The Apocalypse: Our Obsession

So I've recently been getting back into binge watching Netflix after abstaining for quite a long time and found that I could watch Doomsday Preppers (for anyone who doesn't know Doomsday Preppers is a show about people who spend their lives preparing for the 'inevitable' apocalypse) which I promptly did and good times were had by all.

While I was watching this (also writing a short story because yay! apocalypse) I checked my e-mail and received an invitation to sign a petition surrounding a recent court ruling to do with patenting genes.

I was suitably outraged with this as most people should be and it reminded me why I don't like reading news stories about corporate entities anymore. It always makes me feel like these people can't be human, CEO's of big companies seem to feel like they're not accountable to rest of us despite the fact that they are.

Either way this combination of events got my thinking and I came to the conclusion that our modern obssesion with Doomsday and the increase in the number of stories of companies and governments putting money before people are somehow linked.

My theory reads thus:

               As we see more and more stories of this nature our general impression of the world and it's people has a tendency to fall. As this happens we realize, weather consciously or subconsciously, that this sort of behavior cannot continue indefinitely. The influx of large-scale world wide protests and rioting in recent years shows that the general anger of our society directed towards authority increases year on year. Finally as we notice this rising steadily our obsession with media to do with apocalypses also increases as a subconscious attempt to absorb as much information that may be useful in such an event.

...aaaaand breath. Okay so I'm done now, just a random thought I had while sitting awake at 4am because of insomnia being a thing that happens... it has nothing to do with netflix I swear. 

The Devil May Cry but Not as Much as Devil May Cry Fans

I'm a little bit late on this one I feel, but there's something that has been bothering me recently. (Yes folks this is another video game post so if you're not a fan you might want to click away now) 

Last year a reboot to the much loved Devil May Cry franchise was released and it led to an interesting reaction from a lot of people. Most people tended to agree that the gameplay was at least pretty decent and in most places it was thought of as great, but did a lot of these same people like the game? No. Why? Because they changed the main character...okay.

The original protagonist of Devil May Cry was Dante, a half demon, half human devil hunter who was pretty flippant with most of his enemies. Basically Dante was an undeniable bad-ass who has a penchant for showing off, being arrogant and eating junk food (I hasten to point out for the hardened fans that yes Dante was a bit more serious in Devil May Cry 2, that's not really that important to what I'm talking about here because it's the bad ass who you all love so much and as far as I know Devil May Cry 2 was thought of as the worst of the original three games) and as such it's pretty easy to see why the character would be loved in video game circles.

This that pretty basic analysis of the original Dante (and I mean REEEEEALLY basic) I feel I've done enough preamble to begin talking about the new Dante. Firstly the main problem seem to have with new Dante (just gonna call him Dante from here on out. Also when I say main problem this is the one I heard the most and is by no means the only argument people have leveled at the character) is his hair. His old mop was pure white in keeping with his direct family, but now he sports a somewhat shorter hair cut with black hair, leading to a lot of fans calling him (brace yourself for this one)...emo.

For anyone who might have been in a coma for the past decade or so the whole 'emo' thing was style of clothing, music and life outlook that was characterized by darkness and self-deprecation. A decent amount of teenagers went through an 'emo' phase (myself included) usually through high-school where they grew their hair long, dyed it black and started straightening it.

The new Dante does have straight black hair, this is true, but why does this make him emo? He spends most of his time cracking wise and being overconfident, something which is completely at odds with what is classically thought of as 'emo', and I don't think that having any particular haircut should throw up red flags about someones character.

Okay so rant about the hair hate is over, now to actually examine everything else that actually makes the character a character. Firstly the other main argument against him as that he lost his bad ass edge in the latest installment, partially due to the new visual design of his icon red coat over a grotty looking wife beater.

Firstly I want to examine the fact that his personality doesn't seem that different for the most part. As with old Dante he treats many of his enemies very flippantly cracking wise and acting like they're nothing to him. So far it sounds pretty standard and for a while I couldn't really understand the complaint, he was powerful, he was arrogant and he sounded like he didn't give a shit, but then it occurred to me that the problem was that last part.

It harks back to the whole 'emo' point. As much as old Dante was a bad ass who treated his enemies like crap he actually cared about stuff, he is often sited as taking demon-hunting jobs for people without accepting payment because he knows the client is poor (occasionally leading to him being taken advantage of by people when they send him bills for damages he caused while on his free missions) meaning it's clear to tell that he cares about people and the world around him.

Modern Dante however? Well he acts like he doesn't give a crap about himself or the world around him, this is easily seen in the opening by the fact that he clearly drinks heavily, enjoys mindless/meaningless sex and doesn't seem to care about his appearance or surroundings. So this sounds a lot like an emo character, someone who cares little for themselves or the world around them and dresses in dark colors (you know, to match their SOOOOOUL)

So why do I still disagree with the whole 'emo' thing? Surely what I just said totally backs up the point that he's an emo character right? Well it might just do that, if it persisted beyond the first few missions. Examining Dante's life and what we know about it from the story it's easy to see why he wouldn't care for much in his life. He has never known his parents, he has lived alone and entirely for himself for most of his life because he has never had a family and this would almost certainly lead someone into a self-destructive spiral of alcohol, drugs and meaningless sex.

