Internet Apocalypse

With perfect scores from Famitsu and Edge and a glowing review from Kotaku, Capcom seem to have finally found the formula for the ultimate videogame, Guns, Tits and Buns. Bayonetta went on sale in the UK last Friday and smashed into the top 20 at number 5. This might seem like a lukewarm reception to the title, but bear in mind that no one has yet managed to knock Modern Warfare 2 off the top spot for weeks now and, in a chart inexplicably dominated by Nintendo Wii games it has done well to beat other triple A titles like Dragon Age: Origins, Darksiders and Assassins Creed 2.

I’m habitually cynical when it comes to perfect games, so I tried to remain neutral when playing it, trying not to expect anything too awesome, while at the same time, gearing myself up for the first of the big console releases for 2010. First impressions? Well, not great. The cut scenes in this game, although some of them are visually great, are very confusing. At points, the dialogue between the characters makes absolutely no sense and the attempts to explain the plot are laughable. I can’t help feeling that maybe crucial plot elements disguised as Japanese metaphors were lost in translation along the way and what I was left with was an unfathomable mess of random conversations that allude to concepts and storyline only understood by the guy that wrote it in the first place.

That aside, Modern Warfare 2’s storyline makes next to no sense and that’s brilliant, so let’s move on to the gameplay itself. Wall-running, turning into a panther, blowing stuff up and shooting the shit out of things with the guns either in your hands or the ones attached to your feet all feels smooth and well done. The combo system is one you’ll be well used to if you’ve played Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden or Onimusha, with a very similar weapon and character upgrade system. Within 15 – 20 minutes or so, you’ll be well used to the controls and kicking some angel ass. The fact that I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the story actually seemed to make it better as I was hurled from one completely abstract level to another. One minute I’m surfing on a missile, the next I’m running up the side of a sky scraper, dodging trains and the next I’m slamming a huge angel tentacle phallus into a babies mouth and slicing it in half, before tearing it to pieces using demons summoned from and made out of hair. Yeah, it is random.

The game is 70% boss battles. You may get a feeling of “I’m sure I killed you on the last level” as the game forces you to kill the same boss four or five times on consecutive missions, before having you fight them all again in a final, final, FINAL battle to the death. The boss battles are so ridiculously awesome in how they look and the amount of colour and activity going on that it really doesn’t matter and most of them are challenging enough to tax the average player without getting them stuck for too long. Saying that there are points in that game that are so knuckle-bitingly frustratingly hard that I almost destroyed London in a ball of white hot ball of fury several times during the completion of this game.

I’d personally not give this game a perfect score, but it would be pretty close. I can understand why the Japanese might think it’s perfect as they have a higher chance of being able to figure out what the hell is actually going on. I just can’t fault how graphically amazing this game is at times and when I finally turned my Xbox off after completion, I was surprised it hadn’t RROD’d on me again from being overloaded by sheer awesomeness.

THQ have done a sterling job with taking my favourite IP in science fiction and translating it to the gaming medium. The Dawn of War series and its subsequent expansions still stand the test of time today as a fantastic set of games with beautifully modelled units. It's features like the model painter, included in both games, that captured the spirit of what Warhammer was all about and really proved to me that these games were created by people who had done their homework or, more likely, had played the table-top games themselves. THQ extended their rights on Warhammer 40k until 2013 - that was back in March 2007 and since then they have made good on their promises to really bring the characters to life.


A Warhammer 40k MMO had been hinted at a while back. I read an article on Massively which had the MMO down for a 2012 release. I'll be honest with you, I was a bit gutted that it had been planned for release so far into the distant future. The Warhammer MMO is slated for release AFTER Darksiders 2. At the time of writing this, Darksiders 1 hasn't even been released yet. (8th of Jan 2010) However, that was the beginning of the year and this is now. A lot has happened since then, notably the Halo MMO being canned, for whatever reason, and a small recession that I'm sure you're all very much aware of! I mentioned the Halo MMO being cancelled because it is significant alongside all the failed MMOs that are drawing their last rattling breaths, emaciated and defeated and the feet of mighty Warcraft. Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Hellgate London & The Matrix Online, to name the biggest names. The Warhammer Online classic MMO is still going, although it confused me as to why anyone would want to move from Warcraft to a new game with a very similar IP. All this depressing MMOWTFFail news was gradually chipping away at my faith in the Warhammer 40k MMO ever being released at all.


