Pagoda of Gaming

“Ohai, this hell resturant?? I has a reservashun fur 300.”

Zing! not only was it an excuse to make a 300 joke, the cat was supposedly french! Double-appropriate, because 300 is always appropriate! So here it is, almost a week late. Let’s get it done in a single post too, so I can get on to talk about other things. A couple of disclaimers first. I can’t remember the names of french things, so expect me to give rather vague descriptions. I don’t have pictures yet, or rather, I’m too lazy to pull the stuff off the Nin-Cam and upload them, a harder task than it sounds.

So, mistake #1; I should’ve taken the Nin-top. The Ninstation Portable was just enough to keep myself hooked up to the internet, though I did have to haxxor a neighbours connection to get access, he didn’t realise until about thursday evening. The reason I couldn’t use the flat’s internet was because of the PSP’s capabilities, or lack thereof. I’m not going to harp on about it, it’s just shitty that they haven’t made the basic staples of the internet usable through the system, not to mention how terrible the internet radio feature is, and hell that was made by the Winamp people (not that they’ve made alot of good decisions lately). The Nintop would’ve provided everything I needed to get along with the country, my own source of broadcasted materials and an access to google-maps that certainly would’ve saved many an hour, and I could’ve even posted from there and not be limited to something like 250 characters a post (yeh, I tried). So consider this a peice of advice my fellow globetrotters, the price of insurance should never scare you from bringing your laptop with you, where ever you go.

I left with a whole heap of Euros in my pocket, and came back with a little less than what I left with. The immediate family thought that funny-money would be more useful than good old-fashioned GBP, so the loaded my Christmas and Birthday presents with the stuff, and left out the present. I figured that I should buy atleast some sort of souvenir. So I took a little trip to the Virgin Megastore, the one on the huge fucking street with the glass pyramid at the bottom and the twin-pillar-thingey at the top, the one with all the really fucking expensive shops that have bouncers at the door - yeh, that one. I was blown the fuck away. It was amazing, even if half the shit they sold I couldn’t understand. The Virgin megastores in france sell EVERYTHING you could want. They have a book section, half of which is dominated for comics and manga. And they sell CCG’s. They have a huge monolithic wall of cards that caught me off guard, right next to the checkout. I stared quite a while in awe, and the dude at the register looked at me funny. They have Wii’s too, alot of them, and when I saw the abundant stack I had a fleeting thought that I could actually buy one…… but then I put my wallet away. Anyway, getting back to the point - my souvenir was Condemned 2. I know that that’s not very ‘french’, but the boxart and manual are in french, and atleast this way I doubt I’ll be able to trade it in at gamestation.

As a side note, I should note that I got Condemned on a Thursday, not a Friday like I would have back here. That’s pretty awesome. And as another point of clarification - this Virgin megastore was the answer as to why I never saw a single independant game shop the entire time I was there.

They’re really gay for anime down there, so much that it makes me really dissapointed, thinking about our little island. The do it right by marketing it to the right people. The mainstream animes; Bleach, DBZ, and Naruto (They are REALLY gay for Naruto) are marketed towards the middle teen bracket of 14-17, which is really pretty cool, considering the dicks over here want to sell it to 9-12 year olds. I don’t know how the dubbing’s like, but hey, It can’t be worse than 4kids. On the amount of episodes, they’re light-years ahead; atleast 75 episodes ahead in naruto and bleach, and they have all of DB, DBZ and DBGT translated. Best part - that’s ALL on the DVD racks at their local virgin megastore. TCG’s too - I saw three VERY prominent contenders, surprisingly Naruto and Dragonball card games, along with the usual MTG. It really looks like they’ve brought up their kids on comics, unlike us. There were comics EVERYWHERE, and EVERYONE was buying them. All in all, a french nerd, is a happy nerd.

