Gigs I would love to go to...but probably won't get a chance

Because the universe deems it so :(

Weezer
They Might Be Giants
Liz Phair
Muse
Theory of a Deadman
Scissor Sisters
Silver Sun
Evanescence

I wouldn't...

Would you? And I'm the biggest fanwhore of KOTOR in the world. Anyone else care to own that title, I shall see you at dawn. Bring a spatula and wear nothing but a dishcloth.

Possibly Definately Pointless Attempt at Webcomic...ing.

Yes I thought I'd dabble and dabble I did. And dribble.

Here's my webcomic, check it out and leave horrid insulting comments. Mmmm.

Never Bug Kreia

Wall-E

There are always a good selection of kids films or kid orientated films throughout the course of the year. And since perhaps Finding Nemo and the second Shrek film, there haven't been as many of these films by Disney/Pixar ect to get overly excited about. Though it seems every child that sees these films are pleased with the end result and seen as this is their genre, it's hard to criticise a film when all that matters is it's main audiences enjoyment.
But while Finding Nemo and Shrek 2 were the most recent films that adults also thoroughly enjoyed and watched off their own steam, it's taken a short while for another high standard animated film to come out that would grip and bedazzle a mixed viewing audeince. Wall-E not only proves that kids films are still exciting, but that the ability to find a even balance for all the family can be executed in a funny, charming and beautiful way.

Before you find out anything about the plot, you have to realise just how breath-taking this film is. Who would of thought that a barren abandoned earth could look pretty and digitally stunning or that a vast repeated scene of outer space could become a great spectacle for us once again.The attention to detail is great and appreciated, with even the most mundane object been carefully structured.

The animation is flawless. Absolutely flawless. Especially on earth and the robots. It looks real. Much of the time it's impossible to tell whether or not it is real. The few slightly-shaky styled shots that appear a few times in the film only makes the animation that much more amazing and realistic. The humans are really good, too, while not realistic in the sense of you seeing it right now in real life, but they do have a realistic feel to them. The thing with the humans, I believe, is that they were purposefully meant to have this slightly rounded, slightly unrealistic feeling.
I believe the reason is to take a satirical look at humans, and what our goals for a future, perfect utopia, is. It questions what we want, and shows you what is a very, very likely outcome of our desires for a 'better' world, showing both positive and negative effects. The animation for the humans, I believe, was made rounded and slightly more cartoonish to emphasize that that is how we will become. Fat, lazy, yet so perfect. At times, especially with that perspective on the humans, they actually do look very real.

The films core is in it's blissful innocence, a balance of perfect multi-layered humour and action that is neither too drab or childlike for parents or secretly harbouring innuendos that some parents might not want their kids to be aware of. The innocence of Wall-E'scourting of Eve and their budding romance is simply beautiful.
The film is about a robot named WALL-E (or 'Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class'), who is the only thing left on earth with some sort of emotion. His only companion seems to be an industructable yet somehow cute, cockroach. He longs for company and enriches himself with knick nacks he finds when he is scourging the planet cleaning up the waste. Then one day he meets another robot named EVE, and his adventure really begins.

There is a message in the film about taking care of ourselves and our planet or else we'll end up living in a wasted world and though it's claimed that this may not be too interesting for children, it seems that Pixar have managed to get their point across in a simple and cheerful way without imposing any school like moments. The social commentary in "WALL·E" is sobering because it's never overbearing and most importantly because we see the world through machines, machines who feel more about Earth and life than the humans do.
It is a majestic science fiction epic like we haven't seen in a couple of decades and it is a genuinely touching and never cheap romance. WALL·E pay homages to popular films and figures of the past- Chaplin, Keaton, Tati, the Marx Brothers, "2001: A Space Odyssey" (this one is particularly spectacular), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" are actually homages and not ripoffs.

From the entertaining shorts shown before the film to the memorable characters, locations, and animation we have come to expect, Pixar films are now event cinema, and they have outdone themselves with "WALL·E". This film is spectacular, majestic, touching, involving, and achingly beautiful. Most importantly, however, it is perfect entertainment. Personally you will be hard pressed to find an animated film or any film that can satisfy you more than "WALL·E in 2008.

