Posts Tagged ‘review’
Behind the fallacy: 2012 in review
December 21st, 2009 | 
Author: 
As this chart not-so-clearly illustrates, the Sun will ascend into the tropic of Ubiquity around this time in 3 years. We will fly into the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, which will crush us down to less than the size of a satsuma. The whole process will take about two hours, twenty minutes.
Everyone loves a happy ending. Just yesterday, researchers unveiled that the end of makeshift cancer treatments is in sight. And on Friday 18 December 2009, Terry Wogan’s reign of breakfast radio terror came to an end as he was overthrown by employment law and common sense.
Oh, what’s that? Some people love peril and confusion to dominate the human psyche? One such person is Roland Emmerich?
Update: most cinema goers have a hard on for disaster.
Thejamtart saw 2012 ages ago, and although the plot, script, cast and premise left much to be desired she recommended it for a December cinema outing. Having seen a trailer for 2012, I was enthralled by the prospect of seeing (in modern cinema crikey-vision™ no less) the dome of the Sistine Chapel steamroll over a bunch of Catholics on Saint Peter’s square holding a doomed vigil, including a fictional Italian president. Reduced to the heretic subatomic particles of which they so readily and vehemently discredit the existence, I can’t help but guffaw at the irony like an inexcusable expenses-claiming Labour MP.
The best of… video game stories
Donkey Kong: jump barrel, jump barrel, jump monkey.
Last weekend, someone said to me – while, I might add, they were sitting in my living room, on my sofa – that video games had no story.
I’m a calm and collected kind of guy. I respect the fact that other people have opinions that are nearly as valid as my own. So it was only when this person went on to say the following that I was forced to beat them to death with their leg.
“Look at the typical video game story,” this person said, “There’s nothing to it. I mean… what’s the story in Donkey Kong? Jump barrel, jump barrel, jump monkey.”
Donkey Kong. Which was first released in 1981, back when Willy Gates was allegedly telling us 640k was plenty for everyone and when people in the UK were starting to wonder whether or not Thatcherism was a good idea. Donkey Kong: a groundbreaking game in many ways, not least for introducing Mario and the concept of characterisation to gaming. Donkey Kong: not a fantastic story. Not in 1981. They didn’t have room for a story.
It’s a bit like saying, “Sci-fi films have rubbish special effects. Look at Logan’s Run.” Jump barrel, jump barrel, jump monkey indeed.
Review: Tekken 6 is awesome, except where it isn’t
Tekken 6: great game that Namco wants you to hate
I’ve been playing Tekken since 1999. Since Tekken 3, basically.
I got very good at Tekken 3. At university, my friend and I got so good that all our other friends refused to play us. With the lack of external competition, we focussed on beating each other. We played with the fight timer off, and rounds got longer and longer and longer. When we figured out reversals… we had at least a couple of fights that lasted ten minutes or more, because neither of us could get in a good hit.
After that, Tekken Tag and Tekken 4 passed. I played them a bit, liked them. My friend didn’t so much, and it wasn’t until Tekken 5 turned up that we began regularly playing again.
Tekken 5 was a good game – a great game, even. Except for one aspect: Jinpachi. The final boss from hell. Mostly human, he had a mouth where his stomach should be that shot giant unblockable fireballs. Cheap, overpowered and painfully frustrating. I beat him once with each character to get all the endings, and then never faced him again. He wasn’t any fun.
You’d think Namco would learn. You’d think, after all the complaining about Jinpachi and about Seth from Street Fighter 4 (a Doctor Manhatten lookalike that makes Jinpachi look like the Star Wars kid), Namco would think: people don’t enjoy this.
Maybe they did think that. Maybe they want us to hate Tekken 6.
Where to go in London for a good cuppa
Starbucks: coffee of choice for Daily Mail readers and other dumbasses
Kate, aka thejamtart, had a craving the other day, a jonesing for something coffeeish and cold and ridiculously sweet. The result was a “grande mocha frappucino” from Starbucks. Ah, blended coffee flavoured ice drinks. Mmm. The cost? £3.20. That’s 8 dollars in NZ money*.
