Blog Update

Hello to all you loyal readers who have been repeatedly hitting F5 since last September.  Adam here, you know, Addman.  That guy who does the thing.  Now you remember!  I just wanted to let you know that I haven't given up on Blogging and that Calmer Chameleons is still on the way.  Let it be known that Adam Lloyd is not a quitter!  That's why I dropped out of rehab.

I didn't want to fill this space with unfunny life updates, but I feel that you fine folks deserve a few answers surrounding my mysterious absence.  Basically, the design for Calmer Chameleons is done, but I haven't been able to conjure up any particularly good content to put on it.  This is mainly due to life commitments that have grown exponentially, as I shall list in tedious detail here.

So I've moved to Manchester, or as Manchester University professor Brian Cox would call it, the city of D:reams.  Upon arrival, the natives welcomed us in their traditional tribalistic fashion by stealing a laptop from the person who was helping us move.  Apparently, it is an honour to be greeted in this manner.

While we've settled into Mancunian life in the weeks since, unfortunately, I've still been working 70 miles away, so there have been lots of commutes and nights away.  There have also been lots of interviews to try and find work in Manchester (which, despite a number of jobs, they all seem to be taken by cabal of psychic job hunters before anyone has the opportunity to apply.  Perhaps this down to a series of uncles that have been blocking my social mobility. Either way, after a couple of false starts, it looks like I'll finally be starting a new job closer to home over the next few weeks.

For most of my free time over the last few months, I've been hunting the deadliest game of all; employment.  Some say that mankind is the deadliest game, but those people clearly haven't played Jumanji.  However, The rest of my free time has been taken up with an entirely different occupation.

I've been playing at being a journalist.  Namely, the laziest type of journalist of them all, the video games journalist.  I started writing for an independent games website called Power Up Gaming back in August, and since then I have been made an Associate Idiot-I mean Editor.  They even let me write my own biography, the fools!  I've covered events, conducted interviews, and committed my opinion on more than one occasion.  In the short span of time that I've been writing for them, the site has grown tremendously and now gets tens of thousands of hits every month.  I contribute this success entirely to myself, and am planning to overthrow the website in a militaristic coup to take what is rightfully mine.  You can support my endeavour by looking at the articles I've linked and sharing them appropriately.

So this is all well and good, but when will my triumphant return to Blogging commence?  Well, I'm writing again, which is a decent start, and I expect to launch Calmer Chameleons in the new year.  Monday the 5th of Jan looks like a good day, so let's go with that for now.  Appropriate links will be posted here so that you can follow and fan my flagging ego with praise and adoration.  Until then, stay slinky.

E3 2014

The Electronics Entertainment Expo took place in Los Angeles last week (Muppets For Justice is nothing if not timely and relevant). This is the trade show for the video games industry, and boy were there some big announcements this year! Allow me to summarise the biggest game announcements that you might have missed:

Tiger Madden's Pro Kickball HD 2015

The popular Tiger Madden franchise adds the word "pro" to the title this year, adding a career mode and realistic turf physics. This means that the grass will react when you step on it by flattening down and going slightly brown. You can restore your turf's greenness through a mini game where you play a groundskeeper who has to water and trim the turf between matches.

Remake Simulator

Have you ever wanted to replay your old games and pay £20 for the privilege? Well now you can with Remake Simulator. Just fire up the game and you will be presented with a fully HD screen asking you to insert your old game CD. Brilliant!

Moodie

Moodie is grim, indie, 8-bit adventure which makes great use of the colour black. Lots of moody things happen such as lamps that won't turn on, wind noises spontaneously emerging, and an ongoing internal monologue about the bleakness of human existence. There are no enemies and no combat in this game, just lots of walking through caves and abandoned buildings. The game ends with Morrissey singing Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.

Hyper Ironic Awesome Boys

Another indie darling which strives to be as over the top as possible, with hulking space marines hoisting unwieldy cannons around, blasting aliens and screaming "Hells Yeah" and "Yolo" every time you press a button. Explosions literally have the word "BOOM" in them, and are accompanied with slow mo and camera zooms. Don't worry though, the developers are being ironic, so it's okay to be this crass.

Battlecall 12

Are you a white male aged 18-30 who has power fantasies about being a white male aged 18-30 in a war? Well look no further than Battlecall 12. Set during the Falklands War, you can duel wield chainguns and make puns while slaughtering your teammates in online deathmatch.

Teabagger 2

Following on from the success of Teabagger, Teabagger 2 has a variety of opponents for you to squat over and "own".  The game is full of celebrity tie ins, allowing you to successfully teabag famous faces such as Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Spacey, and Ice Cube. You can buy the Snoop Dogg DLC voiceover pack, where you'll hear Snoop commentate your teabagging experience with choice phrases such as "shit son, you teabizzled his chizzle".

And there you have it. Lot's of great games to keep the whole family numb over the upcoming Christmas period. Start saving your money, and we'll see you online shortly!

V – Video Game Player

Long-time readers may have realised that I am quite an avid gamer.  I try not to talk about it too much on Muppets For Justice since this isn’t a gaming blog, so it is a side of my personality that I don’t show too often.

However, I have long sought to become a professional video game player. Pro e-sports athletes (the only sport other than sumo wrestling that you can be both obese and “athletic”) get paid ridiculous sums of money for sitting around and bashing buttons on a controller.  I can remember someone winning a Quake 3 tournament and receiving £100,000 in prize money.  That kind of cash could buy loads more games!  But is a particular game that I excel at?