5/5

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

It was only a matter of time before Rare brought its cutesy platforming series Banjo-Kazooie to the Xbox 360. At some point in the development process, however, a wise person realized the world might not need yet another cutesy platformer, so instead we've got Nuts & Bolts, an irreverent, self-aware, open-world, vehicle-based, Tinkertoy-workshop action game. That's a lot of adjectives, but I'd happily swap them all out for a single one like "stupendous." If you'd told me I would ever like a Banjo-Kazooie game so much, I would have called you crazy. But for numerous reasons I sincerely love this one. Before I ever got into the unique mechanics that make this such a fun game to play, Nuts & Bolts grabbed me with its bold, batty, referential, self-deprecating sense of humor. The game pokes fun at itself and the Banjo series constantly, with references to the "lame" storylines in the original Banjo games and the fact "that italian gentleman" has sold far more games in his time. The lampoon job extends to the entire video game industry, with constant jabs at Rare and its other franchises, the Xbox 360, the Frag Dolls, and a lot more. Every cutscene, exchange of dialogue, and mission description is sharper, wittier, and funnier than it has any business being in a Banjo-Kazooie game, of all things. The game can be downright hilarious. This sort of fourth-wall-busting metahumor is personified in the game's excellent new character the Lord of Games, a self-important set of hovering purple robes with a Pong-emblazoned TV for a face who claims to be the creator of every single video game ever made. At the beginning, Banjo and Kazooie are hanging out on Spiral Mountain, fat and out of work since their last outing eight years ago. Along comes the severed head of Gruntilda, the series' witchy antagonist, looking for trouble again. But before they can square off to see who can collect the most pointless items the fastest, in comes the Lord of Games to restore Banjo's fitness, give Grunty a new mechanical body, and send them off to a hub world called Showdown Town in a race to...collect a different kind of pointless item. The game gleefully wears this sort of game-design irony right on its sleeve. L.O.G. creates a handful of different-themed game worlds you can enter from Showdown Town, and in each of them you'll find the same roster of Banjo characters like Mumbo, Humba Wumba, Bottles, and Klungo waiting to dispense missions that each yield a jiggy (a jigsaw puzzle piece that's the Banjo equivalent of Mario's stars). This isn't your typical assortment of generic ice worlds and desert worlds, though. There's LOGBox 720, where you explore the innards of a gigantic "next-next gen" game console. The Jiggoseum is a sort of Olympic stadium full of athletic challenges. Banjoland is like a comical museum of past Banjo games and historical event all smashed into one small space. The Terrarium of Terror is a vaguely sci-fi-themed glass enclosure full of aliens and gigantic fungi. Plenty more opportunities for jokes go along with each of these worlds, and the game smartly makes the most of them. The first time you enter a world, you get a TV sitcom-style intro with all the Banjo characters playing different comical roles (Humba Wumba is "The Long-Suffering Wife" in the "Green Acres" knock-off) and expertly produced theme music that instantly calls to mind the sort of show that's being aped. Funny writing and varied game worlds are all well and good, but it's the vehicle-building feature that really sets Banjo apart from other character-driven action games. Make no mistake: This is not a platformer, certainly not in the style of the old Banjo games. You can run and jump, climb on ledges, and walk tightropes--and there's a good number of collectible notes to jump around collecting--but almost all of your traveling and mission action will be done in vehicles. The workshop is where you can put together all kinds of wild-looking, multifunctional vehicles from generic parts you can find and purchase as you go. The vehicle-building is really easy to get a handle on, and you can intuit how a vehicle is going to perform just based on the parts you add. If you slap a jet engine and a pair of wings on your racing car, you can expect it to fly. An airplane with a couple of inflatable floaters attached to each side can double as a boat. There are gadgets and doohickeys for pushing, carrying, sucking, blowing, and a myriad of other functions. You can get egg shooters, laser guns, homing missiles, energy shields, and a lot more to extend the functionality of your car-plane-boat.You can save these blueprints and trade them on Xbox Live with your friends, too. Initially, I got frustrated with some of the game's vehicle controls, and I suspect most other people will too. But it's not that they're bad; it's simply a consequence of different parts being used together inappropriately. Too many engines on a light car with basic tires will make you fishtail and spin out constantly. But if you add more weight and replace those tires with the high-grip variety, the driving will get way more manageable. So it's more about getting a feel for how the vehicle systems work together. Don't think the vehicle-building is a throwaway feature only die-hard gearheads will get into. It's as integral to the mission-based action as it is easy to get into. There's an enormous variety of mission types available here, all designed around the things you can accomplish with a properly designed vehicle. Various missions will task you with moving cargo, getting into different kinds of combat, running checkpoint races (on land, sea, and/or air), playing soccer, demolishing an igloo, watering some giant seeds, winning a vehicular long-jump contest, knocking down dominoes, running an aerial taxi service... The point is, there's a huge number of different mission objectives. All that variety is due to how flexible and extensive the vehicle options are. I can't count the number of times I had a problem beating a particular mission, only to go back into the editor and build a better vehicle more suited to the current task that made finishing the mission much easier. That even happened with the game's final boss, which I thought was unreasonably difficult after I failed to beat it over and over. Half an hour in the workshop and I emerged with a new bruiser of a combat vehicle that I used to trounce the boss on my first try. You feel like your ingenuity is really being rewarded when you dig deep into the vehicle possibilities and find more effective (and in some cases, entirely new) ways to approach a particular task. In fact, you'll have to make use of the workshop, as the missions get harder and harder and you'll soon hit a wall you simply can't pass with the stock vehicles. If you truly don't want to build your own, you can purchase blueprints for new pre-made vehicles that become available as you get more and more jiggies. But that would be missing out on half of the fun. I personally enjoyed starting with the stock blueprints and tweaking different vehicles out to meet my current needs. The game makes it easy to replay finished missions from a simple menu. Actually, the game makes it easy to access everything. You can change vehicles or enter the workshop at any time from the pause menu. If you ever get separated from your vehicle, you can hold down a button to warp right back to it. These shortcuts are just, well, pleasant. The aim for this game would of been to not only be great fun for players and especially kids, but also for those who were lucky enough to experience the original B&K game on the N64. A little bit of nostalgia now&again i never a bad thing. Funny, inventive, gorgeous--and cheap. Microsoft decided to charge a mere $40 for Nuts & Bolts, but I got more laughs and more satisfying gameplay out of this one than most of the $60 games I've played this year. And even after spending nearly 20 hours amassing enough jiggies to take down the final boss, I'm compelled to get back in there and keep playing new missions, unlocking new vehicle parts, and exploring more of the game's beautiful world. I had no affection whatsoever for the Banjo-Kazooie franchise or characters going into Nuts & Bolts, but its list of great qualities quietly won me over to make it one of my favorite Xbox 360 games of the year.
5/5

