Diablo 3: Return of the workshy slacker...

Forget about Mass Effect 3 and the wanky ending everyone has been banging on about for the last couple of weeks; there are other third parts to a trilogy on the cusp of release that will show Bioware how not to fuck up a once loved franchise. I mean, some time in the future Valve will release Half-Life 3 and it will surely redefine the gaming experience as we know it. Actually, wouldn’t it be great if Half-Life 3 was released a week next Tuesday with no fanfare or advertising at all. You wake up one morning and it’s just there on Steam, waiting for you to eagerly download and continue Gordon Freeman’s escalation from theoretical physicist of some clout to the alien arse-kicking motherhumper we’ve come to love. Five years since Episode 2 is way too long a wait to experience anything as amazing as the strider/sticky bomb sequence that concludes the franchise thus far.

Wishful thinking...

So, whilst we wait until the end of eternity to hear any news about Gordon’s further adventures (anything Valve – just a note to confirm that it is being worked on will do), something else is required to make up for the bitter taste of disappointment that Mass Effect 3 has brought to the masses. Luckily enough, as Bioware floundered, Blizzard finally announced the release date for Diablo 3. Yay! May 15 is the day battle.net will be flooded with eager beavers waiting to tear the hordes of Diablo’s minions a new one with uniquely dropped weapons, carefully chosen skill trees and multiplayer mayhem.

Diablo 2 was the perfect tonic in yonder days of dial-up Internet and student idleness. It provided endless hours of monster-bashing and character building through a variety of levels that differed on each occasion you booted up the game; time much better spent than that studying malarkey. Before you knew it the best part of a week had passed to reach the heady heights of a level 77 Necro and your evening was about to be spent searching for a specialist bone wand with skill bonuses on a cow-run whilst chowing down on your tenth pot noodle of the week and slurping intently from yet another can of piss awful warm lager. Good times. It probably explains why I looked so gaunt and pasty white in my graduation photo, but that was the life of champions.

The wife already knows what to expect when I get my hands on Diablo 3 (sorry love), more so seeing as Blizzard have seemingly taken the ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken approach to the game’. Sure, it has different character classes (although the Demon Hunter appears to be a Bowazon/Assassin cross-breed), the skill tree appears to have been adapted and improved and weapon collection remains all important, but from the look of things it plays pretty much as you would expect Diablo to play (which is the key thing), just more snazzy to ensnare the current crop of conscientious students and turn them into a generation of workshy slackers. I really can’t wait.

Although the problem is I will have to wait. Release date 15 May. I fly out to Tuscany for a wedding on 17 May. Fucksticks. I’ll be at least 50 levels behind the group of monkeys I’ll be gaming with by the time I return home. It’s been a good few years waiting for Blizzard to announce Diablo 3s arrival whilst they iron out the bugs and gameplay so it can be released without needing an immediate patch (just like in the old days – release when it’s ready, not to meet some arbitrary release date with a half-broken product), which I’m immensely grateful for, but the actual release date remains an incredibly irritating bunch of arse. Fucking Fucksticks! I’ll come into it looking like a right Noob.

Anyway, the build up has started. This could be one of the best games of 2012. More details at the link below. Please Blizzard, don’t do a Bioware…

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/

Waterloo and Shitty Line

I’ve lived in and around London Town for almost 10 years now and can count the number of times I’ve travelled on the Waterloo and City Line on a single finger. It’s not for the want of trying though. It just seems every time I go to travel on this particular section of the London Underground there are signal failures. Yes, signal failures, which is kind of odd for what is essentially a shuttle between point A (Waterloo) and point B (Bank) with no other stops in-between. So how in the blue hell does the Waterloo and City line suffer from such frequent signal failures? Is it being run by a bunch of gibbons that hold up the journey regularly for simple chuckles? Well, going by the drivers take on things on Saturday (‘I’m still trying to find out what the problem is’ over-stated the joyless tit) there certainly seems to be a communication breakdown between the goofs on the ground and the clowns running the whole shebang. It’s like Pinky and Perky trying to have a conversation with Bill and Ben.

