Fallout: New Vegas - Where to fucking start?

I've fallen for the same trap and been burned twice now.

The first time was Bioshock 2. New Vegas is the second.

The trap is quite ingenious, and it works like this:

1. Development Studio X makes a great game.
2. Development Studio X farms out the sequel to a shitty, lazy, talentles bunch of arseholes.
3. I buy the sequel, not realising it's not made by the same people, thinking it will be as good as, or better than, the original.
4. I rage.

The only way not to end up buying this crap is to become one of those people who know what developers make what games, the names of different programmers...a total fucking nerd, in other words. It's lose/lose.

Still, I wasn't burned as badly as those poor sods who like Final Fantasy XI (the online one) who went out and bought Final Fantasy XIV (the other online one). They didn't just farm it out to a shitty company, they farmed it out to a shitty Chinese company...and ended up with Chocobos being referred to as 'Horsebirds' in the actual release version. If that was the only problem with the game, it wouldn't be so bad, but...just watch.



Sadly, the nicest thing I can say about New Vegas is it's not quite as bad as FFXIV.

First off, the storyline is rubbish. Like, fanfic bad. If you don't want it spoilered, skip to the next couple of paragraphs, otherwise here goes. You're a courier who is robbed, shot, and left for dead. You're rescued, and follow the guy that killed you, and get your package back. The package is a chip that contains what is essentially a driver update for an army of robots. You are given control of the robot army for no apparent reason. You install the update and take over the region during a battle between two factions who were also vying for control of the area.

Think about how fucking stupid that is. Someone designs and mass-produces an army of killer machines, but doesn't bother installing the software that makes their primary fucking weapons work? That's like a story where someone makes a load of tanks, but doesn't bother putting the turrets on. Absolute arse. And why are you put in charge of them? There's no reason. They might as well just say "Oh, you're the main character...I guess that means you're in charge, eh?"

Ok, spoilers over, you can start reading again...

Considering this was written by professionals - whose sole responsibility is writing an interesting and engaging storyline - it's an insult. It's the AAA equivalent of Halflife: Fulllife Consequences.

The characters, too, are awful. There are exactly four interesting characters in the game. Three are machines, and the other is batshit crazy. I'm sure the Obsidian apologists will froth at the mouth over that statement, but bear this in mind: You know exactly which four characters I'm talking about. Every other character has congealed in my mind into an amorphous blob of dull, charmless dialogue, plastic faces, and nondescript outfits. The only real exception is the guy that shot you - and he's only memorable because you can shoot him in the head seven times with a rifle and he won't die, despite the fact that his entire set of armour consists of...a suit. Character wise, he's just as boring as the rest of the losers in the Mojave. Why does he have so many hitpoints? It's never explained.

Speaking of shooting, the gunplay outside of VATS is as bad as it was in Fallout 3, which is to say it's terrible. But at least in Fallout 3, the perk Grim Reaper's Sprint meant you could basically use VATS an infinite amount, and never had to use FPS mode - not so in New Vegas. Sprint was nerfed and is now largely pointless, forcing you to aim manually in many encounters...but the engine just isn't up to it.

The environments are dull, most of the game takes place in the Mojave Wasteland which is about as interesting as it sounds. It's just a flat expanse of brown, with barely anything going on in between the places you're forced to go as part of the storyline. They seem to have used many of the Fallout 3 tilesets, there's nothing interesting or well designed to look at. Oh wait, I take that back - in one of the towns there's a gift shop inside a fake dinosaur. So, there's one interesting thing to look at...in a 40+ hour game.

Interiors are also bad...from tiny shacks with no content, to empty, lifeless casinos, you spend most of the game wondering where the hell everyone is. In one casino, I counted seven members of staff, but only 3 customers...how can they afford to pay their wages, let alone their other overheads? Never explained.

Vegas itself is also extremely poor. Insultingly poor. It's tiny. I counted, for the sake of this article, how long it took me to run from one side of Vegas to the other...54 seconds. Three tiny zones separated by loading screens. Even Morrowind and Oblivion had bigger towns than this, I'm baffled as to why they named the game after this one tiny area. Although, in fairness, 'Fallout: Lazy Cash-in' doesn't have the same ring to it. I was actually looking forward to seeing Vegas, but the only way I can describe it is 'a massive letdown'.

Another problem is unfinished interiors. On my travels, I happened across some giant ants outside a barn. I killed them, and decided to investigate the barn...turns out it was the entrance to an area called Ant Mound. I went inside, assuming I'd be fighting hordes of ants...but no. I spent a few minutes walking down empty caverns, only to find two ants in the final room - a Queen and a Soldier. They'd clearly built this zone and intended to fill it with enemies, and then simply not bothered to place any except the boss and a solitary guard. Nearby, I found a building with about half a dozen giant ants inside - more than in an area actually called Ant Mound.

