Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Darko, Daveigh Chase, Donnie, Donnie Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Nathan Atkins, Richard Kelly, S Darko
Okay, this is slightly different to my usual blog posts, in the sense that it’s going to take the form of a letter to Nathan Atkins. You probably don’t know who this man is and to be honest I’d be fairly surprised if you do, for the purposes of this post I actually had to actively search out this man’s name.
In an odd shift of tone, Donnie Darko is a brilliant film. If you’ve not seen it, then I honestly don’t know which rock and on which planet you’ve been hiding under since 2001, but I earnestly implore you to search it out and basically stop reading this blog right now because it’ll mean about as much to you as asking America politely to stop polluting our planet with their ridiculously big cars. I’ve already digressed majorly from what I wanted to write about.
Upon first hearing about S. Darko, the much anticipated, albeit with hugely bated breath, sequel to Donnie Darko, I was honestly excited. ‘Sweet, a sequel to one of my favourite films ever, sure it’s a big film to live up to in terms of greatness, but yeah, sure.’ Not that I could really see how they’d actually work in a sequel to such a film, by and large IMDB Top 250 films don’t generally have sequels, unless originally intended to from the word go. However, then I found out that it was going to feature only one of original cast members, who was too young to actually remember their time on set for the first film and had less screen time than virtually every other actor in the film. ‘Fresh new faces, this could be interesting!’ I thought, with a slightly glimmer of uneasiness about me, but still, it could’ve been good.
Then came the bombshell. Straight-to-DVD. I was nearly physically sick, I can’t name a single straight-to-DVD film that hasn’t been downright bloody terrible. See: animated Disney Sequels of long-dead franchises in order to gain what they call ‘life’ from a frankly long-dead horse. Not only that, but the original creator of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly, had absolutely nothing to do with the sequel in the slightest and wise was he to stay away from this absolute abomination.
Almost everything about this movie was terrible, the best way to describe it would be badly-writtten fanfiction by people who didn’t particularly ‘get’ the first film and if they did, were incredibly drunk upon each subsequent viewing and throughout the entire production process. For example, Frank. Frank was iconic of the first film, it’s good that Nathan Atkins recongised this ‘Guh huh huh, I can use this for my film, people will reconigse it. Guh huh huh.’ No, you stupid man. Any self respecting fan knows that Frank was in the first film because it was Donnie’s sister’s boyfriend in his Halloween costume; therefore the character of Frank only makes sense in this context.
Moreover, the cinematography was horrible, it was filmed in the same style as Neighbours, with a couple of awkward close-up shots, combined with frankly terrible casting. Someone from Twilight, someone else from Gossip Girl (some prick that doesn’t deserve my valuable time searching IMDB, but really does deserve a punch in the nose for being possibly the single worst character/actor in a movie, ever and… someone else from something equally bad.
Donnie Darko fans, by and large, are over-analytic cinematic pricks (Hi there!) and in order to ‘understand’ (in the loosest sense of the word) S Darko, you had to have seen Donnie Darko. But if you liked Donnie Darko, you’ll hate S. Darko because it essentially took everything good out of it, twisted it a little bit then attempted to enhance upon it, ultimately resulting in a twisted car-crash of inane plot, sci-fi nonsense, terrible CGI andnd a definite aura of self-parody.
But the worst part, guh, the worst part was the fact that in this ‘coming of age’ comedy/drama (which is essentially what it came over as, as opposed to the Philosophical splendour that was Donnie Darko) the paedophile/pervert/abductor/cunt gets away with it. Normaly I’d not have a problem with this sort of thing, granted that it’s done in a clever sort of way (See: A Clockwork Orange) Well, it’s not even that, it’s as if they basically forgot about that story arc, realised they’d run out of time and budget and just ended the film because they’d gotten bored.
I lied, that’s not the worst part. You know how in Donnie Darko he burns down Jim Cunningham’s house? Which leads him to be found out to have a ‘kiddy porn dungeon’? Funnily enough, Samantha Darko burns down a paedophile-clergyman’s Church. Why Nathan, you cunning devil you, you’ve directly stolen the same plotline, you craftly thing. No wait, there’s more. His cunt-sister has a copy of ‘The Philosophy of Timetravel’ by Robert Sparrow. This definitely shows how Nathan Atkins didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on in the first film because Donnie never received the book, he only received it in the Tangent Universe. Therefore his Physics teacher didn’t give the book to him so there is frankly no reason for her to have the book in any form.
I went into this film expecting the worse but this far exceeded my expectations, Nathan Atkins shouldn’t ever be allowed near a single piece of film, ever again, by penalty of being hung, drawn, quartered and distributed evenly into every 666th packet of all Nestle products. You stupid, stupid, stupid cunt.