Luckily enough, I am rather good at Tekken.  I was local youth club champion for two years running, and I still have the medal that I made for myself.  It was time to hone my skills and step up to the big leagues.
In a similar fashion to a martial arts student taking a grand pilgrimage to train with a wise old master, I booked a plane ticket to the land of e-sports and high broadband speeds, South Korea.  Over there, Starcraft players are revered as Gods, with legions of screaming fans at their beck and call.  I figured that if I did enough training montages, I too could become the object of affection for one million young Asian girls. Although my weak, Western technique wouldn’t stand a chance against the major Korean players, so I would have to begin my training as a complete novice.

Paul is a triumph of super-hold hair gel.

I had arranged to meet a Tekken master named Ji-hu who would show me the ropes of competitive Tekken fighting.  A young man who hadn’t even reached puberty arrived to greet me at the main interchange in Seoul.  When he introduced himself as said Tekken master, I laughed at him, brushing it off as some sort of bizarre joke.  I couldn’t have been more wrong. The young boy leaped up and plucked my eye straight out of my eye socket for “casting him a dismissive glance”.  As I rolled around in excruciating agony, Ji-hu arranged for my “fat corpse” to be transported to his dojo for training.

Ji-hu was an impossibly strict master.  Now with poor depth perception, I was forced to complete seven obstacle courses before breakfast.  I wasn’t allowed to speak any English at all.  In fact, I wasn’t allowed to speak at all, or else he would have pulled my tongue straight out of my head without a second thought.  I was forced to eat individual grains of rice from between floorboards with a pair of tweezers.  I slept upright on a chair with a mousetrap near my balls that would snap shut if I leaned forward.  I wasn’t sure how any of this would teach me to play Tekken to a greater degree, but I had to trust in my master if I wanted to learn his lessons, even if his methods seemed cruel and unnecessary.

The day of the tournament began.  I chose my favourite character (Bryan Fury if you’re wondering), and I was up against the number 5 seed.  Ji-hu was waiting in the wings with some sort of rudimentary flail, ready to strike should I slip up.  It was time to put my training to the test.

I lost two straight rounds without landing a blow.  I felt like I had become a far worse player since I started my training, as if the dehydration and mutilation I had suffered over the past few days had affected my motor skills.

In severe danger of losing the match, I decided to forget about Ji-hu’s training and revert back to my old tactics.  I went over to the other competitor and thumped him on top of his head, knocking him unconscious. I was immediately disqualified, which I didn’t understand since that’s how I managed to beat all my rivals back home in England. I left South Korea with a cloud of shame hanging over me, and a huge medical bill after Ji-hu flayed the flesh off of my back.  I guess this isn’t the game for me.

Flappy Swine - Latest Update

Since Flappy Bird was unceremoniously dumped from all online stores, the market has been clamouring for the next big thing. We've had Swimmy Fish, Hoppy Frog, and Shavey Badger, which have all enjoyed a modicum of success on the marketplace, but it seems that the one game that has really captured the hearts and minds of the public is Flappy Swine.

Created by Me2 Games, Flappy Swine is a free to play game in which you have to guide a flying pig through a series of heavenly golden gates. The principle of Flappy Bird is thoroughly intact, but the game uses advanced monetisation techniques to encourage players to purchase upgrades and add ons. The game was also recently updated, so let's see what has changed in the latest patch:

Reality catches up with satire yet again

• Flappy Swine now actually looks like a pig, and the placeholder image has been changed accordingly, instead of looking like Flappy Bird.

• All placeholder pipe images in the game have been removed and replaced with gates.

• The title screen now says Flappy Swine instead of Flappy Bird.

• When you die, a screen pops up asking you to purchase an extra life for 7 Swill Points ($5.63). If a swill point is not purchased, a cool-down peroid comes into effect and the game is not playable for 24 hours.  The game will make fart noises if you try to launch it during this period.

• Posting your score to the leaderboard costs 3 Swill Points.

• Each flap on Flappy Swine costs 1 Swill Point. When all Swill Points have been exhausted, the player has a five second window to purchase more points, or else Flappy Swine will commit seppuku with a barbeque skewer.

• Flappy Swine is now only playable on devices with a fingerprint reader, to stop people selling their device for thousands on eBay when the game is inevitably removed from online stores.

• Flappy Swine now makes oinking noises on each flap, rather than playing an audio clip of one of the developers screaming as his soul is sucked clean from his mortal body.

• A hidden credits sequence can be accessed by crashing Flappy Swine into the base of the 3rd gate.  The credits include the text "I can't believe people pay for this kind of wank".

• The feature in which Flappy Swine turned to camera when the game is paused to make wise cracks about your fat momma, has sadly been removed.

• A new feature called Oink Bucks can be purchased for $10.99 each, but which currently serve no tangible benefit to the game.

• If you try and rate the game less than four stars on the online store, you are redirected to a press release on the developer's website which explains how they are "delivering the core experience to gamers".

And there you have it. Flappy Swine is available on all good smart devices and tablets, for the next few days at least. Get your copy today!

Stupid Shit In My Brain

Some of you may have noticed that I often write about childhood. I also often write from a childish perspective, but that is more purile humour than a stylistic choice.

