Gambit’s Blog

Before I go any further, I want to state that these are my best games of 2007. I am not saying that they are necessarily the best over all, but they are the games that I have played and enjoyed the most this year. There is a severely limiting factor in this - I don’t own an Xbox 360. The reason this is limiting is that I am pretty certain that there would be at least 2 games that would make my list had I been able to play them - Mass Effect and Assassins Creed. However, I cant comment, as I haven’t played them.

So, without further ado… My top 5 games of 2007:

1. Team Fortress 2

So the winner is… TF2! I decided to separate out the Orange Box since it is a collection of distinct games that can be purchased individually. Team Fortress 2 is by far my most consistently played game, and I would really struggle to put anything else here. It’s high paced action that is simply the most fun that can be had on the net. Now all I have to do is wait for the Team Fortress 2 Quiz Mod to come along

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2. Super Mario Galaxy

I am in a unique position when it comes to Mario. I’ve played the originals, but I never got around to playing the highly acclaimed Mario 64 (in any of its incarnations), and while I look forward to it on my DS (when Amazon finally get them in stock), it managed to pass me by. Bring on Sunshine, which try as I might, I totally didn’t enjoy. So my hopes weren’t high for Galaxy. I watched the trailers and unlike some people, wasn’t blown away. But it’s Mario. And it’s an Nintendo console. So I had to get it. And, having collected 87 stars and well on my way to finishing Super Mario Galaxy, I can say that is is the most fun that you can have with a plumber. Period. And the most fun on the Wii. Very deserving of the second place.

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3. Portal

Do I really need to say anything about Portal?! All you need to know is that the cake is a lie. Oh, and it’s the best, most puzzling 4 hours of you’re life that you’re likely to have. I’d say that I wish it was longer, but I think if it had been, the game would have lost its charm. Thank god that there are lots of people developing custom maps to keep us going. Long live the weighted companion cube!

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4. Bioshock

Bioshock must be the most talked about game of the year, and when it’s as good as it is, why not?! I must admit, I still haven’t finished it, but my first new year’s resolution is to get my ass in gear and get to the end. I think a key word when describing Bioshock is the atmosphere - you really do feel like you’re there. My only complaint is that there’s no Anti-Aliasing, but that’s the Unreal Engine’s fault, and not Bioshock.

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5. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaro’s Treasure

When I started Zack & Wiki, I thought I’d be returning it fairly sharpish, it looked childish and I didn’t necessarily think it would be my cup of tea. However, after playing the first level I realised that at it’s heart it is a modern day recreation of the Gobliiins trilogy. Level based puzzlers, that have humor and fun combined with lateral thinking. If you haven’t played it, don’t knock it until you have!

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Honorable Mentions
Resident Wii-vil (aka. Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition) - Ok, it was on the Cube, but the addition of some great controls and the fact that I haven’t played it before give this a mention.
Link’s Crossbow Training - Not a great game on it’s own, but combined with the zapper and a couple of friends, this turned into a lot of fun. At a bargain price as well, who can complain?!
Peggle - Not you’re traditional game, Pop-cap Games have developed a really addictive little game. Download it, play it, buy it. Simple.

So another year comes to an end, another one begins, and we start the whole routine of the previous year all over again. It’s not pretty, but every year brings us plenty of TV to watch, music to listen to and Films to see. With the writers’ strike going on, who can say if next year is going to be the same, but this year was certainly entertaining.

And therefore, before further ado, I am going to present you with my picks from last year!

Best Show: Doctor Who

This was a tough one, but for me, Doctor Who had it’s best season yet this year. David Tennant just is the Doctor, and Martha Jones was the most interesting companion we’ve had to date. Some great episodes, some great guest appearances (Jon Simm anyone?!) and altogether very deserving of this year’s Best Show.

Runners Up: Battlestar Galactica (consistently excellent), Entourage (still one of the funniest dramas on TV), Psych (one that seems to miss many people’s radars, but is still an amazing comedy that deserves a mention), The Tudors (taking over from where Rome left off, an amazing show in a similar style that is definitely on a par with its spiritual predecessor), Who Wants to be a Millionaire (after x number of series, this is still the best quiz show on tv) – ok, the last one’s a joke…

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Best Newcomer: Californication

Possibly a controversial choice, but Californication was brilliant. Constantly stepping over the line, always enjoyable, and some great performances - David Duchovny at his best. If you haven’t seen it, you must – Califonication is in a class of its own.

