IRKED #1: High-horse Vegans.

I have been a vegetarian for most of my life. 

As I was but seven years old when I first made what would be an incredibly persistent decision, my reasoning at the time didn't go far beyond 'I don't want to hurt animals'. 

Obviously as I grew older and became more aware of human nature and the way the meat and dairy industries worked, my beliefs developed further. After much soul searching and many different dietary experiments, not to mention a few brushes with uptight vegans who seem to think that substituting meat for tofu makes them better than everyone else, I have reached a conclusion in my late teens and early twenties that I am perfectly happy with. 

There is nothing morally wrong with eating meat. 

Whether we have higher functions or not has nothing to do with it. We are animals ourselves, and as such we need to feed. We have the power to choose what we eat - some choose meat, some choose alternatives, and I am happy to be a humble, habitual vegetarian. I do not pretend that this decision makes me superior to anyone, and I don't believe that one person saying 'no thanks to that roasted corpse' will really make the meat and dairy industries go "Oh, shit, are we doing this wrong?". My choice to be vegetarian won't save any lives, but hell, it gives my conscience a little cuddle, and I'm fine with that. 

There are some pretty gigantic and gross issues with the way we receive those products as a culture. The mass production of meat is completely unnecessary and the dairy industry is vile, no doubt, but I have a newsflash for the scores of superiority complex ridden vegans out there - putting some soy milk in your tea between soaking chickpeas and scarfing down tubs of peanut butter doesn't save you any more cows than we do. You don't get any moral raw brownie points for that unless you're actually out there pulling pigs out of slaughterhouses or pursuing activism - which, by the way, omnivores do too. 

"What? You mean we're not the only ones who care about animal welfare? Shit, son!"

Yup. That's right. There are plenty of vegetarians and dare I say it, meat eaters, care just as much about animals and the environment as you do - except they actually do something about it. If you're an apparently superior vegan who sits at home barely supporting the weight of your own calcium deficient teeth, living on nuts and vitamin supplements, whining about the plight of the soy bean or whatever it is you people do, you are morally poor compared to the hundreds of veggie/meat eating activists and conservationists. It does not mean that you love the planet any more than they do. 

You are measured by your actions, not your diet. Vegans who go out there and actually do something about the broken industries have the moral high ground here, but no more so than omnivores who do the same. Even if you only eat meat or dairy from local farms, you're doing the world much more good than buying basics ham from your friendly neighbourhood global chain. 

Before you gulp down some rice milk and spend a few hours getting riled enough to pop open those Taurine pills to have a go at me, I did try going vegan, if only to see what all the fuss was about. I hated it, but that's fine. It's not for everyone. What I certainly don't need is some moody hippy spitting scarcely mustered vitriol at me for not adhering to the way they believe people should live. 

I believe that a man is entitled to the sweat of his own brow. If he has reared and slaughtered pigs and cows himself without resorting to the horrible mass production practises, he is entitled to that, and the monetary rewards. If a man spends a day catching fish, he is then entitled to eat those fish. Would you deny any other creature the spoils of the hunt? 

Oh wait. You would.

The idea of denying your pet meat when it's a staple part of their diet sickens me far more than the meat industry. Humans have the power of choice, cats and dogs do not - they are physically built to hunt and eat meat. Surely this is classed as animal abuse. You may claim "Oh, but they can survive just as well on taurine supplements and protein based dishes", but this is fundamentally wrong. If you don't want to feed a cat meat, don't get a cat. It's simple. Your so-called animal love has been twisted by your own broken morals and your animal has become an extremely sad trophy of your crazed 'ethical' crusade. 

Animals hunt. Morals are simply not relevant to them because morality is a human concept - not one of our best, either. Stop trying to implement human ideas onto other animals, because it's just cruel and it makes you just as bad as the meat industry. 

The bottom line: It is the meat and dairy industry that is morally wrong - not the consumption of it, or the people who do so. Hunting is hardwired into nature's philosophy and it all links in to that big ol' circle of life - some animals are born to eat, some animals are born to be eaten. By all means, crawl back into your cave, wipe the granola from your keyboard, and try and enforce your beliefs on the rest of mankind from the safety of the internet.

I'll be sat here, fielding your comments, your snide japes at my philosophy, in the smug knowledge that I'm right. 

-SZ

 

ScreenZombie's sort-of informed opinion on building your own gaming computer: Part One

If I could stick a big bloody disclaimer sticker on this page, I would, but I can't/am too lazy to do so here's a written one:

I am not 'qualified' in any sense in PC building or hardware. Everything I say from this point onwards is merely my opinion and knowledge as developed by time spent with far more capable people than me over the past few years of PC tinkering. I like to think I approach it with casual enthusiasm - I don't spend my whole life doing it but it remains a definite interest. Think of this as a layman's guide to getting started.

For the purposes of this guide I will avoid using tech - specific stats and stick to the basics. I'm also going to stick to a few reference brands just for ease of use. Finally: It's not hard to befriend a computer-friendly person. These people (Read: me) can easily be bribed with Monster or any energy drink of equal size and value. Have your computer friendly person check and double check any decisions you make, especially ones you're not sure about, as they may point out important information that you'd totally looked over because it was lost somewhere in the small print. 

Final points before the guide proper: Do your research - there is a wealth of information on the internet and YouTube is full of tutorial videos. Check out relevant forums - these will be a very good source of answers and reassurance should anything confuse you. Finally, read reviews and do research on parts before buying them. Mistakes other gamers have made can and will benefit your purchases and prevent any disappointment. AMD, Intel, Coolermaster and Corsair aren't the only brands in the computing hardware field so don't feel as though you have to stick to them, there are many other great manufacturers in the market.  

PART ONE: STUFF!

Your average PC is made up of these following components. All of these are mandatory, they're not fluffy little optionals you can get if you feel like it.

CASE:

You need one of these to stick all of your components in, obviously. Although there are some crazy design mavericks out there who like to approach things differently, as can be seen below.

Picture from Overclock.net - A good example of how lots of blue LEDs can make everything look excessively customized. 

Picture from gawker.com - ...Holy fuck.

There are, of course, those who prefer to take an ultra post-modernist (cheapskate) minimalist approach to cases:

Picture from tomshardware.com - Why waste money on all that fancy part storage crap when you can just buy a breadboard and work with that? 

Unless you're already artistically inclined I wouldn't reccommend doing this for your first PC. There are plenty of cool looking cases on the market for prices that won't break the bank, and you can always upgrade later if you're willing to move the parts around. Computing sites will often do case and PSU bundles which are great for your first build. 

KEEP IN MIND:

Make sure the case you choose is big enough for all the parts you want to put in it. This can easily be done by checking measurements on components before you spend anything. I don't imagine this being a huge problem unless you're going all out on parts and buying monster fans and cards. 

POWER SUPPLY UNIT (PSU)

This usually has lots of little tentacle wires stuck in it. Like a digital Cthulhu.

The power supply unit is pretty self explanatory. It has specific wires to power specific parts of the machine, and certain wires which can be used to power peripherals like extra fans or LEDs. Again, on your first PC, you may find yourself lost for choice - so here are a few simple tips. Brands like Corsair and Coolermaster are both generally good choices. For a gaming computer, you're aiming at about 500w. As your system becomes more and more demanding, you may decide on purchasing more wattage - personally I've stuck with a comfortable 650w on a fairly mid range machine. This will be screwed into the top or bottom of your case, depending on which one you end up choosing.

These run at a range of prices but you can get a decent 500w for around £30. Premium ones go from £100 and up. 

MOTHERBOARD

It's like a little electronic house for all your expensive shit.

