CC28: The designers of Fallout New Vegas should try getting shot in the head themselves.

Now don't get me wrong. i enjoyed playing the game. But I'm the kind of person who thinks that someone who has the ability to win easily and doesn't bother is even more of a failure than someone who tried their best but never really had a chance. This sense of massive under-achievement is what underpinned Bethesda's Fallout 3 and the only thing they've managed to do is pass the baton of mediocrity to some other poor saps: Obsidian.

On the surface of things having Obsidian take over was something to be relished. Obsidian had been behind it's ground-breaking predecessors Fallouts 1 and 2 and (as black isle) they also had a massive hand in both baldur's gate games and are therefore responsible for absorbing more time out of my life than a time-fuelled hummer. (If you're an Oblivion fan and didn't like the baldur's gate series feel free to stop reading and throw yourself under the nearest heavy-goods vehicle)

The main problem with Fallout can be summed up with one question: Is it possible to enjoy a game that crashes every half-hour? Please note that this is not an exaggeration. So far I've logged almost 90 hours on New Vegas and it has crashed (yes I was counting) 167 times so far. It's also so glitched that one of the endings is impossible for me. Oh and one f my companions vanished without a trace taking a lot of my stuff and forcing me to re-start for miles back in the game. If you're thinking about buying New Vegas my advice to you is this: Get to love your quicksave button.

But that wouldn't have helped anyone who was playing the game in it's first few weeks (in other words, fans) as the save system corrupted the files upon creation so even binding quicksave to all of your fucking mouse buttons wouldn't have helped you. Also if you really want to see a bug log onto youtube and look up, what's now known as, the "exorcist" bug. If only most horror games were this freaky.

This is now not to say that whatever wasn't bugged was brilliant as the turd-sandwich of NPC interactions and combat that dogged Fallout 3 make there sorry way in here too. All the Mo-Cap seems to have been done by Keanu Reeves after having botox and the combat is almost designed to catapult you out of the game experience and leave you massively aware that you're playing a badly-designed game.

I'd love to ask the designers how my skill with a handgun somehow allows another person to survive getting six .44 rounds plugged into their face. (be aware they're not wearing headgear either) How does my skill with a gun affect the damage it causes? I hate it when games pull this shit. A bullet is a bullet, simple as. My skill shouldn't affect the damage it does should it land in someone. That's horseshit! Skill affects my accuracy and reload speed, maybe how fast I can move while holding it but not how much damage it does! If a round fired by a sniper and a complete novice both land shouldn't they both do the same damage? The only difference should be that the sniper would be able to re-cock and re-sight the rifle quick enough to nail the target's friends too, the novice would struggle to deal with the recoil and re-loading as it is in real fucking life!

It's a rare game that places such emphasis on story. Even rarer to find one that does so at the expense of combat (checkout planescape torment for this) but with new Vegas they placed everything behind story including testing and bug-fixing. They even admitted it themselves when the game first came out and fans were up in arms that they aimed to release a good game, not one that worked. In any other industry this behavior is not only frowned upon but also illegal. So why do gamers put up with this shit? The whole cult of "design-by-committee" isn't to blame here. It's to blame for a lot of fucking games but not this problem. What about companies rushing the process. Not that either. When you take stock of the what they've created in new Vegas you can say a lot of things but that it was rushed is not one of them.

One of the other problems is that they've decided to issue the game through steam; the universal platform for pretentious gaming. Steam isn't exactly a well-oiled machine either (as of this writing my steam account is refusing to let me log on for no reason other than I had the sheer gall to try to play games I paid money for) and it's main use seems to be downloading patches to bug-ridden games you paid full fucking price for.

I don't agree with the "flawed masterpiece" label that has been attached to these games. People point out the great story and stunning environment as worth it. But what they also don't point out is that these are the only aspects of the game the designers got right. Every other aspect of this game is broken. The combat, the characters and the quests are all almost totally crap. In other words, they got the story right but not how you progress through that story. They developed nice scripts for all the NPCs but made them act like 3-CPO with his dick stuck in a socket. They laid down an engaging set of objectives for you to follow but made it so you'll spend most of your time doing ridiculously boring fetch-quests with their own objectives that border on the retarded.

They've done the hard part. Then they got the easy part so massively wrong and then implemented it in such a lazy fashion they could be mistaken for the Irish government. With such a solid storyline all they needed to do was point the player in the right direction and they'd do the rest themselves. This is what makes New Vegas unforgivable. It dangles the carrot of a story that doesn't treat you like you've brain-damage but flog you with the stick of inept design. Did no-one notice what happened to Stalker?