Runners Up: Dirty Sexy Money (like The OC, but better, and for adults), Journeyman (but has hit an untimely end), Moonlight (some really bad acting combined with some really good acting, but for some reason this keeps me coming back week after week)

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Best Comedy: Saxondale

Possibly the hardest category for me to judge, as I’ve been watching some past comedy this year too that can’t win it for this year – Arrested Development and Jeeves and Wooster to name two. I was never a fan of Alan Partridge, but Saxondale is just right on the button. Brilliant show.

Runners Up: Entourage (comedy or drama?! Who knows, who cares), Flight of the Conchords (musical genius), The IT Crowd (geeky, but brilliant – perfect)

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Best Short Series: Oliver Twist 2007

A new category this year as there were two series that I really wanted to mention but didn’t fit in anywhere else. Oliver Twist was an adaptation that I was totally going to miss – we’ve all seen the story a million times, who needs another. But the BBC nailed it with this one – the kids were brilliant, and as always Timothy Spall was amazing as Fagin. Definitely one for the DVD boxsets collection.

Runner Up: Secret Diary of a Call Girl (never been a huge Billie Piper fan, but she was superb in this – hugely entertaining, porn for the masses!)

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Best Factual: Human Weapon

It’s interesting, it’s factual, and it has martial arts – what more can you want. The history of all the modern martial arts, and them put to the test by two American Mixed Martial Artists. You learn the culture, you learn the techniques. Great factual TV.

Runners Up: Mythbusters (as usual, though it seems they’re clutching at straws a bit now), Jonathan Ross’s Japanorama (it’s entertaining and interesting – that’s what you want!), Top Gear (not sure this really fits in this category, but still excellent viewing!), QI (Stephen Fry is simply brilliant)

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Most Improved: Robin Hood

I know, I know, what am I thinking?! For those that bothered to stick with this show, it was worthwhile. It doesn’t fit into the other categories since it still isn’t that good. But it is entertaining, and brainless. If you want some Saturday night swashbuckling Robin Hood style, and if you turn off your reality filter, Robin Hood does stand up on its own, and it’s enjoyable. And the second season was much better than the first…

Runners Up: Lost (I still thought that this season was the best so far. I wish they’d hurry up and end it still, but it did grip me far more than the last season).

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Get your act together: Heroes

This category is for those shows that really were good but need to buck their ideas up. Heroes was still great, but lacked the magic that the first season had. They have apparently realised this and will be sorting it out, so here are my fingers crossed for the New Year…

Runners Up: Spooks (most people seemed to love this season. I didn’t. Go back to the old formula – it worked), Stargate Atlantis (I still tune in, but it isn’t a patch on SG1. Please get it right)

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And finally…

Most Disappointing: Bionic Woman

I thought this had a lot of promise. I was wrong. Simply awful TV. Switch Off.

Runners Up: Dexter (still an amazing show, but after one of the best first seasons I’ve ever seen, how could season two really live up to my hype), Bones (still dragging out the love interest. Still love the show, but sort it out!)

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So, that’s 2007’s TV for you! Check back later for more 2007 goodness

When the Wii came out, I was the first to buy one, I was the first to sing it’s praises, and when push comes to shove, I was the first to become a Wii fanboy. Now that some time has passed, and I have sampled a good proportion of the Wii’s gaming offerings, I’d like to assess how it has changed my gaming life.

The biggest change that I think the Wii has made to my gaming life is that I want a 360 and a decent PC. I want a 360 NOW. And if I hadnt just bought a new decent PC and I could afford a 360, I would have one.

This may be a strange thing to say that the Wii has caused, but the reason for this is that I want to play some decent games. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great games on the Wii. Some great games that I can count on one hand. To date I think I have played approximately 50 games on the Wii, and I can safely say that I have played every single one of those until it bored me. The hand mentioned above consists of these games: Zelda, Wii Sports, Wario Ware, Mario Strikers and Resident Evil 4. But what have these games actuallygiven me?