This is the connecting point of all your components. The main choice you'll have here is whether to go for a mATX or ATX motherboard. This pertains to size - mATX is much smaller and a better choice for smaller cases. However, you'll probably find that ATX motherboards offer much more versatility for case and component management; and are essential for fitting larger graphics cards comfortably. It's vital you know what CPU you want before you buy a motherboard, as they all have particular sockets that determine which kind of processors they fit. There will almost always be identical motherboards with the socket you want, so take your time. Good brands to look at from a beginning point of view are MSI and Gigabyte. Depending on your budget, you can also look at Asus for decent gaming boards. 

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT(CPU)

Small but important. Like Verne Troyer in Austin Powers.

There are two commonly discussed giants in CPU manufacture - AMD and Intel. This is perhaps one instance where it's best to avoid forums as there are fanboys on both sides of this particular debate. The simple truth is that the market is always upgrading and improving so there's no real superior, and there are several non-AMD/Intel CPUs that are just as good. So consider your budget, do some shopping around, make sure if you already have the motherboard that it's the correct socket, and then make your decision. This should be one of the more expensive parts of your machine, though -  £60 is probably the bare minimum you should spend on a good CPU. 

 

CPU COOLING

This is more of a mini-section because it shouldn't be a big deal at first. If you buy your CPU in a retail box it will have a cooler with it, unless you're buying an AMD cooler, then for all of our sakes buy an after-market fan.

 

GRAPHICS CARD(GFX)

Everyone knows that GFX clock speed directly corresponds to ego size.

Motherboards all have integrated graphics, but you're a gamer! You want HD resolutions and dedicated graphics, and a card so big it needs brackets. When deciding on your first graphics card it can be tempting to blow your whole budget on the biggest, shiniest one with the most numbers on it, but don't. The CPU and RAM are both important, and many lower priced cards will still offer sufficient power to play new games if paired with a decent processor. There are thousands of these to choose from, so take advice from PC owning friends and consider carefully. If you're not adverse to buying second hand, it might be worth your while looking for refurbished cards from reputable stores and sites. These things last for years, and a refurbed card is just as good as a new one. 

 

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY(RAM)

Essential for those moments where you absolutely must Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, 4chan, Spotify, PhotoShop, and play World of Warcraft all at once. 

 Think of this like your computer's short term memory - the more of it you have, the more stuff your computer can do at once. They come in many flavours but make sure you get the correct voltage and DDR (Double Data Rate) for your motherboard. RAM will either be DDR, DDR2, or DDR3. The numbers simply mark the jumps in generation and does not imply any speed changes. From my experience, Kingston RAM is an invaluable choice for low budget gaming, but Corsair do a few £30+ options that are equally good. 4GB is pretty much an absolute amount if all you want to do is play games on your machine, but if you're looking to do any advanced video editing or photoshop work it may be worth investing in an 8GB kit.

HARD DRIVE

 

For all those pictures of cats you'll be downloading. Yes... cats.

You're probably familiar with this so I won't go into too much detail to avoid sounding condescending. As this will be storing all of your long term data, music, videos, games, and of course, your operating system,  you need to consider how much digital estate you'll be using. For most, 500GB is sufficient, but I'd say go for a terabyte (1TB) as they're really not that expensive these days. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are also an option, but while they may be the future of memory, you also pay much more for much less. Buy yourself a good Samsung hard drive with 7200 RPM(Revolutions Per Minute, this determines how fast the drive can access data) and it should certainly serve you well for a good few years. 

OPTICAL DRIVE

This is what you'll need to read DVDs and CDs. It's worth spending a little more on them if you can manage it, but it's worth pointing out that blu-ray drives are only really cool factor at this point in time. Admittedly, buying a blu-ray drive for about £50 works out cheaper than buying a blu-ray player, but game discs won't be using it forever, and if you already own a PS3 or BD player it's a bit redundant. LG, Sony, Samsung - all trustworthy brands, and all of them offer a budget choice. 

I have one. Because I have no self esteem. 

That's it for part one of the guide, but check back next week for Part 2 - Peripherals (Things to make you feel better about being sat on your arse playing games all day). 

-SZ

 

 

VIDEO: Remembrance Day and why it's still relevant.

It was cold and raining slightly, so what better time for a journalism teacher to send his delicate students out into the harsh arms of Farnham's wandering denizens? 

After many, many rejections, people looking at us like we were wandering lunatics filming old people for kicks, we eventually scrounged together enough footage to present you with this.

Project_Test_lowquality.wmv Watch on Posterous

Young people were confused, old people were incensed at the very notion of someone not remembering Remembrance Day, and some believed it should be rebranded and made more current.

I think the most important thing to remember on Remembrance Day is that while it was a long time ago that those men fought and died in far away lands to protect what little remained of once-great Britain, the fact remains that they fought for it. Just because that particular war has faded into the annals of history does not mean that the war effort should be forgotten in lieue of this new, phony American clusterf**k. Those soldiers fought and died because they were fighting fascism - the closest thing to comic book evil humanity gets. They aren't fighting and dying to secure oil contracts for the United States. 

-SZ

ASSIGNMENT: Newspage Story

Before anyone gets confused about why I've suddenly switched from writing about games and media to rambling about a little town in Surrey, let me point out that this is part of a University portfolio and has no reflection on my actual field of journalism. 

"Farnham's failings reviewed"

FARNHAM residents will soon be reading a document that details the 'failings' of their town. 

Surrey County Council have compiled the document from several surveys, and some of the major problems that appear are pollution and waste disposal. Farnham is notorious for pollution and several campaigns have been launched by the Farnham Herald and other local organizations to decrease it. 

Resident Annie White said "It's just too much. We're a little farming town, there's absolutely no reason why Farnham should be one of Britain's most polluted towns" Several methods have been suggested to fix it, including changes to the one-way system, which accounts for an estimated 30% of excess pollution as it forces drivers to make unnecessary journeys. 

Student Mark Turner said "It's horrible to get around. Even driving back from Uni is stupidly complicated and ends up costing more petrol".

Whether or not the town council can or will do anything with the information remains to be seen, but many Farnham locals hope this will be the start of more pollution awareness. 

By Laurence Braddow

ASSIGNMENT: Farnham: "Cool because it has a castle"

Grace_and_Laurence_-_radio_project_(1).WAV Listen on Posterous

As part of our multimedia platform assignment, my classmate Grace and I went out into Farnham to find out what students and older people thought of the town. This just involved a recorder, a wander around town accosting random strangers, and an hour or so in the editing room. 

The result was definitely a mixed bag, but it can be said that Farnham's older inhabitants enjoy it more than the younger ones, the students predictably bemoaning the lack of things to do. 

 

Saints Row: The Third

When it comes to stupid fun, Saints Row: The Third has no equal this year. 

You may have scaled giant mountains and slain fire breathing dragons in Skyrim, you may have gone toe-to-toe with some of DC's biggest villains in Arkham City, and you may have fought modern day wars with cutting edge technology, online and offline. 

But I can personally guarantee, unless your life is far more interesting than mine, that you have not beaten a policeman to death with a giant purple sex toy, escaped from gangsters riding carriages pulled by saddled men on your own personal man-horse, or murdered hordes of prostitute assassins alongside a pimp only capable of speaking in autotune. 

This is pretty much as sane as the game gets. In between bursts of bizarre obscenity and crime game stereotypes, there are gloriously mental moments which had me staring open-mouthed at the screen in genuine what-the-fuckery. In fact, it wouldn't be over the top at all to say that the first, say, half hour of the game has more balls per second (Henceforth referred to as BPS) than any action movie I've watched in the past two years. There is no downtime in Saints Row, it takes the idea of serious sandboxes and then crams it full of toys, explosions, car chases, zombies, Tron levels, and bizarre sexual references.