However, when Dante is presented with the chance to learn about his past and his family he jumps at the chance (Like seriously for someone who didn't care about much as soon as it was claimed Virgil was his brother he went along waaaay too easily) and from that point on he actually starts to have emotional depth and cares about the people he meets along the way. Yes it's true that the female character is almost certainly there just to be a token love interest but it's not her that I'm looking at here, the fact is that token or not she is the person that Dante starts to care about and wants to protect.

From that point on in the game he still acts arrogant, he still makes wise ass remarks to his enemies and still manages to kick a whole heaping helping of ass, but it is shown that now he has started on the path he is willing to go out of his way to help people. Even if the character tries to pretend he doesn't care or that he's only helping because there's something in it for him, by the end of the story (something I have no plan to ruin for you) it is clear that he does have morals, and does want to help and protect people.

As I've said many times before this is all my own opinion and there are probably a lot of people out there who will disagree with me about the reboot and the characters created therein but for the most point I think I've conveyed the reasons that I find the new character of Dante just as good as the old one and why I feel that the older fans are attempting to cling a little too hard to an older version of Dante who wouldn't have fit into the game that Ninja Theory where trying to make.


Post Post Rambling Follows:

I feel like I should really talk about a few things that I didn't really mention previously because I know that not all people who will be interested in the rest of the post will want to hear this.

I am mainly talking about the mop/wig joke. 

During the first level of DmC a mop head blows towards Dante and it lands on his head as he looks into a mirror that happens to be in front of him. With a cocky grin he quips "not in a million year" and promptly turns towards his giant enemy to shoot him in the face a little. 

A lot of people where annoyed by this joke, perhaps because they felt like the new developers were poking fun or taking the piss out of the old Dante and the old Devil May Cry series as a whole. Personally I don't think this is true, if anything it's a sly nod to the fact that Ninja Theory realized some people were going to hate the new design and where trying to show that they have a sense of humor about it. Also come on the jokes funny, seriously.

One more thing: (If you read that in the voice of Jackie Chan's Uncle from the animated series we are best friends now. Just saying) 

Okay so I need to mention that I feel bad for Ninja Theory. Their first major game was 'Enslaved: Odyssey to the West' which I personally would rate in my top 10 life experiences. Not my top 10 video games, but it was genuinely a game that when I was done with it I sat there and thought about it for at least half an hour. For anyone who doesn't play video games that doesn't happen very often and I feel like that is a major shame. 

Not only did that game bomb so they had to take reboot work, but now they've made a genuinely great gameplay based video game they've had huge backlash from butthurt Dante fans who hate the new look. -_- Seriously hoping that they catch a break soon. 

Why the New Doctor Who was Awesome if You're an Old Doctor Who Fan

(INB4 grammar complaints: I know that I didn't capitalize the name of the doctor despite the fact that since it's his name technically it's a proper noun and should be capitalized. Well this is my blog and I can do what I want so ner-ner-na-ner-ner) 


So for anyone who isn't a Doctor Who fan you may not know that the newest series of the show started recently...okay scratch that even if you don't give two craps about Doctor Who you probably know that it started recently because both the media and the internet have a tendency to go on about it somewhat.

Either way the new series has now begun and the general consensus of the new doctor is practically non-existent. Half of the fans love him and half of the fans hate him, but examining it from my personal, somewhat interesting point of view has lead me to the conclusion that the new doctor at least is absolutely amazing. 

Firstly I think I should explain why my own perspective on the series is a little odd. Partially it is due to the fact that my introduction to the doctor who series began not in 2005 with the release of the rebooted franchise but back when I was a young kid during conversations with my mother. Although she's not what you would call an avid fan of the old series she has seen every single episode of the Tom Baker series and a lot of the Sylvester McCoy series, and as such would often talk about it to me when I caught the name of the show in TV times while it was being re-run.

The conversation we had led me to seek out and watch a few episodes of the original series, finding nothing of particular interest to my then sugar fueled brain I promptly lost interest and forgot all about it. Fast forward to 2005 and the release of the new series being advertised in a gaming magazine led me to begin watching the show and attempting to watch through some of the older episodes.

With my newly matured (or at least less hyper) brain I really got into the series and once Eccleson was finished with his series I promptly sank a ridiculous amount of time into watching the original series. (for anyone interested I didn't watch tenant because at the time I was seeing how amazing some of the old doctors where and really if you've seen them you can understand why Tenant could not really compare) 

With this new found interest in the series I managed to watch a lot of the old episode and read a lot of the books that had been released since the series cancellation, dipping in and out of the newer series when I caught it on TV. Eventually I decided to just bite the bullet and watch the new series as well, as this was just as Matt Smith was taking over the role I had a lot of back tracking to do in regard to the newer series, but in the end I was all caught up and could really get stuck into the series again.

So there is my perspective on Doctor Who explained, albeit in a bit of an obtuse manor, but either way it done now so I'm hoping that it will go someway to explain why I feel the way I do about the new doctor.

So to begin my explanation I will examine one of the early scenes in the episode. Somewhere near the start the character Vastra is talking to Clara and has some interesting things to say about the doctor and his regenerations. A few key things that popped up during the conversation now follow:

"You thought he was young?"

