. hiding in trees. However if he has to battle in a non-woodland area his powers become useless. Foliage Man has a trained Kestrel, or at least he did until brother Jud killed it!
Catchphrase – “Jud thas done in me Kestrel yer get”
Bulbs Man – Bulbs Man is a difficult to understand foreigner who uses the dazzling power of lights to blind his opponents. He is constantly screwing new bulbs into his ‘Dazzle Wand’ and can often be heard to remark “I could do with a good screw right now.” In episode 98 (‘Ebony and I’m very’) Bulbs Man suffers racial prejudice from Clacker Man and Heroic Man Funf is forced to organise an anti-discrimination day by H.R (Heroic Relations). Everyone learns that discrimination is wrong and the moral of the story is to only be racist in the privacy of your own home.
Cacthphrase – “I may not be the best fighter, but I am the best lighter!”
Bandy Man – Bandy Man is unique in that he is made of rubber! This allows him to stretch to lengths of nearly 1.5X times his original length. It also means that if he is ever pierced by an enemy he will put strange clear liquid onto the carpet. Bandy Man is also the most whacky member of the Heroic Man Funf official justice brigade and he will often lighten his colleague’s mood by making japes or asking for unusual pizza toppings. In reality Bandy Man is overcompensating due to a lack of self esteem.
Catchphrase – “This is going to be a STRETCH!”
Dangerous Darren’s consortium of unscrupulous barons.
Dangerous Darren and his evil group have ill defined plans but they certainly seem to cause a lot of trouble! They live in a secret base on Spider Hill and anyone that steps their had better BEWARE!
Dangerous Darren – Dangerous Darren is an evil wizard with a vendetta against the world, mainly because he has a skelington face but also because people kept trying to make him join Farmville on Facebook. It’s just a rubbish version of Harvest Moon! Dangerous Darren’s main weapon is his magic staff which he can use to perform the following powers 1. Hit on head 2. Poke in eye. He is constantly trying to steal Heroic Man Funf’s magic sword so that he can become more powerful and somehow bare knuckle brawl his way into high office.
Catchphrase – “I’ll get you one day Heroic Man Funf!”
Baron Beast – Baron Beast is Dangerous Darren’s main henchman. He is constantly bumbling about and ruining Dangerous Darren’s plans. Dangerous Darren would like to sack him but he is good friends with Barron Beast’s uncle and it would create a bad atmosphere.
In his spare time Baron Beast works to perfect his ‘dunderhead’ accent by telling his Raichu to constantly perform body slam.
Catchphrase - “Give it another Body Slam!”
Baron Liz – Baron Liz is a terrible Lizard who is always arguing with Baron Beast about the best way to make a trap. They inevitably leads to them both falling into a hole and having to call for Dangerous Darren to let them out. He certainly does get annoyed with them! Baron Liz does not like to get told off so he often tries to gain favour with Dangerous Darren by complimenting the way he dresses.
Catchphrase – “Right away Master Darren”
Atrocious Joan – Atrocious Joan is the token female member of the consortium and she basically looks like Lyra only far more evil. Like all women she is totally incompetent but she is kept around because all the members of the consortium have strong erotic feelings for her. Obviously she has no interest because they are all somehow mutated but it certainly helps her to get the best seats at the consortium concert!
Catchphrase – “I need someone big and strong to help me move my chest of drawers around…I’d be ever so grateful!”
Baron Bot – Baron Bot is an evil robot who is always calculating the odds with his nefarious processors; at least that’s how Dangerous Darren see’s it. Everyone else knows it’s just a computer with a face drawn on. He is still the most useful member of the consortium because his spreadsheets help with the finances. In episode 105 (‘Horn Geography’) Baron Horns looks at some naughty images and fills Baron Bot with Spyware. The moral of the story is to always have proper anti-virus protection.
Catchphrase – “You have performed an illegal operation – Abort, Retry, Fail?”
