Customer Support
by John Walker on Nov.28, 2005, under The Rest
A conversation on the phone with Maplins Electronics Customer Sales:
Him: We don’t sell that. The best thing you can do is go into one of our stores and ask.
Me: You don’t sell them, but you have them in your stores?
Him: I’m saying that we don’t have them, but the best thing you can do is go into one of our stores and ask for one.
Review: Gunstar Future Heroes
by John Walker on Nov.26, 2005, under The Rest
You might remember playing the original Gunstar Heroes on your Megadrive. And you might well be carrying a trouser-torch for it to this very day, determined that it was the greatest moment of your entire life, and that this had nothing to do with the fact that you were thirteen. And if that’s you, don’t bother reading. You’re going to buy the GBA version anyway, and you’re going to think anyone whose eyes manage to penetrate the new robe-code of this emperor is a despicable idiot. Fine, fine, I’m an idiot. Move along.
Gunstar Future Heroes is this: less than an hour long.
Can we go now?
Continuing in my newfound role as weekend-filler for EG…
Pleased with the words in this review – and it goes on to contain the greatest analogy in the entire history of all games journalism, ever.
Ban This Being Sick Filth
by John Walker on Nov.24, 2005, under The Rest
Excellent front page from the World’s Most Horrendous Newspaper, the Daily M**l.
Ignoring the fact that they’ve somehow travelled forward in time and taken photographs of the drunken behaviour that will happen later tonight as a result of our being treated like adults for the first time since WW2, and the dreadful inevitability that it portends of every single drunken incident getting reported as if happening for the first time ever (further making the photographs more ludicrous), it’s the peculiar threat at the top in the DVD promotion that entertains me.
Good grief, quickly, get to WH Smiths!
Xbox 360: Worst Impressions
by John Walker on Nov.19, 2005, under The Rest
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?
Review: Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
by John Walker on Nov.18, 2005, under The Rest
Comments Off on Review: Call of Duty 2: Big Red One more...Best Post Ever!
by John Walker on Nov.18, 2005, under The Rest
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!!!”
Fear No Art
by John Walker on Nov.18, 2005, under The Rest
Manipulating Dan Flavin’s art to our own ends, resulting in The Man’s condemnation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
New Rules
by John Walker on Nov.15, 2005, under Rules
#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.
Review : Spyro: Shadow Legacy
by John Walker on Nov.13, 2005, under The Rest
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.