Cats

The boardroom was silent. All eyes focused on their visionary, the man who had dragged one of British TV's greatest programmes from the embarassement of a vampire film or some shit back into the public eye. The man who had also ruined it utterly with the exception of that good episode with the single Dalek. Many a tear was shed over that one.
Russell T Davies looked over the meeting chamber. There were many people here who had enjoyed the original Doctor Who, back when it was twice the length and had so much more time for character development, plot twists and actual excitement rather than psycho cats having sex with zombies to create somekind of zombie cat or whatever the hell that episode was all about.
He had savoured the destruction of Doctor Who. It had been fun to change it from a good sci-fi program into nothing more than a time-travelling Eastenders which focused entirely on relationships, but that wasn't enough.

The lure of power was too much.

"Right," he said, "how can we make Doctor Who even worse?"
The others present didn't know. They thought they'd been pulling out all the stops for that episode where the Cyberman cried oil while screaming something about British Imperialism. That concept had been utterly shite, and they were proud of it.

Damned proud.

"Maybe a special guest," suggested one sycophant. "That'll always make things shittier."
Russell T Davies mused upon this thought. "I think it's a good idea. Everyone knows this Celebrity Sex Island and whatnot always gets good figures. Any ideas who? Remember, it must be someone wholly unfunny, talentless, and preferably looking like that wiry Chuckle Brother after he's been flattened with an industrial steam iron. Any ideas?"
It only took a brief second for the entire boardroom to cry "Catherine Tate!" at once.
"Ah," mused Russell T Davies. "Perfect."
He slammed his fist down suddenly. "But that's not enough! We need the shittest plot possible! It is a Christmas Special after all."
"How about they meet Father Christmas?" asked one. "And he turns out to be a fellow Time-Lord?"
Russell T Davies stared at him. "Scott, that is so fucking shit I think I'm going to promote you to assistant jackass. I love it! But she couldn't be Santa. Could she?"
"How about a bride?" suggested another brown-noser. "That's always emotional!"
Russell T Davies gave him a huge thumbs-up. "Bingo. We're trying to make Doctor Who less scifi and more Eastenders anyway, and this is perfect!"
He began to make shapes in the air while thinking about his fiendishly crap plot for the new Doctor Who.
"Okay, okay, we have this bride right? And she got trapped in time because...it's at a Church. The wedding. And someone accidentally pissed on the stain glass, so...the vicar got angry! The vicar who is actually a Time Lord!"
"Genius!" shouted some halfwit.
"And then...and then he traps her in time because he things it was her who did it. But it wasn't! And she's innocent! Then...it turns out the only one who can reverse the time vortex is Santa, because..."
"Elves?" added a moron.
"Perfect! They are like little Time Lords! They focus time energy with their pointy hats, or some shit. We've never given a proper explanation for anything in this new series, so why start now? And so the Doctor and Cath - we need a name for her bride, by the way - visit Santa and get him to free her!"

There was a brief pause in the boardroom.

"What about presents from Santa?" asked a BBC executive.
Russell T Davies glanced at him. "That's so good I could kiss you! The elves then deposit presents at the wedding or some crazy shit. Kids love presents!"
He sat back with a satisfied smile. "This is going to be the worst Doctor Who episode ever. Apart from the Time Meddler."

------

A wide assortment of brief notes today.
Firstly, a brief advert. As you may be aware, tomorrow is the first Story of WTF expansion! Adding around 120-160 pages of sheer bizarre joy, it's one not to be missed. I suggest you catch up with the original game here, and a word of help - the new areas are accessed from the Ocean and from Mars. So if you haven't found those sections yet, now is the time to get looking!
Secondly, happy Halloween. Unfortunately my house has been plagued all day by chavvy ten-year-olds in rape demon masks howling at the door all evening. Morons. I would've done a Halloween special entry but I honestly couldn't think of anything - except one concept, but I think that would be better used around Xmas.
Thirdly and finally, who watched Torchwood? Despite the fairly dodgy second episode, I thought it was in some ways better than the new Doctor Who. Opinions?

Phantom

Awful Business Ideas #37 : The Phantom

The Phantom is easy prey. There is so much to be said about this fiasco of a console that it has filled many webpages far, far worse than mine. However, I'm going to give my 2 Cents (currently just a little more than 1.1p) about this.
For those who don't know, the basic genius concept of the Phantom is to give the ordinary gamer a change from ordinary good consoles and allow you to play your PC games on your TV. A genius scheme you say! However, they failed to take in several important problems.