Today, Kotaku published some images, released from a "Friendly Source" inside THQ Studio - Vigil Games. They aren't exactly screenshots, but they ARE proof that work on the MMO hasn't been shoved on the back burner to be forgotten about. The presence of the massive Warhound titans give a small hint towards the scale that this game could possibly working towards. The rest of the models do look tantalising, the Space Marine model especially, but I'll hold off drawing any more wild conclusions until we have some more information. But keep going Vigil, I can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

I must confess, I missed the first instalment of Uncharted, “Drake's Fortune”. I didn’t own a Playstation when it came out so I couldn’t get my mitts on a copy. So I wasn’t on the edge of my seat when I heard that its sequel had been announced. Sure, I saw the screenshots, which looked fantastic and I watched some videos of gameplay which looked scripted but still made the game look fun, but I’ve been burned too many times by games that promise the earth and fail to deliver, so I tried not to get too excited by it.

The game combines 3rd person shooter action with stealth as an option but not a requirement to progress through the story. There is a fair bit of Parkour – style climbing which reminded me very much of assassins creed and some puzzles which are so easy, they may as well not be there at all. Where Uncharted 2 really excels is in the mix of all these elements tastefully and in the right quantities so as never to bore the player with too much of one thing. The story was fun and kept me interested while the cut scenes were well acted, both by the character models and the talented voice actors. (Claudia Black especially) All of this is set against some of the most stunning backdrops I have ever seen. Clicking the images below will enlarge them.


The controls work well for a third person shooter. You will find soon after picking up the pad and learning how to use the pistol, that headshots are possible but made tricky enough to be extremely satisfying when you one-shot that evil henchman on the next rooftop over. The game combines 3 gameplay types together well in quantity, however it does fall down at controlling these 3 types equally well.

The Parkour running and jumping controls well enough, but I sometimes found that jumping from ledge to ledge felt rather scripted sometimes, like I was initiating a tiny quicktime event to jump across a gap, rather than using skill to judge the distance of the jump. This DID make the game play smoother but at the same time, made it feel a little linear, which is a shame because the backdrops were really, beautifully rendered. I want to feel like at any point, I can break away and go explore, at least a little bit.

The stealth gameplay was a particular sticking point for me. The stealth takedowns were very smooth when executed and I did try to stealth-kill where I could, rather than go guns blazing every time. However I did find that sneaking around enemies to get behind them was made more difficult because of Drake sticking to the wall at a crucial moment or perhaps jumping over the top of the wall instead of simply standing up behind it. I think this problem could have been solved by a dead-mans-switch method of duck and cover, i.e. if you aren’t holding a button down to hide, then the character doesn’t duck behind cover.

Controller woes aside though, the game is possibly the best game I have played this year. It really is beautiful to watch and to play. It never leaves you bored or frustrated and is impossible to put down. I keep thinking about Metal Gear Solid 4 as I write this. I think the comparison I’d draw is, while MGS4 is a classic that will be studied and praised for years to come, Uncharted 2 is an addictive airport novel of a game that you find yourself devouring in record time and then tentatively waiting for the next instalment. There no doubt will be a sequel to this game and when it is released, I’ll be first in-line to bag myself a copy. Oh yes.

Uncharted 2's stunning backdrops have been unsurpassed this year.

And so it seems the hype has worked against the film as I thought it would. The media frenzy and months of scrutiny and anticipation built the movie a pedestal so impossibly tall so as to make delivery of anything that could live up to peoples imaginations and expectations nigh impossible.

