So look at my surprised face when I find that not only is “Sonic Generations” okay, it’s actually really good!

The story follows our favourite blue hedgehog when he is attacked by a mysterious demon made of clockwork and darkness. Hideously injured and feeling his life ebbing away, Sonic chokes back the pain by reliving the adventures through the course of his life. It may be ripped wholesale from Hitman: Contracts but it’s a beautiful and heart wrenching way to end such a long career and I salute SEGA for taking such a daring step with the scene where Sonic tearfully admits that his last ten years have been a complete failure…

…Of course I’m just kidding. What really happens is some barely explained tear in the fabric of space-time happens which lets the Sonic we know from the 3D games meet the Sonic we love from our childhood, and then fix things somehow by playing through remade levels from a load of the old games.

Old Sonic plays almost exactly like he used to back in the 8-Bit days even down to the sound effects and animations. You run from left to right across the map avoiding traps and destroying robots by rolling into a ball, just like any hedgehog does really.

The new Sonic plays a bit like he did in the Sonic Adventure games if you turned the speed up to eleven, mixing 3D running sections where you avoid obstacles in your path and jump through hoops and side-scrolling sections that feel like old sonic except you can home in on enemies and instantly boost to ludicrous speeds like a cheating bastard.

The level design has a lot of good ideas with shortcuts and secrets squirreled away to help players find a better way to complete a level each time you play and taking some of the levels from the worse games and putting them in a better one was actually a great idea. It felt liberating to actually enjoy the levels from “the 2006 Sonic game” and “Sonic Unleashed.”

This game is really fun to play, but it’s not without its flaws. The worst of which being that it’s way too short. There are about seven levels overall, each with a 2D and 3D version and once you finish them you’re basically done with the whole game.

This would have been easier to swallow if the level ratings had been a little more challenging and encouraged you to make a perfect run. As it was I got A, B and even S rankings on every level despite sometimes limping over the finish line with no lives and one ring after spending five minutes getting impaled by spikes and falling off of ledges. I remember Sonic Adventure 2 giving me E grades by default and only offering A grades if you collected almost every ring and didn’t get hit once, if I’m not rewarded for bettering myself why should I even try?

At the end of the day, Sonic Generations is a good game, but it’s far too short to be a great game. The story was tolerable because there wasn’t much of it to spoil things, and I can’t help but wish they had just made more of it for me to enjoy.

“Sonic Generations” is well worth getting for a Tenner. Twenty if you love Sonic the Hedgehog a little too much. There’s about a quarter of a game’s worth of material, but the warm fuzz of nostalgia isn’t too bad either.

If anyone from SEGA’s reading this, you should just straight up remake Sonic 1, 2, 3 and Knuckles in this style. If you include the Co-op modes with Tails where a friend can pick up a controller and start helping me then I will personally give you a medal for actually making Sonic the Hedgehog fun again!

I was wrestling with this when I saw something that made me sit up and snarl, something I can really talk about.

The new Xbox dashboard.

Microsoft released it yesterday at the time of writing and aside from the usual “They’ve changed it so now it sucks” whining from fanboys, people are okay with it…

But you really shouldn’t be!

1.       My Xbox is infested with ads.

You have to pay a monthly subscription to use the online features on your Xbox, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from pasting adverts across your TV screens for more money!

I’m not normally bothered about ads, I have them here on Unbored after all, but take a look at this diagram here.

The blue area is wasted space, the green areas are buttons you actually use, and the red ones are adverts. Literally three quarters of the page is filled with advertising and I’m not even online yet!

This is like someone at Microsoft watched ‘Idiocracy’ and thought it was a good idea!

The dashboard has a nifty feature where you can flit between different ads in the middle tile, it could have been much better used if it had been for the games on your hard-drive or something, you know, buttons you actually want to use!

I can’t help but feel violated knowing that every time I fire up my Xbox it’s profiting BSkyB, a company that Hacked Madeline Mccann’s mobile phone.

And now I’ve just found that in America the ads are videos that play if you hover over them and can’t be stopped until they’ve finished… I’ll have more on this later!

2.       Microsoft leaked your credit card? Guess you’re screwed!

In order to get back online after the update finishes you have to accept Microsoft’s new terms and conditions. Squirrelled away in all the tedious and often pointless legalese is a section that states that you cannot perform a class action lawsuit against the company.

What’s a class action lawsuit? Well I’m no expert but from what I gather, when Sony royally screwed up when they leaked people’s credit card info, the customers banded together to fund a massively expensive corporate lawyer, this is a class action lawsuit.

Sony decided that their mistake wasn’t letting their network get hacked, it was letting people sue them afterwards, and so they quickly amended their terms and conditions to make sure that if anyone wanted to sue, they had to do it alone. Can’t afford an expensive corporate lawyer to match theirs? Then you’re out of luck.

Microsoft have followed in their footsteps before they even leak your credit card, so if someone nicks your account and takes all your money, all Microsoft will do is shrug and give you the finger.

This behaviour is so disgusting that half the states of America are undecided if it should be legal or not!

3.       It has loads of cool apps, and none of them are out yet.

Still it’s not all so bad. You can watch Youtube, sometime this winter. And 4OD, sometime this winter. There’s also BBC iPlayer, sometime next year… The only two apps that are out are Lovefilm and Sky. One of them is okay and the other one is the empire of evil.

Maybe it’ll get better as new apps get released, but I doubt the ads are going to get any less annoying.

In the meantime, I’ve taken my credit card off of my account. I know it sounds paranoid, but it’s not such a bad thing when you realise that buying points from Gamestation is actually cheaper than buying them straight from the Xbox.

So to summarise, screw Microsoft, screw their lawyers, screw Rupert Murdoch, and screw the horrible waste of space that is the new menu screen. The Kinect stuff is nice though.

I think I explained what the experience was like Last time I went. But here were my highlights for this one. Pictures will follow as they’re uploaded.

1. I got to play Saints Row 3 for a bit. It felt very much like the last one but even sillier, they gave us each a pair of sunglasses and a bobblehead for our interest and my girlfriend got a picture high-fiving Professor Genki, the new series mascot.

If you need any convincing on Saints Row the Third, I submit to you, the greatest trailer of all time!

2. Tim Winchester was there again, and he even remembered me from last time! I wish I had bought more stuff from him.

3. Jess Bradley caught my eye with her adorable caricatures of famous characters like Link, Solid Snake and Rorschach. I bought several and she gave me a sticker for free.

4. My girlfriend (Amanda Lancaster) found herself gravitated towards a stall filled with Yaoi, for those of you that don’t know, that’s the Japanese term for boy on boy action or man-love… I can say it’s definitely worth a laugh!

5. They had the Delorean from Back to the future there, I took a picture threatening my girlfriend with the hoverboard (I’m such a gentleman.)

6. As part of their promotion for Skyward Sword, they were handing out free ocarinas to anyone who proved themselves worthy. My superior Zelda knowledge may have made me worthy of the ocarina, but it doesn’t mean I can play a goddamn thing on it.

7. In terms of cosplay we saw a woman walking around with a terrifying dog head, a guy dressed as Ryuk the demon from Death Note, several power rangers, and one guy dressed as Rebecca Black.

Conventions like this are a great day out if you enjoy the geekier side of life, just make sure you bring some cash with you, cashpoints get flooded by people wanting to buy swag. I bought my lady a Totoro!

The MCM Expo will be back in May, and there are similar events happening all over. Go with some friends and it’s a great laugh, but I’m still the one with a goddamn ocarina!

Update

Check out the pictures from MCM on our facebook page.

I am. If you or someone you know wants to buy a game as a gift, here is my helpful guide. As with all my what to buy someone guides, KEEP THE RECEIPT IN CASE THEY ALREADY HAVE IT OR CAN’T PLAY IT FOR SOME REASON.

First things first: What do they play their games on?

This is the first step you need to work out if you’re buying someone a game. Either have a sneaky look at their gaming setup or ask around.

Wii: Looks like this.

Xbox 360: Looks like this or this.

Playstation 3: Looks like this or this.

PC: Can look like… well, a PC.

Now on to the individual games, while my Comics article was all about the classics, this article’s going to be about all this seasons new releases because 1. It opens several cans of worms around what console they’re using and 2. Because we’ll be here all day.

Battlefield 3 (PC, Xbox 360 and PS3)

The battlefield series has always been about jumping online with about sixty other people and shooting at each other until your team wins. You can run around on foot or in vehicles like jeeps, tanks, helicopters or even jet fighters if you ever get there before everyone else fighting over them. I got very seriously into Battlefield 2 back in the day, and from what I’ve seen this new version is streaks ahead of its predecessor.

Buy it if: They enjoy playing games online or shooting games.

You can buy Battlefield 3 here. 

Gears of War 3 (Xbox 360)

The Gears of War series is often accused of starting or perpetuating the smear of gritty brown shooter games of the last five years. You run behind cover and pop out to shoot enemies in a post-apocalyptic world where… something happened so we have to shoot at it.

It’s never been my kind of thing, but I have always enjoyed playing it with friends, and this newest instalment has made that part even better with the ability for four players to beat the story together, and even more to shoot each other online.

Buy it if: They enjoyed the other two Gears of War games, or any brown/grey shooter games where they sit behind little walls shooting at enemies.

You can buy Gears of War 3 here. 