Speaking of other things that are pointless on London Underground, whoever decided that the inclusion of the Waterloo and City Line map needed to be posted all over the inside of the tube that goes from point A to point B needs a swift kick in the bollocks. Think of the trees you gormless twunts.

You've got to be fucking kidding me...

So after 10 minutes of nut scratching whilst waiting for the Waterloo and City line to kick into gear, Ichabod Bond (a real person who wishes to remain anonymous) and I decided to knock it on the head and get to Bank via the Jubilee Line and Northern Line. After all, we did have the Circle Line pub crawl to begin that morning. It was for my brother’s birthday (the freak was born on 29 February like all the other freaks) and the beer delay was not appreciated. This was my fourth Circle Line pub crawl and here’s what I learned from the experience:

• The Cross Keys is the place where elephants go to die. If you’ve never seen a real alcoholic and would like to experience odour du bum in full blossom, this is the place to go. They do a mean breakfast though, so not all bad.

• The pubs that used to sell Frulli beer no longer sell Frulli beer. I know Jean Claude Van Damme has much to answer for but that does not explain why the Circle Line has gone anti-Belgium.

• Liverpool have been rubbish at taking penalties this season.

• My brother has the organisational skills of a wombat. Is it really that difficult to check that the second pub of the event is open and not being refurbished until 12 March?

• Nearly every pub on the line serves Amstel. Good times. The one pub that had Bishop’s Finger on tap had run out. Bad times.

• Oyster Cards pay-out a maximum of a one-day travel card and then stop rinsing you of cash. Neat. Know that I did not.

• Kopperberg is the only cider in existence that doesn’t taste like stale piss.

• I may still have a student loan but I’m not in debt you bunch of monkeys.

• I’m getting too old for this shit. Sunday’s hangover was a right pain to shift (it didn’t disperse till Monday).

• If the Waterloo and City Line is run by a bunch of gibbons then the Circle and District Line is controlled by an equally eponymous bunch of simian twats. This is the fourth time I’ve been unable to make it the whole way round the Circle Line owing to the line being closed for some reason that probably has something to do with signal failures (I was drunk at Edgware Road at the time so cannot remember the lamentable excuse). London Underground? Bunch of cave dwelling troglodytes more like.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil - a review

Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), two affable yet clueless hillbillies, are on holiday looking to do some fishing and drink some beers whilst patching up Tucker’s new vacation home (which looks eerily like the log cabin from The Evil Dead). But they’re not alone in the woods. Some frat-brats have also decided to pitch up a tent and party. One skinny dipping session later, where Tucker and Dale save one of the hapless college girls from drowning, turns into a simple misunderstanding where the remaining bunch of students presume their friend kidnapped and likely to suffer unspeakable evil at the hands of the duo. Fearing for their lives that Tucker and Dale will come after them next, the remaining frat-brats decide to strike first blood by harassing and hounding the care-free hillbillies for the rest of the night.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil is a welcome return to the horror ethos of old. Gone is the stale, tedious torture porn of the last decade, replaced by a homage to what once made the genre great; lots of gore, balanced by entertaining comedy moments and featuring an intelligent satirical streak that belies the lead duo’s relative stupidity. Unsurprisingly, the reversal of norms is what initially makes Tucker and Dale a compelling watch. Here the usual butt-fucking Brady bunch of backwards, inbred, deep-south archetypes are a warm, friendly duo that unfortunately look like they might be a couple of unpleasant psychos. The college gang are typical fresh-faced smart-asses, but with deep-rooted prejudices and at least one psycho nut-job amongst them. That the frat goofs seemingly accept everything observed at face value is where much of the initial farce derives; ‘hey, we’ve got your friend’ calls a friendly Dale once they’ve pulled her from out of the lake, only to be met with cries of terror.