As I sat in my favourite seat in the little cinema in Hammersmith, i sensed restlessness in the crowd of people as they watched the movie. After the initial "wow" of the first 10 minutes or so after the opening credits had ended and the story kicked in, i started to become irritated by the number of people texting on their phones, running back and forth to the bathroom, whispering to each other and generally not paying attention to what I thought was a great movie. After I got over my annoyance at them all and quelled my need to stalk the isles with a silenced PPK, picking off those who were not paying due attention and diligence to the movie, I reminded myself of what I had initially thought when reading the graphic novel... "this is ace, but how are they going to translate this into a movie??"

In defence of those... I am hesitant to use the word idiots, but there, i just said it... in the defence of those idiots who could not sit still and listen to dialogue for more than five minutes at a time, I will say this: This movie has been billed and hyped as a superhero movie and, in essence, it is just that. However, the distinction was never made between this movie and, say Iron Man or X-Men in the advertising campaigns. Therefore people who had not read the book arrived wanting to see super powers, flying robots, indestructible men and perhaps the odd one-eyed giant tentacled mutant tearing apart New York (yes, I'll get to that).
In actual fact, what they got was a dark, dialogue heavy movie which I felt sat more on the film noir side of the fence than the superhero side of things. The reasons I think this movie didn't appeal to a large section of the audience in the cinema was the very reason I liked it so much.

Apart from the ending - and there IS a spoiler alert at the beginning of this article, so please stop reading now if you haven't seen it yet - Apart from the ending which was completely different from the comic book, I thought that most of the core elements were captured in the film perfectly. The sets were fantastic and Rorschach's part of the story, which is my personal favourite, especially his time in prison, was very well done indeed. Sure, the odd detail had been changed, they used a circular saw rather than an arc welder to cut the bars off his cell door and he didn't shackle anyone to a radiator, set them on fire and give them a hacksaw, but I do understand why you have to cut some things down and out of a story in order to fit them into what is already quite a weighty film... within reason of course. What I noticed and what I found fairly annoying, was that the night owl and the silk spectre both such a mastery of kung-fu style street fighting. I understand that making them masters of unarmed combat makes for entertaining fight scenes, but in Rorschachs case, I don’t think it was necessary. His style of fighting was so awesome in the books anyway... simply pick up whatever comes to hand and jam it in the opponents eyes... maybe break their fingers or lock them in a fridge.


I think the biggest deviation from the storyline was the ending. Again, spoiler alert. It got to about ten minutes before Ozzy was about to unveil his master plan to Rorschach and Night Owl and I started thinking... "Are they gonna do it? or are they gonna pussy out?" T minus five minutes and still nothing to suggest he was going to be teleporting psychic monsters into New York. When they decided to go with the fusion generator detonation thingy, I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed but in retrospect, I think it might have taken a bit too long to explain and, since there had already been people walking out of the cinema by this point (no doubt wondering where Val Kilmer in his rubber-nippled batman costume was) I guess I can let them off. The effect was the same, but the method was different, that's all. The motive for doing the dastardly deed remained the same but the film makers obviously decided that it was just too tricky to introduce in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, which is understandable I suppose.

You have to admit though, it would have been awesome to see a massive creature mind-blast New York with psychic energy and fill the streets with death and rivers of blood.

Funk drummin never sounded so good!

Stanton Moore is an incredibly talented drummer - so talented, he has his own band, named after him and they are all pretty awesome too. Not a long post today, just an old Vid of the man, doin what he does best... Layin’ down some grooves!!

Oh to be a reporter in the 1950's! Sipping rum in the stifling heat of San Juan after a hard day toiling away over a typewriter in a nicotine stained office. This is exactly how I felt as I accompanied reporter Paul Kemp on his journey through the bowels of Puerto Rico. Today I'm writing about the Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson.

