Video Games without all the boring bits

21 THINKS ABOUT FAR CRY 4 – Non-Review by Mr Biffo

18/11/2014

I loved Far Cry 3 slightly more than is decent. The swanning around an exotic island, taking drugs, skinning animals and getting locked in bamboo cages was probably the closest I ever got to a gap year.

As I understand gap years to be.

I mourned when I completed the main game, and can only liken the sense of loss to having a foot amputated. I’ve never had a foot amputated – even though I suffer from crippling gout, following years of consuming little more than dry sherry – but if anything my loss was probably even worse than having something like that happen. At least if you do lose a foot you’ve always got another.

LIMP

For a while after completing the game, I limped on, ticking the boxes, finding the last of the collectables, hunting, dragging my face across the map like a big, fleshy, mop, before just… giving up. It wasn’t the same. It was like staying in a relationship long past the point where all parties know it’s over. I’d been playing out of habit, trying to hang on to what was once good.

Inevitably, I played Blood Dragon in an effort to ease the grief. I enjoyed it to a point, but it felt wrong. Imagine coming home to find your mother has died, and your father has replaced her with an ironic parody robot, called Mombus? It might parrot all your mother’s favourite sayings, but it does so in a sort of sassy twang, while skateboarding around the house, dribbling gravy from a pulsing, rubber vent, and leaving your mother’s extracted teeth under your pillow.

FREE CRY 4

Because I don’t get games free no more, I bought Far Cry 4 today. Due to all of the above, I can’t quite recall looking forward to a game this much. As you might imagine – because I’m barely one step removed from a tramp – I spent the whole afternoon playing it, like some filthy, jobless, student.

I’m not going to give it a review. Such is the responsibility of people who are far more paid than I. Instead, I scrawled down whatever thoughts popped into my big, hairy, mind-hole during these first few hours of play.

Here, in no particular order, are those think-ohs, in unsatisfying, inconclusive list form:

This opening sequence is a bit dark. Did I set the brightness slider too much to the left?
Ha ha. A monkey.
Yes. Yes I did set it too dark. How much monkey did I miss because of this?
Did they choose the name Kyrat, because it sounds a bit like Cry?
Oh. It’s pronounced “Hy-rat”.
Did Pagan Min (stupid name) just call me “Andre”? Why have there never been any games characters called Andre? Andre is a delightful name. It would be a good name for a whimsical, cartoon loris. I can already hear the sprightly theme music. It even has lyrics: "Andre, Andre, he's always on the go, Though because he is a loris he sadly is quite slow".
This doesn’t look noticeably better than Far Cry 3, even on the PS4. Maybe the location isn’t as interesting? Those rocks don’t look all that good close up. It looks like someone’s drawn some rocks on a bit of cardboard.
There’s a lot of climbing, using my new grappling hook, and it’s becoming a bit tedious.
Man alive!! Bears!!!!!
Does Andre have to make disgusted noises every time he skins an animal? Then again, I make similar disgusting, retching sounds every single time I clean the cats’ litter tray.
This is really very similar to Far Cry 3. But more vertical.
Why do I have to find tapirs in order to carry more weapons? Tapirs? Will the hide of no other animal suffice? Why is tapir hide considered the ideal material with which to build a weapons holster?
I just found a “Photo of a dwarf”. No, really.
Why do the characters look like characters from some grungy animation? Am I expecting too much of this generation? Wasn’t everything supposed to look photorealistic by now? Maybe things are getting better looking, but the Uncanny Valley is getting more noticeable as a consequence? I dunno.
It only takes me three seconds to skin an animal. Why is that guard spending so long on that boar? What is he actually doing to it?
These are very steep zipwires. Also, they have flags on them. How does that work? Wouldn’t the flags get caught up in the mechanism?
Who leaves hangliders just laying around? Aren’t they, like, really expensive? Who leaves the hanglider on the edge of a cliff, and goes off to get a latte? What if there’s a big gust?
Rhinos? I didn’t know they had rhinos in the Himalayas. This why I got ‘unclassified’ in my geography exam.
Oh! So, we’re back to the big mountains that take forever to walk round.
And!

3 Comments

OLD GAME: HERE - HALF-LIFE 2

17/11/2014

2 Comments

I can’t pretend I knew it was the tenth anniversary of Half-Life 2. Well, I can pretend – that would be really easy. I’d just go, like, “Pfft… I totally knew it was the tenth anniversary of Half-Life 2”, and you wouldn’t be any the wiser. But I’m not going to. Many thanks to Kotaku, Games Radar, and that, for alerting me to this important date.

Weirdly, despite being oblivious, it was only last week that a mate asked me what my favourite game was. “Half-Life 2” I erupted, in a bizarre, shrill, squawk, before going on to bore him with its merits. Aside from Super Mario World, it’s the only game I’ve played through more than twice.

There was something magic about it. Something that went beyond the in-your-face genius of the gravity gun, or Dog. It was years ahead of the curve in terms of characterisation and world building. It was immersive in a way that no other game ever really has been. There was a sublime consistency. An eerie quiet. A confidence.

You can see its influence today in the The Last of Us – how similar are those opening scenes to wandering around City 17? Answer: very similar, right down to the locked doors of the abandoned tenements, and over-zealous militia. It was also there in the moments of heavy silence, where the game trusts the player not to need something to shoot at every ten seconds. Where it just allowed the experience to breathe.

And yet, much as I love The Last of Us – and it’s in my top five – you’re given everything. Your character. The story. The world. Half-Life 2 held back, and let the player fill in the gaps, while assaulting them with one clever idea after another. It wasn’t a game of Michael Bay’s Whack-A-Mole, as so many shooters are these days, but instead cautiously rationed out the action.