Baron Horns – Is having a big pair of horns really an advantage in life? Baron Horns seems to think so even though his ‘ability’ could be replicated by a man wearing a Viking hat. (Although as we all learned at school the Vikings never actually wore those hats, they actually used to wear panama hats. A funny story about Vikings is that at school for a project about ancient Greece me and my chums made a huge cardboard cut out of the Marvel comics version of Thor. The teacher never said anything despite Thor having nothing to do with Greece at all.)
We all know how to defeat Baron Horns, just stand in front of something electrical and move away at the last minute causing him to ‘horn’ the electricity.
Catchphrase – “Time to mow the horn!”
Baron Man – Baron Man was formerly a good friend of Heroic Man Funf and fought by his side under the name of Barren Man. (His ability was to have many casual sexual encounters without impregnating anyone.) However Baron Man was turned to the dark side after a falling out involving him thinking a jif lemon bottle contained sherbet. Dangerous Darren has promised him dib dabs of every kind once Heroic Man Funf is defeated.
Catchphrase – “We used to be friends but now we are not friends!”
Today's Work - 10 anecdotes about Dance Dance Revolution.
Dance Dance Revolution invented almost every element of modern videogames. (Namely huge unwieldy peripherals, licensed games music and imprecise gameplay that involves moving around like a fool) Unfortunately Konami are useless and were unable to capitalise on this because they were too busy recording the many hours of cut scenes for Metal Gear Solid.
However in those days of ‘millennium dome’ I was not the jaded cynic I am today and I embraced DDR with open arms. Here are ten anecdotes about DDR. Please note that they are not interesting anecdotes but they are things that happened in real life rather than in my mind. (Which is why they are so boring)
Anecdote 1 – The first time I played DDR was actually inside the millennium dome. I forget what the song was but a woman was stood watching me and Uncle Pete said “You can have an autograph after”. But I don’t think she wanted an autograph. Actually I have no idea what she wanted but I think it is an odd thing to just watch a stranger playing DDR. Especially when that Stranger is only 16! I think that woman should probably be locked up.
Later on we went to see a show about a man hanging on some curtains but I don’t know what it had to do with the millennium.
Anecdote 2 – One time I saw a man in the arcade doing TWO Dance Dance Revolutions at once using his hands and feet. A lot of people were stood watching him and it was nearly as exciting as the time I saw a man playing House of The Dead 2 with both guns. (Although that actually makes the game easier but it costs more money)
Anecdote 3 – Once Jonas Bruner’s friend went on a trip with us to Skegness and he played DDR while wearing a fes he had bought from a joke shop. H emay not have managed to get a good score but he certainly managed to keep the fes on his head!
Anecdote 4 – I forced Uncle Pete to buy me Dance Dance revolution Euro Mix otherwise I wouldn’t go to my school prize giving. He didn’t realise that he would also have to buy the dancing mat and I made several punds out of him that day. It’s a good job I did go to the prize giving as I was awarded a £10 WH Smith voucher for high intelligence. I promptly spent it on Breath of Fire IV for the PSONE. An intelligent move? Certainly as it’s the only good Breath of Fire game!
Anecdote 5- I once had such a ‘vigorous’ session of dancing that the floor started shaking and things started falling off shelves. It was a bit like being in an earthquake but instead of big cracks opening up in the floor you have to listen to Boyzone.
Anecdote 6- Dance Dance Revolution features a song called ‘Silent Hill’ which has nothing to do with Konami game silent hill. It is however the world’s greatest Christmas song.
“Lights on the avenue
All seem so far away.
I should be drinking a toast to you.
From my Christmas Tray.
Tonight is the night for
I love you
Johnny Rawlings
Equipped with a spear
Rainbow Summon
CHRISTMAS IS HERE”
The other good thing about that song is that it stole the tune from the SNES version of Sim City.
Anecdote 7 – The Japanese version of Dance Dance Revolution mysteriously features famous songs with slightly changed lyrics in an attempt to avoid copyright law. The best of these is the version of “Celebration” which says “Lets get down tonight.”
Surely having the exact same song with slightly different lyrics is not enough to confuse the music industry?