 Would you trust this man?

With the set-up complete, the film just gets on with the lovingly crafted punch-lines; dispatching the incompetent students via hilarious accidental deaths that befit their mis-reading of situations. A sequence with a wood-chipper is not exactly unexpected but still reaches the echelons of horror-comedy genius (thanks mainly to Tudyk’s brilliant reaction). This is almost bettered by a chainsaw sequence involving Tucker and a horde of restless bees that will have you chuckling away like a gibbon. Proof that someone running at you screaming with a chainsaw in hand doesn’t necessarily mean they’re attempting to kill you. And any film that has the blonde bird with the massive norks splashed with gore in between the mayhem for simple chuckles is always onto a winner.

 Norks...

Tudyk and Labine, as needs be for the titular leads, are excellent throughout, providing Tucker and Dale with banter and warmth reminiscent of Val and Earl in Tremors. They’re incidental characteristic traits are delightful, from Tucker pouring beer onto his ever growing list of injuries for medicinal purposes to Dale’s photographic memory being of little use to his erstwhile social awkwardness. Most of the laughs are generated by the twosome, be it their own interpretation of the bizarre circumstances happening around them (‘suicide pact’) to their explanation with the local law enforcement about the host of dead bodies littered all over their property (‘Hidy ho officer, we’ve had a doozy of a day’). Without such an endearing partnership, Tucker and Dale would easily be a less engaging watch. The students are also much more spunky and memorable than the usual brand of college personas that you almost feel sorry for their ineptitude. Jesse Moss is particularly excellent as the slightly unhinged Chad who leads the mayhem against poor old T&D, whilst Katrina Bowden is rather plucky as the damsel in distress. 

 Tucker and Dale - they deserve a sequel...

Parodies are a tough concept to deliver, yet Tucker and Dale succeeds largely on the underplaying of the situation. It’s less nudge, nudge, wink, wink, look how clever we are (i.e. it’s not unpalatable shit like Scary Movie), instead opting for a more seamless transition into routine horror, but one that tells convention to ever so slightly do one (kind of like Bubba Ho-Tep). Sure, the plot loses its way in the last third – the appearance of an improbable newspaper cutting from 20 years previously positing a big revelation is incredibly hackneyed - and the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ platitudes are as obvious as Wayne Rooney sporting new hair follicles. But at only 90 minutes long these do little to undermine the carnage and laugh riot that has already preceded. Tension, chainsaws, laughs and bucket-loads of gore, but not how you quite expect it, Tucker and Dale vs Evil is a unique entry into the genre. It also happens to be rather wonderful.  

Overall – A rare gem of a movie. Tucker and Dale are cult characters in the making; sequel please! 

Enter the Procrastinator

Back in August I highlighted how procrastination had affected my book writing endeavours for the last 10 years and made a promise to double the limp 6,000 word content by the end of 2011. All I can say is, damn Rocksteady, Bethesda and Naughty Dog. Damn them and their genius game-making skills to hell. November and December completely wiped out by the triple whammy of Batman: Arkham City, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Uncharted 3. Bastards.

So, I have once again followed the path of abject failure, placing ‘obtain more PS3 trophies’ at the forefront on my to-do list and the book writing on the back-burner. Okay, so I did manage an additional 4,000 words before I lost concentration and admired the pretty graphics instead. This is only 2,000 shy of said doubling, so could be viewed as not too bad an effort. Yet the current draft still remains 5,000 words shorter than my MA dissertation. Which was written in four months. Whilst spending huge amounts of time on Diablo 2. Tit.

Anyway, considering it’s going to take me another 20 years to produce a final draft, there’s no harm in sharing an excerpt. Let’s consider it a teaser trailer, albeit one for a story that will never fully see the light of day. If you like it let me know. Some encouragement that it’s not total bollocks might convince me to put the PS3 controller down more often and pull my finger out:    

   Bear turned to Jack and winked. ‘Get your arse out of here’.