Whenever she goes into Starbucks, she’s so intimidated by their specially invented Starbucks language, that she instantly becomes That Annoying Girl who doesn’t know how or what to order.
“I’ll have a… a… shit, what is that, is that a coffee?” — thejamtart aka The Annoying Girl, staring at the menu board.
“Is what a coffee?” — not-so-patient counter girl
“The, uh… what size is a vint? or a grand?… and is that a hot or a cold one? Oh fuck it, can you just give me a medium coffee, one of the cold ones, please?” — thejamtart aka The Annoying Girl
“Iced espresso, smoothie, frappucino?” — not-so-patient counter girl
“o_O” — thejamtart aka The Annoying Girl
Picking a paper: a bluffer’s guide to the UK press
UK newspapers: toilet paper for the inky arsed
Journalism in the UK is regarded as being some of the most exciting in the world. We’d like to think this is because we have that famous British sense of irony, but mostly it’s because our papers really enjoy pissing people off.
As a foreigner coming into the country, picking a paper can be daunting. The paper you read can define not only your politics, but also your social status and even your level of intelligence. The British are notoriously snobbish about many things, and we love nothing more than to exhale sadly at someone’s choice of paper.
Never fear, though: as always, we’re here to help. Read on for the bluffer’s guide to the UK press. From the hallowed pages of the Financial Times to the dirty toilet paper of the Daily Star, you need never worry again that your colleagues will see the paper you’re reading and think, “My god, that people are as dumb as a bag of hammer.”
TV review: Dragons’ Den
Mindlessly surfing channels the other day, I came across an episode of Dragons’ Den. Madcap entrepreneurs, scared witless, quavered through their pitches for weird and often quite stupid inventions. They were then ruthlessly mocked by the ‘dragons’, who declined to invest in the proposed schemes, and the pitchers were sent packing.
Where do those crazy sods come from? And I’m not talking about the inventors. I’m talking about the dragons. Supposedly they are a panel of self-made millionaires – British business brains with dosh to spare. They sit there in every episode, imposing and self assured, alongside stacks of pounds, obviously enjoying themselves as they grill the sweating, jelly-legged pitchers.
Dumbasses for Dummies – a guide to virtual stupidity
Available now from all bad bookstores
The internet is a marvel. Since its incarnation as a tool to enable research to be shared between universities, it has grown so much. It is now an interactive platform capable of enabling myriad arseholes an outlet for their barely coherent and almost always misinformed outbursts under the guise of “Having your say”.
Anyone who has used the internet to share their opinion, ever, will be familiar with the kind of ignorant nonsense that some folk consider to be worthy of voicing. Go to a news site, or forum, anywhere, and scroll down to below the story. Read the first comment from “NRA_4EVA” – see?
When YouTube was first launched I fully expected it to turn into a catalog of near death experiences captured by dim-witted American college kids, yearning to imitate their Jackass heroes. For a while I was right. Then the corporations found out they could “leverage” sales out of “viral” marketing yada yada yada.
Tags: art, crime, dumbasses, exploitation, fake-tan, infomercial, link salad, morons, opinion, publishing, review, social media, spam, video, web 2.0 | 
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TV review: The Apprentice UK
Has anyone ever actually seen Sir Alan Sugar doing any work? I mean, ever?
I ask this because I’m currently hooked on the latest series of The Apprentice UK, which has just been beautifully and ruthlessly mocked by Cassetteboy. Every week, Sir Alan’s business acumen is brought forward for our appraisal, but I’ve got an inkling that the guy might not be as rich as we’re led to believe.
Look at him. Just… look at him. He looks like Harry the Hobo’s worse-off brother. You get the impression that the only reason he was knighted was that the Queen slipped at his execution. He limps to the board room desk in his tattered tramp trousers and proceeds to dribble over the table until he’s reminded by Tweedledee and Tweedledum about what he’s meant to be doing. And even then he usually just asks everyone what they’ve been up to. How can he not know? We’ve just had half an hour of TV that shows us in clear detail what the band of idiots have screwed up this week.
