Quick thoughts on the World Cup

We’re a few days in now and I’m just putting up some stuff while I continue playing Modnation Racers before I review it and wait for Germany vs. the Australians.

He wouldn't spoon it into his own net

First thing is I love the African teams, especially Nigeria. Vincent Enyeama looked like he was taking it all very seriously which is why it’s a shame we couldn’t have given him a British passport. I have a theory about goalkeepers. Unusual hair, short sleeves, coloured boots or jogging bottoms are all signs that the only involvement with white sticks they should have is using one to avoid lamp posts and litter bins. Sadly Robert ‘Patty Cake’ Green wasn’t showing any outward signs of ‘Crappygoalitis’, although he did manage to rupture his own ligaments taking a goal kick before so nothing should really come as a surprise.

It’s not a huge disaster at the end of the day because Algeria and Slovenia-or-Slovakia both look absolute pony. The England USA game also made me see how bad a soldier I would be. At one point they showed the US soldiers celebrating alongside a load of glum faced British soldiers, which for me would be enough to make me join the Taleban.

Also the vuvuzelas: I’m all for embracing the culture of the host country and so on but these things are really pissing me off now. It’s like every match has a 90 minute long Kid A soundtrack.

Fucking stop it

PS – ITV what the hell is wrong with you? You produce 1,000’s of hours of crappy live TV every year yet every time someone has scored a goal you need to make us watch adverts? After we went to 1 -1 the thought of some poor technician being fired really warmed my cockles.

PPS – I called the 1-1 draw pre-match, just ask anyone I know.

If the children are our future I’m defecting to skynet

Previews of next years Toddler Apprentice

And lo the winner of kiddie apprentice is Arjun the maths gnome. A boy whose thick hair was matched only by his rival, Tim’s, beard.

I only watched Junior Apprentice because it popped up on iPlayer last month and I was so incredibly bored I decided to give it a go. There was no way it could match the real Apprentice I thought. It would just be a pale imitation where the board room was replaced by a ball park and Christmas Island faced Nick Hewer exchanged for a clown making balloon animals and wearing pants made of frivolity. Well I was wrong; it was quite literally all the brilliance of the normal apprentice minus 10 years from the contestants.

The only major difference was that these poorly proportioned Human larvae were better than the people who turn up on the ‘real’ apprentice. The grownups always seem to make a grand total of about £340 tops while yesterday Arjuns team shifted £10,000s worth of tat and lost to Tim and Kirsty who managed £40,000. I don’t know if they threatened the buyers of camera but those sorts of numbers would make the usual lots heads spin. Then again the concepts of halal and kosher managed that before.

Not only that but Tim and Arjuns half Tesco value half 1984 brand of ‘A bottle of water’ was actually a good idea. They didn’t even present it in front of the professionals in the manner of a newborn calf that’s just been pissed onto the floor by its mum like Apprentice pitches usually are. The key difference was that some of them appeared to actually have some talent.

Talent aside some of the little scrotes were easily as hateable as their older parallels. Zoe Plummer for example who I can only imagine is either an almost attractive childlike dominatrix doll or a robot sent from the future to kill using only haughtiness and pretention. ‘Lord Vader’s’ assertion that she had the ability to ‘rub people up the wrong way’ is like saying McDonalds has the ability to ‘piss off cows’.

Lets be honest - She rubbed us up the right way

Kirsty the other finalist didn’t make much of an impression on me; however she did seem to be doing a pretty good impression of Wee Jimmy Krankie.

In the final task Zoe actually became even more annoying when she managed to develop an ebonic accent while talking to some poor lads they had ambushed playing football, and the brand name of ‘Drip Drop never Stop’ was apparently brilliant because it rhymed. Well ‘Piss Flap load of Crap’ rhymes as well, you should have called it that. In fact the manner in which she started to speak ‘lik' dis yo’ reminded me of the scenes in the Terminator films when Arnie starts to learn human behaviour, be afraid.

The only thing worse that the ‘Drip Drop’ brand name or the way Zoe shoe horned in the word onomatopaic into a conversation was their TV advert. It was like some sort of Guy Ritchie inspired post apocakypse gangster flick starring 2 seemingly disabled children who had crawled onto a council estate roof only to be mugged for their last bottle of water.

Similarly disturbing was the ‘A bottle of water’ advert conjured up by Tim and made even more homo-erotic by Arjun. A handsome fellow basically runs through a public park stripping (Past some really pissed off out of work actors who had been brought all the way from Hertfordshire to be told basically to fuck off). The advert reads ‘’All he needs is a bottle of water’’ but I would argue he probably needs 24 hour round the clock care, electro shock therapy and some prescription drugs.

Eventually the two teams backed by the previous failed contestants (Which is like having the cavalry turn up, only to discover that the cavalry are the Para-military wing of the Salvation Army) end up in the ironically named Spittlefields in front of a bunch of knobs whose life’s work is selling water, in bottles.

