Monday, 3 November 2008

An introduction to Rob, by Rob (part the first)

Well, since I have yet to venture forth an introductory post, I figured I'd take the introductory post as a way of introducing myself to the blog's eventual audience. Let's start with the basics. My name's Rob, I'm 24 and I'm a Medway-based comedian. I work full-time at a cinema, and my interests include music, games and movies. On this subject I have a few pet peeves I thought I'd share with you, the fine criticising public.

The first is thus:

The sheer number of shitty video games.

This one is fairly simple to explain. My irritation partly comes from my previous experience working at a video game retailer. The release list was updated every week, and eager staff would scour the list looking for the release date for their most anticipated games. Priority #2 for the staff was to browse through the shitty games and have a good old laugh at their expense.

Seriously, the crap:good ratio grows ever smaller on some of these consoles. Whereas the two current-gen consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3) seem to have a reasonable ratio of big name games compared to the lesser titles, checking out the Nintendo DS list seems to be a recipe for disaster, and of course this comment is doubly appropriate on DS as there exists a game version of Hell's Kitchen - 'Ever wanted to hear Gordon Ramsay call you a wanker, but lack culinary ability of any kind? Well, never fear!'

Searching for Nintendo DS games on Amazon's UK website yields an impressive 877 results. Hold your applause, most of them suck. Pulling up the first couple of pages gives me Bunnyz.


One of the more recent of the virtual pet games with the annoying Z at the end, Bunnyz is joined by such classics as Dogz, Catz, Tigerz (I shit you not), Hamsterz and Duckz (ok, I made that one up, but the rest are true). What are some of the awesome features of Bunnyz, I hear you cry?

Well, this absolutely genuine sentence from the game preview should tell you all you need to know:

"Keep your bunny happy and comfortable with regular brushing, feeding and cleaning it's cage".

So let me see if I understand this. Part of the appeal of this game is the ability to clean up virtual excrement? Do yourself a favour, throw the game in the bin and dispose of some genuine shit. Secondly, the grammar of this marketing is so bad that I can't actually tell if you get to feed the bunny itself or its cage. How boring would that be?

Even more amusing than this is the fact that this game only allows you to have one bunny at a time on the game. So this game doesn't even replicate the ability to own 2 rabbits, a luxury only apparently affordable to those with enough money to buy a second copy of this toss. So let's take a keen look at those who wished to part with their hard-earned money, with a reader review of Bunnyz.

"This game is not as good as it looks".
How a game can be worse than this looks defies the most brilliant scientific minds.

"You can take it outside the cage into the room".
Obviously this feature is only possible if the cage has been fed, otherwise it tends to hold the bunny hostage as some sort of collateral in order to barter for a Wagon Wheel.

"Although you do get to teach it words and phrases".
...I'm sorry, what? Do you mean to tell me that this game...alters reality? How about altering it so that kids can choose MORE THAN ONE FUCKING RABBIT?!

"overall it is poorly structured"
I don't feel it's my place to go into detail about why this is a funny sentence to me. To keep it short, it's a pot/kettle-related hate crime.

Honestly, Ubisoft are responsible for some serious shit. There are 28 results on Play with the prefix 'Imagine'. Some of them are quite ridiculous, such as Imagine: Babies (I'm pretty sure you can go to prison for that). That's right, Ubisoft think so little of you that they don't think you can imagine such simple things as Teachers and Babies without the help of their software. Perhaps Ubisoft should have first created Imagine: Competent Developers to give them a bit of a hand.

They've also got a game called My Health Coach: Manage your Weight, which comes with a pedometer. I've never understood the point of them, do they alert you to a nearby molestor, or rate your effectiveness as one? Alternatively, they've combined the concept of a pedometer with the idea of weight management and have perfected a game that makes you sexy to nonces.

I'll be back with more things that annoy me soon enough.

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