Keeps going and going and going….

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Have a good long look at the below image and I mean, not just a matter of seconds look, I mean look at it like Brian Sewell, the world’s poshest art critic would and come up with some elegant witty banter about it;

Now in HD…..

You decided to read on did you? Are you sure you want to do so, considering how amazing that image above is? Go on, best to go back and have another good long hard stare at it. Maybe while having a nice cup of tea too.

Do that for about 2 and half hours.

Congratulations! You have just simulated what watching The Hobbit: An unexpected Journey is like. The colour beige in cinematic form. Such a loaded statement isn’t it? The kind that drives various internet trolls ablaze with the potential insults about your mum and the ways they will now rape and kill you.

But before the digital warriors come forth to defend the movie’s honour as being a masterpiece and I don’t what I’m talking about, let’s sprinkle some context onto the situation. After which, you may then send the death threats and rape messages.

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Sequels, Sequels and more Sequels to those sequels: the sequel.

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Friends, countrymen, Romans, lend me 10p for a cup of tea.

For with that tea, let me tell you of a world which over the next year, we will actually be experiencing a great deal of deja vu.

Across the various forms of media, we will be watching, listening and playing sequels to works which proved a hit in one form or another. We’ve reached the point of saturation where now we will just have reboots or sequels as being the predominant entertainment with more original takes on themes, ideas and characters taking a back seat.

Now this is not going to go into a rant about that very thing, far from it, in many ways, it is very difficult to generate new original ideas, especially where now everything is now basically a derivative from another idea or premise. Where there is scope to progress and improve ideas which came before, we should wholeheartedly embrace those that follow.

I for one welcome our Marvel / Disney overlords who basically have got the formula right with giving variety to their huge amount of content, and who have published their film list for the next 5 years. They have reached the point where they are now producing great quality repeatedly where the heroes taking center stage have more than enough of their own problems to deal with and it’s something most people have been enjoying.

There’s been another glitch….

However, there has been more than enough entries in the annals of history to show where sequels would have been better off being left to gather dust on the shelves of various cupboards instead of being unleashed on the world. After the first Matrix movie, who gave a damn about the two that followed after the hype died? Who sighed a deep sigh when yet another Assassin’s Creed game was “leaked” to be in development when the recent Unity is still being fixed? Continue reading →

Brack Friday Funderul

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, where the days draw in, we prepare to spend time with our loved / hated ones, start decorating our homes with the same decorations used for 10 generations and then camp outside shops at midnight, to then run over to shelves and hit each other with TVs. It’s at this point the guy on the PA system in Asda yells out “Finish him!”

Yes friends, countrymen and Romans, Black Friday has come and gone within these sunny isles, in the biggest campaign of the year, and inevitably comes with it, all the stupidity and madness that we previously witnessed and laughed at on the news when pictures came through from America, where this proud tradition was imported from.

This is a post with a good deal of moaning, so all hands, brace for impact.

Starting over in the UK after it had caught on in the US back in 2003, it was a silent but deadly event (much like after I’ve had a curry) which started to really make an impression thanks to our supreme online overlords such as Amazon but this year, all retailers decided to get in on the act, and suddenly the level of silliness previously laughed at, was now on our front door step. This is not a good thing. Continue reading →

Silver Screen Seinfeld

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

A random invitation popped through to the inbox the other day, tempting me with free beer and soup in return to turning up at a cinema in central London to do one thing; Watch the top 10 episodes of the acclaimed television series, Seinfeld as voted for on Den of Geek.

By all accounts, it was the 25th anniversary or something like that and HMV had another box set to sell to diehard fans who hadn’t bought it the other few times they had released it. Gotta make money somehow, right kids?

The thing is, it was yet another one of those things which had passed me by so long ago that when this was reaching the heights of popular culture, I was attempting not to go into a general rage at school over the fact I couldn’t understand what the hell Manga was all about and getting my ass handed to me by various cool kids.

So basically what better way to see what the fuss is about than to have the fans choose the episodes which best captured what it was all about, and you get free beer and you don’t have to clean up after yourself? Continue reading →

Tell some tales….

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Witness if you will, a ghost town.

Nah, bugger that, ghost towns are boring and let’s be honest, Scooby Doo and the gang pretty much solved the mystery of every town as well. That old man from the amusement park….b******d.

Witness if you will instead, some writing about a genre which apparently died of death and then came back with a vengeance, and is now among the best titles released.

Telltale Games, a collection of old Lucasarts employees who it appears thankfully escaped being owned by the evil overlords of Disney, have produced some of the best adventure games in recent years, from Sam & Max, to the revival of Monkey Island.

In recent years however, they decided to take the genre further by mixing up the game mechanics with some button mashing, and choices which have an impact on parts of the story being told depending on your choice.

This was first really brought to the forefront with the release of the first series of the Walking Dead, which frankly was utterly amazing, and provided the template for later releases such as The Wolf among us and….well this;

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Yoga 2: This time it’s personal

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

In a world fraught with jelly and terrorists who post on Facebook about their day, one man will do something blah blah blah….OK, the introduction to this is in no way going to be as good as the title.