• Zelda - great game, but havent I played it umpteen times before?!? And now that I’ve finished it, when will it be back in the blue illuminated slot of my Wii?
• Wii Sports - again, great, but really only one for when you have the mates around
• Wario Ware - i played this on the gameboy, then on the Gamecube. See Zelda and Wii Sports.
• Mario Strikers - frustratingly hard in the later stages on single player. Great with the mates.
• Resident Evil 4 - see Zelda and Wario Ware.

My point is, the truly good content on the Wii has been done before. I know what I’m hearing you say, “but you are missing x game”, but think about it, how many of those games that you put in the x space there havent come out on either the PC or the 360 in a BETTER version. And by better, I mean both Graphically, and CONTROLS.

But arent the Wii’s controls it’s selling point?! Yes. But they are also the bain of my life.

Take Rockstar’s Table Tennis for a case in point. This was a good, fun, easy going game on the 360. Stick it over onto the Wii and “Oooh, there’s waggly controls, we MUST use this”. No you must NOT. Just because the controls are there, does not mean you have to use them. Of if you must, at least give us the option to use it as a normal controller, or plug in a Gamecube pad or something. I dont want every gaming session to feel like a marathon. This is just one example, but there are hundreds of others.

Let’s get back to the 360. I want to play decent games. I want to play Bioshock. I want to play Gears of War. I want to play NBA Live 08… What, NBA Live is out on the Wii?!? I know it is. It just has POINTLESS waggly controls. It is not fun. And that’s what games are supposed to be! I want to play it the way I enjoyed it on the Gamecube. [nb. before the arguments ensue, I am well aware that it is a crime to group NBA Live 08 alongside the other two games listed]

And this is what it boils down to. There just isnt the content for Single Player gaming. The waggly controls work well for multi-player games and minigames, but what happens when you want to play on your own?

You get out the 360 or the PC, thats what you do.

So, to all you Wii/Nintendo fanboys out there, I’d ask you to assess your situation, and ask if Nintendo is really thinking of us gamers anymore, or is it thinking about our mums, sisters and or mates. I don’t know, but I hope that they get us back on track sometime soon.

So until Mario Galaxy proves to be as much of a let down as Mario Sunshine, and until Smash Bros. Brawl comes out, I’m off to play Bioshock, Half-life and Gears of War. Preferably without having to get armache.

Through a random series of events unfolding (thanks John), and a few e-mails being sent, I last night attended the launch of the pivate beta of a new website - LocateTV.

In their own words: “The idea behind LocateTV is simple - to let you find TV shows available where you live in the world, be they on broadcast TV, online or on recorded media (DVD, HD-DVD etc).”

The project is still in the beta stages - and rightly so - there are still a large number of bugs, but the basic concept is definately an interesting one, and one that I personally feel has a lot of potential. With the release of the BBC iPlayer (for better or worse), 4onDemand and various other online TV watching choices, it is soon going to be common place for people to go online to watch their favorite (or not so favorite) TV shows. With so many services all pumping this stuff onto the net, how are you going to know where to look for it? Maybe it isnt on the net yet, but is going to be on Freeview in 2 days time? The idea behind LocateTV is to group all of this together in one easy to search location. And for the most part, it works. In addition, if the show you are looking for is not on TV any time soon, it’ll allow you to price check the best DVD prices.

It’s not exhaustive at the moment (I couldnt find The Tomorrow People on there) - but it’s not finished. In addition, the search needs a bit of work - searching for Angel gives me a lot of people named Angelica, but not the TV series I want, and sometimes you will get two versions of the same site - but these are all kinks that will be ironed out over time, and hopefully in time for the launch.

There is also an option to embed all this information on your own blog/forum/site using a standardised dynamic graphic, that will update to track your favorite show, actor or whatever. At the moment, this is a large clunky graphic, but I was told last night that there will be multiple options made available!

In my mind, once the kinks get ironed out, this will be an excellent resource that I will use almost daily (especially if the add RSS feeds, which are sadly lacking at the moment… nudge nudge…). At the moment, to get close to all the information that they are supplying I have to flick between a number of sites - TV.com, IMDB, Radio Times, and FindDVD, where as this will give me all this information (albeit to a lesser level of depth) under one roof.

In summary, I think it is a great idea, and once the kinks are straightened out, it will definately be a resource worth using. I’ll be using it over the coming months, and will post about any major developments that I feel are worth mentioning!

