Failquake

The Great Kent Quake of 07!

Brought to by Kent Independent Publishings :

"England's most exciting news from England's least exciting county! TM"

Following the devasting earthquake that struck Dudley a few years back, bringing the city of Birmingham to its knees, Kent has suffered from the same. At 8:20 on Saturday 28th April massive tremors blasted into southern England, leaving a trail of destruction and forcing people from their homes.
This devastating earthquake ripped through the town, causing as much as £10 of damage across the entire region. We spoke to some of the locals who gave their opinions on the terrible damage done to their properties and livelihoods.
"This earthquake slightly damaged my wall, dislodging over six bricks!" a local idiot told us.


"I don't now how I will get over it," said the crying fool. "That wall meant everything to me. I guess I'll just have to try and get through it one day at a time. But it'll be hard."

Another local described the results of the quake as "devastation on a previously unknown scale".
He showed us a picture he had taken to demonstrate his point.


As you can see, our county is going to take some time to recover from this catastrophe.

We asked an expert exactly what a major quake like this would mean for a region.
"A severe quake can take many years to recover from, with major rebuilding work needed, hinderd by the crippling of the local and potentially regional infrastructure," explained Professor Angus Wellington. "The cost of repairs can leave the area economically disadvantaged for many years more, and it could be upto a decade, possibly even more, before we see the affected area back to how it was before."
The prospects for Kent certainly appear bleak, and it with electricity supplies still down the county could find itself back in the dark ages for the time being.

Kent this weekend?

The epicentre of the quake was several miles offshore in the English Channel, raising the possibility of a tsunami that could cause damage on such a grand scale that today's disaster would seem like a mere vibration in comparison. Since no wave has yet appeared, we can only presume that we have been spared this even more deadly threat through mere chance.
However, perhaps of equal concern is the proximity of this earth shattering event to London. At less than 100 miles from the capital it is distinctly possible that London could soon be hit by a similarly large quake, which has the potential to become the most devastating quake of all time, potentially even harming the royal family.

So there you have it. Once again the incredible county of Kent is right at the forefront of British news, and that of the globe. During the World Wars we were the last line of defence against evil, and now it would appear we are to become the last line against an increasingly violent mother nature. For she is our new worst enemy.

SuckyMcGee

Okey dokey. I was going to do these in 3 separate entries, but I really don’t think there is enough to say to warrant that. Instead, I will compact these three rants about shitty games into one mega-rant, rather like the Power Rangers when they transform into one stupid middle-America ultra-robot Zord thing.

Project Gotham Racing 3

I hate racing games. The only enjoyable racing game I’ve ever played is Burnout, and that has a subtle advantage – you blow things up in Burnout. The entire point of the game is to destroy over cars in the coolest way possible, and the slow-motion wheeling deaths always look awesome.
So, what do you do in PGR3? You race. You race perhaps a hundred times on identical tracks against identical opponents, and if you lose, it says FAILED in massive bold letters across the screen. You can buy other exciting cars which are basically identical – though I’m sure anyone who watches Top Gear could tell them apart, but I honestly don’t care about the difference between a Honda or a Ferrari or something.
The graphics are fine but really don’t tax the 360, yet it somehow contrives to take twice as much time as Gears of War to load a fraction of the content. In addition, the controls aren’t inverted, thereby making it unplayable to all ordinary human beings until you change it in the menus.
Most importantly, the physics are staggeringly bad. If you crash into the side of the track like this…


…you spin insanely despite it only being the side of your car which taps the side and you end up trying to drive into the barrier. Another complaint: in any shooter or good game, you can come back when you’ve made a mistake. But if you crash once, you’re then basically out of the game.

4/10

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Lost Planet

Lost Planet is made by Capcom, who produced Resident Evil 4 and Dead Rising, both of which find a comfortable place in the 10 best games ever made. As such, I had high hopes for this ice-based game, even if the plot appeared disturbingly anime-like.
The graphics are entirely white. There is nothing but white in this game, and if you’re really, really lucky, you might find a dull grey building somewhere. The enemies are boring and repetitive – but in fairness, the one boss I found was quite cool. Unfortunately, EVERYTHING in this game knocks you over, and so I was on the floor for most of the time the boss flattened me.
Walking in Halo 2 is slow, but this is like making your way through solid molasses. You walk incredibly slowly, and jumping – which normally speeds you up – just sees you plunging knee-deep into yet another fucking snowdrift which’ll slow you down while generic Starship Troopers aliens stab you, depleting your thermal energy reserves. These are stupid little red balls of shit you have to shove your face into to recharge your power, which is pointless and like a poorly implemented version of a timed game. It keeps you moving, but you don’t want to move since you’ll just move to another bloody pile of white.
In addition to the slow movement, the controls are horribly clunky. It feels like you’re trekking up Mount Everest when you’re simply walking through the vast torrents of boring snow.
Also the radar makes no sense.