When I read this book, I imagined the setting in tones of sepia, old Chevrolets rolling past in the dusty Puerto Rican streets as people in thin linen shirts and round-brimmed hats try to do as little as possible in the heat of the beating sun. Suddenly my tube journey to work was transformed. I could hear the Jazz and taste the cheap iced cuban rum, a refreshing change to the cramped, sweaty underground of sleepy, flu ridden Londoners.

The book tells of said reporter, his adventures and mis-adventures. He joins a small newspaper, already fated to fail due to its colourful workforce of extrovert and sometimes violent hacks that make their living there. This could be enough of a story on its own, but throw in a love interest shared between the reporter and his unstable friend and you have a recipe for both disaster and intrigue.

What impressed me the most was that this book, written from the point of view of someone who was obviously having trouble dealing with becoming middle aged, was penned by Thompson when he was just 22 years old! Although short, this is a must read for anyone, especially those with a lust for adventure or the idyllic dream of a little work and adventure in far flung lands.

Definitely - I will have to write a short article on Down & Out In Paris & London by George Orwell at some point, as both these books have the same effect of truly transporting the reader to a different place and time. It will be hard to beat books like these on my commute from here on in.

One of the most famous and celebrated sci-fi authors celebrates his 80th birthday this week! Well, unfortunately, he is dead already, he died in 1982. However Mr. Philip K Dick was responsible for a massive body of science fiction that has permeated society in the form of classic novels that will live on for the rest of time, which in turn gave rise to some of the best movies ever to be made.Everyone knows the book "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" which inspired the film by Ridley Scott "Blade Runner". This is, by the way, one of my favourite films of all time. This film was released just a few months after his death. I think it is a tragedy that he never got to see it before he died.But what about the author himself? Well to be honest, until I had started to research this post, I knew little about him. Unfortunately for the budding writer in me, it seems that Philip K Dick joins the long list of visionary masters that I aspire to who suffered from serious mental health problems and heavy drug use. Dick claimed that he wrote many of his works while high on amphetamines and LSD and later on in his life suffered from what sounds to me like paranoid schizophrenia. He would be plagued with flashes of visions into ancient Rome and as these got longer and more intense, Dick decided that this could well me a past life or that perhaps he was leading two lives at the same time. Interestingly, he also had a recurring dream that he was looking for a story entitled "The Empire Never Ended" in a magazine. He convinced himself that if he ever found the magazine in his dream that it might send him mad.

In tribute to Phillip K Dick, I've pulled my finger out and made a start on "The

 Man In The High Castle", one of his most celebrated works that I, for some reason, have never gotten round to reading I'll no doubt post about it here once I've finished it.

To find out more about Philip K Dick:

BoingBoing.net have a radio tribute to him archived on this page
The Philip K Dick tribute blog (amazing name) Total Dickhead

Films

I've listed the films of his that i really enjoyed in no particular order. I guess in the order of most awesome as voted for by me (I'm typing them as they pop into my mind). There are 9 films that I am aware of in total but these four are the ones that I have seen, remembered and enjoyed.

Blade Runner

Directed by Ridley Scott. Film Noir about a dark and not so distant future where a private detective hunts down rogue androids, while questioning his own humanity. "Do androids dream of electric sheep"

A Scanner Darkly

A strange method of filming live action scenes then animating over the top of them was used in this movie. It explores an alternate reality where a small group of friends live with their addiction to the psychoactive drug "Substance D". "A scanner darkly"

Total Recall

Truly, one of the most awesome Arnie movies of all time! This was released in the cinema in 1990 apparently (I thought it was older than that!) This film is about a man who thinks he has paid for memories of adventures to be implanted in into his mind. He quickly begins to discover that he has gotten more than he bargained for. "We can remember it for you wholesale"

Minority Report

Adapted into a blockbuster movie and directed by Stephen Spielberg,

 Minority Report is set in a future where murders are kept to an all time low by a police force that relies on the pre-cognitive abilities of three young psychics. The main protagonist is a cop, accused of a murder he has yet to commit and pursued by the very police force he used to serve. "Minority Report"

I saw the Manga movie of Battle Angel Alita when I was still in high school and it was then that the film became firmly cemented in my mind as one of the most amazing cyberpunk universes of all time. I've just finished reading one of the graphic novels about her that a friend has very generously sent over to me and it just left me totally gobsmacked.

