And in the effort to keep up the REM related posts in recent times, last weekend, I went to see the band at Manchester’s cricket ground, the scene of the earlier cricket and later drunken stupor while trying to watch England do something on the field.

Now normally, as you would expect a manly stallion such as the Lord of Leisure, he would have been accompanied by a playboy model, or failing that, a cheap group of prostitutes who are more than happy to be paid by the hour for standing on a field filled with drunk people.

However on this occasion it was not to be, due to laziness (a true sign of being the Lord of Leisure) the decision was made to take someone else along.

Now, we cannot just bring this person on without some grander introduction because this is a person who helped make this all possible. So we’ll steal the top gear introduction: Some say that the big bang was started by a noise coming from her arse, and that she eats Jehovah’s witnesses who dare knock on her door.

Please welcome onto the blog for the first ever time in photo form: Mum.

And suddenly the mystery of why the Lord of Leisure is the way he is not a mystery…

Now already I can sense the tumbleweed of doom floating through the background in many minds out there in Internetland already thinking “Paul, you excellent person who deserves at some point to be the world’s strongest millionaire, you took your mum?”

Yes, it may not be the coolest thing on the planet to do, and frankly to even admit this on a publicly available stage will kill off whatever reputation I had built up. I had hoped to be thought of being a loveable rapscallion of the underworld by now, but beggars can’t be choosers as to what people think of them.

But before going further, I would like to address this point if I may.

Why is it considered a social faux-pa to include your parents in some of your life at all? They do lots of naughty and eventually squeeze you out, dress you up like a Christmas tree for a few years, then watch you make lots of mistakes of which leads them to wonder if you weren’t actually fine like the doctors told them when they dropped you.

The point is, is that they have been there since the beginning of your life, and yes we all get to the point where we don’t listen to them, pretending we know better when all the while we are just guessing and hoping for the best, just like they did years ago.

This endless cycle has been going on in various forms since humans stopped throwing poo at each other and tried to walk upright. Well, we are walking upright, but the poo thing is still a going concern.

But just because we spread our wings, run away and try to do things ourselves that doesn’t have to mean we just cut ourselves off from the birth givers altogether, far from it, at this stage, it should be a platform of equals, where all parties concerned can enjoy things, more often than not without getting on each other’s breasts.

My my, it appears I need to get off the soapbox and return to more favourable debauchery.

Actually, no let’s put one foot back on the box, as it turns out we were not the only ones there who had their old people with them, for your consideration, please view exhibit 1A:

Of all people to run into, we wandered into a pair from the local area, mother and daughter in this case, but this was more of a case of “Boyfriend silliness” than anything else, but nevertheless it’s something to help my already over explained case.

Turns out they were nutty, which was nice as we talked on about something, The V festival came up over and over, and then we were playing “let’s get closer to the front” as all people try to do to get a good view of the outside stage which was set up at one end of the ground.

Now as typical at such events, you find overpriced food and drink available for all to consume, as well as the little stall selling various bits of tat designed to make the weak willed part with their earned wages more than the ticket price already had done.

But they also saw fit to have next to nothing opened, which meant huge queues for practically, everything. It was a beautiful summer day, most uncommon in Manchester to be fair, so naturally you tend to be thirsty in such situations.

25 minutes later, we came back with tea and coffee costing the gross national product of Ethiopia.

Never mind, we weren’t there to enjoy the beverages and marvel at the modern toilets, we were there for some fantastic music.

First off on the stage to get people in the mood for dancing around like apes, was the Guillotines or gummy bears or something like that, they were on the stage for a while, and basically more fun would have been had counting arm pit hairs, my god, these people were singing songs which would make you wonder if playing with knifes was a fun pastime.

So off they went and suddenly we were happy again.

Then the second set came onto the stage, and I was rather happy to see it was the Editors, whom I had seen on more than one occasion beforehand while walking in various mud piles, and each time they had always performed at their best, singing great songs which just simply make you want to bounce.

And bounce people did:

The problem I guess, is that I’ve heard them on a few occasions now and I still haven’t a clue what any of their songs are called, nor who any of them are, you just hear the name editors and basically by association of the wandering madness of the past, you think “ah they’re good”, and good they were, belting out a number of tunes as they had done before, but no real new ones.