Anecdote 8 – Jonas Bruner said that DDR song “Gotta Keep Rushing” was one of his favourite songs for a piece of school work. In reality all his favourite songs are tunes from F-Zero GX. (But they don’t have lyrics) This was probably better than what I said when they asked me what my favourite songs were as I never actually heard any music until I was 22. I say probably because I can’t remember exactly what I said, I suspect I just hissed “Soooooooonnnnngggg” and then floated into the sky.
Anecdote 9 – The Disney version of Dance Dance Revolution features many Disney songs, but it also features a song from car racing anime ‘Initial D’. It is easily the best song on the game but I have no idea what it is doing there.
Anecdote 10 – I spent a lot of time playing emulated versions of the game boy colour dance dance revolution games. This was probably the most pointless thing anyone has ever done.
Today's Work - A true story about being yourself.
My brother Jonas Bruner once told everyone that Norah Jones was coming to his birthday party so that they would come. However he was lying as he does not even know Norah Jones and also Norah Jones hates Lazer Quest. Especially Lazer Quest where you try to cheat by wearing your jacket over the proton pack but the man tells you off. That man should realise that there are no rules in war!
The moral of the story is that everyone came expecting to see Norah Jones and they were bitterly disappointed when Norah Jones failed to arrive. They started to make comments such as “You don’t even KNOW Norah Jones” and “Jonas Bruner, more like JONAS LOONER”. So everyone went away from the party apart from his true friends who would have come anyway and they brought better presents. Also young children have no idea who Norah Jones is and don’t really have an appreciation of her music so it didn’t really encourage them
The story has several morals, they are.
1. Always be yourself, unless yourself is someone who tells lies about knowing Norah Jones.
2. If you are going to try and cheat at Lazer Quest wait until you get into the warzone proper.
3. Donkey Kong bubble bath is not an acceptable birthday present even if it is in the shape of a game boy.
4. No one wants to pay a pound to have a go on a Primal Rage arcade game.
22/09/2010
Retro Prefect - Crazy Taxi
Crazy Taxi is all about people deluding themselves. While the four protagonists insist they lead a ‘crazy’ existence to try and appear more interesting to people at parties they are in actual fact the same as every other lowly cabby ferrying ungrateful patrons to the KFC while engaging them in casually racist conversations.
BD Joe may think that putting mysterious initials in front of his name (after much research I found that BD actually stands for ‘Bombastic Dinosaur’) makes him look cool but he also thinks that wearing one of those fisherman hats makes him look cool so we probably shouldn’t be trusting his fashion sense.*
Obligatory ‘none-man’ Gina thinks that referring to the money she earns as “Crazy Money” makes the fact that she never became a dentist easier to bare. She knows deep down there is nothing crazy about not being able to pay the rent because you couldn’t take a Vicar to Tower Records in under ten seconds.
The Green haired Axel hopes that if he saves up enough money he will be able to buy a shirt, more importantly he dreams of one day going back to his job of smashing punks in the face with an iron bar. (The joke is that it’s the same Axel from Streets of Rage, fallen on hard times due to the waning popularity of the scrolling beat-em-up. Actually Gina looks like a less tarty Blaze and BD Joe could be a grown up Skate. Gus is probably a Galcia turned away from his evil ways. That or Sega really like the name Axel)
Gus actually gave up on his life long ago and doesn’t believe his Taxi is all that crazy. However he keeps up the pretence to give hope to the younger crazy taxi drivers – he is based on Judd Hirsch from Independence Day.
This doesn’t mean that Crazy Taxi is a bad game though, after all Gears of War is all about a team of men pretending not to be gay and that seems to have shifted a few copies. In fact its possible to glean a fair bit of ‘enjoyment’ from Crazy Taxi as you barrel around marvelling at the product placement and trying to attain the hallowed S-Rank. (It is a known fact that Japanese people don’t understand the alphabet and so constantly place S higher than A. We can’t really complain though as we can’t even write their alphabet.)
I realise I have yet to explain how the game is played, but surely everyone knows that by now? To sum up in one sentence – “You have to go to a place get a man take him to another place and hope the time doesn’t run out.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about then go do the taxis missions on Grand Theft Auto but imagine that you couldn’t run people over because they keep diving out of the way and also the world is bright and happy instead of crime ridden and miserable.
