We’ve had a relatively slow news week other than Diablo imploding, so here are all the best things I found this week!

Why you have to be mad?

When internet flame wars about which game console is better than which start to get ugly, I’m totally going to link them to this clip.

Carmageddon: Reincarnation on Kickstarter:

Kickstarter seems to have started a torrent of all the greatest things in existence. First we have Tim Schafer’s new game, Freddie Wong’s Movie (more on that further down) and the ext Carmageddon.

I’m just gonna say it,’Carmageddon’ a little impatient for this game… I’ll just be quiet now.

Video Game High School

Ever since Freddie Wong first started his Youtube channel people have been asking ‘why can’t he make a real movie?’

Video Game High School is that movie, and they aren’t screwing around with Hollywood.

They will be releasing one ten minute episode every week, the first came out last week, the second should be coming out soon on their website Rocketjump.com

Check out the first episode here.

Cat sings the Blues

I feel ashamed to be posting a cat video up here… Ah not really, here’s a cat singing the blues, apparently, I think he just wants to sleep.

Disney’s Full Metal Jacket

I think I might be the only person who hates the Sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, but I will admit that there’s something unbelievably funny about seeing his lines done in Daffy Duck’s voice.

That’s everything for this week, ‘Like’ us on Facebook for even more funny, awesome and just plain weird stuff.

I first saw Dustforce several years ago when it was just a little beta test and I knew it had promise at the time. Now it’s all grown up and had its first Steam Sale, I snapped it up and promptly had my buttocks handed to me by my own ham handedness.

This is where I normally talk about the story, but there really isn’t one. You pick one of four colourful cleaners and run around the levels clearing up rubbish, leaves, dust and radioactive waste in levels based on streets, forests, castles and science laboratories.

The gameplay focuses heavily on maintaining your momentum as you run up walls, along ceilings and very occasionally on the floor, you automatically sweep dirt from any surface you run on so the levels play out as a mad dash to sweep up as much as possible in as little time as possible and with as clean a combo as possible.

The controls are incredibly tight and fluid, especially when you’re playing with a keyboard, and while the game is incredibly unforgiving at times, you are never left feeling that there’s anyone to blame other than yourself. When you die you immediately get put back to the last checkpoint, the only loss being to your pride and your final score at the end of the level. Perfectionists beware; you’re in for a world of hurt.

There are enemies that roam the level as well that you have to clean up with swipes from your broom, but rather than kill you they reset your combo meter, a fate worse than death if you’re trying for a perfect score but merely a nuisance if you’re just enjoying the flow. It makes all of the real difficulty feel self inflicted rather than forced upon you.

The game reminds me of a more complex but less violent version of Super Meat Boy with its fiendishly difficult platforming, fluid motion and great sense of style. I have no hope in hell of ever getting anywhere with this game, but I love playing it all the same.

Everything about the game feels oddly meditative, even though you’re flailing around at breakneck speed you’re listening to calming music, watching serene scenery and getting more and more immersed in the serene flow of this game.

There’s also a multiplayer, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, I’ll be sure to let you know what I think when I actually work out how to find it in the game’s map.

As it stands, Dustforce is a brilliantly original and polished title that will keep you playing time and again even if you have absolutely no idea why.

You can buy Dustforce here on Steam. If you love your platforming games I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Listen to it here.

If you find yourself enjoying it for some reason, check out our Facebook Page and give us a thumbs up!

And on top of that we’ve got fun stuff for you!

K-9 MM. The only ammunition that’s also your best friend!

Happy Wheels. The first and last game where you pull sick stunts on a Segway.

User generated levels? Check. Gore and violence? Check. Hilarious fun? Oh hell yeah!

Click the image to check it out.

Or play it here.

I wish all my business could be done like this.

The guys at Blizzard know how to make someone feel special!

The Kiss. How fighting over a girl can escalate really quickly.

Mafuta: A fat Hamster’s quest to save its baby.

If this is really just from the first year of Animation school, I can’t wait to see their dissertation!

The only Hunger Games adaptation you will ever need.

I’m currently reading the Battle Royale novel and I’m probably going to get lynched for saying this. The Hunger Games is just Battle Royale if the whole ‘make a bunch of kids fight to the death’ set up actually made any sense.

Plus, I don’t see Battle Royale with Beany Babies anywhere!

I love how it’s more faithful to the original novel than the film in places. I hope we see more stuff like this in future.

We talk about Motorola banning Xboxes in Germany, the WiiU might be getting a new name, Nintendo will be selling their digital games at stupid prices, Black Ops 2 and EA being petulant twits about it, the Elder Scrolls MMO, and what we’re calling ‘The Stupid Xbox.’

Listen to it here.

Let us know what you  think in the comments and throw us a like on our Facebook page if you see our true potential!

For those of you that don’t know, JRPG stands for Japanese Role Play Game, role play games typically involve you setting out on an epic quest to save the world by building your character up to become stronger and take on bigger and bigger threats until you can take on the boss. The Final Fantasy series did this really well for a long time, but when the seventh game in the series rocked people’s worlds with the death of a major character and the protagonist dealing with a troubled past… Japanese studios seemed to think this was the only thing people wanted. So we lost worlds to roam and challenges to face in favour of bigger hair and weirder costumes.