You kind of wonder about these support acts and how they perform as basically you have to wonder at the back of their heads somewhere, are they thinking “no one’s come here to see us, why are we even bothering? F**k it let’s switch the lights off and go home” It’s got to be a little bit demoralising though, especially for the first act, who made about as big an impression as someone farting next to a speeding train.

REM came out on stage and came out strong with song after song from their recent album, almost to the point where they wanted to prove that they can still kick arse and chew bubble gum. They’ve been doing this for over 25 years, but hell judging from what they were doing on stage, you wouldn’t think that.

I suppose to talk about them in this way, it’s more difficult as being a fan of them for quite a long time, it’s easier to just turn into a special person and jump up and down screaming some garbage about wanting their babies, as some in the crowd were on that night.

But it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, as the accompanying mother of the daughter was bored silly, to the point, I dare say she wanted to go home as quickly as possible. Someone said to me, that it was difficult to not like any of their songs as they had done at least one that everyone liked in their time, but no, this was not true.

I also have to remark on the fact that they seem to be getting more annoyed at the current American administration as quite a lot of their recent songs seem to bear out their annoyance at such things like the classicly titled “Ignoreland” which I can’t recall ever being played before and “Man-sized Wreath” which is only 2 and a half minutes long, but is utter brilliance.

You can’t however stop thinking about how many more songs they can swing out the door about the current administration without getting dull and what happens when good old dubba bush is out the door? Where will they get their annoyance from then, start whining about the price of petrol? Despite this, it appears that the American annoyance lives on as far as the crowd goes, having cheered at every point about all this.

They did some classics as well, and I for one am glad they aren’t giving up playing Losing My Virginity, er, I mean Religion, as every time you hear it live, it still is as good today as it was back when the band gave man-birth to it many years ago.

And this time round, it was an even better experience despite many people wanting to push back and forth all the while. For one, we were able to actually see the band perform as opposed to the time back in Hyde Park, where you paid £180 for the same position, with everyone else fenced off half a mile away just because they didn’t want to be ripped off.

Two, the band’s performance was better than 2005, which was a hard thing to do really, considering that was at the height of their tour. Michael Stipe’s voice wasn’t broken in any way, and was bang on tune all the while, with Mike and Peter playing at their best without even making it look like an effort. They could have just started playing with their feet while getting a massage and you got the impression it would still be as good.

And lastly, it seemed to be slightly more personal, as they appeared to be enjoying it a little bit more than usual.

All in all, right now, you will catch them at their best. However long that lasts, you’ve got to go and see them. Why aren’t more bands these days like this? I can’t count that many who are as big and still keep going for as many years, and still manage to amaze.

Frankly, it was a great way to end the weekend away from the trials and tribulations of Broken Britain, even if there were other things to forget, such as the wait home, or the b******ds who like pushing through crowds and being arseholes, but hey! Why be glum?

Guess who I stood in a long line for at Waterstones today in the vain effort to say about 10 seconds of drivel and then get escorted out by big burly men who would be more than happy to introduce you to your bottom? OK, that didn’t actually happen…

Yes, it actually is Mr Michael Stipe from R.E.M. and David Balise, the man who has been taking rude pictures of them for over 6 years, and now there is a book full of pictures now out in shops for people to buy if they so choose.

I feel like I’m the man on the moon…

During the bank holiday weekend back in reality as I’m now beginning to equate the London experience with the rest of Britain, the opportunity was taken to watch Hellboy 2: The Golden Retriever.

In a no doubt rush to get some more cash from a franchise born from comic books, The film was released on Wednesday for all to see, laugh cry etc. And why not? As mentioned before on the tome of silliness, there hasn’t been really anything other than the Dark Kite to get excited about at the box office, and of the films to come out, the majority of them have been sequels, perhaps now finally bringing home the bacon of truth, which is that Hollywood has ran out of ideas.

So the reasons for watching Hellboy 2: The cash-in, were that a) the first film was actually rather good. 2) It looked one of the better films out at the current time, considering what else is out there right now and iii) It was a Saturday night. Aside from dancing like someone suffering from Motor Neuron disease, drinking till our eyes bleed or drugging an unsuspecting person to violate, what else can you do at that time?

So there you are. The reasons behind the choice have been laid bare, and just like Get Smart, the expectations for the film were not overly huge, again as a result for a lacklustre summer blockbuster fest.

