Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) update 1.05

Yes, I'm reviewing a game update. Why? Because I can, and because I'm quite impressed with what it offers. As you'll know if you've read my previous review of the game itself, I was pretty pleased with it though there were some problems. This update doesn't address many of them but it really doesn't matter. In the intervening time I've really fell in love with the game and play it regularly. This update offers a lot more functionality and fun. I'm still shit on-line, mind you.

By far the best thing in 1.05 is the ability to backup your save to a USB device. This essential omission was rendered vitally important by the fact that going on-line can result in lock-ups that occasionally corrupt your save. Whilst the lock-ups happen a lot less now it's still great to know your progression can be saved. You still can't swap saves with others, which is good, but it's not known whether they are locked to account or PS3 unit - pretty vital if you change PS3s and want to keep your save.

Seasonal Events are brilliant. They offer a lot of fun, close racing and lots of credit and xp. They are updated regularly, are open for around two weeks and let you race, time trial or drift. They tend to have very strict regulations and most of the race events restrict you to a single vehicle that you can hardly tune at all. This leads to very close, tough racing. I can only get silver at best but it's great fun trying to find just a second or two more out of a track.

The new Hot Car dealership offers you access to 12 cars (and trucks) that will help complete particular events. These will be occasionally updated. In addition, you now get credits and xp for on-line races where your distance driven and number of wins are now saved. Mine still reads 0. Oh, and the shadows have changed - they're slightly smoother but still pretty shitty.

Finally, until January 11th, we get more rewards for doing A- and B-Spec events. A really good gesture to wrap up a really good update. What's impressed me most is that these additions, for the main part, are neither fixes nor things they wanted to put in the game, they are genuinely new things to do. And they're a lot of fun. Nice one Polyphony Digital.

Playstation blog on the update.

Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) Review

I come to this game, as I do all games now, with the mind and body of a 40+ old gamer with very little twitch muscle left and all manual dexterity fading with age. Whatever enjoyment I can find in a game tends to be tempered with the idea I can never do well at the higher levels of the game and the fact that I'll not be winning on-line. So enjoy your read ahead with that in mind.

GT5 is the racing game that Jap studio Polyphony Digital have been making since before the Playstation 3 launched. Its tag is the real driving simulator and it's by that that it must be judged. Don't expect flashy explosive graphics, tracks with spurting lava, boosters and so on - this is a sim and it deals with real cars going around realistic -often real - tracks.

So how did they do? Well, they did pretty well but the game is not without some problems.

The menu system, for example, is an annoying piece of shit that should of been changed completely shortly after design with the subsequent public torture and execution of the designer and his entire family. It's unintuitive, doesn't group things where you would want them and forces you to endlessly traipse backwards and forwards as you just want to race.

The graphics and sound are great. With the exception of the trees which are a bit polygonesque and the shadows which are as bad as anything from the PS2 you can imagine. The engine does run at 1080p 60FPS though, so perhaps it's easy to understand why some compromises had to be made. Sound, on my system at least, comes out as Dolby Digital 5.1 48k and is as crisply appointed as one could want. The music on the other hand is techno, lightweight synth jazz, cheapo classical and generally a bit shitty and uninspired. Like it was chosen by someone who doesn't like music very much. There is no option to use your own music in the game - for shame, Polyphony Digital.

There are over 1000 cars in the game - one of its unique selling points, and due to implementation one of its critics' biggest bugbears. There are around 200 premium model cars and therefore around 800 standard model cars. The difference? The former are modelled in detail, look amazing and offer custom dashboards if you like to race inside the car. Standard models contain less detail and no dashboard. That said, they actually look quite good to my eye, just a little plain at times - it depends a lot on the specific car.

Damage modelling comes in two flavours in GT5: costume and mechanical. Both become progressively unlocked as you increase your level. Costume looks a bit crap, with areas of your car taking on a sort of distorted plastic look. Mechanical damage unlocks quite late on and actually effects your racing performance. So I can't tell you much about that apart from to say that update 1.03 just became available tonight which adds mechanical damage to on-line racing via the options.

Handling is a fucking dream, thank fuck. This is the very core of any racing game, without which any amount of snazzy graphics, explosive damage modelling and car tuning options would completely fall apart. It took me 3-4 days for the handling to click into place for me, and when it did it was a pure joy to be able to sling cars round corners, powerslide and all the other cool car stuff we love. It is not forgiving though, muck up your line or braking at a corner in a powerful car and you'll spin or go off-course - this is just how it should be in a sim.

GT5 is played in one of three main modes: GT Life, Arcade and On-line. GT Life is the full experience and involves entering races to win money and experience points to go up levels to get you faster cars which can enter more races, etc. You start with a small amount of cash and no cars and have to make your way up the rankings. It works well. Arcade gives you access to most courses and cars and is standalone with no xp or money involved. On-line is currently unstable and can cause your save game file to corrupt - though maybe 1.03 has fixed this. There's no info currently.

