Affectionate Diary

NEW URL ALERT!

2006-10-18T14:46:00.000+01:00

Ok, so we've now officially moved to here -

www dot affectionatediary dot com (sorry for the dud link - we're getting spambot referrals)

Change your RSS feeds immediately.

Actually, we might not have RSS feeds. I don't know how that works. Also note that our template is ultra-bogus and that the lnks and sub header are all WRONGZOR. That's cause we're amateuristic shams who can barely log on to newsnow let alone download the latest megabytes, so we won't fix that stuff for months. I'll do it when I get round to it. I don't expect Boss to even know how to add links.

The death of Affectionate Diary

2006-10-17T16:14:00.001+01:00

YES.

This blog will die soon. A tragedy?

NO. It will be reborn. NEW, BRIGHT and BETTER than ever before.

We just need to decide on a suitable name.

I'm going for Affectionate Diary Phoenix Evolution.

I imagine SUKI will have his own fucking ideas, as usual.

Elite Beat Agents

2006-10-16T15:34:00.000+01:00

It's actually ok that they're going to completely dismiss the original Ouendan's songs when they release this in the UK. I already have Ouendan (or at least I did before I lost it along with my Mario Kart cart *sob*) so I don't need another version of it. I need a sequel, perhaps this time with a more mathematically-sound difficulty curve (as opposed to a flat line with a HUGE spike at the last song). So Elite Beat Agents will be magnificent, even though this is apparently the tracklist -

1. Walkie Talkie Man - Steriogram
2. ABC - Jackson Five
3. Sk8er Boi - Avril Lavigne
4. I Was Born to Love You - Queen
5. Rock This Town - Stray Cats
6. Highway Star - Deep Purple
7. Y.M.C.A. - Village People
8. September - Earth, Wind and Fire
9. Canned Heat - Jamiroquai
10. Material Girl - Madonna
11. La La - Ashlee Simpson
12. You're the Inspiration - Chicago
13. Survivor - Destiny's Child
14. Without a Fight - Hoobastank
15. Believe - Cher
16. Let's Dance - David Bowie
17. Jumpin Jack Flash - Rolling Stones
18. Makes No Difference - Sum 41
19. The Anthem - Good Charlotte

*sob*

YMCA? Oh man. I hope this is one of those Guitar Hero things, where you see the song and you think "that is FUCKING SHIT" but when you actually play it you feel like Amadeus.

Totemball

2006-10-11T11:22:00.000+01:00

I didn't even pay for it and I feel completely fucking ripped off. The cost of the development of this game was surely hidden in the price of the camera (thanks for including UNO, by the way, a game that almost everyone already has), which means that Microsoft has just fucked my ass royally.

Driving in Hawaii

2006-10-10T18:07:00.000+01:00

Apparently, everyone has their lights on all the time, no matter what time of day it is. That must be because they're rich. I'm also impressed by how many different car dealerships there are on the island. I guess again that must be because everyone in Hawaii is rich. Which begs the question - why the fuck do people wear Mark Ecko's shit fucking clothing? Where's the Armani? Versace? I'm not spending 100 grand on my eigth car and then a tenner on my threads. I'm RICH, mother fucker. I've got houses all over the island and every kind of bike in existence. I need Evisu jeans made of gold thread and virgins' hair and a Patek Philippe watch made from wooly mammoth's ivory.

This game is fucking shit.

I mean brilliant.

Guitar Hero II Full Tracklist

2006-10-10T13:20:00.000+01:00

Finally! After an 'accidental' misleading leak of the tracklisting on MTV, I can set the record straight and reveal the full, complete and REAL tracklisting here. This is from an OFFICIAL source, and not somewhere stupid, like IGN. So here, for the first time, are all 20 licensed songs, as well as 5 EXCLUSIVE as-yet unnannounced bonus tracks from unsigned bands:

Riffs On Fire

Gold - Spandau Ballet
Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now - Starship
St Elmo's Fire - John Parr
I've Had The Time Of My Life - Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes
Hip To Be Square - Huey Lewis and The News

Heavy Heavy Hardcore

Invisible Touch - Genesis
Sledge Hammer - Peter Gabriel
Like A Virgin - Madonna
She Drives Me Crazy - Fine Young Cannibals
Fast Car - Tracy Chapman

Soft Rock

China In Your Hand - T-Pau
Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi
Pour Some Sugar On Love - Def Leppard
Dancing On The Ceiling - Lionel Richie
Liberian Girl - Michael Jackson

Final Fret Lunacy

Uptown Girl - Billy Joel
Pretty In Pink - Psychadelic Furs
Up Where We Belong - Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes
Stutter Rap - Morris Minor and the Majors
Eruption - Eddie Van Halen

Unsigned Bands

A Million Love Songs - Take That
Could It Be Magic - Take That
Relight My Fire - Take That
Never Forget - Take That
Back For Good - Take That

TDU is still amazing

2006-10-09T11:25:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I completed the following:

* Tour Of The Island Race
* All Singleplayer Races
* Uncovered all roads.

This makes me the best, obviously.

I did the Tour Of The Island on my fastestest bike. Hilarious and heart-pumpingly exciting for 40 whole minutes. The bumpy roads in the latter third were a barrel of laughs and shouting in equal measure.

This game is STILL seriously fucking brilliant.

Tokyo blog - day two

2006-10-04T23:02:00.000+01:00

I wake early and call Daniel, who isn't quite ready. We agree to meet near my hotel in an hour or so and I arrive about 45 minutes early. I appear to be in a shopping area (which is going to be the focus of today's activities) so I pop into a Levi Store. It's kind of a cop out, but I figure having the Levis brand as a common point of reference should help highlight the differences between Japanese culture and our own. Plus, the girl I saw through the window was J-hot.

The shop attendant asks me something in Japanese, which I can't reply to with anything other than "sorry, I don't speak Japanese." He goes back about his business. I pick up a gorgeous black t-shirt with gold roses on the front and proceed to the changing room. Seeing me, the shop assistant jumps in front of me and forbids me from trying it on. I am mystified and assume Daniel will explain to me why later (he can't), so I leave. I pass a sports shop and head inside looking for rare trainers. No fewer than six men are lined up at the doorway and they scream something at me. I will hear this same scream (though at a pleasingly lower volume) at every shop I go into from now on, but for now I'm stunned. I mean that literally. I try to at least acknowledge the first one, but they start bowing and repeating the scream. I really don't know what to do. I want to run past them but I don't want to offend them. I don't know what the right thing to do in this situation is so I stand there, staring at them, mouthing the beginning of words that I haven't decided on yet. After about an hour (or a few seconds) I gather my wits and run past them. The shop is a loss, so I turn to look at the front door. They're ALL STILL THERE, STARING AT ME. I run past them, really quite scared, and they shout something else. I shout back, "bye!" and make a highly undignified exit. I rush off to meet Daniel and we hit the shops, never once finding one as completely batshit insane as the this one.

We go to a regular high street footwear outlet and they have the sickest, rarest trainers you can imagine. Later on we go to a more exclusive trainer shop and I find that the trainers the Japanese covet are actually just the ones you find in our Foot Lockers here. In fact, the trainers I have worn to Tokyo are on sale, labeled as "Very Limited Edition". In English, that's how cool they are. I don't buy anything, so we hit the arcades.

The arcades! MAN! Where do I even begin? Ok, for starters, the arcades that I visited there were huge. They all had several floors, each devoted to a specific genre or title. Usually the ground floor would be UFO catchers (which are all fixed, by the way - the strength of the claw is determined by how much money the machine has collected) and at least one other floor would be devoted to fighting games. Some arcades had entire floors devoted to Virtua Fighter 5. If they didn't, their fighting game space was dominated by VF5. Why anyone would want to play anything other than VF5 I don't know, but I guess they have to give the chicks something to do. During my three day stay in Tokyo I will spend around Â£75 on VF5, at 50p a go. If I lived there, I would easily spend more than that, forgoing things like food and water to play The Greatest Video Game Ever Made. My Lion card racks up a 40 per cent win ratio, which is about 30 per cent higher than I was expecting it to be.

At some point I must have left the arcades (why, Daniel, why?) because I also managed to visit Akihabara, where I had the Best Noodles In Japan, as endorsed by the emperor and the prime minister. I know a PR stunt when I see one, but I also know good noodles when I taste them, and BOY those noodles were the best I'd ever eaten. Even better than my step-mum's pork ball noodles, and she's been working on that recipe for decades.

Akihabara is often name-checked by geeks in the know (such as myself), and I was super-excited by finally being able to say "oh yeah, I've been there. It's shit." And I'd experienced Asian shopping before, in Hong Kong and Malaysia, but I figured that being Japan, things would be different. And they are, kind of. You still have poorly organised shops, and you still have over-eager shop assistants who call you in to shops from the front door, but in Akihabara they have megaphones. They will shout through their megaphone at you, at point blank range, and you won't know what the fuck they are saying. Even if you speak Japanese. The only way to stop the painful noise is to get behind them, which means into the shop. Quite clearly the tactic is an effective one.

My Akihabara side quest (the main quest being to pick up an amazing DS Lite case and something to hold the carts in) was to find the sickest, most depraved Hentai imaginable, and preferably on UMD, since my PSP is Japanese. Ideally, I'd have found aliens with 10 penises raping eight-year-old boys who look like they're in pain but secretly enjoying it (it's no secret to me, obviously). What I found was much, much worse.

I'm quite down for the whole rape fantasy. I mean, it doesn't get me off, but I kind of understand it. And I know girls who are also down for it. And I understand that the average Japanese male treats his girlfriend really badly. I also understand that they must, as a natural by-product of their shy and respectful manner, be quite sexually frustrated. I'm generalising, but the nastier side of Hentai seems like pretty good evidence that I'm right about at least some of the Japanese men. But how frustrated they can be, and how angry about sex and women, can only really be understood by visiting a Hentai store. You see, I thought that the raping of sub-teenage girls was at the end of the scale, and I was right about that. What I wasn't right about was which end. By the time I reached the sick end of the shelves I'm picking up boxes with pictures of young girls covered in cuts, lyingunconsciouss in a pool of blood and semen.

I'm sure there's a goodargumentt for allowing this sort of thing to release sexual tension in a safe way, but when it gets to the point where you need to be nearly killing a girl to get off, you are in WRONGLAND. And these things are available in shops that anyone can shop in. I saw several teenagers shopping who were definitely under 18, even taking into account how young oriental people can look. I can't imagine how sex would be for a kid losing his virginity if his main exposure to sex has been these images for the last year or so. I wouldn't like to be the girl, that's for sure.

Then I buy infinity capsule toys, go to more arcades and then go back to my hotel. I need to get changed because tonight Daniel is taking me to a Dazed and Confused party (super-trendy models galore). But more on that later. This post is now huge.

Peter Jackson in gaming

2006-10-04T17:38:00.000+01:00

Some thoughts -

The Matrix
Mega CD

"Is that Motorstorm?"

2006-10-02T18:17:00.000+01:00

Asked a commuter on the train this morning, as I read the latest issue of Edge. He then asked if it really looked that good. I clearly saw this as an opportunity to talk authoratively on something I had no personal experience of, so I immediately sprung into action -
"It does look that good. It's going to be incredible."
"How do you know?"
Clearly this was getting better and better.
"I saw it last week."
I did, actually. Well, I saw a trailer last week, but my boss had seen it a few weeks ago and thought it was incredible so I was clearly in my rights to follow up with the following -
"I'm not sure if it's worth paying £500 for, though."
Hah! He was on the backfoot now, confessing that he didn't even own a console, but that he just liked to follow things on the internet. He reads IGN, he says. That is all I needed to hear. Taking a deep breath, I inform him -
"Xbox 360 is the best. Cos of the internet things. PS3 can't really do internet. I mean, it can, but rubbishly, like the PS2."
He knows about the PS2 being rubbish online! And he doesn't even own a console. His friend has a PS2, it seems. I tell him to buy a Wii, or something. I forget. The important thing here is that I am now knee deep in a conversation that I don't want to have. My experience in Tokyo (more on that later, promise) means that I want to make the world a nicer place to live in, so carry on with my unsubstantiated truths, just to avoid cutting off conversation with this friendly stranger. I recommend he buys the 360 when he asks, because the online stuff is so amazing, and then maybe a Wii. I say something else, but I'm not really aware of what it is. I'm focussing on appearing sincere and interested and friendly now, when in truth I'm anything but. I'm super bored, having to entertain these "what's better, PS3 or 360?" style questions, but it wouldn't be nice of me to tell him to fuck off. I want more people to talk to strangers on the tube. I want more people to be interested in games. And I want to be part of that process.
I let him read my copy of Edge, and then it's his stop. He returns the mag and thanks me, and then gets off. Cheery bye!

That was nice. A stranger not ashamed to talk about games, who's not really even into them. I am 90 per cent certain he wasn't just a gay hitting on me, even though he said he was a graphic design teacher. I mean, he spotted Motorstorm from screenshots. I probably should have given him my number, though, on the off chance he wanted to suck me off.

Recent news!

2006-09-29T11:18:00.000+01:00

As Suki has been in Tokyo, I've been actually playing games.

HERE'S THE ROUND-UP:

Samurai Warriors 2 (360)
Brilliant.

Test Drive Unlimited (360)
Fucking Brilliant

DEFCON (PC)
Might be brilliant. I'm not sure, as my PC died yesterday.

THE BEST of the lot is definitely Test Drive. Even with all its petty rubbishness, spazzed features and idiotic car selection rigmaroles, Test Drive Unlimited is one of the best car games ever released. Maybe even the very best, provided you're not an incredibly anal racing fanatic. TDU's exemplary brilliance is mostly due to four things:

1) Wicked cars
2) Brilliant engine noises
3) Fucking shitloads of roads
4) Easily exploited events that can be rinsed to generate large volumes of cash

You know what? Test Drive Unlimited 2 is going to blow everything else out of the water. The GT, PGR and Forza people will look like FUCKING IDIOTS.

TDU is going to be the king until someone else can come up with a driving game where you can freely cruise with mates for hours at a time, but in some combination pretend-land where there's windy mountains, vast deserts and proper big cities, like Paris. So we can ALL do our own re-creations of that Rendevous film, but all at the same time in a crazy race. There needs to be a stunt course and some kind of stunt rating system for jumps and shit.

I also want stats on EVERYTHING, including crashes and accidents. I want estimated repair costs and injury projections, along with times for recovery.

However, TDU has the following shits in the punchbowl:

1) Cunt police
2) Idiot AI traffic
3) Not enough races
4) No Lamborghini Countach (yet)
5) It might get a RUF Porsche soon.
6) Rubbish clothes
7) Rubbish avatar customisation
8) Token photo mode
9) No replays if there's AI traffic
10) No 4am-in-the-morning mode

Ugh. Still, none of the above make the game anything less than fucking ace. Hey, just think of the missing things as features for the sequel / update and everything becomes even more brilliant.

Best cars? Tune all of these and they rock:

Lamborghini Miura (ludicrously fast for its group)
Nissan Skyline
Jaguar XJ220 (I am not fucking with you)
Pagani Zonda
Saleen S7 (This is a fucking beast)

AVOID:

Ferrari Enzo (YAWN)
Maclaren F1 LM (Actually shit)
Koenigsegg (yeah it does 270 - after 30 mins of accelerating

FINUL SCOREZ:

TDU gets a solid 9.999999998 / 9.999999999999 from me.

It's about the joy of going fast in cars and as you can do that so much more in TDU than any other game ever ever ever, it means that TDU is the best best best.

Disclaimer

2006-09-26T23:06:00.000+01:00

I forgot to say - I obviously only spent three days in Tokyo, so take any conclusions I draw with a pinch of salt.

And though they both deserve their own post, I should say right now that Rhythm Tengoku and Dot Stream are fucking BRILLIANT, and if you don't buy them immediately you are a total cunt. Unless you don't have any way of playing GBA games, but I really can't believe you don't.

If I was Chewing Pixels I might have said that better, but fucking swearing will have to do, ok? Boing Boing had the audacity to recommend a book on how to blog recently, but I already know how to swear and be incoherent. I don't see how a book can improve that any (unless it has some really good swear words I don't know). I'm off to play more Rhythm Tengoku. Dot Stream times for the pwning of your sorry ass later.

Tokyo blog - day one

2006-09-26T13:34:00.000+01:00

Touch down! Blam, I'm in Tokyo. 11am, fully refreshed and fully in Tokyo's time zone. No jet lag thanks to strategic use of sleep deprivation and Nytol. My first hint as to how the Japanese mindset operates happens as early as the baggage reclaim. Some markings on the floor around the revolving bag-o-returner ask people to keep a respectful distance to ensure more people can reach their luggage more easily. Amazingly, everyone does. Also amazingly, people keep all their gear behind them so as to take up as little space as possible as they crowd around this line. This amazes me (and I imagine would amaze anyone who frequently flies to and from Heathrow). It's as if everyone actually wants the world to be a better place. Then I go hire a phone, have a heart attack at the price, then realise how little money it is (this will be a recurring theme as I attempt to convert yen into pounds throughout the trip), get on the bus and I'm off to TGS.

On the highways there is practically no traffic. This will also be a recurring theme as I travel around Tokyo, making crossing streets very easy and making breathing MUCH easier than is reported.

