85 is not average

Everyone and his dog and the dogs fleas is muttering about the free gold live 10 day period, approaching us at a constant rate (Wednesday September 20th to Friday 29th). As I see it, this is akin to the tantilising 10 minutes of soft core pronography cable and satalite dangle in front of your flacid junk at midnight, goading you to turn you balls inside out in record time. Lets see anyone achieve that, if you’ve had the internet for any length of time.

We’ve all become desensitised. And don’t play coy, you know exactly what I mean, you wanker. (See what I did there?) In effect you’ll have nine days (count them) to wank yourself blind, so fucking well get some toilet rolls, something nice you know, charmin, treat yourself like, and have a good old tug on your 360.

Sweetening this deal are some special events on a few of the fave games, which include:

Now remember, be clean. Don’t stay up late. Always use protection. And look both ways when you cross the road.

Barely content with setting one severly under-developed game loose, EA have forced DICE (presumable under duress, who the fuck else would churn out poorly tested games at such a furious pace) to spew forth what seems to be a new ‘game‘. I’m not actually sure you can call it a new game. It does seem like they’ve made a few models and maps, with a bit of snow (yes this is new to PC players of BF2, unlike those XBox cunts what have lorded it over us), and perhaps tweaked some of that shit behind-the-scenes python, to make “Battlefield 2142″.

The internets, and mainly weirdo fanboys, have gone totally nuts about it, and have posted tid-bit after tid-bit about it and how it looks like it will be great. One thing I have to say, is have you fucking played BF2. It’s bug ridden from arse to tit. All python coding bugs as well probably. Shame coz the engine is actually pretty decent as far as I can tell.

Maybe they will do a Google and call everything Beta until people either stop complaining about bugs or stop playing. Anyway links follow with some of the early tripe.

On TomsHardware UK.

On PALGN Australia.

On Boomtown.

Gaming Horizon.

On ladies favourite, TeamXBox.

On slutty old Gamers dot Com.

And Pixelgamers whoever the fuck they are.

Of course lets not forget our cooperate sponsered sucking machine, EuroGamer.

More recently:

A Boomtown follow up.

I speak of course about E3. Rumours over the last 72 hours have been bouncing all around the web, “Oh no, E3 is cancelled, where will I see real women to wank over now?” or “Its the worst thing to happened to gameses ever 111one one one”. Over-reaction was never so well exampled than in instances of crap news reporting demonstrated thusly:

Next-Generation stride forward, with their eyes firmly aimed at a desolate future, weaping at the loss. Or do I mean failing to fully digest the news, and just making stuff up? You decide.

4 Colour Rebellion are easily led by Next-Generation, as were so many others… “The web space has been rampant all day with a rumor that E3, as we know it, will cease to exist from here on out. Next Generation has the exclusive, stating that…”

The world would not be complete without any willy waving, as so animated here, by planetxbox360. Well done on the prediction fellas (“Now for a little self-promotion, we here at Planet Xbox 360 actually predicted that something like this would occur back in May.”), you must have massive penises.

Sadly the web, after a nice little bit of panic, and lets be honest, everyone likes to have a bit of flap now any then, has recovered, with most of the main contirbutors to the furor of incorrect stories, now turning against all the other sites, and having a good old yap about it. Well done all round.

Some incredibly useful people, you know, the sort that would be essential to the survival of mankind should there be a terrible appocolypse or whatever, have ‘invented‘ the best ‘device‘ ever. The illustration really tells you the whole store, thank fuck they came up with it.

Catch the original shit page here.

Updated

As a follow up, Jesty put me onto this. Intresting and note worthy, and features this picture:

The Sony E3 presentation has now become internet legend. I was going to post this before, but Robbo has reminded me by mentioining it today in IRC. So here is another remix, arguably the best so far. Watch it now.

See it on YouTube here.

Games Industry brings us news that the actor once predicted to go so far, Mark Hamill, is to get his second job. The Japanese hit Yakuza, is to be localised for western audiences, and in doing so has ‘attracted’ voice talents sure to help us understand the eastern-ness, and what with GAME scrapping its ‘no-quibbles’ returns policy, let’s hope they are right. A quote follows

“Topping the bill of vocal talent for the western adaptation is veteran actor Michael Madsen, who will voice Shimano, a physically imposing and brutal Yakuza boss. Star Wars legend Mark Hamill will provide the voice of Majima, an insane, violent Yakuza boss with a twisted sense of honour.

Other stars lending their voices to the game - which has already been a huge hit in Japan - include Smallville’s Michael Rosenbaum, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Eliza Dushku and Rachel Leigh Cook, the heroine of geek-to-chic teen flick She’s All That.”

Read the rest here.

A culmination of the last few weeks of articles on the web about Girl Gamers or Female Gamers or whatever the fuck they want to be called. An excellent article, and one which any person wishing to write about GGs should read lies here. Richard displays pretty much the same attitude as myself on this subject, in a sensible way. A breif quote follows:

‘If you absolutely have to put a picture of a regular female gamer, a thumbnail or something is perfectly acceptable. In no circumstances may you begin with anything other than a physical description, moving onto the actual ‘gaming’ part only as time permits - in much the same way that no write-up of Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendell ever goes without a discussion of his latest hair-style, or the pertness of his ass.’

(more…)

View now:

We thank you, Japan.