When was the last time you played a first-person shooter that balanced shooting, puzzle-solving and physics, and placed it within an utterly convincing and compelling universe? For a game set so clearly outside of the real world, there was a convincing weight to it. It felt real.

Take Destiny as a comparison. It’s not exactly comparing like for like – lest we forget, Destiny is an “MMO”, apparently – but I’ve found it to be a hollow, tedious experience. I can't stand how artificial its world feels. It’s unquestionably a beautiful game, but more like a theme park ride with guns than anything else – like wandering around Pirates of the Caribbean, shooting at the animatronic pirates with an infra-red flintlock. Nothing feels like it has any consequence, because you know that the second you disappear around the corner your defeated enemies will just pop up again to rattle their cutlasses at the next guests on the boat ride.

I get slightly annoyed by games that kind of unnaturally graft a single player campaign onto what is essentially a multiplayer proposition. If you can’t be bothered, why go to the effort of hiring Peter Dinklage to phone-in a voice-over? It feels a bit like an insult. Like ordering a Big Mac Meal, and only getting three chips, and the guy behind the counter shrugging and saying “We never said how many chips it came with… And yeah, I did fart on them, but nowhere did it say I wouldn’t fart on them”.

Titanfall steps into a similar trap, trying to pass off deathmatches-with-bots as some sort of single-player experience. But I think Titanfall manages a better job of balancing it out. There’s just no sense of consequence to Destiny’s gameplay, even if you do feel there’s scant parallel between it and Half-Life 2.

So. Yeah. I still love it, as much as I did ten years ago. I never stopped loving those hours spent discovering its strangeness, unwrapping its otherness. I love how grown-up it all still feels. I love that it managed to package a sandbox inside a linear experience.

I also love the fact we're still waiting on a sequel. We can only speculate as to whether Half-Life 3 is any closer to release than it was ten years ago. But if they can't better it, or catch lightning in a net all over again, then I want them to leave the series be.

Some things should be left to nostalgia, blooming like flowers on a grave.

Right, kids...?

2 Comments

PANEL 4: BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

15/11/2014

By PAUL ROSE

As Mr Biffo I wrote professionally about video games from 1993 to roughly 2008. In those 15 years I gave countless bad reviews, made snarky comments about hundreds of games, and took potshots at every single games company in existence. I probably made cheap jokes about prominent games developers of the day. Once, I even wrote a feature about a retro gaming emporium, and repeatedly referred to the owner's son as "Half-Beard", due to his distinct facial hair, alleging that the boy was kept caged and malnourished, living in terror of a psychotic, cybernetic bird creature called "Birdok".

I built a career out of that snark, out of trying to make people laugh at the perceived uselessness of others. It paid my bills, and it was all too easy to get a quick fix from saying something was bad in a funny way, or give a comically low review score just to provoke a response (frankly, I figured, if something is bad it’s bad – you’re not going to buy Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on the Game Boy, regardless of whether it gets 43% or 0%).

In all those years, I rarely stopped to think about the people affected by my reviews. Sure, there were times when a PR person would ring us up to have a pop, or not give us review copies of their next game, because we’d taken the piss out of the previous one. But my job was to review the games, not to have empathy with the poor people whose hard work I was so casually trashing with just a few easy keystrokes.

But that’s ok, because these days I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a bad review possibly better than anyone. Because I’m the idiot who wrote Pudsey The Dog: The Movie.

TV SAVALAS

In case you’re unaware, I’ve been writing for TV for about 15 years, mostly for kids (there was some crossover with the games stuff – I’m old, but not that old). Roughly two years ago, a producer I work with asked whether I’d be interested in writing a film for the winner of that year’s Britain’s Got Talent. She wasn’t involved in the project, but had been asked by Pudsey’s agent whether she knew of any good children’s writers. I missed the foreshadowing at the time, but the signs were there even then; when she mentioned it to me, it was with a wry roll of the eyes, as if to say “Why would anyone in their right mind ever wish to sup at this poisoned chalice?”.

Now… I didn’t watch Britain’s Got Talent, but for some reason I had seen the final of the most recent series. I knew that Pudsey was a dancing dog, and here was an opportunity to write a fun, heart-warming family film in the vein of Babe and Nanny McPhee, that might even pay my bills for a few months (it was not a big pay cheque…). I knew they wanted something that felt very British, so my initial thinking was inspired by the Children’s Film Foundation movies I used to watch at Saturday morning matinees. Films like Sammy’s Super T-Shirt, and Electric Eskimo, with a pinch of Digby The Biggest Dog In The World. I wanted to imbue our film with an innocence, the sense of bygone days, of long summer holidays playing in sun-dappled fields. Frankly, I wanted to write something old-fashioned.

Perhaps mistakenly, I wasn’t interested in the four-quadrant appeal that you get from the likes of Shrek, or How To Train Your Dragon. I was aiming for the under-10s that seemed to be Pudsey’s core audience. Adults can go and watch Gone Girl if they want something grown-up and depressing. This was going to be for the little ones.

So, of course, my pitch to Vertigo Films was “Beethoven meets Midnight Express”. Regardless, it got me the job – but whether you’ve seen the film or not, you can probably tell that the end result is not Beethoven meets Midnight Express. Indeed, Pudsey The Dog: The Movie still stands at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, one of a select group of movies to achieve such an honour.