I do this because I have a strange memory. I remember certain segments of my childhood very vividly, and yet, can barely remember what happened yesterday. As such, there's a whole.swathe of stupid shit that sometimes bubbles to the surface of my mind. Most of it has been lost to the sands of time, and people look at me weird if I bring them up. Some folks think I'm making this stuff up, even if we were the same age when it was happening, or even saw it together. It makes me feel a bit perculiar when I remember something so well, and yet someone else cannot. Let's run through a few examples:

Parappa The Rapper

I never even owned this game, yet I can recite many of the words from the opening song. Parappa learns to do karate from a guy called Chop-Chop Master Onion, and here's the opening words from the rap, from memory:

Kick, punch it's all in the mind,
If you want to test me I'm sure you'll find,
That the things I'll teach ya are sure to beat ya,
But nevertheless you'll get a lesson from teacher,

I sing this to myself whenever I chop onions. As I said, I never owned the game and don't know anyone who did own it. However, I remember a friend had a demo for it and I played it once. I must have learned it in that one sitting, then my brain conjures it up when I'm faced with onions.  Bizarre.

Banana Bubbles

Banana bubbles, banana bubbles, the cereal that thinks it's a milkshake.

This is a breakfast cereal that had a very limited run in the early to mid-ninties. Why I remember it or it's jingle is a mystery since I never ate it or even wanted to. I didn't even like banana milkshake, so why is this in my head?  Probably because, even at the tender age of eight I could see this was an abomination.

Big Bad Beetleborgs/VR Troopers

Everyone remembers Power Rangers, especially since they're still going strong today. However, no one seems to remember these poor rip off shows.  I'm pretty sure these were shown during prime time kids TV slots, probably between series of Power Rangers.

Coco Pops

I'd rather have a bowl of Coco Pops than what?

The Coco Pops jingle is one of those brain bugs that pops to mind whenever I don't have anything else going on in my head.  I must be a slave to Kelloggs or something, since their jingles take residence in my head.  Even that little twinkley thing they do at the end of their adverts makes me want to shout "I'D RATHER HAVE A BOWL OF COCO POPS!"  Also, why do their adverts feature a camp ostrich?

That's all I have time to mention right now, although I'm sure there are loads more I could probably think of.  What about you lot?  Is there anything you distinctly remember that everyone else has forgotten?

The Creepiest Games You Know

Welcome to the dark side, where up is down, time is no time at all, and jelly babies are now jelly teenagers and won't come out of their rooms for a family meal.  That's right, you've reached the Twilight Zone of the Internet, and once you've changed your underwear after that frightening first sentence, we're going to explore the scariest business that the electronic format can provide.  Namely, creepy video games. 

Anyway, while there are plenty of frightening games out there, sometimes developers will throw a curveball into an otherwise happy, child friendly game.  I want to discuss those video game moments that are either unintentionally upsetting, or just outright jarring.  Below is a small selection of utterly horrifying gaming moments that quite simply shouldn’t be.

The Gameboy Camera Faces

Back in the late 90’s, Nintendo released a camera peripheral for their wildly popular Gameboy.  The idea was that you could take photos, edit them, and print them out for your friends.  The last thing that Gameboy camera owners expected to see was this:

The image is actually an error handler.  Rather than displaying an error message if something goes wrong, Ninty thought it would be a lot more child friendly to display disfigured faces with the rather menacing phrase “WHO ARE YOU RUNNING FROM?”.  Considering that one of the main causes of this error was by selecting the Run command, which hadn’t actually been programmed, this often seen error screen caused many childhood nightmares.

Most developers would have either just removed the Run command or displayed a generic error message, but Nintendo decided to opt for this frankly baffling picture.  Perhaps they thought it was a joke, but either way, it was poorly judged on their part.

Sonic CD

Oh what fun!  Here’s a game where you leap around as a little blue hedgehog and free tiny animals from robots!  This game will be completely suitable for my children and guaranteed not to scar them for life:

Oh.

This was a sound test easter egg put in by a development team who had spent the first half of eternity in hell.  Of course, an eyeless freaky Sonic is a perfect image to show the kiddywinks!  They’re going to enjoy seeing their cutesy hero wearing a threatening mask while he leers at you through those soulless sockets.  What makes this even worse is the music associated with it.  Seriously, watch this on YouTube for the full effect:

Super Mario Galaxy

Super Mario Galaxy was one of the biggest hits on one of the most ubiquitous console of recent years, The Wii.  If you’ve ever played the game, did you ever get the eerie sense that you were being watched?  Well you should have done, largely down to these little folks:

Yes, there are mysterious shadow figure overseeing the events of Super Mario Galaxy.  Who are these secretive beings?  Can they feel love?  Who on the art team thought to include them?  Chances are, with this being a tiny speck of the background that has been magnified, one of the artists included this as a joke.  What’s more surprising is that someone even noticed this in the first place.

Fallout 3

There are many horrors that an irradiated wasteland can offer up, but none quite compare to the skinless floating muscle people that occasionally pop up in Fallout 3.

During the game you can quite easily blow enemies to pieces, quite literally, spreading their organs and guts across the ruins of DC.  But occasionally, a bug in the game causes those pieces to reform into a character.  Sometimes they'll mysteriously float around aimlessly, others can be interacted with, but all are freaky as all hell.

Half Life 2

Okay, Half Life 2 is intentionally creepy in a lot of places, but this one is a particularly freaky easter egg that everyone will have come across without knowing it.  Specifically, the zombie headcrab noise:

Yes, those people are screaming "OH GOD HELP ME", which is a nice unsettling touch added by the developers there.

Anyway, that's all I have to share with you today.  I figured that the blazing sunlight and longer daytime hours of July would make an ideal backdrop to discuss scary stuff, rather than waiting until Halloween like a walking cliché.  Regardless, do you have any unintentionally creepy gaming moments to share?