One of first things to note is that all of the characters from the first film do make an appearance at some point, but not all return, which the reason behind that do explained away quickly and is as quickly forgotten. Even the dead can make a comeback, as John Hurt was there as Father explaining basically what was to come through the rest of the film in a handy flashback sequence.

So using that last flashback bit as a very bad way of linking sections of this critical dribble together, let’s reveal what it’s all about then. Some fairies and humans were being naughty, something happened which made someone either very angry that some fighting started.

A big bunch of robot things were built with a crown to control them and then lots of humans were massacred. The fairy that was controlling the robots at the time was upset for some reason and stopped the robots.

A truce was made, the control thing for the robots was split into three, some falling out happens with the fairies and then we get to present day where Luke Goss, the fairy who had the falling out earlier turns Greenpeace and goes ape over humanity’s actions. It wasn’t enough that he was angry at daddy in Blade 2, he was now angry here. Someone should get that man help.

Now we have the gripping tale of terror or silliness or whatever was coming, let’s cue lots of “oh my god bits”, Hellboy comes in and along with trusty Liz, the fish and some german bloke made of smoke spends time saving the day and for good measure, let’s throw in lots of love related things with a twist somewhere, I don’t know, there was on hold music buzzing in my head at the time.

David Hyde Pierce wasn’t around this time to provide the voice of the blue fish man, and upon seeing the film; it wasn’t a great push to see why. He probably took one look at the script and thought this was rubbish, or perhaps more harsh words to that effect.

And that’s the opinion you would tend to take away from watching the on-screen malaise, that it’s a small wonder how it lasts beyond 30 minutes.

The story is, well, there in places and then we have a load of monsters to fight, a great number of special effects, all of which were very larger than life, far more than what we saw before which kind of gave away the fact that a lot of money had been spent on the film’s effects and sets, to create a grander world perhaps than the one we saw before.

But all the while, whatever was trying to surface as love between people and the tragedy of loss, well sort of got lost in a mess that made little sense, even in a comic book world established in the first film, and that’s where the big disappointment comes from.

You can argue that the first film wasn’t exactly commiserate of Shakespeare and most would agree that. But it was an enjoyable experience, being introduced to the world of the big red man if we were not already familiar with it via the printed material read by kids along with Playboy and the Kays Catalogue.

We actually were sad at the death of John Hurt, and we didn’t want the Germans to win after all. But in this cinematic pile, you just end up wondering how far up its own arse it will finish.

The whole section with the troll market just came out of no-where, and how it fully fitted in, is anyone’s guess. The problem was that this lacked any real substance, just like Get Smart, but unlike Get Smart, it actually lacked a lot of charm and well anything which you would leave the theatre with joy and not the feeling that the movie business once again left a mess up your backside.

You can’t be all negative in such things, you always try and see the upside to anything, and one thing that cannot be condemned about this film, is seeing drunken people sing when upset. Other than that and the first scene with the young Hellboy, the rest you can write off.

I wish I could find more to say more about the film, to keep on looking for signs of the Hellboy I used to like, but regretfully, this is one of the times where the gift of waffle fails.

Such a shame, but then again, perhaps not to be unexpected in the current climate of output quality from Hollywood, and the huge quantity of money used to make films will not necessarily mean that you will get a fantastic film.

I suppose that you could argue that when it comes to the summer blockbusters this year, it’s been about as exciting as listening an accountant talking about the colour grey. Can you name more than 3 films you’ve truly been excited about without being drugged by your supposed best friend and then dragged along so they don’t feel lonely?

So far, we’ve had the knight in dark clothing wooing us all with his magic abilities to talk funny and drive big things really fast, all in the vain attempt to keep us all safe from the dead guy. But aside from that, so far the only other film that even attracted my attention and possibly some other’s as well, was the load of Hancock with big Willy. And we all know how well that turned out don’t we?

So I guess when it came to the new remake of a TV series, Get Smart with Steve Carrot, the guy who actually did a really good film called the 4 year old virgin, which after complaints from parents was turned into the 40 year old virgin, the expectations were at an all time low.

It had won out for viewing against the Mummy goes to Iceland, in which the cast appear simply to try and keep their film careers going, and the other film which you may have had shoved down your throats with bizarre adverts: you don’t get mess all over Zorro with everyone’s favourite shouty man, Adam Sandal.

So after all that, the film just had to show up on the big screen and it was already better than you thought. So with that in mind, as the mind had ceased all other brain function, is it actually worth spending time in the dark to see?

