Last week I was one of the people who stayed up late (I’m in the UK) to watch what everybody correctly guessed was the PS4 announcement. I sat on the sofa watching on my laptop while tweeting from my iPhone, generally mocking and complaining with the odd positive comment thrown in. Much has been said about the PS4 since they revealed it in all it’s translucent invisible glory, some good some bad and for what it’s worth here’s what I think.

The question regarding used games was kinda sorta maybeish answered and then analysed to the point it no longer felt anything like an answer. For me though the fact that the system wont be backwards compatible feeds into this. Sony are stating that the PS3 back catalogue will (at some point) be available for digital download and presumably this means that PS4 games will be available also. What with launch titles historically being thin on the ground titles from the previous generation would be quite widely played. If the console isn’t backwards compatible with physical media then they are going to need to have a wide range of PS3 games available digitally at launch which again seems unlikely as PS3 digital purchases wont carry over to PS4.

Pricing is a massive part of all of this and could well break the gamers back. I’m an XBOX owner and when games are released digitally they tend to be £20 ($30) which for a digital download is quite pricey especially seeing as that price remains static and used games prices drop over time. Add to this the fact that people may well have already shelled out for these games once already, asking them to pay for them again is going to be cheeky to say the least.

For these reasons having a concession price for people that already owned the game would be fair however then comes the issue of how do they prove they already owned it. Well Sony your a big boy and to be honest you should take it on the chin. The only way to do it would be if it shows in the players games history which could mean it was their copy, rented, borrowed or god forbid stolen. The point being penalising the masses to try and claw some money out of the minorities is bad business. Remember Sony we are living in a world where Amazon are offering customers a free digital copy of any album they ever bought from them, it’s time to think forwards not backwards.

Living in the UK I grew up watching a lot of American TV shows and movies. American and English cultures certainly have their crossovers and links, probably more so now than ever, but when I grew up through the 80′s it was a strange new world of things I’d never heard of, specifically food.

Growing up I didn’t know what a Baby Ruth candy bar was or what it tasted like, I just knew that Sloth loved them and if one was dropped in a pool it looked enough like poo to freak out the swimmers. As a youth I knew nothing of Twinkies or there consistency, but I knew John McClain wasn’t a big fan. During my formative years I knew a fruit loop (or should I say froot loop to maximise the loooooops) was a breakfast cereal that looked weirdly disgusting but was somehow very popular. The only other thing i knew is that i wanted to taste them, every single one of them. The birth of the Internet meant these things were no longer unobtainable however they were bloody expensive and potentially not worth it.

In the last couple of years some UK shops have started having an American Candy section in them and there are even dedicated American Candy stores popping up all over. Making tasting these previously out of reach treats easier. Of course they are still ridiculously over priced but at least you can buy a single bar before being crushingly disappointed. It’s not that the things I’ve tried are horrible or anything it just becomes clear that the two top reasons US Candy wasn’t syndicated in the UK previously was that:

A/ There was already a UK equivalent or something so close that it didnt make sense to import it. And:

B/ the UK chocolate and sweet treat powers that be did not understand why the Americans needed to put peanut butter in everything.

For example, last year I tried a Payday, delicious as it was the moment I looked at it and thought “it’s just Peanut Brittle” the enjoyment was instantly drained from me. It was like biting into a Kit Kat and there being no wafer inside, nice, but not as nice as you were expecting . Being 36 years of age and discovering Froot Loops are just weird tasting Cheerios is devastating, and that’s putting it mildly. As a result my experience with American Candy is tainted. My childhood aspirations (other than growing up to be a fire engine, yes I said engine not man) of trying these common place delicacies, these American cultural main stays have been quashed. Crashing down to earth is the reality that chocolate is just chocolate wherever it comes from. It may well have an exotic name and a shiny unfamiliar wrapper, but inside is probably a fairly familiar combination of a few of the chocolate corner stones, nuts, caramel, nougat, wafer, honeycomb and biscuit.