The game rockets from one activity to the next, and many of these will be familiar to those who have followed the Saints Row series - you can merrily return to haphazardly chucking yourself in front of cars to make money in Insurance Fraud, or hanging off of buildings and sniping cyberpunk criminals just because you feel like it. This is where Saint's Row's strengths lie, glorious, mindless, violent stupid fun, a brilliant respite from the drama-heavy games of late. It's not for everyone, and I'm certain there'll be people who play it once and hate it. 

But for those who don't, you'll have hours upon hours of psychotic grin inducing gameplay ahead, especially if you have the preorder bonuses. This includes a mind controlling octopus gun, a gameshow costume topped with a Deadmau5 style cat head, and a truck mounted with a man-firing cannon that lets you fire yourself and countless others clean across the skyline. If you read that sentence and thought "Hell yeah", then Saints Row is definitely for you.

-SZ

Collect THIS - Assassin's Creed Revelations

So, the new Assassin's Creed came out recently - It's November, of course there's another AC game out - and while I've had a bit too much on my plate to really involve myself with the game itself, I did march out dutifully on November 15th and purchase the collector's edition on PS3. Subliminal programming successful, Ubisoft. Your secret French masterplan is finally succeeding.

This collector's edition is nicely presented, but hardly beats the previous Codex Edition of Brotherhood. It comes in a solid plastic box with a cardboard overlay, with a subtle plastic switch on the front to open the top and reveal the nerdy goodness within. As for extra content, you get a couple of extra multiplayer characters, the dungeon of Vlad the Impaler to explore as an extra level, and some pretty thin collector's stuff. 

The first thing I pulled out was the artbook. It's pretty slim but it has some cool images in it, and it's interesting to see Ezio's evolution in Ubisoft's eyes. It also has a very, very, shiny cover. If you lived somewhere that isn't England, you get a much more substantial and apparently very high quality book. So hate yourself for living in a country that receives lower than standard collector's materials!

The only other item of interest is the Assassin's Creed: Embers short film. This is pretty nice to look at and a nice way of wrapping up Ezio's story, but ultimately unimpressive. I would have bought this set regardless as I have every other AC game in collector's edition, but I wouldn't recommend shelling out the extra cash for this box unless you're just as obsessive about the games as I am. 

As for the game itself; I've played three or four hours, and it's good. I'm eternally disappointed in Ubi for refusing to move out of the same city visuals but there's enough new stuff here to contend with ACII and easily surpass Brotherhood. 

-SZ

 

Idiot Wars Episode I... the Idiots Strike Back

we petition the obama administration to:

Immediately Ban the Deadly Videogame Known as "SkyRim" for The Safety of America's Youths.

Whereas videogaming has proven to cause social, ethical and health problems in people of all ages,

Whereas sexual perversion and homosexuality are threatening to destroy the Christian foundations on which this nation was built,

Whereas a new video game has just been created that far exceeds any others in the psychological and spiritual damage it does to teens,

We, the American people, today ask you,

1) To enact an immediate ban on the videogame known as "SkyRim" produced by Blizzard Entertainment.

2) To seize and destroy all copies already in public hands and erase its presence on the internet.

3) To prosecute the players of "SkyRim" to the fullest extent of the law.

4) To create a national database of videogame avatars and "screen names" so that teenagers can be better monitored.

Created: Nov 24, 2011

Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Human Rights, Technology and Telecommunications

Learn about Petition Thresholds

It's up to you to build support for petitions you care about and gather more signatures. A petition must get 150 signatures in order to be publicly searchable on WhiteHouse.gov.

Over time, we may need to adjust the petition signature thresholds, but we'll always let you know what the thresholds are.

Signatures needed by December 24, 2011 to reach goal of 25,000

24,987

Total signatures on this petition

13

via wwws.whitehouse.gov

It's no secret that I highly disapprove of those relatively few idiot Americans that set the trend for a global stereotype. These stupid bastards make the US a tragic joke in the eyes of the civilized world, and does nothing to rid the world of the idea that Americans are all hyper-Christian hicks who'll happily be offended at just about anything.

These particular idiots have had a go at just about everything I hold dear - rock and metal music haven't had an easy ride, and there's been no shortage of thick politicians attempting to ride an anti-videogame policy to success (This is mainly because no-one is easier to exploit than bad parents looking for a scapegoat).

But don't you fuck with Skyrim, America. Don't even go there.

Can you imagine if the beleaguered US government just decided to ditch worrying about Afghanistan and the fact that pretty much every teen who isn't playing Skyrim is currently part of the Occupy movement to try and take this seriously?

"I'm sorry, what? You want us to get rid of the one thing keeping teenagers at home? Fuck you, Tennessee"

I'll end this rant here, but rest assured America, I have plenty more bile to douse your idiots with.

I'm just too busy playing videogames right now.

-L

My first day in Skyrim...

At the time of writing, I have clocked up my first twenty hours on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which entitles me to present to you this brief summary of a day in the life of a Dragonborn- 

(Some minor spoilers ahead)

 

• Almost got executed. Dragon appeared. Didn't get executed.
• Went into giant cave. Found ancient Dragon word. 
• Found Whiterun, the first city you encounter in the storyline. 
• Killed a dragon because it was there. 
• Learned how to Shout because I absorbed the Dragon's soul. 
• Promptly spent a good half hour Shouting at townsfolk until a guard appeared and nervously asked me to pack it in. 
• Was made Thane of Whiterun, given a flame axe (Catch!) and a bodyguard who I pretty much just told to stay home. 
• Walked up a huge fucking mountain. 
• Shouted at an old man. 
• Joined a rebellion, helped said rebellion attack and take over Whiterun, got told off by the Jarl who was ruling it beforehand. 
• Heard one Dragon calling another worthless and wondered if workplace bullying was commonplace in their society. 
• Killed the worthless dragon and then felt bad, then realized I could use its soul to Shout at time. 
• Shouted at time. 
• Got bored of killing dragons, wandered off into the "Miscellaeneous" quest section.
• Killed an old woman.
• Got kidnapped in my sleep and inducted into the Dark Brotherhood. 
• Killed a woman with a bow and arrow at her own wedding. Felt awesome for about two seconds before her husband came over and stabbed me in the face a few times. 
• Decided to try my luck with one of those big mammoths. Got hit by a giant and flew clear across the map. 

It's all been one giant "ooooh, what's this?". The main storyline kept my attention for maybe five hours or so but then I just went and lost myself in the huge amount of content on offer. Sure, I'll wander back to it eventually, but for now, I'm just enjoying the meticulously crafted, beautifully realized game world, which, despite being filled with freezing mountains and cold plains, is more alive than any world Bethesda has forged beforehand. 

It's easy to see how their experience with other games has changed Skyrim. Even minor stylistic elements like the interface - which, by the way, is super streamlined and amazingly intuitive - and the way names of discoveries scroll atop the screen remove any possibility of distraction. Nothing ever tries to pull you away from the game. It pauses while you change weapons, spells, and armour, but the game in front of you is still very clear. It allows you to do what you want with minimal distraction, and it's awesome. 

Bear in mind this isn't a proper review. I'll get one of those written up when I've actually finished the main story line... say at around the 50 hour point? 

See you then!

-L

Collect THIS: FF XIII-2 Collector's Edition

via kotaku.com

In an attempt to start blogging more regularly, here's a new feature I'm going to try and introduce over the next few weeks - every week I'll post some sort of awesome/failsome collectable for your viewing pleasure. This will include games, DVDs, figures, and ridiculous memorabilia.