3/10

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Perfect Dark Zero

Perfect Dark on the N64 is probably the best game ever made for reasons I must’ve mentioned somewhere in another previous blog. So while I wanted to have high hopes for this sequel, since most of the good Rare team have since moved out and created Free Radical, I wasn't sure how good it would be.
This game makes me want to cause bodily harm to those who progammed it. This is an insult to the series. This is like creating a second Mona Lisa painting, and it's just a picture of an elephant's backside. I have neither the time nor patience to list every single way in which this game is shit, so here are a few reasons.
You walk slower than in Halo 2.
The weapons in Perfect Dark are staggeringly inventive. These are all generic.
Despite being on the 360, the graphics are awful. Everyone's skin looks like plastic.
It is a prequel, and therefore fails to continue the awesome conspiracy plot.
The weapon-changing system is horrible and hard to use.
The "take cover" function does nothing except switch your view to third person.
It is not enjoyable to play.

-9/10

This avoids getting -10/10 purely because it is fairly amusing to blast someone’s stupid Botox face a dozen times with the shotgun to watch them get up and yell “Joanna!” in a mildly annoyed voice.

I actually want to destroy every copy of this game that exists.


Yes, I know bowling balls are probably larger than the game case. It’s artistic license.

Phrases

Top 5 phrases I really, really hate.

Also, look at my Bebo thing.
Go! Go now!

#5 : "Yo Blair"

So it was fairly amusing to see B&B discussing their various gifts upon not realising the microphone was off. Discussing jumpers, nicknames, all kinds of charming things you don't really except mass-murderers and war criminals to discuss. But the phrase -

I hate rap. Most people should know this. I see no musical value in thousands of different people - all called "Shizz dawg" or "Dawg shizz" or "Yo Pimpa Ma Nizzle" or "I'm so dumb I failed nursery" or something - talking over a simplistic beat about how many hos they've pimped or some nonsense. I also, therefore, hate the words "Sup" and "Yo". Whenever doing anything online, if anyone greets me with either of those words I instantly kick them from whatever game I am in. I refuse to play with teenage idiots who have IQs lower than their age. And so the simple use of Yo in this phrase makes it all the more horrible.

#4 : “Web 2.0”

Unless I’ve missed something truly colossal, this is nothing more than some pointless buzzword which could mean any of several things. Idiots and clods alike use it to refer to some kind of new internet, a concept which seems essentially impossible. You cannot replace the internet at this stage and hope that people will move, like digital TV, you can merely upgrade the internet as you go along, a process which happens by itself without some nonsensical post-modern phrase attached to it. That said, post-modern itself is an equally nonsensical phrase. But the upgrading bit-by-bit is shown by the simple fact that no-one uses Netscape any more and the total lack of playing 56k dial-up games unless you live in South Korea and think the Protoss are greatly underrated.

Web 2.0 is probably user-generated content, which we’re already seeing with blogs, Youtube and that Bebo thing with the photos and the words I’m being pressured to join by everybody I know (i.e. Vicky). So stop saying Web 2.0, and read the rest of this entry instead.

#3 : “I’m Jack Thompson”

Now to tell a little story. Perhaps twelve hours after these Virginia shootings, Jack Thompson appeared on various networks and websites, spewing his usual cocktail of bullshit and horsecrap. He insisted that the gunman/gunwoman (unknown at that time) must've rehearsed their attack using video games.

This happened before we knew who had done it, but yet he was still utterly sure that games were to blame. Even if the shooter had turned out to be a frail, blind, 90-year old woman with no fingers who didn't even know what a video was - let alone a video game - he would still have blamed them. The man is a clod, and I was just glad to see him partially shot down by a couple of the television stations he apparently frequents.