If you mentally added mint and orange to that list you are wrong, so very very wrong.

This movie appealed to me for two reasons, the first being Alan Tudyk and the second being Tyler Labine. My thinking was that a combination of Soc from Reaper and Wash from Firefly just had to be hilarious. The premise for the film is quite original and a funny idea to boot, which of course increased my expectations and I couldn’t wait to see it.

The story is based on a very stereotypical teen based horror movie. A bunch of college buddies go camping and run into some crazy murderous yocals then try and save their friends/ kill the bad guys. Pretty standard fare as far as horror movies go ala Texas chainsaw etc however this is a comedy. Turns out the murderous creepy weird hillbillies are actually just two regular (if not socially awkward) hillbillies out on a fishing trip and not murderous in the slightest. The upshot being that the college kids keep dying in horrific accidents so their buddies think the hillbillies killed em and the hillbillies think that the teens are part of a suicide pact.

Tucker and Dale is at it’s funniest when tipping the wink to other movies like Texas Chainsaw and although not a Horror movie Fargo appears to get a nod too, these bits are funny and thankfully don’t go into full Scary Movie parody. The dialogue between Tudyk and Labine is clearly where the laughs are supposed to come from in this movie but it’s just not there. Labine’s character feels incredibly two dimensional and forced, Tudyk does a better job with the script and manages to flesh something onto the very bare bones of this screenplay.

Unfortunately the good cast and amusing premise was simply not enough to save this movie from its poor script. It had its moments of good humour however this was in the main around the time that the central theme of the movie was revealed and as i said it was quite a funny idea. The comedy switches from joking about the hillbillies being dumb, to the college kids being dumb, to the hillbillies being misunderstood and then some slapstick on top. It requires a few mental leaps of faith in regards to some of the bizarre conclusions the characters come to, however I think this is supposed to add to the humour but for me it fell short of the mark.

All in all i was expecting more from this film which was over optimistic to say the least.

I was lucky enough to receive an iPad mini for Christmas, now I’ve had it for a little over a month I thought I’d share my thoughts.

Being an iPhone user already I was able to restore the iPad mini from my iPhone iCloud backup, the thought process being it would be easier to do this and then remove whatever I didn’t want. I’m not entirely certain that it was easier. It took forever, seriously like 5 hours which is just ridiculous considering I was going to delete a bunch of the stuff afterwards. I’d started though so figured if was safest to finish. Many of the apps I have we’re not universal so needed replacing with the iPad versions and in a lot of these cases, like eBay, this did not cost anything so all was well with the world but all in all this process took the 5 hours of restore followed by 1-2 hours of going through apps to see what was universal and what wasn’t. But hell, why am I complaining cos now I have an iPad mini.

When the first Gen iPad was announced I stated I was not interested and my reasons were 2 fold. I already have an iPhone and all I can see this doing is being a couch device simply replacing my iPhone while watching TV. Secondly, occasionally there are things I can’t do on my iPhone and similarly I wouldn’t be able to do them on my iPad either making it further pointless. Pointless however is only a barrier to affordability and not to ownership. These points in the last month have held true to me, the iPad is generally only used as a couch device while watching TV and i-devices are restricted in functionality by their very nature. The only difference here is the money question and as it was a gift I don’t feel bad about wasting money on Something I ultimately love but certainly do not need.

I have been thinking in the last 10-12 months about ditching the iPhone in favour of a windows phone as I’m a bit bored and fancy a change. Knowing this prompted a good friend of mine to tweet this to me:

and I thought, “you know what, he’s right! I am now an Apple guy for sure because I have two devices in the Eco system”. As it turns out however, I really don’t feel that to be the case, in fact in a weird way I feel it kinda makes my potential experiment into windows phone a little less risky. I have previously trialed a Nokia Lumia 900 and wrote a couple of blogs about it. But my conclusions were that I loved the phone but the apps just weren’t there for it. I was coming home and doing certain things on my iPhone that I felt I couldn’t do on my windows phone. As it stands I’m coming home and using my iPad on the couch while watching TV so it wouldn’t really have a massive impact.