SpiderMan:Web of Shadows

*Beware there are some spoilers in this*

You know I've always wondered where game developers went wrong when it came to superhero games. I mean take Superman. He's got the basic traits of your uber powerful hero, super strength, flight, speed, laser eyes ect. So you'd think a game with him would just be immensely fun and just fantastic. And yet every Superman related game that has come out on any console/format has let down gaming fans and comic book fans. Can you honestly name a Superman game that was bordering on perfection in terms of the formula and the resulting gameplay. Superman Returns was the best I've seen, but it was still prety flawed and repetitive.

Now Spiderman is a different dude altogether, his means of travel, his means of enemy attacks are completely different and from a logical mapped layout for a game you'd think that a Spiderman game would be more difficult to successfully create.

Well screw you logic of the universe and your minions of physics. Cos Spiderman is the only shining example of how to make a good, loyal comic book related game. Primarily I'm thinking of Ultimate Spiderman, Friend or Foe and of course the critically acclaimed Spiderman 2. Spiderman 3 made me cry, let's not talk about it right now.

But while Spiderman 2 topped all comic book games and was favoured as the best Spiderman game by many a reviewer,player and critic, a new Spidey game has come out and I'm going to say it and I don't care what toxic fruit you hurl at me - Web of Shadows is the best damn Spiderman game yet!

Whatever niggles and naggles and other words that sound like lord of the rings creatures, there were in Spidey 2 have been erased, de-bugged and refreshed in this game. You've got all of Manhattan to web-sling around. You can go by foot or by air, though there are times when dropping to the ground and loosing track will result in your mission failing.

Remember in Spiderman 1 when you couldn't go to the streets because the lazy creators couldn't be bothered enhancing the map or graphics. Remember when Spiderman would die from touching the streets of Manhattan? Oh what fun.

If you do fail at a certain point during a mission, it doesn't make you restart from the very beginning of that said quest, no no, the boys at Activision realised that would anger players.
If you are chasing a bad-guy, let's say it's Electro and there's 4 parts to this. You fight him on a rooftop, then a railway, then the river and then a bridge - well if you loose track of him at the river you're not sent back to the rooftop, you just carry on from the river again.
Yes that was a rather long winded analogy, but it goes to show that aside from the genre of the game, a general gaming faux pas has been wiped out altogether. Nothing worse than getting so close to completing a task only to have some stupid interruption ruin it for you and send you back to the beginning.

Depending on what console you got the game on you'll have a different roster of Marvel guest stars. There are some though that will appear in all formats, like the Black Cat, deliciously voiced and acted by Tricia Helfer of awesome Battlestar Galactica fame.

*spoiler alert-avert thine eyes*

Symbiote Black Cat is freaky as hell though.The hair...lord.

I don't really like this Marvel idea of having different selections for different consoles. They've done it with the atrocious X-Men 3 and also with the groovy Ultimate Alliance games. Don't. I played he Xbox version and found out Aunt May appears in another. Do you know how cool it would of been to see her go all symbiotic on Spidey!
The guest stars not only feature as geeky eye candy, but can also be called upon, when your special metre bar is full, to aid you. To be honest I was that immersed in battles that I rarely called upon them, but when you do it's pretty cool and they do fight off the baddies. Black Cat is especially useful.

