Shitty Box Art Round-Up

Championship Manager 2010

Rob: This guy seems to have a nervous system made of tactics...
Brad: Some dude's standing in front of the logo. This game appears to be called "Championship Manger". Which is either the place you keep Christ, or French for "Japanese Cartoon".
Rob: I'd play either, if I'm honest.
Brad: You know I've been trying to get everyone in this country to refer to football as "soccer"? I've changed my mind. I'd know like football to be referred to as "Woofy Woofy Woo Woo Ball".
Rob: Why were you trying to get everyone to refer to it as "soccer"?
Brad: For the very simple reason that it pisses off soccer fans. Would you buy this game?
Rob: I don't play this particular one, but I don't mind football management games.
Brad: Score?
Rob: I generally do. Depends on how my midfield performs.
Brad: 4/10
Rob: Oh, right...6/10

Imagine: Detective Adventures

Brad: "Imagine: Lily Allen"
Rob: Fuck...Do I have to?
Brad: She's real, but everyone at the school is a sprite.
Rob: She can't be much of a detective. Nobody will have any trouble spotting her.
Brad: That's going to lead to some canteen tension of almost Forks High School levels. Have they 'shopped in that magnifying glass?
Rob: That'd take some mad Photoshopping skills. She might have had something else in her hand before, I guess.
Brad: Like a Fleshlight? I'm not an artist, but I'm fairly sure that the roof of that building doesn't quite seem to work, somehow.
Rob: She's a detective in a sprite clown school?
Brad: Yeah, the one on the right appears to be a French mime. Have you read the blurb for this thing? It's shitting hilarious! "Use your wit, your feminine sixth sense, and your photographic memory to solve cases". My girlfriend uses those exact same three things to win arguments. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Nancy Drew licence fell through.
Rob: Is there anything in this game that couldn't be experienced by going to school in real life?
Brad: I would find it hard to "embody a smart, adventurous, techno-fluent girl". But I did do a pretty good "dumb, introverted, Warhammer-fluent douchebag". Score?
Rob: My 4/10 sense is tingling.
Brad: 9/10
Rob: Nine?! Are you rolling a d20?
Brad: No. A d8. I guess it could be a six.

Oktoberfest: The Official Game

Rob: ...What the fuck?
Brad: Dude, I've just back from Germany, and I don't have a clue what Oktoberfest is.
Rob: I know what Oktoberfest is, i just don't think it can be made into a game.
Brad: Well done, Nintendo. You've made riding a ghost train into a mini-game. "Just enjoy the soothing polka-soundtrack"...Are there really people who are so rich they can spend £20 quid on this just for the MIDI polka tracks?
Rob: Apparently they exist, and own DSs.
Brad: I don't want to do this site anymore. I'm learning much, much more about the human race than I think I ever wanted to know. Apparently this is the "Official Oktoberfest game, licensed by the city of Munich". Do you know what that means?
Rob: Go on.
Brad: Somewhere out there, heartbreakingly sad as it may seem, is an UNofficial Oktoberfest video game. What did they do wrong to miss out?
Rob: They probably didn't have a woman on the front...probably an aubergine.
Brad: Score?
Rob: 7/10
Brad: 5/10

Queen Teen: The Clique

Brad: Man, there seem to be a lot of these type of game coming out on DS. It's almost like Nintendo is....for girls!
Rob: It says a lot that there's no description of it.
Brad: It's not just me, is it? There are a lot of these sort of games, right?
Rob: No, there are quite a few.
Brad: Why?
Rob: I don't make them!
Brad: You're the video game expert on this site! I thought you might have some kind-of insight! Oh, no, let's just leave it to Brad to do fucking everything, shall we? Who had to go to Japan, huh? Fucking me, that's who! You sit there, with your smug little thumbs up farty avatar, and you don't do anything around here! FUCK YOU!
Rob: Do you need a hug?
Brad: No! Just..GAH! Look, this is your area of expertise, there must be some kind of opinion, thought, anything! Rob, why would you say that these Gossip-Girly games are so popular at the moment?
Rob: If I had to guess, I'd say...it sells. Because of the Money/Sense ratio present in babysitting circles, I guess.
Brad: And who would you say is buying these games?
Rob: Teenage girls, I suspect. Although "nobody" wouldn't surprise me either.
Brad: You know who I think is buying these games?
Rob: Go on.
Brad: Closet case Nintendo fan-boys turned Internet humourists. Named Rob. With your face. Score?
Rob: 10/10
Brad: 7/10

Saw: The Video Game

Brad: There is no way this game can be any good.
Rob: Again, no description, is it really so hard to write one for this?
Brad: I'm trying to think what sort of game they could possibly make based upon the Saw movies. No type of game seems right somehow.
Rob: Rhythm action game?
Brad: How would a rhythm game work?
Rob: Timing your button presses in order to build traps...could work in like a Theme Hospital kind of way. Theme Torture Dungeon.
Brad: See, now that I would buy. And probably jerk off to.
Rob: Why did you feel the need to add "Probably"? Who are you kidding?

Book Reviews

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters
Quirk Books
Review by Brad Harmer

From the publisher of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes a new tale of romance, heartbreak, and tentacle mayhem.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As the story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels?

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is damn sight better than its predecessor, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – whether this is because the concept allows for a little more scope or not, I’m not sure, but the basic fact remains that it is a marked improvement.

Whilst good chunks of the original text still remain, the alterations here seem much more seamless than they were with PP&Z. The action sequences seem to actually arrive naturally, rather than the spontaneous zombie attacks of its predecessor. What’s more, there are actually jokes present beyond the basic “tee-hee” juxtaposition. There are sarcastic characters, slapstick moments, and some pretty damn good laugh-out-loud moments.

