Video Games without all the boring bits

MAN DIARY: MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY

30/4/2015

APRIL 24th
For reasons that are likely to remain unknown, I've decided to become a famous chef. To get ideas and learn how to cook, I've studied all the popular TV chefs at length, and it appears that they all have a gimmick.

Ramsey is basically posh and foul-mouthed, Oliver keeps licking his own face while patronising working-class people about being disgusting morons for not buying more fresh food (he should take a look in the mirror the next time he thinks about criticising "pink slime"!!!), Fearnly-Whittingstall eats any old rubbish out of a compost bin like some flaxen-haired pig, and Worrall Thompson received a police caution for forgetting to get permission before removing some low-value items from Tesco... However, it is the shaven cook Heston Blumenthal that I'm taking most of my inspiration from.

Frankly, I don't think the camera-awkard "molecular" chef goes far enough with his outlandish recipes. People say he's the Willy Wonka of cooking, but my dishes are going to make him look more like the Silly Wanka of Farting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL?

Comedy gold.

3 Comments

HATRED GETS ME EXCITED by Mr Biffo

30/4/2015

22 Comments

So. Steam is getting its first Adults Only-rated game.

Hatred - a title that has been surrounded by controversy since it was first announced (and not just for its content - there were also swiftly-denied accusations that developer Destructive Creations had links to "anti-Islamist groups") - will arrive on June 1st.

In Hatred, players become a sociopath, who sets out on a "genocide crusade" to kill, well, everyone. In short, it's a mass-murder simulation, clearly inspired by far too many real-world shootings.

When it appeared on Steam Greenlight, the game was removed due to its content. However, following an almost immediate outcry, Valve boss Gabe Newell (who shall henceforth be known as "Billy Backtrack") intervened, reinstating the game and issuing a public apology.

Now a new trailer for Hatred has been revealed, which will do little to quell those who feel that such overtly provocative and taste-befouling games should not exist.

22 Comments

10 SHAMELESS VIDEO GAME RIP-OFFS

28/4/2015

11 Comments

You know Jessops, yeah - that high street photographic chain? It's a little known fact that it was once sued by Aesop, writer of the famous fables.

See, Jessops originated as Jessop's Fables - a collection of stories that were eerily similar in tone and content to Aesop's Fables, albeit mostly about cameras and stuff. When he read Jessop's book, Aesop threatened to sue, but Jessop countered with a cunning plan - by pretending to be a high street photographic chain.

At that point, Aesop - a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in Ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE - had no choice but to withdraw his legal action.

Which is a long-winded and not entirely successful way of saying this: the history of video gaming is littered with the discarded undies of a million clones - games that have shamelessly ripped-off other games, and (for the the most part) inexplicably gotten away with it - from Flappy Bird's countless imitators, to Saints Row's wanton aping of Grand Theft Auto.

Here are but ten of those games, what we have just refered to. Aesopppp!

11 Comments

REVIEW: DAVID ROWE'S ART OF KNIGHTMARE

28/4/2015

9 Comments

By David Walford

For those of a certain age, whatever the early home computer format, one constant was box art bearing scant relation to actual game footage. At best the loading screen might capture the essence of an epic space battle, but then for technical reasons play would feature distant ships on black.

More ambitious developers would refine their techniques for bigger bitmaps, or instead generate semi-abstract graphics on the go, but regardless, smooth colour transitions were only possible if your machine contained a tiny artist posting his work out through a slit above the expansion port.

Fortunately, in 1985 TV Producer, gamer, and secret Fantastic Voyage fan Tim Child did not have the funding to kidnap and miniaturise David Rowe following his latest artwork delivery to computer game publisher Melbourne House. Instead, Tim just asked David to draw some dungeon backgrounds for his new children's game show concept, which became Knightmare. It lasted eight series, by which point a mixture of narrowed viewer demographics and, ironically, competition from better-looking computer games, led to its cancellation in 1994.

This book collects the surviving artwork from the early series, using a two-page spread to present each background. Faxed briefs, sketches, and explanatory text are given on the left page, with the finished piece on the right. Disclaimer: I am one of the people who funded production of this book via Indiegogo, so if you don't want to read my obviously corrupt review then buy your own copy instead.

9 Comments

SILENT HILLS FALLS SILENT

28/4/2015

3 Comments

A long, long, long, long time ago, Digitiser's Mr Hairs and Mr Biffo were invited to Konami's UK HQ to watch a screening of Batman: The Mask of Phantasm - the feature-length spin-off from Batman: The Animated Series. Konami was releasing a Batman: TAS game, see, and this was their way of promoting it to the gaming press.

