A few weeks ago, I was making a (perhaps slightly in poor taste) joke about Osama Bin Laden, and later one about Jade Goody. I was told angrily both times, by the same person, not to "disrespect the dead". Now excuse if I'm being inconsiderate here, but if a person who had no qualms (allegedly) about ordering thousands of people to be killed and a person who made a career out of being ignorant and racist die, does this suddenly elevate them to the point of some kind of saint? Last time I checked, being racist twice doesn't count as your two miracles. What I'm really trying to say is that if a person does things to attract ridicule in life, dying does not cleanse them of that and make them better than me, because I'm not dead. It all goes a bit Final Fantasy X: "The world is bette governed in death" on you, and you begin to feel like maybe you should be dead too, to join in on the party.
More on this later.
Tuesday 21 June 2011
Tuesday 7 June 2011
To Mii, to U. (Dear god I'm sorry)
From what I've seen of the new Nintendo console, the WiiU, I have to say it's both a step forward and a shot in the foot. I'll explain why I think this through the medium of a numbered bullet point list:
Bear in mind the aforementioned shots in the foot are more to do with the E3 announcement than the console. As a nintendo fanboy, I'd rather gouge out my own eyes that criticise anything they make.
Good
1. The controller is an excellent idea, the information streaming thing is cool, and it's good to see the return of a "true" console controller to shut the haters up.
2. The graphical power of the console looks to be fine, though slightly below that of what the Xbox 360 can do when pressed. Then again, it's still early days, and I have no doubt that can be improved. Tech demo looked great already, mind you.
3. Proper online play you say? Wonderful, thanks.
4. The third party support is some of the best Nintendo has enjoyed in years. Titles such as Assasin's Creed, Ghost Recon Online and Batman: Arkham City could help to attract a more hardcore fanbase, but not to the point where Nintendo simply becomes another faceless creator of realism machines for blowing up imaginary communists.
5. Full backward compatibility with all Wii software and hardware, not to mention 1080P HD. NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM.
Problems with the show.
1. It got a little confusing a bit of the way through, or at least I thought it did. Maybe I'm just dim.
2. Not actually showing the console was a mistake. It lead many people to think the WiiU was just a Wii add-on, and that's not the sort of first impression you want to make.
3. I personally think holding onto the Wii name was a mistake. For a start it leads people to believe this is an add-on for the Wii,as indeed happened. But more importantly, the Wii doesn't have a good name with the regular gamer who doesn't play Nintendo games. Thanks to lazy developers, the Wii is now synonomous with lazy ports, poor controls and mini game collections. None of these are real problems, but that's the sort of view shared by a sad number of people. This won't help.
Tell me how I'm wrong and feel free to abuse me. I find it delicious.
Bear in mind the aforementioned shots in the foot are more to do with the E3 announcement than the console. As a nintendo fanboy, I'd rather gouge out my own eyes that criticise anything they make.
Good
1. The controller is an excellent idea, the information streaming thing is cool, and it's good to see the return of a "true" console controller to shut the haters up.
2. The graphical power of the console looks to be fine, though slightly below that of what the Xbox 360 can do when pressed. Then again, it's still early days, and I have no doubt that can be improved. Tech demo looked great already, mind you.
3. Proper online play you say? Wonderful, thanks.
4. The third party support is some of the best Nintendo has enjoyed in years. Titles such as Assasin's Creed, Ghost Recon Online and Batman: Arkham City could help to attract a more hardcore fanbase, but not to the point where Nintendo simply becomes another faceless creator of realism machines for blowing up imaginary communists.
5. Full backward compatibility with all Wii software and hardware, not to mention 1080P HD. NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM.
Problems with the show.
1. It got a little confusing a bit of the way through, or at least I thought it did. Maybe I'm just dim.
2. Not actually showing the console was a mistake. It lead many people to think the WiiU was just a Wii add-on, and that's not the sort of first impression you want to make.
