My God. It has been a busy, busy few weeks. Here’s the thing, chaps: I had been planning to write a post about my top ten video games of the last decade, but I didn’t comfortable doing so until I had played every single video game from that period. So for the last two months, I have sat down and played – to completion – every single PlayStation, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, PC, PSP, Wii, N64, GameCube and GBA game released since 2001. It was a massive task, but someone had to do it.
When you read the following, my ultimate top ten videogames of the last decade, I’m sure you’ll agree it was worth the bedsores, lost family time and thirty pounds of gained weight. Here’s the list:
10: Parkour Sniper (PS2)
A surprise hit amongst older people and the French, Parkour Sniper was released in 2005. The game is viewed from a first person perspective, and your task is to take out the agile young people jumping around the city landscape using a special light gun. A lot of satisfaction can be derived from waiting until they have made their way to the top of a tall building and offing them, watching their lifeless body bounce off the railings and flagpoles below.
9: School Dance Revolution (Arcade, PS2)
The best of the dancing games came as a surprise to most. What nostalgic fun this was! As a (computer generated) inept DJ span terrible music, the aim of the game was to stand at the side of your room for as long as possible. Later levels included awkward shuffling, surreptitious alcohol smuggling and teacher avoidance. The two player game, in which you had to be rejected by the other gamer in as cringeworthy a fashion as possible, was an added bonus.
8: Grand Theft Auto: Headbutting Authority Figures (PS3, Xbox, PC)
Finally, a GTA worth playing! None of that rubbish carjacking or drug dealing, just finding authority figure after authority figure and giving them the old ‘Glasgow Kiss’. Fun for all the family!
7: Movie Tie-In: The Video Game (PS, PC, Atari Lynx)
This sprawling RPG saw you take control of a video game designer given the task of adapting a new movie for the console market. With different playable characters, an excellent fight system for beating up annoying middle management types and levels of difficulty depending on the film being adapted (from ‘action/adventure’ to ‘period drama’), this game stood out in a time when RPGs were shite.
6: Nomihodai no Umeboshi (PSP)
Available only in Japan, this tragically overlooked game makes the list to show how amazing and extensive my knowledge of video games is.
5: Cowbell Hero (PS2, Xbox)
Who needs guitars? Nobody, when you have cowbells! Altogether now, “We need an increase in cowbell! I have an illness and the only thing that can cure it is an increase in cowbell!”
4: Jetpony II: Stumplegs (Every muthafarkin’ system)
The sequel to the popular platform shooter begins when Jetpony wakes up after a night on the town to find that his legs have been removed. Luckily, he still has his jets, and everyone’s favourite Shetland Pony goes on a murderous rampage to try and find his missing limbs and the bastards who took them. Quite possibly the goriest game ever made, and all the better for it.
3: World of Carpark (PC)
In 2001, Lizard Games released Carpark, their first garage-based rpg. It was mildly popular. Then, in 2007, they released the follow-up, a massively multiplayer online car park simulator, and the world rejoiced. Who can forget the first time they chose their character and set foot in that fabled land of disabled spaces, angry attendants and harried mothers? Sure, it could be daunting for the newbie, having to deal with older players who had levelled up and can do a three-point-turn on a sixpence, but this was as rewarding as online gaming was ever likely to get.
2: Tiger Woods Pun Simulator (Xbox 360)
Sure, it’s a brand new game, but making ‘Wood’, ‘In the Rough’ and ‘Leg-over par’ references will never get old! This game will run and run and run!
1: Help! I’m Trapped in James Cameron’s Nose! (PS, PS2, PS3, PS4, Atari 2600)
The best game of the last ten years, bar none. What more can be said? There is more playability, replayability, satisfaction and depth of gameplay in this release than every other game made in the last century. Escaping from the famed director’s nose is challenging, yet the difficulty level and enjoyment means you’ll keep trying to find your way out of the conk. My God, I’m going to go back and start it again, I can’t get enough of this game.
So there you have it. The best games of the noughties. But what do I think will be big news in the 2010s? Here are my tips:
Mummies: Zombies and vampires are old news. Egyptian undead sarcophagi-dwellers are going to be huge in the coming years.
Baccarat: Televised baccarat is gaining popularity, so expect to see lots of tie-in games.
Robots made of meat: I don’t know why, but this is my dark horse.
Benjamin Netanyahu: I’ll be honest, I’m out of ideas.
Showing posts with label Lists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lists. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
The Top Colours of 2008
Colours are amazing things, useful on so many occasions. Whether you’re a sports fan deciding who to cheer for, an artist looking at your palette or a racist deciding who to throw a stone at, colours are essential.
