John Walker's Electronic House

I AM A REAL GAMES JOURNALIST.

Here are my impressions after spending up to two hours watching someone else use an Xbox 360 and having a quick go myself. Yes indeed – by far and away the most accurate way to judge something:

“Oh dear, they will have fun pretending to love it.”

And in more detail: A very troubling launch-list will send everyone into apoplexy as they attempt excuses and overrate everything in desperation.

Fifa 06

It’s hard to know quite what the console is capable of, unless of course the horror show zombie apocalypse of the new Fifa is what it’s capable of. Screams. That was the most common response to the ghastly visages of the seemingly deceased England football team. They’re not the prettiest bunch of men at the best of times, but the waxwork monstrosities generated by all this new processing power caused yelps of panicked disgust from a room filled with deeply hardened Men. The entire game appears to be in blur-o-vision, everything ghosting horrifically in the dreadful animation. Which is as nothing compared to the most hilarious crowd animations beyond anything you could imagine. Moving as one, the thousands of identical blobs appear to be trying to break the record for the largest number of above-water synchronised swimmers in one stadium. It’s near impossible to concentrate on the tedium of mis-angled penality fluke-outs when in the background Earth’s most complicated Mexican wave is taking place.

Kameo

Oh dear, oh dear. The curse of being bought by Microsoft is now confirmed in Rare, as they generate Yet Another Generic Platform Game, this time with added rubbishness! A horribly long and boring first level introduces the central pixie character’s three other assumable forms – furry ice beast, roly-poly spike ball and angry plant – involving the mandatory repetition of simple platform tasks, frustrated by an evil sluggish camera, hellbent on facing the wrong way in all situations. Once this has been completed, you’re then required to take part in… a basic movement tutorial! Yes, that’s right – as soon as you’ve discovered how to move left, right, fly, walk and fight with the idiot camera for yourself, it then painstakingly tells you how to do those things! It had better get a lot better very quickly. This is the game Rare didn’t rush to complete for release, which bodes very poorly for Perfect Dark: Zero.

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Hard to say from a cursory glance really, it might be awesome. But the confusion of CSI style poking around murder scenes with shooting innocent people in the face for the crime of being a drug addict does seem a little worrying. Beyond the Fifa-esque facial tragedies, it looks pretty enough. Somewhat boosted by being played in the pitch black the entire time.

Project Gotham 3

Heavens to Betsy, do we need another identical Project Gotham? The original and its sequel being two of only six games that ever made it worth knowing someone else with an Xbox, I imagine Microsoft are relying fairly heavily on this licence, especially without a Halo 3 to throw at the launch. If familiarity will offer comfort to customers, then Project Gotham 3 will score the win by being seemingly the exact same as Project Gotham 2.

Call of Duty 2

Which leaves the only hope for the console in the arms of Call of Duty 2: The One Without The Subtitle. Which is already out on PC. Which is a better medium for playing games than a 360.

Keep it calm. This is what consoles do when they’re brand new – have games that don’t know how to make use of a tenth of the potential. Compare the awesome Call of Duty 2: Big Red One on the PS2 with any PS2 FPS five years ago. But man, Fifa – what the hell?

As I check the time on my mobile phone before I start writing, I notice that it’s 11:11. Normally, seeing this time reminds me what a complete idiot Uri Geller is, but today, having spent the last few days playing the console Call of Duty sequel, it makes me think about… well, nothing really. A good way to start the review?

A large parcel arrived in the post this morning. Emptied out, it revealed:

And then opened up further revealed:

Thank you Charity. You are “awesomest ++++billion x infinity!!!”

Manipulating Dan Flavin’s art to our own ends, resulting in The Man’s condemnation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

The Rules Page

#21 When two ‘o’s appear together in a word, no one under any circumstances is allowed to make them into eyes. For the word ‘look’ it is punishable by death.

#22 Presents may not be presented as from either babies or pets, once the presentee is over the age of 10.

#23 If you live in the UK, the amber light means GET READY. By the time it’s green, YOU GO. As it turns green, you are pulling away. And this is equally the case if you are seven cars back in the queue. You do not begin pulling away once you see the car in front move – you watch the lights. If you live in the US, or other countries without an amber before the light turns from red to green, you already manage this fine without the amber, so what the hell is going on UKites? Aren’t you humiliated? The rest of the world doesn’t even get the warning and they can manage it. You’re pathetic. Sort it out, for crying out loud. Look at yourself. It’s embarrassing.

#24 An ‘i’ may only be topped by a single dot. Adding a circle, or god forbid a heart, does not make you interesting, or kooky, or brighten anyone’s day. It makes you a moron who cannot manage the simplest of tasks without deliberately ruining everyone else’s lives.

#25 Txt spk is annoying enough in texts. You can’t say it in 140 correctly spelt and grammared characters? Phone me. But outside of texts – utterly banned. AN EMAIL HAS INFINITE ROOM. You, under no circumstances need to abbreviate anything. And here’s why: It’s harder for the person to whom you’re writing to read it. We learn to read, and we recognise word shapes immediately. Start encoding those shapes, and translation is required. It goes from seeing the word “to” without pause, to seeing that there’s the number “2”, translating it phonetically to all its other potentials, working out which one it must be in the context of the sentence, and then re-understanding it as “to”. IT’S ONE CHARACTER SHORTER. Stop it. You’re an idiot.

Perhaps it’s a job for trade descriptions. The box says “Spyro: Shadow Legacy”, and nothing else. Platform game then, right? Stick it in the DS, switch it on, wait for the interminably long splash screens to finish their agonizing, glacial display, and then… it’s an RPG?