"He looked like your dashing young gentleman friend, your lover even"

"You might as well flirt with a mountain range"

"He looked young, who do you think that was for?"

"me?"

"Everyone. I wore a veil as he wore a face, for the same reason"

"What reason?"

"For the oldest reason there is. To be accepted" 

  

 (For anyone who cannot tell green is Vastra and red is Clara)

(Before this goes any further I find it necessary to defend the following with the qualifier that it is all of course my own opinion and I am not trying to say that the messages I got from the conversation are the messages intended to be imparted, it is simply how I interpreted what I saw)

So, why exactly have I brought up this conversation ? Well firstly because it become infinity more interesting if you imagine that they are talking about the show instead of the person, and if you imagine that Vastra is addressing the new wave of fans instead of Clara. 

The first sentence could easily refer to the fact that most new fans either didn't know about the older series or didn't care, which is practically criminal. I'm not going to pretend that if you haven't seen the old series you shouldn't watch the new series, the new series was made specifically for new fans and will always be a separate entity. What I am saying is that to ignore the fact that there was 30 years of back story and character is only going to do a disservice to a character you're supposed to be a huge fan of. 

The next sentence primarily seems to refer to the modern trend for younger and more physically attractive doctors. In the old series the doctors character was almost always played by older men who could give off the air of someone who was very old and very wise, in the newer series they just about manage to sound like a high school nerd hoped up on sugar. Again I am not saying that the newer method for casting doctors is at all wrong and it might be perfect for the new load of fans that are interested in the show these days, just saying that it is hugely different to the way the doctor always used to be. 

The third sentence can pretty much be seen as pointing the finger at the almost rock star style adoration and sexual attraction that a lot of fans have towards the newer doctors. For the most parts his companions seem to have an attraction to the doctor, much like his fans, something that was never really a part of the older series. The doctors character was never supposed to be eye candy he was supposed to be your grandad, the wise old man who kept you safe and always seems to be saving the day. The idea of any of his companions being an object of attraction for the doctor was practically unthinkable, after all he was old enough to be their grandfather's, grandfather's grandfather. 

This last section is perhaps the most telling, this is to be directed at both the newer fans and at the returners who stuck with the show from the old series. Firstly it points out that the younger doctor was supposed to be for the younger fans, the newer fans responded positively to a younger, physically attractive doctor, so the show makers gave them what they want. 

The conversation also explains why this was done. The last sentence I copied above is aimed at the older fans, it is an attempt to explain to them that has they decided to not change the doctor, both the character and the physicality of him, then the series might not even be here for you to enjoy at all. Had they stuck rigidly to the old format then the show would possibly have dipped heavily in popularity and would have almost certainly been taken off the air again. I mean hell if that had happened it's possible they would have given up on trying to resurrect the show at all and we wouldn't have gotten any of the newer doctor who stuff we now have. 

So what does all of that mean overall? Well from the way the first episode seems to have been put together it seems to me that the shows creators are attempting to gently reintroduce elements of the older Doctor Who to the new series so that the older fans will have something of the old doctor back but the newer fans won't be turned off by an overload of heavy changes. 

A lot of people do not like the writing style of Steven Moffat, and honestly in places I can understand why, but whatever you think of how he writes the character it is apparent that he is at least trying to recapture the spirit that made the doctor such a hit in the first place. 

As for the new series I cannot say that is definitely going to be amazing, I mean even this episode had moments that seemed pulled right out of Moffat's darkest regions, but what I can say is that if they keep the new doctor the way he is I wouldn't be surprised to see a resurgence of older whovians returning to the series, and I don't see how that could be a bad thing.

Rugrats Feminist?

Okay so recently I was poking around buzzfeed as one is prone to doing when one is bored (aint I posh?) and noticed a post called '14 Forgotten Feminist Cartoons from the 90s' and saw that the thumbnail for the post was a picture of Charlotte Pickles from Rugrats.

Intrigued by this I clicked on it and read through the list, most of which was pretty agreeable, but in the number 1 spot was the aforementioned Charlotte Pickles. This puzzled me a little because she is not exactly a great character from the show, and if we're honest she is possibly the worst one of the bunch to have chosen for the number 1 spot on that list.

I can see why someone might choose her if I'm honest, she has a high profile job at a powerful company and is the main breadwinner for her family ( I know that her husband has a job as well but it's clear that she's the one who makes the most money if you watch the show) so at first glance she seems like a great pick; however if you closely examine what she's like it seems a little less tenable to keep her there.

Firstly because she totally ignored her child, seriously most of the time she's too busy on her phone to even listen to what her little girl is saying. Now I'm not saying that she should have a shitty job or no job at all so she can stay home and look after her child, that sort of attitude hasn't made sense since the 1940s and even then it was bloody stupid, but when she's not at the office she should at least be willing to make some time for her child.

I know that the parents in the rugrats weren't amazing, I mean the amount of time they lose their children in the show is a good enough indicator of that, but for the most part the parents in the show take a genuine interest in their children. Charlotte pickles would rather have her head in the business world than spend any amount of time with her daughter (In her defence Angelica's a little B*tch).