Steve Carrot plays Max Smart, a bloke who’s handy with doing brainy things but desires to be a secret agent for the good guys, who for the purpose of this spy takeoff, is called CONTROL (ALT-DELETE) and all the people take the mick out him as he’s a nerd etc, blah blah blah. The stone plays an agent and so does the woman/bit of poon designed to want to do naughty with Max: Anne Hadawaywithwords.

Bad guys want money, they blow things up, and all the while you are wondering when the ride comes to a stop to allow you clear some of the drool that would have congealed around your mouth.

But fear not, for once this film did do exactly what it said on the tin. There were some funny moments in the film, such as Bill Murray getting upset about no-one wanting to visit him in his hollowed tree.

The gadgets were plentiful if only a bit of a waste of time when trying to break out of handcuffs, and of course the revelation that bad guys are human beings too was something that only Austin Powers talked about before. You will also find yourself wishing for a boss who just wants to beat the s**t out of anyone who disagrees, doesn’t anyone else think that this would actually be rather welcome in the real world?

Steve Carrot just had to repeat his previous roles and he did so with ease, so you couldn’t really fault him on that, except for perhaps, he’s done that all before, where’s the new stuff? OK, let’s through in the fact that for once he wasn’t playing someone who was completely useless, just didn’t know what to really do sometimes.

Strange as it sounds, this is new territory for American comedy, though short lived. We still have some of the good old staples designed to get the ultra cheap laughs, and the sh**y dialogue that people wouldn’t even find smeared on their toilet paper. So much of it, you will simply groan at.

The story was more ropey than a 10 year old tin of Spam, and the twist would you going “Oh. Carry on then.” But considering the fact that you expect the film to be utter rubbish all the way, you are surprised on occasion. Maybe. Ish….

The Stone or Rock or boulder, whatever his name was, is the same fella as always, delivered straight down the middle as the hard man who was what everyone wanted to be and all the ladies wanted to do naughty with, but the hidden gems came from the classic “geeks” coming up with new technology that fails miserably and then pretending to the cameras for a certain situation only to avoid getting fired if it all went tits up. Not bad at all fellas.

So let’s deal with one other issue which actually came into play while the eyes were glued to the screen with silly putty.

Anne Hadawaywithwords, despite the fact she causes my spider senses to tingle, had a lot to prove in my books for the simple reason that my opinion of her was pretty much destroyed by the film “The Devil wears Prada”.

This human rights violation of a book turned film, was basically one in which the fashion world is shown up as being a rather big load of bollocks and you hated every person in the film, hoping perhaps that a big fire would consume them all.

In this cinematic Ford Fiesta however, she looked extremely nice, as any bond type sexy lady should, and at one point, I swear she was actually convincing as an actress. High praise indeed considering she was swimming round the toilet bowl of opinion beforehand, with my hand ready placed over the flush.

Get Smart, as it stands, was an enjoyable experience, one where you don’t have care what’s really happening and one were you don’t feel cheated out of your money. Something other films out there at the moment are failing to achieve.

What the hell do you write if the best you can come up with so far from the week, is waking up, going to work, and then going home? A blog is an ongoing narrative and therefore requires the finest in writing material to keep the people coming back for more and more. Failing that, some lols and writing in txt speak about how everything is s5it.

Never mind, perhaps something will come in my next outrage about something which is in the grand scheme of things of little concern to most people. Like those darned elves or why bread never lasts more than 5 minutes when you blowtorch the thing.

Mind you, I have gotten tired of the homeless people taking one look at my shoes and deciding I have money. If they saw my bank balance, that would say actually, he doesn’t. It’s at the point now, where basically I’ll have start thinking about asking them for a spare 50p.

The only difference truly is, that I go to work to not be homeless, and at least to keep some money coming in so the bank doesn’t cry and then they make me cry. Why don’t they do that?

Bugger me, that sounds heartless. I’ve become a southerner…merde.

Well given a choice, and the sad fact is, that no matter what happens, I still haven’t got a pot to wee in once again, I’m taking the night off tonight from doing nothing, and instead am braving the outdoors of drunk city workers and “happy they got more money, cos they’re greedy b******ds” tube workers, to watch Get Smart, the film which they say is not very funny. Well it was either that or messing myself over Zool or whatever that thing with Adam Saddle is called.