It seems absurd now, but I honestly thought it would turn out to be a cheery, low budget kids film, which snuck out with the minimum of fanfare. Looking back, my naivety is jaw-dropping.

It was a film based around the winner of one of the biggest TV shows in the country, produced – for publicity purposes, if not in reality – by Simon Cowell (he literally had nothing to do with it), one of the most famous men in the world. With a dog that ended up being voiced by David Walliams, a judge on one of the biggest TV shows in the country, who only has to brush his teeth to get a tabloid headline. Two years after I first started writing the thing, I couldn’t step outside the house without seeing a Pudsey-emblazoned bus drive past, or switch on the TV or my laptop without being hit in the face by that bloody trailer.

You’d think that would be the most surreal aspect of the whole endeavor, but nothing quite tops the fact they were filming for a week literally around the corner from the house where I wrote the film. I used to drive past Ashleigh and Pudsey every morning. However, the only time I visited the set was on the widely-reported day when Pudsey had to be sent home because he’d suffered an upset stomach. Just halfway into the filming, the crew were walking around sporting a grim, thousand-yard stare – a consequence of weeks spent trying to get the animals to perform.

One entire subplot had already been abandoned and rewritten on set, without my input, due to a difficult cat. In fact, so little of the scripted action was able to be achieved, due to time and budget constraints, that at least half of the animal dialogue ended up later being improvised on the fly in the edit, in a bid to make sense of what exactly was going on in the scenes. Upon seeing the finished film, I was taken somewhat by surprise, as I had hoped this dialogue would at least be used as a guide track for some witty improvisation from the talented voice cast. Alas, no.

I wasn't always able to let criticism wash past me, but over the years I’ve developed a pretty thick skin when it comes to work. As a writer you have to, or you crumble. In 2014 alone I wrote twelve 30 minutes of kids TV, and a 45 minute episode of Stella for Sky One. Each of those episodes went through multiple drafts, and I got notes on each of those drafts. Every set of notes has the potential to knock a person’s confidence, call their writing ability into question, and make them want to give it all up to become a librarian. Sometimes notes can get through the armour, but for the most part you just have to detach your emotion from it.

It’s just as well that I’ve developed that skill, because I’d never have survived the tsunami that was headed my way. The negative buzz around Pudsey started arriving months before anyone had seen the finished thing, not helped by a trailer that didn’t exactly promise a classic.

Twitter went into meltdown:

·      "Why has mother fucking pudsey the dog got a movie I deserve a movie more than fucking pudsey the rat dog"

·      "Pudsey The Movie? You are fucking kidding me??!"

·      "I used to fancy Pudsey's minder a bit but a film about him is beyond the fucking pale."

·      "Good grief - do we really need a whole movie? Scraping the barrell I think."

·      "Truly a golden age. A golden Brown age of dog crap."

·      "On July 18th 'Pudsey the Dog: The movie' is being released?!?! IN CINEMAS?!?! Seriously there is no fucking God. ‪#‎Seriously ‪#‎NoGod"

·      "Pudsey movie will be shit"

·      "Mrs Browns Boys D'Movie. Pudsey the Movie. Please can shitty TV stay on TV channels I don't watch, and keep out of my cinema"

·      "who is funding these low budget movies?? mrs browns boys, postman pat now this they can't possibly make any return on these films"

·      "They've made a film about that Pudsey the dog? Christ it's a dog that can dance it doesn't need a bloody movie"

·      "The fact there's a Pudsey The Dog movie, is every that's wrong with our film industry in a neat little package. ‪#‎ItWillBeTerrible"

·      “Just having that parent/child talk. The one when you explain why going to see the new pudsey film is never gonna happen!!!”

·      “pudsey the movie, i couldnt think of anything worse”

·      “Everyone involved in Pudsey the Dog: The Movie should hang their heads in shame.”

·      “No way has pudsey the dog got a fucking film out, what a tit”

·      “Pudsey the dog movie???..........oh fuck off”

·      “That Pudsey movie is probably the worst film ever created, who would waste energy going to watch it”

·      “Pudsey The Dog will definitely be the worst film ever made.”

·      “They're making a Pudsey film with David Walliams as the main character? I don't want to live in this world any more”

·      The Samaritans've only just talked me down off a ledge over Mrs Brown D'Movie and now there's a Pudsey dog film? Where've I left my cyanide?”

·      “Just seen the trailer for Pudsey the movie and done a sick in my mouth. Why would they even attempt to make such a film”

·      “If you pay money to see the pudsey the dog film, we can't be friends”

·      Pudsey the movie is an all time low for motion picture ‪#‎forshame”

·      “Because British cinema isn't quite dead yet, there's something called Pudsey: The Movie coming out July 25th.Enjoy!”

·      “Idea - a Mrs Brown/Pudsey crossover movie, where Pudsey contracts rabies & bites Mrs Brown. ‪#‎MakeItHappen”

·      “I'd rather drink toilet water than watch a whole fucking film about pudsey”

·      “If anyone actually pays to go and see this pudsey film, then they need to be sectioned!”

· “WTF are they bringing a film out for that stupid dog Pudsey ‪#‎shit ‪#‎sackwhoeverisincharge”

·      “Just seen a trailer for a film with that dog from BGT in, called 'Pudsey: the Movie'. And it has genuinely upset me that the film exists”

·      “There is a film about Pudsey?!?!? You fucking serious?!? Where has film gone wrong these days?!”

·      “They have made a film about Pudsey the dog off BGT...seriously. what a waste of money”

·      “The "Pudsey the dog" trailer makes me want to hurt people. What on earth would watching the film do.”