As we travel along I keep an eye out for a sprawling metropolis in the distance. I envisage a solid wall of concrete and glass marking the boundary of Tokyo, though I'm not sure if I'll see the city yet, since Tokyo Game Show is not in fact in Tokyo. Of course.

I get to TGS, it's very small, and there are no queues for anything bar Devil May Cry 4. Well, there are queues but we're talking three or four deep. In three hours I've played everything I care about and seen everything else. Several things surprised me -

There were a LOT of US-developed games on show which quite clearly will never sell in Japan.
Microsoft's games were everywhere simply because they had the biggest bags and therefore were clearly on show on people's shoulders at all times.
There was NO COOL TAT on offer anywhere (wtf?!).
There were loads of mobile phone games.
Everyone was taking pictures of the J-hot girls, but nobody wanted to be in the pictures with them. It was a strange sort of voyeurism, with some guys being overheard saying things like "you were a Capcom girl in 2004, why the change?"
There really wasn't any cool tat.

Then I meet up with Adrian, a friend of a friend who is fluent in Japanese and French, but alas not really English. He takes me into Tokyo on a train, when he tells me he is a drag-performer at his night, Tokyo decadence. As we travel along, I stare out the window as much as possible. We're mostly over ground, and I'm hyper-excited about seeing Tokyo in the distance. We start to enter suburb type areas clearly defined by large areas of grassland and forest. No skyscrapers, no flying cars, no robots. No city. Soon we get off to change to another line. I ask how long before we're in Tokyo. Adrian replies, "we are 'ere."

We're clearly NOT in the largest and most technologically advanced city on the planet, but I don't say anything. I put it down to his poor English and my non-existent French and Japanese. We change, I see some school girls who don't look like as hot as I'd hoped (in fact, they look like, well, school girls, but more on pedophilia later), and then we arrive at my stop. I thank Adrian, get out, get confused at the barriers (which start open but shut on you cruelly if you have the wrong ticket, which I did) and then I'm outside. Outside into fresh air, wide open space, and what looks like the outskirts of a city. I think there must be some mistake so I drag my near-empty suitcase back inside and check the name of the stop, which is still Yotsuya. I am in the centre of Tokyo. I go back outside and take careful stock. The roads are HUGE. There is space everywhere. There is loads of green, very little traffic, and every person I ask for directions from speaks English (a statistical anomaly, perhaps). Later on I find out that most of Tokyo is like this - expansive, clean and really quite green. There is next to no pollution, no litter (and no bins either, which doesn't quite add up), and transport and food are both very, very cheap. In fact, it's possible to live in Tokyo for only a few pounds a day. Unless you play Virtua Fighter, that is.

In fact, at this stage I realise that everything I think I know about Tokyo is wrong. Very obviously wrong. Later on, Adrian tells me that the stories of Tokyo being massively over-populated and expensive and difficult to navigate are all propaganda spread by Japanese to keep out foreigners. I can easily believe it.

I check in to what is the biggest hotel I have ever seen. To get from the reception desk to my room takes nearly 10 minutes. There is a shopping mall on the first two floors of the hotel as well as countless restaurants. My room has slippers I can take home and a rubbish hairdryer. I chuck everything on the floor and race out to meet Daniel, who will ensure that over my three day stay I see and do everything in Tokyo that I want to.

We go to a restaurant with Adrian and his friend and a dancer called CoCo. CoCo tells me (via Daniel as she speaks no English) that next week she is having a catfight on stage at Adrian's fetish night. I laugh and ask if it will be a real fight and she tells me it will. She makes clawing gestures and snarls. She asks me if I think she is cool (she is). We then grill our own meat on the mini-BBQ in the middle of the table and get drunk on sweet cocktails made from things I haven't heard of. Then Daniel takes me to meet his friend David, who takes us to a Belgium-themed bar where beer is SUPER expensive and there are no J-hot girls to look at, so I retire to my hotel.

Thus ends my first day in Tokyo.

I'm back

2006-09-25T18:00:00.000+01:00

I don't even know where to start. A proper thing later, but some random thoughts for now -

Chibita is basically the coolest guy on the planet, even though he likes trace music.
VF5 and the way the arcades and the scene work over there blew my mind.
Everyone in Tokyo is SUPER FUCKING STYLISH x infinity.
Taxis and transport and food in Tokyo are really, really cheap.
Drinking in nice bars is about as expensive as it is here.
Their super cool trainer shops stock our regular trainers and their regular shops stock the trainers we can't buy for love nor money.
Clothes are really expensive. Well, nice clothes. Uniqlo is cheap, and much better than the version they've given us.
VF5 is amazing, though only Chibita used the new evade move on me.
Hentai does actually get so bad you feel physically sick just looking at it, and it's not even remotely hard to get.
Tokyo girls are HOT but apparently shit in bed (they have a term there - mackeral - because they lie there like a dead fish).
People fall asleep on the tube within seconds of sitting down.
Their mobile phones also double as their oyster cards, but I didn't see one person use it.
There seems to be no excitement for the PS3 at all.
Asking for DS Lite carrying cases in a hardcore gaming shop will get you laughed at, because the DS Lite is too new to be cool amongst the 'real' gamers.
The fascist political party openly drives around in vans with loudspeakers, broadcasting "foreigners get out" messages.
I take a size large when buying clothes.

Tokyo tube map

2006-09-20T14:17:00.000+01:00

The Road to Chibita

2006-09-20T13:23:00.000+01:00

I am now officially really nervous about this. A trip to his arcade on Sunday is planned (does he own it? Run it? Is he the champ there?) and I know nothing about Japanese arcade etiquette. If I do Lion's up+P+K and shout SHO RYU KEN! will he laugh or be offended? What if he gives me a round, am I allowed any jubilation at all? What if he doesn't like me? What if we've got EXACTLY the same hair styles? What if he doesn't like VF anymore? WHAT IF I WIN A ROUND?

No chance of that happening really.

Things I don't know about Japan -
Do they have a seven-day week? If I say "Friday" will they translate that into their equivalent day of their seven-day week or do they just work non-stop until they die?
If you win in the arcades, do you rejoice? Do you keep your head bowed? If the other person wins, do you congratulate them, or will that embarrass them because then they are rejoicing? Is it like at a karate competition, only the other guy isn't broken and bleeding at the end?
Do the girls have sideways fannies?
How tall are they? I mean, Chinese guys are tiny, but most Koreans I've met are huge. Like the dude in Lost. Will I be of normal size over there or what? I'm not planning on sleeping with the chicks cos I love my girlfriend very, very much, but I at least want the chicks to think "he's probably got a big one." If only because it won't ever happen anywhere else (I'm half-Chinese).
Do they drive on the left or right (those that don't have spaceships)?
Are they really that good at games? I mean, Chibita is going to trash me, but maybe I'll get some wins against the henchmen.

Things I do know about Japan -
They are all really racist, even by my comedy standards.
Everyone can do karate really well.
They see things in widescreen.
They don't have cheese.
They don't like the PSP (and who can blame them?)
They go red when they drink (SCORE!)
They have a slight biological advantage at games over white guys because their eyes and brain can assimilate information over a larger area faster than the average honky - I don't know how it works for black guys but Ryan Hart is pretty fucking sick. Let's assume that means all black guys are good at games, because they always chose Guile back in the day and beat pretty much everyone.
The KFC is made from actual chicken.
Even if they can speak English, they won't, so fuck off.
Not everyone is like Hard Gay.

Japan

2006-09-19T17:23:00.000+01:00

Japan is the ultimate destination for all gamers. No matter the market is shrinking, or that famous Japanese doctors were slamming games until they starred in one, or that everyone plays shitty traditional RPGs and nothing else over there. No matter they don't play FPSs and they sleep with children legally. No matter that even though it's ok to draw a girl being fucked by seven demons who have penises that are a hundred foot long but if you film a prostitute you have to blur the screen so nobody sees any genitals. The fact is - if you're a gamer, you want to go to Japan.

I am a gamer, and I want to go to Japan. On Thursday, I *am* going to Japan. I will have the best three days I have ever had, and that includes the sex marathon I had in Ibiza when I lived there. I will probably not come back. Don't be jealous. I don't want you to be. Instead be happy, safe in the knowledge that there's not a single person on this planet who would smile as much as I'm going to, and that fact alone is enough to make it ok that if one of us has to go, it's me and not you. Though it would be better if we could both go.

Last night I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed thinking about having my own personal robot, and how nobody drives cars and uses their own jetpack, and how my friend told me to try the KFC out there, because it contained actual chicken. I probably shouldn't have played Samurai Warriors 2 till 1am but that was research. It's important I know as much about Japan as possible before I go, and now I know that if I attack a man and his wife is nearby, I'll get attacked in such a way that my body gets chucked up in the air and on the way down get hit four times in quick succession. So no attacking men unless they're alone, but that's pretty much common sense.

Oh, and because it's not quite clear in this post - I'm well up for demon rape and sleeping with children.

STOP PRESS

My man in Japan is confident he can arrange a meeting with Chibita in which I get TOTALLY raped in a game of VF by him. Man!

A wife's duty is to protect her husband

2006-09-19T10:18:00.000+01:00

Samurai Warriors 2 on the 360 has the best voice acting I have ever heard.

Gradius Collection

2006-09-18T13:29:00.000+01:00

Is here! And it's fucking excellent. So don't fuck about reading blogs about idiots who can't get laid or who still haven't clocked Bubble Bobble on the Amstrad CPC 464. Stick with us for REAL proper informative opinion (Boss Nonnu talking about Wii aside). So here, EXCLUSIVE to Affectionate Diary readers, is -

The Gradius Collection Definitive Review.

379200. That's the score I got when I clocked Gradius on one credit this morning. Default settings, but difficulty turned up to Normal. Let's not try to understand why Easy is considered default in the world of Gradius. The hit box on default is set to Small, which seems odd but after Gradius V, I'm happier this way. It makes it easier, aye, and it's not like Vic is particularly large anyway, but I consider this enough to make amends for the only thing I can find fault with - the PSP's dpad. It's HUGE. I've not really realised that before, strangely. It's taken the precision needed by a shmup to show me just how much travel that thing has. Maybe I'm spoiled by the DS's excellent dpad, but playing Gradius on the PSP has made me realise just how bad that dpad is. The analogue nub is more responsive but I'm not good enough with that, really. Also, it's in a fucking STOOPID place, so clearly nobody will touch it.

While we're on dpads, the 360 pad's attempt is quite amenable once you've got used to it. I have no problems in SF2 anymore. If you're complaining that you were amazing on a SNES pad but can't do any of the moves on the 360 version, go back and have a go on a SNES pad. You'll probably find that it's you who's useless, not the controller. You've aged more than a decade - that skill has left you. Not me, though, obviously. I'm brilliant.

Anyway, back to Gradius Collection.

Did I mention I'm going to Tokyo Game Show? No?

I ONLY FUCKING GOING TO TGS YOU CUNTS!

Gradius Collection.

I have mostly played only Gradius. I've not played the second one at all, and I rinsed three and four on the PS2 so I've only played four once, and that was just to check how similar it was to the (apparently) arcade-perfect PS2 version. It was exactly the same.

You have to save your settings for each game seperately, in case you use different controls for Gradius and Gradius IV. I really have no idea who would change their key config. from game to game, so I can only conclude that this is a SHIT way of doing it. Also, I am unlikely to want to autosave on Gradius II but not Gradius Gaiden.

Oh, and if it's even the tiniest bit sunny, forget being able to see bullets. Also, playing on the Victoria Line is impossible, also because the bullets are so small.

In summation - it's fucking Gradius, and therefore the best shmup ever. Far superior to any hideously ugly Cave shooter that scrolls vertically, obviously. Well worth the £25 I paid for it, and completely excellently playable on the small screen, even though the dpad on the PSP has been designed for someone with a 10cm-wide thumb.

Score - four options, missiles, lasers, one speed-up, shields and the bar hovering over another shield out of 10.

You'll notice I started with my score for Gradius (one) so far. That's because I want you to FUCKING BRING IT.

WARNING

2006-09-15T14:42:00.000+01:00

The previous post is TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT.

One Hundred And Eighty Pounds

2006-09-15T14:24:00.000+01:00

For a fancy Gamecube with a nifty remote?

No wonder they're making profit from the first sale LOL!

That remote costs $40 - £25 at the most. So Nintendo are flogging us a slightly better gamecube for £150. Double the price of a standard one. God they're a lovely company, aren't they?

Let's hope they issue another, slightly nicer Wii in 18 months so we can buy it again!

It's out two weeks before Christmas. That's a wise choice, considering most parents buy their kids' presents in November. Anyhow, all the games will be piss. (Hah! I'm so good!) I mean come on, what would you rather do: Pretend to play tennis by waving your arm or pretend you're driving a shit-hot sports car around Hawaii?

Seriously, all the games look shit. Even Zelda. It's been in development hell for like two decades longer than Duke Nukem forever, which proves it's total fucking rubbish. None of the Wii titles look anywhere near as good as NNN or Test Drive Unlimited, but some of them do look like they're almost as good as Dead Risible (HAH! I'm fucking brilliant!).

Nintendo = bankrupt within a year, bought out by the mammoth Sony/MS conglomerate, which formed after a series of court cases following the bizzarely accidental launch of Halo 4 on the PS3 in January 2007.

Ps: I don't really hate Dead Rising.

I'M ONLY FUCKING GOING TO TGS!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-09-14T22:14:00.000+01:00

FUCKING MOTHER FUCK FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate myself

2006-09-14T13:38:00.000+01:00

I bought Scramble last night when I was drunk. I have inadvertently reinforced the belief that foisting bullshit like that on us is acceptable.

I'm not entirely sure I understand how to use the word 'foisting'. I might need an 'off'.

The most commonly asked questions

2006-09-14T13:37:00.000+01:00

The questions I'm most commonly asked when I tell people I'm a PR in the games industry are proof that people are, generally speaking, idiots -

1. Does that mean you test them?
2. Does that mean you review them?
3. Do you just play games all day?

I also make the games from scratch using my own version of C++.

EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS STOP

2006-09-13T14:36:00.000+01:00

We have added a new link. To Mr Driller's recently reactivated blog. To be fair, we only linked to him cos he linked to us, so it's mutual masturbation, but his blog is basically shit. Don't bother clicking on the link. I mean, he's linked to UK:R! Everyone knows that UK:R is not as good as Idiot Toys these days. Jesus. You might as well link to Kotaku.

You might have seen him in the comments but don't be fooled. He is definitely NOT funny.

Ape Academy 2

2006-09-13T13:55:00.000+01:00

It's not the worst game I've ever played, but I'm really struggling to think what kind of person would have come up with such an over-simplified and slow, drawn-out game design. It just feels so sterile. They perhaps thought "we've got a load of minigames, depending on your definition of load, but it's not quite enough. Let's dress them up in a really slow overly-simple card game mechanic and hey presto! Two games for the price of one."

Or something. I mean, it should be amazing. Card battles with minigames underneath? Like a Mario Party vs Card Fighters Clash kind of thing. But the windows for action on each game are soooooo short, and the card sections are soooooo long in comparison, with almost zero scope for tactical play, and then the minigames are not really all that, and, and, and HOLY FUCK DON'T START ME ON THE VOICE ACTING. I can't wait to hear my actress girlfriend piss herself laughing at the worst selection of comedy British accents since Call of Duty 2's attempt at Scottish. I once had a dream where games localised for the UK would actually have British accents. Now that I see how that can turn out, the dream is crushed. I really DON'T want anyone from Birmingham in any game I play. Ever.

I really am struggling to figure out who Ape Academy is made for. Certainly not for gamers or by gamers (like the PS3 LOL). Certainly not by the magical lifestyle mindset that brought us Singstar, since it's so impenetrable from the moment it loads. But it doesn't scream incompetence. It's polished enough to make me think everything about it is deliberate, and carefully considered. I just can't work out by whom, and for whom.

I suppose I could have just said it was shit.

Gangs of London is brilliant

2006-09-11T10:34:00.000+01:00

I played it for most of Saturday night. With a friend. We played one game of pool and about a million games of light cycles, which isn't called light cycles. My friend tried to call it Snakes, but didn't even bother trying to work in a pun. Even Snakes on a PSP would have been borderline acceptable. What's the world coming to?

I didn't play the main game, obviously. I've seen too much advertising on the underground to believe it's any good. Good games don't get assigned marketing budget by Sony.

And I don't get Boss Nonnu's frustrations with Dead Rising. I love it. And I save regularly. I mean, they're everywhere. It only takes about 10 minutes max to get from one toilet to another. And that's a worst case scenario. And I don't go anywhere without at least two mini chainsaws and a book on blades.

The Definitive Dead Rising and Test Drive Unlimited review

2006-09-11T10:16:00.000+01:00

Dead Rising: Brilliant, just not as brilliant as Test Drive Unlimited.

Test Drive Unlimited: Even more brilliant than Dead Rising, with much less stress and frustration.

10.10/10.10.

I have no shame

2006-09-07T13:15:00.000+01:00

Ok, so this is the lazy way, and I'd bigger and better plans for this post, but I'll never get around to doing it (Dead Rising!) so fuck it. Here's a link to some pics from PR handsome man Leo Tan's recent 30th cosplay birthday party.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23408223@N00/219885398/

It's Ben Talbot's page, so credit to the man for hosting.

Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins

2006-09-06T16:14:00.000+01:00

I don't mind that it's really hard. I'm weaker now than I was 10 years ago, sure - I've been back to my old games and realised that I just don't have what it takes anymore. I remember the kind of precision jumping I used to do in Great Giana Sisters on the Atari ST, with an Atari 2600 joystick. No fucking way I'm pulling that shit off anymore. So of course Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins is hard - I expect it to be. I also expected the level design to annoy me, designed as it is to stop you in your tracks, as opposed to New Super Mario Bros, whose levels are designed to allow you to fly. But neither of those reasons are why I don't like Ultimate Ghost and Goblins. The fact is, it's ugly. It's one of the ugliest games I've ever played. I seem to be the only person in the world who thinks so, though. I've read review after review containing boundless enthusiasm for the "unashamedly old school graphics". They're not unashamedly old school - they're crap.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved is unashamedly old school. Darwinia is unashamedly old school. Frogger and Time Pilot on Live Arcade are shamefully old school. Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins is ugly. That snake! That snake can fuck right off. Those ghost things that warp in. The GRASS. Everything about it is mismatched and hideous. It's like 100 different school kids independently puked on their PSPs and then someone collated all the puke and put it in the game. It makes Auto Assault look like Loco Roco. So it's out and Outrun is in, till Gradius arrives. Then I won't play any other game on my PSP ever again.

This is really out of date, I'm sorry

2006-09-05T14:36:00.000+01:00

But COME ON. What the fuck is going on here?

IGN: "Would you consider VF5 to be more of a timing based fighter now, or is it more like what you were saying, where if you really know a character, you can pull off combos and know exactly when they'll hit?"

This was in an interview with someone in AM2, or something, I can't remember now, I've purged the memory from my system to preserve my sanity. Credit is due to the interviewee for not picking up a gun and shooting himself in the face after screaming "IT'S THE ONLY WAY OUT."

Game overload

2006-09-05T13:21:00.000+01:00

OMFG I just got Dead Rising.

This is horrific.

I'm nowhere near finishing NNN! I've only got one character up to level 9 (Inphyy) and I haven't even cleared the secret level yet. FUCK.

FUCK!

Dead Rising has nothing to do with George Romero and Nintendo are based in Japan.

George Romero and Dead Rising

2006-09-04T18:00:00.000+01:00

Dead Rising has absolutely no connection to any George Romero films. None whatsoever. The fact that it's about a shopping mall full of zombies is a complete coincidence. I'm really glad that they tell me that not only on the packaging of the game but also every time I turn it on (which is whenever I have a free moment at home, which is whenever I'm at home). Had they not put that disclaimer about not being connected to George Romero in any way I might have suspected them of taking their inspiration from George Romero, but they are definitely not connected to George Romero so they can't have. So don't even THINK George Romero's name, because you'll be thinking a WRONG name, such as George Romero. George Romero is definitely not involved with the game in ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM.

Just in case there was any confusion there.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

2006-09-01T14:16:00.000+01:00

Playing Sweet Child O' Mine in Guitar Hero II is better than anything I've ever done anywhere, ever.

Disgaea on PSP

2006-08-30T11:14:00.000+01:00

Ok, so it's just the first one, but with enough new dungeons to make your head explode! That's what I'd say if I wrote for Your Sinclair, but I don't, because that's what I'd write.

Anyway, everyone's getting it because I say so. This is the game you've been waiting for. Not another fucking version of PS2 Racer X or some bullshit 3rd person action game that makes you hate the analogue nub. Now you can power level everywhere. On the train, on the bus, on the toilet. Even the most mundane action becomes an opportunity to find a Legendary Yoshitsune. Divebombing 100-level dungeons is fine because you've got sleep mode and it doesn't matter that you've seen the main plot before because the main story boards are only about 10 per cent of the game anyway. The other 90 per cent is raping Cave of Ordeal 4 over and over LOL

I doubt any of you will get that joke.

Anyway, like I said - you need this game. It's like Disgaea on drugs! Though probably over the counter drugs that are really just vitamins.

EXCLUSIVE: Tetsuya Mizuguchi news

2006-08-29T13:48:00.000+01:00

Click HERE to read this story. Whilst you're waiting, why not look at everything else on our blog, even though this message should really be the story you wanted in the first place.

ANYHOW,

NNN is still the best 360 title ever. If you disagree, you're still very wrong. If you can't get to the final stage with Inphyy, you're fucking SHIT and everyone is laughing at you.

If you don't understand that the key to excellent joy is to work out how the combos can be combined to best manage the crowd, you're an idiot. You should really be dead, as technically you don't have a brain or something.

Maybe you're just really snobbish about games. I don't give a fuck. If you diss NNN, you're either insane or have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, so fucking shut your fucking mouth and fucking fuck the fuck up.

If you haven't unlocked Dwingvatt or the 12 year-old, don't even attempt to have even the most shallow opinion of the game. Your opinion will be completely, totally, utterly wrong unless your opinion is:

"OMFG it's so amazing I've shit myself and fucking love that I've shit myself over how amazing this game is".

Still here? Fine. Take this on for size:

My girlfriend, who is a girl, is brilliant at NNN. She unlocked Dwingvatt.

How does that make you feel?

Inadequate, impotent and causing a sudden re-evaluation of your understanding of videogames, I hope.

Tonight, I will be cruising around on a giant key and bombarding colossal armies of cunts with a fucking huge tidal wave. It really doesn't get any better than that.

N N N N N N N N Nnnnnnnnn

2006-08-26T16:55:00.001+01:00

As I suspected, Ninety Nine Nights is a test in how hardcore you are.

Amazing features like ongoing specials being cut short by triggered cutscenes and the incredible lack of accessible health, along with the vast distances the player has to traverse if they want to regain a shred of life during a nasty and protracted boss fight are not 'bugs' or 'balance issues'.

They're all tests.

Tests of how little you give a fuck about the pampered niceties of modern gaming and how much you really, really, really want to get on with the killing.

Same goes for the tortuously long levels, BEREFT of any saving or checkpoint opportunities. Hardcore.

If you can't take it, or think Ninety Nine Nights is shit, then you're FUCKING PATHETIC and WEAK and DON'T DESERVE TO PLAY GAMES. FFS!

Don't try to argue until you've mastered the correct use of y,y,y,x,x,y.

Instant score:

10/10

Sega promo literature distress!

2006-08-25T12:51:00.000+01:00

Fucking IDIOTS.

In the Sega Retail Preview brochure that came with this week's MVC, the FIRST paragraph in the VF5 DPS refers to it as 'Virtua Fighter 3'.

This is a fucking disgrace.

Even more infuriating is the assertion that VF5 has 'button bashing fun'.

FUCK'S SAKE!

I'm fucking burning Sega. It's over.

Secret Tips Exclusive!

2006-08-23T14:12:00.000+01:00

In Tekken 3, if you can get through arcade mode and beat the boss in under 5 minutes, you get to fight a super Kazuya and if you beat him, you get to fight Heihachi's Mum and Dad. They have dying sex if they lose and that's how Jin was really born. Heihachi watches.

In VF4 Evo, if you get three DLC wall juggles in a row during a red chest prize match, you get rewarded with a ghetto blaster for Akira and he breakdances, raps and flings his own faeces at the camera in his victory anim.

In Shenmue 2, if you have the seaman microphone plugged in, the fit bird on the motorbike shows her tits if you ask to see them in Japanese. If you do this three times in a row, Ryu turns gay and refuses to play Space Harrier.

In MGS3, if you plug a PS1 controller into port two, the game re-loads to look like it’s running on a PS1. If you then put in a PS1 memory card, you can play MGS3 with all the weapons from MGS1 except with infinite ammo and Snake has hair that’s three metres long, with incredible physics and he has 20 porn mags in his inventory that are all readable and have real naked women in them.

In Battlefield 2, if you type “home james!” into the server address box, you log into the EA mainframe and you can download every game they’ve ever made for free. The password is PASSWORD with a D.

In Sonic Adventure 2, if you make Sonic run in alternating circles for 15 minutes, he gets an erection and rapes Tails in an extended cutscene that goes on for three hours, featuring scenes of extreme degradation, greivous bodily harm and the use of excreted fluids in a startlingly imaginitive manner.

In Rez on the Dreamcast, if you press Start 30 times in the options menu, the soundtrack changes to Falco and he appears as the boss on each level. You have to make his car crash in order to kill him.

In PGR3, if you reverse around all the Tokyo tracks in an Enzo, you unlock a BMX and Andy Crane.

Why I fucking love Ninety Nine Nights

2006-08-20T15:34:00.000+01:00

Because it's hardcore.

I love it for exactly the same reason I love Dynasty Warriors. It's hugely flawed, fucks the player over and makes life difficult, but who wants to be treated like a fucking pussy when you're so fucking badass with a spear?

Look, you can mash up literally thousands of bastards in the space of five minutes. That kind of ego-wanking doesn't come cheap. Ninety Nine Nights makes you pay with intrusive cutscenes, a ropey manual camera and frame rate drops, but that's the kind of shit I fucking love.

It makes me feel like I earnt the joy it gives me.

As for those frame rate issues, LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKING BASTARDS.

Bless Ninety Nine Nights. I hope Dynasty Warriors 360 steals all your good stuff.

Ray Hound!

2006-08-18T21:17:00.000+01:00

http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/

This is Ray Hound. It is mental. It's by Mr Warning Forever, which is a mental post-modern shmup dedicated to the love of boss fights, only under a time limit.

TO PLAY:

Use mouse for everything, I think.

There are bullets. They are obvious. If you can't work out what they are immediately, you're an idiot.

Press mouse button to CAPTURE THE BULLETS!

Hold down the button and move the mouse to guide the captured bullets at the guns that fired them. LOL!

It's very good.

PS: there's a time limit and time is like your lives.

Sniping = sex

2006-08-17T22:48:00.000+01:00

Hitman series:
Brilliant sniping. Slight attempt at realism, always good body drops and impact wound simulation. Hitman has never disappointed with its sniper rifles and I've spent countless hours trying to lure everyone within the range of my favourite sniping positions. Once, I copied a friend's stroke of genius and killed everyone on the chinese restaurant / whorehouse level, stripping them all off and then lining them up in the outside bit. With the bodies near-naked and arranged into neat lines, it looked like a proper war-crime. It actually became one when I started emptying all my weapons into the corpses. My friend claimed to have shot the fat bloke off the cliff, but I couldn't be fucked and instead took a load of screengrabs. Which I promptly lost, leaving a gaping hole in my self-generated porn collection.

Battlefield 2:
Rubbish sniping. This is quite upsetting. Despite some quite good aspects, BF2 seems to subscribe to the method of double tap sniping, although this is to ensure a kill rather than making sure the victim's head is properly fucked up. That's fucking rubbish.

I always try to double tap whenever I'm sniping in any game, but these days the prevalence of ragdoll deaths means I often end up creating a row of new orifices on the victim's thigh, none of which I can run down and fuck with rabid delight. Sadly, that kind of interaction isn't implemented in current game engines.

Rainbow 6:
Brilliant sniping. Of course, the sniping in this is fairly shit by today's standards, but it remains a fond favourite for me. I used to populate the maps with unwitting stooges and spend hours sniping them in a methodical manner. This is probably why I'm such a fucking sweet sniper. Rainbow 6 also introduced me to the joys of supressed sniper rifles, as everyone knows suppressed snipes are even cooler than loud, total-pwnage ones with a Barratt.

Delta Force:
Amazing sniping. The wildcard. Delta Force had insanely realistic sniping, with adjustable sights for the simulated fall-off. The squeals of near-sexual delight that I erupted with following the impact of a bullet into a distant enemy's head (from directly above them) were probably the happiest noises I've ever made. You can stuff your fucking Mario 64 cannons up your jacksie. THIS WAS PROPER BALLISTICS.

Operation Flashpoint:
Brilliant sniping. OpFlash was a SICK game, both in terms of graphics tech, sheer scope and perceived realism. Needless to say, the sniping in this was brilliant. Once, I crawled on my belly for about two hours (at the fastest accelerated time setting) in order to shoot an officer. Why? I'd fallen down a steep slope and broken both of my legs. REALISM x 1000!

I still remember the rapture I felt when hiding on a rainy hillside, triggering some road-based booby traps to blow up a convoy and then sniping down all the FOOLS that thought investigating the burning wrecks was a good idea. Despite my superior tactics, I ended up falling down a slope and breaking both my legs again, but that didn't taint the memory and I still freely masturbate over it on a regular basis.

Hidden And Dangerous 2:
Ultimate Sniping. The sniping in this was fucking brilliant, but that was mostly due to the whole game being fucking brilliant. That's all I can say, really, as I can't actually remember any specific incidents, just that the whole game was unbridled war-joy, albeit with some astonishing shit bugs. There was that time I sniped about 20 soldiers from behind a door, but I can't remember how it turned out because I was enjoying it too much.

Ghost Recon:
Brilliant sniping. This is mostly due to it so closely related to Rainbow 6. In the very first Rainbow 6, I loved nothing more than filling that chemical weapons lab level with goons and sniping the door so they ran out to headshot after headshot. Grenades were also a brilliant laugh. Ghost Recon was no exception. I fiddled with all the levels to make them sniper hunting grounds, with the Red Square map being the real jewel in the crown. I sniped people to death in every conceivable part of their body in that game, the best being fatal snipings due to successive hand injuries.

Things We Have Learned From Games

2006-08-17T16:21:00.000+01:00

Hoho, both Boss Nonnu and myself have just finished reading one of those "what RPGs have taught me" things, which was really funny because it said things like "it's ok to rifle through someone's furniture when I'm in their house."

LOL!

So we decided to do our own one, about games in general. I hope you find it as funny as we did the RPG one - we're still doing a LOL out loud!

Things we have learned from games.

Drugs are really, really good.

LOL is a common greeting in Russia.

Weird people have magic powers like fire, electricity and ice!

Short people are really just children in fancy clothes.

Sony are brilliant but evil, Microsoft are all geeks who've lost weight and are evil and Nintendo are basically Wario, but even more cuntish about gold and princesses and are really, really evil.

There is only one real online gaming news site and they post everything to everybody, who in turn send it to everybody to post so everybody gets a post. Everyone posts.

If you're rich, cash machines have a secret touchscreen menu where you can do stuff like divert money from charities and spray pigeon effluent over people queuing behind you.

Sex is like having sex, but with more sex and less non-sex.

Everyone loves an exclamation mark because of Solide Snake!

World Of Warcraft is a lie because it's not a world but a collection of tiny continents and there's no harrier jump jets or hovercraft, which is fucking rubbish.

There are no sniper rifles in World Of Warcraft and it is a massive scandal in the industry.

MMOs are like virtual reality but much, much, much more shit and cost more money.

Hating major publishers is really cool. Loving tiny publishers is really cool. Making a blog about being angry at the industry is pretty much the best thing anyone could do. If they want to look like something that doesn't have a word because it's too fucking spazzy to describe.

Every straight-edge ends up either dead or on drugs. In fact, 90% of non-specific 'natural' deaths happen under the influence of heroin or its analogs.

RSI is a test. The pain is the reward.

Professional gamesplayers eat old computers to enhance performance. Fatal1ty had his own cunt stapled together by Norton and Mcaffee so the Chinese hackers couldn't download a virus onto it during competition.

Shooting a dead body repeatedly, especially the dead body of your friend, gives you an erection.

If you had infinite money, you would always put 99 credits in a machine every time you played, regardless of how many games you were going to play.

How you dress is the most important thing in the world, and takes precedence over saving the planet or winning an international competitive event of any kind.

The best way to win a race is to reverse into cars that are following you and then call them fags.

Everyone in the world is an American teen, except for you - you're a fucking fag homo queer and you've been fucking OWNED, YOU BITCH, YEAH, HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?

All women are useless bitches who need saving (I didn't learn that from games LOL!!)

It's ok to fuck 12-year-olds if you're Japanese.

If one of your team dies on a mission, it's ok to shoot everyone else in the back of the head with a pistol and then throw yourself on top of a grenade.

If you have loads of child porn on your PC, you can go to jail. If you keep it on DVDs labelled "cuttings archive 2001-2003" nobody will ever find out.

There are loads of children hanging out in places like Habbo Hotel.

If you doctor images of adults to look like children, you can STILL go to jail! Unless you keep them on DVDs with misleading labels.

The best way to deal with girls who repeatedly walk towards you kicking at your shins is to block the kick and PUNCH THEM IN THE FUCKING FACE, YOU BITCH, YOU RUINED MY LIFE.

Mentally handicapped adults will have the emotional reactions of a child when you fuck them but none of the legal consequences.

Eight Stars

2006-08-16T17:58:00.000+01:00

As I recall, there were eight difficulty levels on the SNES version of Hyper Fighting. And that was tough. I've been so dismayed by people's assertions that the 360 version was impossible that I had a bash on the highest difficulty level last night, which is represented by only seven stars. That made sense to me, since generally I've found it to be much easier than I remember it being on the SNES. And as I expected, I raped it. I had to continue a few times on super-cheap Bison, obviously, since he can throw you from half a screen away and has priority on pretty much everything he does.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if you can't even manage the first round on the easiest difficulty level, you are utter cock at games and I've basically just shat in your mouth.