Let hope the new 4.5GB patch along with the 7.2GB patch fixes things..........yeah right.

CC27: Google Adsense For Swearing.

Hey! Look what I found in my yahoo spam filter:

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not
accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying
Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For
instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as
http://www.corrosivecontents.com/. Please note that this URL is an example
and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your website.

As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to
place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. In addition to
photos and videos which contain nudity or sexual activities, below are
some other examples of unacceptable content:

* Lewd or provocative images
* Crude or indecent language, including adult stories
* Sexual tips or advice
* Sexual fetish sites (e.g. foot fetish content)
* Adult toys or products
* Ads or links to external sites containing adult content
* Adult links and/or adult keywords within the meta data in the source
code of your site



Please make any necessary changes to your webpages in the next 72 hours.
We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies
(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en)
to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad
serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to
your account within the next three days, your account will remain active
but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note,
however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found
in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Issue ID# 1494725
----------------
For more information regarding this warning email, please visit our Help
Center:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113058&stc=aspe-ai4-en.

Hmm... well Google if we took the swearing out of this blog there wouldn't really be any blog left, so: No.

I suppose that puts the brakes on my new Google adsense sponsored venture: CockRingsAndTightAnus'.com

Oh well.

-ANkh

CC26: Adam sandler: Now with 50% less plot!

I finally got around to watching "grown ups" and figured that the title is the only form of irony Americans can understand: blunt and obvious. I say this because the movie was one of the worst pieces of shit ever to be committed to film. Really if you thought this movie was good than please felate the nearest gun-barrel.

The thing is, I used to be a HUGE adam sandler fan. He was usually the only SNL star to get laughs out of me consistently and without resorting to the lowest common-denominator. A cock which most of the stars of "grown ups" have firmly wrapped their lips around and are sucking for all it's worth. But then one movie changed all that, one movie which was so resoundingly bad it's beggars belief that the guy who hit out "the waterboy" could think this shit was funny: Mr Deeds.

Or should I say the remake? I don't. Purely because I don't want to sully the reputation of a perfectly good movie (regarded in some circles as a "classic") by associating it with this turgid dross. It'd be like if there was a brutal rapist with the name surname as you and everyone just assumed you were related, and then stopped asking you out for nights on the town for fear they'd be dragged into an alleyway by their own paranoia.

Mr deeds isn't funny no matter what level you take it at. It's not even one of those "so bad it's funny in spite of itself" movies. This presents a huge problem. When a comedy isn't funny the audience instantly look to the characters for some sort of emotional support. If they can't laugh it's usually because they don't fully understand the characters (imagine trying to find quagmire funny without the knowledge that he's a heartless sex hound)

This is where it all unravels. Sandler isn't actually a character he's just this horrific non-entity bouncing from one scene to another spewing out lines with virtually no comedic timing. You could have achieved the same effect by writing his lines onto tennis balls, loading them into a launcher, and wheeling it out on cue. Actually that would've been fucking brilliant as it would've involved winona ryder getting plastered in the face forty times a minute with tennis balls. Normally she's quite a good actress but if she'd have gotten prison-time for shoplifting she wouldn't have been in this so no sympathy there.

The plot is so weak (which is strange given it's written by the same guy who did the previous eight, yes fucking eight, sandler movies) even the moments where it's not trying to be funny are hilariously contrived. There's one scene where they buy bikes off of kids to go for a ride through central park in the middle of the night. To anyone on planet earth this a fantastic way to get raped and beaten, but on planet sandler (where there are dick jokes in the constitution and having an IQ over 100 is grounds for exile) this is simply a light-hearted romantic moment.

Then there was "50 first dates" a film where he's dating a girl with a wierd sort of love amnesia and can't remeber things on a day-to-day basis. The good news is sandler can roll out his tired lines and she'll think it's gold every time. The bad news is that this is pretty much how he's been conducting his entire career for the last ten fucking years. Treating his audience as if they've all got some extremely specific memory issues and then rolling out the same bullshit he did last time. There was a scene in "50 first dates" where one if the characters states, during one of the numerous awkward pauses where acting is meant to take place, that he's "had enough" and leaves. At that time I turned to my friend and said "So have I" and left as well.

"Click" was another movie that pissed me off. A movie where a guy gets a remote that can fast-forward him past the boring bits of his life. Which ,if you're watching it on DVD, is exactly what you've got too. It wasn't that it was poorly acted or that the jokes were atrocious it was just a poorly constructed thing from start to finish. Even the whole concept of a remote control that can alter the universe is so badly used that I almost started shouting ideas for how sandler might use the fucking thing better (like pointing it at Kate Beckinsales' clothing and pressing the delete button). The problem is that his character displays such retarded reasoning that, in the real world, he would be trusted to build a fort out of fucking pillows than become a partner at an architectural firm.