Maybe I should investigate that growth on my elbow while I’m busy at it?

Now it’s rather unusual to remark on this, I know I’ve had this issue for a number of years, but now it’s more accute.

To be fair, I’m a portly gentleman. OK, I’m a chubby f**ker who’s life involves not women, wine and a cigar as most people in this cosmopolitan slab would believe, but mounds of greasy bacon smothered in Angel Delight. We have a working relationship. I buy it in huge quantities, and in return, it lets me stuff it down my arena-sized gob. There’s not much talking, and there are no questions asked.

I’ve been this size for a large amount of time, pardon the pun, and therefore have been used to knowing which shops tend to stock items which fit, for example, the NEXT chain of stores in the UK are great for tops of all shapes and sizes. But if I were to try and fit into their range of trousers and jeans, I would cut off circulation to the man-sacks and proceed to walk funny.

However, it appears that either I have grown a full 20 inches around the waistline, or the sizes of clothes in the capital seem to favour those with less meat on them than a chicken nugget.

The same size shirt, which I bought up north, same collar size of 17 inches etc, of which still fits me today, I wear it often without any trouble, and when trying on another shirt at the store, I was a spitting image of the Fatboy Slim Album cover with the big man/small t-shirt motif on the front. It was unbelievable what had occurred in the space of 20 seconds. It was as if my stomach had been exposed to gamma radiation and then got very angry.

Upon checking both garments, both were the same collar size, but the shirt that was tried, was certainly missing a few inches.

It was dubbed “Slim fit” which as it appears, now means that the collar size which I used as a guide to know what shirts in the packet would fit, no longer applies. Looking all over, the fashionable attire all bore this label of doom, and only plain white shirts, the type you wear if you’re about to kill someone, were the normal variety you come to expect.

To add insult to injury, they wanted more money for the exact same fitting as well.

BASTARDS!

They have the same size as my current attire classed as XXXL, which in a roundabout way, is telling you, lose forty pounds, not only money wise, but weight wise and we can do business!

I began to look around other places on Oxford Street, and all of them are thinking about those with the 30″ waistline only, you will have no flesh on your body and large wavy hair, all hanging around girls you could use as a belt in case of emergencies. These models all appear to be one hour away from death if they don’t nibble on another piece of celery soon.

Why is this the desired image these shops which to project? If you want to be in, you have to look like this? Why does society only favour those who will be able to dress the same as those people on the posters?

The answer appears to be “You’re too fat, f**k off.”

Granted, there is another way to look at this: perhaps this was a wake-up call to get the backside down to the place where you only end up sniffing the women’s bicycle seat: The Gym, work hard, slaving away sweating my various body parts off, while others flex their non-existent muscles to catch attention, work off more under the aid of a personal trainer who seems to be unable to count properly, and then maybe, just maybe, nothing will change.

We’ll find out then when I go….

But no, it really was disheartening that once again, if I want something like a shirt with the stripy bits, I have to go back north for it, to the exact same store?!?

I tried to get some trainers at a main store, Sketchers, to add to the two pairs I actually own which can be used out and about at various functions, murders etc. You see, this company appear to have the only trainers that last more than 3 minutes with me, and they have proven themselves time and time again. They earned my continued patronage.

But it was too much to have a size 10 pair in, well, anything. No matter what trainer you picked, nope, haven’t got that either. Are my feet now too fat? They said “try again next week” instead after failing at every turn. I certainly will, but back home.

In fact the only thing which could be considered a victory was a new wallet to replace the mouldy old one with the bee hive inside, broken down after 3 years of service and even that was a task in itself.

Do you use cash to pay for anything? Why? Credit Cards are where it’s at! Sadly, you can have 700 cards in a wallet that cost £115.69 but you want to put in some loose change, forget it. But if you are like me, and let’s face it, who doesn’t want to be like me (you can all put your hands down now), look hard enough though and you will find what you need of course.

London, the place with everything and yet, you can’t get what you want without something turning into the brown stuff. Maybe it’s just me then…

And in time honoured tradition, it’s been a few days since the release of the last podcast featuring another game review of dubious quality, and like the sun rising and setting every day, the text of said review is posted for your vomiting eyes to over eat.

Episode 4’s review focused on EA’s Mass Effect.