Now, that building was interesting in itself...it was full of giant ants, but all the doors were closed...and giant ants can't open doors. So, how the hell did they get there? Did someone lure individual giant ants inside a building, and then shut the doors behind them, trapping them in? And to what end? It's never explained...like most of the nonsensical bullshit in New Vegas.

As we're coming to the end of the writeup, let's talk about the end of the level. You're thrown into a battle between two of the main factions...except when I played, I was friendly with both factions, yet one of them started arbitrarily shooting at me anyway. There's a long, dull battle on a dam, followed by one of the worst boss fights I've seen in a long time. You're fighting a guy who has about as many hitpoints as the guy at the end of Operation Anchorage, except this time he spawns about a dozen bodyguards who come after you exclusively. Out of nowhere. I specifically cleared the area before I attacked the boss, but the game had other ideas. It basically boils down to a war of attrition; a race to see which you run out of first, enemies or health packs. It's utterly dull, since you're fighting waves of the exact same guy over and over again.

To top it off, seconds after you finish the last of the fuckers...your robot army shows up. I could have put my (virtual) feet up, had a nice (virtual) cup of tea, and the problem would have sorted itself out. I put myself through that abject tedium for no productive reason whatsoever.

Not to mention the fact that the best weapons in the game are only found in the last level, which you can't exit once you've entered...so you can only use all the best crap for about 40 minutes on a shitty map.

The only thing this piece of trash has going for it is VATS, and even that seems like a bit of a step backward compared to Fallout 3...they seem to have altered the way action points work, so you spend a lot more time unable to aim because you a) can't use VATS, b) the controls are shite. That may be my memory playing tricks, mind.

How this game ever got released is a mystery. I can only see two ways that anyone thought this was a product worth releasing: 1) During the entire development cycle, at no point did anyone actually sit down and play this game from start to finish 2) They just don't give a fuck. My money's on both.

(I hope you noticed the fact that I never mentioned the bugs, game-breaking as they were...this game doesn't fall down because it was badly made and shipped buggy and unfinished, it's shite anyway)

Socko likes to post videos at the end of the articles, but this sack of cack doesn't deserve one...so here's a music video featuring a decent game instead:

My favourite games

I was sent a thing on Facebook which got me thinking about my favourite video games. This is by no means a definitive list, and is probably more of a reflection of my mood at this particular moment than anything else. It is also not objective (there are a number of games which I'm sure you think are better, but this is my list... make your own in the comments section).

Anyway, here is my definitive list of games that mean the most to me when I think of games which mean the most to me at this particular time:


Chrono Trigger (SNES) - I'm a big fan of Final Fantasy games, but Chrono Trigger beats all FF games in my opinion. This game pushed the SNES to its limits - it looked amazing, it played beautifully, its gameplay and story were innovative and so much about this game has stuck with me. Chrono Trigger is my benchmark for deciding whether a game is any good - if it comes close, then I know it is a good game. I do the same thing with music, I listen to a song or album and think to myself "is this anywhere near as good as Jimi Hendrix live at Filmore East in December 1969, if it's not anywhere near as good I tend not to bother.





Micro Machines 3 (PS1) -In particular, the level Brake Fast Bends. I must have played this level hundreds of times on multiplayer mode. The level is short and perfect for competition. You could go round the track for an hour without a winner, with the victor only being decided when the other person lost his or her nerve or made the tiniest mistake. There is a real spiritual, Zen-like element to this game which most people won't realise.



Super Mario 3 (NES) - this game is perfect. I must have played this game through more times than I can remember, and each time I play it, it fills me with a real sense of joy. In terms of mechanics and gameplay, the game is flawless. But alongside this the game is witty andfull of suprises. It may not look as slick as the multitude of games being released today, but if today's games had half the playability of Mario 3, it's doubtful that I'd be married.



Fallout 3 (Xbox360) - If you've not played Fallout 3, then you are in for a treat. One of the deepest, most satirical and darkest games I've ever played, this game takes immersion to a level I've never experienced in a game before. It is not for twitchy gamers who see the FPS genre as the be-all-and-end-all of gaming. I think the sign of a good game is one which you can discuss fondly with people over a pint... and I've done this, on a few occassions... and heard about vast sections of the game I hadn't even come across. I love Fallout 3 because it reward patience and curiousity, and VATS is awesome... and because the owls are the hootiest.



Grand Theft Auto (PC) - I'm a bit old school when it comes to games. I never really got into GTA IV the way I did Vice City, and I never got into Vice City the way I got into the original top-down Grand Theft Auto. The original GTA made robbing and killing seem almost charming and daft. The game had a lot of humour and charm, the colour pallette was brighter, and damn it, the game was faster-paced and funner (shut up, funner's a word now).