Arjun celebrates his win

Arjun and Tim charmed them with maths and northern bumbling while Kirsty and Zoe described ‘Sally’ the target group for their product who sounded like a cunt. When all was said and done and we were back in the board room waiting for ‘Lord Sugar’ who I still expect to reveal himself from behind the frosted glass doors wearing just a towel. Tim and Arjun played a game of backhanded compliment tennis while Zoe and Kirtsy were ejected. This brought an amusing moment where Zoe tried to be magnanimous but came across like a Data from the next generation.

In the end Arjun won – I wonder what he will spend the money on? If I was him it would be growth hormones.

Once Upon a Time in my bedroom - Red Dead Redemption

I’ve seen the ‘Dollars’ trilogy and I think Clint Eastwood is cool but somehow the whole western genre of everything has passed me by, so I was surprised when I got caught up in the hype for Rockstars Red Dead Redemption. I spent the weeks beforehand listening to Ennio Morricone and watching the duel at the end of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly while working myself into frenzy over the idea of riding around on a horse and squinting at things.

Eventually the game arrived (a day early, thanks www.gameplay.com) and I set off on my adventure into the west, which is when the first problem I had reared its head. I had come into this game with the idea of being a badarse outlaw out on the lamb murdering and robbing anything that moves, but I couldn’t. Although nothing is technically stopping you from being a bad guy the contrast between the John Marston I wanted to be and the John Marston the cut scenes forced me to be was jarring. One minute I was lassoing women and leaving them on train tracks and the next I was telling Bonnie Macfarlane how much a loved my wife and tipping my hat like a Victorian gentleman.

The mild West

It actually made me long for the days when the GTA characters were just silent mannequins of death dealing. Ooh, that was a bit naughty did I just refer to Red Dead Redemption as a GTA game? Well it is and it isn’t. Rockstar have absolutely stuck with the format they seem to think they perfected in GTA 3 whereby the letters appear on the map and you go to the letters and you commit some ‘errand’ for somebody (Whose usually either in the mafia or working for a shady government agency). The world doesn’t feel like GTA though even if the characters do and they really have made an effort to move away from the ‘go to X and kill everyone there’ which I commended. Even if a lot of the missions are things like ‘Herd some cows’ or ‘Abuse a horse’.

Usually when I play a GTA game at the start there is this sense of joy and wonder as you marvel at the fine polish and wonderful craftsmanship worked into the game but as time goes by the goodwill starts to ebb away and it starts to become a bit of a grind. Well Red Dead Redemption is the same. It’s cut into 4 acts so to speak and during act 2 (Mexico) the 160 mile horse rides started to take their toll on me. I’d say it felt like they were padding the game out but it didn’t feel like that, it felt like they were punishing me for daring to get a bit bored. I almost gave up in the final act when it stops being a free roaming cowboy adventure and turns into Harvest Moon.

My point is Red Dead Redemption falls into the same trap every single GTA game falls into – I think the developers get bored and lazy half way through and suddenly the innovation and interesting characters go away and are replaced by shady men in suits who antagonize you. Seriously, think about it, GTA 3, Gay Tony, Happy Biking Adventure, Grand Theft Eastern European War Criminal all end up in you working for the suits and so does Red Dead Redemption. In fact Rockstar could make a game called Grand Theft Dinosaur set in the Jurassic period and you’d still end up working for the CIA or the Italian mafia. Just stop it – I play games to avoid ‘The Man’ and he keeps turning up in my adventures with his glasses and his tax returns.

Leave me alone!

There are other problems with the game – you can go out collecting all manner of random crud like armadillo skins or bear hearts to sell but everything you buy in the shop you can pretty much find for free. It’s like buying bottled water. They also play a rather cheap trick here in letting you buy an awesome bandolier that actually attached to your character model. I got all excited thinking about personalising my character but that was the only example of real customization in the game, poor show.

The absolute worst aspect for me was the music. Apart from some stand out moments like entering Mexico the music feels like a huge let down. There’s no chanting Indians or swelling trumpets just a bit of looped whistling and the strings of the psycho theme up in the mountains around Blackwater. I think I would have felt a lot better about the whole thing if they’d gotten the music right. I actually though the end credits music was a piss take to start with.

Now let’s talk about the multiplayer. Parts of this are very good parts are very disappointing. I kind of expected the ‘Free Roam’ to be a bit floppy after the ‘Free Roam’ in GTA 4. I don’t miss the minigames all that much as trust me I’ve seen people play online poker for real money so seeing 15 year olds play for no money isn’t going to be a true representation of the game. What I do miss is the trains, again. Why do Rockstar insist on taking trains out of multiplayer in every game they produce? All I want to do is somehow force a situation where I will see a fellow human being splatted by an enormous locomotion engine and they bloody won’t let me do it. They also left out the lasso for ‘technical’ reasons but it can’t be any more complicated than rendering 16 horses falling down a cliff and into a river can it? And I’ve seen the game handle that, lots.

The structured multiplayer is better – I honestly ADORE the auto aim and I think every console shooter should use that system. It means you can actually take snapshots even if you don’t have the reactions of a kingfisher on speed. The shootouts are fun and the guns are balanced. I don’t think I’ll play it for very long but it’s the best Rockstar multiplayer offering so far.