2008 was a great year for colours, with many new ones being discovered and invented. Some were rubbish, while others were superb. So which were the colours that epitomised the year of our Lord, 2008? Let me kick them at you like a farmer kicks a chicken. (Hard)
1: Elaborate Orange
Elaborate Orange was the winner of Good Housekeeping Magazine’s annual “Design a Colour, You Dicks!” competition. This entry, which won its creator, Mandy Higgins, $150 and an apron, has a tangy foretaste and elements of surprise.
2: Spink
Spink is what you get when twenty thousand Eastern European refugees walk across a red carpet. To see it is to faint with ecstasy. I’m fluttering now just writing about it.
3: Tragically Hip: The Colour
Invented by Canadian rockers The Tragically Hip, this colour was featured on all the band’s promotional material last year, including album covers and tour t-shirts. It’s a bit like mauve, but with a deeper quality of feeling and an understandable sense of injustice at the inequities of the world.
4: White
When the International Colour Foundation upgraded White’s status from ‘absence of colour’ to ‘actual colour’ last year, fans of this much-maligned hue rejoiced. And with good reason! It’s responsible for eggs (except brown ones and those weird speckly ones) and 90% of the world’s supply of blank printer paper.
5: Matthew, Prince of Beaumontford
When a minor British royal gave birth to a small, undulating ball of colour, the Queen decided to give it a title and treat it as if it were a real royal child, instead of feeding it to her corgis as her advisors suggested. MPB (as it’s known in colour-fan circles) is a cross between red and green, but tinged with sadness.
6: Twitter Black
This is the colour that your fingers and thumbs turn to when you spend all day sending text updates to your blog. Twitter Black is a good indication that you’re about to die, and so comes sixth in my list.
7: Charonesque
Few will forget the events of May, when a beautiful asexual alien appeared in a field in Kentucky and promised to reveal the secrets of universal peace and eternal joy to the assembled media and political representatives. ‘Charonesque’ is the name given to the colour of the mysterious matter that emanated from his hands, flying over the land in dovetail-shaped majesty and instilling a sense of awe, wonder and love in everyone present, up until the alien was shot seventeen times by the American military and taken away for testing.
8: Blutt
Now that it’s impossible for many people’s teeth to become any whiter, dentists developed this new colour, which is several shades more transparent than regular white. Complicated surgery is the only way you can get your teeth to be Blutt, and it hurts like a barbed-wire condom.
9: Extreme Lilac
Do you think you’ve seen lilac before? YOU HAVEN’T!!!! You haven’t seen ANY COLOUR AT ALL until you’ve seen EXTREME LILAC!!! EXTREME LILAC is MORE LILAC than ANY LILAC you’ve EVER SEEN!!!! It’s more lilac than A THOUSAND TONNES OF LILAC FUCKING A LILAC SEAL!!! IN SPACE!!!!
10: Green of Anne Gables
Designed to coincide with the anniversary of a book that people love despite having never read, Green of Anne Gables is a new kind of green that looks like a tree barfing up a lawn. Only greener.
2008 was a great year for colours, with many new ones being discovered and invented. Some were rubbish, while others were superb. So which were the colours that epitomised the year of our Lord, 2008? Let me kick them at you like a farmer kicks a chicken. (Hard)
1: Elaborate Orange
Elaborate Orange was the winner of Good Housekeeping Magazine’s annual “Design a Colour, You Dicks!” competition. This entry, which won its creator, Mandy Higgins, $150 and an apron, has a tangy foretaste and elements of surprise.
2: Spink
Spink is what you get when twenty thousand Eastern European refugees walk across a red carpet. To see it is to faint with ecstasy. I’m fluttering now just writing about it.
3: Tragically Hip: The Colour
Invented by Canadian rockers The Tragically Hip, this colour was featured on all the band’s promotional material last year, including album covers and tour t-shirts. It’s a bit like mauve, but with a deeper quality of feeling and an understandable sense of injustice at the inequities of the world.
4: White
When the International Colour Foundation upgraded White’s status from ‘absence of colour’ to ‘actual colour’ last year, fans of this much-maligned hue rejoiced. And with good reason! It’s responsible for eggs (except brown ones and those weird speckly ones) and 90% of the world’s supply of blank printer paper.
5: Matthew, Prince of Beaumontford
When a minor British royal gave birth to a small, undulating ball of colour, the Queen decided to give it a title and treat it as if it were a real royal child, instead of feeding it to her corgis as her advisors suggested. MPB (as it’s known in colour-fan circles) is a cross between red and green, but tinged with sadness.