One scene goes like this: He has a big project coming up on the forth of July. He's faced with the dilemma of either going camping with his family or doing his work and getting that huge promotion. Normally this is standard fare fork-in-the-road bullshit that romantic comedies pullout. But add in his ability to control time itself and this problem becomes pretty fucking easy. Pause the world, do the work, go camping, bang Kate Beckingsale in a tent. There. Easy. But , wait! What does he do? He just goes and skips the entire weekend altogether! What the fuck? Who put this fucking muppet in charge?

He does try to appease his fanboy fan-base though where in one sequence he fast-forwards to find out his wife marries another man because he's too much of a workaholic. So what does he do? He pauses the seemingly nice guy in mid-walk and kicks him in the bollocks. Three fucking times. This is possibly the only scene of testicular torture that only made me wince because the scene so so so badly done.

Then it goes and gets really serious at the end. And winds up producing the funniest scene in the entire movie hands down. After arriving at the end of his life he's lying in a hospital drive in the rain dying slowly of a heart attack. That's the funniest scene in the movie.

All this brings me back to "grown-ups" (I completely hated "funny people" too but that's a post for when I've upgraded the bile filters on my laptop to be able to deal with the waves of searing hate that pour when I begin to talk of that film) For it's a film that really could have been great but just didn't put the effort in. Which makes it even far greater a failure. It's essentially an SNL reunion under the guise of a "buddy" movie. Whereby your treated to actual jokes being told by actual comedians. Other than that it's just Kevin "Chris farl...no wait" james hurting himself while everyone else goes "ooooooh!"

It's just five guys cracking wise. Like Ocean's 11 without the heist. Or the charisma. Or the good-looking actors. Or the plot. Or the.....Ah fuck it! The thing is this movie leaves people very divided. One friend once told me that he got to stare at Salma Hayek for two hours and there are worse ways to spend two hours. I told him go watch Desperado. That way he could see more of her and the thing getting pounded would NOT be his cerebellum.

This film probably came about when Rob Schneider called up Sandler and asked for a film to pay for his new boat when sandler just said "fuck it, let's go on vacation, two birds one stone". One conference call later the cast are in the hills watching David spade call him a fartbrain, Chris rock calling Kevin james fat, sandler cracking on rock for being black and no-one making fun of sandler because he's the one piloting this money-plane into their fucking wallets.

It's really hard to think that a movie staffed almost entirely by good professional comedians could fail to be funny. Surely someone thought that locking the SNL cast in a room would produce something special but all we get are bad one-liners and Yo mama jokes for two, solid, fucking, hours. I mean, come on, a movie about people making fun of Rob Schneider has got be like shooting fish in a barrel. Unfortunately none of the cast can even graze the fucking barrel. With his antics he just begs to be torn apart but we are let down each time.

All of this makes me angry, not because I consider films as art and these films are the artistic equivalent of a penis drawn on the cover of a copybook, but beacuse sandler CAN actually act. He really can. Okay slag off "punch drunk love" all you want but watch "reign over me" and tell me the fucker with the weird hair can't act. He's great in that movie! Anyone who can hold their own against Don Cheadle in a Drama deserves serious kudos.

I suppose he's waiting for them to create the"longest dick joke made by a third-rate hack" Oscar award then he's a shoe-in, provided Rob Schneider dies first................

CC25: Meteor Mobile Play A Fabulous April Fools Day Trick

Today I recieved a text message from my phone service provider.

The text was to inform me that my account balance was overdue.

Now I am quite certain that my account has enough money in it to cover my bill, so I worried that my service provider might be a bunch of idiots who had been bumbling and mismanaging my account for the last four months.

Then I remembered that it was April first, and this is surely a joke, right?

-ANkh

P. S. I can't post this blog remotely because Meteor are blocking the port Blogaway uses. But that's another rant.

CC24: Command and Conquer 4 Sucks

I bought this game. Don't buy this game.

If you've never played a C&C game before: don't buy this game because it death-marches you down a lame plot you know nothing about and the game-play sucks.

If you've played a C&C game before: Remember everything you loved about C&C?
Remember:

• No unit caps
• Cool tech trees
• Ore harvesting and the attack/defence of ore
• The great range of units

Gone. All gone.

All that is left is the limp remnants of the game and a bunch of over-dramatic cut-scenes.

This is crap. I want my money back.

-ANkh

P.S. oh and my computer wouldn't restart until I system-restored to before I installed this trash.