Sony Conference 2013

Last week, the world’s most rapidly shrinking company held a press conference to announce their new, next gen console.  The Playstation 4 was unveiled to great fanfare; a two and a half hour lecture about dreams, content, clouds, and other miscellaneous wistful vocabulary.  But what did any of it mean?  I decided to summarise it for you so you don’t have to sit through a lengthy conference that those poor games journos were subjected to.  I mean, they were paid to sit and listen to a man talk about a medium they are interested in.  That’s hell on Earth right there!

Anyway, let’s take a look at the main points raised by this press conference:

Playstation 4 Has A New Controller

Look at this thing!  It has a blue light on it!  That’s awesome.  It also has a “Share” button.  The functions for this are almost endless, but the main use is for your mum to come in and press it, forcing you to let your sister have a go on Spyro The Dragon.

Also:  Nicer triggers and thumbsticks

It Will Play Some Games

Sony showed off a couple of games.  A shooty game, a driving game, and a shitty game.  Specifically Killzone: Shadowfall, Driveclub and Knack respectively.  This confirms that Sony’s machine will in fact play games and not the unfathomably abstract, social applications of your dreams.

Other People Can Watch You Game

Using the “Share” button on the controller, you can send people screenshots and videos of your gaming exploits.  You can invite people to watch your game session, offer advice, or even to take control of your character and make him leap straight into a pit of snakes.  Also, with the Playstation Eye peripheral, people can watch you masturbating in your living room while your dog glances at you quizzically.

The PS4 Has And Hasn’t Got Backwards Compatibility

People have been speculating for weeks and months as to whether the PS4 will be backwards compatible with older games.  Well, Sony shocked the gaming world by confirming that the PS4 simultaneously will and won’t support the full library of old Playstation titles.  You can’t pop a PS1, 2 or 3 disk in and expect it to run.  However, you can stream old games online.  But you probably have to pay for it or rebuy your old games.  But hey, you can stream them!


It Is Good At Rendering Old People

Are you sick and tired of playing young whipper-snappers in games?  Are you bored by controlling lithe, athletic men who are able to leap around and shoot guns?  Well, the Playstation 4 is just the thing you need in your life.  It can simulate the aging process accurately by depicting every winkle and crease with a cellulite-ridden avatar of you.  Age has never looked so good!  In fact, the console is rumoured to have a feature where it will go into “sleep mode” in the middle of a game, giving you chance to nap.

A man shows off a man's face at the Sony Conference

It Has A Typical PC Architecture

Some hardware specifics were revealed which put the PS4 in line with current high spec PCs.  It has an AMD x86 processor, which doesn’t mean a great deal unless you jack off over hardware specs until your gigahertz.  To games developers it does mean a great deal, as the PS3’s Cell processor was rather aptly like a locked door without a key, making it difficult to program for.  Although this doesn’t promise better games, it does offer hope that Playstation ports of games won’t be hideous.

Dreams

I lost track of the conference at some points, but I’m sure he spoke about dreams at some point.  I suspect that you’ll be able to upload your dreams somehow and have other people comment on them.  “LOL soggy mattress fail”.



As I'm sure you'll agree, the PS4 will usher in a new era of stuff and things.

Advice From SimCity

Congratulations on becoming the new mayor of SimCity!  Here's some useful tips from your advisors:

Hello, I’m McGuiggan and I’m the advisor for recreation and leisure. You need to give your residents something to do. Leaving them to their own devices is not a great idea. Why, back in '73, I remember the problems that occurred when we closed the local swimming pool.  The residents soon become restless and started playing a citywide game of "name that STD" for fun. It wasn't pretty.

Hi, I'm Johnson and I’m in charge of safety.  Fire in disco! Fire in the disco! Fire in the Taco Bell! No, I’m not singing, this is a serious status report. You see all that orange stuff with smoke coming off it? That’s your downtown going up like a light bulb made from matchsticks.  Might want to dispatch a fire engine or two.

Greetings, I'm Huxley, your financial advisor. You wanna be rich don’t you? Then take it off...slowly now. Yeah, and dance a little...nice. They don’t call you mayor candypants for nothing, huh?

Good afternoon, I’m McClaire, your education advisor. Unlike you, our residents will need a good education to get better jobs. Not everyone wants to follow in the family business of selling glances of our genitals to passing motorists.

Alright, I'm Bob the transport bloke. Just thought I’d update you on those requests. A) Segways are not cost effective public transport and B) we can't expect commuters to get a "backie" on their friend's BMX.

Morning stars shine upon you. I'm Serenity, your environmental advisor. Have you considered investing in green technology? No, that’s grass. Yes, I know it’s green. When I say green technologies I mean wind farms, solar power...no... grass isn’t a technology...OKAY STOP CLICKING ON THE GRASS NOW!

Hey, I'm Drips, and I look after your utilities.  I have a few questions for you.  Firstly, why have you built nothing but pipes?  Secondly, why have you filled those pipes with man eating plants?  Thirdly, why have you  named your city "Super Mario Land"?  I don't understand.

V – Video Games

Here we are at V, the inevitable topic of discussion.  Long time readers may recall my unwillingness to discuss video games on here, for fear of turning this into yet another games blog.  And yet, in an A-Z of things that interest me, there isn't a more fitting topic for this particular letter (and don’t any of you dare suggest that I should have written about Vaginas.  I know how your minds work).