So here's the FF XIII-2 Collector's Edition (I think it may be time to abandon the Roman numerals, Square) in all its underwhelming glory. As has become rather prevalent lately, the general approach to producing a CE tends to be sticking it in white book packaging and stuffing some extra DLC in it. The most ridiculous thing about this is 95% of the time, this DLC will be released on PSN, XBL, or Steam, removing the exclusive appeal entirely.

If this was a lesser developer I would let it slide, but think of the potential a Final Fantasy special edition has, the amount of imaginative crap they could fill it with. Cuddly Moogles, startling Tonberry statues that seem to get closer every time you look at them, Yuna's gurning face to scare off any potential purchaser. Or perhaps just a soundclip from that awkward laughing scene in X playing eternally to murder your ear drums and make you cringe so hard your face turns in on itself.

I personally vote for a life size, fully functional Buster Sword, but no-one ever listens to the creepy guy with long hair and glasses.

-L

No More Heroes micro review

Yesterday I sat down to play a game I've always been intrigued by, yet avoided at all costs. It's called No More Heroes, and I've dodged it thus far because it was previously a Wii exclusive (And Nintendo is Satan). 

No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise is a PS3 Move version of the original games. All credit to them, this was no lazy port - the game has been given a HD revamp and there's no doubt at all that it looks very slick, very stylish, and very cinematic. Unfortunately, this game is a poster child for style over substance, and the controls are unbearably wooden, so even though Travis looks cool swinging his giant shiny rod around onscreen, it feels like you're bashing a cotton bud against a redwood. 

I could probably have forgiven the repetitive, finisher-heavy combat if it was some sort of weird minigame, and it's probably better if you play it with the Move (I personally refuse to bow to the motion control cash in). The driving, however? That sucks balls. It was like playing the first Driver game with a broken controller... and severe autism. His heavy, future-retro bike turns corners like Tron without the early Sci-Fi quirkyness, and I found it totally unplayable. 

So, in short - everything is wooden. The jokes are funny at first but there's only so many times you can rehash an "I want to have lots of sex with you" innuendo. Thugs scream "My spleen!" almost every time you kill them and that really, really starts to drag. There are plenty of cool little things to do - like part time jobs, exploring all the little bits of Travis' apartment, but the main game itself fails to do enough to hold them up. 

It gets a 6/10 in my opinion, but it may just be quirky/dirty enough to stand up for some people.

 

-L

 

UCA Farnham Gaming Society

In lieu of mine and my girlfriend's recent foray into painting Warhammer Fantasy models (I'm more of a 40k fan) I started wondering why there wasn't any kind of gaming society at UCA Farnham. I did some research into this anomalous factoid and it turned out that there was a society last year, but it ended up going under for one reason or another. 

I've taken the "If you build it, they will come" approach and sent an email out. Within the space of a day several people have shown a lot of interest in getting this started, unfortunately there aren't many tabletop gamers as there are console. Either way, it's cool to see people taking an interest, and it'll be fun if we can get it started. 

I'm also (optimistically) hoping the Uni might be able to fund the purchase of some cool games and equipment to use - Dreadfleet, Blood Bowl, and gaming boards. If we can get the Computer Games Art staff on board; it would be easy to set up tournaments and multiplayer events, and hopefully secure some funding. 

More on this as it develops!

 

-L

Bad mothers cause web filtering for the masses

via guardian.co.uk

I was doing my daily browse (of internet newspapers, not porn) when I saw this and I just had to laugh.

The article basically says that the Government is about to unleash a series of measures with top UK internet providers to prevent children from accessing pornography online. They intend to force an 'opt-in' service where users who want to view porn have to register that particular interest with the provider. The reasons why this is stupid and will prove almost entirely ineffective surely number in the hundreds, but here are just a few.

1) Your average ten year old knows his/her way around Google. A quick search on how to avoid these imposed limits will bring up a number of solutions, DNS workarounds or proxy changes that get your child all the porn they'll ever want.
2) One word - Torrents. When Jimmy finds out that he can download hardcore foot fetish porn the same way he downloads Hannah Montana's latest album, you can bet there'll be a few hundred gigabytes of porn lurking somewhere on his hard drive, with little room for anything else.
3) Google! You can pretty much type anything in with safe search off (Which kids will find out how to disable pretty quickly) and up pops a few thousand jpegs worth of nudity.
4) I'm not really sure how the opt-in will work, but I doubt it will be on a single user basis. Which means if you're in a normal family home with a dad or a teenager as well as your precious little bundle of joy, either Dad or the teenager will probably at some point opt in, thus unlocking porn for the entire household.

These ridiculous measures not only threaten to impose upon the public's rights, but they expose the government for not really knowing anything at all about this subject. I do not know a single adult who has been forever warped by watching porn as a child - it's an STD free way of getting rid of a perfectly natural curiosity that all people have at some point in their lives.

This is an irritation to the many in exchange for the approval of a few loud mouthed mums who don't know how to parent their children properly. News flash, Mothers' Union - if your kid is being parented correctly, he will have no interest whatsoever in porn. If you treat pornography and violence as some evil, forbidden thing, then you can pretty much guarantee that they'll go looking for it at the first opportunity. Hell, when I was eleven, Action Man and cartoons were still king in my mind, and I couldn't care less about boobs.

Why? Because I was parented properly. Because my mother didn't treat sex and nudity as some evil secret for only the 16+. It was something else that existed in the world, but at that point in my life, I couldn't care less about it, because it wasn't a taboo, and my mum would actually answer questions when I asked them. When I asked "where do babies come from?" or "what's sex?", I was told the truth in a format appropriate to my age. There was a complete lack of storks or "When a mummy and a daddy love each other very much..."

All this nanny-government farce is doing is exposing how little the government understand the way the internet works and assisting a collective of attention seeking mums in sealing away everything they don't want their kids to see. It's more than a little sinister, if the Mothers' Union wanted HMV to stop selling Marilyn Manson albums, would David Cameron wave the Tory wand and ban it from the shelves?

I'm all for preventing children being exposed to this element of life inadvertently, and later on the article speaks about inappropriate clothing for kids, which I'm all for ending, but aren't we skirting around the real issue here? Why is the government failing to take into account that the parents are the ones at fault? If you buy your son a computer, he's going to explore the internet. If you buy your daughter an underwired bra, she's going to wear it.

I'd love to hear thoughts or feedback on this subject. Comment on facebook, posterous, or email me.

-L

Long Live Play

via youtube.com

This is easily the best Sony advert I've ever seen. What can i say = they know how to play us.

Gave me a bit of a chill, I'm not going to lie.

-L

Awesome

via huffingtonpost.com

This is pretty cool.

-L

There are no words...

via videogamer.com

... to describe how much joy this trailer gave me.

-L

I Refuse To Lie to Children

via guardian.co.uk

Ever read Where the Wild Things Are? This guy is a hero.

-L

Gotta love the Australians...

via youtube.com

Sixx Sense

via sixxsense.com

Such a great show.

Mastodon: The Hunter

via google.co.uk

Georgian sludge metal band Mastodon return for a fifth trip into metal psychedelia with The Hunter, a raw follow up to its predecessor Crack the Skye.

Where Crack the Skye had heavy prog elements and a definite concept throughout, this new album is much more independent from that kind of structure, making stunning use of those trademark riffs and forcing every song to stand on its own merits - which they do, spectacularly. Every song is like a concept within itself, and pretty much all of them start with an instant hook riff.
If you're looking for something new from the band, then you may not be fulfilled. But if you're all good with more of what the band does best, it's definitely worth buying.