Modern Warfare 3 (PC, Xbox 360 and PS3)

As regular as clockwork, Activision releases another Call of Duty game for the holiday seasons to part youngsters of their money.

The story plays like your everyday action movies, but the games have frequently pulled quite a few good surprises in telling them, such as a scene in the first game where the player gets caught in a nuclear blast. The series prints money, but it has done so for very good reason so far.

Buy it if: They enjoy Tom Clancey Novels, Michael Bay movies or anything to do with military equipment. Be sure to give them a copy of “All quiet on the Western Front” or “Bridsong” while you’re at it.

You can buy Modern Warfare 3 here.

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (PC, Xbox 360 and PS3)

The newest game in the Elder Scrolls Series, I’ve never played any of the previous games like Morrowind and Oblivion but their reputation precedes them. Epic Fantasy with swords and magic and Dragons and wise old men sending you out to get unicorn pelts. You can really lose yourself in the atmosphere while running away from a horde of giant crabs.

Buy it if: They like their swords and sorcery. Fantasy and RPG lovers will be all over this.

You can buy The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim here.

Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword

The legend of Zelda series is back for another collectathon! I’ve been playing these since I was ten and they still keep me coming back for more.

Buy it if: They have a Wii… Seriously, this is the only thing they’ve got to look forward to now Nintendo only cares about the 3DS and shovelware.

You can buy Skyward Sword here.

Batman Arkham City

Batman Arkham Asylum was an absolute tour de force back in 2009 with a game that let you punch sneak and connive your way through an insane asylum that had been taken over by the Joker. I wrote a review that you can read here. This time around the game has spread out over a whole city that you can swing around in while muttering “I’m Batman!”

Buy it if: They like their comic books, played the first game or like games where you get to sneak around and not kill people.

You can buy Arkham City here.

Assassins Creed Revelations

Assassins Creed 1, 2 and Brotherhood are absolutely brilliant games where you run around on rooftops in historical cities and stab evil people with hidden knives. The story is turning out to be absolutely superb and Revelations is looking to be the conclusion to the story of Ezio Auditore Da Firenze, the protagonist of the last two games.

Buy it if: They enjoy stealth, parkour, history or learning a little Italian. The attention to detail in these games is superb, they should really use these kinds of games to teach people more about these kinds of subjects.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Revelations here.

Fifa 2012: Footballl… That’s it. If they like football or have all the other eight billion versions of this, then they’ll like this.

You can buy Fifa 2012 here.

Saints Row the Third

Imagine if you were put into a city where you could get away with anything? Where you could rampage around destroying anything you pleased? That’s what the Saints Row games are like! Catharsis with a sense of humour!

It’s making Grand Theft Auto look rather Dora the Explorer. Couple that with online Co-Op where you can play with a friend and you have something really special.

Buy it if: they liked the GTA games, or have a rather silly but dark sense of humour.

You can buy Saints Row: the Third here.

Mario Kart 7 (3DS)

It’s Mario Kart, what’s not to like! You know this already.

Buy it if: They have a 3DS and friends. Mario Kart is only fun when you have friends to shout at when they get a blue shell and kill you from the other end of the track, nothing really beats three friends and this kind of game.

You can buy Mario Kart 7 here.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

Imagine if you took the flight simulator games and gave it a really good story. That’s Ace Combat. The series has had its ups and downs, with 6 being a bit weak in comparison to the others. But at its worst, the series has been fun and inventive, and Assault Horizon looks like it’s really going to shake things up.

Buy it if: They like jet fighters, or poignant war stories. It seems somewhat paradoxical to have an anti-war message when you play as a literal doom-machine raining fire on thousands of planes, tanks and buildings but some the games have done a really good job at making war seem like hell even when you’re having so much fun!

You can buy Ace Combat: Assault Horizon here.

So there you have it. If you weren’t sure what to buy that special someone, I hope this clears things up a little for you. Be sure to check out our other articles if they’re into Comic Books.

So here’s how I’m going to try to help. Every week I will give you a new article to help you buy something for a loved one or a friend, ten suggestions and my reasons for suggesting them.

So without further ado: What to buy someone if they’re into… COMICS!

1. Watchmen/The Sandman/Maus.

Why they’re good: If you ask anyone what the greatest comic books are and they’ll probably suggest at least one of these.

Watchmen is an absolutely seminal piece that first examined what kind of person would actually become a superhero, it follows a fascinating cast of characters as they react to one of their number being murdered by being thrown out of their apartment window.  The entire comics industry changed from the influence of this book, and none of them have really captured the magic of the original.

The Sandman follows the god of dreams across time and space. One episode will be about him battling through Hell to find his former girlfriend, the next could be about him making a random human immortal and watching him change over seven hundred years. It acts more like a collection of short stories with a big theme about stories, dreams and how they tie together. It’s weird, it’s wonderful and it’s a beautiful read.

Maus is much simpler than the other two. It follows the author’s father, Vladek Spiegelman as he tells the story of his life during World War Two, including his time at a concentration camp. The fact this is actually a true story gives everything so much more weight. It’s the comic book world’s equivalent of Schindler’s List. It’s not pretty, it’s not fun, but when you finish it and put it down you somehow feel like you’re a little bit more grown up for reading it.

Buy them if: I decided to lump these three together in the top spot because they’re the absolute pinnacle of comic books. So while they are brilliant, it’s also likely your friend already read it. If they’re serious about comics, they’ve probably read them, if they’re just getting into them or they’ve stuck to the normal Marvel/DC lines they won’t. If you get it wrong they’ll at least think you have good taste.

You can buy Watchmen here.

You can buy the first book of the Sandman here.

Maus can be found here.

2. Red Son.

Why it’s good: Red Son is a standalone comic that follows the life of Superman if he had landed in Russia instead of America. I thought it was going to be a bit of silly fun, showing an evil red scare Superman. But instead it actually takes a healthy and nuanced stance on Communism by having Supes believe that he should be helping everyone for the common good. He almost fits in Russia better than he does in America, but he finds himself stretched thin helping everyone all over the world and has to contend with an increasingly paranoid America trying to kill him constantly.

Buy it if: Your friend enjoys a bit of Superman comics or movies but hasn’t read the more esoteric stuff like this. It really gives a whole new perspective on Superman’s character.

You can buy Red Son here.

3. The Boys/Preacher.

Why it’s good: Welcome to the world of Garth Ennis, one of my favourite comic book writers of all time. He’s weird, he’s dark and very very funny.

Preacher follows a priest, his girlfriend and a vampire on a quest across America to find god… So they can beat the hell out of him for making such a mess of the world. Along the way they encounter a disfigured boy called Arseface, the KKK, Sexual Detectives, and the embodiment of death in the form of a cowboy… it’s like a depraved modern cowboy epic.

The Boys follows a young man who looks suspiciously like Simon Pegg who joins a secret CIA team who dress up in trenchcoats and beat Superheroes into line when they misbehave. It’s just as good as Preacher, and almost even more extreme.

Buy it if: They’re old enough to take it, seriously, it’s brilliant but not for the youngsters. If your friend has a dark sense of humour, can find the funny side in less than savoury subjects and enjoys a bit of gore they will love it. More prudish individuals or religious people may want to steer clear though.

You can buy the first edition of The Boys here.

You can buy the first edition of Preacher here.

4. Kingdom Come.

Why it’s good: Kingdom Come follows the entire DC universe’s superheroes gearing up for a war of epic proportions when Superman makes a mistake that destroys the whole of Kansas and goes off for a sulk. In his absence a new breed of superhero emerges, vigilantes who are dark and brooding and more interested in killing evil than saving good…

Yeah it’s a little heavy handed in its message but it’s a good story well told and it’s got some of the most beautiful artwork I have ever seen. Every panel is like an individual oil painting.

Buy it if: Your friend has read a lot of darker comic books like The Boys, Preacher or the Punisher. It’s a great way of bringing a little light back to comic books.

You can buy Kingdom Come here.

5. Pride of Baghdad.

Why it’s good: It’s about a pride of Lions that escape from a Zoo in Iraq during the Gulf War when a bomb blast destroys the cage walls. Only one of them even remembers life before captivity and the others have to adjust to their new and unfamiliar surroundings full of escaped wildlife, terrified humans and American war machines ravaging the land.

Imagine the Lion King mixed with Black Hawk Down and you might have a good idea of what you’re in for.

Buy it if: Your friend likes a damn good story. Pride of Baghdad is a good bet because it shares three great attributes. 1. You don’t have to worry about continuity, 2. It’s an intelligent self-contained story and 3. It’s not as well known as Maus or Watchmen so they’re not as likely to have read it.

You can buy Pride of Baghdad here.

6. Deadpool.

Why it’s good: Ever since the eighties Superhero comics have grown progressively darker and grittier in a desperate bid to convince people they’re a worthy art form… that and calling them ‘Graphic Novels’. Angst, depression and hatred are the name of the game for most of these comic books, Deadpool is just one of many series that brought things back to being entertaining again.

Deadpool is a super-soldier who has gone so insane that he realises that he’s in a comic book. He talks to his own speech bubbles and mocks the comics industry while having wacky adventures around all the other straight-faced and uncomprehending superheroes of the marvel universe.

It’s hilarious, doesn’t care about continuity and makes a great change from all the pretentiousness.