Filed under: In the News | Tags: BNP, egg, eggs, Kim Thomas, Unite Against Fascism
Unless you’ve been living as a hermit under a rock, on the dark side of one of Saturn’s moons, you’ll be very aware that the BNP obtained their first seats in the European election due to the British public’s increasing apathy towards Europe and voting in general. This was due to a 1.4% vote increase on 2005, this time obtaining a staggering 6.3%. With such a figure, Nick Griffin continues to persist that they are the ‘party of the people’, that is if your idea of a ‘party’ is a swathe is ill-informed idiots, formerly of Neo-Nazi organisations but have realised that is no way to get into mainstream politics, calling themselves ‘patriots’ in order to defend their ridiculous viewpoints. If by ‘people’ you mean the particularly sheepish members in the most isolated and backwards sections of the E demographic, you’d be spot on.
I didn’t write this blog post as an attack on the BNP, which seems to be like spitting into the sea at this moment in time, so instead I’m going to rant about whatever I think of in the next five minutes. Ah yes, the BNP…
Not the party itself, mind. I trust anybody reading this to be fully aware of their shortcomings; I just fancy showcasing what I what call your typical BNP sympathiser. Upon posting the hilarious story of Nick Griffin being harangued and egged by a particularly angry group from Unite Against Fascism onto my Facebook, I was surprised when a 16 year old girl commented rather eloquently with ‘:( ‘. Naturally I assumed it was a pisstake, I assumed BNP supporters were all fairly large men from 40 and above, who still use the term ‘darkie’.
I was wrong, it eventually spilled over into a full-on Facebook argument about how the BNP are a ridiculous party, aside from the racist tendencies, their policies don’t even make sense.
im sorry but i just find it completly unfair
but tbh i support any right wing group
Tch, I guess it doesn’t matter so long as some minority group is getting their heads kicked in by skinheads, eh?
i think its good people are allowing far right parties to get positions. i just want labour to get demolished.
A protest (would be) voter, interesting… Y’know there are other ways to protest against our current centre-right government than going further right?
nick griffin has a point we need to kick people out of this country who arent supposed to be here and are taking advantage of us i.e foriengers who use us as an easy ride because our government lets anyone into our country.
HOW CAN YOU SAY ITS NOT A PROBLEM
He HAS a point? I just thought he hated foreigners. Who ‘aren’t supposed to be here’? I’ll try and respond to this without raging my arse off, but… since when do you have the right to determine whether another person is allowed within an arbitrary border? If we want true freedom, this notion is going to have to go to. Just assuming someone doesn’t have ‘the right’ to be in our country because they’re not from this country is totally and utterly fucking inane. More Brits are abusing the benefits system than any of the reported ‘dirty foreigners’, this is exactly the type of argument you’d see on the front of the most ridiculously misinformed tabloid column. I say it’s not a problem because it FUCKING ISN’T.
the bnp arent nazi.
to call anyone a nazi is highly offensive and ignorant.
Apart from, y’know, Nazis. Especially self-proclaimed Nazis. The BNP aren’t Nazis, I didn’t even call them Nazis. I merely used the analogy of Hitler’s rise to power to show that ‘the people’s verdict’ when it comes to voting, isn’t always spot on.
exactly i know, thats why i like right winged groups such as the bnp, im more so a conservative thpugh. i cannot stand low lives that are on benefits and cba to get their arses to to work.
I knew the Tories were centre-right, but this is ridiculous. Honey, I think you’ve got the wrong political party. Do you even know any of their policies? No? Death to the infidels, you say?
how can you criticise peoples opinions
i am entitled to my opinion
Therefore I’m entitled to mine: you’re an absolute and utter fucking cretin.
SO im not criticising your opinion am i
doesnt make you right either im afraid love
You’re right, not that I even claimed that, but you’re right. You’re still a cretin.
actually, you may not have relaised but the country is in a recession and british people who are jobless could use the jobs that foriegners have come in and gladly taken. think of both sides.
You’re not even thinking of your side, you have absolutely no proof. That’s just you regurgitating the same shite the tabloids pump out of their horrible little ducts, on a daily basis.
The bad side? Well, there isn’t really a bad side. Hence why I’m not discussing it.
The recession was caused by a flawed banking system, not by ‘dirty foreigners’.
your all just left winged narrow minded people who have they heads up theyre backsides. goodday.
So us fun-loving liberals, as in those who want equality for all and more freedom, are the ‘narrow-minded’ ones? We’re MORE narrow-minded than the British National Party? Us left-winged liberals? That’s possibly the single best example of irony I have ever seen.
There we have it, my first blog post in ages. I’ve not got a headache and my desire to go and play Far Cry 2 is too great for me to continue. Have fun, children. Actually, I’m feeling like a bit of a cunt. This is her facebook: #mce_temp_url#
Filed under: Other, Rants in general | Tags: alcohol, binge drinking, channel 4, drink, drunk, NHS, taxi, teenagers, teens
The first blog post in a while, I know but that’s probably down to me not having been pissed off by something that wasn’t commented on by everybody and their fucking mother. Being the disgusting youth I am, I went to a field party yesterday; essentially entailing a PA system, a shed, some speakers and about 50 or so tents, I decided to get a taxi with the ‘responsible lot’ partly out of their perceived maturity but mainly because a taxi between four is a lot less than a taxi on your own. Ironically, last night a Channel 4 documentary on drunken teens and their strain on the NHS was on, bizarrely located in the Midlands, where this party was. Next time I’m staying in and watching it.