I'm deeply ashamed

2006-08-10T16:44:00.000+01:00

Recently, I've been playing - and enjoying - Tekken on the PSP. I'm really sorry about that, but it's ok! Because on the PSP it's not really Tekken anymore. It's not about the fighting system, which is basically total garbage for anyone who can remotely play fighting games. It's about the combos! And let's face it - Tekken does good combos.

When people say they enjoy playing Tekken, what they mean is they enjoy doing combos. They enjoy doing huge floating moves and then doing another combo on the way down. They like the big explosions and the sound effects and the pretty graphics. They enjoy the feeling of destroying two thirds of a bar of energy with only a minimal amount of understanding of where their fingers are and what they're doing. And that's fine. That's why it works so well on the PS2 - because you play it at home by yourself. That's why I gave Tekken on the PSP a shot. On the PSP it's a puzzle game. You can mess around with combos, try out a brazillion characters and unlock stuff. I even enjoyed unlocking Tekken Bowl! Which just goes to show - you can be one of the most technically-proficient development teams in the world, but you can still fuck up minigames.

I did get bored, though. Obviously. I mean - there's just too many characters! And each one has combos that are huge chains! Meaning to form any sort of defensive game (I say game) you need to memorise a lot of sequential shit. And learning that kind of shit, my chums, is BORING. So fuck it off.

Perhaps if the movesets had any sort of underlying logic to them, I might have been able to learn about the system in general, and have a vague idea of how the AI liked to fight. Then I might have been able to put together a battle plan of some sorts. But hey, then you wouldn't get the diversity of character that Tekken players crave.

I don't know any Tekken players.

Also - I know your moveset is based on arcade controls but there really is NO FUCKING WAY to press right punch and left kick at the same time on the PSP. And the window for simultaneous button pressing is so narrow that even if I could get my fingers there, the rate of success for pressing those buttons together would be minimal, like when I try to throw or counter. So I have to assign keyboard shortcuts, which I hate. And I can only assign two of them. Surely it's not too much to ask to fiddle with the commands for some of the moves to make some characters even simply feasible on the PSP. I mean, I did read an interview with you, Mr Developer, in which you said you didn't want to make Tekken on the PSP unless you could make a fully-featured, real Tekken, and not some scaled down version. What you meant, though, was that you only wanted to make one if you could make everybody in the world sit up and say "holy SHIT look at the smooth scrolling on those graphics!" You failed. I can't do half of the fucking moves, you fucking cunt, and I'm not fucking bad with a pad. Sure, I prefer a stick, but I can fucking well play Street Fighter 2 on the 360 without crying to my mummy. I can even do the claw position, for index finger and thumb action on the face buttons. But I can't do half the moves in Tekken on the PSP.

But, you know, all of that aside, it's not bad for a few hours. It's a reasonable distraction. The character customisation is good for a bit, though I can't help but think that in Japan, absolutely everyone's Jin looks exactly the same. It's no VF, that's for sure. And there are a shit load of characters in it, so you feel like you've got your money's worth. I think. I obviously didn't pay for it. And it just feels so full to the brim with features! Which is what games should be - full of features.

Oh no, wait, I meant to say I FUCKING HATE THE TEKKEN FIGHTING SYSTEM.

Thank God I didn't have to play it against anyone else.

Dead Rising is not the next GTA

2006-08-06T16:48:00.000+01:00

But it's lots of fun.

To be honest, it still could be. It's only that I can't really judge it on the strength of this slightly shit demo. I really wish those fucking cutscenes wouldn't end the demo and I seriously need longer endurance for that Katana.

It's fucking brilliant.

I also would have liked to have seen a slightly more capable player character, as his skillz aren't anywhere near as ill as I've seen on promo vids. This makes me cry, as I had VERY clear visions of being able to pull of a zombie version of Dynasty Warriors, which is kinda hinted at but never materialised for me. I cried and stuffed some arms into zombie mouths.

MORE BLOOD TOO PLEASE.

Feeling weak? Let daddy help.

2006-08-04T17:25:00.000+01:00

Can't do the special moves? Complaining about the dpad? WELL BOO-FUCKING HOO. Go home to your mummy and cry you little cry baby mummy runner. The truth is, the AI in the Live Arcade version of Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting is significantly easier to deal with than it was when we played it on the SNES. If you can't get anywhere in single player it's because you're fucking rubbish. I'm not - I'm ace. I can do it all really well. Except for dragons, maybe, but you really don't need them against the computer anyway. It's not like it ever uses pressure wake-up tactics to force you to defend with a high-priority move. Not that you know what that means.

Here's how not to suck.

General tips -
Jumping vertically over fireballs destroys the offensive tactics of most of the fireball characters. They'll probably then jump at you, which is when you shit in their mouth.
If you are hammering the buttons, you are not blocking.
If you sweat a lot, wipe the pad before passing it on.

Playing as Ryu -
You probably consider yourself to be a True Fighting-Games Player. You think nobody understands you. You think that fighting games and martial arts are the same thing, and that your skill in fighting games would translate into real fighting skills if only you'd take up actual martial arts. But you never will, because you wank too much in your bedroom when you think your family can't hear you. But they can. And it gets them off.
Crouching HP is amazing for all jumping opponents bar Vega, but only because you just don't have time. Guile might come off better 50 per cent of the time, but that's it.
Buffered combos are brilliant, but you probably can't do them, because you're fucking rubbish. Settle for crouching HK and then do another when the computer is trying to get up.
Playing against Ryu -
Just jump over his fireballs and then HK into crouching HK. If he's nailing you with dragons then you're not timing the jumps properly, probably because you suck. I don't suck, obviously, because I'm brilliant.

Playing as Ken -
You're a bit like a Ryu player only wankier. You think that the flaming Dragon Punch is amazing, and that Ryu players are boring. You only download ass porn.
Playing as Ken is the same as playing as Ryu.
Playing against Ken -
He's an idiot. He'll start doing loads of fireballs or loads of dragons, and seldom mixes it up. Jump early if he starts a fireball series and nail him on the way in. If he's hitting you with a dragon before you land, even when you hit him, you're kicking too early. That's probably because you're SCARED like a little girl. Get your mummy to beat him.
If he's doing dragons then just hit him on the way down with a meaty HP. Don't wait and try and do a buffered combo - you'll only fuck it up.

Playing as E Honda -
You want to be different. You despise society and grow your hair long, but only on one side. You probably know what the word Emo means. Your mum has caught you wanking but it turned you on, and mashing on the pad for the Hundred Hand Slap is the closest you can get to recreating that feeling.
LP headbutt rules supreme. It's easy to do on the pad and the start up is practically invincible. Charge through everything. HP headbutt is good too. Always use 100 Hand Slap on them as they get up. Don't bother with anything else. He's rubbish. Some people will tell you about his good range and all that, but really, fuck off. Are you gonna play an agile game of footsie/distance? With that controller? Exactly. Spam the fucking head butt and hand slap.
Playing against E Honda -
Jump back or up a lot and do HK on the way down. Works with most characters.

Playing as Chun Li -
You are a paedophile. You think that telling everyone that you like Chun Li because you can see her knickers somehow masks your true deviancy, but we would never film you looking after our children.
You'll jump around a lot and get nailed. Try to knock people down with sweeps and then do hundred foot kick when they wake up. Never bother with Spinning Bird Kick. Actually, I can't really explain my superior tactics to the likes of you. I win a lot with her but I don't know how to describe it in n00b terms. She has insane air priority but when she's up there she doesn't come down forever.
Playing against Chun Li -
Jump up over her fireballs and then when she jumps in, do HP to nail the silly cow. Or whatever your anti-air is. As she falls back screaming, walk up and do a crouching HK as she tries to get up. Like you would with a real girl, only there's no option to shit in her mouth in any sense other than a metaphorical one.

Playing as Blanka -
When people shit in your mouth, you like it.
Do the spinning thing a lot, and do the electricity when they wake up. His crouching HP is fiercesome and his jump is fast enough to get over most fireballs and nail the HK. Don't spin into Ken or Ryu, though, cos a successful dragon sucks your energy down fast.
Playing against Blanka -
When he walks back, he's going to spin. Jam on LP with most characters to nail him on the way in. Fireball as he backs off for rubbish chip damage that makes you hate yourself for doing it, but really, there's not much better you can do under the circumstances. That's if you can even fireball. I can, because I'm brilliant. Never jump into him and never throw a fireball at him unless he's the entire screen away. As he comes at you he will jump, so just stick out an HP. Crouching HP with Ryu and Ken, obviously. Well, it's obvious to me.

Playing as Zangief -
You are a gay lol.
Jump a SHIT LOAD. Jumping HK is a beast. So is crouching HK. Do the 3xP and 3xK to beat people jumping in IF you're crouching. They'll kick late so it works. It doesn't work if you're standing cos they kick early and you eat their shit. Don't bother even TRYING the piledriver - you'll fuck it up. Jamming on LP is good for lots of things, but none of those things do much damage.
Playing against Zangief -
He is one cheap mother fucker. Shit in his mouth by jumping up or back and doing HK at random points. The moment you land already be pressing up for the next jump. Don't jump into him. If you catch him with an HK on the way down, do a crouching HK or MK to push him back. Just keep him away, cos he'll grab you out of anything cos he's a TOTAL CUNT.
If he takes to the air as well, kick mega early.

Playing as Dhalsim -
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Playing against Dhalsim -
Do hurricanes, air hurricanes, and jump super early for the HK win. If your character doesn't have hurricanes then use other tactics.

Playing as Guile -
You are the cheapest mother fucker in the world. You skank people by mixing up medium sweep with relentless Sonic Booms. You're diagonally charging for both sonic boom and flash kick and no-one can get near you. The recovery on Sonic Boom is non existent, so you do another medium sweep when they're being hit. Everyone hates you. Fuck off.
Playing against Guile -
What a TOTAL cheap cunt. Walking forward and doing Flash Kick. Firing a hundred Sonic Booms at once. Walking up and THROWING YOU when you're trying to play defensively. Beating you in the air unless you're Chun Li, and if you're Chun Li you're fucked anyway. Do a lot of vertical jumping. Never attack him unless you have an invincibility cheat on. If he walks up to you, throw the odd crouching LK to stop him from throwing you. If you're Ryu or Ken, crouching MK into fireball to push him back enough to start the whole sorry process again. Occasionally when jumping back or up you'll get a lucky HK in. That's pretty much it. At higher difficulty levels he'll just walk up and do the Flash Kick on you, BECAUSE HE'S A TOTAL AND UTTER CUNT.

Playing as Balrog -
What, the boxer? Or do you mean the Spanish guy? Oh, look at me, I'm so fucking hardcore I know the original Japanese names so I'll refer to the boxer as M. Bison, cos everyone knows he's supposed to be Mike Tyson really. Now we're all confused.
Are you playing the Japanese version? I DON'T THINK SO. Get your own fucking tips for playing as this guy.
Playing against Balrog -
Hurricane Kicks will beast this guy. If you're another character then do something else that works.

Playing as Vega -
You're probably actually quite good at this game. You can build a solid ground game and don't mind the speed of the jump. You don't need any tips.
Playing against Vega -
Wait for the screen-border jump and then nail crouching HP with Ken or Ryu. Piece of piss. If you're not Ryu or Ken, most standing HPs will work.

Playing as Sagat -
You think you're a dude. You've got fireballs and dragons down pat and you think that becoming Sagat will show that you're more technical. You watch yourself in the mirror when you wank. Though, to be fair, who doesn't? I don't like Sagat players, so again, fuck off.
Playing against Sagat -
He is BORING. Jump over his stupid TI-GER! shots and hammer him with HK into crouching HK. If he goes mental on a rush down, which doesn't happen often, just sit and block until he goes into Tigers and shit in his mouth.

Playing M. Bison -
You're lazy. You know you want to play Street Fighter II against your mates but you don't know any moves. You don't know how to play the game. You've learnt about charge up moves and you think that M. Bison must be the most powerful because he's the boss. Annoyingly, you're right. You can win by spamming the Flaming Torpedo, timing (by accident) to cross up on wake up. Those words don't even mean anything to you. You have almost no honour, being out-cheaped only by Guile players. You hardly ever finish your wanks because you can't really be bothered.
Playing against M. Bison -
Jumping up and back with HK works a surprising amount. Always follow up a successful HK with a crouching HK If he does that head stomping thing rejoice. Block and then hammer him with HP on the way down. If he tries to walk up and throw, which he'll do a lot, you're probably fucked. Watch as he throws you while you're dragoning, which is definitely a real world. If you try to sweep, you'll get that big kick in your face from Dhalsim range. If he does the roll over kick and you're in the corner and he hits you, you die.

In conclusion -
You will notice I recommend that you just jump up and back and hammer HK a lot, and not jump forward. That is not really tactical finesse, but let's face it - you're fucking shit at SF2. I'm not. I'm brilliant. That's why I'm writing the guide and you're touching your willy. Well, I'm touching my willy too, but while I write the guide. That's how good I am.

Saints Row

2006-08-03T19:29:00.000+01:00

I ran over lots of people, killed some pimps and stole their prostitutes.

Then I went and bought some drugs.

Shame it's not really that much fun.

To be honest, I only downloaded it in an attempt to plug the gaping hole in my psyche that's been carved by the ferocious anticipation I'm experiencing over the prospect of a Dead Rising demo.

I reckon Dead Rising could be the new GTA - an ambassador to the mainstream of how fun videogames for geeks can be. It's a pity that Saints Row is five years late to the party, really.

Hello readers!

2006-07-31T17:42:00.000+01:00

And I really mean that! I'm not just saying it because me and Boss Nonnu were accosted by a legion of fans at a party on Saturday night. That's right! Two very personable and dignified young chaps told us, after meeting us for the first time, that not only did they read this blog, they actually enjoyed it! And I didn't even bring it up - they did!

I know!

I didn't bother trying to remember their names - I would only have embarrassed myself five minutes later, as I forget absolutely everyone's name the first hundred times I meet them. Instead I enjoyed their excellent jokes about syphilis. One of them even looked like a young John Travolta! Imagine that! John Travolta reading this blog!

I know!

I don't know why I'm so pleased. I bet literally hundreds of people read this blog. I mean, look how many exclams we use! More than anyone else!

I know!

I took a picture of them, which I'll post later. In the meantime, here's a teaser for my next STUNNING post about things that would blow the ass and mind of an ordinary blogger -

Coming soon - the DEFINITIVE Disgaea 2 review.

Pretty good, eh? And I didn't even get paid $12 for it. I don't care though, I'm still buzzing off my newly-found celebrity status. This must be what being in The Triforce feels like, only better looking.

Cloning Clyde

2006-07-28T11:58:00.000+01:00

Cloning Clyde is AMAZING.

It's also a bit average. But for an average game, it's amazing. I think it's Live Arcade that does this to me. Maybe it's about the money being spent justifying an average game's escalation into brilliance. I really enjoy Cloning Clyde, and four-player co-up with mutants thrown into the mix and chicken kicking is maybe the funniest thing I've ever done, but having an axe fight in Animal Crossing DS is a pretty close second, which I think says a lot about the game's appeal.

It's definitely worth 800pts, though. Or however much I paid for it. I don't even know.

It's nowhere near as good as Disgaea 2, though. Obviously.

Warning: non-games post ahead

2006-07-25T12:41:00.000+01:00

I have had lots of conversations with lots of people about martial arts. Many people with little or no experience in the field often believe they are right about many, many things that they obviously don't understand. I think this is something to do with the nature of fighting, and of the way many people need to believe they are badass in some way in order to feel good about their pathetic existence. I am obviously one such person, only instead of being wrong, I'm right. Some of these people attend an hour-long class in a gym practicing some system or another and then tell their friends "oh yeah, I do system X." These people will say things like "Thai Boxing is the most effective system for street-fighting" or "Tae Kwon Do is just kicking" even though they've never attended a class in either under an instructor who knows what he's doing (a rare commodity in London). And even if you've attended a class, you've still no right to comment on the merits of a system unless you truly understand it, which seldom happens in a class or two. Like Akira says, you're ten years too early.

These people are, by and large, normal, intelligent, rational people. So when they tell me with conviction that they're right and that I'm wrong, even though they clearly have no idea what they're talking about, I am often dismayed. I wish that wasn't so, since their view is so inconsequential, but the magnitude by which they are wrong is so great, sometimes my brain spasms from the conclusions they have reached. So, in an effort to cast a +5 banishment spell on these idiotic ideas I will put down here some stone cold facts that seem pretty fucking obvious to me, even though Real Actual People try to tell me otherwise, despite my having spent more than half a lifetime in training.

Fact 1 - all martial arts are offensive. This seems irrefutable to me. Someone attacks you, you break them, they stop attacking. The only purely defensive maneuver is to run away. I did read about an interesting system once that someone had created that consisted solely of moves that get your body into a position where you can run away. Now THAT was purely defensive. If someone is set on attacking you, the only way to stop them is to beat them down. I've never heard of anyone blocking their way out of a situation and I've not heard of any systems that consist of only blocks. And even then, that's attacking their limbs.