·      “They made a film about pudsey?? Does the dog die at the end??”

·      “Pudsey the dog movie? Hang on while I rip me face off”

·      “Awww, Pudsey The Dog. The Movie. Fuck Pudsey The Dog. The Movie!”

·      "Pudsey. The Dog. The Movie. I am officially over this planet."

·      “Pudsey the fucking movie. Fuck off”

·      “Please tell me I haven't just seen an advert on the side of a bus for Pudsey the Movie, dog voiced by David Walliams.”

·      “So Pudsey the Dog now has his own movie. This might be what actually causes me to become a full-on supervillain. I hate everything forever.”

·      “Pudsey has it's own fucking movie?! FFS..I'm done!”

·      “a bloody pudsey movie?? kill me now”

·      “Pudsey the dog the movie' kill me now”

·      “The trailer for "pudsey the movie" makes me want to kill myself”

·      “Pudsey the dog has his own movie... that's it I give up on life”

·      “Never will I ever watch Pudsey the dog movie”

·      “Pudsey The Dog: The Movie looks like the worst thing since they invented AIDS”

·      “Pudsey the dancing dog has a movie? Now I understand why the bear tried to gouge its own eyes out.”

·      “If anybody goes to see Pudsey the movie they are blocked. No exceptions.”

·      “Pudsey the movie ?? Get me a bucket Ffs”

·      “still so confused why that dog pudsey has a movie out. who is funding this”

·      “I thought it was a sick joke, but having seen an ad on a bus I now know PUDSEY: THE MOVIE is a real thing that exists.”

·      “Pudsey 'The Dog' the movie. How. Why. Actually I kinda want to see it now. Just to see how bad it is.”

·      “Pudsey the dog movie? PUDSEY THE FUCKING DOG MOVIE?! What the fuck?”

·      “Niquita is cryin on the phone to me cos I told her to YouTube pudsey the movie”

·      “I've just seen a trailer for Pudsey the Movie - starring the dog that won X Factor. Hell's gates open and Cowell rides out on a puppy's back”

·      “Pudsey the movie? Mrs Browns Boys the movie? Think I would rather throw myself in front of a bus........”

·      “'pudsey the movie' what is the world coming to”

·      “Oh...my....god. Pudsey the dog the movie. Pudsey the fucking dog??? What is the world coming too ‪#madness”

·      “sweet shit in a bucket i've just seen the advert for the movie about pudsey the dog. what is the world coming to?”

·      “'Pudsey the movie' what is this world coming to”

·      “As if Pudsey the dog now has a movie... what the hell is wrong with the world?!”

·      “I get to work and Lorraine Kelly is fucking talking about Pudsey The Movie and I hear Jessica Hynes is in it. I feel betrayed”

·      “Mrs browns boys 'da' movie ? ashleigh and pudsey the movie? I'm emigrating. To Mars.”

·      “*snaps an old nun's neck and pisses on the burning corpse* Sorry!... Sorry, I saw an advert for Pudsey the Movie and red mist took over”

·      “Because every talent show winner must become a SyCo cash cow, Pudsey the dog now has a movie coming out. Fucking hell.”

·      “I'd rather eat glass than watch Pudsey the Movie”

·      “there is going to be a movie about that pudsey dog that won britains got talent ahahah wtf is this country”

·      “Pudsey the dog has got a fucking movie. A fucking dog”

·      “Why does pudsey the dog have his own movie? That bitch jumped through a hoop and got a contract and there's me forking out 9k for a degree.”

·      "That Pudsey movie looks awful! Obviously David Walliams is voicing him just cos Simon Cowell owns both of them thanks to BGT!"

Well… That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the general idea. Nobody really knew anything about the movie at the point the above messages were tweeted. They’d seen the poster and the trailer, and knew that the dog was going to be voiced by David Walliams. However, I had seen the film – or a rough cut of it, anyway – and was pretty certain that it wasn’t going to change anyone’s belief. I hunkered down, and prepared for the worst.

DT

Disclaimer time: I actually don’t think the finished film is as bad as the reviews stated. I honestly don’t. That’s said without any degree of defensiveness, and trying to look at the thing objectively. Certainly, such is the nature of a creative collaboration, there were some fairly hefty creative challenges along the way, which were met with solutions that I don’t necessarily agree with, there were changes to the original script that I struggle to watch (some of them I even agreed to at the time), but just as nobody ever intends to develop a bad game, or record a terrible album, nobody working at the coalface of Pudsey The Dog: The Movie set out to make an awful film.

I wrote the script, and that – for the most part – is the script they filmed. Maybe I didn't write a good enough film, but I am happy to raise my hand and take responsibility for the shitting pig which most seemed to stoke the fury of the reviewers.

Any creative endeavor is like a game of bagatelle. Or – if you were born after 1871 – Peggle. The more people involved in a creative endeavor the more pins on the Peggle board. The more pins, the more chance that you’re not going to get the high score you want. In short: it’s random, far more random than I ever thought it would be.

But that’s not the point. Pudsey was just "bad" enough to live up to (or down to) expectations. As a reviewer, whether it’s for films, or music, or video games, it’s about showing off. You’re a performer. You’re standing atop your platform, and you want a response from your audience. There’s a degree of playing to the crowd, and in the case of Pudsey the Dog: The Movie the crowd was baying for blood. The reviewers gave them exactly what they wanted.

Putting its creative merits (or lack of, depending on where you stand) to one side for a moment, the narrative established for Pudsey The Dog: The Movie on social media and in the press was that it would be a cheap and quick cash-in to capitalize on Ashleigh and Pudsey’s victory in Britain’s Got Talent (it was).