Two salient points here. The AI is rubbish. You'll either win by miles or be all but last, depending on the relative speed of the car. And the B-spec mode, where you build up a fictitious racer and issue race commands to him, is a massive time and credit sink and nothing else.

This is a massive game, I've only scratched the surface myself and have only been able to write of a few of the more important areas and more annoying issues. I've not told you about tuning, the used car dealership, special events, replay and photo mode, paint, race mods and so on. Sorry about that, but did you really want to read much more?

GT5 is a game that excels - mostly - in the areas that are most important to it: driving a car around a track. It offers little panache or flair and has some problems that are really unforgivable in a game with such a long development. That said, they appear to be listening and are bringing out updates at a rate of knots. I'm impressed, I enjoy the game and would suggest anyone with an interest in driving games buys it. I wish they'd fix the on-line though, that really is cuntish corrupting your save file.. oh and you can't back it up, it's copy-protected.

UPDATE: I was wrong, you can use your own music. It's hidden away in options/audio. Works well, called 'Personal Music' inside the game. Online seems much more stable to me with the new patch (1.03).

Musical Biographies #1 - Cheesie Knicks and Thickwood Muck

Formed in Them Days by an aging Mick Thuckwood and his Green Peter, Thickwood Muck started out peddling blue songs for crack cocaine to angry negroes in the bayous of pre-Colombian Venezuela. Their breakout hit Albatoss - written about masturbation in Scotchland - is an acknowledged blue classic. Mick, dissatisfied with his rock crystals, immediately set upon a quest to find ever refined levels of cocaine use.

With pop-stardom threatening, Mick dropped his Green Peter like a hot melon and along the way met an elf-child, a pixie and a pair of grim swingers who he invited into the band. They were united by a shared interest in the coca-leaf and the by-products thereof. Many tracks were laid down in the studio and all were snorted up as fast as possible. Critical reviews were made and the band soon found they preferred Peruvian flake. Some music written.

The elf-child found it could sing. Although the sound was ever-muted due to the billowing clouds of pink fairy dust (see above), cotton candy and acres of lace. Pupating into female form she lived in a huge fluffy castle full of unicorns, curtains and lots and lots of cushions. Persistent vaginal infections led to a substantial amount of brie and Mick found himself finally able to dub her with her name to this day: Cheesie Knicks.

Ode to cocaine, Oh You Make Bumming Fun written.

Hit followed hit, tour followed tour and before long mild-mannered cretins everywhere were being soothed and tweaked by Thickwood Muck's brand of super-jizzy pop-tastic pseudo-rock twadge. The band suffered, having to write and perform music was eating into valuable cocaine enjoyment time. They resolved to write one really big hit album that would pay off their dealers in one go and give them more time for their relaxing hobby.

Tango in the Shite was born. It was very smooth and less divertingly interesting than anything they'd recorded before. With absolutely nothing to trouble their minds, remedials everywhere lapped it up like little puppies with advanced brain tumours. Everybody was wildly happy, especially the dealers.

One more tour was planned. By now every band member was legally divorced from every other band member at least once and they refused to share the same continent with one another. This made touring difficult but a resolution was found when Lindsay Fuckingham the pixie-boy suggested each band member had their own trailer, stadium and three roadies devoted to blowing the coke up their arseholes all night.

Inevitably the situation couldn't continue. The swingers took permanent exile into a caravan park outside Lowestoft, Fuckingham grew his ears until death threatened, Cheesie disappeared up her own cunt after a roadie sucked rather than blew one night and Mick himself took to rocket science in a bid to find the first supplies of space cocaine. He remains very tall.

Casual Games for Sad Old Fucks #1

Three reviewlets of three games I've been playing recently. All were played on the Playstation 3, all are available on the Xbox and probably the Wii as well. Who knows, some might even be out there for the PC (one is). All are casual games, because that's what I'm playing at the moment, simple as that.

Monopoly Streets
£30 at Amazon
My latest purchase, what can I say, it's Monopoly. It's presented in 3D with excellent cartoony animations, it's all hopelessly family friendly and there's plenty of boards and pieces to earn to add to the interest (probably not enough pieces, truth be told). There are various game modes, from Official rules to Fast Game to Jackpot offering various rulesets. Graphics and sound are fine. So, is all hunky-dory in the Monopoly Streets world? Well no. Whilst it plays a great game you can sometimes get lost amongst the tight, close-in shots and feel a bit disconnected. But far, far more importantly, there's a big problem in the online mode where if one player drops the game ends immediately and you're sent to the main menu. This is shit. Frankly. That it got past QC is a sign that a fuck-witted numbskull was allowed to wank into the mix at some stage and left their stain behind. Patch please, quickly.