Fact 2 - the fastest way to develop power is not to refine your technique - it's to put on weight. Admittedly, the muscle kind is better than the fat kind, but really, either will do. Technique takes years, muscle takes weeks.

Fact 3 - there is no such thing as a purely soft art or purely hard art. All systems have aspects of both, but in varying degrees. Even Tai Chi has striking.

Fact 4 - it's not the system, it's the person practicing that determines the effectiveness of a fighter.

Fact 5 - the terms karate and kung fu refer to families of martial arts and are not systems in themselves in any sense other than as very broad categorisations.

Fact 6 - all striking systems are pretty much the same, at their core level. This is because the human body can only effectively produce force in so many ways. Spinning is one, straight line movement is another.

Fact 7 - not all fights go to the ground. Most one-on-one fights do, sure, but I've not been in, or seen, a one-on-one fight for a very long time. Going to the ground when you're outnumbered is effectively death.

Fact 8 - the assumption that some martial arts have no spiritual aspect to them, or that some are more spiritual than others, is wrong. Spiritual cultivation, for lack of a better term, is not something that you get taught straight away, or possibly even ever. It's a natural by-product of devoting yourself completely and utterly to any one thing. Martial arts practice tends to bing that out in people, so you find that strange spiritual dedication in the martial arts world a great deal, but in my experience you also find it in athletics, cooking, fishing, drivingÂ in any sphere of human performance, really.

Fact 9 - training just once or twice a week is pretty much useless for anything other than having fun. In which case - I hope you're not in my class because you are bringing down the quality of the teaching, overall, since your casual fucking namby pamby needs are being catered for while I'm supposed to learning how to be badass. However, I acknowledge the merits of having people like you in my class, because it makes the prices of a class financially viable, which is in my interests. But if you're in it to actually learn a system, you are failing.

Fact 10 - none of it really matters anyway. Nobody really fights anymore, everyone has knives or guns and yes - a knife will probably fuck you unless you are AMAZING and the other guy is an idiot. Even if they don't have weapons, they will have friends. And nobody fights with honour, so it's all about surprising the other guy and getting in the first hit. Then it's over. And thinking about it, you don't really want to hurt anyone, do you?

Fact 11 - you should never go beyond 10 facts in a list.

Disclaimer - the author of this article is not actually much cop in a fight and has played more Street Fighter II than anything else. But he'll still take you on.

Things that Affectionate Diary loves

2006-07-21T17:27:00.000+01:00

120 stars
100 coins
3 lives
Mid-level bosses
Options
Head shots
Why am I so great?
You're ten years too early
Million-plus scores
Blogs about NGJ
You rock!
The Rule of Lefts
Character customisation
Pause
Hi-def
Sanwa
+4 frame advantage
Catching 'em all
Multiplayer
Videogames
Video Games
Computer Games
Megaton
w00t
1337
pwned
Angelus car
Max Chain
Quad damage
Defibrillator kills
Destroy the humanoid
Engine notes
Enter your name
Select star sign
Weapon shops
Over The Distance
Knife kills
Replays with lots of selectable camera angles
Wall jumps
Melee kills
Mix-e-lode
Multipliers
Reversals
Chains
Combos
Counterattacks
STR
ATK
DEF
HP
Dark Assembly
Randomly generated
Moloading
Space Michael
Attention!
Lord Baal
Dood!
!
Megablast
Co-op
Championship
Hyper
Super
Alpha
Zero
C-C-C-Combo breaker!
Buffering
ECD
ARE
Mission complete
8-way directional shooting
Ninja Dog
Yellow Solvalu
Ready Steady Go
Sniper rifles
M-m-m-m monster kill!
Welcome to violent city!
E-X-T-E-N-D
C4 jeep bombs
Now is time to the 68000 heart on fire!
Easily unlockable costumes
Night vision
Desert eagles
Kempston interface
Shots cannot hurt other players... yet!
Tango down
Load ""
Middleware physics
Ten Foot Toss
The beast Lu-Bu
Spectravideo Quickshot 2
Somebody's right on your tail!
MOS 6581 Sound Interface Device
Lasers
Where might I find some sailors?
Competition Pro
OSSU!
Super Nashwan
Datel Action Replay
Rampant ninja related crimes these days
Euromax Pro
Multiface
SYS4096
100 bananas
100-trick combos
3-hit combos
Yoho>low punch>shoulder ram>double palm
Levelling up
Brutal Deluxe
Oh! My Car!
Azura's Star
Tera Star
Omega Fire
Braveheart
Giga Heal
Nazi enemies
Winners don't do drugs
Perfect!
You win
You lose
Game over, yeah
Thank you for playing

Dark World 1-4

2006-07-21T13:35:00.000+01:00

Insane levelling of healers!

Man! I'm still buzzin' off a fifteen minute blast of PURE MATHS.

Dr Mario

2006-07-18T13:12:00.000+01:00

A video games addiction clinic has just opened in Amsterdam, according to the internet. And they can totally 100 per cent right to the bone fuck off.

What exactly is going on behind these doors to the poor children who, starved of love or social acceptance, turn to the only thing in their life that doesn't hold them down and shit in their mouth? Are they being robbed of the only thing in their life that makes life worth living in order to meet the accepted criteria for what we consider to be a normal healthy life? Where will they turn then? What will lift them from their lives of misery and the day to day humdrum existence of modern man? Books? Books are failing us. Isaac Asimov is dead, replaced by Dan Brown. The equivalent of Nippon Ichi being replaced by - ugh - Criterion.

When I was a young boy I turned to games to get me through life. Without games I would surely be insane by now. I would have easily qualified for the heaviest, most intense program at any clinic designed to beat the love of games out of the likes of me. Easy 16-bit software piracy meant I had every game, and I played every game. Super Sprint to Super Cars, Rampage to Rampart, Dungeon Master to Bloodwych, you name it, I sunk hours of my life into it. My mother barely noticed. As long as she was left in peace to hit the bottle or watch East Enders everything must be going fine. If not, here's the belt. Kids won't play with me in the street because my mum has at some point assaulted their mum. We're shunned, the only ethnics in town. There's nowhere to turn. I've read every book in the school library and there's nothing left to do. My saviour - a father kept away by a restraining order, with a healthy wallet and only twice a year to prove he loves his kids - brings on the games.

If I hadn't had games in those days, I really don't know what I would be doing now. I might be in jail, like loads of kids I went to school with who simply had nothing to do with their lives in that small town. Or perhaps just at home, sat in front of the telly, waiting to die. But I'm not. I play a lot of games, sure - in excess of twenty hours a week, every week, but I also enjoy my life immensely. I enjoy learning, and pushing myself. Years of gaming have sharpened my mind and now I simply can't sit idly while things are going on around me. I need new experiences. I need to feel like I'm achieving something. I need to feel that sense of elation that only comes with the sensation of realising a degree of competence. That, in my mind, is living. And that, in my life, is still going strong thanks to my time with games.

If your child is spending 40 hours a week with games, be they 10 or 30 years old, ask yourself why. Is everything around them so bad that gaming is the best thing they have? If so, don't take it away from them. Give them something better. Sending them to a clinic to cure them can't help. It's not your child's failing, though it's maybe yours. And hey, it could be a lot worse. They could be out their face on crack each night, or robbing people in the street. There's plenty of that where I live now, and I can't help but think that if they all had Xbox 360s at home there'd be a lot less crime.

People need to live. Games allow that when often, families don't. I realise this is my experience, and it's just one of many, and possibly some kids need some serious help, but like with all other youth-problems there are more serious issues to deal with before the problem goes away. Gaming addiction is not a problem worthy of the resources being thrown at it.

Except WoW players, who are all fucked up in the head, obviously.

Diss Gayer Too

2006-07-11T20:09:00.000+01:00

I sat in on Suki's lunchtime session today.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOLY FUCK THIS GAME IS AMAZING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

However, I sadly doubt I'll do it the justice it deserves when I can get my hands on a PAL copy. I'll be fucking up zombies or racing sportscars around an Hawaiian island. As stupefyingly wicked as Disgaea 2 is, I know the flashy shit will pull me away.

WHAT I DEMAND IS A DS VERSION. IMMEDIATELY.

The Dark World

2006-07-11T13:29:00.000+01:00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOLY SHIT THIS GAME IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Starting over

2006-07-11T12:42:00.000+01:00

Last night I transmigrated five of my guys. For the Nippon Ichi uninitiated that simply means killing a character off and then reincarnating them at lvl 1, with rubbish stats and minimal skills. I keep all the sick gear I've been collecting/upgrading, though, and if I change the character type (which I did) then I get to learn all new skills but keep some of the old ones. How much I keep depends on how much mana I spent, a currency earned by killing things.

This resetting of characters is unique to Nippon Ichi games, as far as I know, and is the reason why a good levelling strategy is so important, since you will constantly be training key characters back up to whatever level of enemies you're currently fighting. Each time a character resets they come back stronger, but allowing your characters to reach high levels before resetting also gives them more skills to retain (and in some cases, base stat increases). So it's a constant balancing process. Do I transmigrate now? Do I wait another five levels? Will I unlock Giga Heal if I do another item world before I reset? The choice is made largely according to your fighting style, which is why I love Nippon Ichi games so much.

Whenever I speak to another Disgaea player of Makai Kingdom player and I ask them what tactics they're using the answer is always completely different. Everyone finds their own way to progress in the game. I love that. I love that the system is complex enough to allow me to do what I want, how I want, and yet the entire game is essentially just manipulating stats. I remember when Boss Nonnu told me that everyone he talked to about Oblivion had their own stories of what happened to them in the beginning of their game. I think it's like that, but with +900 on the geek stat.

They fucked up Dynasty Warriors :(

2006-07-05T22:52:00.000+01:00

Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires on the 360 is fucked. It's so sad.

I absolutely adore the series, being a bit of a newcomer. I started at 4. Thing is, once you get someone into it, they often like it. Give them a fresh character and help them through a story mode and they fucking love it.

The big problem is that is has all this extra tactical shit. I don't want that. In the first battle of a fresh save, you don't appear to pick up items or weapons from officers you kill. I don't want that either. THIS IS ALL WRONG!

What I wanted was a simple, bigger, better update to DW5.

It's a shame because this could have been the chance for Dynasty Warriors to get a much wider audience. The six months in the life of a new console is a fertile time for promoting brands. The general selection of software is restricted, so players will be more likely to try brands and genres they wouldn't normally play. It's worked for Hitman on the 360.

I was feeling pretty low at this point. I found out how low when I couldn't take my custom character into the story mode, which is fatally tainted with the strategy stuff. TEARS. I was weeping openly.

In a last ditch attempt to prevent an imminent suicide, I gave the Free Mode a last go and after some cajoling, managed to bring my character to the battlefield.

Then, everything became wonderful. I was my custom character, but fighting with all the fury of the beast Lu Bu. Being able to assign any character's moveset to your creation is a stroke of genius.

10/10

It's still fucked, though.

On scarves

2006-07-04T18:07:00.000+01:00

Big scarves are fucking COOL. Viewtiful Joe had one, Shinobi had one, and now Adell has one. Kind of. I mean, Adell's is actually a tie that's huge but it goes round his neck and they're all from Japan, where the words for scarf and tie are the same, probably, so I'm basically right.

Japan is fucking brilliant. All the girls are 12, or dress like it, everyone can ninja and they make games like Disgaea 2. If Disgaea 2 was made in the States it would probably have the AWFUL American dialogue that they've added as the standard, and then the Japanese would add subtitles, so I would have no choice but to listen to Adell's re-imagined fucking awful whining voice. As it is, thanks to Beat Takeshi I can listen to them all in glorious Japanese. With English subtitles so that I can pretend I'm there with them, crushing monsters and calling for pizza on my cellphone. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've been able to call for pizza on a cellphone in a Japanese turn-based strat-RPG, which is another reason why it's better than Final Fantasy III.

There's also a flying frog thing that has split personalities and tries to hump chicks. The frog's name is Tiki or something. Hey Tiki, why are you walking funny? Because you have frog's legs? Don't say anything, everyone will want a fly in their soup!

Or something.

What I did at lunchtime

2006-07-04T14:29:00.000+01:00

So I went to the item world at lunch and I used my cellphone to call for pizza and instead the 38th Hero from Earth, a prinnie, totally flew in and KICKED SOME ASS for me and then I went to the 10th level to fight the boss and I fought him and killed him and then it took me to the specialist village where I met another prinnie who is now playing hide and seek in the item world with me and then I bought some hard liquor to make the councilors who are opposed to my proposal drunk so they would vote the wrong way when I try to make a strange old man and then I got out of the item world and pressed three switches in the hub but didn't unlock anything but I know something's going to happen soon so I'll keep on trying to press different things and trying different stuff and talking to people and I'll find something brilliant I just. Know. It.

Guitar, Herro!

2006-07-04T11:58:00.000+01:00

So I got an Epiphone G310. It's modelled on the Gibson SG, the guitar replicated in the Guitar Hero controller. It's completely black, though I'm told changing the scratch plate for a white one is a piece of piss. I'm going to learn to play not because I'm having a mid-life crisis, thank you, but because playing the game has imbued me with a newfound sense of appreciation for guitar music.

Although that sounds stupid coming from someone approaching their 30th year, it's actually not that surprising. I've spent most of my life deeply entrenched in the dance music scene. I've been as niche as I can possibly manage, refusing to listen to only very specific sub-genres of dance music. As a result, I've really not heard any of The Who's music before. I didn't know any of the groups behind the songs in Guitar Hero beyond David Bowie and Franz Ferdinand. I actually hadn't listened to ANY of Jimi Hendrix's amazing guitar work till now.

That my musical epiphany has been brought about by a video game shouldn't really surprise me. How else was something going to penetrate my ultra-focussed life? It wouldn't be the first time a video game has changed my life either - when PGR came out I found myself driving round London endlessly, revisiting parts of the city I hadn't realised I missed as much as I did. Shortly afterwards I moved back to London.

And I'm going to be amazing on guitar. I have to be. I won't settle for anything less. Not just because of my strong competitive streak, though I'm going to capitalise on that and revel in my need to win. I'm going to dedicate myself to the process of mastering this instrument, however long it takes, because to do anything less would be to disrespect the music that I've found and the passion that has found me. I'm told it's the journey we make that's important, not the destination. I think that applies to this.

More scores

2006-07-03T23:57:00.000+01:00

Makai Kingdom style easing in - 7 out of 10 (with Disgaea being 4 out of 10)
Hub world graphics pointing towards something mysterious and sexy to come - 8 out of 10
Interface - cleaner out of 10 but also less detailed out of 10
Lead character - big scarf out of 10
Plot - largely irrelevant out of 10
Overlords - definitely getting conquered out of 10
System changes - Disgaea out of 10
Hours played so far - 4.5 out of 200

Disgaea 2 - the definitive review

2006-07-03T15:14:00.000+01:00

Graphics - 1000 out of 10
Sound - 1000 out of 10
Playability - 1000 out of 10
Lastability - 1000 out of 10

Overall - 10000 out of 10

I'll update this review with some words once I've played it.

IT'S MOTHER FUCKING HERE!!!

2006-07-03T12:05:00.000+01:00

Disgaea 2.

Life.

Is.

Over.

Disgaea 2 ACTUAL COUNTDOWN

2006-06-30T14:26:00.000+01:00

It's only in the fucking post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THREE DAYS TO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RUNNING OUT OF EXCLAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brain Training FAQ

2006-06-29T12:36:00.001+01:00

Are you stupid? Can't get your Brain Training score lower than 80? Eat your own shit for breakfast? Then this is the guide for you!

Each month I will help you score higher in a different minigame in the popular-but-ball-achingly-dull Prof Something's Brain Training, a game that shows that all the academics who hate games really want is fame and adulation. They couldn't care less about us!

This month's FAQ focuses on the mentally exhausting X20 Calculations minigame.

********************** TABLE OF CONTENTS **********************

I. Version History
II. Frequently Asked Questions
III. Calculations Basics
A. Addition Basics
B. Subtraction Basics
C. Multiplication Basics
IV Credits

I. Version History

Version 0.10 (29/06/2006): Began work on this guide. Outlined the sections, and started on the Version History section.
Version 0.20 (29/06/2006): More or less finished the Versions History section. I have the feeling, though, that I'm missing something there. Had a wank.
Version 0.30 (29/06/2006): Finished wanking.
Version 0.35 (29/06/2006): Thought about the Addition Basics section. Seems like a lot of hassle. Can't think of anything funny to blog about, though.
Version 0.40 (29/06/2006): Started on Addition. This'll take a while, I think. Harder than I initially predicted.
Version 0.50 (29/06/2006): Addition section is proceeding. Added a FAQs section.
Version 0.60 (29/06/2006): Removed FAQ section.
Version 0.70 (29/06/2006): Listened to radio.
Version 0.80 (29/06/2006): Played with knob a bit. Unable to muster enough strength to have another wank so soon after completion of previous one.
Version 0.90 (29/06/2006): Searched net for pictures of Keeley Hazell. Some luck!
Version 0.91 (29/06/2006): Wanked.
Version 0.92 (29/06/2006): Did Subtraction section.
Version 1.00 (29/06/2006): Did multiplication section.
Version 1.01 (29/06/2006): Thought about a third wank.
Version 1.10 (29/06/2006): Boss has complained that I am wanking in the office too much.
Version 1.10a (29/06/2006): Added a FAQs section. Thought about if that should have read "an FAQs section".