Disgaea (PS2) - This little-known turn-based strategy-RPG is possibly more addictive than crack mixed with Pringles. If you were to watch someone play this game, you'd probably fall asleep in your own waste, but playing it is just brilliant. It's kind of like a complex version of chess, in which the characters evolve and develop... it also has a quirky Japanese humour running through... you might not think it's the most engaging game you've ever played, but then you notice that you have clocked up few hundred hours...



Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past (SNES) - I know that Ocarina of Time is a better game, it is. Link to the Past is the game I got with my SNES so it will always occupy a special place in my heart. Nostalgia aside, Link to the Past is still an amazing game, and judging by all of the proceeding Zelda games which have followed, it has also become the template for them (see Minish Cap on GBA for definitive proof!).



Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES) - My preference for this particular version is due to fact that this is version I had on my SNES. I had Super Street Figher II, but it never felt quite right. Although Street Fighter IV is a much better game (arguably one of the best fighting games of all time), I've gone back to SF2 Turbo again and again for almost 2 decades. That's a pretty good sign of quality, if you ask me.



Mario Kart Double Dash (Gamecube) - Mario Kart is gameplay heaven, especially in multi-player. This is a game which I've owned every version of (SNES/GBA/N64/DS/GC, not Wii, because I'm not 8), and love each version in its own way. The SNES version will always have that nostalgic thing for me, I played Ghost Valley I with my friend Kieren countless times as a teenager (the Brake Fast Bends effect), and the DS version seems to bring together the best elements of all the Mario Karts in what is technically the ultimate version. But Double Dash is a game I've played with Claire and my friends coutless times. Whether its the ambiguity of what or who a Daisy Cruiser is, or just going mental in Baby Park, this game has ended up being dug out during countless drinking sessions.




Braid (Xbox360) - I would urge anyone who has not played this game to stop being stupid and get yourself a copy. From the outset, this game looks pretty dated. It looks like a bog-standard 2D playform game, and on first play doesn't seem that interesting. But after a short time, something clicks and you realise that this might be the most innovative game of the last decade (if you see the manipulation of space and time as innovative). The game is complex and rewarding, it's a bitch at times and makes no concessions to the player. This was the first game I've ever played where I found it useful to stick post-it notes all over my TV screen while playing it, I'm not kidding... If you're idea of a good video game experience is waggling a remote control to make a balloon inflate, I'm not conviced this will be the game for you.



Bust-a-Groove (PS1) - my final official selection is Bust-a-Groove. Before music games had to have arrows for your feet or little toy guitars, there were two titles which defined the rhythm game genre (at least for me they did): Parappa the Rapper and Bust-a-Groove. Although Parapper the Rapper had better game mechanics, Bust-a-Groove was a much better gaming experience. Shorty and the EZ Mouse, a giant voguing robot, Capoera aliens and Kitty N gave this game oodles of charm. I've not played the game in years, but I can still hear the songs in my head... "I would never ever run away..." "I'm the natural playboy in town..." "very very very very very very goood..." "Everything is fine with me, if I'm with my EZ mouse..." I'm still not sure what a Bugger Dog is though....

Gaming in Asia

As some of you may know from Socko's Pro Wrestling Review, I'm currently living in Taiwan. Since I don't have anything new to say this week (it's tough to finish a game when you're playing 6 or 7 of them at once, and one of them is Final Fantasy...) I thought I'd do a repost from my personal blog on the local gaming culture.



These are just my personal observations from my time in Thailand, Taiwan and Malaysia.

I went looking for a videogame store in the 'big town' nearby, and was surprised to find that there isn't one. The town has a Subway, a McDonalds and a KFC, dozens of clothes stores, several DVD stores and bookshops - but no videogame stores. Back home, there would definitely be a Game in a town that size, maybe even a HMV, a Blockbusters etc, and buying games would be no problem, but in Taiwan there is nothing to be found.

The whole gaming culture is different here. The PC is the platform of choice, and people play mainly free to play MMOs or Counterstrike, or CS clones.

The main reason for this is one of economics. In an internet cafe, an hour is roughly $20 (40p). Or, at my local one, you can pay $100 (£2) for a 9-hour session. I'm not going to lie and pretend I've never done a 9-hour game session before, but I've rarely planned to do so in advance. The fact that enough people plan to do this ahead of time that they have special deals for them seems very weird - a little worrying, even.

Compare the cost of a 9 hour game session to a new PS3 game. Heavy Rain (which I still haven't played, dammit) is going for roughly $1,500 (£30). In order to get the same number of hours out of the game as compared to dropping $1,500 in an internet cafe, the game would need to be 135 hours long. Most games are 8 - 12 hours long, even exceptionally long games like Final Fantasy are only 50-70 hours. It's just not economical to play console games compared to going to the internet cafe (and that's without considering the cost of the hardware).