In my opinion Charlotte Pickles should not have been that number 1 spot, if anything it should have been Betty Deville, she ignored gender stereotypes by being the masculine half in her relationship, she doesn't take crap from anyone regardless of gender or station and manages to make time for her children without being a slave too them.

I know that it's never made clear in the show if she has a job or not (at least as far as I know) but having or not having a job doesn't make someone a good feminist character, her outspoken nature and unwillingness to let people walk all over her because she's a women is what makes her a decent feminist character. She defies stereotypes without letting her defiance of those stereotypes turn her into a token 'anti-stereotype' character

I know that Charlotte had her moments as both a feminist and a parent but for the most part she was obnoxious annoying and a downright horrible person, whereas Betty was strong, a great role model and managed to defy the common perception without letting that denial define here. If anyone from that series a good role model for young girls it was Betty.

(UPDATE: I just found out from the rugrats wiki that Betty was indeed the breadwinner for her family as her husband Howard stayed at home and looked after the house and kids, I was pretty confident of this already but it's nice to have it verified) 

The Modern Problem with Names

So there's a subject that I've been thinking about for a few years that I thought might interest a few people so I thought I'd post my mental ramblings here for the world (or more accurately the 50 or so people who read my blog) to see.

So the issue I've been thinking on is names, more specifically second names or surnames. Your second name shows the lineage of your family, or at least it does if you're a man, if you're a women you're 'supposed' to give up your maiden name when you get married. Apart from being grossly unfair on the 50% or so of the population born with female genitalia this also leaves the issue that family lines with even a single generation of all female children will instantly be broken.

Of course in our modern age not many women still elect to take their husband's name, a few do obviously but it's a lot more commonplace to find a husband and wife with different second names. While this solution is perfect for the husband and wife in a relationship it does somewhat make the second name of the children somewhat more difficult to deal with.

Most families tend to remedy this by double barrelling their child's name e.g. 'Wallace-Smith' or 'Williams-Burrow' which might seem like a fine solution. However the unforeseen problem here is that in a few generations of double barrelling our children's names will take around 4 days to say and will consist of about 50 second names as opposed to the single name that we are used to.

So is there a workable solution? where both sides of the marital divide are represented ? Where we don't end up having to omit 90% of our friend's name for fear of being trapped in a name loop? Well there is a solution that I've thought of that might not make people happy, but is at least a workable solution to he double barrelled problem.

My idea was to take the first half of one name and the second half of the other to form a new name based on the old one. Examples of this would be 'Wallith' (Wallace + Smith) or 'Willrow' (Williams-Burrow) and as you can see it is usually possible to fit the names together without too much difficulty.

Of course some may complain that this doesn't preserve lineage because the names change with every generation of the family, but I always feel like it's more important to preserve the feeling of the current family (i.e. the mother father and children) then it is to preserve the memory of a family history. If you want to keep your bloodline in memory forever then you can use the internet, or try killing a lot of people they'll probably remember your family name then.

Why I hate Dead Space 3

Anyone who knows me will be able to tell you that I am a tad partial to the horror genre no matter which medium it comes in. I have enjoyed horror books for a long time particularly Poe and Lovecraft, and have seen more than my fair share of horror films particularly the hammer horror films.

The third medium I tend to think of when thinking of horror happens to be video games (I am not discounting audio based horror either to be honest. The midwich cuckoos with Bill Nighy is an amazing radio play and terreffied me as a child) I have in my time played through most of what is usually considered 'the classics' of the form, things like the first two silent hill games and the resident evil games, and I have also tried more contemporary survival horror in it's many flavours (for anyone who didn't think pixels could be scary you need to play lone survivor) 

Having said all of this I have also played the three games in the Dead Space series and I thoroughly enjoyed most of them. To elaborate what I mean is that I own and have played extensivly the first two games in the series, and while I am the first to admit that they weren't ever really scary they did have the atmosphere of horror games for the most part and a large part of why I enjoy horror is the atmosphere that surrounds it.

You may have noticed that I left out the most recent game in the trilogy from my list of dead space games that I have played and enjoyed. This is because I recently got the chance to play Dead Space 3 for free (For anyone who doesn't already know this Playstation Plus is awesome) and found myself thoroughly hating almost every single minute of it.

So sit back and strap in as I use this blog to once more vent my frustrated rage on a game I hate...or explain why I think the games bad whichever sounds better.


1. Co-Op features

For anyone who is not familiar with Dead Space it's really been a single player experience up until now. There may have been some multi-player features involved (I actually don't know I own both the first two on XBOX360 and never pay for gold because my desire for online play is so infrequent that it doesn't warrant a £5 a month subscription) but the main campaigns were always reserved for a single player experience only. This is primarily because a feeling of isolation can create a lot of the horror that one usually feels. The feeling like you are totally alone being overwhelmed by a titanic amount of gutteral horrors is a large part of the enjoyable atmosphere that surrounded dead space in particular.

This has totally been ruined in the third game by having the inclusion of Co-Op features. Apparently the developers felt that the games where going to get stale and tired if they didn't do something to change up the style of the gameplay, so here comes the Co-Op (just so everyone knows you cannot do this crap split-screen, it's on-line only folks) 

Other than the destruction of the atmosphere, which admittedly is only  a problem if you play the co op campaign instead of the solo one, is the changes to the gameplay that effect single player even if you don't want them to. The most noticable is the inclusion of elements and missions that you cannot use if you are on your own, this just serves to make you feel like you're missing out on something when you play the game in single player.