Buy it if: your friend has a good sense of humour and enjoys their superhero comics. Everybody loves a bit of Deadpool. Just grab any old one, the continuity isn’t too important for this guy. But i recommend “Suicide Kings” if you find it. Watching Deadpool riif off of the Punisher and Daredevil is brilliant.

You can buy Deadpool: Suicide Kings here.

7. V For Vendetta.

Why it’s good: Written by Alan Moore, the man behind Watchmen. V for Vendetta is about a Britain that has become a terrifying dictatorship under a hyper-conservative government. A mysterious man in a mask who calls himself V sets out to put things right one murder at a time.

It has a lot in common with the film, but the original is much, much smarter.

Buy it if: Your friend enjoyed the movie, liked Watchmen or takes a passing interest in politics. Whether you agree with the main characters ideals or not doesn’t matter when it’s built around a good yarn like this.

You can buy V for Vendetta here.

So there you have it. I hope this guide helps you get that perfect gift for that special someone. The only other piece of advice I think I need to give is keep the receipt!

So now here comes a new Deus Ex game, and this one’s from Square Enix, the guys behind such famous corridor simulators as Final Fantasy. I pre-ordered the game hoping to make a good rant about the sacrilege of our god from the machine… but then I started playing it.

The story goes that in the future humanity has developed the ability to graft robotic limbs and other enhancements onto people’s bodies. They may give you superhuman strength, stamina and the ability to beam porn directly into your eyeballs, but you end up depending on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of your life and about half of the world hates you.

You are Adam Jensen, a security consultant who gets caught up in an attack from a bunch of cyborgs that results in his girlfriend getting killed and his own body being mashed up beyond repair. Jensen’s boss gets a bit scalpel happy and pulls a RoboCop on Jensen, giving him a new set of arms, new legs… and a pair of retractable shades presumably because it’d just bring the whole look together.

Jensen is brought back into the line of duty and set to the task of finding out who orchestrated the attack before his scabs have even healed, and I thought my work was harsh because they won’t give me overtime. You’d think Jensen would be a bit miffed about the whole thing, but he ended up being a lot more up-beat about the whole thing when I had the dialogue options.

Just like its predecessors, the game allows you to pick and choose the way you tackle a problem. Do you sneak around unseen with the use of the cover mechanics that allow you to hug a wall and look round the corner and pretend you’re James Bond? Do you sweet talk a security guard into giving you the keys to the objective and letting you walk straight in? Do you hack a computer to turn the security robots against everyone and sit back while they do all the work? Or do you pick up a gun and murder everyone in sight?

The experience points you earn for killing, exploration, stealth and general achievement let you unlock augmentations that allow you to turn invisible, pick up heavy objects, hack computers or take bullets to the face. Over the course of the game you will manage to unlock most of them, but the way you pick your battles changes the way your character develops over the course of the game and what methods are open to you.

I was a sneaky bastard , the only time I even killed a single person was when I found myself confronted with a room literally full of about thirty people looking straight at me… After trying to sneak around them to no avail I instead opted to hack the security system and turn the security turrets on them. Thirty looted bodies later I ran straight into the first boss… where this game finally falls short.

The Boss Fights have been universally reviled by critics because they go against everything the game had been built to be. There is no choice to how you take them down, your only option is to fill them with bullets till they die. Which is all fine and good except you may have been building Jensen to be a sneaky pacifist relying on the non-lethal melee takedowns. You can’t sneak by, you can’t hack computers, you’re not even allowed to use your melee abilities. I honestly don’t know how they got through to the final product when the standard has been so good everywhere else.

As problems go it’s not a deal breaker, especially if you play with the forewarning to pump a couple of points into armour for later and carry a nice gun around. Talk softly and carry a big stick.

Human Revolution is an absolute triumph with a few blemishes that don’t destroy the experience so much as remind you that the developers are only human. The writing is great, the atmosphere and style is superb and it’s so much fun to play and experience this world on your terms as long as you know that whether you want to or not, you will have to crack a few skulls at some point.

It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damned close, unless something very impressive comes out in the next few months it may well become a classic. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

She finds that her best friend Lillian is getting married and that she’s finally going to meet Helen, Lillian’s other friend from her fiancés side who of course Annie’s going to love…

They hate each other from the minute they first meet and they find themselves competing for Lillian’s attention, starting with a hilarious scene where they both try to make a moving engagement party speech, grabbing the microphone off of each other as soon as the other tries to finish, and it only escalates from there.

Helen (Rose Byrne) is attractive, elegant and unbelievably filthy rich, you can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy for Annie when she buys Lillian a box of sentimental gifts from their childhood and gets trumped with tickets to Paris. Things go from bad to worse for Annie, starting with her giving everyone food poisoning while they’re trying on expensive dresses (it’s as disgusting as you can imagine.)

It may be girly, but it has some serious balls.

Before I saw it I joked that it was “The Hangover but with chicks”… And I can confirm that it is in fact “The Hangover with chicks… and much better writing.” Everyone from Megan the fat military girl (who manages to be funny without being just a stream of ‘it’s funny because she’s fat’ humour) to the policeman played by Chris O’Dowd from the IT crowd has their moment to shine.

This isn’t something I would normally have bothered to watch, but I was glad I did from the moment the movie started with jokes about weird and awkward sex, followed by a bit where Kristen Wiig does an impression of a penis… Not because I have an immature sense of humour, I do, but also because they were hilariously well written and almost weirdly tasteful in their execution.

If you want a ladies film that doesn’t make you feel you’re about to poo rainbows or a few well crafted Knob gags, then you will like this film. If you want to watch something that isn’t Transformers, then I highly recommend this.

But a sequel? How can that work? By the end of the first film Po has unlocked the secrets of Kung-Fu, master Shifu has exorcised his personal demons and the only villain has been killed in a surprisingly violent explosion courtesy of our lovable panda. Can they possibly improve on the first one?

Yes, yes they can.

The film stars Jack Black as our friendly martial arts panda who has to face up to the biological quandary regarding the fact that he is a panda, and his dad is a goose…

Many years ago in the city of Gongmen, Lord Shen, the heir to the peacock clan (played by Gary Oldman) hears of a prophecy that he will one day be defeated by a black and white warrior. In a fit of rage he took an army of wolves and massacred an entire village of pandas in a bid to prevent the prophecy coming true… Well, it worked so well for Herod didn’t it?

Quite rightly horrified, Shen’s parents banished him from the city and years later he has returned with a mysterious new weapon built from fireworks that could threaten the entire world. It is up to Po to stop Shen from destroying the city and invading the rest of China.

The story itself may be quite simple, but it’s told incredibly well with the actors giving some absolutely spirited performances. Oldman in particular absolutely steals the show with a single scene that changes the way you think about the villain of this piece. The writing, acting and animation all come together to tell the story beautifully. Especially with one or two exchanges between Po and his father that were genuinely sweet.

The film as a whole is absolutely spectacular, if you’ve seen the first film you will know some of what to expect. During the first half hour or so you will feel slightly underwhelmed. This is just because you’re remembering all the good bits of the last film and it’s a bit unfair as a comparison, by the time we meet Lord Shen you’ll feel differently.

The fight scenes are again some of the best around. The frantic action works really well with the art style, and the pacing of the movie lets each fight feel fresh without becoming tired (I’m looking at you Michael Bay.)

‘Kung-Fu Panda 2’ is an excellent follow up to one of my favourite films of all time and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you enjoyed the first you won’t be disappointed, if you haven’t seen it you probably won’t have any problems catching up.

It’s funny, it’s thrilling, it’s touching and it’s made me want to go to the cinema more often so I can do more of these reviews. That’s not a bad thing right?

We interrupt your usual Fun Stuff Friday articles to bring you a special piece on the BBC’s new series. In with the Flynns. Because I saw it about six months ago.

So Saturday night I went to a live taping of ‘Meet The Doyles’, which in the time between signing up and actually arriving had metamorphosed into ‘Meet the Flynns‘, or maybe just plain ‘The Flynns.’ After spending about twenty minutes waiting outside while the actors finished their rehearsal and the crew worked out how to herd the audience in to the studio, the magic started. Not good magic, the kind made by someone like Dumbledore or Gandalf, the evil kind weaved by sorcerers throwing bats into a bubbling cauldron at the top of a tower made of obsidian.

The show stars Will Mellor and Nicky Wardley as Liam and Catherine, a couple who had kids too early and… that’s it. It’s basically ‘My Family’ but Northern, presumably to play up the fact the BBC is moving/outsourcing their offices and studios out to Manchester.

In the episode we saw, Liam faced such wacky and original situations as his son getting in a fight at school, his daughter getting a tongue piercing and his dad almost going out with a  woman who may or may not have been a nun. We would watch the show a scene at a time, then the ‘entertainer’ would take over.

At live tapings they have to fill in the gaps between takes and scene changes. Some times it’s a way for stand up comedians to start their careers by keeping the audience occupied. I don’t think our guy was a professional stand up comedian, and if he wanted to be he should think long and hard about his life choices. I can only describe him as what you’d get if Gilbert Gottfried was northern, and not funny. His idea of hilarity involved accosting anyone who got up to leave by forcing them to hug him until he would let them go. In his eyes it was probably endearingly funny, in the eyes of the law it was probably rape.