It was decided that it would be a creative, financial and critical disaster for Simon Cowell (it certainly wasn't a financial disaster for him, as he didn’t finance the film, or have any creative input into it – he was asked to provide a voice for one of the animals, but never replied). It also didn’t help that it followed in the wake of Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie – a huge hit, despite the best efforts of the critics to hobble it. Along with Mrs Brown and the Harry Hill movie, it became part of a wave of low-budget, TV spin-offs, with no creative merit, designed purely to milk an existing audience and destroy the British film industry.

In failing to produce a movie of such staggering genius and quality that it disintegrated this established narrative, Pudsey handed the world exactly what it was looking for: a stick with which to beat a very rich man. A very rich man who wouldn’t even feel the body blows.

“See how I bravely shatter Cowell’s kneecaps,” screeched an excitable Pete Bradshaw in The Guardian (which was a shame, as he’d previously said very nice things about two of my CBBC shows).

“Watch me laugh as I splinter Cowell’s ankle,” bellowed a snickering Mark Kermode.

“Applaud me, dolts, as I give you what you want and batter Cowell’s thorax to mist,” said every film blogger on the Internet.

Were they right? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they weren’t. It was a film aimed at six year-olds. And Cowell got off without a scratch; it wasn't him that the world was lobbing flaming torches at, but a bunch of ordinary people hiding inside a wicker effigy of him. People who'd done their best to make an alright kids film, despite no budget, no time, and without the benefit of a human lead actor. All they could do was look on helplessly as the flames licked at their heels.

Some involved in the film were genuinely very troubled by the sheer vitriol it received. Some took it so to heart that they ended up bed-ridden and ill. It still surprises me that I wasn’t more upset by it all. Somehow, probably because of my years of note-taking, I was able to detach myself, and be – for the most part – amused by such foam-flecked rage for a family movie about a talking dog. That said, it’s probably buggered up any chance of me writing another film anytime soon, and that’s obviously a bit of a shame for me personally. Prior to Pudsey being released, the script was generally well received.

But the fact that most of us tend to forget is that behind everything is a human story. Unless you’re an actual robot, none of us are robots. Reviewers are people. The things they’re reviewing are made by people. As a reviewer there’s no logic in worrying about the people you’ll affect by your review, and as the person on the receiving end of the review there’s no real sense in getting upset by a bad review.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t. And it doesn’t mean that reviewers always review things from some cold, emotionless place where they judge things solely on their merit. Back in my Digi days I’m sure I was tempted on more than one occasion to bump up a review score because some PR person had been nice to me, and didn’t want to upset them. A review is a human interaction, and behind every human interaction is a bigger story. Whether it’s one on one, or played out across the media, or the Internet, there’s a broader narrative, underpinning the behavior of the people interacting.

Still. Anyway. There you go. That's what you get for giving Sonic 2 only 72% and slagging off the Amiga. Karma’s a bitch.

FAT SOW: PEELING BACK THE YEARS

14/11/2014

Well stretch my lips over my snout and call me a peel-over. I’m back once again like the Renegade Master. Which opinions are the best sort of opinions? Pickled “o(p)nions”. And by pickled, I mean drunk – and I’m drunk right now on a heady concoction of resentment, indignation, and vodka. This is literally my rage against the machines.

Even though I’m just some made-up pig, who now exists even less than she did when she appeared every Monday, or whatever it was, on Teletext’s barely-remembered Digitiser, it doesn’t mean I’ve not spread my gaze over recent gaming developments, like furious butter on a limp slice of digital toast.

Do you know what I hate – and I mean literally hate more than I hate myself? Homogenisation. Yeah, ha ha – isn’t that a funny word… IF YOU’RE 14 YEARS OLD (because it has “genis” in the middle, which sounds like a mash-up between “penis” and “genitals”)? But it’s also a word that applies to the current state of console gaming. Homogenisation seems to have become a philosophy at The Big Two.

CRAPULOUS 4 BILLION

Completely ignoring the Wii U (as most of the buying public seem to do) there’s literally nothing to separate the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Now that Microsoft has stopped trying to pour its Kinect down our throats, like some weird waterboarding experiment, they’re pretty much the same console.

They’ve even given up with the casing design – what happened to consoles looking like some Giger-esque engine component (Mega Drive) or a DJ deck (PlayStation), or something you’d hang from a baby’s crib mobile (SNES)? Once upon a time you could actually get excited about unboxing a console. Now it has all the thrills of unwrapping a new boiler thermostat.

Even the controllers are edging closer together. It’s like – on an aesthetic level at least – the games industry is churning out identikit boybands. It’s skull-splinteringly boring. We get it – you want your console to sit unobtrusively in our living rooms. But it doesn’t. It sits there under the telly, constantly shrieking about how mature and grown-up it is, like some miniature philosophy student who’s just had his first shave.

ANTI-HISSSSTAMINES

Oh, sure, let’s all bleat on about the fact that games on the PlayStation 4 look generally a little bit better than the Xbox One. But watch those side-by-side comparison videos they put up on YouTube. Seriously – rip a hole in the gusset of your own awful prejudice and watch them closely. Watch them and ask yourself whether the difference is ever really that stark. Or really worth getting into some sort of pointless faff over. Honestly, does it matter?

Frankly, I even struggle to tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps, or even really see how graphics have improved since the previous generation of machines. And even when I can tell the difference, it’s so slight that I can’t work up the energy to care. For the most part, all these new machines seem to really be able to do is throw more antagonists at the screen. It’s as if George Lucas went even more mental, and re-released the original Star Wars films again – only this time there were 400 identical Darth Vaders in every scene, running around like a flock of hyperactive children.