Well I say EA’s Mass Effect, it’s from Bioware who were swallowed up by the mammoth Electronic Arts evil games corporation in an attempt to bolster its gaming catalogue and creation of original game franchises. Bioware have made quite a number of Role-Playing games in the time it’s been around. We may remember Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights and the ever popular with those suffering from various skin diseases, Baldur’s Gate.

All have been received with good reviews, and now moderately fresh out of the factory on PC, with the Xbox 60p version being released being released last year in yet another great decision to release things far later on PC.

First off this game features SEX! There’s a bit of naughty in the game, and it caused such hoopla in yankland, the land of the free and depressed. Fox News, those lovable rogues of the news world, who can find tragedy and outrage in someone not saying please., they brought out their news casters, and even had some fella from EA on just to accuse him of lying and that EA was responsible for 9/11 and probably World War 2. Who knew Hitler worked for EA?

There was even more made up controversy with this version of Mass Erect due to the internet connection requirement. Every 10 days, the game would check to see if it was a legit game and then deactivate if wasn’t able to authenticate. On the plus side of course no disc was required in the drive, which Steam has been granting that handy advantage for quite some time now.

So for the brief period of timing you would be playing the game, just hope you don’t lose your net connection and all will be well. The truth even behind this, was not of any evil “oh my god, I can’t play any more, EA have robbed my money” but one of “Nice, the disc stays in the box.” For those annoyed we have to prove we bought the games, this is here to stay, so get used to it, we have no choice.

And speaking of the brief gaming experience, it will only be brief depending on how hard you play it and rush through the main storyline, the game experience was completed in just under 15 hours and that was stretching the time out over a weekend and one evening. So what will you get for your “pain-taxingly worked your arse off for” thirty pounds?

Well you get a game in a vibrant sci-fi universe with a story that well, er, it’s not overly exciting.

You are Colon Shepherd who is a big man or woman depending on your choice at the start of the game. He/she goes around space dealing with naughty people are all shapes and sizes. One scary fella shoots another scary fella and then you go off finding said scary fella who is in love with a bug thing who wants to royally screw over the entire universe.

You will meet and annoy new people along the way; all with their own stories to fill out about 5 minutes, before off you go shooting people with guns and other things which glow.
I have two words to describe Mass Effect. It just happens to be followed by other words which when put together form a sentence.

Basically if you haven’t guessed by now, I am not impressed, and I’ll tell you why. What’s new in this game?

Please, you will look at the graphics, going that’s nice and shiny, these characters are new, well colour shipyard I’m convinced was stolen from Stargate Atlantis, and all the others are basically the same ones from nights of the old public toilet.

Rex basically reminds me of the evil robot fella, the love interest was the other Jedi lady who depending on your naughty ways would be good or evil with you.

That’s quite a damning piece of judgement there, and already you will smell the stench of failure, but hold on, it’s not all bad news.

Despite the fact the story is largely the same typical baddies will take over unless you stop them affair which Bioware have produced before, it’s still done in a compelling way which will carry you through the game to get to the end.

And they even deal with Racism which is rife in this game; basically humans are viewed for the most part with the same level of hate as Asylum Seekers. One of the hot human lady characters you have the choice of using in your squad really despising any aliens in the same vein, and depending on your feelings or how many playthroughs you go through, the way you respond to this will determine if you have naughty with her.

To their credit, to deal with something so obvious in a computer game should be applauded, but you even have a choice on how you deal with it, and that can make you feel strange. Anything which can evoke emotions even negative should be recognised.

But let’s move swiftly onto the meat and potatoes of the game, the game play.

You will go through a series of landscapes and situations with two other computer played companions who vary through the game, and all the while you will use you trusty mouse and keyboard to move your third person placed arse about the screen. Enemies come onto the screen, and you shoot them. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, the game’s console roots mean that your aiming doesn’t have to be accurate as even shooting with a shotgun from long range caused injury to the hapless naughty bad guys. And using the sniper rifle will make you cry, because each time you use it, it appears you need huge amounts of Dutch courage, there is no way you can steady the scope to shoot, not that it matters, you get them anyway.

The choice of Swiss army weapons never change through the game, but you can add bits found out and about or bought which make them fancy. Which is nice considering you have to scroll through a huge number of items of different bits when purchasing new and shiny things. It just takes far too much time. Inventory system is therefore not the best in the RPG space.

