Recently, Professor Stephen Hawking has said that mankind will need to venture far beyond Earth’s boundaries to ensure the long-term survival of the human race.
Hawking, adding “Disasters such as an asteroid collision could wipe us all out. Once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. There isn’t anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star.”
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The promos have been great, the graphic look sublime and it’s out this December. Nintendo’s WII may sound dirty, but the fact that Nintendo are trying to go against Sony’s much delayed PS3 and the XBox360 shows that the next generation wars (or NEXTGEN) is starting to heat up – even though we, here in the UK, are only just seeing the starting point.
In terms of games, WII is set to be launched with a bunch of games, including Red Steel, Rayman, Zelda, Wii play, Monkey ball, and much more besides.
Of all of these, the one that strikes me the most is, of course, Red Steel. Just the thought of wielding a sword with my controller reminds me a lot of the Star Wars arcade game. The promos for this game make me want to go out and buy it. The thing that bothers me is the repetitive strain injury that WII controllers will give its players.
You’re probably laughing right? RSI from WII controllers? No, I’m actually being quite serious. As a suffer or a rotator cuff muscle wastage injury – the angles that your arm is cause me a lot of concern for younger gamers, especially for holding a gun at a “gangster-like” angle in Red Steel — the more you hold it in a certain position the more your muscles get tired and ache and you want to get further into the game and risk severe rotator cuff injury or muscle wastage.
But, I’m probably overplaying this factor and I’m sure the WII will be great.
In terms of potential, I believe a “Star Wars light saber adventures” game will be the most mouth watering — can you imagine wielding your controller like a light saber/sword much like Red Steel, but in the world of Star Wars? Facing such villains as Darth Vader?
I bet someone’s already onto this. And I for one, can’t wait.
It seems Dustin Diamond (AKA: Screech from TV’s “Saved by the Bell”) was recently at two major Universities within the UK, including both the University of Glamorgan and the University of Hull, selling out the student union bars with his “unique” comedy styling.
Screech was, according to an IMDB source, “was the main attraction of last Saturday night at the Hull University Club, Asylum”. Apparently, he came on stage where people texted questions from their phones, and then he answered them.
“It was weird”. Said the source. “one of the questions was ‘What the hell are you doing in Hull?’ and he answered that he was looking for girls to ‘t-bag’. Seriously, he just ruined my childhood”
When “Torchwood” actor John Barrowman appeared on the BBC’s Jonathan Ross evening TV show a couple weeks back, Ross played a clip of a movie so achingly bad it has built its own cult around it.
The scene shown on Ross’ show had a giant shark eating a speedboat full of people in whole, with the most glaringly bad special effects since that scene from James Bond craptacular, “Die Another Day”.
Anyway, here is a collection of random clips from “Shark Attack 3: Megaladon”.
Links:
Although it may be over, the third annual Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco overed a wide selection of topics, too many to go through and analyze; but it did come up with some interesting topics.
The Web 2.0 Summit focused on business and technology developments that utilize the Web as a platform whilst defining how the Web would drive business in the future.
The Guardian is running a Weekend dedicated to a Web 2.0 special, and includes interviews asking the question “What exactly is web 2.0? Does it even exist?”, now finally the marketing blurb can be put to bed, and the snake oil can be drained away from the hype that surrounds this almost mythical realm of web development.
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This week, Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, wrote a damning report (The Stern Review) on how the world would face an economic collapse, similar to that of a World War or world-wide depression if climate change was not averted; affecting people, resources and the whole world as a whole.
Naturally, no everyone is happy. Not just because it means a drastic change in behavior, but because it means that we’re gonna get taxed. Taxed a lot more than we are now, and much more in the future. Is it just another tax dressed up as “environmentalism” as many proponents claim? And will the new taxes really change behavior? And will any changes we make as a country make any jot of difference?
If you’ve ever gone on public transit, regardless of where you are in the UK, you’re more than likely to have picked up a Metro; either by habit, or just to get yourself away from the mediocrity that is life.
But lately, I’ve come to realise something.
