I make no pretense that I am a pretentious bugger, truly I'm often to be found listening to Bach's lesser known works whilst reading a book with horribly arty ideals. All I need now is a roll-neck jumper (black) and a beret (also black) and I'll fit in perfectly with all of the irritating pricks often to be found on coffee shops arguing about Marcel Proust.
However, in the course of viewing 70s prog-rock band Focus with a good friend of mine (who shall be referred to as Leroy from now on, simply because I like the name) I encountered somebody who may be more pretentious than I.
Midway through the set, I turned to Leroy, and told him something (the exact details escape me) and he responded. At which point, Mr Pretentious himself commented, in these exact words, "If you want to chat, go outside"
What the fuck? We were in a busy music venue, a fairly huge amount of people were dancing, and generally have a good time. And this guy had the call to moan at us for talking? Seriously now, if you wanna listen to music under conditions chosen exactly by you, then get some decent speakers, a stereo and a copy of their album.
No point at all to make here. Just felt like you should be warned about people like this. They should be shot for their own safety.
-Az
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Friday, 25 April 2008
Interesting Customer of the Week Part 5
Visiting my local station of gaming today, with the intention of purchasing House of the Dead 2+3 for the Wii (If you were vaguely interested, which you probably were seeing as how I'm totally loved and admired by all you lot as though I was a tall glass of ice and rum on a warm day at the beach) I encountered somebody. Two somebody's in fact.
The first was your average middle aged woman, looking a bit lost in this ocean of gaming spittle, and the second was probably her son, aged around 14, wearing a Linkin Park hoody, the deep and meaningful muso that he so clearly is. Anyhows, the following conversation did occur presented now word for word, for your amusement.
Woman: Oooo I think I might get Wii fit.
Son: You don't own a Wii.
Woman: You need a Wii to play Wii Fit?
At which point I had no choice whatsoever but to completely collapse laughing. She may have been offended, but whatever. This struck me as being an awesome conversation to witness, and also struck me as eternally grateful that I don't work in tech support or gaming retail.
-Az
P.S. I'm aware that I didn't work there. She was still a customer. So if all you Daily Sport reading peasants want to complain then please mail them in a ground glass covered envelope to your arse.
The first was your average middle aged woman, looking a bit lost in this ocean of gaming spittle, and the second was probably her son, aged around 14, wearing a Linkin Park hoody, the deep and meaningful muso that he so clearly is. Anyhows, the following conversation did occur presented now word for word, for your amusement.
Woman: Oooo I think I might get Wii fit.
Son: You don't own a Wii.
Woman: You need a Wii to play Wii Fit?
At which point I had no choice whatsoever but to completely collapse laughing. She may have been offended, but whatever. This struck me as being an awesome conversation to witness, and also struck me as eternally grateful that I don't work in tech support or gaming retail.
-Az
P.S. I'm aware that I didn't work there. She was still a customer. So if all you Daily Sport reading peasants want to complain then please mail them in a ground glass covered envelope to your arse.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Metal Gear Offline
Sorry for my last post, I was just making a quick note of something I discussed and forgot to sign my name, as Az pointed out, and I assure you I was hunted down and mauled by seven hungry tigers as a fitting and just punishment. However, now that I have paid my dues to society, I feel another entry is in order to give me something to do as the wounds heal. Ears can grow back, right?
Anyhow, fully limbed or no, I recently discovered that pretty much everywhere on the globe was getting a downloadable beta of "Metal Gear Online", a PS3 exclusive featuring squad based combat and due to be shipped free with Metal Gear Solid 4 in mid-June. I was pretty chuffed at this, so I got to downloading and installing the application as fast as my Ethernet cable would allow.
24 hours later I was online and ready to go! Being the optimistic son of a bitch that I am, I had few worries on my mind as I selected "Start Game". With hindsight, I should have taken that itself as a dark omen hanging above my unknowing head. The first seemingly minor obstacle occurred when I had to enter my "Game ID", something which I can't get without first signing up for a 'Konami ID". Fair enough, a quick diversion to the registration website will see me blowing up other people in mere minutes! But, of course, the site doesn't work properly. Each page took half a minute to load, and after completing 99% of my form, I would click "Submit" only to be told that I had taken too long and the confirmation page had timed out.
Needless to say, Konami were spared the view of my gesture by my unrelenting good will and of course the sticks which I had taken to thrusting into their eyes. But, as their tears flowed red, my registration was finally complete and my metaphorical friends were both forgiven and given the name of a good eye doctor in braille.