They also waaaaaaay scaled back the power of all your weapons so that it'd be more necessary for you to have two players. In dead space the enemies of the series are already dead and can only be put down permanently by removing most of there limbs, usually you are given engineering tools (your character is an engineer) which are designed for cutting through things meaning that you can slice and dice all you like. In DS3 your weapons don't even make the bad guys flinch half the time.

The lack of power beind the weapons coupled with upgrades that are specifically only useful if you're in Co-Op even if you happen to be playing in single player just make it seem like EA and Visceral the people behind the game didn't give a crap. They slapped together a single player campaign without changing anything and it just makes the game feel like it wasn't designed to be played alone at all.

speaking of guns...

2. Micro-Transactions

If anyone is unaware of the term micro-transactions it basically means that instead of paying full price for something you have the option of buying in really small amounts for lower prices more often, that way the developers get a more steady income stream and those who don't want to pay for the micro-transaction products don't have to. These are usually in free to play games like Farmville or The Tribez so that the devs can support themselves without having to charge for the main game itself.

So why the hell does a full price game need these?

That's right despite being a game that you will have to pay full price for (unless you're me and you've got Playstation Plus) there are still micro-transactions in the game. These come in the form of 'resource packs' which you can use to help build parts to upgrade your weapons or armour, and if you don't pay for them they're usually found lying around on the ground as you play the game. So why would anyone actually pay for the resources?

Well if you remember in single player your guns have been so scaled down in power that if you don't pay for the micro-transactions you're probably going to have a hard time getting through the entire game. I mean I suppose it's arguable that I only think that because I am terrible at the game but I would ask you to remember a few things:

   . I am playing on the easiest difficulty
   . I have been playing games for nearly two decades now

Bearing this in mind shouldn't I be having an easy time of it on this difficulty setting? I mean I could be wrong and the micro-transactions having nothing to do with the scaling down of the weapons but it just smacks a little too much of bullcrap to me.

3. Cliche around every corner 

I know I shouldn't really expect too much from a video game storyline that isn't produced by Bioware but the story of the first two games was at least passable. In the first you're sent to a space ship that's gone quiet to investigate and to see if it can be fixed. I don't remember much about the second games story other than it involved the main character havign his brain probed so that the government can make copies of the evil thing that made people turn into zombie (thanks obamacare. jk) 

In the third game the 'evil' religion of Unitology (careful game devs!) has decided that they want everyone to be evil mindless undead zombies so they try to kill the protagonist because he has a history of destroying the markers. Apart from that not making much sense (1 guy has a history of destroying something meaning he is the ONLY GUY WHO CAN! so much sense) it just comes across as something a blockbuster hollywood film should be doing and not a horror film at that. The game coems across the same as any Sci-Fi action film and even has the cliched characters to match.

The guy who has stolen main characters girlfriend, who is obviously going to be a jerk so that the protagonist can get back together with his girlfriend

The big breasted Ex-Girlfriend of the main character who exists for cheap sex appeal, so she can get back together with the main man and so she can die at some point (Seriously she went from having an almost beleivable human being character design in DS2 to being pointless eye candy with clevage a mile long. For shame Dead Space 3, for shame) 

The nerdy scientist who is just likeable enough that when she dies you feel sort of bad for her

The gruff old man who's seen his fair share of adventure/space travel/engineering etc

The 'oorah' commando block who is clearly there just to be teamed up with the protagonist so they can have a disagreement at the beginning and become friends at the end. (this is made worse by the fact that if you play single player he's not there throughout the game so they've had zero time to have this change in relationship) 

Evil english dude...I shouldn't even have to mention why that's cliched

So there you have, the three main reasons that I am angry at dead space 3. Of course there are many, many MAAAAANY more reasons why this game is terrible and if I were to try and bring them all up on one blog post it would probably be about 5000 pages long and would cause several different types of coma (yes there are types) so I have restrained myself for now in reference to the slagging off of dead space 3.

See you next time I have sheathing to complain about.

Looking for info on Yogventures? So is everyone else

UPDATE: The project is now officially dead. See here


Ahh Yogscast, a UK based gaming channel that I have had an interesting relationship with over the past few years. I first discovered them when they hit the front page with one of their minecraft videos called Planetoids, and admittedly I thought that I thought Simon was a stoner which is sort of why I started watching (for the most part it was because he was funny, not just because I think he was high when he recorded that episode) 

For a few years after I discovered their videos I watched the yogscast religiously and followed everything they did from their SOI minecraft series to the Yogpod and beyond. However the happy times where not to last, and for some reason after the completion of the Shadow of Israpheal (or rather after it got stalled) I started to loose a lot of interest in the channel only occasionally returning to watch through their songs or game series.

Luckily thanks to most of my friends being fans of the Yogscast I still manage to keep up to date on their big developments and it's not like I don't occasionally get an itch to watch some of their videos, so I have kept abreast of a lot of the yogscast related news (hence my blog post about the SOI animation).