People are also a lot more tolerant of f2p (free to play) games here. In the west, most people tend to turn their noses up at MMOs. Most MMO gamers are playing WOW, as well as a sizeable migrant population that goes from new game to new game every few months, as well as a few die-hard fans of games most people have either never heard of or forgotten about. F2p games are only really played regularly by kids, who can't afford to pay for a subscription based game each month. But when the kids grow up and can afford the fees, they will graduate to pay to play. This is mainly down to production values - P2P games have much higher budgets and are far more polished than F2P, which is important in the west - less so in Asia, it seems.

Also, in Asia they are a lot more tolerant of grinding. This is a cultural thing, children here are schooled using the Confucian system where things are learned by repetition...they say the same thing over and over again until it sticks in their head. In the west, of course, we use the Platonic(?) system of writing everything down to remember it, and asking questions when we don't understand something, with comparatively little repetition. So, grinding the same mobs for nine hours is much less of a turn-off for Asian gamers than it is for Westerners. MMOs are notoriously grindy (hell, the word 'grind' comes from the MMO world...), and F2P games are even more so, which puts off a lot of gamers in the west but isn't an issue here.

That's not to say that consoles are non-existent here, in the cities there are games stores that seem pretty similar to their UK counterparts. Ok, they're a lot less dingy and the customers don't look like horrific social rejects, and they're usually well-lit...but apart from that they're basically the same. But console gaming is far less of a big deal, don't expect a small town to have the same kind of console game availability as a similar sized town in the West.

Top 10 animated comedies of all time (that you probably haven’t seen). Number 8: Space Ghost Coast to Coast

Okay, so technically Space Ghost Coast to Coast isn’t exactly an animated comedy – I suppose it could be better described as an animated chat show with real guests... who appear on monitors... in space... and are interviewed by a superhero and some aliens. If you’re not American, the chances are that you never saw Space Ghost and his chums confound and confuse their celebrity guests. But it was the supporting cast of Moltar (an evil director) and Lokar (a mantis with designs on taking over the universe). It all sounds very stupid, but that doesn’t come close. The show was chaotic, made little sense and was great late-night with a smoke entertainment. Check out some of these clips and you’ll see what I mean.

Random Thoughts

I haven't completed (or thoroughly given up on) a game this week, so I haven't done a writeup - here's my thoughts on the games I've been playing.

Fallout: New Vegas

This game started to grow on me the more I played. It has an addictive quality, I found myself playing it a lot despite the fact it is flawed and I wasn't really enjoying myself for the most part...maybe it has something to do with VATS. I don't know. I do intend to finish it, but not until after I've played the next game...

Red Dead Redemption

This game is fantastic. The opening cinematic demonstrates the love that has been poured into this game, and it never seems to stop. It's a Rockstar game, and this is the kind of quality I've come to expect from them. I'll save most of my thoughts for the full writeup, but I will say this: Obsidian, this is how you do 'desert' - the Mojave in New Vegas looks like crap compared to the environments in this game.



Final Fantasy XIII

This seems pretty decent so far, but a lot less open than previous games. I'm several hours in, and I still haven't even come to a town let alone the world map - it's just one long, very pretty, corridor. Of course, Final Fantasy games are designed to be huge, epic games so there's plenty of time for it to open up. A bigger problem seems to be that enemies don't respawn - I like to level my characters for an hour or so at the start of these games so I won't get stuck on a boss or whatever - not possible here, you have the exact amount of experience points the devs want you to have...it's a bit annoying. Also, battles this time round are rated out of five stars, which seem to be awarded solely on how quickly you can finish a battle...so if you play defensively to make sure you don't get killed, you lose stars. They seem to encourage and all-out attack for every single battle...even when it's reckless or even dangerous to attempt it. But if you don't give a fuck about videogame stars and just want to win fights, everything so far has been pretty easy.

The characters are a bit weird in this one too. There's the usual whiny little brat, but here he's actually treated like a whiny little brat instead of being awarded 'main character' status, which is a nice change. There's the idiot who uses his fists when his enemies have guns, the inexplicably cheerful girl, the cold and ruthless girl, and the black man with a bird living in his afro. Wait, what? Capcom got called racist for Resident Evil 5, merely because a game set in Africa had black people in it, but Square gets away with making a character based around 'lol, afros look like nests'? Aside from that, he's probably the most normal of the bunch, certainly one of the most likeable.

If I can just figure out how to permanantly kill the whiny little brat, it'll be plain sailing...



Watching this kinda makes me wish I'd got the Japanese dub/English sub version when I had the chance...

Top 10 animated comedies of all time (that you probably haven’t seen). Number 9: Monkey Dust

Monkey Dust is admittedly the only British entry in my top 10 and it’s not for everyone. With light-hearted humour being punctuated with darkness, this show isn’t going to be for everyone. If you don’t mind the occasional joke about paedophiles, terminal illness, Nazis or suicide, then you should be okay.