Rapala Pro Bass Fishing
£40 at Play, including rod peripheral
So to fishing, or Yankee fishing, without proper baits and that. That aside, this is an excellent game - probably the best fishing game ever, though to be honest that isn't saying much, I know. The big draw of this game is the rod peripheral which uses tilt switches and a reel (fitted either way for the right- and left-handed) to mimic the actions of a real rod and reel. It's not bad either. Obviously there's no feedback (the package is too cheap) but as you wave the rod about to move your lure in predetermined patterns or fight your fish you can squint and just about believe you're doing something approaching fishing. Visuals are great, sound good and the single player game seems quite well balanced and fun. The problem again lies in the multiplayer arena, and this time the problem is simple: there is no multiplayer. This could of been so fun and simple, fishing in a lake against friends or strangers for a predetermined time. Activision are indeed cunts.

Worms2: Armageddon
£13 or so, Playstation Network
This is part of the old Worms series that started in the 1990s, this is the cheapest game by far in these 3 games, this is in 2D and this is by far the best game I'm writing about today. In addition, and least importantly, this is the one game also available on the PC. You know the score, it's the old BBC computer artillery game with amazingly surreal landscapes, weapons ranging from the mundane to the insane and worms; lovely cute little worms with adorable voices. It's savage as hell, especially online where no prisoners are taken. The only problem with this game are the players - so many scurrilous toads are happy to besmirch their good name and honour by quitting games when they're losing that it can be quite rare to finish a game online. Apart from that it's wonderful, gloriously pretty in 720p and most importantly fun as hell.

There you have it, two not bad but flawed games and one prime jewel amongst games. If I had one general comment it would be this: please let me play my own music in my own games. None of the above let you play your own and that annoys the hell out of me. This should be such a simple requirement every game should allow it. The Xbox 360 has had this since year dot at system level. That's probably why these 3 ports don't have it.

That's all for now, poodle-tip.

Modern druids? Modern wankers.

If you believe in an organised religion through childhood indoctrination I regard you with pity. If you have come to believe in organised religion through your adult life I regard you as mildly retarded. If you have thrown aside organised religion for a belief in what they call 'Paganism' I regard you as a prime fucking wanker.

Druids, pagans and witches - tossers. Basing themselves on old religions we know next to nothing about, connections with mother nature that don't exist in any concious applicable form and believing that spells can do anything, ever, to anyone. Cunts. It's worse than most Christians, in that it's more active and a belief in superstition is even greater.

These are people for whom organised religion seems remote and disconnected - they're not quite stupid enough to believe. But in the void that appears in their lives lurks fear and superstition. The void has to be filled by bullshit. They're not quite clever enough to deny the urge.

Atheist Realities. Religious Necessities.

Atheism has a problem. It exists as a reaction against religion, and is in an unstable position because of it. In its worst incarnations it can look like a religion in itself - if you look at some of the extreme atheist forums you can understand why. Things aren't helped by the fact that scientific theory forces us to admit we can never prove if there's a god or not. We're all forced to believe something even if it's in nothing.

I am an atheist, but these days I prefer a gentler form of the game. I've never believed, no indoctrination was attempted as a child - I'm not even christened. So in my later years I find myself living without a religion as purely natural; you should be good to people as an acknowledgement of the society you enjoy and live your life for the benefit of that society.

But what of fighting the good fight? Shouldn't I be trying to create other atheists, protesting about the latest knuckle-dragging cluster fuck of a Papal decree, and generally attempting to destroy religion?

I don't think so. Other than setting an example by leading a decent life without god, I don't think any longer it's my place to do these things. Partly it's because those acts smack of religious activity, and partly it's because of a new realisation that struck me a few years ago and has been growing in my thoughts recently.

People are fucking thick. Even in a relatively rich society like the UK the average person leaves school with a poxy 2 GCSE grade C's. That means that the great masses of this, and presumably every other country, are deeply stupid people. People who without religion to rule their lives instantly seem to devolve into braintards believing in magic crystals, wicca, the cult of scientology or whatever other fucking rubbish someone is flogging to fill the religious void.

So could religion be necessary for a healthy society that consists mainly of sub-moronic halfwits? Could a lack of it be why UK society suffers from various form of anti-social problems? Could it be a creation of social evolution (in Dawkinian terms) that favours the continued existence of that society? I'd say it's worth considering.

New toys - Amazon Kindle

I'd wanted an e-reader for a long while, I don't have the best of eyesight and the tightly set text of many modern book imprints had basically stopped me from reading. This also made e-paper an essential - other screens refresh themselves constantly and make reading a lot of text a chore. My other criteria was price, around £100 seemed fair to me.

So when Amazon advertised the new 2010 Kindle at price points of £109 (wifi only) and £149 (including 3G mobile data facilities) I literally pre-ordered mine on the day. As I have no need to download books on the move I saved my money and ordered the wifi only model. Both share a 6" screen, 4GB of memory and the same form factor.

It arrived on time, was unpacked and powered up. It had a protective sheet of adhesive plastic with some warnings about use printed on it.. soon removed.. and.... it wasn't printed, it was text on the Kindle screen. Text of quite amazing clarity and quality. It's not like text in a book, it's far better, like a very high quality print on very high quality paper. I worked out the DPI of the 16-shade grey-scale screen and it's just about twice that of the monitor I'm using now. Impressive stuff.