Which could be a delightful surprise – don’t get me wrong. But still, when you’ve got a kajillion kids buying your game because they want to leap the purple dragon around fast-moving worlds, collecting crap, and probably at some point going through an underwater section and then a bit on some clouds, you’d think you’d call this one: Spyro: Shadow Legacy – AN RPG ADVENTURE (that isn’t a platform game). And then all those tartrazine-addled ADD-ites will be well-warned to stay away.

Keeping Sundays special, my Spyro review appears on EG.

The Rules Page

#17 Any sentence that begins, “Am I the only person who thinks…” will always be followed by the most obvious, vacuous and mainstream thought possible.

#18 When walking down the pavement/sidewalk and someone is walking toward you in the opposite direction, the first person to move to one side has the priority. Moving over to the same side after the first person has moved over gives the first person permission to hit you with a pole. This situation is not funny in any sense, and nervous laughter in response is outlawed.

#19 If you think someone has forgotten that you’re meeting them, say, “I want to check that you remember that we’re meeting today,” and not, “Are we still on for later today?” or any other feeble attempt to make your accusation of your companion’s disorganisation look like a general enquiry.

#20 You do not need to qualify every comment you make with, “In my personal opinion…” If it’s an opinion you have, then yes, it will be yours, and indeed it will be personal, and indeed it will be an opinion. Such awful tautology demonstrates that anything qualified with such an introduction can only be the most redundant and idiotic opinion available. Although chances are it’s nothing of the sort, but something you read in the The Mirror and have unconsciously taken as your own belief.

John Walker says he has foiled a terrorist attack in the final stages of its preparation, after 8,000 people were arrested in Bath and Bristol.
By Chief Terrorism Reporter John Walker

John Walker spokesman John Walker stated that John Walker had averted a “potentially catastrophic attack that would have killed every child and puppy on Earth”.

Anti-terror organisation John Walker explained that John Walker’s last-second arrests are the only reason that a terror attack that no one has ever heard of, nor has ever been warned of, has been stopped, but that it definitely would have happened if it weren’t for John Walker.

“John Walker’s work has given us an extention to our lives before the inevitable destruction of all mankind at the hands of evil terrorism,” said John Walker representative John Walker.

Police chief John Walker warned, “We should all live in permanent fear of these terrorist attacks that definitely are about to happen all the time. It is only thanks to the work of John Walker that we managed to escape it this time.”

It’s come to my attention that people aren’t obeying The Rules.

It has further come to my attention that this might be because no one has bothered to write them down. I plan to do this, probably over the course of my life. When I die, exalted, these rules shall govern Earth, and a utopia will preside.

A message to anyone who considers any of the Rules to be “intolerant”: You are attempting to excuse your wanton inability to follow this entirely reasonable Rule by transfering the intense guilt and shame you feel onto the author responsible for highlighting your crime. Also: You are being stupid. Being intolerant of stupidity is the only hope the human race has left.

More rules will be added to the permalinked page here. Alerts will be given. Pay attention.

THE RULES

#1 If you think of an excellent punning name for a shop or business, you must quit your job there and then, and begin that enterprise immediately.

#2 Never go to a party which has clip art on the invite.

#3 You no longer have to pay £7 to have a conversation with your friends at the cinema. From now on you may have the same conversation with your friends in the park, for free.

#4 Look at toilets before you sit down, you idiot.

#5 If you are offered a cup of tea or coffee, that is the indication to that it’s not too much trouble. From now on, if you put this proviso on your reply, you will be obliged to leave.

#6 If you have a t-shirt with writing across your breasts, that means you’ve said it’s ok for people to read your breasts.

#7 No umbrellas.

#8 You no longer have to thank cars for stopping at zebra crossings. They’re required to stop. You don’t thank them at traffic lights, so stop it at zebra crossings as well.

#9 Get your wallet/purse out before you put your shopping on the conveyor belt.

#10 You must be involved in the digging of one hole, at least one foot deep, every year.

#11 The right to walk in front of anyone you like at any time you like because you’re pushing a buggy/stroller has been entirely revoked. You’re back to having to give a crap about anyone else again.

#12 Every time you hear someone use the word “debate” with some sort of explanation that it needs to be bigger than the norm, you absolutely must say, “mass debate” and snigger.

#13 Fake bingo calls are always funny. “Seven and three, twenty-eight.” “All the fours, nine.” “On its own, eighty-two.”

#14 Correcting grammar is to be met with a sense of reverence and awe.

#15 One type of cleaning spray for bathroom and kitchen.

#16 People who get blown up by bombs are not “brave”. They are “unlucky”. From now on, they are to only receive awards for “Misfortune”.

There is proof of an interventionist God. The most remarkable crash to date, locking up all sound from my PC into a sampled loop, freezing all controls, forcing a hard-reboot, has spectacularly rendered Starship Troopers unbootable. I am free, free to write the review.

It didn’t start well, either. But before we get to that, it’s time for a quick check that everyone’s in line when it comes to the film this FPS is based upon. Verhoeven’s film is, and this cannot be stressed enough for the hard of thinking, a SATIRE. The problem is, satire requires thought from your audience. Do your satire well enough, and those who aren’t willing to engage their brain will confuse themselves, and start pronouncing the film as pro-war, all-American, or as has often been the case, fascist. To give Verhoeven his credit, he wasn’t exactly subtle about it. The superb spoof propaganda adverts provide belly laughs, and really ought to make the point ever-so-slightly clear. But it’s never better than when people attempt to speak the truth of the situation, and are drowned out by the gung-ho nonsense from the main cast. And it has Doogie Howser in it.

Forgot to link this earlier today.

Brian coming this weekend.