But oh no – we’re all too scared to say this aren’t we? Buddha forbid we question the wisdom of spending three hundred slurps just to have a few extra dust motes floating around the screen.

KEVIN BACON

I mean, let’s get real here. What has this new generation really given us? On both systems, the Uncanny Valley still seems only incrementally closer to being bridged. Slicing the skin off Kevin Spacey’s sour face and wrapping it around a ventriloquist’s dummy isn’t going to convince anyone you’re watching a real person. NPCs still have that same, stop/start-y, bobble-headed gait that they’ve had for years.

I dunno what I was expecting. I just feel a bit cheated. Not only am I unable to really tell the difference between the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, but I can barely tell the difference between them and the 360 and PS3. Surely a new generation was never meant to be like this? Surely it was never meant to boil down to which one has the exclusive rights to Tomb Raider for a bit, or which one upset you the least by not insisting you grant its executives access to a potential live stream of you wandering around with your genis hanging out.

Visually, there’s been nothing I’ve seen thus far on the Xbox 360 and PS4 that has impressed me as much as flying over the sun-licked mountains in GTA V, or the ocean waves in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag (more or less identical across the generations), or the sublime and subtle characterisation in The Last of Us. Maybe I’m expecting too much too soon, but it’s like the console industry has entered its iPhone phase. We’re being tempted to upgrade, where there’s no real compelling reason to do so. At least on a new iPhone you can play all your old games.

God. I hate the people responsible for this rage. I hate those people, and all other people and things equally.

THE VIEWS OF FAT SOW DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT DIGITISER’S OWN.

MAN DIARY: UKCP AND BROWNAROUND

14/11/2014

November 13

It would appear that this long dry spell of unemployment is finally coming to an end. I have a new job as a candidate for UKCP – the UK Co-Dependence Party. Unlike most political parties, UKCP’s platform is one of proud emotional dysfunction. We campaign for the country’s requirements to be placed as a lower priority to those of other countries, due to an excessive preoccupation with putting the needs of others before ourselves.

Driven by a core pledge of low self-esteem, Britain over time – as governed by UKCP – will drive away its European partners by repeatedly texting to ask if they still love us, accusing them of negotiating trade deals with other countries behind our backs, over-analysing every little treaty, and going out to discos with Iceland to make them feel jealous.

Eventually, Brussels will have little choice but to declare Britain no longer part of the European Union. At this point, we shall threaten to blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons unless they take us back.

November 14

Well, that didn’t last long. I’ve had to resign from my post as a candidate for UKCP, following my disastrous attempts to stage a “Co-Dependency Carnival” in Brixton. I took to a podium, and – while speaking in a cheery, Jamaican accent, dressed in a leopard skins, and beating out a steady rhythm on a large, tribal-style drum - I balanced the tricky task of reassuring passing voters that I was “fine”, while being visibly terrified that they might secretly hate me.

For some reason, not a single person agreed to vote for us – not even when I repeatedly offered them tea and cake, regardless of whether they wanted it or not, and chased them down the street shouting that I was going to wrap my lips around a bus exhaust pipe, and asphyxiate myself, unless they pledged their support.

November 15

I am taking something of a career break following my disastrous entry into politics. Adhering to the old adage that ‘healthy body begets a healthy mind’ I have decided to go on a juice fast. Unfortunately, the most immediate consequence of this new diet is the most profoundly explosive diarrhea I have ever suffered. My doctor tells me that this sort of extreme diarrhoea, or “diarrhoea 360”, is also known as “brownaround”.

At any given moment, my sphincter will pout and open like the iris of some pink-eyed kraken, emitting a flock of soggy, sepia doves, the rough shade and texture of fluorescent Weetabix. Last night I couldn’t flush my lavatory fast enough, and resorted to sleeping in the bath with the shower running. At one point, my neighbours called the police as they thought somebody was being murdered. Unable to move enough to answer the door, the police were forced to smash their way in, only to be confronted with my clammy, shivering, weeping, form slithering around on all fours.

I had a brief respite this morning, so paid a visit to Primark to buy some new underwear, trousers, socks and shoes. But while browsing the footwear I felt the sudden rumbling of Old Faithful in my abdomen. I had no choice but to emit a gallon of this so-called “Mahogony Niagra” into the hood of an anorak. When confronted by a shopworker, I had to pretend to have spilled a flask of French onion soup in there. Worse still, due to a misunderstanding I later checked myself into an Ibis Hotel, and ended up with a bill of £500 for damage to their lobby carpet and an elevator. It turns out there’s no such thing as an IBS Hotel.

I have tried everything to stop the gushing, from plugging the leak with a small boxing glove, to Super Glue and Velcro fasteners, to filtering it away using a complex system of wearable aqueducts and latrines. Regrettably, in the words of Jeff Goldblum, “Nature always finds a way”.

CYBER X: LIFE AFTER GAMES JOURNALISM

14/11/2014

BOOM! I’m Cyber-X. You probably remember me. I used to be a top games journalist, writing about all the top video games of the day for all the top games mags, like Top Games, Games Top, Mega Top, Top Laptop, Total Top, Tip Tops, and Top Tops.