So in the end Red Dead Redemption doesn’t feel exactly like GTA in some ways but in a lot of ways it does... The chief one being the sense of vague disappointment at what could have been.

Why Heavy Rain is a good game and Final Fantasy XXXIIXMV is rubbish

The unlikley named Ethan Mars

Now I played both these games a few months ago and they both stuck in my mind, albeit for different reasons.

If you haven’t played these games the basics are these:

Heavy rain was a semi-original concept game based loosely on films like Se7en. It was filled with interesting and mostly realistic characters that you could identify with.

Final Fantasy over 9000 was a ridiculous colour fest filled with absolute morons and the sort of dialogue that could cause you to abandon the English language altogether.

For those who DID play the games here is a little test. Think about Ethan Mars the protagonist of Heavy Rain – what can you tell me about him?

· Crappy Parent

· Bit soppy

· Unlucky

· Eventually brave

· Loving

· Architect

· Lived in a house bought from IKEA

Now let’s look at Kurt Cobain from Final Fantasy – What can we remember about him?

· Beanie

Maybe I’m being a bit flippant here, I can remember one more thing about him, and he was a huge penis.

The other characters in Final Fantasy were equally bad. They were all standard JRPG caricatures but these ones grated especially badly. We had the wise cracking black fellow the angsty heart of gold woman the zany one the annoying child – and by god they were awful. It actually got to the point where I was letting them die just so I could see them collapse. In fact the only character I could relate to was the chocobo that lived in Lionel Ritchie’s hair. The mass chocobo slaughter was the point at which I refused to play the game anymore.

He deserves this for wearing sunglasses indoors

Heavy Rains cast grew on me to the point that I was so incredibly tense playing the game knowing that they could die at pretty much any moment that it wasn’t even fun anymore (Not fun in a good way). Every time there was a fight scene or it looked like something dodgy might be about to happen I’d just sit there for 5 minutes refusing to go any further. There are a few let downs like Scott Shelby the 45 year old overweight private detective suddenly going all Tony Montana and shooting up a villa filled with bad guys and the slightly needless sex scene between Ethan and Madison, but that aside it all made sense.

You might have noticed that I’ve been using Heavy Rains characters real names and naming Final Fantasies after people with whom they share a vague resemblance. That’s partly because I don’t remember their names and partly because the names I do remember are so incredibly stupid. All the names seem to be random nouns like Snow, Lightening and Hope. It makes me wonder if I’d played until the end I might have come across Fog, Horse and Xbox. The bad names aren’t confined to the people either – the world on which the game is set is called Pulse and the city is called Cocoon. Maybe these are bad translations from the Japanese version but that’s no excuse for the utterly made up words like L’Cie or Fal’Cie. The translation is pretty poor – after killing groups space pigs you are offered ‘spoils’ instead of loot. I mean ‘spoils’? Really? As in the ‘spoils of war’? Because I think ‘spoils’ is a rather grandiose term for some spacepig hair or another Beardoglion horn.

Heavy Rain has its language problems too but that’s more to do with the voice acting. The game was made over in France by French people but set in America. Now I’m not an expert on American accents but even I could tell Norman ‘Nomnom’ Jayden was clearly spending too much time holidaying in Europe. The best example is when you play as a child whose about 8 years old and grew up the the noir city the game is set in. He couldn’t have sounded more French if he’d started speaking it.

This is how miserable being in Final Fantasy can make you.

Ah! But Final Fantasy had amazing graphics I hear you cry! So did Heavy Rain I retort. And in fact Heavy Rains visuals were better and this is why – Its allot harder to make things look realistic and Heavy Rain looks realistic. Final Fantasy is just an orgy of colour and ridiculous lighting. That’s not hard that just wastes a lot of processing speed.

Heavy Rain isn’t totally original, it reminded me a bit of Shenmue (Now that’s how you do a JRPG) and it borrows heavily from the games that its company made before it (Nomad Soul/Fahrenheit) but it was original enough that it should be praised and celebrated. I think the stand out moment is when you are put into a situation where you have to chop of a part of your body. I didn’t realize this at the time but there are about 10 different ways to do it including refusing. I think everyone should be forced to play this scene as a sort of sick personality test. I myself went for the big knife and then used a heated iron rod to cauterize the wound, genius. My friend used some disinfectant and a saw, not genius.

I’m not even going to go into the more technical details of Final Fantasy such as the rubbish ‘crystalarium’ XP system or the fact the only thing you need to do in combat is mash the A button. Nor will I talk about how every mission is an overly long corridor that you will grow sick of after about 4 minutes. I won’t even mention how impenetrable the plot is. For the record I made an effort to understand it just in case I was missing something and read all of the 60 million text entries in the logbook. I wish I hadn’t. In fact that was probably the greatest mistake of my life – and that’s coming from someone who spent 15 years in prison.

I hadn’t played a Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy 8 which I actually liked. Final Fantasy 13 was almost exactly the same but I hated it. It’s like a replica of a beautiful portrait which you then found out was painted by Hitler.

Basically Heavy Rain made me feel a lot of things. Final Fantasy made me feel one thing and that was that I wanted to pull out my eyeballs and use them as earplugs.

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