   Jack continued to look on bemused as he went over to the mirror. First the man-eating wardrobe, now a talking teddy bear. By all accounts it had been a strange evening, one where he was glad to still have his wits about him let alone be alive. Yet alive he was and about to follow Sam and the others through a portal to another dimension of no concrete form or description with their escape route defended by little more than a child’s teddy. If it was not for the axe starting to pierce and splinter the study door or the shouting from the Wixard’s minions beyond Jack would have questioned his sanity further. As it was, with death on the line, his survival instinct kicked in and once again reassured him this was reality. Running away was the best course of action.

   He stopped just before he was about to throw himself through the mirror and looked back at Bear. A sword had appeared in Bear’s right hand and a shield in his left. Jack had no idea where Bear had found such weapons.

   ‘Don’t worry’ chirruped Bear as he strode towards the door, ‘I’ll have skull-fucked these fuckers by the time you return.’

   The study door capitulated at that point. The axe assault had done enough to create a sizeable hole in the door; the remainder was being kicked down by the boots of many to make enough room for the first marauding henchman to clamber through. The first that did so had little time to blink before Bear’s blade had ripped him diagonally in half from shoulder to hip. The man screamed as his innards quickly became his outards. Two more men rushed into the room wearing the same white robes with red trim as Bear’s first victim, only to be hosed down with blood gushing from the dying man’s traumatic wound. Both looked on somewhat confused at the little bear in front of them, sword and shield at the ready, not quite believing their eyes.

   ‘Welcome to the Megaverse’ declared Bear with a chortle.

   The last thing Jack saw as he stepped through the mirror and into the void was more of the Wixard’s disciples entering the room and Bear leaping onto the face of the closest henchman burying his blade deep into his eye socket. Bear was not wrong, Jack thought. He really was going to skull fuck them all.

And yes, this portion of the story has been influenced rather heavily by the wonderful drawing of that damn cuddly teddy bear protecting his bestie whilst he sleeps.

Limbo (PC) - a review

Most modern games are insubstantial shit. Take sand-box adventures for instance. Fun for all of a few seconds until you recognise playing pool is way more fun with real people, in a real bar, with real beer. Meaningless side-games only exist to detract from the fact that mindlessly running over people in stolen vehicles is dull and tedious in the long-term. The Sims; fun for about a nano-second until you realise that earning real money, buying your own house and kitting it out with your own stuff is way more fun. Modern Warfare; amazing graphics that simply mask the bland, tedious level design suggesting most gamers are idiots that would somehow prefer style over substance. Oh!

I could go on.

Of course, I say most modern games. There is the odd occasion where a title sneaks out thinking it is still sometime between 1984 and 1998 and that words like 'challenging', 'unique' and 'tough as mittens' remain in common gaming parlance. So, if Portal 2 is the Head Over Heels of the modern age that would make Danish developers Playdead's latest title 'Limbo' the natural successor to Delphine Software's rather spectacular (at the time) Another World. Well, kind of the same, just more macabre, less colourful and with a silhouetted protagonist that you kind of end up caring for rather than a goofy, ginger-haired scientist tossbag.

Another Modern Warfare campaigner throws in the towel...

Limbo's plot is quite simple: small boy wakes up in a somewhat haunting and bleak forest with his sister missing. He has to find her whilst navigating a surreal monochrome landscape and the deadly, brutal traps lurking within its dark underbelly. That's pretty much it. Playing very much like a horizontal scrolling platform adventure, Limbo's roots are aligned with old school retro-gaming conventions. Instant deaths and immaculate timing are routine and hark back to bastard hard single-life Spectrum games like Treasure Island Dizzy. Yet the touch of the modern ensures it's not insanely frustrating as was the case with games of yonder. The puzzles have been logically and lovingly crafted with the difficulty level spot on, meaning that even the short attention spans of most modern gamers will revel in the challenge (instead of immediately searching for an online walkthrough).