Typically, as was the way with most promotional trips that Hairs and Biffo were sent on, that they got about 5 minutes into the film before getting a fit of giggles about something or another, pretended to both be going to the lavatory, and then left the building never to return.

Which brings us nicely to the sorry news that the highly anticipated Silent Hills has also left the Konami building, and won't be looking back.

3 Comments

NANANANANANANA BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT - NEW TRAILER REVEALED

27/4/2015

1 Comment

Seen Avengers: Age of Ultron yet? You probably should. It's a ludicrous film, mostly in a good way - but it is clearly straining at the seams to hold it together.

Too many characters, too many disparate story strands - some of which just disappear into the ether (presumably to be resolved in other Marvel movies) - and an inevitable lack of focus all risk to pull it apart at any moment.

Regardless... it's a gargantuan feat of film-making - just to have successfully created something remotely edible out of such a rich stew of ingredients. It's the cinematic equivalent of Ready, Steady, Cook - Joss Whedon got handed a lemon, a jar of anchovies, and a radish, and somehow made a passable beef stew out of them.

But anyway. If nothing else, coming in the same week as that dreary Batman Vs Superman trailer, it proves that Marvel has cinematic super-hero adventures sewn up. Weird then, that when it comes to video games it's DC Comics that has the upper hand. Click through for video evidence of this thing we just mentioned.

1 Comment

REVIEW: MORTAL KOMBAT X (Various - PS4 version tested)

27/4/2015

3 Comments

It's probably not a sensible admission to make - given all the fighting games we reviewed back in the glory days of Digitiser - but we're terrible at beat 'em ups.

It was the special moves that we've never been able to master: those combinations of perfectly-timed swipes and button-presses.

Frankly, we lost more games of Street Fighter II through trying (and failing) to perform the poxy special moves than we won because of them. Hadouken? Hadon'tken more like.

Because of this, you might think we hate beat 'em ups. Certainly, we hate playing beat 'em ups against people who are good at them... but the fact is, providing we're going the single-player route, or playing against someone as cack-fingered as we are, we tend to get on just fine. It's probably something to do with not wanting to be laughed at.

That said... the Mortal Kombat franchise was never a favourite of ours. It always felt like a juddery step behind the Street Fighters, and Tekkens - putting gross-out gore and heavy metal symbolism above its gameplay, like a desperate-to-shock teenager who's just dyed his scrotum black.

3 Comments

FIGHT NIGHT: GAMES CHARACTERS vs REAL-LIFE CELEBS

27/4/2015

3 Comments

With Mortal Kombat X once again proving just how splendid a well-realised traditional beat 'em up can be, our thoughts are once again turning to violence. We began to wonder: how tough are video game characters really? How would they fare against real celebrities?

We decided to pit four video game characters against four real-life personalities, inputting the data into Digitiser2000's special fight computer, P-Tronz. The results may surprise you.

3 Comments

WEEKEND ROUND-UP: WITH MR NUDE

24/4/2015

0 Comments

Hello and welcome to this Digitiser2000 Weekend Round-Up - coming to you live from my all-nude Nude Village, in the fairly attractive hamlet of Peans. I'm Mr Nude, and I invite you all to de-nude at our unclad hideaway (albeit depending on your level of personal hygiene, and providing you're not intimately scarred or foreign).

Just peel off your slacks, drop your drawers, and dive right in to a bare-skinned way of being. While you're here, why not make use of our many facilities? We have an all-nude choo-choo ride, a slightly risqué nude bare-becue, and the third-least pungent latrine in the South West.

New for 2015: a stirrup-frame on every chalet porch! You can sit back, and watch the sun set with your legs raised to the heavens, like nature intended. Now let's bring on that round-up!

0 Comments

SUPER-QUIZ 33: Are You a Gaming Addict? - Presented by BW

24/4/2015

3 Comments

Good <INSERT TIME OF DAY HERE> and welcome to Super-Quiz 33, presented by me, your host, BW. You're probably wondering what's going to happen next. Well, here's what happens next - I'm going to ask this: have you ever wondered whether you are dangerously addicted to video games?