6: Twitter Black
This is the colour that your fingers and thumbs turn to when you spend all day sending text updates to your blog. Twitter Black is a good indication that you’re about to die, and so comes sixth in my list.
7: Charonesque
Few will forget the events of May, when a beautiful asexual alien appeared in a field in Kentucky and promised to reveal the secrets of universal peace and eternal joy to the assembled media and political representatives. ‘Charonesque’ is the name given to the colour of the mysterious matter that emanated from his hands, flying over the land in dovetail-shaped majesty and instilling a sense of awe, wonder and love in everyone present, up until the alien was shot seventeen times by the American military and taken away for testing.
8: Blutt
Now that it’s impossible for many people’s teeth to become any whiter, dentists developed this new colour, which is several shades more transparent than regular white. Complicated surgery is the only way you can get your teeth to be Blutt, and it hurts like a barbed-wire condom.
9: Extreme Lilac
Do you think you’ve seen lilac before? YOU HAVEN’T!!!! You haven’t seen ANY COLOUR AT ALL until you’ve seen EXTREME LILAC!!! EXTREME LILAC is MORE LILAC than ANY LILAC you’ve EVER SEEN!!!! It’s more lilac than A THOUSAND TONNES OF LILAC FUCKING A LILAC SEAL!!! IN SPACE!!!!
10: Green of Anne Gables
Designed to coincide with the anniversary of a book that people love despite having never read, Green of Anne Gables is a new kind of green that looks like a tree barfing up a lawn. Only greener.
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Films of the Year, 2009
Let’s face it, 2009 was an awful year for movies. Hardly anything good came out. The multitudes flocked, sheeplike, in their millions to see utter tripe. More than once, I was moved to vomit by the cinematic felchmess on the big screen. Many of the films I saw this year were so bad that I walked out of the cinema after just a few minutes, telling the establishment’s owner what I thought of their ‘entertainment’ with a well-thrown bag of excrement.
But in this rough year, some diamonds shone through. And while it’s easy to gripe about such shitefests as Satirical Movie, a satire of those awful, churned-out-by-the-dozen-and-guest-starring-Carmen-Electra satire movies like Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, it’ll probably be better for my health to count down the few films that didn’t make me weep like a small child with no elbows. So let’s do it to it.
1: Three Men and Two and a Half Men and the Man in the Iron Mask and Five Children and It and It
After the huge runaway success of Three Men and Two and a Half Men earlier in the year, a big-budget sequel was quickly made, featuring Tom Selleck, Sam from Cheers and Corey Haim reunited with Charlie Sheen, the Fat Kid and His Ugly Dad. Together they travel to 17th Century France, rescue a mysterious imprisoned man, and save some Victorian children and a wish-granting pixie from a scary clown. This film had everything, and everyone I know who saw it was speechless for five days afterwards.
2: Moonlit Dusk
This heart-warming tale of a schoolgirl’s relationship with an undead werewolf was a huge hit with promise ring-wearing Jonas Brothers fans and hirsute paedophiles alike. Some liked it for the excitement, some for the romance; I liked it for the bit at the end when he eats her in a blood-crazed rage.
3: The Man Who Cried
My third favourite film of the year was sentimental weepie The Man Who Cried. In the course of 110 minutes, John Steward (played by John Actor) loses his lover, his dog, his parents, his son, his way to the funerals, his mind, his favourite tie, his keys, his ATM PIN, the use of his legs and his brother’s sundial. He cries. A lot. And so will you.
4: The Christmas Presence
A haunted Christmas tree terrorises two young parents (Jennifer Connelly and Mark Wahlburg) in this seasonal horror film. While the film itself wasn’t particularly good, it did win me the complete Monty Python DVD box set.
5: Ducks in a Bus
The animation of the year was this brilliantly funny film, which provides fun for all the family, except possibly Uncle Jim, who doesn’t really like this sort of thing. Four ducks (probably voiced by Jack Black, that fat one from Knocked Up, someone else currently de rigour and Ellen), find themselves in a bus. What will they do?
6: La Maison du Patrinibopp
A dead cert for best foreign film at next year’s Oscars, this French effort has weeping nuns, a prostitute with a heart of gold, a pair of men obsessed with the sound of their own farts and a whole lot of onion-scented loss and despair with glorious undercurrents. This film didn’t make a lick of sense.
7: CGI Man 2: The Explosioning
Fans of the first CGI Man film were not let down by the sequel, which featured explosions, bangs, big fights, shiny things, lights, loud noises, midriffs, and a hey! Look at that! It’s a funny dog! Look, it’s chasing his own tail! Ha ha ha ha silly dog! Where was I?