The reason Monkey Dust is in my top ten is for a number of reasons, mainly because (for the first series at least) the humour was unflinching and the social commentary was sharp and disconcerting. The claustrophobia and frustration imbedded within each episode felt like a reflection of the post-Iraq Blair years.

Top 10 animated comedies of all time (that you probably haven’t seen). Number 10: Dr Katz - Professional Therapist

‘Squigglevision: the bane of epileptics everywhere’ – that could easily be the tagline to Dr Katz. With its unique wobbly aesthetic, improvise dialogued and the showcasing of a number of hitherto untapped comic talent, Dr Katz stands as one of the most underrated animated comedies of all-time.
The show details the lives of the Katz family: a divorced father and his hapless son Ben as they plough through life. Ben is lazy, fat, and is somewhat reminiscent of Ignatius Riley from A Confederacy of Dunces (if a little more cheerful and laid back). Through all his flaws, the relationship between Ben and his father is warm and light-hearted. With episodes revolving around the highs of Ben’s life (such as the episode he didn’t quite witness a crime, or when he considers maybe breeding pot-bellied pigs for a living), and his obsession with his father’s receptionist, Laura. Laura is venomous, sarcastic and bitchy, and comes out with some of the best lines in the show
As this is a show about a therapist, it would not complete without therapy. The basic premise of the therapy session was to allow stand-up comics to perform their material in the context of an episodic show. On the whole, this worked really well, but an episode could be rendered almost unwatchable if the comedian was particularly bad or annoying, such as Gilbert Godfrey. The formula worked because it combined the familiarity of the staple characters and their storylines with fresh voices and perspectives in every episode.
Dr Katz was pretty big in America and won many awards. In the UK they used to show it on ITV2 in the early hours of the morning. If you missed it, I highly recommend giving it a go.

Top 10 animated comedies of all time (that you probably haven’t seen).

I’ll admit that the “Top 10 animated comedies of all time (that you probably haven’t seen)” isn’t the catchiest title, and that the “all time” bit seems a tad redundant as a) animated comedies didn’t exist for most of our history, and b) the best ones were made in the last 20 years, but let’s not get bogged down before we even get started.

When it comes to animated comedies, few people tend to look beyond The Simpsons, South Park, Futurama and Family Guy. This is a shame, because although their prominent position in popular culture is undeniable, there is also so much being overlooked.

What I want to do with my top 10 is show you some great animated comedies which you may have missed, overlooked, ignored, forgotten about, or maybe, still enjoy today. It’s a list which I will do over coming weeks, so enjoy.

Random Thoughts

I've been playing a bunch of different games this week, but I haven't finished any so I don't want to do full writeups. So, in the absence of anything worth saying, here's a load of crap that's probably best ignored.

Fallout: New Vegas

Not impressed with this game at all. If you're reading this, I'm sure you've heard all about the numerous bugs and glitches that plague this game. I saw a lot of bugs, but they didn't bother me - until I got an actual game-breaking bug that means I can't complete the game. I don't want to start again, and my only non-ruined save is from maybe 8 hours ago so I don't really want to go back down that many levels.

Even without the bugs, the game isn't a patch on Fallout 3. The main story arc seems to make a lot more sense, but aside from the main plot it's a definite step down. What I liked about Fallout 3 was that it was crammed with interesting things to explore; wandering the wasteland you would barely go 5 minutes without finding a random dungeon, or a small town plagued by vampires, or a lunatic sitting on a pile of explosives ready to blow you up as soon as he sees you. In New Vegas, there's nothing aside from quest-related locations, at least not that I found in the 15-20 hours I played. There's no incentive to explore, unless you really like abandoned shacks, since doing the quests will take you everywhere anyway - and exploration was the best part of Fallout 3.

Still, VATS is only slightly buggy. I never get tired of VATS.



God of War Collection

This is brilliant. I somehow missed the God of War franchise the first time round, but I played 3 briefly and was blown away - I would have got that but I didn't want to have no clue what was going on. I'm still on the first one, maybe 5 hours in (I can't kill Cerberus...), but it's a blast. It's clearly last-gen, despite the new HD graphics, but it's such a fun, well-polished game that it doesn't really matter. One thing that's weird is that they redid the graphics for the game, but not the cutscenes - it makes for some really jarring transitions. But aside from that, it's above and beyond most current-gen games.



Dead Rising 2

I was having problems with this game - I love it now. It's a question of getting into the Dead Rising mindset...I still haven't touched the main storyline since I got stuck, and I've gone from level (I think)15 to 35 just exploring and messing around - and I've still only seen maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the mall. Of course, I've been everywhere, but I haven't actually stopped to check most of it out. I'm going to do a no-survivor-rescue, no-psychopath playthrough and just try and see everything.

This is why I no longer give a shit about the main storyline:



Little Big Planet

I got this to play with my girlfriend, since she's nearly finished Heavy Rain, and the idea of watching her try to play any of the other games I own is painful.