The game follows Yuri Lowell, a sarcastic but well meaning rogue who finds his neighbourhood water source has been sabotaged by a crooked wizard and he sets out to exact vigilante justice with his dog at his side, his rampage lasts a grand total of five minutes and he finds himself thrown in prison at the royal castle. Yuri doesn’t have time for doing time so he breaks out and bumps into Estelle, a girl with absolutely no skill in hiding the fact she’s obviously a princess trying to escape from the castle as well. Eventually Yuri finds himself involved in thwarting a plot that could destroy the very world itself.

Along the way you collect a team of assorted characters with their own stories, motivations and abilities. For the first time in my whole life I’ve found I didn’t hate any of them, everybody in this game is actually likeable from Estelle who is sheltered but genuinely sweet to Raven, the thief whose status as ‘team pervert’ seems more tongue in cheek than creepy.

As RPG’s go, it doesn’t attempt to do anything particularly new, it just strives to do it well. It just so happens that it does it very, very well. I never thought I’d miss a world-map, but modern JRPG’s have avoided them in favour of corridor shaped scenery. The game may be mostly linear with a few side-quests but the humble world map makes it feel like you have so much more freedom to wander around if you missed something before or just want to see something again. It gives you a sense of familiarity with the world, and by extension a feeling like you live somewhere you actually want to save.

When the team goes into battle mode it plays out more like a beat-em-up with you controlling one character and delivering orders to your teammates. If you have friends over you can have them pick up a controller and join in the fun. While an RPG isn’t exactly the kind of game to use co-op when it’s difficult enough to keep up with the plot and all your abilities as it is, it’s a welcome addition and probably a great experience to share with friends.

Vesperia delivers so many things I’ve been missing from modern RPG’s. Final Fantasy and Eternal Sonata made me feel they’d become corridors that thought all we wanted was pretty but pointless graphics and people bitching about how much they hate being so powerful and being on an adventure across the world.

JRPG’s lost their way a long time ago, they cling on to the features that were originally there to hide the seams and defects you got from old technology and they dropped the things that made them popular in the first place. Turn based combat, equipment and levelling up have remained while likeable characters and a compelling story have been left behind. Vesperia harkens back to when we still had our cake and ate it.

Tales is available on Xbox Live Arcade for Twenty Quid in Xbox Points and if you enjoyed the old Final Fantasy games it is more than worth the price of admission.

We’ve got a lot of lost time to make up, so I’ll keep it quick.

An already amazing Left 4 Dead fan film takes an unexpected turn.

I haven’t played any of the Left 4 Dead games much, but I can’t help but love a well crafted homage to a game like this… or should I say games?

Go Right, a thoughtful look at videogames.

You go right… it’s almost hypnotic

Things go sour in a confrontation on Middle Earth.

Wow, this is awkward. Reminds me of my last family reunion.

Vytautas Mineral Water. More manly than Powerthirst!

You heard me, this is even better than the Powerthirst videos. I’d buy a bottle if it probably didn’t cost a left testicle or something.

Speaking of testicles… the greatest FIFA action replay ever!

I’m sorry, there are no words, just watch and be amazed.

The best way to remove a bra with one hand.

I always found it really hard to remove a bra, mainly because I’ve never seen one. But this video makes it incredibly easy!

Goku shuts down a Ho in style!

Incredibox. The only beat-boxing simulator you’ll ever need!

Exactly what it says on the tin. Mix and match different elements to make your favourite ‘choones.’

Check it out here or click the image!

See you next week for more amazing stuff like reviews, podcasts and the kind of Fridays that Rebecca Black would be envious of!

So the change in me from absolute indifference to genuine intrigue when I saw the new trailer for Black Ops 2 is amazing.

I’m gonna admit, it’s not paying more than full game price on launch day amazing, but still mildly amusing.

UPDATE: Tim found a ‘Gameplay’ trailer as well.

Listen to it here!

Listen to it here!

http://unbored.podomatic.com/entry/2012-04-12T16_28_15-07_00

So I hereby present the Unbored Podcast. Or UnboredCast if we don’t think of a better name. It’s a little thing I’ve started trying out with a friend to see if we can mix things up a little bit now we don’t have pesky things like work getting in the way of making new content for you guys.

This first episode deals with the weeks news regarding Assassins Creed 3, Mass Effect 3, the new Xbox not having a disc drive and Tim Scafer’s new project.

In the second episode we talk about the ending of Mass Effect 3 (Notice my change in attitude between the two episodes.)

You can listen to Epidode 1 here.

Episode 2 is here. WARNING: MASS EFFECT 3 SPOILERS.

Let us know what you think in the comment section or on our Facebook page. Would you be interested in audio reviews of games as well as Podcasts? Is there anything you want us to talk about? Any tips on how to make it better? We’d love to hear from you.

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.