II. Frequently Asked Questions

Q. It doesn't register my handwriting, why is that?
A. You are using the Japanese version. Try writing the answers in Japanese.

Q. It doesn't understand what I am saying, why is that?
A. You are using the Japanese version and speaking in English. Try speaking in Japanese. If this proves difficult, swap all the L and R sounds around for maximum scores.

Q. Can I reproduce this guide anywhere?
A. No, you fucking dickwad, I rely on this shit to put food on my plate. How would you like it if I walked into your house, shat in your mouth and had sex in your wife's bottom? Exactly.

III. Calculations Basics

A. Addition Basics

0+1 = 1
0+2 = 2
0+3 = 3
0+4 = 4

And so on. If you substitute any of the numbers for any other numbers, adjust your calculations accordingly.

B. Subtraction Basics

Subtraction is one of the four basic arithmetic operations; it is essentially the opposite of addition. Subtraction is denoted by an minus sign in infix notation.

The traditional names for the parts of the formula
c − b = a
are minuend (c) − subtrahend (b) = difference (a). The words "minuend" and "subtrahend" are virtually absent from modern usage; Linderholm charges "This terminology is of no use whatsoever." However, "difference" is very common.

Subtraction is used to model several closely related processes:
1. From a given collection, take away (subtract) a given number of objects.
2. Combine a given measurement with an opposite measurement, such as a movement right followed by a movement left, or a deposit and a withdrawal.
3. Compare two objects to find their difference. For example, the difference between $800 and $600 is $800 − $600 = $200.

In mathematics, it is often useful to view or even define subtraction as a kind of addition, the addition of the opposite. We can view 7 − 3 = 4 as the sum of two terms: seven and negative three. This perspective allows us to apply to subtraction all of the familiar rules and nomenclature of addition. Subtraction is not associative or commutative— in fact, it is anticommutative— but addition of signed numbers is both.

C. Multiplication Basics

Remembering 9's
What's 9 x 7 ? Use the 9-method! Hold out all 10 fingers, and lower the 7th finger. There are 6 fingers to the left and 3 fingers on the right.
The answer is 63!
This method works with any numbers.

IV Credits

I would like to thank the author of Itsy and Shigsy for being a lazy fucking cunt and not doing any more strips. This blog has really gone downhill since he started playing Rumble Roses XX. Get your fucking cock out of your hand and get drawing. Jesus, we can't keep people reading when our ideas are as weak as this.

If I've missed something, please contact me at: affectionatediary@googlemail.com Unless you're a spammer, in which case PLEASE DON'T CONTACT ME!!!!!!!!!

(Oh, and in case you didn't get my little hint above--NO SPAM, PLEASE!!!!! I still hate spammers.)

(And if I've missed something then PLEASE! Read my FAQ first before you email me with your inane question. I have a life too, you know!!!)

1200 pts

2006-06-22T18:07:00.000+01:00

For GRAW's new content.

FUCK. OFF.

Battlefield 2: MC - the definitive review

2006-06-22T17:53:00.000+01:00

"Medic! Need healing."
"I have a health pack here, come over and I'll heal you."
"Medic! I said medic! Are there any medics here?"
"RIGHT HERE. I'm HERE. There's a medic HERE. Let me HEAL YOU."
"Where's the fucking medic! I need healing! Why won't anyone answer me?!"
"I'M RIGHT FUCKING HERE YOU DICK, STAY STILL SO I CAN HEAL YOU."
"Jesus, no need to shout. I've been calling for ages."

And so it goes on. The dance of irregularly failing voice comms is just one of the many quirks that makes Battlefield 2 on the 360 that little bit realer. That little bit more chaotic. That little bit more, well, shit, I suppose. And I hate it for that. I hate it for having shit voice comms that drop in and out, and the erratic ranking system, no option to set up private games (clan games definitely don't count), for allowing the players to vote on which maps it wants to do (Backstab again?) and for the total lack of community support on the official forums.

But - BUT - I also fucking love it. I love laying mines, I love running behind my team mates and healing them, I love never being the engineer, I love moving from cover to cover, I love war. I love war. I never thought I'd say that. I've always taken a stand against war games because, well, they're so dull to look at. And BF2 is dull to look at, for sure. But it puts me there, in combat with my friends, moving from point to point trying to seize the upper hand, and it makes it fun, somehow. And it all feels quite real. Obviously not that real since actual war is rubbish. No respawns, no health pack, tons of camping, friendly fire if you pick the American side and nobody lets you fly the chopper.

Scores -

Tanks - 3 out of 10. Because I drive it into a bush and it blows up. Fuck off.
Choppers - 2 out of 10. Because everyone else is invincible in them and I can't fly them without making a detour into a building.
Engineers - 1 out of 10. Because they have NO splash damage on the bazookas you fucking idiots! Well, ok, some, but not much. Fucking hell, why is everyone an engineer?
Support - 9 out of 10. Air strikes and healing? HELL YEAH *whoop whoop*
Backstab - bored out of 10.
The oil rig level - 9 out of 10. Hold the bridge! Chuck grenades in! Dude, protect my back! Dude! Dude? Dude!
The graphics - 3 out of 10.
Community support via the forums - minus a million out of six billion.
Voice comms - a negative mark so low, it breaks the laws of mathematics
Protecting your homies' backs - 11/10
Cantonese voices on the Mandarin-speaking Chinese soldiers - ignorant Americans out of 10.
Playability - 10 out of 10
Lastability - infinite replayability
Addictingness - 9 out of 10
Lag - absolutely no lag out of 10

Overall (an average of the scores) - 12 out 10 when it's working, 2 out of 10 when it's not.

Shitting and thinking

2006-06-22T11:55:00.000+01:00

I sat there last night, on the toilet, trying and failing. So I picked up my toilet book, A Brief History of Nearly Everything, and I flicked through. Realising I always did that I went straight to the first page to guarantee I got something I hadn't read recently, and started on Bill Bryson's reasonable attempt at portraying the scale of the universe. As he moved from protons to solar systems, my brain struggled to comprehend just how big everything is, and how small everything is. It really is impossible. But I tried, and tried, and tried, and then EUREKA! My bowels exploded in a symphony of plopping delight.

Bill Bryson really knows how to get shit out. I don't recommend reading his books unless your trousers are already down.

Disgaea

2006-06-20T17:57:00.000+01:00

I finally got my copy back from a friend last night. Although I've lost my 100+ hours save I still have the urge to play this game. A quick hour of running through the tutorials last night to re-acquaint myself with the system before Disgaea 2 arrives has made me think a couple of things.

Firstly, I now think Makai Kingdom is the best place to start your Nippon Ichi journey. The way it eases you in, the streamlined system, the slightly more 'casual' metagame (though casual is definitely not a word I'd use to describe it outside of this comparison) and freedom of party development all make Makai Kingdom the better starting point. Which is kind of a shame, since by the time it came out most people had either decided Nippon Ichi games weren't for them or they'd already learned things the hard way (ie playing Disgaea first).

Secondly, I'd forgotten how bewildering Disgaea is. How did this game score so highly across the board when it's so impenetrable from the start? Did everyone understand it better than I did? Or was everyone content to play the game with only minimal understanding? Or, did we all think we got it after 10 hours and it's only now, with 250+ Nippon Ichi hours under my belt, that I have begun to realise the genius at work.

Retro [Gamer]

2006-06-19T19:56:00.000+01:00

This month's issue of Retro Gamer has something very wrong.

A Jaguar article.

It's not the subject that's wrong. That actually turns out to be moderately fascinating. The wrongness is the fact that they appear to have printed a draft rather than the final copy. Either that or placing [random words in] brackets throughout [the article] is some brave, avant-garde assault on the aesthetic conventions of printed type.

I won't dwell on that as my real beef is something a lot more serious. Well, at least to me.

I like technical info. I can kind of understand it and when placed in the context of a good explanation, it helps me understand the hardware I play games on. This understanding makes the magic all the more magical, as it exposes the true scale of the effort programmers put in and bridges the gap between the real and abstract components of a videogame, bringing two previously disparate understandings together in some drug-crazed harmony inside my head.

I remember reading an old Edge article about the 3DO that went into the ram-to-video memory architecture in a depth that impressed me, mostly because I couldn't understand it. That had rarely happened to me in over a decade of reading videogame mags and I think that prompted my growing desire to understand the technical aspect of gaming hardware and software. Actually, I tell a lie. Tech Niche in Crash regularly stumped me, but that bit was never about games so fucking fuck off, ok?

SORRY.

This Jaguar article skimps on the technical detail to a depressing degree. In the sole paragraph dedicated to the technology that makes the Jaguar such an oddity, the claim is made that the machine contained true 64-bit chips. However, we are not told how the chips were 64 bit and instead are told more about the Motorola 68000, but in a tone that suggests it was custom silicon itself, rather than a staple processor of the 16-bit age. They even left out the mandatory fact/legend that the 68000 became THE processor of choice for washing machines. Instead of a technical overview of the Jaguar's exotic innards, we're told that a 64-bit chip from 1993 is rubbish compared to a 32-bit chip from today, again without any explanation of why!

The problem here is that the lingering 64-bit question is resolved by having a programmer saying "yes! It is 64-bit!". The custom DSP chips are not explained in any way, nor are any of the juicy tidbits like the hardware bugs, which are briefly referenced in the most simple terms possible. Much is made of the Jaguar's power when programmed correctly, but none of the claims are backed up with reference to the hardware's capabilities. I'm left knowing nothing new about the hardware, having read less information that I'd get on the console's own sales sheet.

I know it's a massive geek-out to want that kind of info, but to me it's a fascinating glimpse into the darker, mysterious underbelly of videogames. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to read something in a videogaming mag that's out of his depth. It's not as if Retro Gamer can't get the info (people have reversed engineered gaming hardware to death in the race for universal emulation) and we can understand it if we read it enough times and ask some really geeky people on the internet.

Gimme the geek knowledge!

It's a fucking magazine about old games. It's already broken the geek barrier about a million fucking times so wtf?!?!

Things

2006-06-16T12:31:00.000+01:00

I bought my first 360 dashboard theme last night from Live Arcade. 150 pts. The Street Fighter II one, obviously. What a TOTAL ripoff. A couple of average-at-best pictures in the background and a colour change on the blades? RUBBISH. I have about a million better SF2 pics on my PC and from various guides over the years. There is some amazing artwork out there, which Capcom must surely own the rights to.

Also, is that what themes are? Background pics with colour changes? I had hoped for the graphic on the blades to change at least. You know, instead of a simple straight-ish line sliding over the screen I want Ken doing a dragon punch, or Blanka spinning. That's worth spending money on. Not changing the colours. Cunts.

The gamer pics are good, I suppose. Pretty cheap for something that should basically be free with the game. I'd like to see elite gamer pics. You know, if you hit five million in Geometry Wars you get a special gamer pic so that everyone knows you're just better. Maybe they exist already and I just haven't seen them. I mean, I have, obviously, I just choose not to show them. I HAVE A BIG WILLY TOO.

Also - Battlefield 2 Modern Combat has been patched. Some changes have been made that were annoying the community, apparently, and they fixed the voice comms problem. Only they didn't. You STILL can't hear what anyone is saying half the time. They just removed the fucking graphic that lets you know someone is speaking. What a total con. I only realised because my friend called me up and said "I'm standing next to you shouting, can't you hear me?" No I fucking well can't. At this rate we'll have to play Perfect Dark Zero. And nobody wants that.
And while I'm on BF2, there has been absolutely zero community support on the official forums since April. Cunts.

It's ok to call an entire corporation a cunt, I think, but I'd better not call Nick Pateman a cunt, or he'll close us down LOL

TDU: The original and best view

2006-06-15T21:05:00.000+01:00

In the demo, there's an option to turn up the sensitivity of the steering. I did this and I reckon my car got much nippier. I still found things a bit unresponsive at super high speed, though. Another thing that's still fucking me up is going off the road, but that's mostly because I'm too used to the likes of Burnout, Ridge Racer and PGR3.

I'M GOING TO KEEP THE FAITH IN THIS ONE.

Hopefully enough people have complained about the handling that it'll get tweaked before release.

Jesus Suki, you're such a fucking pessimist.

Disgaea 2 countdown - day 27

2006-06-15T13:05:00.000+01:00

Seriously, where the fuck is it? I want it BAD. I need it. I need a screen full of stats that look boring but actually offer me REAL ULTIMATE POWER over my team, how it works, how I play the game and how I RAPE bad guys for exp. and dollar$, yo.

Expression of oneself through mathematics. It doesn't get any sexier than that.

Test Drive Unlimited - the other view

2006-06-14T11:19:00.000+01:00

I played the Test Drive Unlimited demo too last night, and I think my opinion of the game is different enough to Boss Nonnu's to justify a second post on the demo.

First off, Boss is WRONG. And not just the regular "in the head" wrong. I mean, he's wrong about the handling. A full push of the stick in TDU has the same effect as about a half push of the stick in every other driving game I've ever played. He's right in saying that at top speeds you wouldn't turn violently and cause your car to crash (unless you were trying to kill yourself). He's wrong, though, about thinking that that means that the developers should remove that choice for you. Real cars don't deactivate the steering wheel's more excessive movements at top speed. You just don't turn the wheel all the way at 100mph. So likewise, in the game I don't push the stick all the way when I get to 100mph. Or at least, I didn't in any driving game ever (bar maybe Outrun 2 and the odd rallying title) until Test Drive Unlimited. It's like riding a bike with stabilisers on, and it makes any sort of exciting maneuvering redundant. I know I'm a PGR3 whore but come on. I'm no elite driver. Surely most of us are capable of pushing the stick only half way in. That's what analogue is all about. You might as well assign the steering to the dpad.

Secondly, Boss is WRONG. About the experience making the car change characteristics as you progress. Initially, when he told me this idea I thought, sure, why not? As I considered things further, however, I realised that this idea is batshit insane. Sure, it might *mimic* the process of skill development in some way, but it also retards that very process that it's trying to emulate. One of the primary factors in physical gaming skill is muscle memory. A game's control system must remain solid and constant in order for your body to get used to it and, eventually, perform delicate and precise movements naturally and without deliberation. If the variables are changing all the time then it becomes really difficult to build up that feel for the controls. Boss Nonnu's system would only restrict movement in the beginning and then slow down the process of learning how the game controls in the long run.

Also, I thought the sound of the engines was just "ok", but I don't really have a phat system hooked up to my 360 anymore, so I'm not really capable of commenting on that. And I didn't take out the Exige, which Boss tells me sounds like sex.

All in, my time with the demo has saddened me and made me less excited about what is an incredible game on paper. I love the whole concept of a persistent island populated with other drivers, and roaming around looking for races, and I can forgive the choppy framerate in the out-of-car view and the ugliness of the scenery. I can even forgive the shocking lack of damage to your car, allowing you to drive into traffic at 150mph and completely wreck it yet drive away unscathed. But I can't forgive the horrible handling, which represents roughly 90 per cent of the joy I find in any driving game.

Horses for courAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH THIS GAME IS SHIT AND IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EXCELLENT.

Vrehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

2006-06-13T22:31:00.000+01:00

That's the word that lingers in my mind after playing the Test Drive Unlimited demo.

Burning around a hawaiian island is lots of joy for me. So much so, I re-loaded the demo a good four times in a row the other day. That fucking time limit is a fucking disgrace, by the way. However, it looks like everything's going to be in place and it'll work. I'm definitely looking foward to going for a drive with my mates and parking up by the beach to take group photos.

The sound is fantastico. The Gallardo sounds fucking wicked as it reaches the high gears and the Exige is raw fucking sex with its supremely fierce trumpeting. Having a quick blast on PGR3 immediately afterwards is a bitter disappointment, but then I was always a bit upset with the transparency and thinness of PGR3's engine notes.

Someone I know said that the handling was non-existent. I think he's confusing PGR3 for a simulator.

Mind you, I only accept the unresponsiveness at high speed because it feels like that's the way it really would be if I was driving a car like that.

It occurs to me that for a nice sense of character progression, it would be fucking sweet if TDU started you off with heavy handling and then, as you progressed and learnt how to handle that particular model, the game granted you progressively more looseness and freedom. You'd get a brilliant sense of learning how to drive mental cars then.

I wonder if that's what it's like in real life, but with fear as the handling variable.

One final thing:

The replays have a really high helicopter camera angle that gives me almost exactly the view that I want. The joy this brings me is immeasurable.

We opened for Guns N' Roses

2006-06-12T20:23:00.000+01:00

And we did it with a video game.