So, in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled, watch the blog, sign-up for the e-mail updates, and wait patiently - it should be worth it

The DVD Forums are running a Photo-a-day challenge for July, and since i havent used my camera for a while i thought i’d take part! You will be able to see all my photos on Flickr throughout this period by clicking here. It’s going to be tough keeping it up, as i’m not the best at these kind of things, but lets see how it goes!

Some will be good, some will be crap, but should be interesting anyways! Wish me luck!

Today, i got a new hard disk. It didnt work, so i ran a diagnostic tool for Western Digital drives. It came out ok, but I decided to write 0’s to the drive at the start and end to clear it, just in case. Who knows why. It shouldnt have been a problem. But it was. I had the wrong drive selected. Instead of running the test and the clear on my new disk, it was running on my old hard disk, the one I boot from. This is a Western Digital drive too. Crap.
Now I have no windows boot partition.
Im an idiot

So, i’m in the process of finalising my NesPc (more to come on this when i finally get it finished), and the house gets hit by lightning!Not only does it scare the crap out of me, cause me to drop my dinner all over the floor, and miss the start of Neighbours, but it causes me to worry sick that all the computers may have been blown up (it’s happened to us before, so i was a little nervous).

So i was quite relieved when i got upstairs and saw all 4 of them humming away merrily. It was only when i got close that i realised that the network had gone down. After much playing, i realised that the router had blown up (after a pretty serious blast to the phone line i imagine), but not only that, the ethernet port on my NesPC had blown too

This was pretty wierd, and the other physical connection to my parents comp was fine, but that was a shorter distance :s
The port shows fine in windows, i’m just getting absolutely nothing from it. This screwed my plans of setting up my NesPC, as i’ve been doing it all over the network using VNC and was streaming all the media to it as it only has a 2Gb HDD.

I hate lightning…

It’s been in the news a fair bit recently, with people wanting to teach intelligent design to school kids as part of science lessons. This really angers me, so when I came across this, I thought it was time I wrote something about it.

For me, while evolution is just a theory, its one of the most obviously true theories in science today. The sheer amount of evidence available should far outweigh any doubts that people have. However, some blind people still seem to believe in Intelligent Design. It’s generally these same people who so fundamentally believe in many religious doctrines which have absolutely no evidence to support them, and lead to crazy people like this.

Anyway, in my opionion Evolution is as close to scientific fact as you can get. As I have said before, everybody is entitled to their opinion, and I am not going to try and change the opinions of people who believe in ID, but seriously, it does make me worry about the world when something so glaringly obvious (evolution) gets overlooked by people in favor of something that has absolutely no scientific basis or any hint of proof about it (ID).

As for teaching it in science classes, what an absolute pile of crap. R.E. classes maybe, although, personally I think teaching something so clearly wrong is a waste of time, full stop.
Anyway, back to the orignial thing that prompted me to post this, in perusing the web today, I came across a pretty convincing arguement for evolution on Google Groups. I’ve posted it below for completion, and it continues after the break…

“I was recently fortunate enough to witness a high school biology
teacher get hit by a question about Evolution…

(more…)

I saw the video below this afternoon and it reminded me just why I no longer believe in God, and why I dont want to. Religion does some crazy things to some people, and the woman in this video really scares me! Religion seems to be able to give excuses for nearly everything, and quite frankly, I dont want to be associated with anyone as crazy as this woman.

I’m not saying that there arent millions of people who have a perfectly healthy connection to their religion, and I would never try to force my beliefs (or lack of) onto anyone else. I fully respect decisions people make in their beliefs, however when things go as far as they do in this video, i have to draw the line. I’m sorry lady, but as the reporter in this video says, you’re a nutcase…

When i was back home recently, i went to Ikea and bought a Detolf cabinet to display my recent purchases of toys and busts. Afterall, what would be the point in buying them if they werent going to be on display?!

Now, i know many of you reading this will not appreciate the beauty of these items, however its an addiction that i cannot cure (and actually quite like). A bit like cocaine… but cheaper and less harmful to my body…
Anyway, onto the photos This is not my whole collection, rather a selection of the ones that are still at home (i have some on display up here in Nottingham too). Enjoy