-L

Super Knife: When five knives just aren't enough.

via amazon.co.uk

This is insane. I think we just found the Bear Grylls of the gadget world.

-L

Silly DC.

via io9.com

What's that? DC massively missed the mark with that giant DCU-wide reboot they had in mind? Surprise, surprise.

Surely when a seven year old girl can see how badly you've fucked up, that's time to take a step back and think "Hm, perhaps we should consider turning this one around..."

Anyway, this is a great read if you're remotely interested in comics and it has a bunch of links to other great articles.

-L

My sick sense of humour, summarized.

via newgrounds.com

I love this series. It's not to the taste of most but imagine your favourite childhood cartoon, put it in the back of a dirty white van with that nice gent offering candies, put it through an extremely stressful and experimental series of therapies, and you have Leo & Satan. If you like Adult Swim, this is definitely something you should look into.
-L

Gears of War 3: The biggest launch this year.

THE BUZZ: Online sales-tracking website VGChartz is proclaiming that in its first week of release, Gears of War 3 has sold over 3 million copies. If true, this would not only be a 50% increase from the sales of Gears of War 2, but would mean that Gears 3 outsold the first-week sales of both previous Gears of War titles combined.

This would also put Gears of War 3 as the biggest launch of 2011—above previous top seller Pokemon Black & White—and would chart it as the 6th biggest Xbox 360 launch of all time worldwide (behind Grand Theft Auto IV).

EGM’s TAKE: VGChartz isn’t always known as the most reliable sales-tracking outfit out there, but it wouldn’t be surprising if their numbers on this one turn out be true. Back in May, Gears of War 3 had already hit 1+ million pre-orders, and there are no doubt more gamers out there who purchase games without pre-ordering versus those who do.

Source: VGChartz

via egmnow.com

This is really unsurprising. I've yet to get all the way through the story but the game is good. Chest high walls are go as this cover based shooter reaches Epic new heights.

Metal Hammer » Blog Archive » EXCLUSIVE: New Evanescence Track Streaming On Metal Hammer!

via metalhammer.co.uk

I fail to see the point in Amy Lee continuing to produce the same limpid crap that has been every single one of her efforts since Fallen.
And that was a long time ago.

Perhaps she has some misguided sense of self entitlement ("I am a musician! Honest!") that continues to drive her to churn out this bland crap. Their sound (Back when it was good) has since been improved tenfold by We Are The Fallen. This band was basically a big "fuck you" to Amy Lee after her endless histrionics caused all the decent musicians in her once-great band to scarper... and then form a better band with that same gloriously miserable sound and a far superior vocalist.

Vitriol aside, Amy Lee fails to impress with these lacklustre, derivative singles. I'll still give the self titled album a listen - old habits die hard, and Evanescence was a childhood band almost as essential as Nirvana for me - but I will do so in the same way you approach cleaning up after your dog. You know it's going to be warm shit, but someone has to pick it up.

-L

rob-zombie-mobile-wallpaper.jpg (320×480)

via www3.images.coolspotters.com

So now we all now what Kurt Cobain would have looked like if he had lived to reach middle age...

-L

A brilliant article on why the rock musical was dead.

via timeout.com

I loved this article.

The rock musical is truly dead (Except for Repo!).

-Laurence

A busy summer, and a deluge of fantasy.

It's been a good while since I've written anything remotely insightful or opinionated due to (ironically enough) moving away to study Journalism at university, so this is my first attempt at giving my atrophied creative muscles a good kicking.

My summer has been spent pursuing fantasy novels in the hopes of finding some inspiration to begin writing my own stories again (What was once an absolutely predominant part of my character has grown somewhat meek, and I fear if I don't get back into gear I'll lose all rights to title myself a writer). This began with an assault on George RR Martin's gargantuan series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Now, I'd heard much and more of this epic before HBO succeeded in condensing the first book into ten gripping episodes of sex, death, and betrayal, but I must admit, even for me, it was daunting. It wasn't the size of the saga that gave me cause to hesitate, rather two uncertainties that lingered in the back of my head as a long time fantasy reader.

Reason number one: Due to an issue between Martin and his publisher regarding the size of the original manuscript, there was a huge delay between the release of A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons - seeing as these two were intended to be pushed as one book. Six years separate the publications, and I have no doubt that ADWD's release was well-timed after the conclusion of the massively successful HBO series. No offense to the author, but I don't know if I can genuinely stay interested in the series long enough to wait potentially another decade for its conclusion - and Martin isn't getting any younger!

Reason number two: Series that stay active for this long seem to start to lose priority in the author's mind - unless of course we're talking about bloated cash cow franchises. Not only that, but one with the expertly crafted multi-thread narrative of A Song of Ice and Fire's will eventually begin to loop around on itself, questions will go unanswered, and the story will begin to drag. After reading the latest instalment I realized that Martin has fallen into this trap, and this was a truly sad realization, as this man is a master of the literary craft, and ASOIAF had the potential to overcome classic literary epics.

I'm not a long time reader of the series, but I love them all the same -  perhaps not with the somewhat creepy passion of people who have been reading it since the beginning, but hell, they've been sat on this particular journey for almost 20 years now, they've earned the right to be a little weird about it. Here's hoping Martin can get things moving again in The Winds of Winter!

-L

inFamous 2 has bad morals.

By that, I don't mean it teaches little kids to take up parkour and develop a penchant for shock therapy. It's clear from playing the first hour or so of inFamous 2 that this is one of the sequels of the year - it's fantastically well-designed, any weak points in the gameplay have been carefully ironed out or replaced with superior mechanics, and the visuals have had a mo-cap shaped slap in the face. Cole McGrath is an ass-kicking, wall-running, wire-grinding powerhouse, and despite an appearance overhaul that makes him look like a skinny Bruce Willis wannabe, he's still pleasantly familiar. The game is truly outstanding and improves on anything that might have been slightly amiss with the fantastic original.

Which is why it's such a shame that they seem to have completely forgotten about how awkwardly the morality system was shoehorned into the first game. Maybe this can be explained away by the definitive comic book inspiration, but that's not where inFamous' morality system fails. This is the game's only true flaw, and it wouldn't be much of a complaint at all if it wasn't one of the mechanics that it prides itself on. Morality choices in previous games - using Fable as an example - have always differed good and evil by sacrifice and convenience. inFamous 2 only does this by offering you two equally difficult routes; one that makes total sense, and the other unnecessarily chaotic.

In Fable,  for example, you would be provided with one way of finishing a quest that handed out some good points and a small reward. On the other hand, you could take the easier way out and grab yourself a more substantial reward. People would spit on you in the middle of the street, but your life was slightly easier. Perhaps this was some vague metaphor for the weak wills and small hearts of the corrupt, but in inFamous 2, Evil Cole doesn't get anything easier than Good Cole does.

The only real difference morality makes is how Cole's powers manifest, and to be honest, by the end of the game you'll have found the powerhouse combination you love and you'll be perfectly happy zapping away at the game's various swamp beasties, rednecks arbitrarily South African ice soldiers and perhaps innocent civilians with whatever works for you. Neither morality offers any particular advantage, and with enough upgrading, every power is equally lethal. This is another area where the game succeeds - the battles are extremely frequent, and to stave off button mashing tedium, Cole has a huge arsenal of superhuman powers which can be upgraded ad infinitum and eventually, his electricity powers will be augmented with similar ice and fire abilities. There's a lot of choice in how to approach enemies, creating a unique play experience depending on personal preference.

