HeadWillCollapse

Fat Conan and I have been playing “Cooking Mama” on the DS this week. It’s the first thing to get us excited about cooking since the dawn of Nigella Lawson (ah, Nigella; you may have the unnerving height and unconvincing lady-name of a Soho transvestite, but you could clarify our butter any day). While “Cooking Mama” doesn’t stimulate quite the same parts as the aforementioned kitchen kitten, it does hit all the marks you could want in a fusion of Warioware and Gordon Ramsay’s “the F-Word”. It’s fun, it’s actually pretty tough and Mama (of the title) seems easily riled for a game that’s aimed squarely at kids. Don’t get me wrong though: Mama gets quite irate, but manages to fall short of the sweary rages that Mr. Ramsay is capable of spewing upon his staff.

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You are outdoors.
> Look
You see: the Ukraine. If this had graphics, you’d probably be witnessing a beautiful recreation of the bleak landscape inside the “Zone”: the area of the Ukraine worst affected by the fallout from the reactor fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986. You might also witness the glitches generated by your graphics card as it overheats under the demands of the engine providing said recreation.
> North
You have died. The ground beneath your feet has electrocuted you to death. Would you like to restart? Y or N.
> Y

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I came home on Tuesday evening to find Fat Conan hunched over his PC monitor, staring at the Fallout 3 teaser and hacking at his wrist with a rusty nail file. He was inconsolable, muttering something about polygon counts and the probability of the game being rubbish now that a version had been announced for the PS3. As he continued to jab at his veins he ranted to himself about how the armour he’d seen “…had to be the t-45 model and couldn’t be the t-51b model…that didn’t make sense” and that “…the gun, couldn’t be a gun, not the right mechanisms…”.

A small amount of foam formed at the corners of his mouth and he strained so hard to cry that little puffs of dust erupted from his long since atrophied tear ducts. His manic utterances went on “…why is there a skateboard? why? And the bus, why is the detail of the bus so low? It must be for the isometric view…it must be…unless they just have a low quality bus…and the city, why is there so much stuff in the city? …”. By this point he’d blunted the metal nail file against his tough leathery hide and had resorted instead to chewing on his arm between outbursts.

I just left him to it, caught what I could of the teaser (those bits that weren’t occluded by his bulbous, manical frame) and retired for the evening. I’m glad FC’s an extreme example of the fan-base, you’d have to pity the folks at Bethesda if they were all like him.

Only 8 days to go until Bethesda’s teaser of Fallout 3 is released and the rabid fans decide how much they hate it. Fat Conan would point and laugh, if he wasn’t kind of one of them himself. He’s not such an outspoken member of the Fallout fan base, he’s more reserved, choosing to release his anxiety about the upcoming sequel through hushed self-harm in the darkness of his cave. Actually that last wound he opened up, while worrying that the new game might not stick with the original’s isometric view, is probably in need of medical attention.

Sadly hasn’t been announced. However, a look at the track listing found on the latest offering “Singstar: Pop Hits”, suggests the the quality doesn’t have to drop too far before it becomes a genuine possibility. It’s fair to say that while we’re used to a certain level of fluff in the Singstar editions, the latest in the line still manages to stand out from its kin in the pap stakes. (more…)

It’s almost here! The sequel to the fantastic “Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan” simply entitled “Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2″ is now available to pre-order from Play Asia for around $50 which is about £25 (or £20 if you’re reading this tomorrow, arf) excluding postage and packaging. It apparently ships on the 17th of May, so you’ve only got a couple of weeks to wait if you don’t want to pre-order it. Needless to say Fat Conan and I would be throwing cash at Play Asia like the dirty girls they are if it wasn’t for the fact that FC’s spent all of this month’s food, hygiene product and media budget on locks, keys and other door related paraphernalia.

Anyway, those of you not afflicted by a terrible drunken-key-loss incident last weekend should go ahead and buy them up (incidentally taking advantage of our strong pound for import purposes) and look forward to getting a little slice of happiness through the post next month. FC and I will just sit here and weep (or as close as FC can come to weeping, which is probably just to look stern).