Yes I realise there were tents but I never stay over at these sorts of things due to them being guaranteed to be the single worst nights sleep of your life so far, until the next party which miraculously manages to be worse. I digress greatly from my main point and the main reason I’m writing this article. Drunk people are the single worse type of person on the face of this planet: they’re loud, they smell funny, they manage to find new ways to lose any shred of dignity they used to possess. Actually, these aren’t the reasons I hate them, these are merely the reasons I don’t drink myself into oblivion like so many 0ther useless pricks. It’s always the girls, always the fucking girls. If you’ve not experienced it in person, you’ve experienced it on various expose documentaries about the state of Britain and failing that you’ve probably seen the front of a tabloid in the past hundred years.
The horrible thing about drunks is that they’re in a state of self-inflicted helplessness which leaves us less-drunk and more-standing-without-support types in a sort of moral limbo. I spent twenty minutes trying to get somebody I don’t know into a taxi after one person who was meant to be getting in had already gone home due to be completely para-fucking-letic. Dickhead number 2, however, point blank refused to leave. Picking them up causes them to scream and hit you. Oh terrific, for being concerned for someone all I get is a punch in the fucking face. At this point the ‘Oh fuck ‘em!’ part of my brain starts to kick in, getting increasingly frustrated by this absolute idiot who, if left alone, would probably choke on their own sick and die. At this moment in time, that sounded like the attractive option.
It’s not as if I haven’t been there, mind. I’ve been sick through alcohol twice now, one I put down to the lethal combination foreign nasties, a game of rooftop cards and ridiculously cheap Chilean alcohol. The other down to this bizarre ‘legal high’ called Spice, which made everybody (combined with 15 or so beers) incrediably sick. I most point out, however, that in the case of the former, nobody knew I’d been sick. I got myself to a toilet 10 whole minutes before the sickness started as I knew I didn’t feel quite right. Sick once, then sleep. THAT’S IT. The latter was pretty much the same affair, apart from this time it was sick, sleep, sick, sleep. At neither point did I need the assistance of others and when offered I actively refused.
Fuck you drunks, fuck you. I am by no means against drinking, hell I actually quite enjoy getting mildly tipsy, the ol’ dutch courage is pretty good in itself, that little extra social confidence that means you might actually engage in conversation with others rather than trying to create something in your already stagnated social circle. In fact I urge the government to somehow harness the power of mildly-tipsyness into some sort of pill, calling it the ‘Will of the Dutch’ or something, it could become the 21st century’s version of ‘Fisherman’s Friend’.
I’m saying it here and I’m encouraging others to do the same, if one of your idiot irresponsible friends decides to drink themselves to sheer idiocy and there’s other people around, leave them. I am not sacrificing my night to accomondate for someone being an complete and utter dick. You made your grave now you can fucking lie in it. Friendship doesn’t matter when someone expects you to pick up the pieces of something which is entirely your fault, especially if it means you have to practically wrestle someone you don’t know, for half an hour or so, just so you can get home.
That was my night. Three hours of being very slightly drunk and a bit high. Home by 12. This is not what I’d call a fun bloody night.
In the spirit of parties and my new-found love for this genuinely awesome song:
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Capcom, Haze, Killzone 2, RE5, Resi 5, Resident Evil 5
If someone asked me to name a few notable games coming out this year, my first thought would be in regards to Killzone to and Resident Evil 5, the demo of the latter coming out the today, the former on Thursday. I’ll be the first to admit that I was fairly anticipative of the forthcoming Resi 5, it being the principle reason my friend actually bought a Playstation 3, the fool not realising it was multiplatform, but by doing this actually making the better choice.
Being the semi-late-90’s gaming type I am, you’ll be surprised to know I’ve not actually played any of the previous four Resident Evil games, I’ve not even scene so much as a glance of any of them, so for the first time in a while, I was going into a demo with absolutely no pre-conceptions, bar the dull glow of hype that seemed to surround it, painting an illustrious picture of sheer liquid awesomeness. I won’t bore you with the background details because unlike me, you’ve probably played the game and are currently contemplating some form of suicide due to me boring you absolutely shitless.
I digress, you know how good the Resident Evil 5 demo was? It make me cancel my pre-order with ShopTo. I suppose this won’t so much be a review on Resident Evil 5, but more unto the entire Resident Evil series, as I understand they’re all virtually the same game, each with generation-specific graphical upgrades. The first alarm bells starting ringing on the first game screen, before the menu, a hoarse voice stating the games name in what I can only assume is a half-hearted attempt at, well, something. Tacky, that’s the word I’m looking for.