It's not too bad, lots of customisation options and cutesy graphics. It's kind of dull though - if it was any more laid back it would be in a coma. It's ok to play for an hour or so, but I wouldn't sit down for a bit LBP session like I would with...well, pretty much any other game, now that I think about it.



So, that's my little roundup of videogame thoughts for the week. It's not much, but there seems to be a vacuum of content on here at the moment so something is better than nothing I guess.

Dead Rising 2 - A Cautionary Tale

Dead Rising 2 is a game that absolutely hates you. Sure, you'll think you're having fun at first. Killing zombies, making homebrew weapons, exploring the enormous mall the game is set in. But eventually, it'll get you. You'll be lured in, chewed up and spat out. You will end up throwing your controller at a wall.

Things start off pretty well. The missions basically amount to 'go here, watch a cutscene, go there, watch another cutscene'. Pretty standard stuff. It's a nice mixture of tasks, you could be doing anything from fetching some anti-zombie pills, to chasing a train on a motorcycle, to destroying an armoured van which is being protected by mercenaries. A new mission pops up, so you wander over to check it out, excited to see what cool new action sequence the game is going to throw you into.


Except, it's not an action sequence. It's a boss.

The bosses in this game are unforgiving, even if they don't look it. One boss is a woman in a cocktail dress, but she acts more like The Juggernaut.

So, there you are, fighting the bastard child of Superman and Goku, slightly denting their health bar with the same weapon that only moments before was capable of clearing a room full of zombies in a couple of swipes. You are under-equipped, and are too low level to have a realistic chance of taking them down. So you die. The game offers you two options - start again from the beginning of the game (keeping your character's level), or load from the last save point.

No problem, you say. Huls, you've faced tougher bosses than this before, you've been too low level to progress before. The solution is a piece of cake - just grind for an hour or two to level up, get all the items you need to beat them and then go back and take care of business.

Easy, right? EXCEPT. This game is on a timer. If you don't beat the boss within a certain time limit, it's game over. You can't go and get better weapons and curative items. You can't go and grind. You have to fight them, over and over again, with whatever you're carrying and at the same low level, or you have to go RIGHT BACK TO THE START OF THE GAME.

This was the point where I threw my FUCKING CONTROLLER at the wall.


I have two options open to me now. I can keep rehashing the same boss battle for several hours until I finally crack it (not to mention actually getting there from the savepoint each time, which is a mission in itself), or I can lose ALL of my progress so far. There is no good option here, only different levels of crap. So far, I've chosen to go with 'don't play the game', as it is the least negative thing I can do.

A game where you can get into a position where not playing is preferable to playing is a poorly designed game.

I'll give this game a full writeup later - despite this article it is an awesome game, there's just a few design decisions that make it more frustrating than fun on occasion. I wanted to share that frustration with you guys. I will go back to it, but finishing this is going to be a long, painful slog - and with New Vegas just around the corner, it seems kind of pointless to attempt it now.

Saints and Scroungers – BBC One – Monday 7.30pm

Scroungers! Bleedin' scrounger dole scum bastards! Taking all of OUR money out of our POCKETS and putting it into THEIR POCKETS. SCUM. But thankfully, decent hard working citizens can rejoice, as ex-used car dealer Dominic Littlewood is here with half an hour of publicly funded prime-time television to put the work-shy bastards back in their place. PRISON.

Saints and Scroungers follows the DWP investigators who track down benefit fraudsters. Acting upon information given by anonymous informers (grasses) they set out to catch those THEIVING BASTARDS who think somehow they have a right to live off the toil of hard working LOWER-MIDDLE-CLASS people.

The DWP investigators are on the trail of Robert Murt, a recipient of some £99,000 of disability living allowance over the last ten years or so. They tell us they have access to 'intelligence' about Mr Murt (they're like real spies in MI5!) that leads them to believe he's a cheating bastard. We see secret video of Mert running around playing a game of football, despite stating on his claim form that he had no legs. We hear from a doctor who tells us how if one really was suffering from the various ills Murt had claimed to possess, then they'd spend their days in painful agony, festering in a pile of their own piss and shit, unable to so much as clean up after themselves, let alone run a successful delivery company in the north of England. We learn that Murt is THE DEVIL. Murt is a CANCER on our society.

Of course a programme with the title 'Saints and Scroungers' will need a 'saint' to counter the evil 'scrounger' Robert Murt, and that saint is lovely 87 year old Queenie Maxwell. She bought her London flat in the early 1980s and it had no heating. Her late husband had always been against taking so much as a penny off the state, and didn't much care for central heating either, but now he's dead she's getting her flat done up on the social. This is good news, those lovely old people who lived through a booming economy of post-war reconstruction, full employment and cheap house prices have suffered enough. With the help of Littlewood, Queenie has managed to blag herself two grand of new boiler, double glazing and wall insulation. She's also had her pension bumped up. Fuck yeah.