We were there to be recorded as the canned laughter, all you need to know is that aside from one or two chuckles from what I can only assume were an actor’s mum and a homeless person who’d snuck in, the audience sat in almost stony silence. occasionally laughing at the odd joke from the guy playing Liam’s brother (Can’t find the actors name just yet) who managed to actually be funny. Unfortunately, no matter how funny a joke is the first time, the second or third take tends to lose it’s lustre somewhat. That’s just how live tapings are, when you don’t really laugh the first time, you have a problem.

Meet the Doyles/Meet the Flynns/Meet the Spartans doesn’t have a release date I can find on hand, and maybe it should stay that way. It was fascinating to watch and understand the process of making TV. How people work on set, how actors toil away for hours on end to get their scenes just right, and how an entire crew of at least fifteen people in a room will somehow get this far without one of them so much as saying, “Hang on a second, this isn’t funny. This show is awful!”

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe the show will be released and go on to sell eight series and a range of tea towels with catch phrases written on them. Maybe it won’t make it to air, which feels like a tragedy to me, not that it deserves to be seen, but that our TV licence money got wasted on this steaming pile of failure.

For those of us that didn’t know, ‘Friendship is Magic’ started in October 2010 and has gained a cult following on the internet, to the point Lady Gaga referenced it in one of her costumes.

Anyway, I decided to see what all the fuss was about and watched the pilot episode so I could make fun of it for the amusement of everybody.

The problem is, it may be a cartoon for little girls, but it’s actually not half bad.

Okay, lads, hold on to your manliness, listening to this plot synopsis may cause you to lose them.

The pilot follows a Unicorn called Twilight Sparkle who wants to save the world of Equestria from the coming of the ‘Mare in the Moon’, a sort of horsey anti-christ. But her message to the Princess, presumably requesting a horse SWAT team, is turned down and she’s told to stop reading the dusty tomes and go out and make some friends instead… Dude, harsh!

So she is sent out to Ponyville to go and celebrate the Solstice festival, which is coincidentally the time the aforementioned Pony-pocalypse is coming.

It was around this point in the episode I saw she was going to Ponyville on a chariot being pulled along by two anonymous Pegasii, Pegasese? Pegasuses? I paused the video and started furiously scribbling down jokes about how Ponyville runs on slave labour, that there is an intricate caste system that means some horses are treated as people while others are treated as, well, horses…

Then I resumed the video and Twilight got off the chariot and politely thanked the two pega… horses for giving her the ride over. Well, bugger.

Not only do I get deprived of material, but it’s actually setting a good example to my future children as well… Can I at least make fun of something other than myself for watching this? I’m watching a cartoon for little girls about magic ponies and having to concede that it’s actually quite good!

Twilight finds it hard to settle in to her new life with the Equine Ragnarok looming, and her desperate preparations are disrupted when she meets five other ponies with names like Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. Each of them is nothing but welcoming and friendly towards Twilight in her own way, but she is having none of it because you know, end of the world.

It turns out Twilight was right the whole time when on the stroke of midnight the Night-Mare appears and wreaks havoc upon the land. Twilight and her friends set out to save the world, and learn a few things about friendship along their journey of epic proportions.

That’s just the first episode.

Overall, I felt kind of uncomfortable. Not just because I didn’t want anyone to catch me watching My Little Pony, that would be silly because I’m writing about watching it now, but because I have to actually admit I enjoyed it.

Don’t be mistaken, I doubt I’m going to be watching the rest of the series or anything… I’m a twenty three year old man, but the jokes are funny when they’re supposed to be funny, it’s educational without being preachy and the messages are the kind of thing I would genuinely get behind. Things like being kind and looking out for your friends.

If you have kids or you’re secure enough in yourself to check this out, then I highly recommend this show. If you’re a dude I’d recommend it for you too, but I would also suggest you listen to some Alestorm every fifteen minutes lest you forget you are a man, because this show will get under your skin.

Well guys, how do you like the new site? I wrote about a few of it’s intricacies here. If you have anything you’d like to say just jump into our new comments section, I’d love to hear it.

Windows 8:

I took the piss out of the iPad when I first saw it but that sold like cakes made of thermite. Now Microsoft are getting in on the action with something that I find genuinely interesting. Their new OS actually scales from smartphones to tablets to laptops to PCs without much difference across the platforms. It’s built for touch screens, mice and keyboards so you can use whatever the hell you want to get your PC fix.

And the kicker is that they say it’ll have lower system requirements than Windows 7. If that all works out it will blow me away.

I’m still going to wait for the first service pack to come out though. I might even be ultra hipster by using Chrome OS instead.

Batman Arkham City… A NEW CHALLENGER HAS ARRIVED!

Batman Arkham Asylum is one of my favourite games of all time, I was rather just hoping for more of the same, but they seem to have really pushed the boats out now.

And by ‘boats’ I am, of course, talking about her titties.

Creepiest ad ever:

I never expected something to keep me watching for a whole seven minutes, but not only did this video accomplish that, but I was pretty much laughing the whole time.

Six years old and he’s already a total pimp:

Look at this kid, drifting around in a sports car with a girl in the seat next to him… And he’s at least eighteen years younger than me.

I like how he’s ditched the girl by the end, probably felt her slowing the car down.

Nice Guys;

Great lyrics, a catchy tune and it’s funny as well. I guess this fills the musical quota for the week.

Game of the week, Nyan Cat edition:

If you’re not familiar with Nyan cat, you can try your luck here.

Somebody’s only gone and turned it into a game based off Robot Unicorn Attack.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present:

Nyanicorn

There are no words… Mostly because I’m still playing it in the other tab.

For those of you that don’t know, The MCM Expo is a comic con, an event where comic readers, cartoon watchers, videogame players and anime masturbators gather to share their mutual love of all things geeky. It can be sexy, it can be horrifying, it can be tiring and it can be the most fun you will ever have if you enjoy anything normally considered nerdy.

While I would recommend events like this in a heartbeat, there are a few things you need to know before you go.

1. Always, always, ALWAYS buy your tickets in advance.

My friend tried to get tickets at the door and ended up waiting in line for two hours. We still had a great time, but we could have done without that faff. Buy your ticket online, print it out and wave it at the staff who will politely usher you past the aircraft hanger sized queue to the good stuff.

2. Pack and dress light.

It can get pretty damn warm in there and you will spend the whole time walking around, if you’re not dressing up as anything then dress for the summer, because you will boil alive. If you are dressing up, make it something skimpy, because I’ll enjoy it more… unless you’re thirteen or something.

3. Don’t mess with Voldemort.

I tried to get a picture with me hugging the dark lord himself but he wasn’t having any of that and threw me to my knees. Thankfully Jonny leapt into action and rescued me after getting a couple of photos in.

On the other hand, there’s a photo coming soon of me hugging the Alien… he was lovely.

Now you can consider yourself ready to Con yourself silly. Here are some of my highlights of the event.

People I Know: I met the absolutely wonderful Timothy Winchester while I was cruising around the comic tables and he struck up a conversation with me. I offered to buy one of his comics, but he insisted that I read a bit of one of them first before committing anything. I read one page of absolute gold and demanded that he take my money.

When I came back round near the end of the day about five hours later he still remembered me by name and gave me a free mini-comic along with my second purchase.

His website is brilliant, his comics are worth buying and Timothy himself deserves all your money. Get to it people!

ASDF and TomSka: The fellow behind the ASDF videos was selling comics and signing them, the comic rehashes a few of the cartoons sketches, but TomSka himself was a fun guy who signed the comic for me, doodled on it and said he hoped it would bring me lots of luck with people of the opposite sex. Check out his videos some time, and if you find yourself in a situation where you can get a signed comic, get it, the guy’s a great laugh.

Simons Cat: Simon Townsend of Simon’s Cat fame had a booth selling his books and merchandise, I bought one of the books and asked him to sign it… instead I got a drawing of the titular cat lounging on the pages of my book.

What a great guy! I’ll get pics ASAP!

The Futurama cast: The voice actors from Futurama turned up and did a panel. I didn’t see the whole thing because Jonny and Sophie arrived part way through, but I wasn’t particularly fussed, the sound system wasn’t very good and I could barely make out what they were saying. They were quite fun though.

The Cosplayers: I found at least five Deadpools, four Rorschach’s, I got hugged by three Misty’s (or three times by the same one.) I hugged the Alien as I mentioned, I tried to get a photo with some stormtroopers but missed them and found my absolute highlight in the form of a guy dressed as a Steampunk companion cube. There were some absolutely brilliant costumes at the convention and such a sense of camaraderie.

I’ll have some pictures up as soon as I get them developed, there is another MCM expo coming in October and I plan to be a little more prepared next time with Unbored cards and maybe shirts to show off. If you plan to tag along, give me a shout and we’ll meet up and high-five or something.

UPDATE. Pictures!

On with the stuff!

Who knew the Dulcimer could be so badass.

A Guy explains the scientific inaccuracies of My Little Pony.

At first it was sleight of hand, then it became sorcery.

The most epic use of a Violin ever.

I love how genuinely happy she looks while she does this.

The funniest gay robot you will ever see.

I also wrote a piece on this years ATP curated by Animal Collective. It wasn’t for me, but there were a few real gems there.

Now, here’s what I’ve found this week that might excite you.

Mass Effect’s soundtrack can make anything sound epic:

Mass Effect is a brilliant series of games, and their music is no exception. How watch the glor of it being dubbed over the House of Commons.

I love how it fits so well with the argument. And how pathetic it sounds when you turn the music off.