My main gripe of this game is the entire mechanics of the damned thing, the control scheme makes it literally impossible to run and turn at the same time, resulting in a series of run-pause-turn-pause-run sequences which really break the entire flow of gameplay, and a hairline fracture through the whole idea of ’survival horror’. On it’s on, it’s not a major hitch, and I probably could have learned to love it. Note the past tense. But I guess I have the same problem with Dead Space that I have with this, why do developers insist on survival horror from a third person perspective? Both games feel forced and awkward, and it cracks immsersion over the back of the head with a wrench, as you instantly associate that you’re not important, you just incidentally happen to control someone who is.
I lied about any of the above being the real problems with the game, oh, not by a long shot. From a survival horror game you would expect several things: a sense of danger, probably created through tension, suspense, combined with a sense of urgency. Second, scary monsters. Whilst Resident Evil 5 certainly ticks all of the boxes for the second category, the entire game seems to completely misentrepret the whole concept of survival. Imagine if you had to fend off waves of zombies with a limited supply of weapons? Scary, no? But for all the right reasons, you’re not going to just ‘happen’ to have a stockpile worthy of a the US Marines , so that works. However, envisage yourself in exactly the same situation, but with yourself glued to the spot, whilst it might serve for about 5 seconds of pulse pounding action thriller rollercoaster nonsense, it will only last 5 seconds because you would fucking DIE. I’m quite sure the lead-designer for Resident Evil 5 must’ve suffered a brain aneurysm during the conception of this game, because the notion of having to be static whilst shooting, and aiming down the ironsights, if a completely fucking ludacrous one. I’m unaware if the previous games were like this, quite frankly I’ll be fucked if I go and play them now just to prove a point to myself. But if they were, how the bloody hell have Capcom been getting away with it for 4 previous games? I’d have probably expected it from the first two, given console limitations and all, but the gameplay feature in RE5 is one I’d expected in a Newgrounds game devised by Robert Mugabe and voiced by Kerry Katona. Furthermore, I know the AI is meant to simulate zombie behaivior but, come one! It’s just downright lazy, I’d have thought enemy AI would be pretty much the first thing one would code for in a game like this.
From what i’ve read, these are the ‘improved’ controls, to give it a more ‘Gears of War’ feel. Personally I’ve not actually played Gears, but I’m quite sure that Capcom have far and away missed the mark on that claim.
If you’re torn between buying Killzone 2 and Resident Evil 5, for gods sake kill yourself, because the obvious choice is obviously Killzone 2, and anybody who disagrees shall be shot on sight. If Killzone 2 does a ‘Haze’, I will LITERALLY eat an entire jam-jar worth of pennies.
Filed under: In the News | Tags: Cancer, Gaze, Good news, Goody, Israel, Jade, News, Palestine, Sensationalism, The Sun
Lo and behold, on my usual trip to the Sainsbury’s local, opposite my school, a glance at the nearby newspaper rack affirmed my belief that yes, we are all utterly, utterly doomed. Strange it may seem then, that I an in fact not talking about the recession at all, heck, that actually benefits me, the tuition fee £3,000 cap is staying very firmly on, as well as house/petrol prices freefalling. I digress, what I saw was a truly, truly horrific depiction of contemporary British society, our whole ethos optimomized by a single headline. I think it was something alone the lines of ‘THERE’S A 40% CHANCE I’LL SURVIVE:JADE GOODY’, pertaining to her recent and very unfortunate contraction of cervical cancer, her third cancer, this headline bearing a striking resemblance to those harrowing speeding adverts, with the ghostly little girl, with her narration, and wrists snapping into place like something from The Exoricist. I’m not saying Jade Goody deserves cancer, heavens no, nobody does, it’s a terrible, terrible illness that thousands of people die from each year, but herein lies my point.
Jade Goody is one person, recent developments in her battle of cancer are harrowing, and some may say even disheartening, but it certainly isn’t news. I wouldn’t so much mind on the reporting of this during a slow news week, but unless you’ve been liking under a rock on the dark side of one of Saturn’s many moons, you’ll have heard about the current Israel-Gaza conflict. Today, according to David Milliband, the current Foreign Secretary, around 905 Palestinians and 13 Israeli’s are believed to have been killed since the previous cease fire broke on 19th December. That’s 918 fucking people. Jade Goody is but one of them, and when tragedies such as this are occuring throughout the world, how is it possibly justifiable to report on a much less important topic?
I am exactly the type of person who’d have slated Jade Goody in her ‘hayday’, shall we call it? But nobody deserves cancer, nor does anybody deserve to be killed in any way, shape of form, least of all through war or warcrimes. It sickens me it seems okay to report on this sort of thing and I put it down to sheer disassociation. Of course, things that in other, less important countries don’t matter because they’re, you know, beneath us. It’s much more prevalent to talk about us, because we matter and sod everyone else, because we’re best. Exactly the same fucking thing happened during the Brand/Ross ’scandal’ (which personally, was a load of cock and balls, in my opinion), people were being stampeded to death and shot in the Congo but no, it mattered much more that Russell Brand had yet again slightly overstepped the mark, causing a public outcry the likes of which have never been seen before, the fucking cretins.