> TVs offer lower quality.
> Hardware of consoles always lags behind PCs.
> It's a daft idea.

Despite this, they managed to take in over £35m in investments! I dread to think what foolish millionaries invested their money in this. No doubt the generation who think that anything to do with gaming will instantly appeal to the stupid youth of today, somewhere inbetween breaking public property, taking drugs and mugging the elderly (thankyou Anonymous).
But it gets worse! As if you still thought that buying a pointless & pointless expensive console to play your 5-year outdated PC games wasn't a bad idea, get a load of this. On Januray 3rd this year, they announced an add-on to the disaster that Phantom Entertainment Inc miscarried in a computer lab somewhere. A keyboard!
Yes! The first console with a keyboard! It was bound to work, because everyone knows people have perfectly flat surfaces on their sofas to rest it on. Perhaps one particularly clever PEI employee decided to make it flexible. Brilliant. Truly we are seeing the work of genius.
The final nail in the coffin is the whole £17 or something monthly fee. For playing outdated games. This reminds me fondly of the N-Gage.

The Phantom is currently worth a whopping 0.0049 on the stock market.

That comment doesn't really need any more discussion I feel. It pretty much says it all.

Welcome to the future.

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In an odd side-note for people like me who still like C&C 95, I'm in the process of updating a combination of my favourite missions from that into Yuri's Revenge. Why? I have no idea. But it looks like a pretty fun mission so far.

Also, coming Thursday : The Story of WTF Expansion!!!

Fog

It was foggy.
Two henchmen of the evil alien overlords who planned to invade Earth, leech of it its natural resources, leave it a worthless heap of slag and then return to their homeworld were sitting on an APC. Following their previous adventure in the defence of City 17 where they left with a few light cuts and bruises, they were being allowed to rest before the next offensive. No-one could say the Combine didn't have a good health plan. A lonely scanner flew overhead, trying to find someone else to photograph.



They were still surprised that they had survived their encounter of yesterweek.
"Well, I don't know how we got out," said Combine Soldier helpfully.
"As I see it," continued Combine Elite, "either we were incredibly lucky, or-"
"It was all down to luck!" finished Combine Soldier brilliantly.
There was a brief pause when only the gunfire and occassional explosion could be heard. Then Combine Elite said "No wonder you didn't win that creative writing competition you told me about."
"It was rigged!" insisted Combine Soldier.
Elsewhere at the Overwatch Nexus, two Combine Police officers were having a conversation. Due to the lack of manpower because of the revolution, they'd been forced to redraft certain people into different jobs. These two were currently mechanics.



"Why are they on that APC?" asked one of them. "I thought it was off-bounds for the next while."
The other shrugged. "I haven't got round to fixing it yet, but it's okay to sit on. The problem is that one of the weapon strippers in the Citadel went on the blink and decided to blast the armour. It's now paper-thin. It's fine to sit on, but any gunshots would go right through. If they hit the petrol tank or whatever fuel system our fellow aliens use, it would go sky-high."
The first Metrocop looked around the Overwatch Nexus. A gunship sailed overhead as he considered.
"I guess that's okay. Those two have had a tough time, and it's not as if there are any rebels reported to be in this sector. Lucky that."



"It sure is," replied the other Metrocop. "It sure is."

Cliche

I've recently noticed three huge cliches in the world of gaming.

1 : The Hunter.

There are too many creatures and enemies called "Hunters". The three that instantly spring to mind are from Halo, Half-life 2 Episode 2 and Prey. I'm sure there are others - no doubt some pixelated variety of Strogg is called a Hunter. Would it be so much so ask for a more interesting name?
According to the synonyms tool in Microsoft Word, another word for Hunter is Seeker. However, this sounds rubbish. If you reduce it merely to "Hunt", then one of my favourite suggested synonyms is "Search for".
Thus, I think a great new name for a video game enemy would be the "The Searcher For". It would have horns and whatnot and be generally shit like stuff from Uwe Boll (creator of such stunning movie-graphical masterpieces as House of the Dead, a film with a lower IMDB rating than art-house classic Porn stars from Mars.)