The mechanics behind the instant deaths, for example, are actually a quirky design necessity, rather than an infuriating bollock ache, to aid the player in game progression. So, stepping on an unseen pressure pad usually ends with the protagonist getting squashed into mangled little pieces. You've now learned not to tread on said pressure pad again. When confronted with blow-dart wielding humanoid figures further on, back-tracking and leaping across the pressure pads leads to their mucky end instead. Simples! Likewise, the punishment for making a simple error in judgement when leaping over a circular saw is much more restrained than in the pixel perfect days of Dizzy. After the protagonist's body is mangled and shredded in an impeccable display of quality gore, you are simply returned to the beginning of that puzzle to try again. Dizzy would have required you to begin all over...

Jump you fool, jump!

Added to these design mechanics is the games unique style. This, if anything, is what makes Limbo a highly memorable gaming experience. It's not just a game; Limbo is art! The visuals are utterly compelling in both conveying the surreal dream-like quality of the nightmarish environment and, in the absence of a more elongated plot, generating the emotional high-points that make you care for the little boys plight. The lack of colour, the foregrounds in shadow tempered by the greys and whites of the parallax scrolling backgrounds, ensures the hazy macabre reality is an unsettling, yet awe-inspiring experience for the eyes. As soon as the protagonist wakes and begins his journey, you're thrown into a feverish night-terror straight out of a graphic novel. The accompanying silence and minimal sound throughout simply enhances this atmosphere. As do the few segments of lively action that take on a film like quality, especially the sequences involving a giant fecking spider. Running away from that behemoth, whilst applying pin-point timing to every leap, certainly makes for a welcome change of pace to the more plodding puzzling aspects of Limbo.

 

Fucking spiders!

 Then there's the little boy; a shadowy, silent silhouette with two piercing bright eyes who is animated superbly to convince this is just a little boy. It's simply remarkable that such a diminutive avatar can create the much needed pathos the longevity of the game relies upon. Of course the range of deaths in store and the discombobulation of his body parts at these junctures kind of helps. Every time he is impaled on sharp spikes, falls long distances before breaking his neck (or legs, depending on which way up he lands), carved into little pieces by circular saws or mashed against the ceiling by hydraulics is one more time you regret your latest action. After all, this is a lost little boy, in a nightmare world, looking to find a way out, whom you've just killed because of your complete ineptitude. The lack of a driving plot may irk some, but the conditioning Limbo works on the player to see the little boy through to sanctuary at the end of the game (his forlorn, piercing eyes are incredibly affecting) is a compelling driving force throughout. Indeed, Limbo works, in many ways, due to the care and attention afforded to its style, which ultimately complements the substance. Just looking at the game has much reward!

Sure, there are complaints. Gradually, the oppressive forest environment is replaced by a detritus strewn, lifeless industrialised shitscape - Limbo starts to lose its way around this point. The puzzles seem less enjoyable and limp without gigantic spiders, brain slugs and shadowy humanoid figures perpetuating the lurking danger. The static puzzles that seemingly frequent the last third just seem like more of a chore. And once you do reach the end the ambivalent finale is likely to leave some gamers with an unsatisfied taste in the mouth (although for my money the symmetry and minimalist explanation of the conclusion makes Limbo wonderfully thought-provoking, not underwhelming).

The calm before the storm.

It's also a relatively short game and should only take four to five hours for most competent gamers to complete, which brings into question longevity. Although for seven quid you can't really complain. Like Portal beforehand, the length of the game is moot when taking into consideration the unique appeal that Limbo provides. In a medium of never-ending first person shooters, Limbo is a refreshing change to the norm. In addition, there is one Steam achievement (complete the game losing only five lives throughout) which is an old school hardcore gaming convention. This certainly adds further scope for play, it's just a shame that Playdead did not think to include this in Limbo from the outset - that would really have sorted the men from the muppets.