Every month you read/looked-at my photo journal column, Cyber-X’s Top Night Out, in the pages of Total Toptop Games Top-Top Video Games Mega Top Monthly, detailing my wild and mentally ill exploits at some of North Bolton’s top nightclubs – clubs like Top Club, Club Top, and Clop Tub. Some nights I even wore a crazy top hat to really ram home the point. I also mostly only ate Pot Noodles – this is because the word ‘pot’ is ‘top’ backwards. It wasn’t easy, but for true authenticity I even ate the Pot Noodles in reverse; feeding them into my anus, and – usually the next day – excreting them out of my mouth.

Those were the days. The top days of my life (up until that point – more on this later: LOL… or should I say TOP…!? You see, TOP is an internet acronym I invented – it stands for ‘Total Overload of Phunn’). But then it all went wrong. Or as I like to say (‘cause I literally just don’t care what anyone thinks) - ‘tits up’.

FRIED (FIRED)

Total Toptop Games Top-Top Video Games Mega Top Monthly folded, and I got laid off (aka “FIRED” – little did I know then that the thing that was really being fired was a bullet being fired from the starting gun of a particular type of race – specifically, my race to the top). It happens. But without a job, my access to free review software dried up, so I had nothing to sell in Computer Exchange, so I couldn’t afford to get into clubs.

Worse still, most days I barely had enough money to buy drugs, and then my girlfriend left me, so I couldn’t even steal money from her to buy drugs. It was literally like being in a nightmare – a horrible, clubless, drugless, attentionless nightmare. I was trapped at a bottom of a pit, and there wasn’t even anybody who wanted to peer in at my brilliantly manic antics.

It felt like the whole world had it in for me.

Before long, I found myself living in a sewer. Not a metaphorical sewer – but an actual sewer. It was the top sewer in the country, but it was still a sewer. And even though I was sleeping on a big mound of top quality shit, which you probably could’ve sold as fertilizer to some of the country’s top farmers, nobody needs that as a bunk. Frankly, however you look at it, shit is still shit. It still stinks, it comes out of bums (except when it’s coming out of my mouth – see above) and is made from dirty brown germs. There’s a reason it’s called shit – and that’s because it IS shit. Literally.

LOWEST TOP POINT

But it was at my lowest point that everything changed for a second time. I had a revelation – I realised I was better than this. In fact, I deduced that I was better than everything and everyone – I was literally the best person alive on earth at that point. Why else would I have had my own monthly clubbing photo column in a games magazine, when nobody else did? Mother Theresa never had her own clubbing column in a games mag. Nelson Mandela didn’t.

Neither did his father, Admiral Nelson “Winnie” Mandela-Day – the only column he had was a stupid, boring one in Trafalgar Square made out of concrete, and surrounded by four black lions (the only lions I’m interested in are my loins – where my genitals live).

Who wants to look at that, when they could be reading about/looking-at me in a video games mag, hanging out in clubs, with dilated pupils and a bottle of beer in my hand? But I did/had my own photo column. Literally. I was, however you looked at it, better.

In that moment of profound self-awareness I was reborn – that sewer was my manger, and I was the infant Jesus, ready to bring my message to the world. I just needed a Star of Bethlehem to follow, same as Jesus did. And then I found one.

TOP HAMMER

As I stood there reeling from this cranial hammer blow by the Mallet of Enlightenment, I looked down at my feet and saw what I can only describe as a carrot, bobbing in the horrible brown water like a dead fish. And just like Jesus turned a fish into a load of bread, or whatever, I turned this fish/carrot into a big pile of hope/cash. Splashing around like a wailing lunatic, my fists hammering inexplicably at the sides of my head, I followed the carrot as it was carried along by the “carront” (current).

Eventually, it came to rest at the foot of a filthy old ladder, which was all rusted and that. To the average layman this was just a regular ladder, but to me it represented the difference between a life of hope, and a life of staying in a sewer, gnawing away at a dripping fatberg as my only source of supper.

Seeing it as a sign, I began to ascend, pushing my way up, up, up – and out, out, out through a manhole, in the middle of a street. To the layman, it was just a regular, every day street, but it was soon to become something more – a backdrop to my transformation into something else, something greater. Greater even than I already had been as one of the country’s top videogame journalists and clubbers.

As I knelt there in the warm sunlight, with no way to know whether the carrot had been real, or just a figment of my vibrant imagination, I realized that in front of me was a retailer specialising in self-help books. It was a sign within a sign (and the sign read “SELF HELP BOOKSHOP”). And in that moment I had my new direction. Everything I had been through – the sleeping in shit, the selling my crazy top hat to buy drugs, the fashioning a humanoid companion from wadded clumps of moist toilet wipes – had been just part of a journey, and here I was at the finish line.

I decided I would become the country’s top self-help guru and motivational speaker. I would help others whose lives were stranded in a rut. I would reach out to them, like that famous painting where the two hands are reaching out to one another (is one of the hands the hand of God? We can only assume). And that’s what I did. It didn’t exactly happen overnight, but let me tell you – it was well easy.

This is the Cyber-X that stands before you today (and I literally am standing as I type this – any idiot could tell you that standing is at least 100% more dynamic than rocking back and forth in a corner, or laying face down on the floor; try and picture it – me barking out instructions to my voice recognition software, as I march around my granddad’s garage with my thumbs hooked cockily into the belt loops of my fairly expensive jeans).

TOP LOSERS

These days I dedicate my time to helping losers like you (that’s right – I called you a loser – deal with it), from every race, creed and social background, out of their own pits. Some people have called me a genius (modesty precludes me from naming names – let’s just say one of them is a certain top TV street magician called “Bynamo” – wink wink). Others have called me a madman, or a prodigy, or an unnatural phenomenon, or a guru. Let’s just say I’m a bit of both.