Piracy threatening books? Maybe not.

A new book has been taking the Amazon best sellers list by storm, and it isn’t even out yet. But a PDF version has apparently been leaked and is spreading like wildfire.

The book in question? It’s a bedtime story called Go the Fuck to sleep. I don’t think any more needs to be said. I don’t even need to pirate it to know it’s good.

Valve are working on something glorious.

They are actively experimenting with ways to charge their customers more if they act like wankers in their games. As somebody that gave up on online gaming because of how hit-and-miss the experience can be with the people online, I wholeheartedly approve of this.

I hope this works out for them and that they set a great precedent towards making people on the internet act like decent human beings.

Read the full story here.

Some pictures you might enjoy.

Just have a gander and silently judge me.

Videos of the week. Sleepy cat and determined dog.

First up, a quickie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBNhp2qbYEs

And finally… this guy really doesn’t want to play with that dog. What a dick! Oh wait.

Have a good weekend everybody. See you on the other side!

This years entertainment was curated by Animal Collective. Who despite being fun on stage, seemed to have a genuine hatred of music or any kind of tune. Two out of every three acts was the kind of experimental music that seemed to be more about making noises than a melody. If you listen to Radio 6 late at night you’ll be right at home I guess.

During the event I took notes on my phone. Here’s what I said of the acts I saw.

Highlife: Apart from several moments when he sounded like somebody was strangling a cat with a guitar he was good fun. He just played a mellow acoustic guitar act and it was quite relaxing until he opened his mouth and started screaming.

Black Dice: They made me feel like a grumpy old man. They sounded like a collection of random noises at ear splitting volume… but when I joked about it to my dad he turned and said “I know, it’s great isn’t it!”

They are a case of Marmite division in music. You’ll either love it or hate it. I hated it, but I’ve loved weirder and worse in the past. So make your own mind up and complain about it in the comments.

Dent May: They sounded like karaoke, but karaoke of something really good. I liked their tunes, but the setup wasn’t quite right. They were having problems with their drum machine and apologised to the audience that they hadn’t had any practice. So I’m giving them a thumbs up they could be really good on CD or anywhere with a proper sound test.

Lee Scratch Perry: My sister pointed out that he Looked exactly like Goldar from Power Rangers and I couldn’t think of anything else after that. You will really like him if you’re into Reggae.

Soldier of Fortune: They had the sound of metal about them, and I approved the hell out of that.

Actress: They sounded like your usual club and trance fare… Except whenever you felt he was leading up to some kind of big crescendo Adagio for strings style he would just dial it back and move on to another mix. He’s either a massive cocktease or a massive disappointment.

Big Boi: I have no idea how he ended up here, animal collective don’t seem like rap aficionados, but I’m glad they did. I only saw the last third of their performance and it was one of the weekends highlights. By the time I arrived they had all the girls in the front row up on the stage dancing along. They had damn good stage presence and despite the fact I’m white as the virgin snow, I would actually check them out again.

Brothers disconnected: they played a good mix of different styles, even having a couple of ‘comedy’ segments between songs with the kind of humour that would make Frankie Boyle shit himself. If you give them a try, give them a couple of chances because they run the gamut of good and unsettlingly weird with hints of genuine malice. One track was a Sergio Leone western style guitar riff, and the next was about lynching somebody.

Matt Baetz: He performed a stand-up gig that I enjoyed immensely. He catered his act around the fact a couple of ten-year-olds were sat in the front row, which must have been really difficult when you normally expect to use fuck-words as common punctuation. He was excellent and I will happily watch him again.

Mick Barr: He hammered away at his little guitar like nobody’s business. Normally I love that kind of thing; I listen to all of Dragonforce’s two songs after all. But he just sounded like me playing with my dad’s guitar.

Meat Puppets: They were far more conventional than anything else at the show. I enjoyed the crap out of them. And they had an excellent stage presence.

The Frogs: I was literally about to walk out when they finally decided to turn up. They were riddled with technical difficulties, including the vocalist turning up late.

They were also objectively the worst band I have ever listened to. I know music is a personal thing, but there is no excuse for the way they acted on stage, they would stop playing a song half way through, declare it wasn’t good enough and start again from the beginning, the drummer even started hurling abuse at somebody in the audience.

I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to have been part of the act or not, but if it was, their act was shit! Don’t listen to them, don’t watch them, don’t bother with these wastes of space.

The Entrance band: I only went to see them because the girl on base had great legs, but I’m glad I did because they were my second highlight of the weekend. They were massive fun to listen to and I highly recommend them!

Tony Conrad: Their whole thing was that their performance was surreal, and I suppose that was a brilliant success because I couldn’t tell if they were singing or having a seizure.

Mikachu and the Shades: They had a fun punk rock sound and they actually apologised for being late on stage. I give them thumbs up all the way for that!

Gang Gang Dance: They had a club dancey vibe and were my absolute favourite act of the weekend! They were incredible fun to see live, you could dance to it without having to be dosed to the eyeballs on pills and I’m listening to it in the other window right now.

TeenGirl Fantasy: They had a similar but more mellow sound than Gang Gang Dance but they were a great way to unwind immediately after the former.

Animal Collective: The headline band and curators behind this event. They were good on stage and it was fun to dance to them the first time they played, unfortunately the second time they played was identical note for note. My sister was seriously upset by this, I found them so tuneless I honestly wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t pointed it out. If you’re into this kind of music you will love them. If you’re not, for the love of god don’t go to anything curated by them!

So there you have it, all the acts I remembered from the weekend. Some good, some bad, some massively pretentious, but my Unbored Seals of Approval go to Big Boi, Gang Gang Dance and The Entrance Band. I highly recommend you check them out if you get the chance.

Kung-Fu Panda gets a sequel.

About a year before it was released, my dad told me to watch out for a little film called Kung-Fu Panda, I thought it sounded ridiculous. How could it possibly be any good? Oh how wrong I was.

I went on a trip to the London offices of Paramount Pictures and found this playing on a plasma TV in the reception area. Not only is there a sequel, but it looks actually good!



I can only wonder what the other four KFP films will be about? Oh that’s right, there are going to be six of them!

Google finally gets around to releasing their laptops.

Google Chrome OS is finally coming. Like all first adoption technology it’s going to be overpriced, inconvenient and finicky. But I will totally buy the seventh or eighth version. Especially with an ad like this.

BREAKING NEWS: Facebook are wankers.

It looks like this whole battle for internet supremacy thing has got a little out of hand, and somebody at Facebook has literally hired a PR company to call Google names.

This has to be one of the most pathetic things I have ever seen. When you are so utterly out of ideas that you have to resort to insults (don’t look at that headline again), it reminds me of the black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail frantically kicking their foe when bereft of any other limbs.

Read about it here.

Second best trailer of the week. Real Steel.

Think Rocky, but with robots, starring Wolverine… and you’d be about half way there.

It’s ridiculous, it’s stupid and I utterly, utterly love it.

Cute cat of the week.

My god he wants that food!



Game of the week, breakout meets nuclear fission.

Just play it and get back to me. Playing it was like I had my epilepsy again, but in a good way.

So those are my picks of the week. I hope you enjoyed them because I really need to get some sleep now because after a week of working 7 till 7 I’m starting to hallucinate… See you after ATP!

I’d vote for him, but instead I had to vote on AV. (Rather than choose YES or NO, I numbered the options in order of preference.)

Check out Obama being awesome here.

I swear, between this and Osama Bin Laden getting killed, he pretty much has the next election in the bag.

We had the Royal Wedding, if you’re like me and missed it because you had a hangover and played Portal 2. Here’s the short version.

Who cares about politics! Where are the pictures of pigs in teacups?

Cute video: A duckling harassing a puppy.

I like how the puppy’s panicking all over the place and the duck’s just like ‘Gonnagetyougonnagetyougonnagetyou!‘

You may want to turn the volume down though, that dogs yapping gets annoying. That duck on the other hand, he never gets old!

The best ‘Simon’s Cat’ video yet.

This is now my favourite, or maybe second favourite to the one with the bed.

The future marches on: ePaper now acts like actual paper!

In a curve I did not see coming at all. Getting eInk to display colour is apparently a really long way off. But somehow they’ve managed to make it flexible instead. How does that work? I don’t know, but it looks like something you’d drop into a movie to tell the audience it was a Sci-Fi.

Regular ordinary Swedish meal time

I can feel my chest hair growing as I watch these. They’re absolutely brilliant.

Talented person of the week…

I don’t actually know what this video is called… I just call her ‘the genius.’

I can’t play even one instrument and she can play three. It’s just not fair!

Either this guy’s a genius mechanic or he drives like a maniac.

Either way I tip my hat to him!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f49aNoV_2GE

Todays song: Roll a D6.

I never properly listened to the original, but I have played RP games before. So yeah it’s a good laff and it’s very well made. What do you expect here people?

There’s an old saying that goes… When the pirates came for the Music industry the publishers did not speak up because they didn’t make music. When the pirates came for Hollywood the publishers did not speak up because they didn’t make movies. When the pirates came for the books… everybody was too busy watching Netflix to speak up.

Here are my thoughts.

1. Book sellers: ‘Stop trying to horde sales.’

The Kindle only takes books from Amazon. This is great when they’re on top of things, but it isn’t going to help the punters when they are locked into two options when they buy their eReader, eat up whatever prices they set or pirate everything.