Technically, the game excels all around. Combat is fast, furious, and always offering new challenges (Not to mention ways to electrocute, burn, and freeze said challenges) and Cole's friends have refreshingly deep and relatable motivations - even Zeke, who originally had all the personality and charm of a root vegetable is a likeable chap. An unfortunate byproduct of this is Cole's own narrative ambiguity becoming even more obvious, but that has no impact on the game's enjoyability. Exploring the city is much more of a free experience due Cole's movement abilities having already manifested, reducing the amount of time you spend pressing X whilst straddling skyscrapers. The game world is huge, the main quest line is satisfying and more importantly, can be pursued at your own pace, giving the player plenty of time to explore the sandbox city, tackle random muggings or chase after all the blast shards to make those big encounters seem like nothing.

Cole has his fair share of big things to kill throughout, but the huge battles with towering mutants from the swamp aren't nearly as intense as the smaller and more populated fights. The game tends to reuse old bosses any time it feels like an area isn't challenging enough, or maybe they just assume Cole misses them if they don't pop their tentacles around the door for a coffee and a lightning bolt to the face. Once you've found these creature's weak points, it's easy enough to spam the same move over and over again until the enemy is no longer a problem. This aside, there's two big battles in particular which really stand out and do the game credit.

By its apocalyptic finale, be it the good or the evil ending, fans of inFamous will definitely be satisfied. This is a truly worthwhile experience that gamers will be itching to replay, and with an endless stream of user generated content thanks to Sucker Punch's clever mission creation tool, it's got one hell of a shelf life.

DCU Online (And I feel guilty about milk)

The two thoughts circling around my head right now are "damn cows!" and "Poor DCUO".

I've had the game for the grand total of two days and whilst I like the fresh look, freedom of movement, and generally all the little touches (Being mentored by the likes of Superman, Batman, The Joker and Lex Luthor is something you just don't get in World of Warcraft or RIFT), there are two major issues that make me turn the game off about half an hour after logging on.

Issue number one!

The controls are horribly console-friendly. Now, I'm a PC gamer with ownership of a PS3 and a 360, and I love those consoles, but the MMO is not something intended for a PS3 interface. Playing on a PC with controls designed for a console controller is frustrating, and thus DCU feels more like a button mashing action game than anything else. It also means that tiny little things like movement and aiming are just a little bit more imprecise. Movement feels delayed and clunky.

Issue number two! (And it's a doozy)
There is nothing more awkward than logging onto an MMO, looking at the server list in that gentle, virginal moment where you're picking a place to host your first tender foray into a new world, and every server listed is marked as "low".

There are limitless analogies to describe that feeling. It's like being inches away from losing your virginity, and the significant other decides to go do something else (Probably WoW). Sony Online Entertainment must feel like the richest, hottest kids in town who have thrown a giant party with lots of beer, marijuana and strippers while their incredibly rich parents are away in France trying to cover up the tragic farce their marriage has become - only to find out that everyone else would rather be at home drinking tea, eating crisps, and, you guessed it, playing World of Warcraft.

In my humble opinion, the launch was most unfortunate. I didn't join the game at launch as I did with Rift, but the launcher experienced a load of Flash and Java related issues that stopped people from playing the game entirely, not to mention an incorrect configuration file which tried to access the wrong links for news in the launcher wrapper. Even as I played the other day, months after release, I still had to go and copy - paste the right links in the config file to play. It sounds like a minor complaint, but several months after release, this really should have been patched out for good. Not long after DCUO's launch, Rift hit, which had already garnered itself quite a player base through an intense beta testing programme and those gorgeous HD visuals. Rift is technically the superior game, both to WoW and DCUO, however, it does not have the establishment of either. WoW has been going forever, and has hundreds upon hundreds of hours of content for those with the time to take that life consuming walk through Azeroth.

Not only that, but content updates are frequent and decent thanks to Blizzard's pile of cash that they all make their homes in. DCUO has characters and locales established through decades of comic books, movies, and videogames, which is the only reason it has players, in my opinion. You do not play DC Online unless you like DC characters, whereas you get all kinds of gamers playing WoW without a second thought for the lore or main storylines just for the sweet joy of ganking some Night Elf or doing the most DPS on a stupid recount scale. Rift has the worst lore of all, it's messy and the characters look kind of lame, but it offers a comprehensive MMO experience which is extremely rewarding with patience. It's reminiscent of WoW in the early days when you couldn't get to level 80 playing casually in a week.

With all that said, I feel guilty about milk... that is all.

The Big C's(Caffeine, Chocolate, Comics and Computers)

Oops.

I did that thing I always do - I forgot to remind the internet that I was alive for several weeks! Nay, months, even!

I can't help that, though. Life has been a double - bladed edge of climax and disappointment lately. A trip to Brighton with the girlfriend to , and therefore inevitably Dave's Comics, reignited the purebred nerd lurking somewhere in my mangled cultural identity and thus I've set about assimilating myself into the world of spandex and superheroes again. However, my preference for the bloody and occasionally disturbing meant I skipped the endless back issues of Spidey and friends and scooped up as much Jhonen Vasquez/Mark Millar/The Darkness as I could for my money. Don't get me wrong, I love Spider Man, but Peter Parker never ripped out a man's heart and ate it (Shut UP, Marvel Zombies).

I also finished college with some pretty decent grades. So, off to Uni in a few months, with all my worldly belongings and a desire for some sort of digital or print related career. This is what I really wanted to write about - for the past month, my girlfriend Lisa has essentially been living with me, sort of like a precursor for the next year coming, and it's been interesting. Despite our many, many similarities, we have one fundamental difference which continues to become a bone of contention (However small it is).

It's called "Lifestyle", and the papers would have you believe that it's the difference between dying, and well, just not dying for a little bit longer, really. Despite having studied it for three years now, I still pay the media little regard when it comes to our own health. Our lives are our own, and while I will not begrudge someone who goes for daily jogs or lives entirely on nuts, wholegrain and water their choices, I will argue to my last nerve if they try and question mine.

If I sit on my arse playing MMOs and eating cake all day, I am aware that I will get fat. Obviously I do not care, otherwise I wouldn't do it. If I did care, I would go straight to the closest newspaper and beg them for the latest tidbit of bullshit claiming that holding kittens for too long can cause cancer, or that going to the dentists increases chances of lactose intolerance, or that if you abandon coffee, video games, chocolate, and weed you become IMMORTAL AND GAIN THE POWER TO STRIP THE PUDGY FLESH BREATHERS OF THEIR FOOLISH THOUGHTS OF INDEPENDENCE (Oh, wait. That's the worldwide media).

My girlfriend is no fool - she'll laugh equally at the pathetic, reader - harvesting articles. She's one of those borderline sensible healthy people and though she loves me for me, not for my lifestyle or pastimes, I do sense a slight... polarization. She wants to walk places after meals, I want to curl up out of direct sunlight with A Song of Ice and Fire. We have an equal uneasiness about each other's habits - she wants me to be as passionate/aware about health as she is, and I want her to be as laid back and relaxed about it as I am. If I'm in the mood to be what is considered healthy, I will be. I'm a happy little vegetarian with a love for confectionery, and my body is a 50/50 divide of muscle and fat. I'm not fat, but I'm a little round about the edges, a weight which I easily sustain.

I don't even know why I'm thinking about this tripe, to be honest.

Anyway, I just finished reading Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors and it was bloody fantastic. So was Kick - Ass, the graphic novel of my favourite superhero movie of recent times, which for some diabolical reason I have only just gotten around to reading. I'm carving through A Song of Ice And Fire like a hot knife, currently on A Storm of Swords Part 1. I've also been playing The Darkness again in preparation for the second one, just picked up a PSP to play Birth By Sleep, and I've been enjoying Duke Nukem Forever. It's a terrible game, but it reminds me so much of the PlayStation days I can't help but giggle at the lurid stream of puerile tedium that is the Duke's long awaited return.