Rather than list my favourite games in order (1 would be Silent Hill 2, if you’re interested), I turned to the Internet for inspiration, motivation, and salvation.  I came across the rather amusing Video Game Name Generator [http://www.generatorland.com/glgenerator.aspx?id=132&rlx=y] which dishes out randomised game names.  I’ve listed some of the more chucklesome ones, along with an imagined description that I’ve made up.  Please enjoy:

Jacked-Up Pudding Fighter

Takes place in a school cafeteria.  You choose a generic school kid to play as (geeky kid, goth, bully, sports kid etc.) and your aim is to start a food fight, and come out with the least stainage on your clothes.  If your stain level reaches 100%, your character will pass out in fear of what his/her parents will say.  Being the last one standing nets you maximum points.  Multiplayer only.

Jesus Designer

Similar to Mario Paint, but with heavy religious overtones.  You can make lovely crucifix prints, draw a beautiful landscape of burning sinners, and compose 8-bit church hymns about praise.  The highlight is the 3D fully customisable virtual Jesus, which you can dress up and modernise with low slacks and bling.  After you’ve dressed him, you can plop him into a virtual shopping centre and watch him interact with people, all while Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus plays in the background.

Grueling Mortician Rising

A guy who works in a mortuary falls and hits his head, killing himself in the process.  That is, until a nefarious necromancer raises him from the grave to reap souls for his collection.  The game involves you harvesting bodies and hauling them back to the mortuary for collection.  You have to avoid detection; otherwise the police will arrive and discover your heinous deeds.

Worms Incursion

In an unusual move for Team17, they’ve swapped their cuddly, cutesy earthworms for the bottom-dwelling parasite kind.  In this game, you have to lead a legion of worms into a human sphincter and keep them there, negotiating an obstacle course of barrelling excrement, and probing dildos.  The game is over after a certain time when your worms become too fat to feed anymore and just sort of, drop out.

That’s enough fun for me, now I’d like to invite you to have a go.  Generate some video games and post them in the comments.

H - Homoerotic

Have you ever noticed the comedic potential of the word “homoerotic”?  No?  Then allow me to enlighten you.

It occurred to me some time ago that simply by adding “homoerotic” to the title of a movie, TV show, band, video game or anything, you instantly transform it from mundane to hilarious.  After discussing this with a friend, who shall be named as Zoid to prevent stalking, we came up with a large number of examples.  At the risk of running this joke into the ground, here’s a list of some of the funnier ones we came up with:

Video Games:

Homoerotic Gears Of War

Homoerotic Tomb Raider

Homoerotic Final Fantasy

Homoerotic Civilisation

Bands:

Red Hot Homoerotic Chilli Peppers

Homoerotic Sons And Daughters

Scouting For Homoerotic Girls

The Homoerotic Feeling

Movies:

Mr Poppers Homoerotic Penguins

Homoerotic Monster’s Inc.

The Never Ending Homoerotic Story

The Homoerotic Human Centipede

Jim Carey: An advocate for gay penguin rights.

TV Shows:

Inside Nature’s Homoerotic Giants

Dad’s Homoerotic Army

Mrs Brown’s Homoerotic Boys

Harry Enfield and Homoerotic Chums

That’s enough for now.  Please contribute some more if you can think of any.

On a slightly different note, what would be the opposite of homoerotic?  I suppose it would heteroerotic, which probably sounds more deviant and other-worldly than it actually is.  I'd love to describe myself as an exotic heteroerotic pan-dimensional love invertebrate.  In fact, that would look fantastic on my CV.

P.S. This post was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend of mine, Zoid.  Some of the above suggestions are his, but I can't remember which ones.

B - Baddies

I feel that the media tends to put baddies in a negative light.  Despite their evil tendencies to enslave the world, murder people and whatnot, you have to admire their ingenuity, persistence, and intelligence.  Their actions may be motivated by personal greed, but the work is hard, the hours are long, and it tends to destroy your social life.  Dinner parties are difficult to arrange when you live inside an orbital doom laser.

As a celebration of bad guys everywhere, I thought I’d honour my favourite villains in the form of a best of list.

And the award for most inappropriate fighting footwear goes to...

10 – Heihachi Mishima

The Tekken series is chock full of token evil-doers, but few match up to Grandpa Evil himself, Heihachi.  To list all of his evil achievements would take too long, but his highlights include fathering the devil, throwing his 5 year old son off a cliff, throwing his grown up son into a volcano (same son, might I add), and gambling his entire corporation and billions in personal wealth, just so he could beat up his family members.  He makes Gaddafi look like Mother Teresa.

9 – Krang

Some think that Shedder was most evil person from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but I reckon it was Krang by a long way.  Not only is he a hideous pink evil squid genius, but he hollowed out a guy just to live inside him.  That would make for a brilliant Halloween version of Grand Designs.

8 – Professor Monkey For A Head

Here’s an inspiring example of a villain who overcame a disability to become a feared galactic presence.  Professor Monkey For A Head has to be one of the best villains ever created, mainly because of the simian hanging off of his scalp.  It’s a comedic concept that still makes me grin inanely today.

7 – Scorpius

If you’re not sure who this leather-bound ghoul is, he’s from the Farscape series.  Just a cursory glance at Scorpius is enough to get him listed here.  Evil acts and misdemeanours are by the by when you are sporting the fetishised corpse look.  What?  Yes, I did watch Farscape.  The BBC used to put it on after The Simpsons.  Don’t judge me!