This leads me onto yogventures. Yogventures was basically a game that the yogscast announced a couple of years ago that was based around their antics, primarily their antics in minecraft, and had a lot of interesting looking mechanics. How about world building in a more graphically appealing world? it had it, dwarves, spacemen and explosives? It has it, your favorite pair of English twits (unless you like a bit of Fry and Laurie, that's the shit) the game has it.

The only problem? Well as it turns out there hasn't really been much information available about the game for a couple of months. I mean it's not surprising that it's still not been released yet, games take a long arse time to finish, but there was news last year that the game would go early access on steam soon so that people could finally try it, it's over 6 months later and it still hasn't happened.

This would not itself be an issue, hell for months at a time there can be no information about video games, I mean maybe they've been working on the same boring crap for four months and haven't had anything to tell us? The reason that it's worrying in this case is that the Dev has taken down all of the websites relating to the game, stopped posting in the forums for the game and seems to have deleted his own twitter account as well.

It does almost look like the Dev has done a runner on this game, loads of people keep commenting on the steam page asking for information on the game and haven't got any replies which has caused no small degree of concern, especially amongst people who payed to back the game on kickstarter.

If I'm honest it's more than likely that the Dev has simply removed his twitter and other sites so he doesn't have to keep getting asked inane questions while he's working on the game, having said that this could easily turn out to be something much, much worse, so let's hope we manage to gain some info soon.

 

Why you should totally play Puppeteer

So I play a lot of video games, and we are seriously talking a lot here, in fact I'd say that it's my number one pass time other than reading and writing. Being someone who plays a lot of video games I do occasionally find one that I want to talk about, so is the case with 'Puppeteer' a platformer game released by Japan Studio (for anyone who's wondering they helped out on ICO and they produced Ape Escape and Tokyo Jungle, not to mention some of the more quirky games for the playstation store. It's actually quite surprising if you look into how much they've made) 

So why is the game worth talking about? Well firstly if you're like me and grew up on a steady diet of Playstation 90s 3D platformers this is going to be very familiar to you. In recent years players of the 3D platformer genre haven't had much to write home about, most platformers these days have to have some sort of gimmick to become popular and most of them rely on action on a 3d plain (In the case of Littlebig Planet several 2D plains) and while a lot of action involved in the game is on a 2D plane it really does feel like you're playing an old 'Crash Bandicoot' game.

Gameplay wise the platforming feels nice and fluid, which is to be expected of any platformer worth its salt, but admittedly the combat leaves something to be desired. If combat is a deal breaker you might find yourself bored as it's all pretty much one button combat, however the gameplay mainly shines in the jumping puzzles. A lot of the platforming requires you to go shooting across the stage, slashing through long sown strips, carving through pieces of paper or cloth to pull yourself through the air and rapidly chopping tough obstacles to remove them from your path.... Oh, did I not mention that your main weapon is a giant pair of magical scissors?

So yeah I guess this is a good time to mention where the game really shines, the style. The entire game is presented like a theater show or more accurately a puppet show, with set changes and fourth wall breaking conversions occurring throughout the game. This stylization lends the game a sense of cohesion, making everything seem like it belongs to world that the game has created and it really works. There are enemies made up of cloth and bits of metal, NPC dummies made from cardboard and when you are moving through the levels you can see cogs moving the set through broken stage dressing.

The game oozes the style for the entire time you're playing it and does really well especially with some of the boss characters and NPC's (although on that second point it may be accused of borrowing a little heavily from Littlebig Planet once again) but it's the design of the main character, Kutaro, that is the strong point of style. At the beginning of the game you lose your head (literally) and get turned into a puppet, meaning that you have to find spare heads as you play through the game. Each head you can pickup changes Kutaro's appearance, and all of the heads that you can find have 'magical' powers, in actuality this is mainly just a short animation that you perform with a tap of the D-Pad.

You might think that this is a little lame, I mean if you're going to be questing to find different heads you'll want them to do something right? Well while the powers you gain from different heads have little power in a day to day circumstance, each head can be used in the right circumstances to produce a reaction from different elements in each of the levels. Sometimes this can be something like gaining a few more collectible star shards and sometimes it can be unlocking a bonus stage (there's one in each level) but at any rate it does make you want to collect all the heads to see what they all do.

You may have noticed, dear reader, that I've neglected to mention much of the story of the game. This is really because the game feels like a story telling experience and I feel like sharing too much of it with you would ruin some of the fun of it. Part of the story's appeal is it's humor, as you play through the game you are accompanied by several different support characters and a narrator and the jokes that they've all been given really do tend to hit home, with a few very minor exceptions, and it really endears the characters to you. (Although there are a couple of characters that might attract some ire) 

One last thing I feel it necessary to mention is that if you are trying to turn your kid into a true blooded gamer then you really have no further to look. Puppeteer is a game that stays fun for adults to watch/play without being inappropriate for young kids to play, it's really fun and is sure to be the sort of thing that your kids will have nostalgic memories about playing when they grow up. So if you've got kids or hell even if you haven't I definitely recommend the title, for it's style and humor alone.

The 'World War Z' movie wan't good, even if you liked it.