On top of this, is the current reporting of Prince Harry’s alleged ‘racism’ and homophobia, in what some would claim is ‘political correctness gone mad’, I phrase which I politely dub as foolish, and impolitely dub as a wanker’s term. The term ‘Paki’ is frequently associated with anti-social racist behaivor towards those who are oft mistaken to be Pakistani, given the average IQ of your run-of-the-mill bigot is way below the average shoe size. Of course though, what the papers often fail to mention is that this is a term for one of Prince Harry’s friends, who doesn’t take offence to the term, almost seeing it as a term of endearment. I can relate to this, maybe it’s just the ‘youth of today’, but I have a half-Polish friend, great guy, we often refer to him as ‘dirty, filthy Pole’, an ironic statement pertaining to the frequent reporting of Eastern European immigrants as ’stealing our jobs and our women’, and should all be shipped back home etc. etc.
If we’re going to ignore the REALLY bad things in the world, and just focus on the dubious domestic problems, heck, why don’t we just scrap news altogether? Why don’t we just hand out leaflets telling everyone how great things are and how everything is going to be just fine? Alternatively, replace the news with ‘Good news!’, only reporting on when kittens are saved from trees, or when a boy makes it to school without being harmed? It sure would help public morale, maybe we could also introduce a system where bad thoughts are out-lawed, and certain phrases? Just sit in rooms in blissful blissful ignorance, it’ll be great because everything’s good, nothing with harm us, and our bubble will certainly never burst.
In other news: to paraphrase a great philospher greatly ‘Stop being sensationalistic domesticated pricks, tell it to us how it is, and consider non-English speaking countries for once. Useless twats.’
Haha, funnily enough the ‘related posts’ below conveys exactly what I’m on about quite clearly. Humanity is going down, mayday, mayday!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: band of brothers, Brothers in arms, Cinema, Film, German cinema, laika, playstation, PS3, Review, Saving Private Ryan, Tom hanks, ubisoft, world war 2
I had to get a play in words into the title for some completely arbitrary reason, I’ve gotten bored of the ‘conventional’ methods of reviewing. Either down to sheer laziness, or the fact my memory is so cataclysmically awful, I’ll probably just end up making most of what I’m saying up.
The game in question is Brother’s in Arms: Hell’s Highway which, I KNOW, was released September 23rd, making this review a whole 109 days late, nearly a third of a year and if you don’t like that, then fuck you. Now for less hostility, and more on my feeble reasoning behind this massive delay. Lovefilm have a ‘priority’ system whereby you allocate your most desired titles as to be shipped most urgently, the problem with this is that when a new game is released, everyone with a lovefilm account, their mother, dog and kitchen sink’s will automatically want to rent it, meaning it’ll take about 3 ears to actually play the bloody thing. You’re probably thinking this isn’t a big-name title, and you’d be right, it isn’t, I’m just trying to justify to myself why on earth I’m reviewing this now, I guess. German Films, that’s why.
Now for the main event, which is quite likely to go monumentally badly:
Before I actually start playing, I probably should give a background incase somebody is still contemplating buying the game, the mad bastard. BiA:HH was developed by a company called Gearbox Software, most well known for porting Half-Life and Tony Hawks 3 from pc to console and vice versa, respectively. So a previously virtually unknown dev. team is creating yet another World War 2 ‘epic’, and this one is the eighth in the bloody series! If counting the 4 mobile-phone versions, but shhhh. Bizarre then, it was, that I found out these odd lot are rumoured to be the developers for Halo 4… I know Halo isn’t great but before playing this game I’m pretty sure it’ll be better than this.
Well, on the disc menu on the PS3 there’s not even any bloody music, just a bit of fire, and two men staring angstily past the camera like some punk-pop musical nightmare. Ah, I see, fire, hell, clever. Oh for fucks sake, I need four gigabytes to install a game I only plan on playing once? One second. Bye, bye PAIN!, you awful, awful excuse for £6.99. Gah, PixelJunk Eden isn’t even worth deleting, 109MB? I shit 109MB… EUGH, all this time Mercenaries 2 has been taking up 2.5GB space on my hard drive, and they’d already stolen half an hour of my life. Still, if the intention of that game was to make you feel like you’d just been raped and pillaged, they bloody succeeded.
Finally, back to the review! Installing game data, it’s the basic PS3 stock screen, lazy bloody developers. Devil May Cry 4 may have been pretentiously awful, but at least it gave pretty pictures and a storyline history to not care for. 17% after writing that, how do you pass the time whilst a game is installing? I know, getting a drink, maybe… 83% now, horray! Although my drink is water that tastes like Halford’s, a very, very potent tyre-rubber taste, I fear my father my inadvertently be killing me with his cowboy-esque plumbing abilities.