The real clincher for me though that makes me feel that having a windows phone and an iPad would make no difference to me having an iPhone and and iPad is this. I was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that my iPad and iPhone would work together better than Tony Stark and his metal suit but I really find them to be two completely separate entities. The major bugbear for me is games not syncing scores or progression which is how it really should work. You want the Netflix experience where you stop watching something on one device, and carry on from where you left off on another. Maybe I want to much but for me until that’s the case then I don’t feel the benefit of having two devices from the same Eco system personally. This leaves the WP8 route firmly open for me.

I recall The Punisher being announced and seeing a picture for it, in fact the very picture in this post. I remember thinking “what the hell are they doing casting this Greg Kinnear looking dude as The Punnisher”. It turned out that Thomas Jane was an amazing choice for The Punnisher and even though I had issues with his stature (just not stocky enough) I was convinced that nobody else could play The Punnisher, Thomas Jane was The Punnisher, and I loved that film. It was dark and brooding in the way we have recently come to expect from comic book movies, and this was way before Batman Begins or Ironman, and yet still had some humour too it.

A Sequel gets announced, I squee!!! But wait, no Thomas Jane!!!! What The Effff!!! Reading up on it I discover that Jane wanted no part in it as The Director did not want to stick with continuity and instead essentially reboot as he liked the War Zone series of books. I respected Jane’s integrity and lost interest in the second (technically third if you include Lundgren’s movie) Punnisher instalment. So why am I now watching it? Cos it was on Netflix and curiosity got the better of me.

Punisher: War Zone is ridiculous, it’s trying to be really dark and brooding but bring with it comic book violence which just comes off as silly. The violence is way over the top and quite graphic like you’d expect in an 80′s horror flick. It doesn’t come off as being true to comic books it comes off as dumb. I didn’t know Dominic West was in this and being that I’m currently working through the Wire for the first time I was pleased to see him… Until he opened his mouth. He’s employing a way over the top Italian American, stereotypical gangster accent which grated for about two minutes until I realised this character was a complete complete comic book villain caricature. He played his part brilliantly, the issue being that character did not belong in this film. It was misplaced, he would have been better put in Dick Tracy or something of that ilk.

The story revolves around Frank Castle (The Punisher) accidentally killing an undercover cop and then protecting the cops family from Jigsaw and his crew. Jigsaw wanted to kill them because he hadn’t twigged he had a plant in his midst and felt he needed to assert his authority like any mildly psychotic guy who’s face got mangled would. It’s a very simple story that needed padding out with a secondary string of characters who brought little or nothing to the finished product, they didn’t even make particularly good plot devices.

All in all Punisher: War Zone left me shaking my head in dismay at many points during the film. It’s been long enough now that they can do a Conan and say “let’s pretend that there was only one Punisher movie” beg Jane to return and make a film worth watching.

It’s yet another new year which means the fitness bug is biting once more and this time I mean business. My reasons for stopping running the umpteen times i have were generally in the “3 kids, no time” region however this issue may have been affected slightly now, this is due to me Having a treadmill.

That I have a treadmill is down to my amazing wife and I appreciate it greatly, and the best way to show my appreciation is by using it. The treadmill in question is a Reebok Z9 and it does exactly what it’s supposed to. Back in my gym days I was never very keen on treadmill running as misplaced foot falls seem scarier than road running however this is a great solution for me so I am learning to get used to it. I’ve been for a few runs now and the hardest part was knowing what speed to run at. Luckily as a runkeeper user I was able to look at my previous runs and discern a pace which gave me a starting point. Being that I haven’t run in a very long time I started running splits to build my stamina and within a few short weeks I should be able to run 5K again.