8: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Battle the Guy with the Really Loud iPod on the Subway
Prince Adam of Eternia, along with his cohorts Teela, Man-at-Arms, Orko and the Sorceress find themselves pitted in mortal combat with a bloke playing Rhianna far too loud on the Bloor-Danforth subway line. Chilling and, ultimately, cathartic.
9: Pregnant Teenage Bride Wars
Combining two of the most bankable assets that Hollywood currently offers – Pregnant teens and Kate Hudson – this film is full of laughs from start to finish, except for a brief chuckle-free section around minutes 63 to 65.
10: The Imaginary Review Movie
Sadly overlooked by both critics and the idiot general viewing public, this film was a tour of force, with brilliant performances from the cast, especially the lead actor (I. Reviewer). The story, revolving around one man’s quest to rid the world of evil local listings magazines who don’t reply to well-written and neatly-typed letters, is excellent, and the soundtrack is also very nice. I loved this film.
But in this rough year, some diamonds shone through. And while it’s easy to gripe about such shitefests as Satirical Movie, a satire of those awful, churned-out-by-the-dozen-and-guest-starring-Carmen-Electra satire movies like Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, it’ll probably be better for my health to count down the few films that didn’t make me weep like a small child with no elbows. So let’s do it to it.
1: Three Men and Two and a Half Men and the Man in the Iron Mask and Five Children and It and It
After the huge runaway success of Three Men and Two and a Half Men earlier in the year, a big-budget sequel was quickly made, featuring Tom Selleck, Sam from Cheers and Corey Haim reunited with Charlie Sheen, the Fat Kid and His Ugly Dad. Together they travel to 17th Century France, rescue a mysterious imprisoned man, and save some Victorian children and a wish-granting pixie from a scary clown. This film had everything, and everyone I know who saw it was speechless for five days afterwards.
2: Moonlit Dusk
This heart-warming tale of a schoolgirl’s relationship with an undead werewolf was a huge hit with promise ring-wearing Jonas Brothers fans and hirsute paedophiles alike. Some liked it for the excitement, some for the romance; I liked it for the bit at the end when he eats her in a blood-crazed rage.
3: The Man Who Cried
My third favourite film of the year was sentimental weepie The Man Who Cried. In the course of 110 minutes, John Steward (played by John Actor) loses his lover, his dog, his parents, his son, his way to the funerals, his mind, his favourite tie, his keys, his ATM PIN, the use of his legs and his brother’s sundial. He cries. A lot. And so will you.
4: The Christmas Presence
A haunted Christmas tree terrorises two young parents (Jennifer Connelly and Mark Wahlburg) in this seasonal horror film. While the film itself wasn’t particularly good, it did win me the complete Monty Python DVD box set.
5: Ducks in a Bus
The animation of the year was this brilliantly funny film, which provides fun for all the family, except possibly Uncle Jim, who doesn’t really like this sort of thing. Four ducks (probably voiced by Jack Black, that fat one from Knocked Up, someone else currently de rigour and Ellen), find themselves in a bus. What will they do?
6: La Maison du Patrinibopp
A dead cert for best foreign film at next year’s Oscars, this French effort has weeping nuns, a prostitute with a heart of gold, a pair of men obsessed with the sound of their own farts and a whole lot of onion-scented loss and despair with glorious undercurrents. This film didn’t make a lick of sense.
7: CGI Man 2: The Explosioning
Fans of the first CGI Man film were not let down by the sequel, which featured explosions, bangs, big fights, shiny things, lights, loud noises, midriffs, and a hey! Look at that! It’s a funny dog! Look, it’s chasing his own tail! Ha ha ha ha silly dog! Where was I?
8: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Battle the Guy with the Really Loud iPod on the Subway
Prince Adam of Eternia, along with his cohorts Teela, Man-at-Arms, Orko and the Sorceress find themselves pitted in mortal combat with a bloke playing Rhianna far too loud on the Bloor-Danforth subway line. Chilling and, ultimately, cathartic.
9: Pregnant Teenage Bride Wars
Combining two of the most bankable assets that Hollywood currently offers – Pregnant teens and Kate Hudson – this film is full of laughs from start to finish, except for a brief chuckle-free section around minutes 63 to 65.
10: The Imaginary Review Movie
Sadly overlooked by both critics and the idiot general viewing public, this film was a tour of force, with brilliant performances from the cast, especially the lead actor (I. Reviewer). The story, revolving around one man’s quest to rid the world of evil local listings magazines who don’t reply to well-written and neatly-typed letters, is excellent, and the soundtrack is also very nice. I loved this film.