I guess that’s sort of my ‘problem’ with france, is that it’s french, and there’s no way around it. If the country spoke english exclusively, then it would have been super-awesome, but they don’t. I think it goes back to when the scottish education system decided to shove the stupid language down our throats. Here’s a tip, when you’re french teacher tries to justify her teaching saying that ‘maybe you want to go to france one day’, she’s a fucking lier. You don’t need to know shit to get along in that country. I mean hell, we survived in a chinese resturant where chinese was the first language, and the staff spoke next to shit all french and we managed to order a fucking awesome meal.

Speaking of, the food, now that I look back, was fucking amazing. The french don’t seem to have their own cuisine, like the germans have sausages, like we have haggiss, neeps, and tatties, and like the chinese have chinese. They seem to roll with the basic shit and add a dash of… something to it. I had the most fucking awesomest steak I’ve ever fucking had in my entire fucking life down there, and I’ll never forget that. The aforementioned chinese also graced me with the most awesomest noodle soup I’ve ever tasted. A tip for resturant goers, the food will be relatively cheap, but they’ll rape you in your jet-lagged anus on the drinks; for instance, a 1L bottle of evian is about £4. I do have some problems with their food tho, Mainly that alot of their meals consist of bread, cheese and ham. They’re pretty gay for bread, and without the butter for some fucked up reason. You could topple that country by taking out their bread supply. I don’t think I’ll be able to stomach a meal consisting of their holy trinity for a couple of months now.

I should clear something up. Alot of the stereotypes are true; some horrifically. They do eat snails. Infact they sell them on the street along with a fuckton of oysters and other exotic shellfish. The women aren’t very attractive (and I say this having very low standards myself), I’ve never seen a place with such an epidemic of girls with man-face and guys with girl-face, it’s rather creepy. And the people seem somewhat… Lazy. The underground is a fucking nightmare, the kind that never wants you to travel again. Though I did see a stop on one of the many routes called ‘Bel-Air’. I appropriately geeked out.

Surprisingly, we went to the cinema alot. There’s alot more english films showing than I was led to believe before the trip. We saw 3:10 to Yuma, The Darjeeling Limited and The Oxford Murders. Yuma was awesome, so awesome that it was the second time I saw it, the first being on DVD, which just goes to show how fucked up the release schedule is over there. The Oxford Murders was enjoyable, and showed a bit of tit, which is never a bad thing. It was like a Brit version of Numb3rs, only with lots of weird looking people, which I’m sure was the director’s intention. And The Darjeeling Limited was… well, it was pretty damn beautiful, I’ve got it on my Lovefilm list to watch again.

So there you have it, a slightly delayed interpretation of an unforgetable trip to Paris. Join me next time as I get back to gaming proper and tell you the slightly embarrasing reason why this post was extremely late, and maybe some comments on how brutally beautiful Condemned 2 is, along with how I would have made the game. Want a small preview? Have you ever put someones head into factory machinery, pressed down real hard, and smiled afterwords? I did.

Rember kids, comments are closed, so drop me an email if you’d like to comment!

Wink, just don’t put your teeth on me.

So Edge did it wrong, totally. Let’s start off with mistake numer one, listing the GOTY on the first fucking page. You bum-love the thing so much, give it a damn drum roll first, dudes, srsly. So here’s how it’s going to go: I’m doing the 2007 Edge awards (from issue 184), except I’m putting the right choises in, right as in my choices, and adding in some minor stabs at Edge as we go along. First thing I did when I got home with the mag was to go through it with a permanant marker and added my own little comments. And we begin with the Alternative Awards, games that missed the gold, silver, or bronzes of the real awards but still deserve a mention, like the stupid awards in your high-school year book like who had the best hair or who was most likely to become a porn director. I should say right now there’s only one Wii game that got an award, and it’s only for it’s box art. I’m not a reviewing press person so I don’t get hardware and games mailed to me by people who want their praise from me, so I didn’t want to have a £200 peice of kit sitting there doing nothing for the next billion years, hence no Wii, hence no Wii games played, hence no awards. These are my awards after all, they don’t come with a golden statue or additional press controversy or pissing off fanboys at a national level. They are about as useful as a list on someone’s retarded bebo page. These are all my opinions based on what I’ve played and observed over the past year. Granted, I’ll forget something. Also, because it is the new year already (so this is a little bit late) I’m going to forego the annoying texty bits and leave you with the pure and simple lists, and an invitation, one that allows you to challenge my decisions, so I can respond and tell you I’m right.