However, whilst building on the success of PP&Z, it has rather unfortunately retained all of its failings. The illustrations are still pretty sub-par, and at its core the whole thing is still very much a one-note joke stretched over 343 pages. Often times the whole thing finds itself mired in the heaviness of Austen’s original prose, and I can’t help but wonder if some editing might have been handy – no-one would really have noticed or cared, and it would only have served to up the pacing a little.

With that said, this is good chuckle, and there’s more than a few laughs in here!

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Several scenes of man vs. sea monster combat, often with very gory consequences
Sex/Nudity: None
Swearing: Piffle?
Summary: Worth picking up for a chuckle, but don’t expect high-brow entertainment. Does exactly what it says on the tin. – 7/10

Thanks to our friends at Quirk Books, we've got three copies of this book to give away to you! For your chance of winning one, send us an e-mail to ssandseamonsters@rocketmail.com with your name and postal address before midday on Monday 21st September (UK time). The first three names drawn out of the electronic hat will win a free copy of this awesome book.

This promotion is only open to residents of the UK and Ireland.

ThePrizeFinder - UK Competitions

The Top 5 Most Underrated Star Wars Characters

5: The Rancor
There are a lot of monsters in Star Wars; and some are bigger than this one – but the Rancor has always just looked cool. When I was a kid I used to fantasise about having a Rancor pit under my desk at school, so that I could just hit a button and drop my teacher into it. This continued well into my A-Levels.

What is great about the Rancor though, like most of the Star Wars characters, is the way that George Lucas hints at it having a back story. Even if Kevin J. Anderson hadn’t have filled it out in his short story, A Boy and his Monster: The Rancor Keeper’s Tale, you’d know there was more to the character than just a rubber monster for Luke to fight.

The Rancor is noteworthy for another thing – it’s the first action sequence in Return of the Jedi. All the tension of the good guys infiltrating Jabba’s Palace has been building up and building up – and then it’s this showdown of giant monster versus a Jedi Knight!

This is why Star Wars is better than that other franchise.

4: Asajj Ventress
Not all the underrated Star Wars characters are underrated because they’re harder than they’re given credit for. Some, like Asajj Ventress, are just totally awesome characters.

Ventress isn’t a Sith – she just likes to think she is. She’s kind of a Dark Side groupie, desperately trying to prove herself to Darth Tyranus and Darth Sidious. That and she fights with two lightsabers, which is pretty cool in anyone’s book, right? Her lightsaber battle on Yavin IV against Anakin is an awesome sequence, and a contender for one of my top lightsaber fights.

Ventress is a mysterious character – not much is revealed about where she comes from, or why she turned to the Dark Side. Whilst part of me hopes they reveal this eventually, I also remain hopeful that they never do – some things are best left as mysteries.

Whilst most of her storyline unfolds in the books and comics, she does also appear in one of the movies (The Clone Wars), and as a recurring character in the television series of the same name. She’s also the one who gave Anakin the scar across his eye. Very few people can claim to have wounded Darth frikking Vader!

3: Bib Fortuna
Bib Fortuna is creepy. He’s like an alien version of every teacher’s pet or corporate suck-up you’ve ever seen. He’s creepy, he’s slimy, he’s got mad eyes, and he’s got massive tentacles growing out of the top of his head. He reminds of a guy I used to have to sit next to on the train, actually. Only that guy didn’t have head tentacles, he just had really greasy hair.

Bib Fortuna’s great because he reminds you of those people you hate. Sure, Darth Vader’s a big bad guy, but you don’t bump into Dark Lords of the Sith every day. Jabba the Hutt is an evil gangster – but you don’t have to get one of those to take your parcel at the Post Office. Fortuna, however, is a douche of the kind we meet every day. He sets you on edge just looking at him, never mind trusting him not to just push you into the Rancor pit.

Also, we assume he dies in the Battle on Jabba’s Sail Barge, but we don’t know that. Let’s face it, if any of the characters was going to survive, it’d be this scheming malevolent little dude.

2: General Grievous
Ah, Grievous – back in 2005 we thought that you’d just be some shitty action figure they were hoping to sell this time around, but no, you proved us wrong with some serious arse-kickery, involving multiple lightsabres.

He’s a Jedi killing robot, yet like so many B-list characters, Lucas wastes him. Fortunately, in the comics and TV shows we seem him kick arse as we always knew him capable of!

You want to know why the Artist Formerly Known As Qymaen jai Sheelal is so kick arse? Only two characters have ever been good enough to survive to a second battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi: Darth Vader, and General Grievous. Enough said.

1: Nien Nunb
This poor little guy just doesn’t get enough credit. He was the co-pilot of the ship that brought down the second Death Star at the Battle of Endor, but he just fades into the background. He’s got no lines of translated dialogue, and he doesn’t even get his name mentioned in the movie. Poor little guy.

Watch it again, and you can’t help but feel that even Lando’s not even sure why the little guy’s there. Nien Nunb is wittering on and on about everything and nothing, and all Lando has to say to him is “relax”?

On his home planet, this guy’s got to be a planet-wide underappreciated hero. I bet there’s a Bank Holiday on his birthday or something – but if you go closer into the Republic, they all know Luke and Leia, Han, Chewie, Lando and the droids; but not every man on the street will remember poor old Nien Numb. Mostly because he’s got a very stupid name.

Picture an aged Nien Nunb in a old person’s home on Coruscant, telling everyone he fought in the Rebellion, and no-one believing him.