2 : Predictable Bosses

You enter a room filled with ammo, weapons and armour. There are medkits lying around and no enemies are nearby. What does this mean? Other than a very foolish marine/monster/guard/NSA agent deciding that leaving all the weapons in one place is a good idea, it means there's a boss coming up. Or at the very least a pretty big fight with lots of stuff to kill.
It's always so predictable. For a change I'd like a boss to come right at the end of an area where you've used up most of your ammo and make things a lot easier. My second complaint about bosses is that they always have a nervous habit of exposing their weakspot. Take Thardus, the rock-monster boss from Metroid Prime.



As I see it, he had two options at any given point in the fight.
> Keep throwing rocks at you
> Expose his weak area for several seconds
Maybe I don't speak for all of us here - and I admit what I'm about to say is a little crazy - but I'd have gone with the rocks option. Why quit when you're ahead?

3. Women in games

It would be nice if, just for one, women in computer games wouldn't overbalance in real life due to extreme breast-size. The most absurd example I could find was Lucy from Quake III, shown on the right. That's just not natural.
Every game I can think of - except Halflife 2 - has women shown with unbelievably huge bosoms. It's just not realistic in any way, and I think talks down to people who can play video games. When I say that, I exclude those who play on Xbox Live. It would be very difficult to talk down to that kind of person without resorting to grunts.

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For those who haven't noticed, some holiday updates are generally of a slightly reduced size because I know there are fewer people around to read them. However, Sunday's full-sized update will return to normal and should be an education in everyone about how not to go about entering the stock market. All will become clear...

TV

TV Programs that nearly made it :

A recently de-classified report from the BBC has revealed a wide variety of Television programs that were nearly aired, but just fell short, due to budget cuts, filming schedules, assassinations and the rest. Here is just a small variety of what was rejected :

Quake for CBBC

What a godawful idea this was. Some bright-spark decided that since all 6-10 year-olds play Quake games where you have to butcher Strogg and make them all explode in flying red pixels, you should make a program for it. They even hired a few up-and-coming child actors to play the high-pitched heroes who for some reason crashland on an alien planet but still retain their charming innocence after watching the horror of the HUMAN GRINDER TM. Rumour has it that all the sets were burnt after someone realised this wasn't going to work.

Inside the mind of Ruth Kelly

Some replacement for "Today in Parliament" this monstrosity turned out to be. Don't get me wrong, I like some politics while I'm waiting for the dishwasher to finish or something. But did we really want camera crews to follow this insufferable nincompoop around for a whole month? I don't think so. As if to try and make things even more awful, they added hear commentary on her thoughts. Who cares when the Boy Wonder of New Labour buys a new manly suit (with added foam pads for extra manliness)? Nobody, that's who.

When open-heart surgery on a squid across a rickety bridge carrying a nuclear device - GOES WRONG.

This was Channel 5's attempt to have a vaguely good program that wasn't either a film made by a totally different company of some dubious program about porn, such as "How porn ruined my life" or "My life with porn" or "Porn and my life" or "Porny McGee goes to town" or "An indepth look into the porn industry" or something. Anyway, they did actually make this set up, though how those clods thought they could make a whole series out of this awful idea is beyond me. Only the sounds of the first episode remain before the idea was scrapped :
"Right, now if we cut below the artery, then OH GOD MY EYESSsssssss [splintering sound] [thermonuclear detonation]

Big Brother

A show where the creators go into the worst supermarket they can find and propel as many people as possible from there into the back of a van. These morons are then placed inside a house with hidden cameras and various other devices to see how they react. They try to capture some people who are particularly cretinous/silicone-filled to see how they react. Luckily, this lowest-common-denominator fuckwit zoo was never aired.
Oh wait...

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Getting a laptop soon!!

Live

The world is in shock today as a polite American gamer is found on Xbox Live!

This shockwave was felt around the world as a teenager from the USA didn't adhere to normal online gaming rules. He didn't insult anyone's sexual preferences, he accused no-one of being a Jew or a "fucking faggot", and he didn't even display his sexual insecurity by screaming "Get down bitch!" every time he gets a kill.

"It's unbelievable," said a representative of the American government. "The whole country feels let down by this individual. It's just not a normal day on Xbox live without being called a fag, a racial slur of some kind or Jewish. Even worse, he didn't use normal British insults!"
Our sources tell us these range from "Go eat some crumpets you British fag" to "Go brush your teeth you British fag" and other such hilarious and non-cliched phrases.

A wave of resentment has gone round the USA, with many suggesting that this polite gamer should be kicked out the country for not hating all foreigners. It seems to go against all beliefs of sportsmanship that one should actually be polite over the Inter-Net and not insult your fellow man at every opportunity.