The Alternative Awards

Best Use Of A Beta - Crackdown (360)
Best Use of Annoying Leper/Poor People - Assasin’s Creed (360, PS3)
Most Dissapointing Game - Hellgate London (PC)
Best Use Of Subliminal Messaging in Box art - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Best Movie based on Game Franchise - Hitman The Movie
Easiest 1000 Gamerscore - Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth (360)
Best Game that the Yanks Got But We Haven’t Yet For Some Fucked Up Reason - Rock Band (360, PS3)
Best Use of an Importer - Pokemon Diamond & Pearl (NDS)
Best MMO Patch Of The Year - EVE Trinity (PC)
Most Use Of Man-Hours - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade(PC)
Best XBLA or PSN Game - Settlers Of Catan (XBLA)
Most Secretive Game - Alan Wake (360, PC)
Game That Should’ve Had More Development Time - Mass Effect (360)
Game I Should’ve Played More - Company of Heroes (PC)
 

Read the rest of this entry »

So I’m writing this at 0415 in the morning. And I just finished writing my essay about Steam’s impact on the industry. I think I did a decent job, though that thought could simply be the insanity slowly setting in.

I’m going to stay up the rest of the night. I sort of committed to the idea about 5 hours ago, when it was 2300 and I hadn’t written a word yet. The plan being that I get myself ready to go home now, so I have all the daylight hours I can get playing with whatever, before I have to go catch a train.

It’s staying awake that’s the problem. I do have a decent supply of coffee and cocoa, maybe a concoction is in order. It’s just a shame I can’s sing, that would keep me slightly interested in the process. I’ll maybe write one of my inevitable christmas posts I thought up in the shower about an hour ago. Save it up for when I’m to lazy to post something.

Hrmm, it seems that the motor functions in my hand are beginning to lag a bit. Let’s keep this short and sweet.

I know what I’ll certainly not be playing this weekend, Eye of Judgement kthxbai, and I know that I’ll be negelcting Monster Hunter for WoW during the unhealthy hours and sleeping during the healthy ones. Must dash, the kettle’s boilinged.

Hell says hello, it’s time I should go

So I had like 3 hours of sleep last night. My parents didn’t quite understand the listing of a Flat for 2 when looking for their holiday hideaway for their October Holidays. I spent the night layed out flat across the living room floor. It was simply the most comfortable position I could find.

So yes, I am in Edinburgh right now. It sucks that I don’t get to spend the week here that I’m used to from all my years at the Fraserboring Academy. I’m posting from the Ministry of Gaming, a very nice Gaming and Lanning cafe hidden up the end of Princess street. Check out their website HERE. I haven’t tried the PC’s for gaming yet, simply to catch up on my surfing, but hopefully I’ll get a call before the ‘rents beckon me to some resturant for lunch. They have a Left 4 Dead poster hanging on the wall, and aparantly the UT3 demo on a couple of machines, I’m entrigued.

Spending their money on the fine cuisine has been effective so far. Breakfast was spent at the farmers market, held every saturday within a spectacular view of the castle. the various stalls contain fresh produce, some of it weird, some of it regular, but both high quality. I had a Lamb burger and a “wild boar and apple” burger… for my breakfast. If time continues to serve me right, I may return to get an Ostrich burger. I shit you not.

So I guess if I’ll be playing anything this weekend, It’ll be Monster Hunter Freedom 2 on my PSP. Though I still haven’t told the ‘rents about the vast purchacing of expensive technologies, it may come up this weekend if my iPod rus out of batteries and I’m left to use my PSP for a music player, which I must admit, does it better than I thought. If I do come clean, I may go out and pick up Vice City Stories, but I’m really not after spending money this weekend.