But there was a certain other madman-cum-genius-stroke-guru born just over 2,000 years ago – and he didn’t do too bad (yeah, I know he got hung from a cross, but he also came back a couple of days later, so it must’ve just been some sort of magic trick or something: beat that, Dynamo – respect!).

This article is the culmination of my journey from video games journalist, to sewer dweller, to the country’s top motivational speaker and self-help guru. Every word on this page has my blood in it (literally – while typing this out I cut my thorax on my massive signet ring, and needed one stitch). Every paragraph is true. I swear.

Normally I charge about £450 (plus VAT) to allow access to my life-changing advice. I hold regular seminars (I call them “awesominars”) in top nightclubs across the country, where you can let me change your life to the relentless, undulating throb of post-garage Japanese techno, hardcore European house, or progressive 1,000bpm electrowave crabpulse (it’s the cutting edge of club culture: the sounds are filtered through a couple of old crabs strapped to a big broom). But today I’m going to share with you today my Top 5 Top Tips for Turning Your Life Around – TODAY!

BOOM! Come on, pigs – let’s make this happen:

1.    JUST SAY NO! When bad stuff happens to you, look it straight in the eye and say “NO!”. Like, let’s say you’ve just been refused a bank loan – firmly lock gazes with the bank wanker (or bwanker), purse your lips, and hiss the word “NO!”, over and over and over, rising in pitch and intensity, until he either decides to give you the loan, or asks you to leave. This is even more effective if you don’t pause to breathe in between. If you pass out, he (or she – this is the 21st Century after all, guys!!!) might feel enough pity to give you the loan.

2.    THE POWER OF NOW! They say there’s no time like the present – so most days I like to give myself little presents. If you’re a top genius like I am, this is a great way to reward yourself for being like that, thus encouraging you to be even more like that. Last week I bought myself a new watch. The week before it was a banjo. Maybe I’ll learn to play banjo, maybe I won’t – that’s not really the point.

3.    HOW TO WIN FRIENDS! Nobody likes to be alone, and everybody likes getting presents (see Tip 2), so why not get more friends by buying presents for people you’ve just met? One of the most effective presents is a pint of beer, so I carry one around with me at all times, just in case I bump into someone I’d like to be friends with. Five times out of ten they’ll really appreciate it, and hopefully not find it too creepy, or ask too many awkward questions about the smell of the beer.

4.    AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE! How can you make people do or say whatever you want? Unfortunately, you can’t – but you can make it more likely. Try sneaking into your target’s home while they’re sleeping, and write instructions on the insides of their eyelids, using henna. If they wake up while you’re there – just firmly put your hands over their eyes, mouth and nose until they fall asleep again.

5.    STOP WORRYING! This one’s easy – grab a pen and a piece of paper, and write down everything that’s worrying you in life. Now work out who’s responsible for those worries, track those people down, and make them pay. It doesn’t have to be anything illegal – just damage their car in the middle of the night, or post a shredded bird through their letterbox. They’ll never know for sure that you’re responsible, but they’ll probably have an inkling…!!!! Maybe you could write your initials on an undamaged part of the bird, just to add an extra, subliminal message.

So there you have it – straight from the horse’s hay-hole, a few top tips you can use in your everyday life, starting today. Who knows? Now you’ve had just a taste of what Cyber-X can offer, maybe I’ll see you at one of my awesominars, where you can watch me enjoying plenty of attention, as I stomp around pointing aggressively, kicking at the walls, grabbing the back of my head, and barking light switches. Usually, people are too cowardly to ask for their money back – but that’s just how I like it. BOOM! I’m Cyber-X.

The Awful Return of The Rapping Shoe

10/11/2014

8 Comments

I’m the Rapping Shoe,
The self-aware loafer,
Please wear me on the street,
But don’t wipe me on your sofa.

I'm the Rapping Shoe,
My raps are sublime,
See how awesomely,
I make this bit rhyme.

I’m the Rapping Shoe,
Watch me rap about games,
I rap them so hard,
They explode into flames.

I’m the Rapping Shoe,
Now heed my word,
A burning console,
Is completely absurd.

To extinguish the fire,
There are steps you must take,
To retard the flames,
Please make no mistake.

Unplug from the wall,
It’s as easy as science,
Now get a damp cloth,
And moisten your appliance.

I’m the Rapping Shoe,
You’ve heard my advice,
I’m a UK size seven,
To be bigger would be nice.

I’m the Rapping Shoe,
You can wipe me on your doormat,
I’m not sure I work,
In this new Digi format.

I’m the Rapping Shoe,
And my raps are a crime,
I'm really struggling,
To make this stuff rhyme.

I'm the Rapping Shoe,
And I'm chill enough to know,
This scans really badly,
And the words barely flow.

I'm the Rapping Shoe,
And in all honesty,
This is probably the last time,
You will ever hear from me.

'Cause I'm the Rapping Shoe,
And I'm full of self-loathing,
I always wished I could be,
Some other form of clothing.

I'm the Rapping Shoe,
And I've got me some pills,
I'm gonna wash them down,
With my rap shoe skills.

Yo!

RIP The Rapping Shoe - 1993 - 2014

8 Comments

Forward>>

21 THINKS ABOUT FAR CRY 4 – Non-Review by Mr Biffo

OLD GAME: HERE - HALF-LIFE 2

PANEL 4: BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

FAT SOW: PEELING BACK THE YEARS

MAN DIARY: UKCP AND BROWNAROUND

CYBER X: LIFE AFTER GAMES JOURNALISM

The Awful Return of The Rapping Shoe

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