But without chums these battles will get difficult and just like lights of the bold Arctic, you will have a choice of companions to do the good fight and they become available through the course of the game. Problem is, once I found two characters which made life easier, you are tempted to stay playing with the same team members all the time. Forget the rest, for the record; T-Rex and Suzuki Liana are the best for that.

Indeed they were so adept at taking care of business with the force or whatever powers they used, the only times I did direct them or indeed had to properly take charge using the fancy pause thing which comes up when you press space. Other than that, didn’t even bother. I doubt you will either.

At some point you will be required to explore places, again just like in Bites of the gold bucket, solving issues and you will also be expected to drive a 2657 Volkswagen Space Wagon, well it’s just a space vehicle is what you will drive when landing on most of the planets in search of Bovril or whatever it happens to be at the time, and you would think that this is a welcome addition, something different in the RPG space.

But frankly it appears they have modelled the handling of said state of the art transportation on the broken shopping trolleys with a wheel missing. And try and drive the thing while trying to zoom in enough to fire at the baddies. Its great fun, you just have to take bets on what piece of child-safe tarmac you will get stuck on. Or what pot-hole you’ll fall into.

Other times aside from fighting baddies, you will take on a number of tasks given by the usual suspects to clear people’s names, commit espionage or other things, and it again breaks up the combat quite well. Bioware have done the good thing in introducing responses before the end of a conversation so you can select something to keep things going if you so wish, and despite that sounding like a little thing, it is very much welcome, and was much appreciated.

After you’ve completed your silliness wandering around, having words with the denizens of the world, you go back and say whatever and the rewards you gain can vary depending on what type of person you are by your actions.

And it won’t matter what you do in terms of being good or bad, you will still be able to complete the game with the same type of ending, so unlike the aforementioned star wars games, you will get the same story as everyone else, only the details will change slightly.

As for the side missions in the game…. Well, they’re there. And that’s it. You don’t have to do any of them, and frankly unless you are a completion freak who fears the sun, then move along, nothing more to see here.

Now let’s move onto the technical aspects of the game. Graphics have been done to a very high standard, with spackles on the screen giving the impression you are viewing from some CCTV type display and somehow it’s rather good. At max resolution and anti-jaggy line thingy-ing, it looks more attractive than a super-model. But not Jessica Biel, I’m sorry it will take something special to beat her.

You will need once again a special kind of PC to run it in all its glory but now that is considered the norm so never mind that point.

Bioware have polished the game to a fine shine, but in typical fashion there are still bugs which have affected game play on more than one occasion. And it involves those lovely lifts you will spend half your life in.

If you dared to get a lift at certain points, normally points where you had no choice but to use them, your chums would all face the same direction again, but the door would stay open. You would be stuck for all eternity or until you alt-f4 out of the game. Not the best thing really, considering the elevators are among the most annoying things about the game. Before you just resented them, now they become your reason for becoming a super villain against the world.

The elevators to their credit have the annoying music in them and just like in real life, people seldom talk in them. You sit in your chair and watch as they go up or down a lift and take unknown amounts of time getting there. I had gone off for a cup of tea at one point and I swear it was still going.

Unfortunately this turned out to be a bug in the game where every so often, if you dared to get a lift, you would be stuck for all eternity or until you alt-f4 out of the game.

So what else is there that we can possibly comment on? Oh yes, the sex scenes. With such fantastic coverage by the media in regards to these inclusions into a mature gaming experience, heaven forbid we have that, it was obvious that when it came to the sex scenes in Mass erect that we needed some items before proceeding:

A tub of popcorn, a nice big screen, and Vaseline in case it gets truly funky.

Right because this part of the review hinged on a badly edited series of audio bits for humorous effect on the podcast, when translating this to the website for reading for anyone bored of playing with the scrubby bits of your elbows, perhaps we should go further? Perhaps we should make the effort and allow the real thing to be shown?

So with that in mind and perhaps proving the next point, let’s watch the actual scene using the video porn merchant that is YouTube, involving the male version of Hewlett Packard and the female character Suzuki Liana.

Now after watching the above, I dare you to think anything other than: “IS THAT IT?”

I’ve seen more pornographic scenes in Bambi! People’s grandparents have gotten a big rise out of me than that? Even with the female, female action which could take place, the most you would see if that have a bit of a friendly cuddle. The moral of the story for this is: don’t believe everything you read and see in the media.