It is, of course, monochrome. That doesn't worry me, this device is for reading text and for that you don't need colour. While we're about it, it's not touch-screen either - everyone who has handled my machine has tried to touch it. Sorry, but not at this price-point. Not yet.

Whilst you can find e-books to read all over the web, the Kindle Marketplace on Amazon is your central site to buy Kindle books, newspapers, magazines and blogs. You can buy a book either on your Kindle or via your PC browser. It's all very very streamlined - buy on the browser and next time you turn on your Kindle it's downloaded and you can read in a few seconds. I should note that there are many free books on the Marketplace, mainly older texts but very welcome indeed.

Reading itself is a pleasure. Large buttons on the side of the device offer page forward and back (on both sides to cater for lefties and righties alike). You can select sections, bookmark them, make annotations (using the excellent keyboard at the bottom of the device), select words and look them up in a dictionary, send quotes to Facebook or Twitter and generally do anything you could do with a book and so much more.

The tricks don't quite end there either. Hit a key combination and your Kindle will start reading back your book for you. Okay the Stephen Hawking voice will never be as good as hearing a well spoken audio-book, but it's a cool feature nonetheless. In addition you can play MP3s and there's even a basic Web browser available which works reasonably well.

The Kindle is a quite excellent machine. I can't compare it with other e-readers, having never used one, but this device does everything I'd expect from an e-reader and a lot more I didn't. It's a well-made machine and makes reading easy. Using one text size above default I find reading books is once again available to me - and that's worth a lot.

The Downing Street Sauna I

"Hey Dave, this is great, who thought this place existed, huh?"

"Yuh Nicky, apparently Denis had it put in to entertain some of his Arab oil chums, yah. Been here ever since, down in the depths. Here, be a good egg and throw another pail on the coals."

Clouds of steam rose from the red hot cherries of heat, filling the room even more until all was a white fog, the two men just light grey silhouettes in the thick hot mist. Dave stretched, his naked body immodestly clad in a small white towel, and his hand brushed Nick's shoulder. Nick jumped!

"Hey, hey hey buddy. Hey, hey hey hey. Hey. Hey now what's wrong, you're like a coiled spring Nicky-babe."

"It's just that I'm a bit concerned about the coalition, Dave. We've had a good start, no denying it, great first 100 days. Some of our policies are really really great. Good decisions on the banks and the quangos, I can even let slip the stuff about taking people's council houses away - that's not true is it? - but it won't be long before the Spending Review is in and people realise just what's going to happen. Is the country ready, are our MPs, can the coalition survive that?"

"Hey Nicky", said Dave, standing up behind his friend and partner, "What you need is a neck rub. They were all the rage at Eton, how was it at Westminster?"

"No sauna", Nick replied nervously, adding, "but what about the coalition?"

"Oh coalition schmoalition.", said Dave, as his hands expertly kneaded at Nick's clenched shoulders, "Let's just enjoy the moment. Victory, 100 days of being in charge. It's all great. Hey there, you're knotted up like billy-oh across the shoulders my chum. So tense. Here, let the fingers go in deep."

Nick shuddered and moaned slightly, but it wasn't through concerns about the future now, Dave's fingers had worked their magic and set his tension free. He felt like a boy of twelve again - but as Dave had mentioned, there wasn't one to hand - it was like being back at Westminster School all those years ago. He felt a sense of freedom and daring he'd not felt since that time. He stood, turned, reached for Dave's face. Their lips touched.

<>

Later the sauna was dark, Dave sat against the back wall with Nick laying across him. The towels had gone, any pretence at modesty seemed inappropriate. Both men relaxed in the warm glow of friendly company and shared experience.

Dave reached down and removed something from Nick's chin with a wipe of his thumb, "Missed a bit! Hey Nicky-Babe, that was pretty special you know."

Nick smiled, "I enjoyed it, it was great, like back at school in the showers with the PE master. Hey Dave, do you think such two men, a deputy and his leader.."

"Dual leaders.", interjected Dave.

"..yes. Yes. Dual leaders. Have such dual leaders ever had such an intimate knowledge and experience of one another? Surely this can lead only to good, or who knows, even greatness for us."

Dave just smiled. He leaned back harder into the wall and stroked Nick's hair.

Nick breathed deeply and nuzzled into Dave's lap a little more. His eyes flicked to the wall behind them. Through the remains of the steam his eyes started to focus in on a small patch of graffiti. As they resolved into words Nick could read clearly, "Gordon 4 Tony 4ever". Suddenly the room didn't seem so warm any-more.

William Hague - a lifter of gentlemen's shirts?

Great picture isn't it. Could they have found two men looking more gay? Outside of Queero's Nightclub of Poofland Street, Homoville I think not. They look like they're filming a version of Brokeback Mountain set in one of London's Georgian Squares. Looking at the picture, with Hague's self-assured straight ahead smile and his chum's more hesitant grin looking across to William it's difficult not to tentatively assign them the roles of stone and sponge, from left to right.