The Metro newspaper sucks.
Why?
Well, there isn’t any *real* content in the newspaper. There are articles mostly ripped off other newspaper’s, sometimes rewritten slightly, othertimes replaced by local newspaper articles; however the majority of the time you’re reading adverts. Tons of them.
The newspaper lacks from any real opinion too. Some might think that the lack of an editor, or a team of left-wing/right-wing contributors on the team is a good thing and that you can make a judgement about topical subjects yourself. But the thing is, it’s also a thinly guided way to give you stories without any social commentary, without any question; so it becomes a mouthpiece for the editor.
The stories are also very inconsequential, and are made for easy, quick reading that will bare no meaning once you’ve discarded the newspaper and gone on your merry way.
Another problem with it is that it creates a lot of rubbish. Now I’m guilty as the next person when it comes to stuffing metro newspapers down the sides of the Tyne and Wear Metro train carriages (as they’ve decided to remove all bins), but that just means they are printing way too many copies of the paper. How many metro newspaper’s are recycled? How many are just put on the junk pile along with the moutain’s of discarded fridges and washer dryers?
I’ve stopped picking them up from the “collect your metro here” collection points and instead rely on a discarded newspaper, usually one from the seat as not to pick up whatever crap was on the floor at the time. Every day the stories are almost always the same, in the same position, in the same boring layout without any real meaning.
The only good thing about the Metro is their website. Unlike the newspaper, it’s much more socially interactive, has a good fantasy football game which I play and allows commentary against the articles.
Indeed, in America, some news reporters are even saying that newspaper’s are a dying breed because so much is on the web, in the form of blogs, youtube videos, and the like; although I believe that newspapers will always have their place, I think that disserfication is the only true way that they can go.
In this really well edited clip, Robocop finally goes against Terminator.
I’m really impressed with this clip and showcases the ingeniutity of video editors.
For the past week I’ve been playing “Scarface: The World is Yours” on the PS2, avoiding the heavily buggy PC version, and I’ve been incredibly impressed and have thoroughly enjoyed the game.
You control Tony Montana from the final scene’s of the Brian De Palma movie, and asks the question “What if… Tony had survived?”. After surviving the attack by Sosa’s hit squad you have to rebuild your entire Miami-based empire from the ground up. From doing small drug deals, to buying up Fronts to increase your turf there are plenty of GTA-like missions where you will have to deal with vicious gangs to attack helicopters, and even the police.
For those wanting a GTA-like clone, where you can fly, ride motorbikes or do all the stuff that you expect from GTA: San Andreas – you will be disappointed. Sure, you can’t jump, ride a bike, play basketball or fly a plane — but since when did Tony Montana do any of these?
Many detractors from the game claim it’s yet another GTA clone, at in parts it is, but I find it to be much more rewarding than San Andreas. Why? Well for starters there isn’t a pleathora of easter eggs to collect, or inane basketball games or BMX tricks to pull, I mean in San Andreas none of those things were even necessary or relevant to the plot; whereas in Scarface nearly everything is.
Building an empire in Scarface is pretty straight-forward. By taking over fronts (businesses) and grabbing the local storehouse you can start distributing lots of drugs from big-time suppliers. A big flaw in the game is that your fronts will be attacked from time-to-time, sometimes on the other side of the island where you know you can’t reach it in time.
Some of the missions and sub-missions are quite repetitive and I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t do long-term deals with big-time suppliers (ie: Move x to y over the next few days and I’ll rep you more), and in order to increase your reputation amongst big-time suppliers is to buy very expensive pieces of art, property and cars, some of which are just plain tat, but I guess it is supposed to represent Tony’s lack of taste, and just wants it because it is expensive.
The AI is pretty tough, the missions can be frustrating and although there is a bit of repetitiveness in the missions, I really enjoyed Scarface — if they had put a little more work on the missions, added a little variety, perhaps added a bit of negotiation and perhaps made the Sandman turn on Scarface at the end, rather than being his buddy it would be a much better and longer game.
Overall, a really enjoyable game.
8.5/10.