That's all for now!

This might be the beer talking...

I am so, so sick of hearing about Twilight by now. It's like a bad meme that people can't quote properly, with about as much artistic and creative merit as CopperCab - the only difference being, I can stand about five minutes of his deluded troll ranting before I realize I could probably be doing something more constructive with my time. The first glimpse of Kristen Stewart's gormless face, permanently frozen in the same ridiculous open-mouthed pout like some macabre Keanu Reeves copycat, and I'd probably suffer some sort of crap induced seizure.

Twilight is simply this - a product mass produced to dope little girls into spending money. It's like a drug, but shit. Literally. People who pay to see that trio of living bad PhotoShop pictures are spending money to eat the liquid, stagnating combined defecation of Stephenie - whatever - her - name - is- and the sleazy studio who lowered what little standards they had to produce this steaming pile of fetid crap. I'm not sure about my feelings for Twilight fans - I'm not sure if it's pity for being duped by the simplest media technique in the book of social manipulation and deception that constitutes the way products are sold to us - or just straight up hatred for how stupid they act when they catch the slightest whiff of that pretentious, scruffy haired twat (Or, in fact, any of the barely manifested fetuses calling themselves performers).

You're attracted to R Pattinson? Fair enough, no accounting for taste. But if you want to look at that guy, you may as well watch Dylan Moran stand up videos. That's what Pattinson will look like in about five years and Moran is intelligent, insightful, and extremely entertaining, packed with an amount of anti-social vitriol I could only ever achieve in my sweetest misanthropic dreams.

To cut a long rant short - Watching and enjoying Twilight is like eating a bag of dog shit and making everyone else smell your breath afterwards.

MMO Aneurysm

I have too many MMORPGs in my life.

Shaiya was my first foray into the multitude of digital worlds, but, whilst sharing several of the same features as many of the mainstream MMOs, just didn't cut the mustard. So a close friend was lovely enough to introduce me to the social vampire that is World of Warcraft. I've been playing it for about three years on an extremely on and off basis. I've just about reached endgame content, and eh...

Despite the huge revamp Blizzard undertook on Azeroth, the slightly prettier places just weren't enough to hold my attention when I hit 85 and entered the rather elitist realm of Cataclysm heroics. Admittedly, I was mainly armed with green quest rewards and a couple of Cata normal drops, so Heroics weren't really my place. About a week later, juggling WoW with every other game I play, and I scraped the bare minimum gear score to venture into a random HC. With excitement in my heart and a strange sense of achievement welling up in my head, I joined the random queue.

I was... bored.

Yes, heroics offer better gear, tougher foes, and overall a more challenging experience, but then I realized I was playing the same dungeons over and over again for the chance to pull myself up onto a slightly higher rung of the WoW ladder. Not to mention the simply insane amount of waiting time if you want to go and do anything that doesn't become a repetitive chore after about an hour of farming that culminates to probably about ten minutes of crafting. For the time I have to play it, WoW is no longer rewarding enough to justify the 8.99 a month. It's essentially the same reason I stopped playing the Sims - I don't really enjoy doing stuff that we pretty much have to do in every day of our real lives.

Not to mention that I'm so familiar with WoW - the lore, the races, the classes, and the dubious social experience - that after three years, it's become old. So I've moved to Rift, which is currently patching. I'm going to embark on my first voyage into Telara later tonight with the same close friend that got me into WoW; which has a sort of poetry to it I suppose! I would post some real life updates on here, but my world has solely been digital lately. I've spent the last weekend playing WoW and watching How I Met Your Mother.

Depending on your perspective, my life really, really sucks, or really, really wins.

-L

Game overload

The past week has been... full.

I had a mock film studies exam the other day which went pretty poorly. It's not that I don't know what I have to be writing about; it's more a combination of two factors. 1) My film studies grade has no impact whatsoever on my Uni entry. 2) Since discovering this, my film studies tutor, who isn't a friendly type at the best of times (He's like Bilbo Baggins if the One Ring was permanently fused to his... -cough-) has made his displeasure at this quite obvious.

I managed to get the adverts for my marketing assignments recorded, so all I have to do for that is finish editing them and bulk out my client report. Filming for the b/C video didn't happen on Tuesday, but Wednesday was a pretty bulky day filled with proofreading and minor editorial duties for Tag '11. My graphics design tutor is really punishing me for dealing with my assigned workload so quickly, slapping me with extra tasks as soon as I've dealt with everything he handed out before. I think they're pushing me to see how much they can get out of me, and I could probably keep handing it back out for a good while, but I'm losing drive.

On Thursday my girlfriend arrived to stay for the weekend, after a fruitless FMP session and a frustratingly redundant GCSE class. The GCSE is another victim of me, in that my Uni entrance doesn't rely on it at all, despite being bullied into it by the collective media department of Eastbourne Vocational College. It's such a waste of my time. It was awesome having Lisa around for longer than usual (Even if she did have the misfortune of arriving roughly the same time as Dragon Age II) and I'm sad she's gone, but axes to the grindstone once more, and all that.

Onto DAII. I've not played it exhaustively but I did manage to rack up some decent hours over the weekend, and it's keeping my interest far more than the first game. I found Origins to be a solid RPG with a few rough edges but some truly interesting, superbly written characters supported by a vast mythology and a rich fantasy world. Unfortunately, I found a majority of the game failed to stimulate my interest, so I didn't even manage an entire playthrough (I got to the archdemon and then quit). I loved the Morrigan/Flemeth story, so you can imagine my joy when a giant dragon swoops down on the fledgling adventurers, toasts a group of darkspawn, and casually reveals herself to be Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek fame once more. I apologize for being a little bit ridiculous but Captain Janeway as a shapeshifting dragon is a pretty high grade of awesome.

I've neglected WoW for the past week for a variety of reasons, so I'll probably hop back on Steamwheedle Cartel later this evening to get stuck back in. I've got too many options at the moment, I can't stick at just one game for more than a couple of hours. I've got quite a while before the next deluge of quality releases beat the crap out of my bank balance, however, with just Duke Nukem Forever and Alice: Madness Returns awaiting months from now. I'm considering buying Space Marine, but I seriously need to start saving money, days are just falling away until moving time!

-L

Listening To: 
The Sin'Dorei, Blizzard Entertainment
Watching:
True Blood seasons 1-3, The Big Bang Theory season 4
Playing:
Dragon Age 2, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Borderlands, Dead Space 2

I'd be lying...

...if I said that I haven't paid much attention to Twitter, ZZN or my blog because I've been busy.

It's all thanks to this little bastard. It's true, I probably have better things to be doing than level grinding or trying to get my Ramkahen/Hyjal rep up to Exalted so I can finally go and do some Cataclysm heroics, but my gear is pretty terrible seeing as I left a couple of weeks after the expansion hit and only returned a couple of weeks ago. I made it to level 85 the other day but I've been distracted by alts and, of course, RETRIBUTION, which has made gearing somewhat slow. This is simply because if I have to pick between spending hours grinding dungeons with random strangers who think they're better than me, or sending hordes of armoured Chaos death machines to shoot the hell out of random strangers who think they're better than me, the choice is obvious.

My consoles gather dust and my PC stares smugly out from glaring blue LEDs at them, but that won't last for long - after all, Dragon Age 2 comes out next Friday and that's certainly deserving of my free time. As for Retribution, it's pretty crazy. Six new campaigns sounds impressive, but then you realize most of the missions are vaguely written enough to apply to all six factions. Despite this, it's still a huge variety of content, and I can imagine getting a crazy amount of playtime out of it.