But many see this as the way forward. It would be nice for once to have a friendly atmosphere in the arena of online gaming rather than being constantly insulted by rednecks and morons who seem to believe that killing someone once, in a virtual game, over the Inter-Net is the height of success.
With this scandal running at full-swing, it seems unlikely we will see a conclusion in the short-term. Xbox Live claim to ban those who hurl such insults, but as we can all see they honestly don't give a damn. The only way is to actually listen to the reports players send in and actually do something about these mindless bigots. One final point is that most of these racist morons are the cheaters - particularly hypocritical when they insult you for losing after lagging your allies out of the game.

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eBay is so, so great. My latest purchases have completed all the gaps in my C&C anthology, apart from Generals. I see no reason to get that game...

Fourth

Civ the IVth.

As you may well know, I have always been a fan of the Civilization series. Just a little after playing C&C 95 - my first ever PC game - I played the original Civ. Despite there being many problems which will be discussed later, it was great.
I've never played Civ II or III, I have to admit. I may buy them off eBay sometime in the future, but for now - nothing. So for this review, we'll concentrate mostly on the things in Civ IV rather than the differences. Although there is one difference too big - and fantastic - not to be mentioned.

As with the original Civ, your units are strangely massive. Since you are playing on a scale which has to encompass both vast cities and horseback riders at once, everything takes up one square on the map, as usual. This sometimes provides Godzilla moments in cities, as shown below.

Those are three of my Swordsmen protecting the city. Yes, I was still using Swordsmen in 2010, and I honestly fail to see a problem with this. London was in the middle of my empire so nothing was realistically going to touch it, so I didn't need tanks and all that modern malarkey.
Cities have a fantastic amount of detail in this game. Most buildings will actually show up - see if you can spot the following :
Pyramids, Broadcast Tower, Oracle, Theatre, Colloseum, Observatory, St Basil's Cathedral, Barracks, Notre Dame, The Spirat Minaret, a Fallout Bunker, an Aqueduct, Stone Henge, some City Walls and Oxford University. It's all there in London!

As with many other modern strategy games, there are various ways to win. In some ways I miss the old ways of killing everything until only one person was left, but times change. You can win in various ways, including launching a rocket to Alpha Centurai (like in Civ I) or becoming the most cultured Civ (a new concept).

However, some of these endings are far too hard to achieve. The timed ending - where it reaches 2050 and no other ending has occured - happens far too often. It can be too hard to achieve a different ending in time. The culture victory requires far too much culture for it to be likely in most games while the conquest victory in larger matches is pointless. You're never going to crush eight different players in that time.

No strategy game except possibly Yuri's Revenge gives the same satisfaction of sending a vast army across the map, if only because of the noise tanks make when moving. You'll see what I mean.

Next, the game has Wonder animations at long last. When you build a wonder you get a video of it turning from architectural-sketch into the final building, and these are generally quite cool. The Space Elevator looks like this when completed :


Combat is generally good although it will sometimes glitch. People and vehicles will die without shots being fired fired or explode without provocation. It sounds a lot worse than it is.
You can play as a huge variety of leaders, ranging from Napoleon to Catherine the Great. Speaking of Napoleon, I was disappointed to see he was the same height as the others. I think extreme comic value could have been added to have had only his forehead showing in the conversation box. This could be enhanced by having the diminutive dictator jumping up and down to make himself noticed.

There are a huge number of gameplay options, so your matches can be customized according to win conditions, map, number of other players, and the rest. Civ IV seems to have very few downsides, although one I would mention :
Lag. I consider my computer to be fairly decent, but if you've got a few players at later stages of the game, the computer can pretend to have frozen up for a good five minutes before you get another turn.

In conclusion, Civ IV is a great addition to the Civilization universe. If you don't live Civ (and live in a room with bouncy walls) then I would still suggest getting it.

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On a totally different topic, yesterday I took this horrific screenshot from the BBC site. It burns my eyes.

Jobs

Paint

Today we have something a little different. An interactive (sort of) MS Paint adventure. Starting with the picture below, leave in the comments what you want to happen next, eg "Buy coke", "go outside," "check my inventory", "jab the man in the face" etc.
Then, I shall quickly scribble that picture in paint, and we'll continue from there. So, to begin, you're clearly in some kind of shop. In Europe. That sells Coke at an outrageous price.

Buy a coke and throw it.

Go outside.