I do love runkeeper, it’s a great service however it does not let you input manual program’s when using gym equipment. You can enter data manually but as I am running splits and I can only enter time run for and distance it creates a false pace reading for me. Admittedly this will only be an issue for about 2-3 more weeks so it isn’t the end of the world. I’m really enjoying running again and as a result I’ve rediscovered my Hedy. I was always sad to see this company go under and while several imitation products exist it’s just not the same, I know I’m gonna be sweating and the Hedy helps make sure I can see and don’t feel too disgusting.

The overall hope is that I will once more be fit and hopefully not fat. Lets see how that pans out.

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Assassins Creed is a series of games I have enjoyed right from the get go. The length of time its taken me to complete this game is not a reflection on how much i enjoyed it. ACIII was a must have from release for me. I was looking forward to this game from announcement if not before, merely anticipating something I knew nothing about.

ACIII advances the story of Desmond the “present day” hero and introduces Connor a new assassin from a new time period for the series. On hearing that the game would be based in the US Civil War I was intrigued, it sounded like if would be a great game. As much as I have enjoyed the visuals, the action and the story to this game there are certain aspects that have negatively impacted the game for me, highlighting that this is totally my opinion.

Connor

God bless Connor he’s got a lot about him, by far the strongest back story and ties to the events occurring in front of you but he’s just, not, Ezio!!! Connor appears a very emotionally stunted character in a story where his emotions could well be used to drive story. Ezio had that thing going where men wanted to be him and women wanted to be with him. He was stylish, handsome, smooth and dare I say it sexy. Connor is none of these things and as a result I don’t really care about him.

Side Quests

I can’t really put my finger on it but the longer this series of games has gone on the less I care about the side quests. In the first game I wanted to collect every feather and flag and kill all the Templars, in every game bar this one I’ve made sure I got every view point on the map, I’ve trained assassins, created factions etc etc. in this game I didn’t even bother with all the view points, I just didn’t feel that I HAD to which is how previous games made me feel. I think it started with revelations and the heavy insistence you use bombs which I hated. With ACIII I have completed main story and pretty much nothing else because I didn’t feel that pull to be completionist.

Free Running

The free running or Parkour has always been a selling point for Assassins Creed and while it has improved a hell of a lot over the previous games I think they over stretched themselves with this one. The introduction of free running through the trees sounds amazing and looked even better when shown in gameplay videos and demos put out by Ubisoft. The actual implementation in real game scenarios was altogether different in my experience. Because of how trees look, you know all branchey and leafey, a clear path isn’t obvious. The result of this being your ability to skip from tree to tree stunted to relatively short bursts before not knowing where to go next or worse, falling to the floor. Another free running innovation for this game was the ability to hurdle or vault low fences and walls. This is a great idea as those sort of barriers in your path could really wreck your trajectory when escaping. For this you were given one of approximately 4-6 animations to depict your traversing of the object, all of which look cool. The issue being that some of the animations are longer/ more intricate than others and it doesn’t flow, the join between gameplay and this tiny character animation can be a bit janky and it drags you out of the experience.

Desmond

What the fudge is happening with Desmond? Who in the name of sweet jeebers are these weird ghost/ hologram women babbling at him and what the H E Double Hockey Sticks are they on about

As a result of reading this you may well think I do not like this game, that isn’t the case. I really enjoyed the missions, the story, many of the characters. i had an OMG moment when a plot line went a certain way. I loved the setting, the historical figures used and the ship battles were better than the property defence games in previous games. There are many positives in this game including the plot, but the things listed above bugged me to the point of distraction.

