Video Games without all the boring bits

10 OF THE BEST CANCELLED VIDEO GAMES

30/6/2015

For every game that ever there was, there are many games that almost were. The games that you read about in previews, and got excited for, only for them to be swallowed up by the knife-edge sinkhole that is contemporary video game development.

Because we delight in rubbing your face with the Wire Brush of Disappointment, here are ten of the best games that never came to be.

Please remember this: you will never, ever, ever play any of these games. Aaaaand... cue the weeping!

8 Comments

10 VIDEO GAME TOILETS

29/6/2015

17 Comments

We all do it, and yet there is no social shame quite so acute as others knowing you've just done - or will soon need to do - a poo.

There's a stage in every relationship - let's call it Poo Stage One - where couples finally admit to one another that, yes, they're just like everyone else, and they do indeed have regular bowel movements.

There are several further stages - such as Stage 2: discussing the frequency and consistency of those movements, and Stage 4: Being able to do a poo in a hotel toilet while your partner lays on the bed in the adjoining room - before reaching the final stage: deliberately emitting constant diarrhoea in front of one another, while shrieking and banging a wooden spoon on a saucepan.

Fortunately, video games rarely attempt to pretend that 'parking your dinner' isn't a constant of everyday life, and can help with the rehabilitation of the poo-shy ("Poo-shy-shy, Hush hush your brown-eye"). Here is a celebration of ten of the most notable video game toilets, should you need reassurance that you are not alone...

17 Comments

CHART CAT: 50 SHADES OF YELLOW

26/6/2015

10 Comments

Gosh. Hello there. Welcome to the launch of my debut novel. I'm often asked which of the arts I am most drawn to, and I always reply: "Why, the literary arts, dear boy... now why don't you get out of those wet clothes?".

With middle-aged menopausal women well catered for by kinky fiction, it was presented to my attention that nobody is catering to the middle-aged menopausal gamer. This why I put pen to paper to write my first ever erotic masterpiece: 50 Shades of Yellow, of which I present an extract here.

So go ahead - lick the tips of your fingers, and flick open my lewd hardback. I can promise you a voyage of retro gaming raunch that you'll never quite recover from.

10 Comments

VIRTUAL REALITY BITES by Mr Biffo

26/6/2015

10 Comments

Welcome to the future - a world of the blind, where mankind thrashes around in its living rooms and parlours, grasping at the air to throttle intangible wyverns.

The trend makers would have you believe that in a year or so, every gamer is going to be taping a set of expensive goggles onto their eyeballs, and dipping their senses into artificial worlds.

For the second time in 25 years, we're seeing Virtual Reality being heralded as The Next Big Thing.

Project Morpheus. HTC Vive. Facebook shelling out $2 billion for Oculus Rift... The only way there could be more VR hype is if the actors Ving Rhames and Vanessa Redgrave opened a Very Rare Vortex Removal service, and at the launch party their Veins Ruptured in a Vacant Room while being watched Very Respectfully by the ghost of Victoria Regina.

But something has been niggling at me for a while. And that something is this something: I don't think it's going to happen. Not in the way they're telling us it will.

Oh, yeah, those initial units are going to sell out. There'll be hardware shortages, they'll be selling them for thousands on eBay, in the initial stages. But you watch it drop off after that. Most people aren't going to want VR. Cool as it is, it's never going to be more than a 3DTV-type faddy whimsy. There's good reason people will watch 3D films in the cinema, but not at home.

10 Comments

REVIEW: BATMAN ARKHAM KNIGHT (Multi, PS4 version tested)

24/6/2015

11 Comments

"Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as (Arklife),
And morning soup can be avoided if you take a route straight through what is known as
(Arklife),
Bruce's got brewers droop, he gets intimidated by the dirty pigeons - they love a bit of it
(Arklife)..."

And so on, and so forth.

Did you like that? It was a special song we wrote, and it wasn't even based on any existing songs, because we're well good songwriters, and always totally original. We wrote it to celebrate the launch of Arkham Knight - allegedly the concluding instalment of the mostly-loved Batman/Arkham series. This is a review of that game, in case you were wondering.

Here is the main thing you need to know: Pretty much since the first Arkham game, everyone has been clamouring for a drivable Batmobile. Well, this is the game where you get your wish.

Well done, idiots. You've ruined it for everyone.

11 Comments

THE TOP 10 BATMAN GAMES

24/6/2015

7 Comments

Bronnnnnngg! Hello. Batman here. Bronnnnnng-g-g-g-ggood! You're probably wondering why I keep making that noise. Well, it's elementary really: I've slightly changed what it is that I do. Instead of swooping around, fighting crime in Gotham City, now I just hang out in launderettes with my trousers round my ankles, shouting that noise into the washing machine drums. It really scares people!

To celebrate the release of my new game - Batman: Laundry Perv - here are ten computer and video games that celebrate me in my prime, before I started doing that thing that I now do. Brongggg-gg-g-g! Ha ha. It cracks me up every time! Why don't you take a picture, madam? It'll last longer.

7 Comments

THE KILLER APP: LISTENING

23/6/2015

4 Comments

One of the biggest announcements of the recent E3 show was the news that the Xbox One is adopting a selective type of backwards compatibility.

It's a feature that - initially - Microsoft denied was possible on its next gen hardware, and something that a slightly bewildered Sony continues to claim is impossible on the PlayStation 4.

And yet, it's a feature that was demanded by many, who - when faced with the prospect of upgrading - would either have to keep two chunky consoles under their tellies, or witness a vast swathe of their game library being tossed abruptly into The Dark Pit of Hardware Obsolescence.

On the flip side of the coin, others have rolled their eyes, and complained that backwards compatibility is a failure of the release schedules. They say that publishers should be focusing on new titles which make the most of their hardware. And, in turn, make it worth their while to upgrade.