Walk in a south-east direction.
Buy a map.
Threaten the shopkeeper and demand bananas.

Stuff him in a cabinet and steal the bananas.

Dance in the town centre wearing the sack and the bananas.
Stab people with your 'nanas.
Freeze bananas and repeat.
Enter the Banana Cave!
You are attacked by the Banana King!
Check your inventory!
Play the Harmonica and cause a cave-in.

Use the dental floss to lasso your way out.

-Apologies for reduced quality on the latest ones, Blogger is being crap.

Combine

"Things aren't looking good." declared the combine in the white outfit as they peered out from behind the hastily-built barricade.

The two Combine had been pinned down for a few hours and had put together a make-shift barricade. Despite being devoid of all human emotions after the Combine de-sensitised them, they still felt something of a bond. Two of the last Combine in City 17...
"Seeing as City 17 is under attack..." muttered the white Combine, "and we might not have long to live...I've never asked you. What's your name?"
The navy-blue combine pointed to his nametag. "It says here 'Combine Soldier' on my tag," he read.
"I'm Combine Elite," added the white one. "That's why I have the cool red eye."
"It is pretty cool."
"Thankyou. Lousy depth perception though."
They shook hands.



After that they sat in silence for another few minutes, pondering their fate. Combine Soldier sat on the crate and put his shotgun over his shoulder.
"Do you think Freeman is heading this way?"
"I expect so. This game is more linear than a redneck family tree, although they try to pretend otherwise. If this area's been built into the game - which clearly it has, since we're here - he should turn up soon. If we're really unlucky he'll have up to 4 team-mates with him."
"I've heard they aren't really much use," pointed out Combine Soldier. "They get in the way pretty often and excuse themselves in strange ways."
Combine Elite nodded.
"But maybe we're not screwed," suggested Combine Elite. "We can fight Freeman! We're the best our alien overlords can make - well, I am anyway."
"Yes!" exclaimed Combine Soldier. "We can stop him! We're not going to let him and his ordinary civilian fighters destroy us!"
"I was young like you, once," mused Combine Elite in a kind voice. "I thought we could crush the people of Earth, drain their oceans and leave this planet a worthless husk. But time mellows you."
Outside their barricade, a rebel soldier picked his way through the debris and settled down with his RPG.

"Come on sir, look on the bright side!" exclaimed Combine Soldier. "There's no way they could get at us in here."

Assembly

My apologies for the humour index of yesterday's entry being below standards. I assure you tomorrow's will make up for it. However, for today, we have the second guest entry, this time from someone who apparently wishes to remain anonymous to keep people guessing. It is about the school assembly, and deals with some very powerful issues.

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Assembly

A guest entry by a Nony Mouse

Assembly. The word means a number of things to different people, but a quick look at the define:assembly function on google reveals that it simply means the "single units mulled together". But for what purpose? Do these single units, aka students, learn anything by this gathering?
Certainly not. The rest of the school day is designed for lessons, and assembly-time is too-early-in-the-morning-time for leaning. And for learning. Therefore, my proposition here is this: That we should seek to replace assemblies in educational establishments around the world with far more interesting, enriching and entertaining alternatives! I shall outline some of my saner suggested schemes below, but feel welcome to add your own.

Scheme number 1 : Voice changing units

If every speaker at assemblies were to simply don a simple audio processing unit on a microphone, then any talk would instantly become enthralling. By shifting voices up in pitch, down in pitch or into Darth-vader like tones, you will find a quick way to spice up these "mulling togethers" that easily outlasts the duration of the talk.
Scheme number 2 : Piranhas

This one is slightly more dangerous but has a higher wow factor. Basically, the idea is that one uses a large fishbowl (twice the height of a man) filled with piranhas. And water. Instant amusement - and members of the onlooking crowd will be tempted to throw items into the bowl. Even better if one or more members of staff of the educational establishment are hung over the top by a crane and slowly dipped in. Who needs health and/or safety?
Scheme number 3 : Unicycle

Anything looks good on a unicycle.

Scheme number 3.5 : Custard unicycle

"What is a custard unicycle?" I hear you ask. Well, it is not, as you may have assumed, a vehicle with one wheel and two pedals that is made entirely of custard! [I first thought this - Mkzrj] It is instead, a normal unicycle with one wheel and two pedals that has a concealed 'squirt gun' that shoots low viscosity custard, for pranks and somewhat comical amusement. Add this to any assembly and you will instantly be interested.