Now I want to play a small game of "Choose your own adventure"! If registering solved everything, go to part (1). If more problem arose, skip (1) and go to (A). And yes I know it should be (2), but (A) kept complaining that it wasn't important enough and I'm too tired to have an argument with the voices in my head about political correctness and the inherent prejudices of our alphanumeric linguistics system, OK?
(1) Go to (A)
(A) "Unable to connect to server".
Needless to say the sticks were promptly returned to their rightful places as I ventured onto the MGO website looking for answers to my riddle. "The beta has been indefinitely suspended as we were not able to cope with the high volumes of traffic that far exceeded our expectations".
How fucking stupid can you get? So let me get this straight: A FREE beta test, giving users an insight into how Metal Gear Solid 4 will look and play, as well as granting the eagerly anticipated multiplayer, was not given a priority of "every fucking server we can get out hands on"? A sneak peak of one of the most eagerly anticipated games the world has ever known? And Konami are no strangers to the online world, many of their other games have a multiplayer component and MGO was given an alpha run out for anyone who bought MGS3: Subsistence on the PS2. So how exactly did they not see this coming? Did they honestly expect this to sneak under the radar? I can see their logic, after all its not like any of the other games in the series were hailed as revolutionary works of art that sold millions upon millions of copies? Right? ....hello?
In closing, these people need to get the simple age old message into their ridiculously short sighted minds that it is better to have too much than too few. If they have 50 servers and only need 30 then they can always shut a bunch down, but not having enough to meet demand is appalling, especially given the warning signs they had when the beta was announced and their registration site suffered the exact same problem.
Still, keep an eye out on the street from now on. If they have red-eye in real life, chances are they're a Konami employee!
Konami's foresight: 2/10
~ Fox
Anyhow, fully limbed or no, I recently discovered that pretty much everywhere on the globe was getting a downloadable beta of "Metal Gear Online", a PS3 exclusive featuring squad based combat and due to be shipped free with Metal Gear Solid 4 in mid-June. I was pretty chuffed at this, so I got to downloading and installing the application as fast as my Ethernet cable would allow.
24 hours later I was online and ready to go! Being the optimistic son of a bitch that I am, I had few worries on my mind as I selected "Start Game". With hindsight, I should have taken that itself as a dark omen hanging above my unknowing head. The first seemingly minor obstacle occurred when I had to enter my "Game ID", something which I can't get without first signing up for a 'Konami ID". Fair enough, a quick diversion to the registration website will see me blowing up other people in mere minutes! But, of course, the site doesn't work properly. Each page took half a minute to load, and after completing 99% of my form, I would click "Submit" only to be told that I had taken too long and the confirmation page had timed out.
Needless to say, Konami were spared the view of my gesture by my unrelenting good will and of course the sticks which I had taken to thrusting into their eyes. But, as their tears flowed red, my registration was finally complete and my metaphorical friends were both forgiven and given the name of a good eye doctor in braille.
Now I want to play a small game of "Choose your own adventure"! If registering solved everything, go to part (1). If more problem arose, skip (1) and go to (A). And yes I know it should be (2), but (A) kept complaining that it wasn't important enough and I'm too tired to have an argument with the voices in my head about political correctness and the inherent prejudices of our alphanumeric linguistics system, OK?
(1) Go to (A)
(A) "Unable to connect to server".
Needless to say the sticks were promptly returned to their rightful places as I ventured onto the MGO website looking for answers to my riddle. "The beta has been indefinitely suspended as we were not able to cope with the high volumes of traffic that far exceeded our expectations".
How fucking stupid can you get? So let me get this straight: A FREE beta test, giving users an insight into how Metal Gear Solid 4 will look and play, as well as granting the eagerly anticipated multiplayer, was not given a priority of "every fucking server we can get out hands on"? A sneak peak of one of the most eagerly anticipated games the world has ever known? And Konami are no strangers to the online world, many of their other games have a multiplayer component and MGO was given an alpha run out for anyone who bought MGS3: Subsistence on the PS2. So how exactly did they not see this coming? Did they honestly expect this to sneak under the radar? I can see their logic, after all its not like any of the other games in the series were hailed as revolutionary works of art that sold millions upon millions of copies? Right? ....hello?