Oh and also imagine you are listening to awful music.
Poor Sega in an attempt to grab the attention of ungrateful children decided to break from their own fantastically produced sounds to some horrible licensed tracks that always play on exactly the same loop. Blink 182? More like gang of twats. Stop moaning and make way for magical sound shower.
Therefore Crazy Taxi is a good game but it could have been a GREAT game on par with Outrun 2 - if only it hadn’t been for young peoples music. THANKS A LOT PETE WATERMAN.
Crazy Taxi gets a ‘It’s time to make some crazy money are ya ready? Here! We! Go!’ out of a ‘constantly running out of time taking that man to the baseball stadium.’
* A true story about those fisherman hats. Is that I once had an acquaintance who started wearing one of those fisherman hats all the time for no real reason. (I think he had seen a documentary about Ibiza on ITV) Anyway one day we were walking to a bus stop and these people shouted ‘fisherman’ at him. He never wore that fisherman hat again but insisted that the incident had nothing to do with it.
Today's Work - Remembering...
Remember the old days? Of course you do much better than the now days! In the old days they had the following objects ‘Space Hobble’, ‘Sega Mario System’, ‘Space Raiders 10p’, ‘Go-Bots’ and ‘Spangle Sweets’. Of course all these objects were sent to the moon by galaxy King Neville and so they cans no longer be enjoyed. The only thing that can be entertainment now is LADY GAGA POKER FACE
However you can still also have fun by reminiscing about the past and saying “Remember that hah!” It is even more fun if you don’t actually remember the thing or remember it incorrectly for example ‘Ghostbusters Ambulance’. Here is the memories:
Old Sweets: In the olden times all the sweets was costing just 10p especially a 10p mix up and also 10p mix up was having MILLION SWEETS in it. Some sweets to remember are flying saucers, gummy crocodiles, chocolate mice, Titan Bar, Desperate Dan chew and Spangle sweet. They do not make these sweets anymore so don’t even bother going into shops and asking for them as you will come away disappointed. The only sweets available now are ‘Tuton Bar’. Remember how sweets used to be much bigger for example the size of a house and also only used to cost a pittance, that is why obesity is such a problem in this country smaller more expensive sweets. Remember how your hand used to be smaller than they are now; well stop remembering it as it is IRRELEVANT.
Old Music: ‘Back in the day’ people used to listen to PROPER MUSIC but now the children just listen to a cacophony. Why don’t they just listen to the same music as their parents just like when you were a youngster and everyone liked the same thing? It gets very annoying having to hear new kinds of music all the time, if only there was a way to somehow listen to music other than what is played on the radio. For example some sort of ‘pod’ which you could put the music inside and then listen to whenever you wanted. Unfortunately that is impossible as only the Desk Jockeys working on the Radio possess the complex machinery required to process an EP into sound.
Old Cartoon: Do you remember the old cartoon when looking back on the old cartoon it seems like certain characters may have been GAY or ON DRUGS. This is because in those times being GAY or ON DRUGS had yet to be invented and so such behaviours were considered normal. For example on ‘Heroic Man Funf” Blast man is only wearing a leather thong and his saying ‘Lets blast all over your face’ seems highly inappropriate also I can certainly derive humour from the idea of a talking panther. In real life Panther’s are notoriously silent! What were the people thinking of when they designed a talking panther, probably they were thinking of absorbing drugs into their systems and then using the psychedelic effects to design talking animals. Your favourite old cartoon was Terrence-robots where all the robots turn into people called Terrence and join in a decathlon. The leader of the Terrence-robots was Orson Pevancy who you liked best of all due to his lack of distinguishing features.
Old Flavours for Crisps: They used to do flavours like Beef Dripping, Saturated Vinegar and Whalebone why don’t they do these flavours anymore. Also the bags of crisps used to have a little window to see the crisps but now you can no longer see the crisps and instead of crisps it might just be air. (And a noise recorder doing the rustle noise that crisps would make.) Furthermore there are now fancy crisps such as kettle crisps and Roysters. Why don’t they just admit they are just the same as other crisps but more fancy!? i.e. Poshington Fromage and Shallots = Cheese and Onion, Sweet Chilli = Worchester Sauce and Spelt Gnocchi = Transform-A-Snack.
