Eurogamer 2010

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

And the zombie hordes begin their march.

And so it came to pass, that the Eurogamer 2010 show was at the court of Earl over the weekend, and once more, the march for providing a dribbling crowd with a taste of wares to come over the next year had begun, in one case, more than a year, given that Gears of War 3 had been postponed at this point till Christmas 2011.

Though the majority of games were already out or going to be out for the run-up for Christmas, such as Fallout New Vegas, Dead Space 2, Brink, Fable 3 and a whole raft of others.

This year, given the success of the past two years, an even bigger venue was chosen and also the event was spread over three days this time as opposed to just one, which gave rise to the fact that most of the presentations you would want to see, you would more than likely miss out on, except for the biggest one of all, RAGE being the biggest crowd puller seeing as Id Software haven’t produced anything for something, let alone a new title altogether.

Let’s briefly go through a few like we did last year and mock them all to hell;

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Wired of a different kind

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

In a bad attempt to link last week’s post about The Wire, and to highlight one of the pitfalls of PC ownership, I’d like to talk very very briefly, before the return to proper service tomorrow about wires.

I wonder how many flies got caught in all this.

Seriously, why so many damned wires required for all the bits and bobs of the modern PC? It seems that everything from the mouse to the speakers come with at least 17 different wires in order for you to enjoy all the wonderful wonders of modern technology.

The only machines which are coming close to getting it right, I hate to say it, are the Apple Macs. Or more precisely, the IMac. Pretty much everything is in the one package, the mouse and keyboard are wireless, and then you’ve just got the power lead and maybe also a lovely shiny network cable.

But this doesn’t translate well to full blown tower-based systems, where the machine requires its own power plant, and UN weapon inspectors often wander around tutting about various safety procedures being ignored.

Surely people in the PC world such as it stands today, can do much better, maybe wireless cabling for the monitors as well as the mouse and keyboards, which have to be honest, have not been the best in the world, owing to such dwindling battery life, that you’d be better off trying to raise the dead, rather that type another word as it dies in agony.

This concludes today’s lesson kids. Join us next time, where we learn that mixing old people’s drugs is not always funny.

I’m now wired.

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Seems one of the best television shows of the past decade I had ignored, manly because I have an adverse reaction to “cop shows.” It’s the like a rash that I can’t stop scratching until the correct oinkment has been applied, in this case, switching to another channel, poking myself in the eyes, or reaching for a frying pan to hit myself over the head with.

24 came very close to being like that when it first started and that was one of the reasons why I fell asleep during it’s first season, along with the fact that everything was so drawn out to the point of wanting the terrorists to win so it would end. Not even the vapid eye candy known as Elisha Cuthbert enough to stop me from switching to the porn channel that resides in my head.

That show I kind of watched on and off but to be honest, I couldn’t tell you what the hell was supposed to be going on, as really it’s one of those shows you do have to watch from the beginning to get some of the references in later episodes, and considering I couldn’t stand the first season, it wasn’t a price I was willing to pay.

Cut to this weekend, and given my success with defrosting the fridge, doing the washing up and having my annual bath, I decided to wander out to the local store to pick up something different to watch.

The first season box set of The Wire was available at a cut price, and as it had been mentioned by friends and also Charlie Brooker during ScreenWipe as being something you just had to see, I picked that up instead of Hot Tub Time Machine, and put on the first disc.

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Multi-player’s be tripping dog.

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

The world of multiplayer gaming. It’s brought us all together in an digital orgy, only for people to bellow out written and spoken cries of “noob”, accusations of being cheating bastards, and give birth to 10,000 “your mum” jokes.

It’s come on leaps and bounds over the last 15 years, from the simple beginnings of Doom over an IPX connection, to the full realisation of the online console arena, where facing your foes in a virtual world has never been easier to do. However perhaps all this great progress has come at a price?

While conversing with a friend who had just quit from a session of Modern Warfare 2, he stated that a change from the usual multiplayer blood bath would be welcome.

I simply stated that it wouldn’t be a problem and we started to work our way down the list from the Steam games browser to see what tickles our collective fancy. What we initially thought would be a simple task, was not so simple after all. Why is so much of the titles on offer, offer the same thing?

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It was all lies, treachery and deceit

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

On Sunday, we postponed our diatribe about the Pope to bring you news that GOG.com had closed their doors. Today, it turns out it was all a big pile of marketing poo.

Burn them, burn them for their betrayal. Or not.

We now actually have a real life case of lies, treachery and deceit from a company who basically used the ever present tool of “word of mouth” to close their site and spread news to all on the internet who cared. Which as it turns out, included me.

Even though you could argue that taking the site down, denying current customers access to their games without warning was clearly a silly thing to do and “oh my god, how could they? I’ll boycott them forever, start a movement…” and all that rubbish, this actually proved to be a fairly effective marketing ploy, and given the talk it had generated around a number of the gaming sites out there, you can’t say it didn’t work.

For once, the marketing tw*ts who try writing with sticks, banging their heads on wallls, and require their food feeding via a plastic spoon, earned their money.