The main feature of this game is the choice system, which isn't a constant re-occurence but is split evenly across the game. Depending on your choice of Black or Red, I'm sure you can guess which is good and which is bad, you'll be treated to a different cut-scene and also a different ending. Also such actions will unlock different achievements.

You'll get some 'escort' missions, which thankfully don't last too long. I hate escort missions, but the way it was done in this game made me not growl with anger...for once.

The attacks are plentiful and enhanced greatly by the real-time instant transformation between black and red. You could web zip a baddie and have changed between costuumes 3 times before your foot is shoved down there throat.

You are given tutorials in certain moves by other heroes and the ones thought to you by Luke Cage are REALLY helpful, if not annoying to get use to at the very start. Lets just say without web-zip linining enemies and being able to bounce between, as well as using the Black Suits tendril attacks, this game would be extremely difficult and annoying to many players. The B button is your friend gamers. There is one boss battle, where you have no choice but to use such attacks as it's in the air and you're too far up to web-sling onto anything. You gain EXP points for every enemy vanquished in this game and can upgrade your moves. There's a great array to choose from and as you progress some attacks are just that damn cool you'll never grow tired of using them. The speed and fluid movement of some attacks is just amazing and breath-taking and completely makes this game a big fat juicy winner. I can't praise this game enough. Ok I could but you'll all poor banana juice on your screens and then fall asleep and have sticky banana juice faces.

5/5

The World Ends With You

It’s all too easy for RPG fans to only talk about Final Fantasy, especially when talking about Square Enix, that franchise’s creators. However, Final Fantasy isn’t the only title in the company’s catalogue, and people often forget that not only did they create the daddy of the genre, they also arguably spawned said genre as well.

And so rather than rehash yet another FF game for the DS, Square Enix has moved into its fighting stance and shouted ‘Bring It’, and brought it they have with the immaculate The World Ends With You, the first new IP from the JRPG house in many years.

The World Ends With You tells the story of Neku, a fairly stereotypical RPG protagonist to begin with. Neku is grumpy, dislikes people and is only concerned with himself. That is however, until he finds himself in a very strange version of Shibuya, a district of modern day , the games setting. Attacked by strange creatures called the Noise, Neku is forced to make a pact with various people as he learns the truth of the Noise, his new found friends and the alternate Shibuya.

While to begin with the tale is fairly generic, as the character of the game starts to seep into every pore it becomes a fantastically epic tale. Yes, Neku can be an annoyingly selfish git to begin with, his inner thoughts and feelings, and his changing sensibilities, really give the character weight.

Apart from the story, The World Ends With You is a technical feat on the DS. Its use of voice, music and special effects is outstanding, proving that while its 3D capabilities maybe lacking, you can make a brilliant 2D game on the system, and a brilliant game this is.

This brilliance permeates down to the core battle system, which most RPG’s live and die by, luckily though The World Ends With You’s system is innovative and fresh, using all of the DS’s capabilities. When you enter battle (done by using a scanning mechanic to see what noise are in the area and then tapping the icons), the screen changes as normal for an RPG, but since Neku is always accompanied by a companion, they also appear on the top screen with Neku on the bottom.

Neku uses a series of ‘Pin’s’, which give him various powers, ranging from slashing an enemy to firing a spread of energy bullets to encasing himself in protective shields, and they are all activated by various actions on the touch screen, such as pressing the stylus on Neku, slashing across him, tapping an empty space or enemy or drawing circles. They are even some that require you to blow or shout into the microphone to send out shockwaves.

Neku’s partner is controlled using the D-pad, and by tapping various directions and following an on screen series of Icons, the partner attacks the same targets that appear on both screens. If the partner hits the right icons in the right way, they earn Fusion stars, which allow both characters to unleash a devastating combined attack.

After each battle, the Pin’s used earn PP (pin points) which slowly level up the pins and may possibly let them evolve to more powerful versions. You also, rather ingeniously, earn PP by not playing the game, as the pins get better when rested. This encourages breaks and rewards you even though you haven’t played, and while you cant evolve your pins totally by just leaving it a few days, is a neat touch.

Another interesting mechanic is the light puck, a green ball of light that passes between the characters as they score successful attacks. This puck increases with each pass, and the longer you keep it in play and keep it being passed, the more powerful your attacks become, encouraging thoughtful and slightly rhythmic game play.

Each area of Shibuya also has affinities to the various brands in the game, and if an area likes one brand it can up to double your attack power, but if it doesn’t like another brand your attack can be halved. This can be solved by fighting battles wearing clothes (the games equivalent of armour) and pins of the lower brand, thereby increasing the area affinity with that brand.

In all The World Ends With You is a superb RPG, and one of the finest new IP’s on the DS. It is a technical marvel and while it does have the odd slight issue such as it can be hard to remember where to go on missions and what parts of Shibuya are where, this can be over looked easily. A truly brilliant title.
4.5/5