Old School: Remember how Mr Fenderson always used to wear a hat during lessons but hats were strictly forbidden for pupils! Who could forget the amazing pranks played by ‘Tanner’ Hatchins such as releasing frogs into the school area and summoning Dormamu during woodmaking lessons. They really were the best days of your life. Here is a joke about that statement “Which just goes to show how rubbish your life is!” Then you can laugh at the joke even though it is true. I looked up my school chums on friends reunited even though it no longer exists, here is the results.
* Ronson Peters – Data Entry
* Belvis Bresley– King of Wales
* RentonThunderbolt – Racist
* Jarocks Alpha – Racist
* Leslie Fong – Children
* Macafee Mountback – Short-lived Success
* Jarocks Beta – Data Entry (Closet Racist)
* Adam Jengles – Twat
* Hobokes Hellington – Army (Closet Racist)
* Allan Scneider – Justice Fist
* Grace Process – ‘Artist’
* Barrensburgh – Children (Not Seen)
* Dranzwig Ing – Predictable Failure
* ‘Gaz’ – Unreasonably content
* Layton Balfour – Married
* Chaz Double – Age gap relationship
* Necro Slazenger – Goth
* Chaz Frankfurt – Visigoth
* Kredo Walton - NHS
* Zolbazz the Wise – Deported
* Oralt LaCroix – Racist
* Joseph Bourbon – Star Witness
* Arlington Neglect – Fabricated Illness
Of course school was much tougher in the old days, pupils were often killed with machetes and teacher had spring legs. At playtime you used to play British Bullion where you have to get all the gold bullion out of Italy on a bus and not let it crash off a cliff. “Hold on lads I’ve been to Ikea” and then he props up the bus with his billy bookcase!
Old Toys: You didn’t have the likes of ‘Ben 10’ in your day although if you did you could say this “More like BENT 10” and then you would be laughing all the way to the bank. In the past the most popular toy was Organised Patrol and they had to put an advert in the paper saying “We aren’t playing hard to get” because they had all sold out and Uncle Pete couldn’t get one anywhere! In the end he had a wacky adventure trying to get a toy of ‘Organised Patrol Section Head Steven Kildare” where he was fighting against a mentally ill postman and a goat. At the end he accidentally joined a parade dressed as ‘Organised Patrol Section Head Steven Kildare’ and we were bitterly disappointed!
Another toy from the past was ‘POGS’ which stood for ‘Potential Olive Grove Site’ and was fun for anyone looking to set up an olive oil factory. The aim of the toy was to collect little plastic pieces of map which would lead you to the best location for growing juicy olives, the irony was the land was already owned by Pogman so you had to throw bits of metal at his head to kill him. Eventually they made a knock off version of POGS called TAZOS (Tomato Agriculture Zone Observation Site) however nobody wanted to build telescopes just to look at tomatoes and the whole idea was a bust.
Old Places: Where there is a bank now there used to be a slightly different bank and before that pub used to be a sweet shop run by a bee hive. Also the Alhambra centre is now called ‘The Mall’ and has a ‘Mall Monster’. (The Mall Monster is a wonky version of Sulley from Monsters Inc). You used to go drinking in local boozer designated “Fox and Cartwright” but now it has changed its name to “Chezzington Square” also the booze has changed from “Archers” to “Castlemaine XXX – the next level”
Old Fashion: Cripes! The clothes people wore in those days were certainly not the same as those commonly worn today. Just look at the hairstyles compared to these hairstyles, what were the people of the past thinking? I think the past decades must be the decades that fashion forgot. Why did they not dress all modern like what we do now?
Old Films: They no longer make films anymore and all old films were burnt in a big furnace by Barry Norman. There is no way to watch old films now so instead we have to watch everything in 3D even though it costs more money. You could take the option to not watch it in 3D but that would be insane! Furthermore films these days are about things like Blue Men which is totally unrealistic wheras before they used to be about a man eating a shoe and a big robot called gort. i.e. reflecting everyday life.