On a sidenote, there was an entertainer in the nineteen-eighties who had a mildly successful TV career with his famous custard unicycle. I have a few taped episodes that I cherish as he is very entertaining. He was the inventor of the custard unicycle and pulled many pranks on people using the custard squirting action on his unicycle. Bonus points to anyone who can comment with this man's name. Here is a picture of him on a show:


Scheme number 4 : Crazier charities

We all know it is good to donate money to help good causes, but sometimes slightly more odd charitable things are overlooked. We should not forget these when fundraising, and perhaps some assemblies could be dedicated to promoting these odder, but just as important, charities. For example, the other day I saw a plea for the "AAAA", a.k.a. the Alcoholic Albino Albanians Anonymous. They have trouble raising funds for their important Anti-Alchol-Abuse campaign overseas in Albania, since many people believe they are merely a joke charity. Any asssembly about "Alcoholic Albino Albanians Anonymous" amuses. This is a scientifically proven fact in many scientific journals, including this one.

------------

So there you have it, several fool-proof ways to improve the regular dull assembly, which under our new school leadership sometimes contains disturbing and wholly inappropriate images. You all know what I mean.

Notes

One nice thing today - I noticed the first link to the blog on an external site! A UFO site has linked to my celebrities consider entry about aliens. Therefore - and this does somehow follow on - I have a mission for everyone. This mission is to tell people about the blog and put it in any forum sigs you may have. Except those on Newgrounds if you post views that are controversial in the eyes of rednecks.
Anyway. To the murder mystery!

Following on from last time, something incredibly unexpected had just happened! To be more specific,
You've now scrawled some rather rubbish notes about what you know so far. Unfortunately Blogger is crap and doesn't have any handwriting font like that Lucida whatsit, so your notes lack some of their hand-written charm.


:- The detective seems incompetent. He has a totally moronic method of taking fingerprints and has smudged anything once on the knife. Judging from what happened last time I suppose it is possible he is the one who did it and it trying to persuade us he didn't do it. Should exercise more.
:- The older woman is my chief suspect. More things points to her, especially her blatent denial of the murder. The bingo hall incidents seem to suggest she's getting even with everyone who wronged her at that stupid place. You only win hats anyway.
:- No-one else seems all that suspicious.

You look up from checking your notes to see the fat detective interrogating the older woman. Wondering if he's come to the same conclusion as you, you make your way over and see what's going on.
"And how do you explain the doctor's last cry?" demands the gargantuan European. "Clearly a reference to a Bingo Hall! And how old are you?"
The old woman looks like she might not reveal such intimate information, but under the glare of the detective she relents. "Eighty-six."
"Exactly! If you're that old you must go to bingo halls."
"So?"
"So you're the prime suspect. Like prime rib."
You wonder if the Belgian thinks about anything except food.
"Anything to say for yourself?"
The old woman looks indignant. "Of course I do! This is outrageous! I didn't murder them! I'm a weak old woman."
You're not sure which side to take. Both of them seem fairly suspicious, and the Belgian's accusations seem incredibly unprofessional. You ask him to follow you off to one side.
"What do you want?"
You point out how unprofessional he's being, and that by telling the old woman he suspects her she's likely to come up with an excuse. The Belgian storms off, and then turns to make an announcement. He apparently wants everyone to meet here in an hour when he will announce the murderer!
A ring of shock goes around the room. The lion-tamer seems surprised and twirls his moustache in a puzzled manner. Lord Barnacle-Smythe looks nervous, and you can just about see the white package in his pocket.

----

Things are drawing to an end now. Post any final questions if you will, but I doubt anyone will tonight.

Feedback

Well, I've recieved a lot of feedback on the Story of WTF. In addition to the overwhelming positive comments - thankyou everybody! - a few things have come to my attention. First and foremost, some people think there is too much dying. Having played it again since then, I now agree that in some areas it can be too tough to find the correct route, specifically Mushrooms & the Sewers. Thus, over the next few days I will be editing these to create looped areas - the incorrect choice doesn't kill you, but it merely gives you all the options again. This happens several times already in the game and I think it needs more of these.
Next, for those who don't know, we intend to add to the Story of WTF monthly. We already have most of the pictures for the expansion done and a good part of the writing. So, two more things for this entry :

THE MAP!

This is our main map with the un-released areas faded out. All of these will be appearing over the coming months.