On one level I don't give a fuck if Hague gives, or takes, it with other men. I have a perfectly ambivalent attitude to gays; live your life as you want as long as my bottom is not touched. Campness on the other hand I find wildly funny, as well as how other people react towards homosexuality in general - there's a lot of humour in the world of gay. So who cares where William puts his nob?

Well, the only problem I see (I'm ignoring the infidelity issue, that's really between the man and his wife) is his voting record on Homosexuality Equal rights as you'll see if you go to that link he has a less than enviable record in this regard. When he didn't vote against the various measures he was absent and only in one minor vote did he vote for the majority (pro-gay) opinion. If it turns out he is a sausage jockey then accusations of hypocrisy will be difficult to ignore.

If, on the other hand, they are untrue. The media should be thoroughly ashamed, including me probably.

The Society of the Clitoris

Women assault men with their bodily pheromones to sell their sex for safety and comfort. This is why it can be argued that all women are whores. This is a purely natural circumstance of evolution which has left the child-bearer weaker than the child-provider. In the 60s and 70s a group of lesbian women across the world decided to push for female dominance - although ironically this urge came from the excess of male testosterone created in their genetic lesbian bodies and minds.

As far as I can tell this goes directly against nature. I don't see that as a good sign and aren't sure where society will go with the increase in female dominance. At the very least it's not a great thing for males and we can already see many negative effects for us. I call this the Society of the Clitoris.

The problem - as ever with solutions to the various 'isms' - is that equal rights becomes mixed up with people being equal. We're not, men are generally bigger, stronger, faster and think more clinically and logically. Women are smaller, weaker, slower and think on a more emotional basis. It should be patently clear that the different sexes fit into different roles in society.

As we try to fit ourselves into the wrong shaped holes, is it any wonder than society suffers? A Swedish survey on gender equality from 2007 noted, "[n]egative effects" to health in both sexes are suggested due to increased stress of the opportunities of the workplace, observed that "one-sided expansion by women into traditionally male roles, spheres and activities will not lead to positive health effects unless men also significantly alter their behaviour".

So, to work, men should go against their nature too, to cater for the aberration of women? This seems wrong to me. Perhaps we should just say that equal rights are a great idea but admit that the sexes are different? Take it down a notch and maybe everyone would be a bit happier.

It might even help women too. I can see a future filled with 40-something women with no kids, no husband, no ability to cook or clean a house. The looks have faded and the pheromones now just smell like bad fish. What have they to offer anyone? Not much is it. All they seem to have ahead of them is 40-50 years of boredom and intense loneliness to look forward to. Thanks Germaine, Andrea and the rest.

Tiger Wood's complete prostitution of the games format

Tiger Wood's PGA Tour 11 has many faults. The hierarchical menu system is completely nonsensical, the graphics are too clinical and glitchy, the online skill level system is totally broken and the commentators are as annoying as hell. But it does play a good game of golf that rewards experience well. It represents a big change from my previous golf game, Everyday Golf, which was a lot prettier, easier, less buggy but probably less rewarding.

But let's forget about all that, because I want to talk about how this game completely prostitutes itself to try to screw every penny from its players. These are the top 4 marketing ploys TWPGA11 presents to the consumer:

1. The On-line voucher, as I wrote about here, monetises the second-hand market for EA.

2. Extra courses are available as DLC for the gob-smacking price of £6.29 for a single course. This seems particularly steep to me - far more than I'd expect to pay for a single map for an FPS for example.

3. You can gain some easy XP (the game's currency) by sending a message to each of your friends advertising the benefits of the game. I presume. I've never seen it. All my friends have.

4. Instead of earning XP to buy new items in the pro shop (from shoes to clubs - and they give you various skill bonuses) you can stump up some cold hard cash and buy them on the PSN. They cost from under a pound to several quid, and there's usually a new better item every level or two.
A quick hint here: learn to grind the skills challenges for fast xp.

This seems quite enough to me. I don't buy many EA games, so don't know if this is (ahem) par for the course - but I'll guarantee it will be, and not just for EA. This ghastly nonsense is going to spread and spread until we can't frag someone on Doom 2012 without being asked if we want to buy a bigger gun. There's nothing much to be done of course, gamers being a slothful lot, all but impossible to rouse.

Cloned meat, Bullshit and Science

So, an embryo from a cloned cow was bought from America and two offspring have got into the food chain. Well, I'm underwhelmed. But this story is consistently being pushed by the BBC, on one level it's merely a classic 'silly season' story, on another it's a danger to our particularly vulnerable beef farmers. Whilst I'm not a particular fan of our little kings of agriculture, beef farming is only just recovering from the BSE crisis and could be hit badly by this irresponsible journalism.

Yet the public have a responsibility too, one we're failing at terribly, in that we should be intelligent enough not to respond like idiots to stories of this nature. The problem is science - the word itself seems to send normal people into dithering, witless dimwits. This disgraceful lack of knowledge seems to make people very defensive indeed, even aggressively displaying their ignorance as some supposed mark of cleverness. If this is you, please stop, you look like a fucking moron.