Technically, what happened was that the very first act at the Download festival last weekend was both myself and Affectionate Diary user Simon Byron playing Guitar Hero. Guns N' Roses were the headlining act. That means, followers of logic and fans of accurate truth, that we opened for Guns N' Roses. That is a STONE COLD FACT, validated by various people from Gibson management as well as a couple of stage managers and audio technicians. Though to be honest, that's not really all that. Guns N' Roses are really just Axl Rose now, who is a tragic shadow of his former self - fatter, uglier, even more arrogant and, worst of all, can no longer sing. And the rest of the band are just session musicians. Which means they're now more tribute band than rock gods. Which is a shame. So I'll settle for downgrading the claim to one of the other headliners - we opened for Metallica. Only, Metallica have sucked ass since their guitarist died. Which leaves me with no choice other than to claim that we opened for The Prodigy, who are fucking INCREDIBLE.

We opened for The Prodigy.

Hmmm, it doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

We opened for Guns N' Roses.

YOU FUCKING KNOW IT.

Other things that occurred during my four-day stay at the Download festival, whilst promoting Guitar Hero - we made people's dreams come true. That's what one kid said when he came off stage, sweating and delirious, barely audible over the cheering and screaming from the crowd who loved him.

Also, I stood at the edge of a Hell Breed mosh pit, which was one of the most surreal things I've ever done. Several thousand people standing behind me, kind of pushing forward a bit but not really, and in front of me a wide open space with maybe 20 people flailing their limbs as fast and hard as they can to hit each other but not really ever hitting anyone on the outskirts. I totally didn't get it on any sort of personal level at the time. It wasn't until I went to see the only non-metal act at the event - The Prodigy - that I understood what it was about.

The Prodigy played in the Snickers tent, which was rammed. I thought there'd be plenty of space, actually, what with it being a metal festival, but apparently Keith has loads of followers because he has tattoos and piercings. That was pretty much the stupidest thing I'd heard all day, but I'd seen little to no evidence of intelligence for most of the weekend so I wasn't really surprised. I got there early with the sexiest girl on the planet and we pushed our way to about five people from the front, ignoring the pain in my now-throbbing knee, an injury that had no apparent cause. And we waited.

They were late on, obviously. Every act had been thanks to the football. But when they came on Oh My God were they amazing. I had absolutely no control over what my body was doing, only that I had to rock as hard as I could, hoping to keep some sort of vague semblance of rhythm. I think I managed, but it was hard to tell because beyond a little bit of bouncing for the first couple of beats of each song nobody was moving. I mean, there was some cheering and fists in the air and rock horns (FUCK OFF), but generally speaking I got the impression that the crowd couldn't hear the music. Most of the people around me gave me savage looks and shoves as if to say "stop fucking dancing you prick, you're disturbing me".

How did that happen? At a fucking METAL FESTIVAL. So I pushed to the outer edges of the tent where there was room and proceeded to dance. On my own. Tina stayed at the front and persevered, but I really had to rock. Looking around me, I realised nobody else was moving beyond a sort of head bounce. To The Prodigy. What cunts. It was a sea of people caught in stasis, frozen from the moment they had all got in position to prepare for the dance ahead. So I got my head down and got on with it. I felt estranged for my music, and slightly angry that I'd been forced to enjoy this experience amongst heathens who couldn't understand the purity of the need to get down, and I was barely in control of my movements. I couldn't feel the pain in my knee. I thrashed wildly. In short, I became a metaller.

I think. I mean, I don't know because I'm not one. But right at that moment I felt like I wanted to mosh. I wanted a pit of screaming people in front of me hellbent on unintentional violence that doesn't really end in anyone getting hurt, and I could no longer feel pain. I had no control and I loved it, and it was all because of the music.

I have a deeper appreciation of metal now, though I wouldn't say I enjoy it. I doubt I ever will, even though I love that their drummers use two kick drums to beat out a REALLY fast bass sound and that guitarists use trampettes to get enough height on their jumps to pose while they play. And it's changed the way I play Guitar Hero too. Those few songs I played on the Gibson stage showed me how the game should be played, and it's never sitting down. Seeing the kids go crazy - on stage and off - to Guitar Hero was one of the most affirming video gaming experiences of my life.

Playing games

2006-06-06T23:23:00.000+01:00

An interview in the current issue of Edge with Lego Star Wars publisher Giant has really resonated with how I'm thinking about games at the moment. Specifically, Tom Stone talks about how he sees some gamers as people "whose only goal is to finish the game. Not play the game, but finish the game."

I have to say, I couldn't agree more.

Not the most recent, but definitely one of the examples that sticks in my brain the most, is conversations with people I've had about PGR3 when it first came out. I heard many, many arguements as to why it was rubbish, why it disappointed and why it was inferior to Ridge Racer (despite being an entirely different type of game altogether). I heard that it had no sense of progression. That it was too easy. That you could buy the fastest car in the game from almost the very beginning. That could simply race the same car all the way through the game and never have to take out a slow or fast one if you didn't want to.

Yes! Yes! Yes! I applauded many of these game design decisions. I couldn't understand why people saw it as a flaw that PGR3 let me race exactly how I wanted to, in whatever way I wanted to. I had felt that the next generation of "game" was upon me. Nearly everyone else thought we'd taken a step back. Never mind the supremely refined handling, or the track design, or the freedom of choice, here was a game that didn't require the player to work. Just play.

Not that the game was perfect, obviously. An overly laborious menu system and the reloading of things that should be still fresh in the 360's memory system would have been much easier to criticise, and yet nobody mentioned any of that. People seemed to at least be enjoying those things. Perhaps they need to suffer to feel alive.

And then today, a friend asked me if Geometry Wars uploaded your score if you played offline and then went online later on. I had to say I knew it did so with achievements, but I wasn't sure on score. Oh, he said, then it's not worth playing till I get home. I suddenly felt completely disconnected from him, as a gamer.

Playing games is about playing. Not working, or achieving (though achieving as a natural consequence of playing is obviously not a bad thing). Even I, perhaps the most competitive gamer ever, am happier playing than working. It's why Akira is so much fun to play in VF. You don't win, or progress. You just try to pull off amazing combos. It's just playing for fun. It's why I've stopped Animal Crossing. It's why I love Geometry Wars, which has no end ever. It's why I can play the first Mute City track in F-Zero GX over and over again. It's why I still play Super Monkey Ball from time to time. And it's why in my eyes, PGR3 is the best driving game ever made. Until the next one.

Sex games

2006-06-06T15:42:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine has often puzzled at the lack of any sort of porn-based video games (the old "my friend" routine.) And he has a point. Why are there no proper porn-based video games? And real video games, not a Virtual Jenna toy or some bullshit anime girlfriend simulator (you can only jack off over cartoons so many times - I heard). It would be simple enough to make if you had the porn footage. You'd play it over and over and never get past the first two minutes. I mean 30 minutes.

The obvious way to do it would be a series of porn scenes and a really rubbish but also brilliant graphic-adventure-type casing. Each "level" is a standard porn scene. You'd be, say, a plumber, and you have to go from house to house servicing various abodes. Your actions would determine how far you got in each house with each woman, and different houses have different objectives. Amanda would need O and A level tutoring, for instance. Success would be determined by either conversational minigames or perhaps a Dragon's Lair-style multiple choice system. And when you've completed every level you get to go to the house with the Korean triplets.

Outright porn with a minimal amount of "game" housing. Like the early Mega CD stuff, but with proper porn. I'd buy it and, knowing our audience here at Affectionate Diary, you'd buy it. Who wouldn't? I'd even follow the adventures of Mario the Plumber through several escapades over several releases, determining which women he slept with (all of them) and which other trades he try his hand at. I imagine gardening would be one (in white overalls, of course).

Unlockables, bosses, plot progression, it's all such a non-brainer. It's actually, genuinely amazing that it hasn't been done.

Industry Interview - Dan Griliopoulos

2006-06-06T13:33:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the next installment in Affectionate Diary's internationally lauded series of interviews with journalists, in which Affectionate Diary FLIPS THAT SHIT ON ITS HEAD, HOMES, and interviews journalists. Which seemed funny at first but we're kind of running out of things to ask.

This week, we're proud to present the only journalist in the industry who knows more words than the dictionary does, and possibly the internet.

Hi! Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer these questions. Let's start with a little introduction for our readers, please. Who are you and what do you do?

Hullo! My name is Dan Griliopoulos (regularly monikered Grill) and I am both full-time reviews editor on Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine and a freelance whore. I pimp out my own squalid ass for the sponduliks necessary to maintain my luxurious lifestyle, and that’s only working for Microsoft. (Ironic laughter follows, breaking rapidly into heartfelt sobs.)

Many consider you to be games journalism's most evil, vindictive, all around NASTY son of a bitch. PRs dread dealing with you and Jon Hicks of Windows XP: The Official Magazine has gone on the record as saying that he wouldn't like to fight you on fair terms, even though he really wants to cave your fucking head in. What do you have to say for yourself?

I never forget a face, though I tried really hard with yours. Jon and I have a deep spiritual link that transcends the understanding of mere mortals. (It’s something to do with quantum entanglement that affects the Micro(soft)chips implanted in our prosencephalons.) For this reason, we understand truly the squalid depths of the human soul and loathe the race of men in general, each other in particular. To be honest, he’s all talk anyway. He couldn’t squash a gnat without running it past the boys in Redmond. Wimp.

Sorry, we were talking about Evil weren’t we? Yes, I have certain pride in being… evil. Someone needs to provide a sense of balance to the moral sphere and I’m glad that my reputation reflects the obsidian glosses of my psyche. You PRs have it too easy, too many of your victims are taken in by your glib lies and fail to realise that they’re being manipulated. I feel that my random assassinations of games, dissemination of dastardly rumours and general vicious ratlike behaviour might strike the fear of god into you scum. (Also I look cool in Fable, what with the glowing eyes and horns. And I get to use really cool powers in KOTOR.) When the revolution comes, you’ll be just after the lawyers and garden gnome owners. (N.B. These are solely my opinions, and are not necessarily those of my magazine. The fucking cowards.)

Let's talk about your feud with the wonderful, fair and just Jon Hicks for a moment, if we can. We all know about your famous public spats, but when did it actually all start? And did you *really* say you wanted to **** his *** with your big ****?

It was very hard to pronounce all those stars but, being the last native speaker of both Aramaic and Cornish, I managed. Hicks, I spit on his name, p’tooh! Hicks! Our…disagreement started back in ‘84 when we were both at the secret Microsoft base beneath Bognor, having our control chips implanted, and Bill Gates decided he wanted to see us fight for his pleasure. Obeying the Glorious Leader (long may his name live in infamy!) and stripping down to our loincloths, we… (If you want to find out what else happened, you’ll have to download the full movie Hot Hacks 3: When Geeks Attack from The Official Micturosoft Official Porn Official Server. Official.) …and then we had some toast. It was lovely!

Of course, everyone can remember that brief week where you both made up and moved in together, only to fall out later over a Tempest high score argument.

Is that the game where you take control of a out-sized tropical storm in order to water-damage a town in America, thus hastening the advent of mid-term elections and distracting the world’s media for many months from true suffering and starvation happening on an industrial scale elsewhere in the world? No? Oh.

Archer Maclean was brought in to check the machine's highscore table for tampering and it turned out that you had modified your score in order to beat Jon's.

I did it with Minesweeper too, on all his machines and he never noticed! Ha, eat that, Hicks!

Obviously this sort of dispicable behaviour is par for the course for a man of your nature, but what I want to ask is - are you a gay lol

You see, this is what I hate about PRs. Always prying into your lives, sticking their unwonted noses in, using long-lens photography to get insalubrious snaps of us, infringing the privacy of us poor hard-working types who’ve only agreed to a no-holds barred interview with some glamour shots. Not like us journalists, models of probity one and all. Like my hero Piers Morgan or that guy who helped the government kill David Kelley. And their spelling is terrible. What if I was a gay lol? Would you dare to ask question then? Yes, you would. You’re almost as Evil as me. I admire that, you filth.

You are well known for having digs at your co-workers behind their backs. Last week you said something mean about Gary Cutlack. Because he doesn't read this, it's quite safe to repeat yourself, so please, tell our readers what it was you said.

Bloody Cornish tyke, forcing his pasties on us, reaming us with his extreme talent and modest silence. I’m going to out him. HE LIKES PISSING ON R KELLY AND FANCIES THE STEAMING CORPSE OF RICHARD “TWICE NIGHTLY” WHITELEY! (And he writes the immensely influential and funny UK Resistance). The sod.

And finally, because I can't think of any more questions and because I loathe reading everything you write, can you sum up everything you hate about the world, including why you think Serenity didn't get the recognition it deserved and whether or not you would bone Tom Cruise.

I’m bored now. Can I go home? Oh, hate? Well, I think I’ve expressed hate at the world in general, life in particular, but let me think. Is there anything that rouses me to especial indignation? Hum, lack of complexity, ignorance of true storytelling and sticking to rigid formulae pisses me off whatever the context, but particularly in games. Oh, and the poor. And immigrants. And people who care about things. And what does Suki mean anyway? Is you surname Fiddydollah?

Enough!

Anonymous commenters

2006-06-02T16:18:00.000+01:00

Is this the most common off-topic post subject ever?

Anyhow, I'll echo the wishes of millions of blog authors the world over and ask that the anons at least leave us clues as to your true identities and some token of your affections.

Something like:

"love u, xox"

"lol u r cool, xoxo"

"much luv! <3 <3 <3"

pls rply asap pls. TIA.

The Wii question

2006-06-02T14:37:00.000+01:00

WILL IT FUCK UP MY WRISTS?

I don't really care if it ushers in a new age of intuitive control methods, or becomes a nasty, gimmicky box for massmarket digital toys.

I just want to know what an hour of repetitious wrist movements in all angles will do to my tendons.

IF IT FUCKS THEM, I'M FUCKING SUING.

A proven track record

2006-06-01T23:41:00.000+01:00

Betamax. MiniDisc. BluRay.

Nuff said.

Overheard just now

2006-06-01T16:54:00.000+01:00

Boss Nonnu just described a football management sim thing as "good if you like that sort of thing" and "not Shadow of the Collossus".

JESUS.

Disgaea 2 countdown - day something or other

2006-06-01T12:53:00.000+01:00

Right, this is looking a bit non-happening now. I'll need to actually wait for the PAL release at this rate.

JESUS.

BLLLUDD MUNNNEHHHH

2006-05-29T22:44:00.000+01:00

If IO, the developers of Hitman had any self re-cocking-spect, they'd make sure at least ONE of the levels in their latest installment had an Amiga 500 playing that now-excruciatingly shit intro to Psygnosis's landmark shooter.

However, the sinful admission of that particular Easter Egg doesn't diminish the invigourated joy that a logical progression of Hitman's sandbox-of-killing provokes in me. I fucking love this shit.

Becoming quite the stalwart, Bloodmoney deviates little from the series template, providing a decently diverse range of colours with which to paint its asassination canvas. Now a fairly solid collection of intermeshing routines, obstacles and means of action, Hitman soldiers on in an entirely familiar vein, providing me with exactly what I wanted.

Disappointing but entirely consistent with the roughly-hewn nature of previous entries, Blood Money has polish in the right places but not quite enough to hide all the game's mechanistic workings. Also missing are obliging accomodations for exactly the kind of obsessive player the game demands for its greatest challenge. A sorrowful showing of minimal statistics is all the player has as a record of their misdemeanours, fleetingly presented at the end of each level before a results-generated newpaper arrives - a newspaper that shows some observation of the player's style has taken place, but not smart enough to name them by signature killing methods or provide forensic details of how the mission slipped from a professional stealthathon into a corner-creeping massacre.

Besides these ultimately minor disappointments, Hitman: Blood Money does its thing admirably well. It's a superb collection of killing-by-puzzle environments with both the intellectual depth and visceral combat to satisfy any terrifyingly gun-obsessed media professional.

As for those wanting tips on any particular kill, this is the best advice I can give:

wtf i just shut him them teh face with the nailgun lol

SCORE:

Death Graphics: 8/10.

"The old-gen engine shows its limitations, but some scenes undoubtedly impress. The Mardi Gras is fucking wicked and I can't wait to get in there with a suitcase bomb and a loaded M4 with the drum clip bang bang bang bang bang bang bang"

Humour: 10/10

"You'll fucking piss yourself when you set off ANOTHER remote mine at the Whitehouse Security gate, blowing up the soldiers body-bagging the civilians you blew up five minutes earlier."

Soundz: 1/10

"The gunshots are actually shit. Maybe even the shittest. The music's a bit poncey too, especially at the beginning."

Killing: 1000/10

"This game is pure killing x1000. Fans of the genre will love it!"

Lasers: -1000/10

"There are only lasers as security devices. You cannot use them as weapons."

Manual: 1,000,000/10

"I write manuals and this one is fucking sweet."

OVERALL:

9/10

Bloody Wicked.

Disgaea 2 countdown - day three

2006-05-26T10:24:00.000+01:00

Six days to go!

Disgaea 2 countdown - day two

2006-05-25T09:41:00.000+01:00

FOUR DAYS TO GO!

The more astute of you may have noticed that it was five days to go two days ago. This is not an error anyone's part bar maybe yours.

A quick word about Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

2006-05-24T19:46:00.000+01:00

If Marc Ecko thinks his game is a faithful representation of Graffiti, then he's a fucking toy.

You can take the cultural structures, disciplines and locales, you can lace it with Kings. You can put loads of wicked Graf in it and you can have simple re-creations the actions required to get up. That's what should be in there.