4 Comments

15 THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH THE VIRTUSPHERE

22/6/2015

1 Comment

These days, all the Virtual Reality talk is about cool and happening products such as the Oculus "Rift", Project "Morpheus", and the Hollow "Lens". Such is the power of this new generation of VR technology that older VR gadgets have been swept aside beneath their stomping jackboots.

One such peripheral at risk of obsolescence is the Virtusphere - a "10-foot hollow sphere, which is placed on a special platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely in any direction according to the user’s steps. A user is able to walk and run inside the sphere, viewing the virtual environment through the head-mounted display."

The Virtusphere company's motto, according to its website, is "The Virtual World Immence - Let's Immerse Together". With that clear and definitive statement in mind, here are 15 exciting applications of the Virtusphere.

1 Comment

ROUND-UP: WITH A SPECIAL CELEBRITY GUEST

22/6/2015

1 Comment

Whaaaaa...! Whaa-a... whoooooo?! Hello, everyone. Hello, boys and girls. I'm The Ghost of Boris Yeltsin, and I'd like to welcome you to this woefully belated Digi2000 round-up.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to stick around, due to the fact I'm scheduled to be rolled up into a ball and fed to a mature cetacean. In all honesty, that's not the sort of thing I expected to happen in the Afterlife, but I suppose you live and learn. Or should that be... die and learn!!? LOL.

Anyhow, here's a quick shufty of everything you have or haven't read since the last Digi2000 round-up, including lots of E3 coverage, and lots of E3 trailers and videos that seemed to bore all the DIgi2000 viewers to heavy tears. Who cares? See you, comrades!

1 Comment

THE MAN'S DADDY'S FANTASTIC JOKES

18/6/2015

2 Comments

Hello. I'm a popular comedian called The Man's Daddy. You might be wondering who my daddy is. Well, I can answer that question: his name was Lawrence Dundas, the 2nd Marquess of Zetland, and he was the Secretary of State for India between 1935 and 1937, then becoming the Secretary of State for India and Burma between 1937 and 1940. He died in 1961. It doesn't say why, but I like to think he choked to death somehow.

Anyway. I've been busy writing some new jokes. And here are those jokes now. I hope they're ok. It doesn't matter if they're not. Well. Alright. Bye then. Hope you like my jokes. Bye.

2 Comments

IT'S BACK! ADVANCED LAWNMOWER SIMULATOR 2015

18/6/2015

13 Comments

Regular readers of our Digitiser2000 listicles will have doubtless seen our recent rundown of 10 Mundane Jobs That Got Turned Into Games. Wedged firmly into the belly of the list was Advanced Lawnmower Simulator - a deliberately terrible game created deliberately by the legendary Your Sinclair magazine.

Now Digitiser2000 reader "Mr Favus" has taken it upon himself to recreate the game for the 21st Century - with a number of special Digitiser references. You can play it here, find out more here, or just watch the trailer below, Darren:

13 Comments

E3: SO THAT WAS THAT by Mr Biffo

17/6/2015

4 Comments

E3 is still rumbling on, but the Big Boys and Girls have lifted their garments and presented their puffy and distended wares, unveiling all that we'll be frolicking with over the next year or so.

On the one hand, it was an exciting E3 - production values have reached a level where they're on a par with Hollywood movies, and the big franchises do indeed feel like the blockiest of busters.

Unfortunately, it must be said that the industry still lacks a certain star quality - that splash of Hollywood glamour, that you're simply not going to get from watching the brand director of Mojang and Microsoft's amusingly-named Saxs Persson fanny around with a Hololens helmet. All these decades in, and the stale bouquet of nerdery still lingers at the crevices of gaming.

4 Comments

E3: STAR FOX ZERO TRAILER "LOOKS NICE"

16/6/2015

3 Comments

Nintendo may have stayed away from E3, in order to look all enigmatic, and like it's above those sorts of things, but that hasn't stopped it holding its own online-only event.

It announced a wholly unexpected hook-up between its collectible Amiibo characters and the similar Skylanders series, and unveiled a bunch of 3DS titles - the multiplayer-focused Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes, Metroid Prime: Federation Heroes, and Mario & Luigi Paper Jam (an epic meeting of the Paper Mario characters with their 3D counterparts, basically).

But it was the anticipated exposing of the Wii U's Star Fox Zero that has elicited the biggest whoopings. In short: it looks like Star Fox... but with transforming vehicles. Why dontcha do some clickin' to see it, Steven?

3 Comments

10 GAME CHARACTERS WITH STUPID NAMES

16/6/2015

8 Comments

Hello, everyone. I'm Donkey Kong - a type of monkey. You've probably all heard the story of how I got my funny name. That's right: a wayward itinerant wrote it down on the back of a seed packet, and shoved it up a Papal cranny.

You may also have heard that the new Mad Max game features an antagonist called Scrotus (surname: "Scrotum"). However, Mr Scrotum is far from the only example of terrible video game naming. Just smudge your eyeballs across these further examples will you?

8 Comments

E3: HORIZON ZERO DAWN TRAILER "LOOKS NICE"

16/6/2015

1 Comment

The team behind Killzone revealed possibly the most promising new property of E3 day 1. Horizon Zero Dawn can best be described as a post-apocalyptic cavemen versus robotic wildlife game.

Here's the blurb: "As Horizon Zero Dawn’s main protagonist Aloy, a skilled hunter, explore a vibrant and lush world inhabited by mysterious mechanized creatures. Embark on a compelling, emotional journey and unravel mysteries of tribal societies, ancient artifacts and advanced technologies that will determine the fate of this planet, and of life itself."

Click below for the deeply moving moving images.

1 Comment

<<Previous

Archives