No one really expected a game based on the ‘run-away success’ Da Vinci code, to really get anywhere. Not only is it now a movie tie in, its also a fairly boring, hype based subject. This post is less about the game, and more about the effort of the BBC News story about it. Chet pointed this out on IRC today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5007998.stm

A summarisation of the discussion that follows, highlights the relentlessly poor quality of games reviewing the BBC produce. Jonathan Fildes begins the review with the standard opening, a small amount of cautiosly optomistic hype; “Even before its release, the Da Vinci Code video game had a lot to live up to.” In all honesty, did it really. Living up to a mediocre fictional novel, with a mediocre film tie in staring a few out of work actors, who really are worth more, does not leave a lot to live up to; (Jean Reno, what has happened to you?).

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So you’ve probably seen that that E3 thing is happening, as it does every year, and everyone sweaty person and his sweaty mum wants to know what sweaty things are going on there. Fortunatly, someone has condensed all the relevant information about the Playstation 3, into a short video. Please view it. Now.

Those of you who thought you knew how to use a games console, probably should consider yourself among the lucky few. It seems that we are all a lot stupider than we realised, however help is at hand in the form of a new must have coffee table, or bog side book, XBox 360 for dummies.

Check it out on amazon here

“Microsoft’s Xbox now accounts for 37 percent of the game console market, and the new Xbox 360 is due out for the 2005 holiday season, months before Sony’s PlayStation 3. When gamers take the new Xbox home, however, they’ll soon discover that it’s more than a just a game machine it’s a full-fledged home media hub with more power than most PCs. This friendly guide shows how to maximize both gaming and non-gaming features of this amazing machine. The topics covered include hooking up Xbox 360, taking advantage of HDTV and Dolby capabilities, using built-in digital video recording and wireless functions, storing media files, playing music, and displaying photos. It shows how to have even more fun by taking an Xbox online for massively multiplayer gaming, instant messaging, and more and discusses the social potential of the Xbox, which people can use to make new friends, join groups and teams, and even throw fantastic parties. It also includes tips for securing the Xbox from online threats.”

May I point out that this is bullshit from the original series of propegandic release from Microsoft. Allow me to elaborate by taking the example “using built-in digital video recording and wireless functions”, of which, the XBox 360 has neither, nor can it have, without an additional bit of hardware. So in many ways, every-fucking-thing out there that has USB can also be classes as a “home media hub”. Glad we got that cleared up. I’m still looking forward to the “even throw fantastic parties” feature, presumably thats one which will be available on XBox Live Marketplace, along with friends, alcohol and wotsits.

One thing that did catch my eye was “includes tips for securing the Xbox from online threats”. I genuinely would like to know how to do that. But first I would also like to know what threats exist. It’s not like the 360 has a version of ‘patch tuesday‘. I had to entirely unfirewall my 360, and give it it’s very own external IP, for it to allow me to play COD2 at all, UPnP couldn’t give a shit.

Some of you will remember Domonik Diamond, popularised by the Channel 4 series Gamesmaster. Seems the poor fellow has lost his way, and in his efforts to get back to the straight and narrow, turned down the opportunity to be crucified. God knows why. Read the article in the Guardian here.

Brief excert:

A tabloid columnist making a documentary about his quest to rediscover his faith yesterday backed out of being crucified in a Good Friday ritual in the Philippines after seeing 11 others nailed to crosses.

Dominik Diamond, 36, a life-long Catholic from Arbroath who has said he was making the film after recent events made him start to doubt his faith, declined to discuss the incident afterwards. After praying, he left the scene.

Rants concerning women in gaming (not to be confused with girls in gaming) are numerous when one looks. However ones that actually use the words we all use in our heads are few. This man braves a new teritory, and if he survives with his balls intact, man even father children. If I said some of this stuff in front of my female friends that play games, I wouldn’t keep my balls very long. There are several following updates from the initial page, emphasising his case, be sure to read them. The following is an sample:

But funny thing - most of them actually do attract sponsors. Here is why;

They have vaginas. They have asses. They have tits. They have mouths.

Initial post: here. Follow up 1: here. Follow up 2: here.

PointlessWasteOfTime has an article that is fully worth reading, “Fanboy Intervention”, regarding the atrocious state of the hype surrounding the “forthcomming” Nintendo console. Many of its points can of course be applied to any and every game with hype surrounding it, however they ring truer in this case.

A quote from the article:

‘”One photo shows a player holding the Revolution controller behind his head with the corresponding screen shot displaying the (sword) hilt being held up to the character’s face.”

That’s right. You’ll be required to swordfight with this thing, which means you’ll have to sit on your sofa, swinging your arm around like you’re having a seizure.’

I cannot wait. It will be like dancemats, for your arms and such. Catch the whole thing, here.

Some of you will be old enough to have anticipated Stuntman on the PS2 before its release in September 2002, moreover some of those people will have been somewhat disapointed at spending wasting half of your time looking at fucking loading screens. Admittedly the PS2 was doing a fair bit, but games that could be considered its peers of the time were doing a lot better. It’s now 2006 and the word is out that Stuntman 2 is in development and has gotten far enough along to have released some shots to some magazine. Hexus.net bring us this news, but don’t link to the site, how kind of them. I’ve copied and pasted the felatio blurb like you could give a fuck. Hit the link at the bottom for the shots.

Excert: Stuntman 2 is a mission based driving game, currently in development by PARADIGM ENTERTAINMENT, and published by Atari.

Little is currenltly known about the next title in the Stuntman series, but we can be sure they’ll be plenty of deadly objectives, T-bone smashes, and extreme vehicles to smash to pieces!

Hexus article here.