A Little Background

Alita is a cyborg. Her head and torso are discovered in rubbish dump beneath the floating city by a scientist called Ido, who takes her home and fixes her up. Alita has no memory of her life before she is found by Ido, but as she adjusts to her new home in the city, it emerges that she has abilities in combat that are unusual, even for a cyborg.

Battle Angel Alita is based in a city where the useful, wealthy or just plain lucky members of society have fled to a floating city in the sky called Tiphares (Zoram in the movie). The city that sits below the floating utopia of Tiphares is left to rot and ruin, completely overrun by crime, drug abuse and violence. As this is set far into the future, most of the most prevalent criminals are cybernetically enhanced and therefore unstoppable by normal humans. To counter the lawlessness, the governing body of the sprawl known as "the factory" uses bounty hunters to bring in the heads of vanquished thugs and villains. Alita puts her awesome combat skills and abilities to use as a bounty hunter and that is pretty much the beginning of the story.

Awesome!

Why is Alita so awesome? So far, I haven't found out much about Alitas background before she became the cyborg you grow to know and love in the stories. However this mystery is an essential part of what makes her character so interesting. She is plunged into a cyberpunk city of sin with a wealth of colourful characters, most of whom aren't totally "good" or "evil" but instead doing a mixture of moral and immoral acts in order to survive. I really like that in characters that I am trying to connect with in stories. This is because, not only is it more realistic than just having a metaphorical Dumbledore or Yoda or any other totally pure character, but also because you just never know if your main character will be screwed over by them on the next page, or if they will be saved by them from the brink of death, albeit for a tidy sum of money or other aspect of personal gain.

Maybe this story, this world just appeals to my pessimistic side which tells me constantly...

"There is no 'Good', just varying degrees of Evil."

There ARE bad guys in this world and some of them are addicted to BRAINS. Yes! One of the more awesome aspects of this crazy cyberpunk future is that some of the massive killing machine cyborgs are addicted to the adrenaline found in human brains and this need drives them to horrific murders for their own personal gratification. It also means that brains and spines are hot property on a black market flooded with other human body parts and this trade in human tissue can also lead characters into interesting and sometimes terrifying situations.

I think if i reveal much more about the Alita universe I might give away too much or spoil it for the future initiated fan so I'll leave it at that, with an additional recommendation that Battle Angel Alita should most definitely be checked out.

Down the darkest alley of mankind’s possible futures, there is no apocalypse, no great war, no invading swarms of hostile alien forces... there is only Capitalism!

Jennifer Government by Max Barry is set in Australia in a future where the corporations finally control the earth. The capitalist USA now controls most of Europe, Australia and half of Asia. The book follows several characters as they live their lives in super-corporate America.

 The main story follows Jennifer Government, a government agent who is investigating a string of killings linked to a new $2000 pair of Nike trainers that have just gone on sale world-wide. At the same time you follow John Nike, a Marketing executive who has arranged the killings of a set of Nike customers in order to raise the profile and street-cred of the new shoes.

The book is non stop action from the word go. It is full of black humour, mostly rising from the super-capitalist world by which the characters are constantly being thwarted and screwed over. There's just the right amount of violence and black comedy to make this one of those books you can't put down. I'd recommend it for anyone who sees themselves as anti capitalist. Fans of Bill Hicks would most likely dig this book too.

Also: There is a free online browser game called Nation States which is inspired by and based in the Jennifer Government world.

OK. The last few months have turned out to be amazing in terms of gaming and I don’t think it will stop just yet, with Fallout 3 on the Horizon, Farcry 2 actually here RIGHT NOW (!!!) and Little Big Planet screaming at me to sell one of my kidneys and finally get my hands on a PS3. Saying all this, I promise the NEXT entry I write won't be about computer games but, as we are truly in the golden age of interactive entertainment, it seems foolish of me not to get in on the action.

