Hello, fellow 4am drunkards. First, a little background information. Those in the know will remember that, while I am Jewish, all my family on my mother's side are various breeds of Christian. Those who were not in the know, now are. This means, of course, that Christmas is celebrated with as much forced gusto as it is in most other places up and down the country and indeed the Western world, crappy presents and all. Now, before I sound like an ungrateful little oik, all my family bought me books, largely autobiographical and factual, which I really enjoy, particularly the one I'm reading at the moment, 'Ross Kemp on Gangs', the book accompanying the Sky One series where former Eastenders hard man Kemp hangs around with some of the toughest street gangs in the world in a desperate attempt to reclaim his tough guy image following the highly public pasting dished out to him by his wife some time last year. Indeed, the bollocks present-buying was on my part, and on largely to myself.
Now I'm a big kid at heart, and I do like my computer games every now and then. I'm a certified addict of the Football Manager series, which I heartily recommend to anyone, anywhere, ever, though if you can I suggest you get the 2007 edition as the 2008 one is just a tiny bit shit. I don't know why, something about it really winds me up, so you should forgo all those other reviews by professional games journalists and go on my subjective twenty-minute gaming experience before it went back in the cupboard. That was a birthday disappointment, however, so it has no place in the tome of Christmas computer shite that is to follow.
First of all, though, on a surprisingly upbeat note, I have a recommendation instead of a critique (God I hate that word) - I heartily recommend 'SimCity Societies' for those of you who like the idea of SimCity, but don't have autism. I'm feeling generous so I'm going to clarify that for the easily offended: SimCity 2000 and onwards are the most rediculously in-depth games ever created by humans, and to find enjoyment in meticulously laying your own sewer system via the medium of 10,000 tiny little buttons on a computer system you really must have to have some sort of artificially heightened powers of concentration. If you ever sat down and decided that was going to be your weekend, you either have autism or you are the most boring Crystal Meth addict on the face of the planet, and there must be an awful lot of Crystal Meth in the offices of most major games magazines because they completely slated it for having no real goals and no depth, because all you do is put down buildings and watch how people behave in your city.
Duh.
That's what I always wanted to do with SimCity, but I couldn't ever get past my first building because I could never figure out how to lay the cunting sewer pipes. Or the water pipes. Or the million other things you have to do to make anything work in that fucking game. I wanted to make a city and generally act like a juvenile bastard God by carefully ensuring that every resident of my virtual city was at their absolutely most content and controlled, and then every now and then lobbing meteorites of flaming death at them to see what would happen. This is my virtual ants-and-a-magnifying-glass, I don't want to have to worry about the refraction of the lens when I'm burning their legs off.
However, back to the bollocks. Chief amongst the tormentors is WWE: Smackdown vs. Raw 2008. Now, I do like my wrestling games, even if it does contain slight homoerotic overtones of flexing, oily men dressed in PVC underpants dancing around and slapping each other. After all, what other fighting games allow you to stamp on someone's face for twenty solid minutes without any of that pesky martial arts getting in the way? That said, I don't like this one. I loved Smackdown vs. Raw 2006, the 2007 version was even better and took me back to the hours I spent as a child and early teenager cheering on The Rock, Mankind and Stone Cold Steve Austin as they heroically pretended to hit each other week-in, week-out, all for our enjoyment. This new installment, however, takes me back to the time when, in my wrestling-fuelled bravado, I picked a fight with the hardest kid in the street, got my nose broken in three places, jarred my back, and was to move for so long that several small children passed by to call me names and openly urinate on me.
OK, so that didn't really happen, but that's how annoying this game is.
Let me give you a rundown of the features they've added in this new game compared to that old, outdated, obsolete Smackdown vs. Raw 2007: They've butchered the control system, dumped all over the create-a-wrestler, and added Kenny Dykstra. These three features combined into some sort of wrestling hell around four o'clock as I eagerly tore off the cellophane, slammed the CD into my PS2 and dived straight into the create-a-wrestler mode to bring my usual 7ft-tall black-clad ninja behemoth wall of muscle vision of myself to vicarious video game fruition, and imagine my horror as I realised that, no matter which options I selected, what features I gave my created vision of death, what combination of eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, ears or jawline I chose, all manipulated with full 21st Century 3D morphing graphics, I could not for the life of me make him look in any way even the slightest bit unlike Vincent Cassel. Suitably enraged, I gave up. Time for a fight.
Here is where my other two problems with this game crashed together like cruise ships and badly-behaved icebergs. Selecting someone suitably weak as an opponent - as all good bullies should - I chose Kenny Dykstra, because of his weedy body and annoying face, and his comparitavely low skill level. This was going to be a walk-over. The game loaded up and sure enough, he was at least a foot shorter than Virtua Cassel, and about half as wide. I was going to enjoy this. Stepping forward to unleash my inner rage, Virtua Cassel swung a huge left at his ugly, slightly mouldy-looking head. Or at least, that's what he was meant to do. What he actually did was do an entirely unconvincing and slightly unnerving taunt involving waving his crotch around. In a devastating broadside to my murderous French intentions, whatever pixies exist that are tasked with cocking up people's gaming experiences had changed the controls around without telling me. I watched as I got the shit kicked out of me, desperately looking for the 'for God's sake just punch the bastard' button and succeeding only in taunting, running away and some sort of ballet-style leg-waving ring exit move.