END OF MEMORIES.
Today's Work - Gameztime.com
Tremendous Car Pilfering
Having recently escaped from jail/the army/an abusive relationship Derek ‘DK’ Lambert has to start a brand new life of crime on the unforgiving streets of Hoyland. He starts off on the low rungs doing odd jobs for crime bosses like ‘Bent Peter’ or ‘Jango Fred’ as the game progresses he rises up the ranks to the prestigious position of doing odd jobs for other crime bosses like ‘Grand Boss Fenstrate’ and “Rotrom the underhanded” . Many of these jobs involve following people’s cars at a specific distance or driving a car very slowly so that it isn’t damaged.
Also you can murder prostitutes.
9/10
World of Combat: Advanced Modern Army Shooting
You play “Tezzer” a special Army Man who has to fight baddies with his squadron of mates “Renton” “Ghost” and “Lampwick”. Not only can you wield a variety of weapons like the Shotgun, Machine Gun and Rocket Launcher but you can also give your squadron commands like “Attack the men” or “don’t attack the men….yet”.
The best thing about this game is how you can get a Sniper Rifle but can’t really use it because all the enemies run up to you and shoot you in the face. The other best thing is how instead of a health bar you just guess.
10/10
World of Fentiman
Wander across the world of Fentiman doing tasks for assorted fantasy characters with regional accents until you get enough equipment to slay the DARK LORD who is spreading a terrible MALADY across the LAND. A fresh new RPG from the makers of World of Space Fentiman featuring an all new battle system where your party attack continuously and you do nothing but suggest spells they may wish to try. (Spells include healing spell, powerful non elemental attack spell and spells you will never use because MP restoring items are hard to come by and they do less damage than just punching.) Probably the best thing about this game is that it features up to 1000 ill defined status effects such as “Thorny, Morose, Objectified and Excited”.
8/10
Burn the Rubber 7: Go Faster Please.
Illegal street racing is much more exciting than legal racing because it involves souping up cars and bald people looking angry at traffic lights. That’s why the latest in the semi-successful ‘Burn the Rubber’ series lets you drive around an open world looking for people to race, but don’t try to get into a race with the wrong people or they won’t want to race! Other features of this game include more makes of car than ever before – all with slightly different shapes of bonnet. Not only that but you can choose different kinds of wheels and adjust the tension of every individual car sprocket. A real must have for fans of top cat!
9/10
Logarithm
In the futuristic world of the future RPG elements combine ineffectually with a first person shooter in order to create a first person shooter where you can also pick locks! At the start of the game you can customise your character with up to six different faces and then set his stats for lockpicking, shooting and conversation. This means you can play the game exactly the way you want so long as you want to play the game by shooting everyone or picking locks and then someone sneaks up behind you so you have to shoot them anyway. This game also features many moral choices which effect the gameplay i.e. if you kill everyone then people will not sell you things as they will be dead whereas if you are nice to everyone you will get bored. This also effects the branching storyline which means how you play actually effects the story! You can play through many times and never experience the same thing twice. (Except for the first two hours which will be exactly the same.) This is much better than having the developer tell you a story, just like choose your adventure books are better than real books.
8/10
Johnny Tell Me What to Do
If you aren’t capable of looking after yourself and making basic decisions then this new DS game is certainly going to let you play some Sudoku. JTMWD is a lifestyle app which will actually run your life for you and therefore make you a better person. In the morning the titular Johnny (Professor John Stein of the life max academy) will gently coerce you into doing exercises, order you to walk to work and then force you to do brain training exercises until home time. Don’t worry the fun doesn’t stop there as JTMWD will also tell you what to cook and when the bets time to go to sleep is. Of course if you start ignoring the game or doing it wrong Johnny will be displeased and make snarky comments about you “Well if you WANT to be a fatty then it’s not my business.” The fun doesn’t stop their, if you ignore the game for too long a man from Nintendo will come and bundle you into a van. We can’t tell you what happens after that as those people are never heard from again.
If you suspect your friends, neighbours, parents or colleagues are not doing the requisite amount of fun brain exercise then it is your civic duty to alert the ministry.
