John Walker's Electronic House

There’s a term currently bandied around in gaming discussion with wilful abandon. “Living city”. It’s something of a misnomer. If anything, the term is used to describe the most static of towns, where NPCs amble around with no fixed agenda, perhaps occasional unscripted scuffles of no consequence are used as set decoration. These cities aren’t living. The reality is, the city only ever lives when you start changing it.

Pathologic offers a dying city. It’s Oblivion with cancer. A pustule encrusted town where events carry on regardless of your presence, slowly wasting away despite you. This is a fascinating game. And a very broken one. And as such, I’m in something of a pickle.

This was a very tough review to write. If you can blag a copy, have a look at Pathologic. Especially if you’re a developer.

The conversation went like this:

So here it is. This is the article intended to stop us banging on about how much we love the DS itself, rather than the game we’re supposed to be reviewing. It’s the piece to celebrate one of the best things to happen to obscure videogaming in years. It’s not Nintendo-sponsored puff. It might sound sycophantic, but that’s the cynical earwax that prevents your hearing happiness. It’s a guide to the little handheld that could, defying the naysayers’ predictions of defeat at the hands of the PSP, standing up to the bullying cries of, “Hey, specky two-screens!” We’re getting touchy-feely about the touchy-feely. This is a love letter to the peculiar.

I’ve long wanted to express this. It’s a piece with which I’m fairly pleased.

One of the best comedy sketches of all time, and you’ve never heard of it.

EDIT: Oh for God’s sake, Google, like YouTube, refuses to host this sketch. Nevermind the millions of hours of every television programme ever they seem to have no problems with, this obscure, utterly unavailable sketch, made for a charity using money exclusively paid by the public license fee is apparently unacceptable. So you can download it from here until the BBC announce to me personally their logic for attempting to keep it for themselves.

It’s a Blankety Blank sketch, shown during Comic Relief 2003, and stars anyone currently useful in UK comedy (only missing Mitchell & Webb).

Peter Serafinowicz is a perfect Terry Wogan, such that you forget it’s not Terry Wogan after a while. Then the panel of ‘celebrities’ are made up of the amazing Nick Frost as Willie Rushton, Matt Lucas as Su Pollard, David Walliams as Ruth Madoc, Martin Freeman as Johnny Rotten, Simon Pegg as Freddie Starr and super-pretty Sarah Alexander as Lovely Liza Goddard (and her perfect typography). Oh, and Paul Putner as a chauffer.

Then the contestants are Kevin Eldon and someone I can’t identify.

What makes it so remarkable is the darkness. It’s often silly, and plays on too obvious look-it’s-dated gags like mentioning Betamax, but throughout there’s a constant seam of malevolence that keeps it peculiarly uncomfortable. I suspect the silliness and token spoofery is the Trojan horse by which the distinctly un-Comic Relief moments slip through. This is never better than Su Pollard’s wretched agreement with Wogan’s anti-Communist speech.

It’s a sketch that manages to be very funny, while cruelly condemning the very most awful aspects of British television. Pegg’s Starr captures the awful man’s worthlessness, and Lucas and Walliams tap into why Hi-De-Hi actors deserved the loathing they received. Serafinowicz beautifully demonstrates the cowardly nature of Wogan types when faced with anything off-script, and I love how Rotten’s stereotypical cynacism is in fact the only honest perspective.

Eczemallent.

Babies are born far too fragile. They shouldn’t arrive until aged 2, and wearing a suit of armour.

So I’m now an uncle. My sister, after nine months of moaning, had her belly ripped asunder and a small parasitic growth removed. William Thomas Lake is a very cute parasitic growth indeed.

Which amusingly makes my parents magicked into grandparents, and thus 20 years older than this morning.

Here’s my newly ancient mother holding my nephew:

Only positive comments (apart from those Kieron thinks are positive) are allowed, or my dad, who reads this and is bigger than you, will get you.

I’m not dead. But I was in Paris, in a 1940s brothel (Cafe Carmen, formerly Bizet’s house), surrounding by Nazi soldiers, watching a can-can show before the Americans liberated us. You know, the usual.

Ok, listen.

I DO want to start Brian up again, as much of a pain in the arse as it is to make. But we have to sort a few things out.

Drawing Brian takes ages. Other cartoon sites that update multiple times a week make money from this, selling their infinite t-shirts, carrying adverts, etc. In other words, making Brian cuts into writing (money earning) time, and is fairly tough to fit two or three times into a week. So, er, that’s my lame excuse.

What I want is a new site. Nick has built some really excellent code that is the brains behind the operation – a fantastic little device that lets me upload them to the page without any effort on my part, and also automatically archives, etc. It’s superb. But it needs a better website around it. I’m *useless* at making websites. Disastrous. So I need someone to create a really sleek, really professional looking site for Brian to sit within. For, you know, free.

The second thing I want is to see if I can sell the odd t-shirt. I know people want them, and there’s been requests for other similar merchandisey things. I’m all up for that. It’s not as if Brian has a soul to sell… So advice on that, and suggestions are gratefully received. So there’s at least some sort of incentive on my part for spending all the time making it.

So if anyone is willing to dedicate time to making Brian a site, please email me. You’ll need some understanding of Proper Internet Things to co-operate with Nick’s script. If it’s you, then you are the best person of all time ever today.

So I went on two train journeys in the last two days, and nothing of note occurred.

Oh wow, I am The Internet’s Greatest Hero!

And not for just one reason, not three, not fifty, but TWO.

REASON NO. 1

If you score between 55 and 80% on the test posted below, you get the result:

“I imagine you’re the sort that while at school never fell for the “Would you like to join the Pen One Five Club?” joke. You know, after the first time someone did it to you.”

Which led to a moment of pure blissful wonderfulness, where the Internets’ Greatest Draws-er, Charity Larrison, asked me what the “PEN ONE FIVE” club was. Oh yes. YES!

REASON NO. 2

Blaming me directly in the comments below, Masked Dave has posted a Total Eclipse Of The Heart miming video! And as if to try and compete with the astonishing hotness of the girl from the other video, he seems a rather handsome fellow, ladies and the gay.

Oh, if I were the sort to ever write OMG!!!, it would be right now.

EDIT: It seems to be working at random. Something’s up at OKC. If it doesn’t work, wait ten minutes and try again. Or indeed, do something else.

Scanning through the new release lists for the Nintendo DS, spying games I want to bagsie for review as early as possible, I was suddenly struck by…

Well, that’s fairly obvious.

And so a Test was born: The DS Game or Spam Subject Test

Answers are linked from the results pages.