3. I personally think holding onto the Wii name was a mistake. For a start it leads people to believe this is an add-on for the Wii,as indeed happened. But more importantly, the Wii doesn't have a good name with the regular gamer who doesn't play Nintendo games. Thanks to lazy developers, the Wii is now synonomous with lazy ports, poor controls and mini game collections. None of these are real problems, but that's the sort of view shared by a sad number of people. This won't help.
Tell me how I'm wrong and feel free to abuse me. I find it delicious.
Thursday 2 June 2011
Pop Rockalypse
This is something I wrote a long time ago, but I thought I'd share it with you all, if only so you can all enjoy a hearty chuckle at my amateurishness.
Many are familiar with Blink 182 and their wonderfully catchy brand of sing-along, humorous pop/punk/rock, also practised by bands like The Offspring and Green Day to varying degrees of success. A bit of harmless fun, you may think. WRONG. It’s killing rock music stone dead. Ten years ago all you could see on Keerang and MTV were track suited, dreadlocked buffoons rapping brainlessly about their parents being a minute late to their birthday party over noisy, atonal sludge. Now you can’t spend more than five minutes on any rock video or radio station without hearing the latest single from “I love my college girlfriend” or “My Glorious Coming Out Party”. It’s enough to make you want to prostrate yourself in front of what’s left of Limp Bizkit, begging them to release another album.
More harmless fun, you may think, but no, because every single song from these groups of overly chirpy oxygen thieves is a piece of pure evil, specially formulated to lodge itself in your brain so firmly the only way out is a war hammer to the cerebral cortex. It’s quite simple to make one yourself, so here’s a simple recipe:
1. Take either a Green Day or Blink 182 songbook, and change the order of the sections, just to avoid suspicion.
2. Make up some serviceable yet empty lyrics about being stuck in a rut, and then a catchy chorus imploring the listener to “show me what you really want” or “Come back to me”. Or quite simply repeat an interesting word like “swing” or “Socioeconomics”
3. Make a video of your band playing the song (taking note to hide the songbook you’re playing from) that features at least one member of Fall Out Boy or New Found Glory. Tadah! Enjoy your two albums of success!
Alternatively, you could take a Backstreet Boys song, and overdub some heavy guitars to fool your listeners into believing you can write your own songs. Must dash, I’ve got to go lock myself away with a Mudvayne album, which now sounds like mana from heaven.
Take what you will from that.
Many are familiar with Blink 182 and their wonderfully catchy brand of sing-along, humorous pop/punk/rock, also practised by bands like The Offspring and Green Day to varying degrees of success. A bit of harmless fun, you may think. WRONG. It’s killing rock music stone dead. Ten years ago all you could see on Keerang and MTV were track suited, dreadlocked buffoons rapping brainlessly about their parents being a minute late to their birthday party over noisy, atonal sludge. Now you can’t spend more than five minutes on any rock video or radio station without hearing the latest single from “I love my college girlfriend” or “My Glorious Coming Out Party”. It’s enough to make you want to prostrate yourself in front of what’s left of Limp Bizkit, begging them to release another album.
More harmless fun, you may think, but no, because every single song from these groups of overly chirpy oxygen thieves is a piece of pure evil, specially formulated to lodge itself in your brain so firmly the only way out is a war hammer to the cerebral cortex. It’s quite simple to make one yourself, so here’s a simple recipe:
1. Take either a Green Day or Blink 182 songbook, and change the order of the sections, just to avoid suspicion.
2. Make up some serviceable yet empty lyrics about being stuck in a rut, and then a catchy chorus imploring the listener to “show me what you really want” or “Come back to me”. Or quite simply repeat an interesting word like “swing” or “Socioeconomics”
3. Make a video of your band playing the song (taking note to hide the songbook you’re playing from) that features at least one member of Fall Out Boy or New Found Glory. Tadah! Enjoy your two albums of success!
Alternatively, you could take a Backstreet Boys song, and overdub some heavy guitars to fool your listeners into believing you can write your own songs. Must dash, I’ve got to go lock myself away with a Mudvayne album, which now sounds like mana from heaven.
Take what you will from that.
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