PS. Cant wait for ACIV, ill be preordering

This morning I posted a tweet that reflected my feelings after doing something. Nothing new there really, twitter is full of people tweeting what they have done, are doing or are planning to do, so why does this warrant a blog post. Well I posted the tweet and got in the shower, it was while I was in the shower that something occurred to me about the content of the tweet and being the massive dork I am it bothered me. Here’s the tweet I posted:

It’s probably not obvious to anybody but me so I will point out the part that bothers me, I used the word epic!!! I know, right!!! I’d apologise however I feel I had good reasons. First I think I need to make my standpoint on the word epic clear. I’m not against the use of the word epic, I think there are times it’s appropriate (as will become apparent) however I do feel it’s an incredibly over used word.

The whole “EPIC” thing didn’t pass me by or anything, I was aware of it I just thought it was… shit. Epic fail, epic win and just plain epic when referring to something as trivial (however delicious it may be) as a toasted sandwich just seemed like a waste of a perfectly good word. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as prone to hyperbole as the next guy, in fact probably a million times more prone, but the whole epic thing always seemed, shit. I’ve never ever ever ever used the words epic in conjunction with the words fail or win other than to mock somebody who did (yeah I’m a bit of a child, I know). All in all I was fed up of the “epic” thing right from the offset and I’ve pretty much come out the other side of fed up, through condescending and in to acceptance. without joining in of course, I have my own standards.

I’m no English language expert or authority, far from it, and I don’t intend to tell you what words to use as that is entirely up to you. I do however have certain things in language that bug me and I’m not the only one. There are entire clubs, societies and Facebook groups dedicate to people who are militant about the use of apostrophes for example, personally I couldn’t care less, but the things that do bug me, really bug me. I really don’t like it when people say pre-warn for example as trying to warn somebody before you warn them makes no sense. I also hate it when people say you have 2 choices when in fact you have 2 options that create 1 choice, and now I hate the use of epic.

So yes, I used the word epic! But it was intended by its actual meaning and not the over exaggerated and over the top way in which it’s come to be used. The top and bottom of it is that while i was showering, the thought of people thinking I’d said it in the contemporary useage chewed me up a little. While it may not bother any of you guys, and you may not think any less of me if I did use it in the fail/ win etc manner, it bothered me.

I remember seeing adverts on TV for Archer quite some time ago and it looked hilarious, whether it be as a result of not having the time, not knowing when it was on or whatever else i never got round to seeing any of it. Up it pops on Netflix, I’ve finished watching Battlestar Galactica and i don’t want to start watching season 5 of Breaking Bad until they are all available so lets give Archer a blast.

Archer is every cliché about a secret agent that you’ve ever heard, seen or imagined would sounds like it might well be a bit naff and played out but it isn’t, it’s amazing. The style of Archer is classic Fifties for the most part and animated in a heavily cell shaded manner. Now while i say it is fifties style this could be a bit of a misnomer, the suits, the backgrounds and everything lead you to believe that this is set in the 1950′s, that is until a character makes a reference to Dane Cook, or uses a mobile phone. The timeline for Archer, it would appear, is intentionally mixed up and all over the place to the point that the scenery, the outfits and the props become a character themselves.

Sterling Archer is our protagonist and he’s a booze chugging, call girl shagging misogynist with mummy issues that will say the most inappropriate thing at the most inappropriate time, every time without fail. He’s emotionally dead and would think nothing about torturing somebody to within an inch of their lives  for leaving a coffee ring on his furniture. He’s supported by a cast of other agents, admin and the equivalent of Q from the Bond movies all with their own neurosis, issues and inter office relationships to keep the laughs coming. This is all without mentioning the Head of ISIS (the spy agency for which they all work) being Archer’s mother and the issues this brings with it. As an Arrested Development fan I got extra pleasure from the fact that Archer’s Mother is voiced by Lucille Bluth and one of Archer’s potential Fathers is voiced by George Bluth.

Archer is a really original piece of TV comedy that i thoroughly enjoyed and can’t wait for the rest. There are 2 seasons on Netflix UK currently, Season 3 has aired and Season 4 starts in the US in January 2013.