Now I will ask that: have you ever wondered whether you are dangerously addicted to video games? I know I have. But then, I'm dangerously addicted to most things: especially tsars, tapas, and tarps. Sometimes I like to roll myself up in a tarp and eat tapas out of tsar's hat. SKRAAANG-BONG!

Wow! What was that?!! Good evening. Hallo. Ok? Bye-soon.

Anyway. Answer these questions, and then "tot-up" your tally to find out whether you are a gaming addict. Off you go and do that then. Bye-now!

3 Comments

GAMING SPEEDNEWS with "Baz" Feed

23/4/2015

5 Comments

'Sup! I'm Baz Feed. You know me: I'm that guy you see wearing the rolled-up hems, and espadrilles with no socks, swaggering along like I own the world. Let's face it: I'm young, I'm dapper, I got swag, I listen to bands you've never heard of - my generation practically do own the world. Why don't you do us a favour, grandad... and strangle yo'self? LOL out loud!

My life is packed. I got an alt.jazz-hop music festival to go to. I gotta get some sort of ambient (but not too boring) playlist together for my cousin's funeral. And I'm only halfway through writing up the business plan for my new pop-up shop that sells aural wind sculptures made out of old vinyl post-punk records. Music from music. It's the Circle of Life, guy.

I don't have time to read each and every thing: I take all my information in list form. Hit me with some game news. GO! Go. GO!

5 Comments

VIDEO GAMES: HORRIBLE ACAPELLA STYLE

23/4/2015

6 Comments

It isn't a programme we'd normally watch, but last week on BBC1's The One Show, we stumbled upon a performance by a comedy musical act. You know the sort of thing: a bunch of people stand around a piano in suits and evening dresses, and harmonise a song that's supposed to make middle class people chuckle.

Frankly, we couldn't even begin to tell you what the song was about, because 20 seconds into it we had to turn over, or we'd have put our knees through the telly screen... at roughly the height of the performers' throats.

That might seem slightly excessive, but such things push the same buttons in us as - just plucking some examples out of the air here - Ainsley Harriott, Annie Lennox and Dynamo the "Street" Magician.

"Oh look at me, grandad, look - I'm floating! Not really - ha ha! It's just a trick: I'm hanging from some wires, and... oh. Grandad! Grandad, I pooed my pants again!".

Tell us: how is that "street" or "magic"? You can't put a skinny man in a hoodie, and film him doing card tricks with a rapper, and expect us to buy that he's some urban tough... any more than you can sell us that Ainsley Harriott is anything other than a profligate, snake oil, opportunist, who has mistakenly assumed volume and stupid voices are qualities essential to being a TV chef.

Something else you can add to our list of things that stoke an unreasonable amount of homicidal rage in us is this thing: acapella groups.

6 Comments

10 MORE TERRIBLE GAME COVERS

23/4/2015

9 Comments

Batman here. Due to some recent flooding in the Batcave (somebody clogged up the plughole with quinoa and left the shower running - yes, Robin: I'm fingering you for that one), I'm coming to you live from a pop-up gazebo in my back garden - my, if you will, "Batgarden".

The wifi isn't great out here, but it's just good enough for me to tell you that here are 10 further examples of the worst video and computer game cover artwork ever. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to pop back in and see what Robin's up to.

The last time I left him unsupervised for this long he draped spaghetti over my special pillow, placed a smashed lobster in my second-favourite briefcase, and scrunched up my sofa quilt. If he's done anything like that, I swear... this time, I'm going to stab him in the heart.

9 Comments

INEXPLICABLE: VOMITING PAC-MAN TOY

22/4/2015

3 Comments

What do you think of when you think of Pac-Man? A little yellow guy running around a maze, eating dots and being chased by ghosts, we presume.

What you've probably never imagined is a furious Pac-Man vomiting fish eyes onto the heads of his enemies - but that's precisely the concept behind this inexplicable 2013 toy (also available: a version of Pac-Man with a massive extendable tongue, should that be something you might one day need...):

3 Comments

REBOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING

22/4/2015

5 Comments

With the news that 2013's Tomb Raider reboot has now sold a whopping 8.5 million copies, it's only a matter of time before other ailing franchises take a leaf out of Lara Croft's sweaty, blood-spattered book.

With a further instalment of the formative Croft's adventures due to out later this year - bringing with it yet more casual slaughter, and a worrying deficit of survivor's guilt - expect an imminent onslaught of grim and gritty series reimaginings.

Here are three long-in-the-tooth franchises that would benefit from a Tomb Raider-style kickstart.

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