Now it’s done, and powered by Unreal Technology, no less! The start screen is a bit boring, the same angsty man as before, staring off into the distance again, text in red, blood, clever. Marching band drums playing, ah yes, the army! Intriguing, I didn’t expect this game to have any multiplayer, least of all online multiplayer, sod the single player for now, lets go and check this out. Oooh, that marching band music is now into full swing, it’s very Band of Brother’s, or, for that matter, every World War Two film ever made, ever. Still, quite nice.
‘Searching for available games’, results: 6 servers. Haha, Christ, more than I expected. Only one of which has full connection, let’s go! Loading screen with a little more than nothing, I appreciate that. Well that’s a kick in the teeth, I can’t spawn, but on the upside my squad is raising the flag and has just won. The graphics, well, they look quite a lot like Red Orchestra, or another title from around the start of the Industrial Revolution. Well that was a one minute of a life I’m never getting back, that was possibly the worst online game I’ve ever played, it the buildings and players look like they’re made out of paper maché, the guns have about as much affect on the enemy as farting in their eyes, we won by just… I don’t even know how our team won, and the lag is just diabolical, and this is on full connection!
Maybe single player may quell my anger? New game, hey? Casual or veteran? Fuck it, I’m going all out, it’s not exactly going to be Survivor+ mode now, is it? There’s another level, you have to play the entire game through to unlock it, fuck that for a game of soldiers. HAHA, It opens with a ‘Previously on Brothers on arms.’, how very, very inappropriate for such a game. What ensues is a bizarre sequence, detailing… something, it’s so arbitrary you wonder exactly what DID happen beforehand, it ends up being bizarrely compelling, visually pleasing, but fairly disorientating all at once. And whilst I was typing that, a girl was shot, a civilian, and they’re now in a place. Wow, these scenes are actually pretty well done, seems they probably blew the entire budget on shiny CGI and a competent scriptwriter. Although I still have no idea who is who, what is what, or when is when. Apparently he was a friend; the first sequence starts with ‘He’s gone, he’s gone’.
962 words and now I get to actually play the bloody game, hooray! Training enabled, please. Right stick for camera, good. Red screen on taking damage? Call of Duty, you sly devil you. X is sprint? In a first person shooter? Okay, I’ll let that slide due to the fairly realistic running-before-your-face-gets-bombed shakeyness. Ah ha, a deviation! Third person ‘dug-in’ mode, this could be interesting. Graphics aren’t anywhere near as good as the cut scenes, still they’re not bad. But nowhere near as good as World At War. R2 for firing? Are you out of your bloody minds, Gearbox? Conventions are conventions for a bloody reason, don’t break it if I’m heavily acclimatised to using R1. R2 for grenades, R1 for primary fire. It’s simple. Another new idea, ’surpression’, a red circle appears above the enemies heads and they can be ’suppressed’ by blind fire, once the red turns entirely grey mean they’re unlikely to shoot for fear of being blasted in the face by yours truly, finally a nuance of tactics in a World War 2 shooter! That genuinely took quite a while to kill them it felt like a firefight as opposed to a run and gun, which is exactly what WW2 was. It also lasted six years and often involved periods of grueling hardship, without gaining any ground for prolonged periods of time. Good idea, IN THEORY, but so was the idea for Haze. I can see this getting very bloody frustrating. On the upside, a couple of German’s have just ran screaming out of some double, doors, on fire, with fairly decent graphics, score one for the Allies! And genuine heat-haze above it, score another for realism. And all the lights have systematically been closed off in the corridor we’re in, dun dun dun! Everything has a weird green tinge, interesting… ‘There goes the lights’, my brother in arms tells me, got any other gems like that? The sky is blue, the grass is green, there will never be another good Sonic game. Shitcock! Cut scene, bomb, German’s, dead friend! I think… still, not very clear.
‘3 days earlier?!’ ah, another film technique… as well as a title sequence, a proper title sequence, with an equally insipid and ‘heartwarming’ voiceover from a character, may it’s you, I’m not quite sure. I’m sure this is the Band of Brother’s music, it even had the semi-operatic singing for Christ’s sake. Why is a US soldier, with a US flag on his soldier, talking like Hugh Laurie? Another cut scene, with genuinely decent dialogue, again, like a film. I can’t be bothered to listen to minor plot details whilst I type this, but it seems that whoever the ideas man was for this, desperately wanted to make a World War 2 film but knew they couldn’t possibly compete with Hollywood epics and thus, got hired by an unknown studio to try and bring his masterful idea to the small screen. If only Call of Duty had this level of cut-scenery, it would be the perfect game. Instead it’s just Kiefer Sutherland talking over quite bizarre, modern graphics, contrasting somewhat awfully to genuine footage. Why is it always good game play, but no emotional attachment to characters? Back to the game, we’ve just landed in a field… I think in France, cue that potentially plagiarized music again. Scenes of open countryside with planes overhead, how very poignant. Although I don’t remember any mention, anywhere, of gliders being used in world war two, gliders that house jeeps… Either my history is worse than I had intended or I’m about to start hating this game quite a lot.