I hate that game. It's going in the cupboard. Also, how did Vincent Cassel end up marrying Monica Bellucci? He looks like fucking Gollum. The world doesn't make sense anymore. Fuck this, I'm going to bed.
Night.
Now I'm a big kid at heart, and I do like my computer games every now and then. I'm a certified addict of the Football Manager series, which I heartily recommend to anyone, anywhere, ever, though if you can I suggest you get the 2007 edition as the 2008 one is just a tiny bit shit. I don't know why, something about it really winds me up, so you should forgo all those other reviews by professional games journalists and go on my subjective twenty-minute gaming experience before it went back in the cupboard. That was a birthday disappointment, however, so it has no place in the tome of Christmas computer shite that is to follow.
First of all, though, on a surprisingly upbeat note, I have a recommendation instead of a critique (God I hate that word) - I heartily recommend 'SimCity Societies' for those of you who like the idea of SimCity, but don't have autism. I'm feeling generous so I'm going to clarify that for the easily offended: SimCity 2000 and onwards are the most rediculously in-depth games ever created by humans, and to find enjoyment in meticulously laying your own sewer system via the medium of 10,000 tiny little buttons on a computer system you really must have to have some sort of artificially heightened powers of concentration. If you ever sat down and decided that was going to be your weekend, you either have autism or you are the most boring Crystal Meth addict on the face of the planet, and there must be an awful lot of Crystal Meth in the offices of most major games magazines because they completely slated it for having no real goals and no depth, because all you do is put down buildings and watch how people behave in your city.
Duh.
That's what I always wanted to do with SimCity, but I couldn't ever get past my first building because I could never figure out how to lay the cunting sewer pipes. Or the water pipes. Or the million other things you have to do to make anything work in that fucking game. I wanted to make a city and generally act like a juvenile bastard God by carefully ensuring that every resident of my virtual city was at their absolutely most content and controlled, and then every now and then lobbing meteorites of flaming death at them to see what would happen. This is my virtual ants-and-a-magnifying-glass, I don't want to have to worry about the refraction of the lens when I'm burning their legs off.
However, back to the bollocks. Chief amongst the tormentors is WWE: Smackdown vs. Raw 2008. Now, I do like my wrestling games, even if it does contain slight homoerotic overtones of flexing, oily men dressed in PVC underpants dancing around and slapping each other. After all, what other fighting games allow you to stamp on someone's face for twenty solid minutes without any of that pesky martial arts getting in the way? That said, I don't like this one. I loved Smackdown vs. Raw 2006, the 2007 version was even better and took me back to the hours I spent as a child and early teenager cheering on The Rock, Mankind and Stone Cold Steve Austin as they heroically pretended to hit each other week-in, week-out, all for our enjoyment. This new installment, however, takes me back to the time when, in my wrestling-fuelled bravado, I picked a fight with the hardest kid in the street, got my nose broken in three places, jarred my back, and was to move for so long that several small children passed by to call me names and openly urinate on me.
OK, so that didn't really happen, but that's how annoying this game is.
Let me give you a rundown of the features they've added in this new game compared to that old, outdated, obsolete Smackdown vs. Raw 2007: They've butchered the control system, dumped all over the create-a-wrestler, and added Kenny Dykstra. These three features combined into some sort of wrestling hell around four o'clock as I eagerly tore off the cellophane, slammed the CD into my PS2 and dived straight into the create-a-wrestler mode to bring my usual 7ft-tall black-clad ninja behemoth wall of muscle vision of myself to vicarious video game fruition, and imagine my horror as I realised that, no matter which options I selected, what features I gave my created vision of death, what combination of eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, ears or jawline I chose, all manipulated with full 21st Century 3D morphing graphics, I could not for the life of me make him look in any way even the slightest bit unlike Vincent Cassel. Suitably enraged, I gave up. Time for a fight.
Here is where my other two problems with this game crashed together like cruise ships and badly-behaved icebergs. Selecting someone suitably weak as an opponent - as all good bullies should - I chose Kenny Dykstra, because of his weedy body and annoying face, and his comparitavely low skill level. This was going to be a walk-over. The game loaded up and sure enough, he was at least a foot shorter than Virtua Cassel, and about half as wide. I was going to enjoy this. Stepping forward to unleash my inner rage, Virtua Cassel swung a huge left at his ugly, slightly mouldy-looking head. Or at least, that's what he was meant to do. What he actually did was do an entirely unconvincing and slightly unnerving taunt involving waving his crotch around. In a devastating broadside to my murderous French intentions, whatever pixies exist that are tasked with cocking up people's gaming experiences had changed the controls around without telling me. I watched as I got the shit kicked out of me, desperately looking for the 'for God's sake just punch the bastard' button and succeeding only in taunting, running away and some sort of ballet-style leg-waving ring exit move.
I hate that game. It's going in the cupboard. Also, how did Vincent Cassel end up marrying Monica Bellucci? He looks like fucking Gollum. The world doesn't make sense anymore. Fuck this, I'm going to bed.
Night.
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