Okay so for anyone who isn't an avid reader/a huge zombie fan World War Z is a book that was written by Max Brooks (Son of famous comedian Mel Brooks just FYI) that concerns the world being overrun with zombies (ya don't say)

You might be saying to yourself 'so what? zombie apocalypse stories are a dime a dozen' well the difference here is how it was presented to the reader. Most zombie stories are captured in a more visual medium, partially because a zombie apocalypse isn't usually very interesting to just read about and partially because most of the people involved with zombie based media tend to work in the visual areas of the entertainment spectrum.

Most literature surrounding zombies usually goes one of a few ways, the comedy route a'la 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' or a record style a'la '2012: A record of the year of infection' but with World War Z we are presented with a full record of the events surrounding the build up to the zombie world war, the fighting for survival that occurred in it's darkest days and the eventual push back towards a zombie free(-ish) world.

The book presents all of the information from the point of view of an investigative reporter going around the world to get stories about the apocalypse from the people who where in the center of it. This is firstly unusual because you'd imagine the knowledge that the world survived (As made apparent by the fact that the reporter writing the book is still alive) would remove a lot of the tension in a zombie apocalypse story but it's still surprisingly tense in a lot of places.

As the book goes on the point of view bounces between a few different interviewees in different places throughout the world as they recount their particular experiences in each section of the war and ends with some quite jarring revelations in the last chapter (which I won't ruin for you here) 

So now that I've explained to you who do not know why the book was such an amazing work of literature, despite the stigma usually surrounding zombie based stories, I can really dig into telling you why the movie is god awful.

Okay so before I go on I should probably bring something up:

SPOILER WARNING!!! IF YOU KEEP READING AND HAVE NOT SEEN WORLD WAR Z YET YOU WILL HAVE SOME PARTS OF THE STORY RUINED FOR YOU. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!SPOILER WARNING

Ah, there we are, don't you just feel better with that out of the way?

So the movie in question is an adaptation (in the loosest sense of the word) of the Max Brooks novel in question starring Brad Pitt in the role of... erm, well he works for the U.N I think, or at least he used to and then he does again or... you know what it's just Brad Pitt, let's call him that.

So the film opens with Brad and his saccharin sweet family having a wonderful breakfast of pancakes together while they dump exposition about Pitt's old job on the audience. They then drive off for some sort of weekend away together and this is when all hell breaks loose.

As they cross the city they live in the inevitable hoard of zombies (preceded by an equally inevitable hoard of panicked civilians) appears to wreck their family picnic with a lot of running, snarling and for some odd reason running flying headbutts...seriously.

So other than the obvious absurdity of the whole flying headbutt thing what is actually wrong with this? I mean lots of films have taken the sort of speedier approach to zombies and although I may not look it I am not a 'shufflers only' sort of zombie purist. The reason that the running zombie is a problem at least in the context of the film is the fact that Max Brooks took an inordinate amount of time and effort to outline his 'zombie mythos' (in fact he took an entire other book to do this 'The Zombie Survival Guide') and that involved a lot of logic that is usually left out when people think about creating zombies.

Firstly Brooks' zombies do start out able to run when they first turn, and have the strength that they where capable before they turned. This coupled with their lack of need for rest and there never ending stamina means that you might think the movie had the zombies down, but not quite. As Brooks' points out human muscles get stronger when they rip during use and reform themselves stronger, (this is grossly over simplified, please don't assume I'm an idiot) zombies however do not have this advantage because they are dead therefore every time they use their muscles they deteriorate and don't repair *BREATH*

In very basic terms this means that almost straight away physical exertion rips the muscles of zombies apart and makes them less and less capable of agile movement. This means that although they may be capable of swift movement at first within a few minutes they will functionally be reduced to the shambolic, shuffling rabble seen in the old Romero movies. Obviously this means that the running and jumping is out of the question, let alone the full on flying bloody tackling.

That is just a microcosm of what is wrong with the film, the introduction of numerous support characters who are swiftly killed off to make room for new ones (worst offending moment being when the young 'sidekick' introduced at the beginning, seemingly for the duration, is killed off within a few minutes when he trips and accidentally caps himself in the head. Lethal ineptitude at its finest) The constant breaking of physical laws so that Hollywood style 'tense' scenes can be levered into the film (At one point a fortified city is over run when the dead make a giant tower of zombies to scale the walls in a matter of moments....what the actual hell) and for the love of god the terrible, terrible twist that was pulled completely out of the films fat sweaty arse (Would say I won't spoil it for you but it was spoilt before it was written. Basically the zombies don't even notice people who suffer from sever illness....and no one but Brad Pitt noticed this) 

As a zombie movie it's just okay, it's not going to be genre changing or earth shattering but hell if you're looking for a zombie film to watch you could probably do a lot worse (try La Horde, best terrible zombie movie with the best terrible dubbing) but as an adaption it could have been something much more than it was, a truly different zombie film that could have brought some much needed refreshment to the stale genre.

Having said that Brad Pitts performance is pretty solid, and the film is at least competently made (from a technical perspective) so despite the fact that I will personally never be seeing the film again, if you're not a fan of the book then you might wanna check out the movie, at least to see that guy trip and cap himself.