6 - Dick Dastardly

Animal abuse advocate Dick Dastardly was like a blueprint of villainy during my childhood.  When I think back, Dick Dastardly did very little apart from try and stop a bird from delivering letters and viciously thump his asthmatic dog, but his is an enduring character.  He had all the hallmarks of evil though.  He sported a devilish moustache, wore dark colours, and had a wicked cackle.  Plus his propensity for attaching ludicrously dangerous devices to flying machines was admirable.  I’d have loved him to catch that pigeon, just once.

Stop that pigeon NEEEEOWWW!

5 – Kain

Kain is a vampire lord with one of the meanest streaks I’ve ever seen.  When his lieutenant Raziel grew a pair of wings, Kain tore them off in a jealous rage and threw him into Oblivion.  When Raziel comes back from the dead for revenge, Kain leads him on a wild chase over space and time, which are frontiers that most baddies don’t normally meddle with.  Then there’s his propensity for farming humans.  Civilisation only exists because Kain allows it to in order to satisfy him at snack time.

4 – The Claw

Although we never saw him fully, The Claw had two noticeable characteristics.  The first was his steel claw which he liked to stroke cats with, almost skinning them alive in the process.  The second was that deliciously evil laugh.  “I’ll get you next time Gadget, next time...mwahurhurhurhur!”.  That delectable, throaty laugh is the defining laugh that all baddies should aspire to.  Interestingly, my spell checker doesn’t like the word ‘mwahurhurhurhur’, which I assure you is spelt 100% correctly.  Seriously, go and listen to it now.

3 – Brian Fury

Brian Fury is a cyborg who likes to crush people just for the fun of it all.  During his time in the Tekken series he is seen tearing tanks open like sardine cans, breaking an opponent’s bones even when they’ve been knocked out cold, and killing a scientist who saved his life, all while laughing like a monumental maniac.  You have to admire his callous disregard for everyone in the name of fun.

2 – Darth Vader

You just knew that everyone’s favourite negligent father had to pop up somewhere on the list.  Darth’s evil deeds include cutting off his son’s hand, not paying any child support whatsoever, and overseeing the construction of a planet sized weapon of mass destruction.  The Death Star is the pinnacle of evil achievements, sweeping aside the fact that it was destroyed easily by a lone fighter.  We also need to ignore his empire’s overwhelming defeat to a bunch of teddy bears.  In fact, Darth is directly responsible for some glaring mistakes when you think about it.  Gotta love that outfit though.

1 – Psycho Mantis

The guy looks like a mustard gas gimp.  Although he’s rocking that World War II look, Mantis can read your mind, dodge bullets with relative ease, make you go blind, and float around with the power of his mind.  As a child, Mantis razed his entire hometown to the ground in some sort of crazed psychotropic fury, the effect of which probably made him a little touched to say the least.  Fighting Psycho Mantis is akin to overloading on hallucinogens, then trying to punch a balloon in a hurricane.  Of course, you could always plug your controller into port 2.  “Nooooo!  I can’t read you!”.

Your memory is completely clean, dumbass!

Skyrim Diaries

3rd Felstead 4th Era:

My name is Ivor Bighorn. I am but a lowly farmer trying to scratch a living from the barren wastelands around Ivarstead in the province of Skyrim. I hold no illusions that my journals will be of great importance or interest for future generations, however, I was compelled to put quill to parchment after a number of unusual disturbances in our quaint mountain town.

Yesterday, a stranger arrived in town wearing nothing but a pair of dirty discoloured briefs. A dark elf, with extraordinary facial features, exaggerated beyond the usual limits of nature. He has huge bug eyes, a bulbous forehead, and a chin that could cut through troll fat. Despite his hideous physical appearance, most other townsfolk seem unfazed by him, and speak to him as an ordinary visitor. How I wish he’d put on a tunic.

Whilst tending to my cabbages, he approached me from behind without a word, and made movements suggestive of fornication. As I tried to politely move away, he responded by leaping onto my roof and carelessly casting flame spells near the thatch. Fortunately, this failed to ignite, and I was about to summon the guards before he leaped off and ran off into the sunset towards Bleakfalls Barrow. I quietly hope that he fails to return.

4th Felstead

The stranger appeared again today. One of the guards informed me that he was a Dragonborn, and had been summoned by the Greybeards. This essentially makes him the Chosen One, and he will be rewarded special dispensation as a result. I also found out his name; the curious moniker of “IM GAYLOL”. I can only hope that Mr GAYLOL’s behaviour improves in line with what we would expect from a Dragonborn.

Wish You Were Here...instead of me.

5th Felstead

Mr GAYLOL has returned from his training with the Greybeards and promptly proceeded to Shout at my chickens, making them crumble apart with the power of his magical voice. Quite why a person with the power to slay dragons would want to assault a flock of lowly chickens and destroy a simple farmer’s livelihood is beyond me. I called the guards, but they failed to catch him before he stole a horse from a nearby stable, and fled in the direction of Whiterun. If he appears again, I shall report him to the authorities without hesitation. My wife says I need to forget about it, but this injustice is playing on my mind constantly.

7th Felstead

I came across three dead guards stripped naked in the snow today. There were no witnesses, but I am convinced this is the heinous work of GAYLOL. Not only is he an abomination, but he is dangerous and a menace to our way of life. People are becoming frightened to leave their houses. The inn keeper said that GAYLOL was bartering with him over some imperial armour only a few days ago. No doubt he is slaying people and selling their cuirass’ for a few extra coin. I don’t understand why security cannot be stepped up in the face of this evil.

8th Felstead

That bastard! My wife and dog are both dead by his wretched hand!