The Pope Strikes Back!

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

I suppose it’s been a funny old week, reflecting on various things of import, the most important of which I didn’t actually pay attention to, owing to spending too much time playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, and laughing at the notion that Stephen Hawking is simply referred to by some as “the wheelchair guy.”

The Pope came to visit the UK on a £12 million jolly, meaning lots of people got jolly upset about the whole thing costing lots of money and asking why should we care? The Richard Dawkins signal was shown in the night sky over London, ensuring that all were rallied to distribute condoms, pelt the Pope Mobile with copies of the Atheists’ Guide to Christmas, and install chastity belts on the under 7’s.

Now you've remembered your underpants?

The end of that scrolling link from Sky news is: “underpants in the wash, can someone dry them and send them back via air mail?”

The first real tiding of holy doom was cast when Corporal Walter Kasper (not the friendly Ghost), one of the Pope’s senior advisers, pulled out of the trip earlier this week. Apparently he withdrew from the jolly after comparing Britain with a “third world country” and made a reference to the nation’s “aggressive new atheism” during an interview with a German magazine (Uber Allis probably, come on, let’s keep the second world war stereotypes alive!!)

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Gog.com, we hardly knew ye…

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

There's no god?!?!?! WHAT ELSE DON'T I KNOW???Forget about the old Pope coming to Britain, our lovely little third world country, and telling us we shouldn’t listen to Richard Dawkins as he’s a very naughty man, there is some more frankly startling news which will granted, only concern 3 people, but as I’m one of them, and this is my corner of cyberspace, I bloody well will type away in some clanky fury.

Yes game fans, the good old days of main characters made up of pixels that look like body parts appear to have been consigned again to history, as Good Old Games has sadly departed from us from the time being.

As you may remember from some ramblings in 2008 oddly, around September it goes, I was telling you not to inject your arms with cocaine no longer, as GOG.com provided simple old people like me the ability to purchase all these old classics, which they have tweaked and massaged into running on modern day equipment, all for a reasonable price while they are at it; $5.99 with the odd couple at $10, so god only knows what has happened in the meantime in order for the service to come crashing down like the Hindenberg blimp.

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The most oddest of things

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Sometimes it’s not hard to wonder how silly things can be in the world. Here’s three of the best things from the week so far; Warning, some scenes are not suitable for anyone.

Purple Headed Monster on loose round children…again…

No, not that kind of purple monster....

And the silly thing was, worse than a man dressed like a dildo, was that the whole pointless exercise was promoting fitness with chocolate. Well done Cadbury’s, you’ve saved us all!

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Scott Pilgrim vs The Lord of Leisure

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

These days, it is the geek which roams the earth, with knowledge of various sounds and catchphrases from things gone by, own countless devices which cook an egg, does the shopping and clean your teeth at the same time, and either incredibly skinny or have developed many fat folds, which are actually used to store snacks which don’t mind being a little bit moist.

Strangely Hollywood have been somewhat reluctant to give the audience a film which, outside of zombie films, fully acknowledges while they are awkward, and at times stupid, they are also very funny.

Enter Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World

ROUND 1: FIGHT!

FINISH HIM!!

So to the story spoiling bit which we begin every review with, much to the annoyance of many.

Here we’re introduced to the main character, Scott Pilgrim, a skinny fella living in Toronto with a gay bloke, even sharing the same bed, with various T-shirts of suitably sad yet cool origin, who is being constantly mocked for going out with a 17 year old Japanese girl while he is 22.

While if they were in this country they’d already have 23 kids and live in a mansion if you were to believe the press, in Canada, like the US, until people turn 18, potential naughty situations with school kids are still a sort of taboo, so we’ll just move past that and get to the nub of the matter.

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28 Years Later….

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Indeed, it has been 28 years since I came into being, and of course the slow yet steady decline begins as youth is fleeting away from my battered skin cells. Indeed things had been so silly that last year, the whole birthday thing didn’t even get a mention. The one thing for the whole of September was in fact, that someone used a photo from this site. Indeed, something we all know was so earth shattering it had to be remarked on.

Well this year, that will be only slightly different.

You see, as I’ve gotten older and also further away from people I knew once upon a time, birthdays have become nothing more than a day off from work, and really nothing further than that. It becomes a subtle kick in the balls as it were, just like christmas etc, that time is passing by and all the while, things are moving on, and also people are moving on. Yet you’re the one that remains pretty much the same, you’ve still got an arse the size of the moon, the social skills of head lice, and a face that could derail a moving train at 100 metres.

My hero....Like the whole thing about New Year’s for example, which we all know is coming rather soon now, you think that yes it should be celebrated and then use it as a stepping stone, a line in the sand, to boost yourself, start fresh, achieve that special list of things you’ve always wanted to do. And then reality kicks in.

No-one should kid themselves. At the end of the day you will have been fashioned by the sum of your experiences and how you will act going forward will only be subject to those experiences, we don’t suddenly change our entire behaviour.

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