Don’t forget that the expansion “Bring out the sky tv” or whatever it’s called, is available for free download from the Mass Effect website, along with a patch which fixes some issues, and the content in the expansion does give you slightly more of the universe, if you were after more after the end of the main game. For Free can’t knock it.

So after all that huge amount of text, which is almost far too much to write in one post, what do we have?

• A RPG from the makers of fine RPGs, Bioware
• There’s not an awful lot new
• The vehicle sections are well, err, there and you can get past them.
• So are the side machines.
• The sex scenes are welcome, despite the limpness of them; shows at least there are signs of wanting to make more mature games without the silliness around them.
• The bugs are silly
• The elevators are stupid. Just get rid of them.
• The story is actually a real good reason to keep playing.
• The characters are thought out despite some similarities to other ones.

So now using the legendary points system passed down from generation to generation, let’s find out what pointless number will be assigned to Mass Effect for the PC.

Sorry Bioware, your luck is now starting to run out. With your next effort, make it more exciting. Like Rambo or Predator exciting with big guns, a jet and show us more naughty bits! I demand it!

Some people would say that to meet a person who has been on television is actually quite a difficult thing to do. You would have to go through a legion of PR people to only find out that because you are little Jimmy from no.47 and not the Queen, that obtaining an audience is most difficult.

Actually, it’s easier than you think. If you want to go spotting for people with a wee bit more money, just go to Soho Square.

I know what you are thinking. Soho, is the seedy place for going for “relaxation” and other colourful phrases which basically mean the same thing: You’re after a guaranteed bonk.

But instead of being a place where you would expect to find naughty dirty kinky sexy shops and other fellow humans aiming for your heart and body parts beyond, you will find a tight collection of well known companies such as Tiger Aspect Productions and 20th Century Fox. The FA are there are well, though being frank, the only thought that came into my mind is “shame it’s not on fire with them all in there…”

In the space of 5 minutes, I caught the sight of:

And yet, I didn’t go up to them, annoy them like I did the others, because, It occurred to me that the last thing they would want is a fat f**kwit wobbling up them, trying to be funny and then get a picture with a crappy camera phone thing. Let’s be fair it’s not the highlight of the day is it?

Mind you the highlight for me wasn’t that transvestite who was hanging around in Borders either, basically looking around for god knows what, it was both comically and frightening. So I guess it isn’t peaches and cream all the time for anyone is it? Maybe then next time I should go up to one of them and ask what’s new in life? Surely it’s got to be better than looking at a man in a dress?*

*Sorry Scottish people, you can’t talk either, call it what you want, it’s a dress.

Some of you have mentioned the site was running slow which was jolly helpful. Servage have worked their magic due to a bit of an issue on the database side of things and at the moment all is well. Ta very much!

Also it appears some addtional work needs to be done on the site, as in upgrading the backend php pages, some other parts have become, shall we say, not enitirely working. Grrrr!

A lazy man’s work is never done.

EDIT: Sorted out the issues I had earlier, which is great until something else goes wrong!

 

 Epsiode 4: A Living Hell: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After a long time away from the Audio world, we come back with some questions: Will London make you cry? Does it make me cry? And how can you survive one of the most perilous tasks in today’s world? Find out in a special hour long episode!

As usual you can subscribe to the show via the feed URL: http://www.oohsometimes.com/podcasts/feed.xml which you place carefully into your program of choice such as the free programs Juice or Doppler.

You also have the choice of searching the iTunes store, searching using either Paul Hughes, or Ooh Sometimes and subscribing using the software.

If you like what you hear or you don’t then please let us know at: podcast@oohsometimes.com and we’ll respond at some point.

Music:
Tina Dico
“Count to Ten” (mp3)
from “Count to Ten”
(Defend Music Inc.)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

Frightened Rabbit
“The Modern Leper” (mp3)
from “The Midnight Organ Fight”
(Fat Cat Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

Credits:
Paul Hughes – is now scared he’ll have to do another podcast with no material
S.L. Slaughter – Mr. Voice Over Man (He was bored and went off to learn about Golf)

Background Music used was by Kevin McLeod (Kevin’s Website) and CJacks from podsafeaudio. The title music was by Seismic Anomaly who also feature at Magnatune. Some SFX have been used from The Freesound Project. Excerpts from Mass Effect, Copyright EA Games 2008

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.