7/10
Swordboy Online
Online playing is the future of games because you get all the fun of repetitive tasks with the added bonus of talking to strangers and paying subscription fees to big corporations. At present Swordboy Online is the biggest game around with up to 30 millions subscriptions and an economy bigger than Sweden. This is mostly because internet chat rooms were all closed in 2003 so pretending to be a barbarian is now the best way to make facile short term friendships and annoy strangers. (Except for going onto Isketch and drawing gollywogs)
The best thing about Swordboy online is that instead of being the hero of the game you are just another insignificant cog in the economy, just like in real life!
6/10
Hopper
Remember the old days when games looked rubbish and were stupidly hard? Thanks to indie developers those days are back again. Even quick browse on the indie bit of Xbox live arcade will give you an almost unlimited choice of robotron clones, tower defence games and Amiga style platformers. Hopper is itself a platform game with a ‘unique’ (ugly) art style and a twist in the gameplay. The twist is that the game is very hard and is a waste of time, also it is British which means it features traditional British humour. (Sheeps) Everyone should life Hopper because modern games are much too easy for autistic people and because it is better to encourage one person to do something rubbish for not much money than to encourage a lot of people to do something brilliant for a lot of money.
5/10
Tammer’s Party Game Madness!
Popular sportsman Bentworth ‘Tammers’ Tamworth presents a series of fun mini games that you can play with friends which makes it mega FUN. Of course doing anything with your friends is fun (that’s why they are your friends) so it’s hard to objectively judge the merits of this collection of 7 mini games but the time we were playing ‘Beatle Drive – in force!’ when Baz shouted “Not taxes” was the funniest thing that has ever happened. Not only that but watching people wave their arms around is very funny, especially when you realise that the wii-mote is a piece of rubbish technology rather than a magic wand and you can just flick your wrist to much the same effect! Of course the cherry on the cake is the voice over from ‘Tammers’ himself – “Lets go at it Tammers and Hongs!”
7/10
Guitar Playing 4: Rock and Roll it
Everyone in the world loves the Guitar Playing series of games and we are all happy to ignore the fact that it stole the idea from Konami and replaced specially written J-Pop with music by bands you don’t like. That’s because you DO like some of the bands i.e. Sharkbastard and you want to pretend to be the main guitar person using a specialised plastic guitar. Why don’t you learn to play a real guitar? Shut up! Why don’t you learn to jump on real turtles? This game is even better than the last one because they have added even more songs you haven’t heard of by bands you have vaguely heard of. What’s wrong with the singles? Don’t you realise that most albums are all filler no killer? More important this game ROCKS we know it ROCKS because every time you do a song it says ROCK and then when you pick your options it says ROCK ON ROCKINGTON and the main character is a man with a spikey shoulder called ROCKIN’ PETE. (He is voiced by Jack Black)
Here is some jokes about Jack Black
Q. What is Jack Black’s favourite film?
A. Men in Black!
Q. Why do people think King Kong is a good film?
A. Because Jack Black has a moustache in it!
Q. Who is Jack Black’s archenemy?
A. Jack White!
Q. Why is ‘Be kind and please rewind my video’ such a terrible film?
A. Because it’s too long and the other man keeps mumbling!
8/10
H.A.R.D Combat
Take control of Mark Harding as he speaks in gravely tones and punches mutants back to the Stone Age. This is no subtle game; it’s all about learning combos or at least mashing the buttons incessantly. Be wary of the huge bosses who all circle around the stage and try to grab you with giant hands hoping you don’t try and punch them in the eye. If they didn’t want you to punch them in the eye why did they lay their hands down for you to climb!? Mark himself is a tough customer who says outrageous things like “I’m going to kill you BITCH” and “GRUUUUUU”. This lets us know that he is a tough man who solves every problem with violence, except for a stealth bit in the middle that he has to solve with stealth. (It is impossible to fight a guard if he has an ill defined field of vision). Players will love the gritty atmosphere and amount of pure violence contained in this game. (At one point Mark even pokes a man in the eye with a biro)
6/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)