In closing, these people need to get the simple age old message into their ridiculously short sighted minds that it is better to have too much than too few. If they have 50 servers and only need 30 then they can always shut a bunch down, but not having enough to meet demand is appalling, especially given the warning signs they had when the beta was announced and their registration site suffered the exact same problem.
Still, keep an eye out on the street from now on. If they have red-eye in real life, chances are they're a Konami employee!
Konami's foresight: 2/10
~ Fox
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Livin' online.
Quickly before we start, the previous entry may have confused the less observant of you.
There are two writers for this blog, but my colleague has not updated in a while. And often neglects to place his name at the end of entries. So, for reference, Fox is a quiet appearing misanthrope with far too much time on his hands, and Az (me) is a perfect individual, a fine example of mankind as a whole and in fact of the whole male species.
Now that I've alienated most of my audience...
My Facebook is fucking filled with uselss shit, rather a useful reflection of my bedroom, mind, notebook, and also my sorely neglected backpack which finds itself falling apart at the seams and held together with gaffa tape. And I actually am gobsmacked in a totally literal sense at how much new shit keeps appearing on the bloody thing. Bebo didn't get this much! But this absolute obsession with additions is getting ridiculous, last time I checked a good friend of mine had added the "What kind of girl are you?" application. Admittedly he once played a pantomime dame but come on...
For those VERY FUCKING RARE people out there who have no idea of what I'm talking about, Facebook is an online area where people gather to arrange events, or get birthday reminders, or buy each other beers, or race in cars, or fly tramps around treacherous caverns (I wish I was kidding). I can see the practical purpose of some of these features, but enough is enough. I can't log into my facebook these days without seventeen invitations to find out how I'm going to die, or what my sexual fantasy is, or who's bitten me and turned me into an example of the shambling undead, or invite me to express my admiration of "lolcats" which I could easily do using the "Status" function that can usually be found at the top right of the page.
Which leads me nicely onto my next point, just like a well run public transport service, something I find myself highly inexperienced with and thus am used to distractions such as this...erm...sorry.
Allowing people to display their innermost thoughts is an interesting proposition. On the one hand, people can advertise that they have lost their phone and need numbers, or have an item for sale at a reasonable price, etc. Or, more often than not, we get "Gordon Freemon is an emotionless bearded fuckwit/is fighting creatures from another dimension/is stuck on Guitar Hero 'Through the Fire and Flames' on expert mode/is having a threesome with sweaty Europeans in crotchless leather shorts" so on so forth, you get the picture. Worryingly enough I wouldn't be at all suprised at seeing any of these in somebody's status.
I guess this wouldn't be much of an article without some form of conclusion. But I'm too lazy to think this through properly. So I'll just say this. If, for some reason, you feel like adding every application and their worm ridden dog to your already grotty and overcrowded Facebook account, then fine, be my guest. But don't invite me to the bloody things. Rather why don't you find something interesting to do. Read a book perhaps, or write a compelling and entertaining murder mystery. Or, as none of you will do these things, get brutally slaughtered by Motoko Kusanagi and Columbo.
-Az
There are two writers for this blog, but my colleague has not updated in a while. And often neglects to place his name at the end of entries. So, for reference, Fox is a quiet appearing misanthrope with far too much time on his hands, and Az (me) is a perfect individual, a fine example of mankind as a whole and in fact of the whole male species.
Now that I've alienated most of my audience...
My Facebook is fucking filled with uselss shit, rather a useful reflection of my bedroom, mind, notebook, and also my sorely neglected backpack which finds itself falling apart at the seams and held together with gaffa tape. And I actually am gobsmacked in a totally literal sense at how much new shit keeps appearing on the bloody thing. Bebo didn't get this much! But this absolute obsession with additions is getting ridiculous, last time I checked a good friend of mine had added the "What kind of girl are you?" application. Admittedly he once played a pantomime dame but come on...
For those VERY FUCKING RARE people out there who have no idea of what I'm talking about, Facebook is an online area where people gather to arrange events, or get birthday reminders, or buy each other beers, or race in cars, or fly tramps around treacherous caverns (I wish I was kidding). I can see the practical purpose of some of these features, but enough is enough. I can't log into my facebook these days without seventeen invitations to find out how I'm going to die, or what my sexual fantasy is, or who's bitten me and turned me into an example of the shambling undead, or invite me to express my admiration of "lolcats" which I could easily do using the "Status" function that can usually be found at the top right of the page.