So I see that Bioware’s been bought by EA. considering the facts I heard from Ken Fee, my courses head tutor dude, that’s not good. How much are they going to rape Mass Effect. I guess we’ll see.

I promised that I’d post this as soon as it hut youtube, but here it is in all it’s glory, the Portal credit sequence. You really should’ve played it by now, and finished it, and bet the final boss several times just to watch this awesome video. I will maim you if you watch it without “unlocking” it yourself. Spoiler Warning BTW, and yes, that does mean that Portal does have a story.
Click to the youtube page for the video and it;ll give you links to the guy who wrote the song and download links to the Mp3.

Speaking of music, Majornelson’s got a nicely compiled list of all them old fashioned songs that made an appearance in Bioshock (my second play through still pending) with links to the songs in person, Check it out HERE. I know that there’s a chance you don’t care about this shit, but it’s really there for my own reference.

‘Nin Out!

Why the hell did I say I would go back this weekend? I really can’t remember.

Maybe it was for the Prerelease that’s happening on sunday. But even there I’m not particularily “stoked” for some action. Lorwyn seems all good and fun, believe me when I say, Tribal is a powerful form of marketing and design mechanics and it should be a good block. The thing is I feel totally out of magic right now, I just don’t care. The game has nothing that appeals to me right now. I would assume that the situation is like breaking up with a long-time girlfriend. You don’t want to do it beacuse you’re really comfortable, or you don’t want to deal with the incoming fallout from the relationship. That’s how I feel about MTG right now. I don’t have the money to support it for another year, and I’m going to the prerelease as more of a formality than to have some fun.

I’m worried about two things in the set. Firstly, that the tribes will, now that they are multi-coloured, will be hard to build from. In the same way that when Ravnica happened, people including myself built a load of shitty two coloured decks and Wizards printed really janky cards that didn’t fit into those decks (see: the Nephilim). Then the final set of the block came out and people were running 3 to 4 coloured decks that the set was not designed for. The second thing that I’m worried about is that they are only going to be making planeswalkers within sets this year, so they are a lorwyn card mechanic. That would really rape the fans. Give them something they’ve been after for years, then take it away. Whatever, I’m really not playing magic this year anyways, apart from a couple of pre-releases, simply to show face. Infact, the closest thing to Magic that I’ll play this year will probably be the Eye of Judgement.

I’m unsure as to why my parents are after me being home. Well there’s the love thing they keep on spouting, but that’s not what I’m on about. I’m sure that there’s a hidden ajenda in place to rape my saturday in the face. I’ve also got to haul home a bunch of washing, mother’s orders. she wants to get the purple out of my new towels, why, I don’t know. And yet, I’m told to wash my jeans and undergarments and then haul home the sheets and t-shirts. WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK!?! WHY!? And I don’t know why, but when I was called by said mother about 5 minutes ago, she kept spouting that “I sounded like I was on drugs”…. yeh… I’ve never drank a pint in my whole life and I can think of more fun and interesting ways to kill myself. Jesus fucking christ. This weekend is going to be a whole load of me wishing that I wasn’t there, isn’t it?

In all honesty, I really want to stay here the whole weekend and play combinations of both monster hunter and team fortress 2, before halo is thrust upon me next week. Though I am pretty poor at the moment, down to my last £70. So going home would be the correct course of action to get my ass some more money. So maybe that’s why I’m going home.

For me, the hype for halo 3 is gone. I’m definitaly going to buy it and play it and enjoy it, I’m just not terribly excited about it. They could easily delay it another month and I wouldn’t be very phased. Anyways, here’s the new Vidoc from bungie released yesterday:

So what are you guys playing this weekend? I’ll be home-alone with my lappy, so I’ll most likely be torrenting and warcrafting with some cards on saturday. I’d better get going then, get this show on the road.

‘Nin Out!

EDIT: FFS, two hours before I leave and my Magically inclined guildies tell me that I’m a week off on my Prerelease information. Now I really am going to be bored this weekend!