Fable 2 was created by the now famous (or infamous) Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios. For those of you that aren't aware of Lionheads back catalogue, it mainly consists of Fable & its expansion and the Black & White games. Lionhead have really carved out a style for themselves and it has become quite easy to tell one of their games apart from the rest, largely due to the open world "Sandbox" game environment that they prefer and also the chunky, cartoony style of their world and character design. Another theme that runs through all their games is the dominant "Black and White"\wrong and right\good and evil parallels that they draw to in each game by making the player decide between morally good and bad choices and reflecting these choices in the player avatar itself.

Shepherds Bush on a Sunday evening. A lively place filled with sounds of pint glasses clinking in the pubs, revellers denying the end of another blissful weekend. Red double decker busses create guttural rumbles as they ferry throngs of Londoners across a sprawling city that never sleeps. But tonight a new sound joins the evening chorus. Tonight the sound of a dying rancor echoes across the rooftops, the crackle of force lightning arcs down the streets and the sizzling pop of lightsabre on storm trooper startles a city fox rummaging in the bins outside

By now I'm sure that anyone stumbling across this blog has already heard all about Spore and been exposed to at least some of the surrounding Hype about this game. Yes. The media storm surrounding the game as it built up to its release billed it to be one of the most innovative and original games ever made.

The famous video of Will Wright "um" using the creature creator when it was in its earlier stages was amazing and there is no doubt that the design of the creator and the technology behind it is absolutely astounding and revolutionary.

Spore received mixed reviews upon release; a recent Amazon.com "glitch" meant that a thread of unfavourable reviews was somehow "lost" from the Spore product page, although after some questioning, the reviews were restored. The biggest controversy to overshadow the game was its stringent DRM (digital rights management) restrictions - which restricted users from installing the game on more than 3 machines and only allowed customers to create a single account capable of receiving the user generated content and adding a users own creations to the collective. EA have since announced that they will be relaxing the rules slightly, allowing the game to be installed on up to 5 machines. This issue is still a point of contention between developer and end user, but it's also a complex one and maybe a topic for another blog.

As Spore is cut up into five distinct sections, which means this review is really 5 mini reviews in one massive block of intimidating text. Sorry about that.

Phase 1: Tidal Pool Phase

This part of the game is awesome. You start as a small amoeba-like creature and have to swim through a primordial soup of other microbes, eating other animals or plant matter to grow in size. Once you have grown, you can munch on the creatures that have been eating you. You are offered the chance to upgrade your organism, giving it different mouths, weapons and methods of propulsion. This part of the game is very addictive, looks great and its great fun. My only real criticism would be that it is too easy and it is over too quickly.

Phase 2: Creature Phase

This looks like World of Warcraft or some similar MMO. You run around with your creature in third person, grinding computer controlled creatures in order to get you experience bar to the top level. You have some skills on a Warcraft-style action bar at the bottom of the screen that vary in degrees of uselessness. There are a few basic quests which give you extra XP, all in all - it is extremely easy and gets boring fast. You are offered the carnivorous "kill and eat everything" route or the herbivorous "eat vegetables and make friends with everything" route. I chose the former as the latter is for girls.

Phase 3: Tribal Phase

This feels like a Settlers game and turns the camera view into a birds-eye view of the map. You are now controlling multiple copies of your creatures, competing against other creatures in a battle to dominate the landscape. You tell your creatures to hunt, fish, attack rival tribes or befriend them. There is no customisation in this phase and i felt myself rushing through it. There is no substance to this phase and the usually classic RTS features it should have don't exist (for example ctr+1 grouping of units, selecting unit type on double click or selecting all units on screen). In short - play a Civ or Settlers game and you will have a much better time than wasting an hour on this part. The Civ Revolutions demo that I got FOR FREE on Xbox live lasted longer than this, was more fun and looked more graphically polished.