(Meanwhile back in reality sting) Earlier in the year, I had decided to take the plunge further into what the cool kids do and purchase a tablet, in this case, the Lenovo Yoga 10.

This had prompted writing in one of the few posts that materialised on the web site earlier this year about the device in question, given that there in fact wasn’t much in terms of any real world usage about Lenovo’s quirky thing with the fat arse you used to make it stand up.

The few reviews that were out if you were to read up about it, suffered from a good number of problems, but within the usage from my own poor hands, a good few got fixed with a massive update to the entire operating system which made it a hell of a lot better.

But while the software got a hell of a lot better and the battery life was superb for the price paid, the hardware itself was still limiting in a big way. A lower res screen where despite producing good images for video, you still got see pixelation even when reading porn purchased from Amazon that you could read without anyone judging. A number of applications refused to run at all for one reason or another.

Now, we have a new contender in the ring; The Lenovo Yoga 2 (Explosions and rock music sold separately) and this is a real life review type thing. All professional and sh*t.

Before and after, just like those home makeover shows…

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De duh, duh duh de deh, duh duh de duh….

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

SPOILER WARNING; The following will talk about the events that occur within the HBO series Game of Thrones. If you don’t want to know anything that occurs within it, then go and watch this instead and suddenly pineapples!

Ok then, seeing as you are still here then, we will continue after the pretty picture of a chair which will never be featured in the DFS Summer Sale.

You ask me to pay the iron price… but I will wait for the sales for 50% off…

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The Quiet Life of Riley

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Every week, we go back into the offices, coffee bars and morgues that we inhabit to pay various evil enterprises hell bent on conquering the world via billing everyone for being alive, and we sit at our respective locations. Our work colleagues / enemies come in, and more often than not, after the Hi, how are you / Oh, you’re still alive opener, the next question inevitably falls onto; how was your weekend?

Or in the case of enemies, “I’ll get you next time Gadget.”

A man’s gotta do what a man’s got to do….

Normally when asked this, the stock answer is “Not much.” and we leave it at that. Or if someone is feeling bold, they describe one event that they went to, which is a rare occurrence. Even better, if they just came back from holiday, then they will go into a bit of detail about the weather. Now, this doesn’t sound like the epic explosion of being the life and soul of the party, does it?

No sir / madam / evil alien with death ray, you would make the argument that life has become devoid of all meaning, that we are all bitter lifeless husks of human beings and promptly should find some drugs / booze to make the pain go away.

But when this become a bad thing?

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Assassin’s Peed off a lot of people…

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

November is the big time of year normally when it comes to the gaming industry. Christmas is just round the corner, and it’s the perfect time to make people feel guilty for not buying things for you, thus not loving you enough. So it’s the perfect time to release the big guns to make it tough for everyone to decide on what to get.

It’s also normally at this time that we seemingly get two particular games as regular as your bowel movements; Call of Duty: Whatever Subtitle it’s meant to be now, and of course Asshanded Creed: Subtitle Here. Fifa also occurs every year, but everyone knows it’s a pile of balls and only those who haven’t had Sky Sports hardwired into their heads tend to pick that up.

Ah merde.

These franchises are released year after year, and in general it’s a case of being stuck in Groundhog day, with only minor changes, lick of paint here, redone voice acting here to show for all the effort. Last year, Assassin’s Creed found itself in the Caribbean, floating on a big pretty ship, blowing the crap out of everyone else on the high seas and making every day into “Talk like a Pirate day”, YARRR, twas more fun than catching the clap from a wench who had seem more action than Davy Jones’s underpants.  Continue reading →

Moving on up

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Perhaps more constipated than angry…

In a typical fashion, it had again been a long time since anything was populated on this here blog site of lies, treachery and deceit. One would argue this is just par the course these days, as remarkably it can become a lot harder to type away, hammering the keyboard unless you actually have anything to say beyond the fact you bought a jumper and watched TV.

Besides, that is what the likes of Twiiter and Facebook are for, if you’re going to make various questionable remarks to people who never chat with you, that’s the best place to do it.

This being the internet, it is also now confirmed the best place for venting bile and anger at pretty much anything that takes your fancy, and through the recent meh-fest that has been #gamergate, which instead of being about ethics because of various people having sex with each other or something, became a nice way of bitch slapping various “social warriors” about the place, and turning a form of entertainment into some kind of struggle against all things evil or orange or whatever in the world. You can tell I really paid attention…. basically people clearly are bored, and don’t actually just want to play the games they paid money for. Maybe the new hash tag should have been; #areyoubored?

Instead I shall now turn the well meaning but ultimately flawed rage against first world issues towards moving home and the hell of other people.

Now which box did I leave those small children in?

Back towards the end of August, against all odds, a flat still within the greater London area was secured, and thus a huge lifeline away from being forced to live in Zone ZZZ345, facing a 37 hour commute with armpits being shoved in your face and a nice bill for your first born just to pay for the weekly train ticket.

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