Julian Huppert, Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, is one of only two MPs (out of 650ish) to hold a science doctorate, and the only MP to have worked in the scientific field. He's described the problem of scientific illiteracy in parliament as being so bad that all MPs should have a mandatory course in the subject. I'd go farther, perhaps the entire nation needs an enforced lesson in science just to stop them acting like complete arseholes.

Sarah's Law - the plight of the poor paedo

There's no denying it's a hard life being a sexual offender. It's one thing after another - if you aren't out signing the register, you're taking your weekly visit to the local police station or explaining to your parole officer why a copy of "Young Arse" was found under your bed in the half-way house. Things are about to get a bit harder as the nation's police forces decide to implement Sarah's Law across the UK.

Sarah's Law is similar to the American Megan's Law in that it allows parents to find out if anyone who has access to their child is a sex offender. It's named after Sarah Payne who was killed, aged 8, in 2000 by paedophile Roy Whiting. Whilst that was a tragic act, there's no denying that this is a case of law made by the media - mainly in the form of a rabid News of the World, laughingly playing the high moral card against the only people accounted lower than them, the paedo.

We're assured that this will not lead to vigilantism. Well, we'll see. Personally, I'm not so sure the great British public will be able to hold back as word spreads of their local paedo. Especially if he or she has 'access' to children. At the very least he's going to feel just a bit more targeted and vulnerable.

I have some time for the sexual offender. I don't agree with the common mood that they should be tortured to death by a baying mob; I have this odd idea that that isn't healthy for society. This is not to say I think such people should go free, they are after all causing untold harm to their victims.

We need to understand that sexual offenders are ill. For whatever reason (often their own past as a victim) they fancy things that normal people don't. Imagine that for a second. Instead of being attracted to and needing sex with an adult of appropriate gender you have the same feelings for your pet dog, a fireplace or a child.

I believe these people should be helped by all the therapists, with all the drugs and doctors that they require. But if it's judged they are a danger to children (or dogs, or fireplaces) they should be put in comfortable but secure accommodation and treated until cured. This would be healthy for society on many levels.

So, pity the poor paedo - his lot is a heavy one. He's locked into a world he didn't ask for, with feelings which are as natural to him as breathing, and every hand is turned against him. His own acts appal him and the necessities of his life strike him ashen with grief. Poor cunt.

Daily Star, GTA Rothbury and Channel 5

To be honest with you I'd missed this story last week. Apparently the Daily Star managed to claim that Rockstar had started work on GTA Rothbury, a game based on the brief visit to the village by killer Raoul Moat. They reportedly went to members of victims families for comment an mocked up a cover for the game (shown to the upper right). Thinq reports on it here.

Now the Daily Star have had to publish a grovelling apology and give "substantial damages" to Rockstar, who are going to give them to charity.

I know what you're thinking, and I agree, it'd be a terrible game. The one playable character looks like an angry potato, and you only get to shoot four people - one of whom is yourself. The rest of your time is sat in a tent or drain writing letters.

And it's also a fucking disgusting thing to do to sell your piss-poor "newspaper". All of those involved should be absolutely fucking ashamed. That is Jerry Lawton, who wrote the article. Editor Dawn Neesom. And owner Richard Desmond. Take a round of applause all of you, in a theatre named simply 'cunts'.

Desmond, of course, has been in the news for other reasons recently. The porn , magazine and newspaper baron has gone the whole media hog and bought out terrestrial UK tv station, Channel 5. Whilst such centralised media ownership can never be a good thing, I'm not sure how Channel 5 could become any more low-brow and sensational. I await Mr Desmond's attempts with some interest.

At the very least we can expect some top quality video game coverage.

Tiger Woods Pro Tour 11 and the online voucher

Whilst I'd read about this new "online voucher" idea in the games press, this is the first title I'd bought that included the feature. In practise it works very simply, you get a code that you put in and it lets you use the on-line parts of the game. Buy a second-hand game or get your game without the code for some reason, you have to pay some money for the "voucher" (a new code) and you can go on-line too.

This is the games industry monetising the second-hand market and presumably an attempt at monetising piracy on those platforms which allow it. Many think it will destroy the second-hand market - not an area I know or care much about - but as far as I can see it'll just devalue your second-hand game by a few quid.

Morally it's less easy to justify. Without consulting us, the industry has taken away what we thought was ours and gained from the move themselves. Whatever they believe is the legal case - we never actually own these games remember, just a licence to play them - is frankly immaterial. In addition, it's not clear what will happen should your console break and you need to re-install your game.

On the whole, I believe that the games industry is right to bring in the vouchers. It doesn't effect the original owner (as long as new console reinstalls are allowed), it might keep costs of games down slightly and frankly it's a great idea from their perspective. And compared with the complete prostituting of the rest of Tiger Woods Pro Tour 11 it really is nothing.