It’s called the Gilette Method, you buy something at a ridiculous discount, originally a razor but in this case a Kindle, and then they bilk you for your money afterwards in razorblades or ebooks. It worked with videogames, it worked with razors, but it won’t work here. Because this time we can just make our own razorblades for free.

2. Publishers: ‘Your books need to be cheaper, get used to it.’

Fighting the internet is like trying to fight the tides. You either swim with it or you drown.

Anyone personally involved is too busy calling them ‘thieves’ to actually acknowledge this. But 90% of pirates just do it out of convenience. They just don’t want to pay the same amount of money for an eBook as they would for a physical copy.

A real book has value, it is something you own. An eBook is data written on silicone that can be re-written any time the publisher wants. Amazon snatched hundreds of copies of Nineteen Eighty Four away from customers because the publisher didn’t want it published yet. Why should you pay the same for something you don’t technically own?

3. Writers: ‘Yes you will make less per book, but you will sell more books.’

It’s not all doom and gloom. Yes you will have to cut your margins a bit, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t going to pay for your writing.

With the harsh realities of the internet also come glorious opportunities. Angry Birds is a little iPhone game that costs 60p to buy… but it’s been downloaded 140 million times because people are more than willing to fork over a little pocket change for something they enjoy.

If you sell a book online, it costs nothing to sell, no printing, no logistics, just data. If you make 30p for every book you sell, it doesn’t sound like much unless you sell a million books… then you’ve made three hundred thousand pounds. And that’s not as hard when literally everybody on the internet has the chance to see it and buy it.

4. People still like to read.

In fact they may read even more when books get so much more accessible. People are starting to read books on their iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Nooks, Crannies, Crevices and toasters. The market is there, and they’re more than willing to pay money to get their fix. It just has to be cheap and convenient enough for them to not bother wading around the seedier parts of the web for a torrent.

5. Watch how everyone else is dealing with it.

Music went through this, Movies went through this, Videogames went through this. Every single one has slowly come up with a streaming online version of their material. Spotify, Steam, iTunes, Netflix the list goes on and it will only get bigger as people realise that fighting piracy is about as effective as spitting at the sun.

6. Deal with it!

This isn’t the end of literature. This isn’t the end of anything.

Publishers are going to fight change, they are going to charge ten quid for an eBook and then get surprised when people pirate it or buy Angry Birds instead. They will try to prosecute pirates and then find that after a long, boring and stupid court case that they missed the other eight million people going at it unimpeded.

Things are going to change, it may be slow and a little uncomfortable at times, but business is like life, it always finds a way to survive and thrive. When everybody has food in their bellies, roofs over their heads and cash in their pockets they’ll always be prepared to give some of it for a bit of entertainment.

People want to read books, and they want to do it on command, and they want to do it on the cheap. If you stop complaining for five minutes and oblige them you may well hit a goldmine.

Happy Easter Everyone!

On to my weeks highlights.

Man gets to walk for the first time with the aid of exoskeleton:

This is genuinely touching, for the first time in twenty years a man is able to walk with the kind of exoskeleton the engineers were probably building to make an Iron Man suit.

I wish this guy the best of luck and I hope his kit gets even better.

Sarif Industries… Where the last story will go in ten years:

I hope this is a viral ad for something, because this video is brilliant.

And luckily this coincided with the genuine breakthrough this week.

Studio Ghibli’s Soundtrack in Metal:

I need to watch all the Ghibli movies again, I watched Spirited Away again recently and was astounded by how good it was. Why aren’t they bigger out here?

It’s also a good thing I love metal covers of other genres. Check out PowerGlove if you want proof.

Freddie Wong just… doing what he does:

There’s a unicorn… just see for yourself.

I wish I was even a fifth as talented as this guy is.

TED talk about empathy.

The TED talks always come out with some great things, I could do an entire article on my favourites. But this is the one I found this week, and it’s an interesting watch.

So that about wraps it up for this week. Did you find anything interesting this week? I’ll get back to you once I’ve eaten my Easter Eggs. I wonder how Jesus must feel? I don’t think I’d want people to celebrate the day I died by eating chocolate, I’d want them to celebrate by avenging me or something.

Having to go to work is torture when you have something like this waiting for you. And finally playing it was like coming home for the first time in years and finding somebody’s tidied the place up while you were gone…

For those of you that don’t know. Portal was a game where you only got one gun, and it didn’t shoot bullets. Instead it could place two portals on any appropriate flat surface, what goes in one portal comes out of the other. The first game introduced this concept and gave you a series of ingenious puzzles delivered to you by GLaDOS, the laboratory computer. As the game went on it became apparent that she was toying with you and planned to kill you, as you broke out of the confines of the experiment the game became a cat and mouse chase between you and the omniscient computer. It was cerebral, atmospheric and incredibly funny at times.

I’m reviewing this at about three hours in, and the plot has been a complete rollercoaster. Years have passed since the events of the first game, GLaDOS has come back to life and has taken complete control of the facility, up to and including moving the walls around and building new rooms as you go, with the express intention of torturing and killing you. Luckily, you find yourself under the wing of Wheatley, a mild mannered, slightly clumsy little AI played by Stephen merchant who wants you to escape.

Portal 2 feels so comfortably familiar whilst being astoundingly different. The clean, clinical rooms have been enveloped with jungle plantlife, rust and decay. The opening acts of the game reintroduce you to places you saw in the first game in their new state, it sets the scene and shows you just how far Valve have taken the technology in the last three and a half years.

More characters have been added to the mix this time with Cave Johnson, the CEO of the company behind the experiments and Atlas and P-Body, two robots that have to take experiments in the Co-Op mode. I don’t know how Valve managed to inject charm into everything in this game, but they did somehow…

The changes aren’t limited to the story and characters. Light bridges, lasers, the constantly shifting scenery and various reality warping liquids play a part in the puzzles and it is an absolute pleasure to find the solution to a knotty problem after several minutes of trying to find it.

The music in this game changes depending on your environment and how much you accomplish in each puzzle, I never thought a drum beat would be so satisfying, but when it chimes in after successfully flinging a crate across the room through several portals to land at your feet you will know the game is praising you for a good job.

Valve are absolute masters of dropping new elements into their games and letting you think you’ve worked out how they work yourself, and this game is no exception. Valve are notorious for their massive quiet periods between their games, but when they come out with something this good, who the hell am I to complain?

Everybody should play the first Portal and this, I don’t care if you have no interest in videogames. This is the perfect way to show people just what you can accomplish with the medium with the right talent and the right people.

And if actually paying money to get a copy is what’s holding you back, Valve were kind enough to give me a spare copy of the first Portal along with this. It can be yours if you can make a good case for having it and promise to give it a good home on your hard drive.

China know how to advertise the shit out of 7-up.

It’s funny that China have recently banned stories about time travel because one of the best adverts I’ve ever seen was about time travel.

Check it out:

Carl Sagan put the universe in perspective again:

Carl Sagan manages to be incredibly profound with every word he utters, even when he isn’t being auto-tuned!

Because I forgot to do it before…

And also because it seems Rebecca’s really taken to her fame with some aplomb… Just check this tweet out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

There’s no Time to Explain!

I love the look of this game! What is it about indie games that gives them so much more character and charm than the corporate triple-A titles?

I’ve gotta wrap this up early. I should settle back into a workable routine soon now I’m working full time, and I have a couple of cool things to review over the coming weeks. I can’t wait to see what you think!

Did you find anything that made your week? Jump into the comments and let me know, I’d love to see them!

…

As the actress said to the bishop!

Mortal Kombat movie will premiere on my birthday.

The word on the grapevine is that the live action Mortal Kombat miniseries they promised last year wasn’t some kind of sick joke, but will actually premiere on Machinima.com next Tuesday on the 12^th of April! So if it is a sick joke, it’s one aimed directly at me!

This would be the best birthday ever if I had ever cared that much about the Mortal Kombat games before, but if it uses the theme tune I will be Happy.

Starving kittens have never been more adorable.

Just a quick note, apparently the kittens had been ill and were getting their food after recovering, they weren’t actually starved through negligence or malice… but through hilarity!

Awww! Who’s a widdle starving kitty!

Everything George Takei says is pure gold.

I never watched the original Star Trek, but I gained absolute respect for George Takei when he responded to a homophobic basketball player’s hate-filled ranting by threatening to have sex with him.

And now he’s at it again ripping the shit out of the abysmal Spider Man musical.

Steampunk Transformers.

Not only is this not a fan made joke, but there are actual toys made of these images. Just look at them!

Optimus Prime as a steam train and Megatron as a cannon! They just need big metal top hats!

Mass Effect is getting an Anime film.

I have no idea if this is going to be any good, but I’m probably going to enjoy it anyway because Mass Effect is wonderful!

Here’s the link to the announcement!

LA Noir trailer.

And last but certainly not least, another trailer for LA Noir. The game I am looking forward to above all the others except Magicka Vietnam.

I can’t wait to see if the interrogation works out. If it does it will be a sign that games have moved on towards new, more nuanced genres that don’t need explosions. If they can make this technology cheaper and easier to use, acting will become a greater part of the medium, and games could become more about people than how to kill more of them…

Or maybe it’ll just be a thirties Grand Theft Auto… which is no bad thing either!