But these are fairly inconsequential points. Limbo remains a highly impressive title and certainly much more than you would expect from an independent developer. Its artistry is beautiful despite the depressing bleakness. The puzzles are challenging and superbly crafted without the unnecessary frustration. The simple 2-D platforms are retro enough to give older gamers a refreshing tingle, yet it's world away from Mario. Witness the traps that are of the skull-fucking until you're mashed to a pulp variety. Vastly different to dodging Goombas and getting smashed on mushrooms. Limbo is, therefore, the perfect blend of old and new; perhaps that's why it plays so damn well!

Overall - Probably one of the best games of 2011. A beautiful nightmare and a real treat for retro and modern gamers alike.

New Year Bollocks!

Happy New Year everybody! Just to remind you, in case the Tories haven’t got their selective messaging across quite so assuredly yet, 2012 is the year of the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, not the vital year of economic upturn that the country probably needs. So we should all turn those smiles upside down. Whilst train companies continue to take the piss with their inflation busting fare increases, bankers remain exactly that, the NHS is slowly phased out of existence and the poor get poorer, the Olympics and Jubilee double whammy (and the pitiful two weeks of the year those events cover) are expected to make up for the shower of bollocks we’re likely to suffer for the rest of 2012.  

David Cameron with Michael Gove yesterday...

So, if it wasn’t bad enough that the country was being run by Baron Silas Greenback and his legion of inept crows or that Osborne’s fiscal policies have been about as much use as two fish in a tank (how the fuck do you drive this thing?), what else does 2012 have in store? Well, there’s Euro 2012, where once again England will be humiliated at the hands of technically superior European football teams who do not have the liability of Wayne Rooney in their ranks. Poor Wayne has not scored at a World or European Cup Finals since 2004 (when he was actually quite good) and, after serving his current two match ban (which Clive Tyldesley will continually harp on about), will only get sent off in the must win final group match after kicking out against a solid Ukrainian defender for simply doing his job – snuffing out any potential threat Rooney poses. Which won’t be difficult if he’s got another super-injunction in place. No, the only football supporters that will feel any joy this season are followers of Manchester City. But that barely counts for much seeing as they have to live in Manchester…

Moving on, you’d hope that Twitter could not get any worse in 2012. Yet it’s only January and Diane Abbott has already announced herself as a front running candidate for Twitter twit of the year. Even that, however, seems a triviality when compared to the language entering the general usage of Twitter users. I mean, whoever allowed ‘Amazeballs’ to enter the English lexicon should be taken outside, lined up against a wall and shot, just before they’re hung, drawn and quartered. Right now, any number of tedious cnut’s are attempting to draft up 2012s killer Twitter dictionary based on the exposure granted to an inanely awful phrase like ‘Amazeballs’. Before you know it we will be swamped with ‘Brillpants’ and ‘Boomtastics’, and drowning in ‘Kumquats’, like a zombie plague of the spoken word. Twitter: the very definition of a billion monkeys and their keyboards attempting to craft together the full works of Shakespeare. And failing miserably.

Maybe TV will give us some respite from the awfulness of it all. Alas, unless you’re willing to sell your soul to the devil and subscribe to Sky so you can access the quality of Sky Atlantic, you’re pretty much hunting for scraps. Sherlock is inspired quality viewing, but a few episodes a year is barely enough to satisfy particularly when everything else on TV seems to feature hideous, vacuous wankers. Desperate Scousewives says pretty much everything you need to know about the quality output of British television. There’s good stuff out their but it’s hidden away behind bonkers, manipulative shite (Beauty and the Geek, Geordie Shores, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, the continuing irrelevance of Big Brother, etc) that simply goads us all into becoming judgemental arseholes. I’d rather be flayed alive and turned into a pair of shoes thanks. Looks like another year of watching repeats of Big Bang Theory on E4 then…

So, at a glance, and despite the Olympics and Jubilee, 2012 will be the most disappointing year in history. Ever. Enjoy it losers…