Setting it in a shit dystopia, however, is completely unneccesary. Making the player some kind of emergent folk hero is fucking spazzy. Having Trane start out with a mish-mash of styles is what really fucks it.

Marc, what you should have done is gone GTA. Don't piss me about with stupid stories and settings. Give me a writer and let me learn a style that's consistent. Objectives write themselves. All I need is the correct playgrounds. Sure, you can even put in a bit of stealth and fighting, but don't think you can give a player whatever style they want from some magical blackbook and stay true to the culture.

Individuality and learning your own, consistent style that remains irrespressably recognisably yours is one of the fundamental elements of being a graf writer. Otherwise, you're only a single step up from Jet Set Radio on the long, long ladder to creating the ideal grafitti simulator.

If you want a much, much better example of capturing a Hip-Hop associated lifestyle, look at B-Boy. The demands in creating an accurate translation of B-Boying may lend itself to a purer setting, but surely - couldn't that be the case for Graf?

I suppose you gave too much of a fuck about how many people were going to buy it, eh?

:(

The Disgaea 2 countdown

2006-05-23T13:23:00.000+01:00

It's only five days till I get my copy of Disgaea 2!

FIVE!

Each day I'll count down the number, unless I forget to, or unless I reach number 0 and still don't have it, in which case I'll count up. The number is totally made up, obviously, but I'm not going to let a lack of information stop me from executing my amazing PR campaign.

On the day I actually get it I'll do a special post with even more caps and exclams than usual, which will be require something along the lines of effort.

FIVE DAYS!

In the meantime I have been researching VF4 Final Tuned's changes, so that when I get my ass handed to me down at Casino I'll be able to know for sure that it's because the joysticks are broken. I started to read data for all the characters but it basically said the same thing - all the good moves do less damage and have a longer recovery except Jeffry, who does loads more damage all over the shop and can grab people out of the air BY THEIR TESTICLES after he's hit them really hard. Lion has some new moves that don't do anything, which means I'll be even better if I win a round. Kage has lost TFT SO GET IT FUCKING UP YOU NONNU. Well, he hasn't actually lost it, but it's a 270 now, which is so far beyond Boss Nonnu's capability that they might as well have removed it. I mean, he can't even fucking buffer the knee after a toss to the left. WEAK.

Oh, and that reminds me - someone remarked to me that I don't swear very much on the blog. Not that anyone knows my SECRET IDENTITY, of course. But I overheard them talking about it in the office I work in. I guess that means I can send my dad the link. I don't need to worry about the rape jokes - he lives in Cambodia. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

You might not get that unless you're a sexual deviant who uses Asia's rampant immorality to escape justice being served on your sorry ass.

VF4 Final Tuned in London

2006-05-22T23:58:00.000+01:00

In the Casino arcade on Tottenham Court Road. Very, very close to Goodge St station. Go spend some money on it ASAP. Support your local arcade! Or in fact, the only arcade.

E3: Sony and MS

2006-05-22T22:15:00.000+01:00

I fucking love Sony, but fuck me they were shit.

It was so sad. Why do that spazzy controller? It's so obvious. Idiots.

The games, however, look quite nice. I found that heartening. Heavenly Sword looks excellent - as long as it can provide those escalating thrills in sufficient quantity. 9 Days looks good, but the footage is fishy as fuck. That was an incredibly stupid thing to do, surely? Unless everything in the 9 Days trailer was real, retail PS3, it can't possibly be seen as good PR at an event where this year more than ever, the real deal is what's needed to convince. Nintendo delivered that, exactly as they should have.

Oddly, Microsoft had the best but the most bland showing. Lots of great looking games coming soon, big stuff for Vista and, of course, that ludicrious tattoo. GTA4 YAY, but it's coming a bit too soon to be really something new and truly next-gen, right?

Maybe it's GTAPS3 that we should be getting excited about.

Despite that possibility, GTA4 is still very much A VERY GOOD THING but not that exciting, really. It's a surprise that I'm not surprised about Microsoft suprising us with, if you get what I mean.

I think the problem is that 360 is the norm for me now. I'm used to it and I have a vague understanding of what I can expect from it. E3 pleased me, but it was like seeing a round of genuinely promising previews.

I'm really glad that Gears Of War is standing out. It looks gritty and nasty in the right way. Similarly, Lost Planet has a style that I really like, so I'll probably be willing to overlook a few shortcomings. There's lots of stuff in the line-up that looks really good. Yay, but not much in the way of drama. Maybe it was the lack of suspense?

The star of E360 is Dead Rising, which looks a million million fun (apologies to M.). Impressive with the sheer number of zombies it provides - as well as its scope for dealing with them, I have to cling to the hope that they fit two-player co-op into it.

Dead Rising has a certain spark - a particular emphasis on pure entertainment that anyone can understand. In terms of selling a console to the laddish GTA set, Dead Rising's sandbox mayhem might well be the right element to tip their favour away from pondering over 360 appearances in chastised wank mags and instead towards adopting it as the PS2's true successor. If the E3 demo reports are anything to go by, the retail demo kiosks are going to have crowds.

THAT IS THE END OF MY EPS3 and E360, or what I can remember of it now that I've had the inclination to sit down and do a post. Sadly, that inclination has been a summer spent, so now I must endure the winter earned.

The winter being going away and listening to some mixes I downloaded. Not that bad, really.

update

2006-05-19T20:41:00.000+01:00

Hi.

Sorry I've been rubbish recently, but I suffered a crisis of confidence and wasn't able to post for ages. Well, that and fucking Oblivion, obviously. Cunt game.

in order to make up for me being rubbish, I'm going to do a quick update on the gaming related thoughts that I'm supposed to think are good enough to type out for the internet.

Oh. Well, it was pretty wicked really, but I'm not going to comment about the obvious stuff that no doubt already has fifty million pages of internet dedicated to it. Instead, I'll talk about how both Edge and the Guardian Games Blog mention the Wii's controler in less than favourable lights. That I find interesting, as I've always been skeptical of the ability of current motion-sensing technology to perform well for videogaming. Even more interesting is the fatigue aspect, as that can't be fixed with final hardware revisions.

Unless Nintendo release some amazing robot arm.

Fuck. I've got to go to a media party and mingle with comedic actors. Right now.

I'll finish this later.

BYE!

Disgaea 2

2006-05-18T17:39:00.000+01:00

I should have an English language version of this within the next week or so. I seriously cannot state enough how mind-fuckingly awesome I expect this to be. I would sell my own mother to get a copy pre-release. Saying that, I'd sell my own mother to avoid having to finish reading The Da Vinci Code, but the story's basic premise is compelling enough for me to have made the decision to endure what is easily the worst writing ever. Seriously. Worse than the AD&D fan fiction I wrote in secondary school. It's not just me saying it's terrible because everyone else is, it's REALLY REALLY TERRIBLE. But I'll finish it, like I finished Metroid Prime.

Right, like anyone finished Metroid Prime.

Disgaea 2. You've probably not even heard of Disgaea. Or if you have, you probably haven't played it. That's not your fault. It's my fault. I didn't PR it enough. Or even at all, since I didn't work on it. And I'm not working on the sequel either, but I'm not making the same mistake twice.

Quote for the box from credible internet games site Affectionate Diary - "Disgaea 2 is so good you'll not only shit your pants with glee, but scoop that shit up into your mouth and eat it again, it tastes that good."

Expect a million posts on my experience-farming and weapon-levelling strategies.

Lesbian threesome

2006-05-17T17:44:00.000+01:00

I just remembered that the other night I took part in threesome in Guild Wars Factions. My girl monk, KG's girl assassin and some German kid wanking with one hand and typing with the other. I'm not sure if KG had a quick tug, but I'll guess yes, since his typing broke down when the kid asked him if his pussy was dripping with excitedment.

I obviously DIDN'T have a wank, because I'm still a virgin.

Value for money

2006-05-11T17:06:00.000+01:00

"I think when you look at what we put into the box - Cell, Blu-Ray, backwards compatibility, the ability to go online - I think it's a very compelling package for consumers."

Stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't advertising the ability to go online as a feature in the same league as listing polyphonic ringtones as a feature on a phone?

Are you reviewing a game?

2006-05-10T17:49:00.000+01:00

Have you just written "addictive" when describing a game you like? Or worse yet, the grammatically dismaying "addicting" non-adjective?

STOP.

You have just made a fool of yourself.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

2006-05-09T23:41:00.000+01:00

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG mario galaxy

Sad Face

2006-05-09T11:15:00.000+01:00

I will quite obviously have to buy a PS3. I can't afford not to. The Virtua Fighter 5 exclusive deal pretty much sets that in stone. That's not so bad, though, since I'll obviously be buying whatever sexual stick Hori release, or at least an adaptor for my current Hori RAP. What makes my heart sink, though, is the prospect of playing games on the same tragic analogue sticks that feature on the current Dual Shock 2. My PR training forces me to capitalise the name of the pad, but I really don't think it deserves it.

The Network Platform, or whatever it is, and the built in Blu Ray and all that shit, yeah, cool, that's awesome. I'm totally paying for it, though, at the price point they're asking. But what good is a Ferrari when the steering wheel and pedals are made by Fisher Price? A convex, smooth surface does NOT make for precision play in the heat of things. Nor do the apparently similarly-surfaced triggers (though without a hands on it's maybe a bit unfair to condemn them too). And the travel:length ratio of the sticks are all wrong, and always have been. The worst part is, the Dual Shock 1 was actually ok. It could have done with a bit more stiffness, maybe.

I'm confused, I really am. Not by the fact that so many people are content with these sticks (after all, people are content with McDonalds and East Enders), but by the fact that Sony, who should be leading the market with its controller design, seems to be content with such lacklustre controls. This is the frontline. These are the troops who are doing all the work. These babies should be HOT. Microsoft have really nailed their analogue stick design, showing complete understanding of how our thumbs work with the 360 controller's elegance and precision. And to me, the controller is the most important aspect of any console. I'll take precision sticks over gyroscopic controls any day of the week.

Industry interview - John Walker

2006-05-08T11:47:00.000+01:00

The latest installment in the long-running, LEGENDARY series of industry interviews in which the tables are TURNED ON THEIR MOTHER FUCKING HEAD(s) as the journos are asked confrontational questions that force them to look into their dark souls and ask themself - "am I a gay lol?"

This week we couldn't find anyone of consequence. Sorry about that.

First off, I'd like to thank you for your time today. Can I ask you to please introduce yourself and explain what you do.

My name is John Walker, and I am a rogue games journalist. I wander from magazine to website, helping others, putting right what once went wrong, and then before anyone can ask me why, I’ve moved on, with just my dusty footprints left along the road. None can understand me – none can know my true pain, or the reason why I set out on this long, long journey.

Are you a gay lol?

I can only assume this means, "Are you a gay laugh-out-louder", to which I’d probably have to say: yes.

When Affectionate Diary was first introduced to you, you were described as "PC Gamer's leading adventure game expert". Does PC Gamer editor Mark Donald hate you?

He does. But it’s that sort of hate that goes back through the years, based on his own actions. You see, it was a young Mark Donald, back when his hair was… oh, exactly the same, who first hired me. He’ll never be able to have not done that, even if he invents a time machine, because I already have a time machine and went forward in time to just before when he invented a time machine and stole his quantum pulse capacitor and hid it in the year 34,050 (where only his haircut will have survived). I imagine he’s also jealous.

Mark Donald is the UK's Bloodbowl champ. Is that better or worse than being the Warhammer 40k champ?

Is that true? I don’t think that’s true. They’re both worse than each other, in a crazy ever-escalating bid to be more worst than the other, spiralling off into a dark, dark place. Hang on – I’m going to look that up because I don’t believe you…

…Oh dear. I don’t think it is true, and also I read a frightening Google result about Mark Donald’s oversized friend "dick".

The joke is on you! Mark Donald is ACTUALLY the UK Bloodbowl champ! Or was. Either way, he fiddles with miniatures and likes it.

I’m not convinced the final resting place of this joke is on me.

Have you ever painted a small lead figurine?

No, and I’ll thank you kindly to keep your filthy allegations to yourself in future. I once was given one in the 80s though by some computer games designer friend of my dad, I think. But I was too scared of it because my parents told me lead was poisonous.

So you're basically saying you hate Mark Donald, a marvellous, benevolent man?

I think we may have our Mark Donalds mixed up. I was referring to the tyrant king of PC Gamer, who rules with an iron rod, one storey high.

What do you think of people who do it on a regular basis?

Is this a sex question? If so, I think jealous thoughts.

What would you do to the girls who date these people?

I knew it was a sex question. I think that if I were to "do" the girls who were going out with the guys who paint lead figurines, then they might get cross with me, and while perhaps of a small, weak stature from their lack of exposure to the elements, they have huge amounts of lead at their disposal and the only poison I had was the toilet cleaner but that ran out the other day. And what if they have become immune to poison from all their lead painting, because I bet the paint’s got poison in it too, and then even if I did still have some Toilet Duck they might be totally immune, or it might even make them MORE powerful. So no, I would not do anything to them.

Let's go back to our first meeting again. During that meeting you had terrible hair. Affectionate Diary forgets which colour it was, only that you looked like you'd just stepped off a plane from Chernobyl. Since then you've made similar hair mistakes. To what do you attribute this
frankly grotesque experiment with colour?

Hang on? I’m beginning to get some inkling as to who you might be! So far your true name has eluded me, so-called "Suki", but this might have been your downfall! I can conclusively prove from this line of questioning that you are in some way involve in, or have read about, the games industry! AHA!

Yes, quiver in fear. I will expose you.

As for my hair – it was an investment in the future that has finally come to fruition. I knew that by marking my hair in such a way, in a few years time it would be the key to uncovering the identity of someone writing a blog about something. You walked right into my trap, "Suki", or should I say… SOMEONE SOMEHOW RELATED TO THE GAMES INDUSTRY!

(The identity of RAM Raider is only one bottle of Live XXL away).

Please don't allude to lesser industry blogs whilst answering my questions. If my upfront, confrontational style upsets you, simply break down into tears.

I think you’re rather over-honouring Rammy with the term "industry" there.

Your last five review scores, as listed on your blog, have an average score of 4.6/10. Do you hate games?

You cannot ever understand. My past is a secret, enveloping me in the enigma you can’t quite see before you, but mark my words (on an IGN scale so I definitely get over 7/10) - I will find the game who killed my parents. And it will suffer. And if a few games that should have got 9/10 have to suffer along my journey, that is a small price to pay.

Which games do you hate the most?

Stupid, horrible management sims, since you asked. What kind of idiot gets home from work and thinks, "What I’d like to do more than anything else right now is some pretend work,"? (Is that right? Should it be a comma at the end and then the question mark after the closing speech marks, or should it have been a full stop?) I don’t even do ANY proper work, and indeed already am at home when I am working, and even THEN the idea is still so monstrously moronic that if I were to even think about it for a second I would actually die. Apart from Rollercoaster Tycoon, which is great.

Let's talk a bit about your unremarkable new project, Not Enough Owls. Although the premise is sound, the general execution is somewhat lacking. Do you attribute this colossal failure to your partnership with known imbecile Tom Bramwell?

I don’t know what you’re talking about… Oh, wait. You must mean the new, excellent blog by the erudite and mysterious writers, ‘botherer’ and ‘Daggerpanda’. It really is incredible, isn’t it? I’m not sure why you, Suki, should think either Tom Bramwell or I would have anything to do with it.

Anyway, Tom Bramwell is the nicestest man ever in the whole history of time, and is also super-funny, so I can only imagine you’re seething in jealousy. Also, I haven’t noticed you losing 10 stone in weight recently. I think you should do that.

I think that would cause my immediate death, since I weigh only 11 stone. I did recently gain a stone and a half, though. I'm stacked! Do you want to feel my muscles?

The whole causing your death thing was the point of… OH NEVERMIND. I’d like to feel your heart muscle, pulsing its last few meagre beats as I crush it betwixt my fingers.

What is your favourite type of owl?

The wisest ones. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH. And Tawny.

How many times can you twist an owl's head all the way around before
it snaps off?

Infinite. They’re heads aren’t actually attached to their bodies, as is commonly (but stupidly) thought. They are in fact floating in a magnetic field generated by their necks, which is how they are able to look right behind them. We’re not meant to know, but if you watch sometimes they turn their heads back the other way than they first turned them, which is a real giveaway.

And finally, how long do you think you could last having sex with the new Lara Croft? Real life, obviously, we're not some sort of depraved SICKO who fantasises about making sweet love to female characters in games, no matter how much they turn to the screen and wink at you.

I’m a bit confused. You do realise that Lara Croft doesn’t exist in real life? So if fantasising about having sex with her, it would surely have to be the fictional character? So, ignoring your stupid question, I’ll write my own:

John, you delightful man of whom I’m incredibly jealous and also a bit in love with, for how long do you think you could last having sex with the new Lara Croft who is a games character and whether she’s real or not it’s hardly relevant since this is a hypothetical question?

I’m glad you asked. Because the new Lara Croft in Legend is in love with ME and no one else, and she said so through a series of extremely subtle gestures which others would think were simply idle animations. I would last probably about 35 seconds.

Thank you for your time.

This is paid by the word, right?