Back to the north and Murt is having his day in court, after viewing the DWPs evidence the judge declares him and 'fucking cheeky cunt' and sends him to prison for 18 months. He also decides Murt has to pay back the hundred grand he stole from Queenie Maxwell. The DWP investigator is pleased with us, that's 100k back to us honest taxpayers. Woo!

How Robert Murt will find this money to pay us back isn't really explained, especially when he's just found himself with a criminal record and is nearing retirement age anyway. But of course it isn't at all patronising for the TV to tell us we're getting this money back. Because of course we are, erm... somehow. Maybe Murt'll pay back 50p a week for the next 3,800 years? This will happen because we all know that bastards like Murt NEVER DIE.

The media likes making examples out of idiots. On the day American special forces in Afghanistan blew up the hostage they were supposed to be rescuing, we're given our very own special hate figure in Robert Murt. If there was no-one like him in the world then we'd probably all be friends and not hate each other so much and know our next-door neighbours first names. Maybe there wouldn't be any suffering at all?

Remember that woman who took her kids to Raoul Moat's funeral because it was better than Legoland? (How could a media circus with TV cameras, satellite trucks and Kay Burley, plus a ton of police and helicopters and bright shiny things possibly be more exciting than a four hour drive to an over-priced theme park?) Please ignore a government you never voted for cutting everything in sight and get angry about this instead. Raoul Moat funeral mum is at worst a complete idiot, but more likely just a bit mentally ill, so the best thing to do is rather than ignore her and let her quietly make her own mistakes, we should put her picture all over the papers and turn her into a public hate figure. Hey, she was on benefits too! The bastard. Anyway, she's famous now and her kids probably get bullied at school. Feel better about yourself.

michael dixon

Heavy Rain

I've moved halfway round the world this year, and I've only just got round to buying a PS3...so this is an old'un. But is it a good'un?

Heavy Rain is the story of Ethan Mars, and his quest to save his son who has been kidnapped by a serial killer - he only has a few days to find out his son's location and save him. There are three other playable characters. Madison Paige is a woman Ethan meets in a motel, Sam Shelby is a private investigator who is trying to track down the killer, and Norman Jayden is an FBI investigator who is helping the local police with their search.

The story is interesting and engaging, it kept me guessing how things were going to turn out until the very end, and when it gave me a moral choice it really felt like one. The animation is excellent thanks to extensive motion capture, although there are a few isolated examples where it looks extremely unrealistic. The real star of the show is the facial animation - again, their use of motion capture and real actors worked wonders and every expression looks real.


The controls are woefully cumbersome - use the analogue stick to pick a direction, and hold R2 to walk? Why not just bind walking to the stick? There were also a number of occasions where I was holding a direction, and then the camera angle changed meaning my character turned around and went back the way they came which changed the camera angle again, making me go back and forth like a sideways yo-yo.

Also, the game makes use of the Sixaxis controls - that is to say there are times when you have to shake the controller about to do things on the screen. The problem is, the detection isn't perfect so sometimes I'd do the action but the game told me I'd missed it. Not a big deal when I was, say, opening a cupboard. Hurtling down a freeway in the wrong direction at 60mph and trying to avoid an oncoming lorry is a different story.

Which brings me to another point - this game is one big QTE fest. I don't have a problem with QTEs, but I know a lot of people hate them. Consider yourself warned.

The real problems with the game begin to show when you start your second playthrough. The first time you play, it seems that you're exploring a vibrant new world, and that every decision you make has consequences. Unfortunately, it is all an illusion - the game is incredibly linear, and it is impossible to leave the railroad tracks the developers have put you on. Even when I was actively trying to mess up, I ended up succeeding anyway because it would have broken the story if I'd failed. The thing that I liked most about the game during my first playthrough was in fact just an illusion. It's like having a Choose your own Adventure book that says 'Which way do you want to go? If North, go to page 23. If East, go to page 23. If West, go to page 23.' - you're not choosing your own adventure at all, it's just making you think you are.

There are several timed sequences in the game, which are a failure after the first time you see them. Let's say you have five minutes to investigate an apartment before the owner returns. The first time you play, you go around the entire place and look at every possible clue, which is about enough time to see everything before you are interrupted. On subsequent playthroughs, you've seen everything and know there is nothing there that's actually relevant...so you just have to sit and do nothing for 5 minutes while an invisible counter ticks down. There is nothing you can do to progress the story, so you're left to just entertain yourself until the game decides to continue.

I'd recommend you play the game once, as it's definitely worth one playthrough. Unfortunately, it's only worth one. If you can rent it do that, otherwise get it second hand - but don't pay more than you'd spend on a couple of DVDs.