What about you guys? Find anything you think we’ll like? Have any thoughts? Jump in to the comments and we’ll chat over scones… electronic scones! (The secret ingredient is emoticons!)

The game is set in a fantasy world similar to The Neverending Story that is under attack from a dark goo that is slowly enveloping and corrupting everything it touches, a young thief with the ability to talk to animals sets out to find the ancient guardian of the kingdom ‘the Majin’ in order to push the darkness back and save the world.

That’s all I was told before I was thrown into a grimy dungeon to try and find this creature. The guards were horrible black goo monsters that walked like men and hissed like nighmares that swiftly ended my first sword fight against them when they ate my sword. After having to sneak around I finally managed to find this fabled Guardian of the whole world, a creature said to be capable of smiting armies with a single swipe of it’s arms…

“I hungry! You find me food yes?”

Right… So of course I was all like “Kay! Whatevs!” and I sauntered around for a bit and found a bit of fruit that I snuck back to the hungry troll creature. Which suddenly tore its restraints off like paper and declared that we were now friends! It turned out that since the darkness couldn’t kill the Majin because it’s practically a god, but they made do with the next best thing which was to strip its power away and plant them as fruit as far away from the Majin as possible… you know I’d have just left them in a safe somewhere, but what do I know?

And so begins a voyage of discovery as you lead this simple but powerful creature across a decaying post-apocalyptic world to find the fruits that will bring it’s power back and help you save the world from the spreading darkness.

The gameplay nicely balances several different elements, combat when you just wade in with your Majin friend, stealth when you’re on your own and puzzles when the only door big enough for the Majin is locked. The abilities you and your friend get over the course of the game nicely complement each style of play and it’s great to explore their uses. For instance, you get the ability to make the majin shoot lightning to power machines or fry enemies and while it’s great in combat it has some very clever applications over the course of the game involving lightning rods that can extend how far the bolts reach.

The combat is great fun with or without the Majin, on your own you can knock enemies down for a while, but only the Majin can kill them completely. Fighting alongside the Majin is another experience entirely, he’s the embodiment of the forces of nature and he packs a hell of a punch! You get the most benefit by winning through teamwork like knocking bats out of the air with a well-thrown rock to get it in punching reach of the Majin or stunning enemies enough to perform takedowns together where the Majin basically throws you up over the enemy and you both hit it at the same time… It takes finesse to achieve, but it’s incredibly satisfying to watch the apocalyptic destruction you can wreak on your enemies with the right strategy.

The most important thing about this game is how utterly charming it is. At first I thought the Majin would get annoying but he quickly grew on my like the thick foliage on his back. The story is simple but effective and I’m desperate to find out what happens next… this is quickly becoming one of my favourite games of all time and I defy you to try it and not fall in love with the ten foot tall monster when he trips over and goes “Ouch!”

Has anyone else played this or got any thoughts or questions? Feel free to weigh in on the comments below, I’ll chat back while I write tomorrows Fun Stuff Friday!

Sorry for another Thursday/Friday combo again this week, it’s been a bit hectic for me since I’ve suddenly found myself having my job applications actually get responses… It looks like this website has been better for my job prospects than my degree! but don’t worry, I won’t let it interfere with my already lackadaisical schedule!

There have been some real treats this week. I had to seriously reconsider the order I put them in in case you ended up wasting your entire day before you even finished this article.

A medley of the best theme tunes from our childhood.

None of today’s theme tunes ever really live up to the greats. Just watch these three musical geniuses cover some the best tunes of my childhood. I swear if you’re not singing along you’re either too old or have no soul… same thing really!

Peanuts as an existential nightmare

It’s basically this months version of Garfield without Garfield… but it works so beautifully!

It amazes me how well these work some times!

Make your iPad see through clothes…

With clingfilm… seriously!

I love science some times!

Gnome Chompsky

This is one of those ideas that sort of snowballed out of control when it hit the public consciousness. People are actually looking into having this made into a real game. And I can see why!

Even you non-gamers out there must be a little enthused about a videogame character named after an obscure philosopher!

The Music Box

Here’s one of those entries that starts out a little slow and then becomes incredible, just watch it and get back to me…

I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell the guy managed to dance like that… must have been CGI or something.

Re: your brains Music Video

It’s good to see Jonathan Coulton get a music video. I don’t know if it’s an official one or a fan creation, but either way it’s good enough for me!

GIRP

I had to save this for last because you would have never read the rest of this article. From the creator of QWOP, the internet drunkenness simulator, comes GIRP the internet rockclimbing simulator. It seems silly, and it is! Watching your ragdoll flop around uselessly from his unbelievably strong arms is almost hypnotic, and strangely addictive! Just give it a try!

GIRP

The best part is how it’s relatively simple to pick up, but really cerebral when you get into it. Having to plan your handholds and try and maintain momentum… This is gaming at its finest!

So that’s it for this week. Did you guys find anything interesting? Let us know in the comments!

The episode begins with Shepherd being contacted by the enigmatic and mysterious Admiral Hackett, until now he’s been little more than a voice over the intercom like Charlie to his Angels. But now we finally get to see him… he’s an old dude with a scar… Well that was nice at least. He tells you that his friend has found an artifact of the Reapers, the villains of this story, but has been captured by the Batarians, the one race of aliens entirely populated by arseholes. Shepherd has to go in alone and rescue her to potentially save the galaxy.

For some poorly thought out reason, you’re not allowed to bring your teammates with you, maybe it’s because there was a chance you didn’t have any by the end of the game, I think it’s so they didn’t have to write dialogue for your squaddies… So the best part of the game, bonding with your teammates and listening to their witty dialogue that changed depending on who they were with, is missing from this chapter. Shepherd ends up talking to himself half the time just to keep the player clued in to what’s going on in the plot.

The actual gameplay starts out with you wading through a prison killing mercenaries, pretty much a staple of Mass Effect 2. When you rescue Hackett’s friend it turns out she was preparing to slam an asteroid into a Mass Relay (this series “travelling faster than light problem” macguffin, they’re kind of a big deal) but the artifact has caused a few unforseen consequences… and so you run around killing stuff for another few hours before getting to the end. To be fair, if that was going to be a problem you wouldn’t have finished Mass Effect 2 in the first place, it’s the story that counts.

I’m not going to spoil the story elements for you, they’re nicely written and some of the cutscenes are absolutely beautiful. However, this time around there isn’t much of Mass Effect’s typical moral choices to be made. I was expecting to find myself faced with the usual horrible dilemmas, kill one person to save a planet? Punch a reporter or let her jeopardise the mission? Kill monkeys or not have fun? They are what make this series great, and it’s missing from this instalment. Shepherd does face a nasty choice, and you don’t get to make it! It is a good story, and it does have to fit in with the beginning of the next game, so their hands were tied… But I can’t help but feel they missed a trick.

If you haven’t played Mass Effect, you owe it to yourself to play them, it won the ‘best game of the year’ at the BAFTAs for a reason.  If you have played it and haven’t paid for any of the DLC, then I highly recommend “Lair of the Shadowbroker” which managed to exceed both this and  “Overlord.” They all have good writing and presentation, but when you only have one fiver to spend, that’s my vote. If you desperately need your Mass Effect fix, then this isn’t half bad. It sets the scene for the next game nicely and has a few good twists and turns but falls just shy of the spectacular standard the series has lived up to so far.

So let’s get this party started with the coolest things I saw this week that I remembered to put in this post!

The touching story of a King and his Beaver.

This is why every guy I know admits they fancy Nathan Fillion.

My favourite tweet this week… From Nathan Fillion of course!

Deadpool just… being Deadpool.

Next up, Why I love Deadpool so much.

How District 9 should have ended.

Captain America… F**k Yeah!

The new trailer for Captain America’s come out, and it actually looks quite good. I like how there’s an actual story for the characters now rather than propaganda…

But if you ask me, I’m just waiting for Captain Britain!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c_AfAJvGaE

STOP THE PRESS!!! Hey! Listen!

I just found this unbelievably well made music video about the tradegy of Navi, the fairy from Ocarina of Time. Check it out!

Gray Matter

Gray Matter is a point-and-click adventure game harkening back to the good old days of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and the Discworld games where you wander around clicking on everything until you trigger the next conversation. And by ‘harkening back to it’, I mean it IS it. Nothing particularly new or special has been added to the gameplay that we haven’t seen before in the nineties… But I’m still playing it! I want to finish it after I’ve done this review. The story is like one of those books you can’t put down until you find you’ve dehydrated yourself sick.

The plot follows Samantha Everett, an American with aspirations of becoming a Magician who finds herself working as an assistant for Dr David Styles, a disfigured brain-surgeon who hasn’t got over the death of his wife three years ago. His experiments start causing supernatural phenomena across the city of Oxford and while David believes it’s the ghost of his wife trying to come back, Sam thinks it’s an elaborate magic trick. They both set out to unravel the mystery by their own methods, the scientist embracing the supernatural and the magician embracing the rational.

Both characters are interesting, Sam is boisterous and charismatic, frequently using her street magic to solve problems in a system where you plan out each stage of the magic trick. It’s not perfect, you pretty much scroll through the tricks until the game tells you it’s the right one, but it does bring the story along with the conflict between faith and deception.