 

...The yogscast pulled a George Lucas

Okay so the above video is an animated continuation of the Yogscast's famous minecraft series 'the shadow of Israphel' (at least that's what people seem to think it is, personally I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out that this was just a side thing to keep people happy until they released the proper series) 

The internet met this animation with the sort of reactions that you'd expect, most people where pissed the hell off. As it turns out the animation itself is actually pretty funny in places, the scene at the end with Israphel and his minion on the cliff is a personal favorite, but most of the people who saw it seemed to think it was utter crap, so why is that?

Well the simplest answer to that is the star wars syndrome. After 'Star Wars: return of the Jedi' was released there was a somewhat substantial gap until they released the next installment (about 15 years actually but hey who's counting?) This meant that the fans had 15 years to imagine the most awesome thing that could ever have happened to them ever in their tiny little lives.

The problem this causes is that no matter how good something is it cannot live up to 15 years of nerd induced hype. Now I am in no way saying that 'The Phantom Menace' doesn't deserve hate, I mean come on Jar-Jar Binks.....really? But it isn't all that bad if examined by itself, it's just another crummy Hollywood blockbuster.

With the release of this latest animation the Yogscast have created a similar situation for themselves by waiting so long to release something relating to the SOI series. After three years (-ish, seriously I can't exactly remember when they last did something SOI related) they have released a sort of okayish animation that seems to have very little effort put into it, at least on the part of the Yogscast.

The animation style itself is great, it looks pretty good and I'm sure the animator put a lot of time and effort into what they were doing, but Lewis and Simon's dialogue is all taken from episodes of Yoglabs and in all honesty the voice acting for Israphel leaves a lot to be desired in places (if you want to see what I mean listen to the scene where they're running away from the nyan pig cannon) but overall the quality of the animation is a 6/10 minimum.

Now if this was just another yogscast animation it would be fine and I don't think the reactions would have been anywhere near as bad, but because people have assumed it's a continuation they've all gone batshit over it and started bawling in comment sections.

You mark my words, at some point we may yet see a continuation of the SOI and I guarantee that the reaction will be the same as it was to this animation.

The difference between learning and comprehension

As I've gotten older I have come to realize something,

There appears to be a massive, massive difference between learning something and truly understanding it.

You can learn pretty much anything simply by reading a decently presented book on the subject, a fact that people have probably brought up a million times, but understanding meaning behind something can really trip people up.

I've learned a lot about life from hearing about things, other peoples personal experiences count for a lot of peoples social development both growing up and once we're adults, but most would probably agree that social development is really aided by personal experiences, the pain and strife that people go through as they grow turns them into the people that they are when they get older.

So my thinking has been that does my place in an educational system actually mean diddly squat when considering my overall development as a human being, and my happiness as a person.

Personal experience for better or for worse shaped our feelings on pretty much anything, in fact other than as young children for most of us being told something has nothing of the same weight behind it as actually experiencing something.

From a larger perspective I have to realized that no matter what sort of education I or others have there is no reason that you cannot learn something from them, and no matter what no one way to do things or to live is the right way.

Being Autistic

A realization hit me today,

Mainly that I never really talk to anyone about being Autistic, or rather having an ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) called Asperges Syndrome. I am not a self-diagnosed case I was diagnosed by a psychologist/psychiatrist (not sure the difference) when I was 16 years old after I started to refuse going to school.

After I was diagnosed a lot of my previous behavior made way more sense, a lot of the tenancies I had written off as quirks turned out to be the usual signs of someone suffering from Asperges. A lot of people I knew had a decent amount of trouble dealing with the fact that I was Autistic, some because they couldn't see it, some because they didn't want to see it and one extreme case where they were annoyed that they hadn't seen it first (friend with some psychology experience)

Personally I had no issue accepting this new diagnosis, at the time it gave me an excuse to behave in certain ways, but as I grew older I realized that a lot of the problems I had before stemmed from not acting in these certain ways because I thought I wasn't supposed to act that way. Partially a deep hate of large crows, unfamiliar areas and sudden loud noises. Put in these situations I would often get sulky or moody and basically be a little arsehole to the people around me, once I realized that these things weren't something that I had to lie about or hide I found it much easier to deal with.

In the end it took me being diagnosed with asperges for me to really look into and fix a lot of my problems. I got over the long bouts of depression that characterized my early teen years, I managed to actually make some friends due to learning that taking people in small doses at first was the right way to go and I learned to just tell people when something concerning my asperges caused problems or lead to misunderstandings. 

I don't know why I wrote this by the way, it just seemed that I should try and put this into words for anyone who was interested, also so that people actually know slightly more about me instead of just seeing the few scraps of writing that actually get uploaded to this place.


P.s. for anyone in the US, please stop pronouncing it ASS BURGERS, in the UK we pronounce it ASS-PURGES which while still mildly hilarious is much less embarrassing when explaining to people who don't know what it is.

p.p.s also for all those out there who are self diagnosed asperges then you should go see someone and get a proper diagnosis. For people in the situation where they are actually diagnosed you are just causing problems and making people mistrust anyone who says that they suffer from it, same goes for insomnia by the way, pretty sure you can actually get diagnosed with that, it's not just something you can claim to have.

P.p.p.s did you know that one of the types of Insomnia is called 'Acute Sleep On-Set Insomnia'?  Because I was diagnosed with that when I was much younger, having said that it seems to have lasted like 10 years so I don't think it can really be counted as acute any more (acute means lasting like 1 - 7 days)