Which leads me nicely onto my next point, just like a well run public transport service, something I find myself highly inexperienced with and thus am used to distractions such as this...erm...sorry.
Allowing people to display their innermost thoughts is an interesting proposition. On the one hand, people can advertise that they have lost their phone and need numbers, or have an item for sale at a reasonable price, etc. Or, more often than not, we get "Gordon Freemon is an emotionless bearded fuckwit/is fighting creatures from another dimension/is stuck on Guitar Hero 'Through the Fire and Flames' on expert mode/is having a threesome with sweaty Europeans in crotchless leather shorts" so on so forth, you get the picture. Worryingly enough I wouldn't be at all suprised at seeing any of these in somebody's status.
I guess this wouldn't be much of an article without some form of conclusion. But I'm too lazy to think this through properly. So I'll just say this. If, for some reason, you feel like adding every application and their worm ridden dog to your already grotty and overcrowded Facebook account, then fine, be my guest. But don't invite me to the bloody things. Rather why don't you find something interesting to do. Read a book perhaps, or write a compelling and entertaining murder mystery. Or, as none of you will do these things, get brutally slaughtered by Motoko Kusanagi and Columbo.
-Az
Thursday, 17 April 2008
2 Kings 2:23-24
Look it up. 'tis scary shit.
I'm not gonna make this article in-depth at all, but I think this deserves a score at least:
Authors of religious texts: 1/10 (I couldn't find it in my heart to grant a 0)
I'm not gonna make this article in-depth at all, but I think this deserves a score at least:
Authors of religious texts: 1/10 (I couldn't find it in my heart to grant a 0)
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Interesting Customer of the Week Part 4
Whilst at work this week, I experienced a total of zero interesting customers. That's right, totally zero. Nul. Zilch. And was wondering what to do regarding this 'ere feature.
Then, whilst at university, there was a great shining being of true brilliance! A friend of mine commented that she would like to visit the local branch of my place of employment, and like a good little puppy I followed.
And she found some pac-man underwear...
This combination of events is not all that interesting in itself, but what did provide vast amusement was her reaction to these particular pants.
"PAC MAN UNDERWEAR!"
"I'm sorry?"
"They have ghosts on them!"
The conversation from then on got steadily less and less sensible. However, her beautific smile will continue to brighten up my darkest days, as I shall always be cheered by the concept of somebody so amused by such geekily brilliant lingerie.
-Az
Then, whilst at university, there was a great shining being of true brilliance! A friend of mine commented that she would like to visit the local branch of my place of employment, and like a good little puppy I followed.
And she found some pac-man underwear...
This combination of events is not all that interesting in itself, but what did provide vast amusement was her reaction to these particular pants.
"PAC MAN UNDERWEAR!"
"I'm sorry?"
"They have ghosts on them!"
The conversation from then on got steadily less and less sensible. However, her beautific smile will continue to brighten up my darkest days, as I shall always be cheered by the concept of somebody so amused by such geekily brilliant lingerie.
-Az
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
A new feature
Those of you who are sharp eyed enough, or just plain obsessive about website reading, will have noticed that, to the right of these most totally important words, is a new thing which states "Links you should probably look at" and here we shall put, rather logically, things we think you should look at.
If you happen to own a blog, and want some cheap advertising, then send us a link at fox.kadmon@hotmail.co.uk, and eventually We'll read it. If it's worth reading, or at least moderately entertaining, then you'll get a link. If not, then at least you'll get a review. A horribly scathing review that leaves your ego lying in so many tatters and destroying your confidence so badly that you'll never write again, but a review nonetheless.
-Az
If you happen to own a blog, and want some cheap advertising, then send us a link at fox.kadmon@hotmail.co.uk, and eventually We'll read it. If it's worth reading, or at least moderately entertaining, then you'll get a link. If not, then at least you'll get a review. A horribly scathing review that leaves your ego lying in so many tatters and destroying your confidence so badly that you'll never write again, but a review nonetheless.
-Az
Resident Evil 4 vs House of the Dead
And so, the prodigal smartarse returns. Returning indeed, from my classy French lifestyle of skiing, hobnobbing with the social elite, and of course, snorting premium crack cocaine from the breasts of even more premium Alpine hookers, to find a sorely neglected blog waiting for me like a spurned love one waiting to do horribly violent things to me with my prized sculpture of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Those of you waiting desparately with breath held so long you've turned purple can breath a sigh of relief. And then go fuck yourselves because I can't be arsed to write up my trip just yet.
"Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition" is, unsuprisingly to all but absolute retards (those who play drums then) a remake of the Gamecube game "Resident Evil 4" but comparing the two of them just isn't going to happen, mostly because I never played the Gamecube version. So thus I compare it to my favourite arcade game, House of the Dead. (Any of them, they're all basically the same thing, but with different gimmicky weapons).
RE4 opens with the somewhat odd concept of the President's daughter (Ashley, who was destined right from her conception to be a popular Deviantart figure) being kidnapped, and a foppishly haired character from a previous RE (Leon) being sent to a dirty Spanish peasant village to rescue her. Whilst unbelievable, we'll let the game off simply because any excuse to destroy hoards of zombies is to be taken.
This is where RE4 takes an unforgivable turn, in the form of Ashley. We expected terrible dialogue and poor storytelling, but the voice acting is absolutely fucking DIRE. Everytime I hear Ashley screaming "LEON!" I want to join the hoards of peasents, zealots and various freaks and sacrifice Ashely to whatever god these fellows pray too, something which is not really explained in the game, with the exception that apparently there are parasite which infect people, unexpectedly departing from the T-Virus of previous Resident Evils, so I guess the whole approach was just to cash in on the franchise.
House of the Dead, on the other hand, is a brilliantly fun arcade shooter with unlimited ammo weapons, no puzzles, and no horror.
Anybody who played the original RE games will ponder how I can compare them to House of the Dead. It's simple. RE4 gives you ammo and health every step of the way, and if you take a bit of time to look, you can get a shotgun after playing for 2 minutes, and everything becomes a zombie decapitating laugh. All elements of horror disappear from the game completely, and it becomes a House of the Dead rip-off. The crappy story, dialogue and voice acting are as interchangeable as the backing members of Queen, and the whole experience becomes as frightening as Flash Gordon.
So a warning I guess is in order to all you cockweed game developers. If you want us to be scared by a game, make the characters we control likeable, and also vulnerable. And quite frankly the only way to make up for putting Ashley in RE4 is to include a Mini-Game in which she can be shot multiple times with a variety of exciting weaponry. This opportunity is remarkably absent for some reason, so RE4 remains unforgiven.
-Az
"Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition" is, unsuprisingly to all but absolute retards (those who play drums then) a remake of the Gamecube game "Resident Evil 4" but comparing the two of them just isn't going to happen, mostly because I never played the Gamecube version. So thus I compare it to my favourite arcade game, House of the Dead. (Any of them, they're all basically the same thing, but with different gimmicky weapons).
RE4 opens with the somewhat odd concept of the President's daughter (Ashley, who was destined right from her conception to be a popular Deviantart figure) being kidnapped, and a foppishly haired character from a previous RE (Leon) being sent to a dirty Spanish peasant village to rescue her. Whilst unbelievable, we'll let the game off simply because any excuse to destroy hoards of zombies is to be taken.
This is where RE4 takes an unforgivable turn, in the form of Ashley. We expected terrible dialogue and poor storytelling, but the voice acting is absolutely fucking DIRE. Everytime I hear Ashley screaming "LEON!" I want to join the hoards of peasents, zealots and various freaks and sacrifice Ashely to whatever god these fellows pray too, something which is not really explained in the game, with the exception that apparently there are parasite which infect people, unexpectedly departing from the T-Virus of previous Resident Evils, so I guess the whole approach was just to cash in on the franchise.
House of the Dead, on the other hand, is a brilliantly fun arcade shooter with unlimited ammo weapons, no puzzles, and no horror.
Anybody who played the original RE games will ponder how I can compare them to House of the Dead. It's simple. RE4 gives you ammo and health every step of the way, and if you take a bit of time to look, you can get a shotgun after playing for 2 minutes, and everything becomes a zombie decapitating laugh. All elements of horror disappear from the game completely, and it becomes a House of the Dead rip-off. The crappy story, dialogue and voice acting are as interchangeable as the backing members of Queen, and the whole experience becomes as frightening as Flash Gordon.
So a warning I guess is in order to all you cockweed game developers. If you want us to be scared by a game, make the characters we control likeable, and also vulnerable. And quite frankly the only way to make up for putting Ashley in RE4 is to include a Mini-Game in which she can be shot multiple times with a variety of exciting weaponry. This opportunity is remarkably absent for some reason, so RE4 remains unforgiven.
-Az
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