Go compare moonpigs via Halifax, we'll buy any car dot com

If, like me, you happen to agree with Bill Hicks on the subject of marketing then you can't have helped being driven to distraction recently by the fucking dire adverts on the tv. Every vile out-of-work cunt actor or singer seems to have been combined with every gaudy visual or stupid fucking song to sell some cunt product that no cunt wants to fucking buy. I'm not alone either, a particular advert made a friend of mine spout out on Twitter recently, "This [advert] makes me want to self-harm."

Go Compare probably deserve a dishonourable mention here for one of the most annoying audio tracks to any advert ever - indeed, adverts aside it may be the most annoying sound ever recorded outside a South African Football stadium or U2's music studio. We Buy Any Car also deserve a mention for their up-tempo and frankly fucking awful piece of repetitive techno for their ads. No-doubt there's a Belgian Hardcore version of this track being played on a loop in some of the more dubious Hamburg torture bars.

Though there are many awful adverts about, it's my intention in this piece to focus on one of them: the new Halifax adverts. These are the adverts that caused my friend to threaten to self-harm and I share an intense loathing for them that goes beyond mere homicidal hatred.

In the old days (remember 2009, kids?) we had Howard, the highly bespectacled black bank functionary who we are meant to believe was plucked from obscurity to become an all-singing and mainly-dancing poster boy for Halifax bank, building society or whatever it is. Quite why we needed a poor vaudeville act to sell us banking facilities and mortgages is beyond the scope of this article. But Howard was fun, he was bouncy and he had a remarkably funny face. Label as inoffensive and move on.

Now we have something more terrible, something that makes me cringe inside as I watch and listen, wishing the torture would end or at least I could reach the remote. And the question I have to ask is why? There is nothing outwardly offensive about these adverts. Yet each time they're played a little bit of humanity dies. There is very little offensive sound, the visuals are tame and the people are all the type of well-scrubbed smiling folk you'd be honoured to introduce to your mother.

I think there have probably been more but the three adverts in this series I clearly remember are as follows. All seem to be based in some kind of fucking awful commercial radio station of the type I'd not be caught dead listening to. This radio station advertises nothing but various products the bank supplies.

1. The 5 Quid advert - various cunts try to get a word in edgeways whilst the useless fat unfunny hyper-cunt who runs the breakfast show (who could this possibly be?) breaks in to repeatedly tell us that Halifax will give you five quid for some reason I can't recall.
   
2. The ISA advert - some bloke who looks a lot like Russell Howard tries to talk about the benefits of a Halifax ISA while some odd looking tart with big eyes plays Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" over the top (clever huh?)
3. No idea what this is for, The Coffee Cup advert - two birds presenting the show talk about some shit so vapid I have no memory of it and at the end the handle off one of the slag's cup falls off.

So I had a think, cup of tea, bit of spliff and that and tried to analyse what I found so offensive about this particular series of adverts. It aint the product they're selling. It's not the sets, or the music, or even the inclusion of Vanilla Ice. It's not the actors, mainly 20-somethings you'd imagine having degrees and cosy mortgages from their own employer. They just sit and chat in their sensible pastel tops about nothing really.

Then it hit me. The reason these adverts reach a new depth of low for me is the very fact that they are so fucking terribly astoundingly dull and fucking inoffensive. Nothing troubles the eye or ear, indeed nothing troubles the mind. Horrible bland cunts just jabber on about nothing; an achingly appropriate metaphor for the paucity of their lives. And they themselves may well be nothing but a mirror image of our society.

I know one thing's for sure: I won't be a Halifax customer any time soon. Unless they up that free fiver to a tenner.

Modnation Racers - a review of sorts

No-one of sane mind is ever going to claim that Modnation Racers (MNR) is the best game ever made. I don't even know if it's the best kart game ever made, having not played them all myself. Certainly plenty of other reviews have mentioned the rubbish attempt to add a story into the career game, the difficult career passage as the AI becomes mentally aggressive and above all the long loading times.

But it's a good game, there's no denying that, and to me, it's a great game. Those other reviews will tell you the cartoon graphics are great, sounds fine, menus workable and will then almost always turn to the modding tools, which are excellent.

That they miss out on the aspect that makes the game great is no surprise. The lot of the professional or semi-professional game reviewer is not always a happy one. There's not always time to spend dissecting the game as much as they could, as much as the games player does by the natural dint of his playing, for example.

So, I'm 517 on-line games in and have just won the trophy for winning 100 games (silver, btw) and would like to report in. What makes this game great is how balanced the on-line racing is. Seemingly every race ends with a tight finish, good players will always fight one another and you're never left miles behind simply going round an empty track. And this all seems a perfectly natural part of the game, not leveraged by any deus ex machina but just something that happens.

So if you have a PS3 (or PSP) and fancy a blast, get a copy of MNR and join me on-line.

A condom for the iPhone?

Is this some kind of metaphor for our times? Has the hand-held device finally come of age? I doubt it but Steve Job wants to put your iPhone4 in a big rubber johnny. I don't know if Durex have been approached, or if the sheaths will feature different flavours, but I'm fairly sure a spermicide of some nature is involved. At least, users are unlikely to breed.