Monday, 29 October 2007
Book Review: Great Lists I Have Written by Seldom Hatchery
Great Lists I Have Written by Seldom Hatchery is one man’s love letter to lists, and the writing thereof. In this remarkable memoir, Hatchery, a professor of ergonomics and aesthetics at Coventry University, looks back over more than sixty years of lists that he has written.
The first thing that grabs one while reading this book is that in Prof. Hatchery’s hands, the lists have the ability to move us in many ways. They amuse, sadden, anger and warn us, all at the same time. Take one of Seldom’s earliest lists, written in 1951, entitled ‘Things I will do before I’m forty’:
1 Grow a beard
2 Write a book about ghosts
3 Buy a really nice desk
4 Shoot Mrs. Kilkenny
5 Read War & Peace
We are not informed as to whether Prof. Hatchery carried out the items on this list. However, we are given some poignant insight into the state of mind of a young man full of ambition, full of hope, and possibly full of anger towards a mysterious married woman.
While many of the lists are enjoyable reading in their own right, all are brought to life and given wings by Hatchery’s wonderful prose accompanying them. We learn the context of the lists; we learn of their place in time, we learn of their relevance to their own era.
This contextualisation of the lists is displayed incredibly well in the case of some of Hatchery’s most mundane minutiae. For instance, compare these two shopping lists, the first from 1965 and the second from 1997:
Lard
Dripping
An egg
Corn Flakes
Bin bags
Bread
Oysters
Two large rump steaks
Eggs
Harvey’s Bristol Cream
Tabasco sauce
Corn
Stuff Magazine
Professor Hatchery deconstructs these two lists and uses them as a metaphor for his own life at the time. While once he was a man who purchased lard and dripping, now he was a man with a research grant who could afford corn, oysters and extravagant sauces. But yet throughout, at the middle of each list, persevering through time and holding up the lists like a spine or column are the eggs. The change from one egg to ‘some’ eggs (plural) shows, for Hatchery, a display of growth, of aging. In many ways he is the same, but at the same time, he is ‘more’.
Every list that Professor Hatchery has ever written is here, from the interesting (‘Venice Itinerary, 1972’) to the dull (‘Things I need to do this week, February 10 1980’) and from the exhilarating (‘My favourite break-up records, 1965’) to the embarrassing (‘A list of all my colleagues with attractiveness ratings, 1992’). They constitute a good read on their own, but with the author’s commentary to go with them, this book is an essential read.
‘Great Lists I have Written’ by Seldom Hatchery (pp 930) is published by Elemental Quaker Books and is priced £34.99.
The first thing that grabs one while reading this book is that in Prof. Hatchery’s hands, the lists have the ability to move us in many ways. They amuse, sadden, anger and warn us, all at the same time. Take one of Seldom’s earliest lists, written in 1951, entitled ‘Things I will do before I’m forty’:
1 Grow a beard
2 Write a book about ghosts
3 Buy a really nice desk
4 Shoot Mrs. Kilkenny
5 Read War & Peace
We are not informed as to whether Prof. Hatchery carried out the items on this list. However, we are given some poignant insight into the state of mind of a young man full of ambition, full of hope, and possibly full of anger towards a mysterious married woman.
While many of the lists are enjoyable reading in their own right, all are brought to life and given wings by Hatchery’s wonderful prose accompanying them. We learn the context of the lists; we learn of their place in time, we learn of their relevance to their own era.
This contextualisation of the lists is displayed incredibly well in the case of some of Hatchery’s most mundane minutiae. For instance, compare these two shopping lists, the first from 1965 and the second from 1997:
Lard
Dripping
An egg
Corn Flakes
Bin bags
Bread
Oysters
Two large rump steaks
Eggs
Harvey’s Bristol Cream
Tabasco sauce
Corn
Stuff Magazine
Professor Hatchery deconstructs these two lists and uses them as a metaphor for his own life at the time. While once he was a man who purchased lard and dripping, now he was a man with a research grant who could afford corn, oysters and extravagant sauces. But yet throughout, at the middle of each list, persevering through time and holding up the lists like a spine or column are the eggs. The change from one egg to ‘some’ eggs (plural) shows, for Hatchery, a display of growth, of aging. In many ways he is the same, but at the same time, he is ‘more’.
Every list that Professor Hatchery has ever written is here, from the interesting (‘Venice Itinerary, 1972’) to the dull (‘Things I need to do this week, February 10 1980’) and from the exhilarating (‘My favourite break-up records, 1965’) to the embarrassing (‘A list of all my colleagues with attractiveness ratings, 1992’). They constitute a good read on their own, but with the author’s commentary to go with them, this book is an essential read.
‘Great Lists I have Written’ by Seldom Hatchery (pp 930) is published by Elemental Quaker Books and is priced £34.99.
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