This is getting quite tedious now, isn’t it? I can tell? No? Well it bloody well is for me. In a nutshell it’s exactly what I expected from a game play point of view, a mediocre WW2 shooter with a couple of interesting tweaks… I’m quite bored now, I’m sure you are too. All you need to know now is that for some utterly benign reason, you can blow up sheep on this game too. Also, I’m not doing this again, it’s too slow and took up 1700 odd words and I’d not even fucking really started playing yet.
I was going to post a Peep Show video up onto here, from youtube, but apparently they’ve put country filters on now and none of them I can watch. Fucking great, I can’t even watch that now.
Filed under: Other | Tags: bad tags, free speech, German cinema, german films, german little girls fucking, google, paedophilia, stupid, tags, wrong
So this is where all my traffic comes from...
On the surface of it, this is absolutely fucking hilarious, my only search engine term that lead users to this blog, was one of a paedophilic nature. Score one for free speech! But then, something struck me… people actually google this sort of thing?! I’m pretty sure when most people, y’know, murder someone, they don’t look up tips on the hows, whats and wheres.
A short post, I know… but from this we can conclude that not only are there dangerous people out there, that some of them are completely and utterly fucking mentally bankrupt.
(Makes more sense if you’ve read my previous post.)
Filed under: Balls-in-the-mouth Brilliant, Game Reviews, Other, Reviews | Tags: Bioshock, Christianity, Christians, Christmas, Communist, Daniel Bruhl, Das leben der anderen, DDR, der untergang, Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei, Downfall, German cinema, german films, german movies, Goodbye Lenin!, Playstation 3, PS3, Review, Stasi, The Edukators, The lives of others
Christmas, Christmas, Christmas… everybody loves Christmas! Well, not exactly. I spent my Christmas watching German movies and playing Bioshock, which I’ll get to later. And before you start, this isn’t going to be a ‘Christmas is shite! Burn Christmas!’ rant about nothingness.
I actually feel quite sorry for Christianity, sure Christmas is the most widely celebrated public holiday in the history of Western culture but it’s been bastardised beyhond all recognition. The clue is in the name, and Christmas should really be all about the birth of Jesus (although I’ve never really understood why, if that’s his birth, the Gregorian year starts six days later), a very, very religious celebration. I’m not sure about places like America, I understand their church-going population is much greater than on our miniscule island, but in the run-up to Christmas, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone allude to the religion at all and it’s sort of sad, in a way.
By all means, we shouldn’t abolish Christmas, it’s a nice get-together time. But that’s just it, it’s not really anything more anymore, so we might as well turn around and just call it ‘Annual Family Time’, although this may see suicide rates in single, middle-aged men rise significantly. Leading me onto something else, the census. The most accurate gathering of information, as well as being reasonably feasible to carry out, but really is it that accurate? My point being, I was talking to my mother yesterday about it, joking how I will be putting ‘Jedi’ down in 2011, then asking her what she would put. Without a bat of an eyelid, she says Christianity… which struck me as odd as: for one, we’re not only not a practicing Christian family, but fairly avid atheists are people go . ‘Why?’ I ask, and my dad says ‘because we’re C of E’… Although I realise this isn’t necessarily reflective of the whole world, but I’d like to see my parents being, given my cotton-wooled distancing from reality, my best point of reference for the ‘general public’.
Leave Christmas to the Christians and stop ballsing up the statistics.
Anywho, on to my ‘Annual Family Time’ ‘celebrations’, which’d lead me to two solid conclusions: German Cinema is rather good and little girls with big red needle guns are absolutely fucking terrifying.
My examples of these brilliant pieces of cinema are as follows:
Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (English title – The Edukators): a movie about three anti-Capitalist activists in Berlin, two of which regulary undergo a fairly morally lucrative form of ‘Edukating’, breaking into the homes of rich people but not to steal or pillage, but to rearrange the furniture, giving those rich bastards an eerie feeling of privacy violation. I won’t go on anymore about the plot, else you might as well not watch the fucking thing, but it was my starting point, for foreign cinema, and it’s a very enjoyable and thought provoking film.
Goodbye Lenin!: coincidentally also starring one of the actors from the previous film, Daniel Bruhl again provides an entertaining performance as the son of an avid Socialist, around the time the Berlin wall is torn down, taking with it all of the ideals his mother holds dear. However, she suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma a couple of months before this happens, and upon awakening, her son is informed that any forms of excitement may kill her. From this stems an perpetually elaborate con to keep his mother believing that the Deutsche Demokratische Republik is still alive and kicking. Whilst it might not be a laugh-a-minute comedy, it’s certainly very watchable and fairly easily accessible, even for those (like me) who didn’t have any prior-knowledge surrounding the DDR.