The obvious question is this: is the dobber designed to keep out malicious viruses or to keep in the foul evil mind-sperm of the user? As it spurts out of their Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace apps (and blogs) and floods the 'net with it's unwanted muck, maybe, just maybe it's a good idea.

Message jism. Information come. It soaks every area of the 'net. From dull Tweets to duller blogs, word after word, page after page of self-important turdery not another being on the planet is interested in. Not even your mum.

So why don't you just shut the fuck up. Stop your Facebook crap, I don't give a shit about your life. Just keep to leaving appreciate comments about mine. Who cares what your favourite music is on your Spotify list, just go to mine, it's much better. Write your blog? No, just come here, it's all you need.

Kay Burley now watcheable?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Kay Burley has become any better at her job. That would seem an impossibility to me. Her right wing bias, corpse hunting, unprepared, uninformed and unintelligent reporting, with particular reference to her live interviews with unsuspecting fools, remains unchanged. It might be getting worse.

But I can watch her now. Because she's become a parody of herself. That pointed nose, so happy to sniff out a disaster in any situation and the shrieking voice asking stupid questions no longer grate. In fact one takes pleasure in them, all the gaffes, embarrassing moments and nonsense. Each is weighed against the others and shared like a tasty morsel with friends over twitter or whatnot.

Unusually, I think I know the exact moment when things changed. It was, of course, the interview she gave during the election during which she was heckled. "Sack Kay Burley. Watch the BBC." was the cry, and followed by the classy, "Sky News is shit. Watch the BBC."

I'd like to thank that protester or protesters and shake him or them by the hand. I'd probably buy him a meal if he isn't a vegan (or they aren't).

And I think we should take it further. Go and find yourself some pompous buffoon, a puffed up poser, an idiot doing their job badly and shout at them "You are shit. Watch the BBC." This needn't be on camera but that's always better isn't it. Do this persistently until they stop. If they cry you get double points.

Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell, George Osborne, and tens of thousands of British shop workers and council officials take note. And Noel Edmunds.

Raoul Moat and his great mate Gazza

There is no doubt that the funniest aspect of the Raoul Moat story is Gazza. He turned up in the middle of the siege with some supplies for Mr Moat and an urge to talk him into putting the gun down. The police wouldn't allow him to talk to the surrounded man but unfortunately were unable to stop him talking to Real Radio.

There is some great material here, truly surreal and funny. Here is the full transcript. Here are some highlights:

PG: Doesn’t matter. He’s killed someone. Which is not nice, really. Obviously he must have been on drugs, errrm, and he’s shot two people right. Now I’ve heard on the news that obviously the drugs must have worn off. Now he’s willing to give in. Right

...

PG: I’m willing to sit down, to shout, “Moaty, it’s Gazza”, all I want to shout is “Moaty it’s Gazza, where are you” and I guarantee he will shout his name out, “I’m here” and me and him could sit and chat, have a little bit of fishing and all I’ll tell him, Moaty. Listen.
...

PG: Listen, I drove from Newcastle in a taxi to Rothbury, cost a lot of money. I brought a dressing gown for him, I brought a big jacket, I brought some chicken, some bread, I know you’re going to love this one, I brought him a can of lager, I brought him a fishing rod cause I heard he’s by the river. And I brought a fishing rod too, we’ll fish together, I’ll have a chat with him…..just talk and, cause I think I’m the only man…I can help him through this cause I’ve…

Surreal, funny and of course tragic. The delusions of a man run low by fame, money and a gigantic thirst. It's so sad. But not as sad as the current re-writing of Moat as anything but a thug and small minded bully. Don't let it happen. It's bullshit. Don't let the scum win.

UPDATE: The News of the World (shit) have some pictures of Gazza at the scene.

A message to the people of the future...

It's become increasingly obvious to me that some time in the future I shall almost certainly become a major global religious figure. It becomes painfully clear that in the years to come the depth and breadth (not to mention width) of my utterances will in some way be pooled together from IRC, forums, blogs and so on to form a body of work that shall touch people deep inside. Their emotional response shall trigger the supernatural side of the imaginative human brain and a religion shall form that shall change the world forever.

As that's the case, it's only fair of me to directly address these people in a probably vain attempt to explain some truths:

I am not a divine figure; I'm just a cunt. Your religion is shit, as are you. Every one of you should throw your selves off a cliff. A very high one. Your bankrupt pathetic search for 'meaning' is as vain as it is hopeless. There is nothing 'after' your life. You're just a lump of rotten meat or swirling ash. Stupid twats.

Of course, they'll just think I'm testing their faith. Toodle pip.

Bollocks

I like the bacon sandwich as a food and art form. It brings me off orally and sends the dopamine swirling. I feel for our Jewish and Muslim friends who are disallowed by their god to eat this vital food (and some other stuff like shellfish). The poor pig, to suffer the hatred of so many people 'cos it carried ticks and diseases that hurt humans in hot climates. The vegetarians and vegans too really don't know what they're missing out on. The wonder that is the pig, the glory of the curing process.

Enable it, ennoble it, cut it into strips and fry it.