This should also help those who haven't yet found all the existing areas or aren't sure how to get around. Why is the Mushrooms line dotted? Because when you return from part of the expansion, we can't have you going back to Mars and going in a loop, can we?
Next, a trailer for the first expansion that you lucky people have to look forward to.

Finally, a hilarious quote from US Government Official Fuckwit John Bolton - "The USA is not responsible for all the ills of the world!"
Comedy gold.

Syndrome

I can't think of another amusing Story of WTF advertisement, so I'll just say this. PLAY IT NOW! You may need to lower security settings or use Firefox. Or Opera. Just not IE.

Today's update :

"The FPSRPGRTS"

This stands for the "First-person Shooter - Role-playing Game Rapid Transition Syndrome." So for today we have a brief return to the annals of gaming to discuss a problem I have encountered.
As many of you will know, I primarily play First Person Shooters. I personally believe that they require the most skill, because things happen quickly and you don't have much time to think about what's going on. Second in the skill chart are strategy games, because - as the name slyly suggests - those require strategy. RPGs I consider to be generally easy, because you just need to level a bit to kill stronger things. The most extreme examples are the Final Fantasy games where you have all the time you want to decide how to attack. In FF X online, your character even fights automatically. You just pick extra things for him to do.
Recently, I bought Oblivion in the same day I spent £110 on various games, new and retro.


Now, I have played very, very few RPGs. I guess you could count GoldenAxe on the C64 as one, but other than that and the occassional Zelda game, my RPG experience lacks. This is for one simple reason : For RPGs to be rewarding, you have to put in a lot of effort. That's fine, it makes the game last longer. But there must be a worthwhile reward at the end.
Basically, if :

Time + Effort > Potential fun with all stats maxed out

Then I do not get an RPG. World of Warcraft might be an exception, but at £10 a month - are you all insane?
Then along came Oblivion. I decided this was huge enough and with enough potential fun to warrant me buying it. That and every review said they'd wet themselves repeatedly while playing it or sold everything they owned to buy the expansions. Basically - everyone said it rocked.
Having now played Oblivion for many hours, I understand everything going on. However, when I begun, I was completely overwhelmed. So many different kinds of skills, spells, weapons, items, and the strangest levelling system I've ever encountered meant that it was scary. I expect RPG veterans would have been less overwhelmed, but for an aficianado of the FPS, it was scary. The most complex stats I've ever had to deal with were "Axe Power" and "Health" for the GoldenAxe dwarf, or "Muscle" for San Andreas. Advanced stuff.

So that's the problem. Anyone moving from the FPS Heartland into the dark and dangerous realms of Roleplaying is going to be scared. The fact is all FPS games have the same controls, whereas all RPGs will have their own subtle nuanaces. Find an RPG you like and stick to it. I recommend Oblivion.
So for now I'm going to play Oblivion because I understand it, but quietly wait until Episode 2 of Half-life 2 is out. Those mini-Striders look cool.

Goose

Quick Quiz #85

Do you meet the following requirements?
-> Ability to read English
-> Ability to click a hyperlink
If so, click here now and play our interactive online game, the Story of WTF! You may need to lower security settings or try a better browser than Internet Explorer to make it work. That said, on with the update!

------------

They were in the attic, and things were going from bad to worse.