I awoke in the middle of night to urinate. As I reached for the bedpan, I noticed someone had placed all of our food in there in some sort of disgraceful practical joke. This has spoiled our entire food supplies for the winter, which means that starvation is a distinct possibility. That’s when I heard a jug fall off the table in the main room. I grabbed my pitchfork and ventured forth, only to find GAYLOL squatting in our kitchen over the corpse of my beloved and newly eviscerated pooch. Upon being discovered, GAYLOL must have panicked and, in the ensuing scuffle, burned my poor wife to cinders with a fire spell before escaping into the night.

Me and Erin had been together for 38 years, and now this “Dragonborn” has ruined my livelihood, destroyed my dog, and brutally slaughtered my beautiful bride in one evening. I cannot cope. I don’t know how to come to terms with the loss.

Even his horse is evil

9th Felstead

The local community has been very supportive. The inn keeper has offered me free food and lodgings until I can get back on my feet. The blacksmith has provided me with a dagger, for protection in case the murderer reappears. The farm across the way sends it’s condolences, and has offered to replant some carrots for me come next spring. My wife’s body is currently being embalmed at Bleakfalls Barrow and is to be prepared for a funeral precession tomorrow afternoon.

No sightings of GAYLOL yet today, apart from the inn keeper heard someone walking around on his roof last night. I suspect this was him, escaping from the scene.

10th Felstead

Tragedy has struck again. As the undertakers carried my wife’s coffin through the village streets, that damned dark elf appeared again, leaping over the precession on a horse in an act of defiance. He then dismounted and used a Raise Undead spell to reanimate Erin’s corpse. Shortly after coming back to life, Erin went on a spree of unrepentant violence, sweeping aside her old acquaintances like mudcrabs in a mudslide.

It took a whole legion of the Emperor’s finest archers to finally bring her down. In the meantime, GAYLOL escaped yet again.

This is to be my last diary entry. I cannot cope with the twisted machinations of the Dragonborn, playing with me as though I am a character in a stage play. Tonight, I shall end it all by consuming my whole supply of Skooma. I only hope that whatever malicious being is responsible for the creation of GAYLOL is satisfied that it has bought an old man to take his own life.

------------

So remember, next time you’re in Skyrim, take a moment to think about how your actions affect those around you.

Fate Of The World (Or How I Learned To Stop Vegetarianism And Love The Bomb)

Let me preface this by saying, I try not to talk about video games that often here on Muppets For Justice. It’s not that I don’t like them (that’s far from the truth), but I thought that if I allowed myself to write about them, I’d end up with a very dull Blog about graphical quality or who is the best out of Sonic and the guy who deals the cards on Microsoft Hearts. Regardless, I simply have to flag up a  fascinating game called Fate Of The World, and I'm not even being paid to do so.

Fate Of The World is not a traditional game in that you don’t shoot or stab anyone. I understand that some of you might feel slightly nauseous at this thought, but it is a beautiful simulation game with a simple interface, but a magnificently delicate model working behind the scenes.  It’s a strategy game which puts you in control of a fictional organisation (The GEO) tasked with combating global warming and improving the lives of the planet’s ever expanding population. To do this, you select policy cards ranging from improving healthcare and education, to reforestation and stopping the use of coal or oil in a region. Then you advance five years and see what effects your policies have had.

The fate of this thing is in your hands

Sounds pretty easy right? Give people access to aspirin and plant a few trees, job done. Wrong. Every action in Fate Of The World has an equal and opposite reaction and if left unchecked, what seem like sensible policies for a greener Earth can cause mass genocide.

I thought I’d talk about my first experiences of the game to help you understand how disastrously bad events can turn. After a short tutorial mission which was disarmingly easy, I chose the first main mission which required me to reduce global oil consumption whilst keeping the HDI (Human Development Index, a figure which shows people’s quality of life based on wealth, life expectancy, health, etc.) above 0.7 across the board.

My strategy was clear in my mind. I would improve healthcare across the poorest regions such as North and South Africa, then move onto compulsory education in those regions. For the wealthier regions like Europe, North America and Japan, I’d concentrate on renewable energy, planting trees, and stopping deep water oil drilling. An eco warrior’s dream world, right? Being the liberal lefty that I am, I thought I’d be able to finally prove that the world could exist peacefully if everyone had access to health and education, and all power was generated by wind farms.

Play your cards right

Right from turn one I realised that North Africa was basically spoiling for a fight. Mass outbreaks of violent protests and rioting were cropping up all over the region, forcing me to spend a little too much money on providing security to the continent. The whole continent was turning into Fight Club, only someone must have forgotten the first two rules as news of this brawl spread faster than Katie Price's vaginal butter.  I started by building a welfare office, whilst funding peacekeeping troops to try and keep dissent at bay. This escalated further when I found myself having to impose martial law to stop people from killing each other (one of my agents was even kidnapped and killed during this conflict). In a the space of about 15 years I’d personally transformed from a pacifist into a militaristic fascist, and found that I hadn’t even started my higher education program yet. This was disappointing, but inconsequential compared to what was happening elsewhere.

In order to fund my projects in other areas of the globe, I decided to raise a little extra cash in richer areas. I introduced a tobin tax in Europe and Japan (this is basically the Robin Hood tax which takes a cut of all financial transactions). I noticed in Europe that after five years, businesses were threatening to leave the region, so I removed the tax to try and avoid a similar situation to North Africa. However, I forgot to remove it from Japan. The very next turn, Japan removed all support for me and pulled out of the GEO. When a region does this, it takes a substantial chunk of your funding away, so I was starting to feel the financial pinch.