Nigella's Impossible Lifestyle

Now don't get me wrong, I love a good cooking programme and there is nothing more satisfying than seeing an over complicated, hard to source and time consuming dish being served up, knowing full well that not only can I not buy the ingredients that I am also a hopeless woman who needs to commit suicide immediately as I cannot make a Victoria sponge.

Britian's Best Dish is the one that gets my ire the most, ordinary people creating extraordinary dishes, possibly the only one they can do and then seeing that look on the judges faces when they have to taste it, they know it tastes like someone has pooed in their mouth, and then they have to say something positive about it. I like to watch these programmes whilst eating some cheese on toast or spag bog that I managed to heat all by myself.

Nigella on the other hand, she is not the ordinary person serving up her best dish to some sneery judge, oh no, she is the princess of cooking (we all know that the Queen is Delia) and she says that it is all right to use garlic infused olive oil because chopping the damn stuff up with a knife is both dangerous and time consuming. Saatchi's wife seems to be able to eat a river of crisp, fattening food and still manages to have a rich husband, darling children and a house in somewhere expensive like Notting Hill. She appears to be a very nice person and the woman can cook, but that lifestyle, dear God, how do people live like that? I can't imagine Nigella being so busy, she gives her children a bag of crisps for dinner, being so stressed out that she shouts at the good looking children or tells her husband to sod off. The lifestyle is all too perfect and one that I can never aspire to, but God damn it, I'll still end up buying her book, trying to make the food and then forgetting to make a proper dinner and eating wine gums instead.

The Apprentice - Episode One

I’ve never been a fan of reality TV, but I can’t help myself when it comes to the Apprentice. From the moment I saw the gaggle of smug, self-satisfied faces parade onto the screen to take part in “the job interview from hell”, I knew it was going to be a good ‘un.

As with all series of the Apprentice, the contestants were separated into two groups based purely on their gender. Their first task as a group is to come up with the blandest and most pointless name possible for their group. The women went for Apollo, because of the Apollo space missions; Apollo was also the Greek god of fire, the sun, medicine and plague, so as you can see the name fits really well. If Apollo wasn’t bad enough the men’s effort made me shake my head in disgust: Synergy. I’m not fucking kidding you, they went for some early-90s business jargon which has been the butt of a few hundred Dilbert comics. I’m surprised that Sugar didn’t fire them all on the spot for coming up with such an utterly shite name.

I love the way that the contestants quickly slip into gender stereotypes. The men shout, bully, bang tables and are like some macho business pricks from an 1980s movie set on Wall Street. Although they didn’t show it on the show, I’m pretty sure they spent at least two hours comparing each other’s cock sizes and engaging in some rather tawdry drinking games which all seem to involve things being inserted into each other’s orifices. The women on the other hand come across as demented, emotional and bitchy; they seem to spend more time bickering with each other than actually get shit done.

The first task seemed as pointless and retarded as they usually are, and made for very entertaining viewing. If you were running a multi-million pound technology company, what would you think would make a great first challenge? How about make sausages? Didn’t think so. But that’s what they did, and it was hilarious. Synergy decided to make cheap and nasty sausages, whilst Apollo went for the gourmet end. After making the sausages, the teams went out onto the London streets to sell them to the unsuspecting public. Both teams set up a market stall and sent some of their team members off to sell them door-to-door. Apollo when to places like hotels and restaurants in an effort to sell them in bulk, Synergy literally went door-to-door, knocking on people’s houses. I don’t claim to be an expert at sales (I lasted only a few days in a sales job, not because I couldn’t sell, but because the other people were so abhorrent), but I know that if someone knocks at my door selling sausages, I’m not going to buy them.

From early in the first episode, it seemed quite obvious who this series’ antagonists are going to be: Stuart “the brand” Baggs – yes, this guy has given himself the nickname “the brand”, what a complete fucking cretin. This guy comes across as someone who is arrogant, deluded and when he opens his mouth a flood of bullshit bursts out like some broken sewerage pump. Mellissa Cohen – this woman looks like a female version of Andy Warhol; she is bitchy, arrogant, and comes across as a complete thicksicle, with lines like: “I’ve heard what you have to say, and I agree with you 100%, but...” – if there’s a ‘but’ you don’t agree 100%, you fucking retard. Dan Harris - unfortunately this guy was the first to be fired, and for good reason: this guy was a walking gland. If a filthy glob of spunk from a diseased male stripper could evolve into a human, this would the result. He's a macho and arrogant, and a bully who couldn’t lead a dog on a walk. This guy was a complete tit, and spent most of the episode barking orders as if he’d been watching too many ‘angry chef’ programmes.. I can imagine that this is the type of guy who regularly calls Talk Sport to complain about “them bloody Islams”.

There’s a little game I like to play when watching the Apprentice, pick a business cliché, and count how many times it is uttered during an episode. Next time, I will be counting how many times the contestants use the word ‘dynamic’ to describe themselves.