"Ah," said the engineer, tapping the boiler with his biro. "You've got boiler geese."
"I've got what?" exclaimed Joan. "Boiler geese?"
Things were spiralling drastically out of control. At first it had seemed that she merely had a slight plumbing problem - less water was coming out of the taps that expected. Nothing too serious, probably just a partial block in a pipe somewhere. Her normal plumbers had been busy for the next week and so she'd called a new company she'd never heard of. It was against all of Joan's instincts, especially since most of her friends said they'd never even heard of these people. She was beginning to think he might be a scam-artist.
Joan reached forward to check the boiler, but the engineer grabbed her wrist. "Don't do that! Don't you know they're venomous?"
"Venomous?"
He nodded. "Deadly little buggers. They get inside boilers by going through the pipes, see, and then it's impossible to get 'em out. I'll have to take the boiler away and incinerate it."
"Why've I never heard of these?" Joan asked as they descended back down the ladder.
"Government doesn't like to talk about it, love," he replied, closing the attic hatch. "Lots of houses have them though, you're not alone. Lucky for you we specialise in boiler goose removal. It'll cost you though."
"How much?" sighed Joan.
He shrugged. "Two grand, maybe. Depends on whether the infection has spread to your pipes."
"Is that even possible?" she asked as they went into the bathroom.
"Oh yeah, happens all the time. You know how a mouse can get through a hole the size of a thick pencil? Well, it's like that, but with a goose."
Joan wasn't particularly impressed with that analogy, but she certainly didn't want venomous creatures of the order Anatidae in her plumbing. She watched as the plumber bent down under her sink and fiddled around with some pipes.
"Hmmm..." muttered the plumber, tapping something with a wrench. "There's one in there."
"Can't you get it out then?" asked Joan, one eyebrow raised slightly in disbelief. "You're the professional, deal with it!"
"Just isn't that easy..." he replied slowly, looking at the pipes from various different angles. "See love, if we take out that pipe now, it'll alert the boiler geese that we're onto them."
"Alert them?"
"These Vomica Anatidae are cunning. If they know you're onto them, they'll gestate, then you're really fucked."
"Vomica..."
"Boil. That's Latin that is."
"Right. What happens when they gestate then?"
"A whole shitstorm. They breed like rabbits, and the slightest thing'll set them off. Turning the taps on and off is ok, but if they're panicked, they'll spawn."
It seemed clear to Joan now this was a load of rubbish. Boiler geese? How absurd.
"Right, well, thanks for coming," she said, trying to usher the scammer out of the door.
"But I haven't checked the kitchen piping yet," he pointed out, brandishing his screw-driver. "We have to know the extent of the problem."
"I'll handle that, don't worry," she said mock-kindly, ushering him out and slamming the door behind him. Bloody people! If she didn't fall for those Nigerian princes, she certainly wasn't going to fall for this.

*******

Over the next few days Joan began to feel less and less certain. There had been no noise from inside the pipes and no sign of this "spawning", but still she thought it was possible. Less and less water was coming out every day, and today she could barely get out a drop. Since her plumber still wasn't around, she decided to open up the pipes and have a look.
Using her grandfather's wrench, she slowly opened up the pipe and peered inside.
Two tiny pinpricks of light looked back at her.
Then the boiler goose gave out a cry, and things went considerably downhill from there.

Fingerprints

I'm merely going to take a moment of your time to suggest you play our game, the wonderful Story of WTF! You can play Scrabble with Godzilla, meet Trinity from the Matrix, get eaten by a huge Kraken and visit Mars! How can you resist?

And now, regular programming : TO THE UPDATE!

The fat Belgian is crouching over the dead Doctor whose body has been put out on the floor. With your help he tried to remove the speculum, but it seemed to be lodged between something. It also elicited yet another plume of blood, resulting in your second clothes change. You peer over to see what he's doing, and he's half-heartedly checking the Doctor's fingerprints. He seems to be looking around as if waiting for someone to notice him.
You ask him if he's doing this so he can check them against those on the knife in the blonde woman.
"Naturally!" he replies flamboyantly, pressing the Doctor's last finger into one of those black ink pad things. "I am a detective after all."
You point out that he grabbed the knife earlier, smudging any fingerprints that might have been there before his. This exercise, therefore, is pointless.
"That's true," he sighs, putting away his fingerprint pad. "I guess we'll never find out who murdered her."
You ask why he was checking the Doctor - surely the same person probably murdered them both?
The Belgian juggernaut makes an excuse and waddles from the room, mumbling something about diarrhoea. You get the idea he wants to get away from your company. Oh well, there doesn't seem to be much else to do. You consider the latest bits of evidence.
Lord Barnacle-Smythe was clearly involved with something, but it doesn't seem clear what. The bingo hall seems to be a good line of investigation, and you wonder if you should get your mobile phone to make a few more calls. Finally, the Belgian's odd behaviour seems a little...odd.
You're approached by the older woman who disliked the blonde murderette. You wonder if that's the correct word for a murder victim for a moment before she starts talking.
"You know when he said about the numbers?" she mutters quietly, making sure no other guests hear her. "Well, you know. I didn't kill him. In case you think I did. Because I guess he meant the numbers at Bingo. He's the one who always picks the numbers. And I always get annoyed when I don't get the right numbers, so incase you thought I killed him because he rarely picked my numbers - well, I didn't."
You inform her none of that had even crossed your mind. You wonder if she realises what a huge hole she's just dug herself. She withdraws from your company, and you're about to go and talk to some others when something incredibly unlikely happens!

To be continued.

Questions will, as always, be answered. The conclusion is drawing slightly nearer than it was last time!