However, my main issues were cropping up in India. This is a perfect example of how a fantastic plan can go horrendously wrong in Fate Of The World. From early on I noticed that, due to the massive population (which was still growing at an alarming rate), farming and agriculture was under immense pressure to supply food to the region. To alleviate this issue, I flicked through my policy cards to find a suitable solution. It was then I came across the brilliant idea of encouraging vegetarianism. This would relieve pressures on farming as they won’t be required to keep expensive animals, and Indian people love a good vegetable curry, right? So, I played my Vegetarian Revolution card and waited for my utopian iron-deficient society to emerge.




The orangutans were learning to use tools?!  Damn, they could have propped up the economy!

 A couple of turns later, I was alerted to the fact that people weren’t pleased about the reduction in meat. I figured that they were just suffering the last of their meat sweats and that they’d soon settle down. How wrong I was. The situation escalated to a point where I couldn’t contain it with peacekeeping forces. Conflicts were arising, people were trading arms, bacon was being imported on the black market (presumably), and then someone dropped the N word. Nuclear bombs. That’s right, people were so upset by the lack of minced beef that they decided to annihilate themselves in a nuclear armageddon.

So, thanks to what I thought was probably the meekest and most peaceful policy I could have enforced, I bought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Nearly 600 million people were wiped out of existence in the space of 5 years, the HDI in India fell to 0.2 and worst of all, the world’s supply of naan bread was totally destroyed. I have failed the world.

If you’d like to watch the Earth crumble around you for fun, please visit developer Red Redemption’s website. The game along with all the DLC is £15, and I’d heartily recommend it for those of you who think they know what it takes to save the world.

http://fateoftheworld.net/

Old Video Game Boxart

The old saying goes "never judge a book by it's cover". A moral lesson indeed, but if books had covers such as these, they'd have been rounded up and sacrificed to whichever offending God was responsible. In other words, we'd have never learned to read.

Video game covers are supposed to be exciting adverts which give you a strong interpretation of what you can expect when you fire the game up. These examples do neither, and are probably harmful to brain development. Here's a short list of some of the worst offenders:


Karnaaj Rally

A world in which this exists is not a world I want to live in. This boxart raises so many more questions than it answers, such as "who the hell is that guy?", "why does he look like a Guido version of Blanka from Street Fighter?", and "what charity can I donate to to help him back onto his feet?". Also, I assume that the blur effect on the car is meant to give the illusion of speed, but instead looks like someone spilled water on the cover and made the colours run into each other. Perhaps someone thought the original copy was a drinks coaster.

Most companies have a marketing department to help weed out horrible, potentially damaging advertising such as this. We can only assume that Jaleco's marketing department are either dribbling simpletons, or are always on strike from now until the end of time.


Cheggers Party Quiz

Although on this cover Cheggers looks like Paul Daniels being slowly pushed through the skin of a tambourine, this is more of a terrible game than a terrible example of boxart. This image is representative of how Cheggers actually looks in the game, like a giant baby after a face graft with Rocky Dennis.

The Wii may be the home of family entertainment, which explains why a game like this might have come to fruition. However, when you consider that Keith Chegwin once hosted a TV show called Naked Jungle, in which his Cheggers swung freely in the breeze, the game becomes even more nightmareish as you start to imagine Cheggers shedding his clothes and gyrating around the screen in celebration as you answer another question correctly. If you win the game, Keith begins to pole dance in your mind as you gawp on openmouthed, wondering why your wife and children next to you are not attempting to end their own lives with their Wiimotes.


Mega Man

Message to the cover artist: "We've made a game about a metal man from the future who shoots people. Please draw something appropriate."

Back in the olden days, when people ate blancmange without shame and an Internet connection could only be installed in the outhouse next to the toilet, video game graphics were far from realistic. Without an adequate game engine to render a beautiful interpretation of the game and its characters, it was down to the artist to draw something exciting. Unfortunately, the artists very rarely actually played the game. The results are obvious.




Mega Man 2

Although this is nowhere near as dire as the previous Mega Man artwork, it is far less excusable. They've obviously hired a new artist, but again, failed to tell them anything about the game. For starters, Mega Man is using a pistol despite the fact that he should have a cannon grafted onto his arm. Also, he's wearing spandex and looks a Power Ranger suffering from stunted growth. Put simply, you could describe this artwork as being gay. Put more elaborately, you could say that this is so flagrantly homosexual that it would even creep out people who have sex with men.






The Great Giana Sisters

Sisters are breaching copyright for themselves! In what is obviously a feminist's take on the Super Mario games, the cover includes several staples of the plumber's outings. Those are obviously Goombas in the sky, along with tons of mushrooms sprinkled over the floor. Even without mentioning the obvious link with castles between the two, you've already drawn up a legal document and sued the offending company back into the stone age.

If you want proof as to how far the developers went to rip off Mario, take a look at this speedrun video. The first level is almost identical to the point where you have to watch a video of Mario just to make sure it isn't the same.



Final Zone II

Judging this game by it's cover, we can conclude that this is basically Mass Effect when viewed through a stained glass window covered in shit.

The best feature about this is the guy on the right with the explosion happening behind his head. It looks like he has a yellow mohican on top of his brown mullet, which couldn't be any more 80's if it was set to some inoffensive rap.

And there you have it. If you're a concerned parent who is concerned with the amount of time little Tommy spends playing Halos Of War 5 or whatever, show him this article. These covers have done more to set back the video game industry than Loose Women have done for feminism.