The true star of this game in my opinion is Dr Styles. At first he seems needlessly like a hostile wanker, but the circumstances surrounding him become clear and by the time you actually play as him you realise just how tragic a figure he really is, wasting his time and genius on clinging to the memory of his wife. Name me one other work in existence that has a touching, emotional scene where you argue with a six-year-old over an ice lolly! I’m not kidding, that scene was genuinely heart-warming and I’ve never seen something like this explored in a game the way Gray Matter does.

There are no space-marines, guns or explosions. The story isn’t trying desperately to be silly and wacky and funny. It is a genuinely interesting story that deserves your attention because it is one of the best things I have ever seen in gaming. And yet it has such a low rating everywhere!

This is why I hate star reviews! Any old idiot with a site-profile can make them, and then everyone tends to follow the herd. You may give it three stars for its ropey gameplay and its lacklustre graphics, but it deserves ten for its genuinely mature story and characters.

When I first subscribed to LoveFilm I hoped to find the odd gem and found a torrent of shit… But here it is, a beautiful sparkling rock the size of my fist that people have thrown on the skip because it has a couple of scratches on it.

Don’t be fooled by the idiots on message boards that can’t be entertained unless they’ve killed something every five seconds. You owe it to yourself to find a copy of this and enjoy it. If you genuinely believe that games should be used to tell compelling stories, then this is a shining example of where to start. It’s not perfect, but that’s what spiritual sequels are for!

The creator, Jane Jensen, is responsible for the acclaimed Gabriel Knight series; I will certainly be looking into that and anything else she creates in future.

You can download the Demo here.

You can buy Gray Matter here

Outside the UK, it hasn’t been quite so fortunate what with the earthquake in Japan. I’m not going to try to say anything witty and just offer up this link to a place to donate to the cause.

Now less preaching and more fun stuff!

Governing England with the power of ROCK!

I would watch the shit out of the house of commons if they had this kind of backing track to each speaker!

Tricky truck:

This is one of those games that has a simple concept, drive your truck to the finish line without dropping any boxes… and dials it to eleven. Just look at some of the levels you have to tackle!

If my gaming PC was working I’d be playing this right now. I look forward to a day when VR is so prevalent that truckers are trained in these kinds of exercises, who’s worried about a little ice on the roads when you’re capable of balancing a juggernaut on a tightrope!

Real life Iron Man suit:

Back in the day they had a video of an army funded exoskeleton suit that enhanced the wearers strength. Naturally I assumed the project had died along with the hopes and dreams of a million fanboys.

It turned out I was wrong… they were making it better!

I hope when I get old they’ll saddle us with things like these instead of zimmer-frames or mobility scooters… then I’ll have mine supercharged so I can punch through walls!

Although to be fair, before these videos my plan was to replace my mobility scooter with a quadbike and see if anyone noticed.

Ponycraft 2:

Some bright spark’s taken the trailer to StarCraft 2 and matched it with footage from the new My Little Pony cartoon. The result not only has better lip-synching than the original, but actually looks Better!

I’m sorry, but if I saw this trailer in the cinema I would go and see this in a heartbeat. I don’t care that it’s My Little Pony! It looks absolutely epic!

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now!”

Chatroulette love song:

Call me cynical, but I wonder how many tries it took for them to find someone who wasn’t masturbating?

My favourite part is watching her reaction, I’ve never seen somebody look so genuinely touched. I like to think after the video stops he just cuts the connection and leaves her feeling empty and unfulfilled… or he drops his trousers and starts wanking!

I don’t know why, but that’s the first thing I wanted to say about Fable III
which chronicled my tale of the busking real-estate baron that had a dog follow him around for no real reason.

It was my first foray into the Fable series… and just like with John Cleese, I spent the whole time I was around it seriously wondering what all the fuss was about. Sure it might have been revolutionary back in the day, but it’s been overtaken by better things since and it looks like a relic of a more primitive age.

The story goes that you are the Prince of Albion, and you realise your brother is a Tyrannical dick-piece. So you go out into the wide world building support for a revolution to topple him and take his place. And by ‘you go out,’ I mean you follow a trail of glitter to the next person to talk to, listen to them talk for a minute, get bored and wander around waiting for them to cut to the chase so the glitter trail will take you to the next person along the story.

This games writing takes quite a lot of inspiration from the likes of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams… but fails at it miserably. Not once did I actually laugh at the terrible, wooden, stilted dialogue. Maybe they thought bringing John Cleese, Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry would make people think the game was funny. It didn’t work. I ignored every single bit of talking that I could, but still the game would occasionally force me to listen to their ‘funny’ dialogue for minutes at a time.

The only parts of the game that I enjoyed were the combat and the real-estate. You fight with swords, guns and magic. You can level each one up individually and it feels okay, it’s not Bayonetta or Batman Arkham Asylum for cathartic fun or seamless integration, but it was okay.

Maybe it’s because I recently took a psychometric test that told me I was entrepreneurial, maybe it’s because I had watched the Zero Punctuation review of this game and knew I’d need the money, but I immensely enjoyed buying up property and investing in real estate in Albion. I busked with the ‘Lute Hero’ minigame to buy a couple of houses, and

then I would busk again till I bought another while the income from the first ones trickled in… By the end I would just sit and wait five minutes and 100,000 gold would plop into my bank account.

Then of course there is the games ‘twist’ where it turns out your brother was being actually a tyrant because the world was going to be invaded by horrible shadow creatures and he needed to raise the money fast. And once you’ve overthrown him, you are torn between following his lead or dooming the world. The problem is it just doesn’t work. The game so obviously wants you to go in the squeaky clean route that it completely defeats the object of having a moral choice when one option is obviously the right one. Isn’t it more noble to suffer the slings and arrows of public hatred in the knowledge that you are doing what you can to save as many lives as possible? Mass Effect had similar choices, and they were handled so much better. It’s stupid to assume that people will be just as likely to take the evil option as the good one, I’m as cynical as they come, but people still do the right thing, it’s the methods where people can differ. This kind of puerile ‘Moral Choice’ mechanic was probably cool back in 2005, but it’s just not good enough any more.

In the course of my reign, I turned an orphanage into a brothel, I drained the last lakes, I turned a forest into a sewage plant… but I kept the universities! I may be a baby-killing, wage-slaving despotic wanker… But I’m not Nick Clegg!

I raised three quarters of the required money by buying every single scrap of property and jacking the rent up to the maximum, I was literally Ebeneezer Scrooge, but because I built a school and kept the taxes as they were I was heralded as a saint.

What they should have done with this game is flesh Albion out a lot more with a full economy and AI, and taken the story out. You’re not a destined hero, you’re not royalty, you’re just a dude… Go make something of yourself! The game would have been immensely more interesting as a way of seeing how people work their way to power.

Jane McGonigal said you could teach people anything if you turned it into a game. Why not give people a little business acumen when they realise they’ve been saving the world by buying shares in dragon rearing, or investing into adventuring parties and demanding 10% of the loot.

So it would be Monopoly: Middle Earth I guess. Would anyone else but me play it? I have no idea, but it would have been better than giving me a dog I never paid attention to and which did nothing useful!

You can buy Fable 3 here

Due to a mix-up in the post, I received this game way later than I should have and I haven’t had much time to play it before this reivew. For that, I’m sorry, but I doubt it’ll turn out Kirby was Keyser Söze the whole time… But that would have been brilliant!

The game stars Kirby, our resident Nintendo psychopath cannibal. Who gets sucked into a land made of cloth, string and buttons, Kirby has to help the local monarch Prince Fluff stitch the land back together and repair the damage the evil wizard Yin-Yarn has wrought upon the world…

Yep, it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a kids game. And you know what? I’m loving it! Most of all because the English edition has a British voice actor narrating the story in the cutscenes… I never thought a little localisation would go such a long way. But this game was all the more charming for it!

The gameplay itself is a basic platformer with a few twists. The graphics are done entirely in faux arts and crafts stitched material style. And Kirby can interact with the environment unzipping, tearing, unbuttoning or unravelling the scenery to his own ends to find all the gems hidden in the levels to get a better score. Since Kirby has been transformed into an unholy abomination of string, he can transform into various objects like a car to run faster, an umbrella to float while jumping or a tank because the game thought you might have been getting bored. It’s simply yet beautifully animated in a way that actually made me feel like a child that enjoyed my Nintendo again!

One thing that genuinely impressed me was how they dealt with the knotty problem of difficulty. Young players or newbies find videogames quite hard, and the old guard like me have wasted our entire lives getting good at them, a game that caters to one will alienate the other…  But in this game, Kirby can’t die. He’s made of string, and I haven’t found a way to set him on fire or put him in scissors (I tried) but if you hit an enemy, you lose all the gems you had found, lowering your high score. A newbie can just potter around playing with the game and the world, while us obsessive freaks can worry about getting three stars at the end like real men! Yeah Men who get the high score in a game about a little pink ball of string PHWOAR!

I know I’ve been a bit harsh to Nintendo recently, but that’s because they’ve either been making pretentious faux-hip bullshit like the 3DS adverts or utterly stupid, vaguely offensive dross like Metroid Other M. I’m only so angry because I remember when they were good… When they had games like Metroid prime, Wind Waker and Pikmin under their wings, and this is the first game on the Wii that reminds me of that time. If you have kids, get them this game and play it with them. If you have a Wii, get this game and play it yourself. If you don’t, find a friend who does and play it. It’s brilliant, what more can I say?

You can buy Kirby’s Epic Yarn here