Das leben der Anderen (English Title – The Lives of Others): coincidentally also set around the time the Berlin wall is taken down, following two parrelel, yet unwittingly interlinked regarding the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, more commonly know as the Stasi, and a man they are watching, under the ’suspicion’ that he is against the state. It follows Hauptmann, one of the Stasi’s top interrogators and surveillence men, is ordered to keep tabs on a writer named GeorgThe film explores corruption at the highest level, within the Stasi. Unwittingly, Hauptmann develops a close relationship with the entirely unaware Georg and coming to realise a few home truths about the brutality and harshness of life within the DDR.
Last and certainly not least is Der Untergang (English title – Downfall): displaying Hitler’s, and the Nazi’s, final days during World War two and the events which eventually lead to his, along with many other high-ranking German officials and their families’ suicide. The first thing that struck me about this film was Hitler’s immediate portrayal as a fairly warm and inviting, yet frail and weak human, which was an excellent contrast to the usual ‘ABSOLUTE CUNTHOLE, HE EVEN RAPES HIS OWN PETS!’ image which is usually portrayed.
Verdict? Watch them all, don’t let subtitles put you off like I did, I guarantee you won’t even realise they’re on. If you do, I’ll… well, I won’t eat a shoe, you can just fuck off.
Now for Bioshock, which I’m not going to say much about bar than it is the only time that, during a game, i’ve had one of those ‘OHMYGODNO!’ moments in a game, I believe in Shakespeare it’s known a a ‘cathartic release’, don’t quote me on that. The main reason I’m not going to say anymore is that personally, I’m ashamed I’d not played it before now and quite frankly, if you haven’t by now you’re probably drowning kittens or injecting heroin into your Grandmother as we speak.
All in all? A good Christmas, but disappointing in the sense that I didn’t have any awful games to rant about, stupid Lovefilm, actually sending me games and films I like, I oughta sue.
Now for something completely different:
(Warning: Awfully banal and sordid video above.)
Filed under: Other | Tags: Alec Harris., Alzheimers, Communist, Communist Daughter, Daughter, Death, Empty, Granddad, Grandfather, Hotel, Loss, Milk, Neutral, Neutral Milk Hotel, NHS, Vacancy, Vacant
It was inevitable, I knew it was coming yet, somehow, even though I thought I was completely prepared, I wasn’t. I don’t think anybody can be, even if you lose somebody who you were never that close to. He, my Grandfather that is, had been fighting a losing battle with Alzheimer’s for years and to be honest, he could barely form words and had absolutely no clue who I am. To put it into perspective, he’s been ‘DNR’ for about 3 years. In that sense, I guess, the grandfather I knew and loved was already gone, but I don’t guess that made the final blow any less bitter.
I first found out about the inevitable on Saturday, mid-shift at my part-time job, sister came running teary-eyed, informing me that my parents had to rush off, post-haste, down to Gravesend Hospital where he’d been admitted with ‘respiratory problems’. I feared for the worst, and was immediately allowed home. Mid-walk home, I don’t know how or why, but I just let go. I just let go. I started crying in public, walking down the middle of the road, knowing what would happen.
Here we are, today, 8th December and it has finally come to a head. I guess, you could say it was a relief. I guess you could say it’s a release from pain and suffering but really, is it? Even though he didn’t know my name, or recognise me, he was happy. He seemed happy, and for me, that’s still a life worth living. Is it better to be happy and insane, or unhappy and sane? I’d pick the former any day of the week.
Is it strange that my first thought on hearing the news was not for myself, but two things: how my poor Mother must be feeling, solitarily fighting a losing battle with the social services and co-operation from her siblings and secondly, this blog. I don’t know why, but my first instinct was to write about how I feel. Not to tell my story and receive sympathy, by any means, but perhaps to understand how I feel because, to be honest, I don’t know. I know this probably sounds tenuously cliched but I honestly don’t know how to feel. I wouldn’t call it sadness, but it’s not a million miles away.
The worst part of this though isn’t the fact he died, not by a long shot. But more, his ‘fall from grace’, to articule myself in the most banal way possible. He was a captain of a tug, on the thames, which I understand isn’t the most presitigous job in the world but, captain of his own boat none the less. Then it struck me, age is a terrible curse. We make joke from time to time about how awful the NHS is, how incompetent it is a system but, it’s the best we’ve got which leads me on to ask; by having such a good healthcare system, life expectancy at it’s highest ever, have we actually almost condemned ourselves to inevitable senility and undignified death? From Captain to not being able to unbutton your own fucking shirt, how’s that for a glorious retirement?
I found out he finally died about an hour ago, mid-football match in which I, for the first time ever, scored two headers. This was before I heard the news.
A sense of bizarre exctasy, brought on by sheer luck of being in the right place, the right time, with the right hat on, to nothing. Just, nothing. And the journey from the astroturf to home, all I could think is the lyrics and the instrumentation of ‘Communist Daughter’ by ‘Neutral Milk Hotel’ which is a beautiful song, I guess I see the trumpets as a sort of, send off and I suggest you listen to it too.