Fat Conan is a fan of B-movies, he has been since he was young barbarian watching late-night channel 4 on a black and white telly. There was a time when that channel showed dreadful classic after dreadful classic and many a Saturday morning was met in the presence Godzilla, dome headed aliens or deadly creatures from the depths. In his early twenties FC encountered a pair of classics that would outshine those that came before them in just about every aspect of cinematic failure. This pairing was 1977′s “Damnation Alley” and 1992 TV movie “Steel Justice“, true masterpieces of the genre, whatever genre that may be. Needless to say FC loved them both. (more…)

Fat Conan, along with the rest of the nation, has been exposed to the furore following the PS3 launch “disaster” or “spectacular” depending on whose news agency you buy into. The success/failure of the PS3 in Europe has, of course, already been predetermined by a number of Internet-based gaming experts. So just who will win the new console war? As with all web debates the three categories into which the arguments fall are “fawningly for”, “vitriolically against” and “somewhat superior”. All three categories are equally eloquent in their representation. For example Gary, speaking on behalf of the “vitriolically against” faction comments:

“PS3 ARE RUBBISH ITS NOT ALL ABOUT GOOD GRAPHICS YOU NEED GOOD GAMES AND RIGHT NOW ALL PS3 HAVE EXCLUSIVE GAMES THAT I KNOW OF IS GRAN TURISMO AND TEKKEN MGS4 IS COMING TO THE 360 AND I THINK DEVIL MAY CRY IS TOO”

Which is clearly reason enough for Sony to pull out of the race immediately. Such damning criticism of the new console is of course counterbalanced by the praise it receives in the form of the damnation of its other-brand counterparts as karl of the “fawningly for” points out:

“PS3 will once again dominate the UK videogames market, due to the fact it is far superior to both Xbox and the wii. Yes its expensive but a whole generation have grown up with PS2 and have loyalty to the quality sony brand and any serious gamers will always want the console that provides the best graphics and ultimately the best games and gameplay which the PS3 clearly does! The wii is a fad end interest will soon dry up, as for the Xbox its totally unreliable half as powerful and UGLY!RockonPS3″

He has a point, after all Sony has already dominated the UK market with the PS3, apparently, so it’s reasonable that they might do so again. It’s certainly a compelling argument and FC might even have been convinced if he hadn’t already seen Peter’s forecast of the 2008 sales figures:

“My market share split prediction for March 2008?

Wii – 45%
Xbox 360 – 30%
PS3 – 25% “

Peter, who reminds us all that this is indeed a three horse race and not all about the battle between the 360 and the PS3. Meanwhile, the “somewhat superior” element remains self satisfyingly indignant:

“No, I don’t have a Playstation 3. I do have about four thousand books, though.”

Which may well be a fact, though FC has no interest in pursuing a proof. And so the debate continues, ad infinitum. While the question may not actually be answered until the release of the next next generation of consoles, at least the debate will continue unabated. FC is uncertain what the future of the console market will be, but he has reaffirmed his belief that the Internet is indeed a terrible place.

* Please note that all the comments quoted within this post actually come from a BBC “have your say” section entitled “Have you got your PS3? Did you queue? What is the attraction of the new console? Are you going to keep it or sell it on? Send us your views and experiences”. It’s always good to know which question you’re meant to be answering, isn’t it?

Poet William Blakes-Sephen was born in 1978 in Doncaster. His collected works including poetry, prose and illustrations will form the basis of this module. He is best known for his poem “Tyger” about the dichotomy between the natural and the divine in EA’s “PGA tour 2005″. However, the poem we’ll be discussing today is in a different vein. Written as an ode to the puzzle game, “Meteos” on the Nintendo DS it is simply entitled “Five minutes and two seconds”. (more…)

Fat Conan doesn’t care if its target demographic is three to five year old girls. He doesn’t care that its a facsimile of the real thing that lacks the tangible aspects of genuine pet ownership. He doesn’t care that it doesn’t shed hair all over the furniture and fails to crave marrowbone jelly. He’s completely sanguine despite the fact that he can’t take it to the park and use it meet women. He’s not bothered in the slightest that his macho image is somewhat damaged by owning it (he once cut out a man’s spine using only a potato peeler so he’s still more than comfortable with his own manliness). He doesn’t even give a damn that it’s really just a Tamagotchi with added fur. (more…)