Argh, what else? Dragging myself away from the virtual world, I've had my final Uni offer come through, from my first choice (UCA Farnham). It's a pretty fantastic offer, too - all I have to do is pass my current course and my place is secure. I've accepted, obviously, and it's going to make the last stretch of college so much more bearable knowing that if I don't hit my predicted B- in Film Studies, or don't quite manage that A grade elsewhere, it's not the end of my academic life. I'm looking forward to leaving home and being all independent, but going through all my belongings and having to decide between leaving Shiny Collector's Edition #1 or Quirky BioShock Merchandise #3 behind (I know, my life is that difficult).

My page layout tutor took a look at this blog and he was amazed by the graphic design work, seeing as he taught me 50% of my photoshop knowledge and 100% of my inDesign skills, not to mention he's started teaching me bits of HTML on the side. I'm going to make the site shinier in the next few months. Other projects... The music video reached a hitch, we can't film the band until the 25th of March which is relatively close, but deadline - wise it's far too late. So I've initiated a back up plan which should be more than adequate. I'm hoping to score at least a Merit for it.

Tag Mag is going ahead okay from what I know, they keep handing me work, I keep finishing it, as far as I'm concerned that's my part in all of it. I've got Distinctions in both design and journalism so I'm happy with that. I think that's all from me for now. More updates later!
-L

The last couple of weeks...

This will be the first time of many I break that fine line between professionalism and my personal life. 

I'm looking back on the last two weeks and they've been rather productive - certainly been intense enough. I'm sitting here at the back end of them minus 1 delightful, beloved girlfriend who has just scurried back to Uni, but plus a shiny new PC, a handful of new PC games (Chaos Rising, Dead Space 2, Borderlands: GOTY to name a few) so I definitely have plenty of entertainment. Not only that; but DoW II: Retribution comes out on the 4th of March, which is quickly followed by Dragon Age II on the 15th. I'm going to have to game double-time to wade through all of this!

I've fallen behind a little bit with college work and my usual reviews, but I managed to get four or five articles written from my laptop in Farnham. I spent quite a lot of time up there, and I had my Journalism interview halfway through last week, which actually went pretty well. There were very few things I would have said or done differently, so now begins that nerve-rending wait until I hear back from them. I'm expecting the positive but I'm a pessimist at heart, which in a way is good, because my soul won't be shattered if I don't get what I want.

The majority of yesterday was spent assembling my new PC with a couple of friends I game with every Tuesday evening. There was one of those terrifying moments where it looked like my computer baby was dead on arrival, but tinkering, rewiring and poking around eventually brought it to life. I've never been so relieved to see a blue LED, and my girlfriend (Who must have the patience of a saint, she was sat around witnessing something of totally minor interest to her for a good four hours) took a couple of pictures of me grinning like an idiot. An entire evening later and I'd managed to move the entire contents of my 250GB laptop I've been working off of for the past two years onto my new terabyte HDD.

So this is all pretty mundane stuff. I'm pretty happy about that, because these next few weeks are going to be pretty demanding. I'll still be blogging (It's becoming a little obsessive) and putting random thoughts on whatever I play to words, alongside updates on the music video project for Centralia DC and the college magazine work I'm doing. I'm going to sign off and get on with some coursework - that way I can justify gaming for the rest of the day. 

-L

Dragon Age: Redemption

So... Felicia Day is starring in a new web series taking place in Bioware's expansive Dragon Age universe.

It's set to appear sometime this summer, and features both the writing and acting talents of Felicia Day (Well-known for The Guild and her part as Penny in Joss Whedon's mini-musical Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog). She plays an Elven assassin named Tallis who is tasked with tracking down a rogue mage to earn her freedom, and Day has stated that the character is headstrong, sarcastic, and fights dirty.

That's pretty far f**king removed from her usual, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, I like Felicia Day. Dr. Horrible wouldn't have been the same without her, and The Guild is geeky genius. She definitely deserves some credit for trying to break away from the shy, mousy character she's become so well known for, and the girl loves her games, which makes her a perfectly fine candidate for the series in that respect, but it just strikes me as odd. When Day's name comes to mind, I think silliness, pointless arguments about World of Warcraft (Or some other nondescript MMO) and a goofy charm that gives her that brilliant appeal to the nerds of the world, not brutal, sarcastic Elven assassin.

She's a good actress, but then again, I can't say that fairly having only seen her in The Guild and Dr. Horrible. I have no idea how she'll fit into this new role, but Day definitely deserves kudos for trying.

I just hope she can do the rich, intricately crafted fantasy world of Dragon Age justice.

-L

Jeez, they're just pixels... (Dead Island announcement trailer)

I will admit, I'd totally forgotten about Techland's Dead Island seeing as I hadn't heard anything of it for, oh, I don't know, about three years, but it's suddenly re-emerged back onto the internet like a popstar making a comeback in bad taste.

People have been debating whether or not this trailer goes a bit too far to publicize the game. Some people believe that the use of the death of a little girl and images of her dying is a cold marketing technique used to create some kind of thin emotional bond with a product, whilst others believe that it's well - used, tasteful, and thoroughly artistic. I can't say I agree with either of these ideas (Though I do lean more towards the latter).

This trailer is for promotion. It is for advertisement, but in its simplest form, it is pixelated. Yes, a little girl just got mauled by zombies and thrown through a window, but it was done with as much taste and sensitivity as could be achieved considering the subject matter. My main problem with the trailer is not the so called 'controversy' but its lack of attachment to the game itself. 

I ranted about this for a good four paragraphs or so in my ZZN article so I won't push the point any further (or shamelessly promote my writing any more... in this post) but to be honest, I think we have far more to complain about in advertising than some pixelated brain muncher, little girl or not, getting fragged. How about all those food adverts constantly screaming at us that we're all fat and we're going to die at age thirty weighing about 30 stone unless we consume more-of-whatever-shit-this-product-has-in-it, for example? That is true cruelty and manipulation through advertisement, and I can assure you, it has caused far more harm than the poignancy of Dead Island's rather effective trailer.

Hell, the trailer might have been pretty tragic, and seeing the dead little pixels may have been shocking for a sheltered few, but at least the trailer did something different for once. Unlike Killzone 3, Call of Duty whatever-number-it-is-now or pretty much 70% of all trailers these days. In short: The trailer should be viewed as something well - rendered and artistically valuable, but please, scream 'controversy' no more, it's just a short digital video.
-L

Picking My Brain

I want to open up this additional wound upon the internet's collective scar tissue with a brief outline of who I am as a person, and what I do. 

I am ScreenZombie, or Laurie, an internet journalist currently writing for Zombie Zone News, a full - time media student, and a part-time novelist/poet working on an as - yet untitled fiction. I'm going to University in September to study for a BA Hons in Journalism and my interests don't go far outside of videogames, films, literature, gadgets and graphic novels. Click here or here to see some examples of my work for ZZN so far, or visit An Aimless Author for a small archive of articles and very occasional updates on my coming novel. 

So, what can you expect from me? At least an article a week for ZZN (Which is a fantastic resource for zombie with some very talented people onboard) and bi-weekly videogame/movie reviews. I'm launching a vLog on my YouTube channel which doesn't have on it yet, but hopefully there should be some surreal rants/actually useful reviews within the next few weeks. 

So, follow me if movies, games and books are your 'thing' for regular updates and reviews, and check out on my Twitter for my far more regular micro-blogs. There's a lot of awesome stuff happening this year, and I can promise I'll have a hell of a lot to write about.

-ScreenZombie