#2 : "Bringing democracy and freedom"

Finally we come to that neo-con rhetoric used to somehow justify military adventurism. Not totally sure how much democracy there is in Iraq with hundreds of casualties daily in a civil war. Not sure how much freedom there is when stepping outside your door is likely to get you kidnapped by a death squad. But does that matter? The war got Bush elected for his first legal term on a jingoistic wave of American patriotism, got the oil sold off to Halliburton in time to give Cheney a good profit margin and it satisfied the vast hordes of racists who seem convinced the world is now better off without 700,000+ “towelheads”. So what’s the value of nearly three quarters of a million lives in a poor, non-predominantly-white part of the world? Obviously less than the retirement fund for a Secretary of Defence.

#1 : “Am I boverred?”

Shut up Catherine Tate! Shut the fuck up and die! Please! You’re not funny! No-one finds you funny! And if they do, they should be neutered! Because you’re not funny! Are you seeing a pattern here? Just like the pattern of anti-humour on your appalling show!

I actually thought her shitty, shitty show couldn’t possibly get any worse, but then her and Tony Blair appeared in the same scene. It was bad enough, seeing the two most unpleasant people in the country at once, but then he said it. He said the phrase. And the laughter track erupted as if someone had turned it up to 11 (“it’s like 10, but one higher”). Yet, bizarrely, it wasn’t funny. I didn’t even crack a smile. I didn’t even think about beginning to crack a smile, because there was no damned humour in it. ANYWHERE. AT ALL. EVER.

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On a brief, amusing note, we randomly investigated what houses we could now buy in the US since $1 = 0.0001p given the current exchange rate. Or something. Anyway, various states offered up all kinds of different options.

Two states provided us with these brilliant semi-mansions :


While another, un-named state, provided us with a shack in what looks like White Trash Central. Guess the state!

Windmill

A Brief Comment on why I like films based on Frank Miller's comics

On Thursday after school we went into town to see 300 at the new-fangled cinema complex thing dubbed "The Brewery" despite the fact that it appears to lack any alcohol whatsoever. We got in 10 minutes late, but since there were the normal pointless adverts and bloody nonsense before the film, that didn't really matter a whole lot.
I think the word to describe 300 is "awesome". It was just a lot of fun to watch, very entertaining, very violent - obviously - and just very cool. The style the film was shot in helped contribute to this; very sepia colours, and like the comics everything is stylised and larger-than-life. It isn't all violence, though obviously that's one of the main drawing points - there is a semi-factual plot and a good voice-over from time to time from the only su-
Whoops. That was nearly a spoiler.


One of the main complaints/comments - depending on which US State the reviewer is from - of 300 is that it is apparently very homoerotic. I disagree. With the exception of deformed old men and giant-fat-sawblades-for-arms-and-nipple-tassles-man, most of the film is stylised violence. Unless you have a particularly strange (and lethal) fetish, men getting brutally mauled by other men isn't going to turn you on all that much. And the only man-to-man touching that went on the film was someone being kicked off a cliff, stabbed in the face, or picked up and chucked onto the corpse wall.
The best death of the film was probably one of the Persian soldiers who, while leaping through the air, has his leg sliced off. Leg and man then part and go their seperate ways, trailing lazily through the air in slow-motion arcs. At the same time, the soldier realises that he's now closer to Heather Mills-McCartney the Peg-Leg Porn Star than a fearsome warrior of the Persian Empire.


And they are not without humour. Unless you're one of the fucked-up few who go on a real-life killing spree after watching a violent film or playing a violent game, there is amusement to be had in such surreal situations. In Sin City, when Jackie Boy has his hand chopped off while holding the gun, he picks his hand back up with his other hand and uses his teeth to try and free the gun. In 300, the Spartans are standing around on a field filled with corpses. Leonidas is casually eating an apple while his men walk round, lazily plunging spears into those still struggling. Another soldier announces that someone has come to talk to him, and around screams of the dying and the wet noises of spear-plunging, Leonidas replies "Well of course I'll talk to him. No reason we can't be civilised."
Next, the death count. It was suggested to me by one my very favourite people that 300 had 300 deaths in. However subtle this suggestion may be, I'm sure the deaths number in the thousands. And that is on-screen deaths - if we meant all deaths, I don't think LotR could be surpassed what with Helm's Deep and the massive armies of Orcs whatnot.

Sin City is also great, but I feel the blog entry is long enough already. Suffice to say, I do have it on DVD, it is very good, and Sin City 2 is just going to ruin things. Lastly, I know it has been a fortnight since the last blog entry, and as such a second will arrive on Thursday.

So what did everyone else think of 300 and/or Sin City?