Phase 4: Civilisation Phase

This phase is much better than the last two as you get to use the creator tool again, this time to construct your buildings, tanks, navy and air force. I would compare this phase to a command and conquer or dawn of war title but, yet again, not nearly as good.

The phase itself, again, only lasts a very short time and there is even an "I win" button that you unlock after defeating half of the enemies on the map, making the entire thing completely pointless. The vehicles do look really good but you are restricted in how many you can make, the enemies are very easy to defeat and hardly attack at all, even the "aggressive" ones. Also, this phase suffers the same lack of RTS functionality that the last phase did. Very disappointing. It takes roughly three and a half hours of game time to get to the end of this stage without rushing and this is the penultimate phase of the game.

Phase 5: Space Phase

The Space Phase is the proverbial carrot on the end of the stick which kept me playing through three and a half hours of brightly coloured disappointment.

The phase begins with the creator window again. This time you get to create a spaceship. Once you have created one, you are taken through the tutorials which teach you to master trade, diplomacy, terra-forming and changing the planets you have populated by introducing plants and animals.

This phase looks beautiful and the galaxy you have to explore is HUGE. You zip around in your ship and perform various quests in order to gain currency to improve your existing planets, expanding your empire. Think Master of Orion or Freelancer as a basis for comparison on this stage. My main criticism for this phase is that your massive galactic empire only supports one ship to defend its empire... YOU. If you expand your empire to more than 3 or 4 planets, you will soon find yourself zipping back and forth from planet to planet to defend them, without getting anything done. This is a huge game play design flaw in the phase in my opinion.

Conclusion

The best part about this game is, without doubt, the creature creator. Creating the buildings, creatures and vehicles is really good fun and seeing them come to life is great. I really hope the creature creator is implemented in future games. The game play elements are very poor. It's extremely easy, I doubt younger players would have a difficult time completing it at all and once you have completed it in carnivore and herbivore "modes" there isn't enough there to warrant a third run. The game genres it traverses are already dominated by far superior titles that are specialised in doing that genre WELL. While it has some great ideas I don't think it manages to pull them off to the standard people were expecting. A victim of its own hype, Spore is a jack of all trades, master of none.

Yesterday, the share prices for the Halifax (my building society) fell to an all time low, or something like that. Lloyds TSB bought them out, making them stronger and apparently saving them from the one terrifying event that all banks fear, as depicted so perfectly in Mary Poppins - a Run on the Bank. Which started me thinking... if there was a run on the bank, what fantastic repercussions could we expect? Undoubtedly our society would crumble and descend into anarchy, right? How far could this go?

Week 1: Ground Zero

HBOS - The Halifax and the Bank of Scotland share values drop to an all time low of 51%. Thousands of British shareholders see their share values drop from £10 to £1.85. Shocking. Apart from the odd suicide and a few unhappy savers, nothing too exciting happens. The cogs, however, are well and truly in motion.

Week 2: Run On The Bank

On Tuesday 25th September 2008, due to some misguided financial advice from a friend at her local bridge club, Sixty five Year-Old Emily Higgins walks into her local branch of the Halifax building society in Chichester and asks that they transfer all her savings and pensions to her newly opened HSBC savings account. The young teller, James Woodcock, a fine arts graduate of 25 years, informs her that because of a technical issue with their internet connection, they would be unable to do that until the following week. Having no grasp of modern technology or what the internet even is, Miss Higgins panics and kicks up a fuss, loudly declaring that the building society will not give her access to her funds. Within just a few minutes, already worried account holders begin to demand their money be drawn out of their accounts, either in cash, or wired elsewhere. The clamour turns into panic as the painfully slow customer service of the Building society staff exacerbates the situation. Among the growing rabble of angry customers, Dave Watson - Reporter for the Chichester local newspaper makes the call to his editor that would change life as we know it.

Week 3: Financial Apocalypse

several of the panicking Halifax patrons post tweets online about their ordeal in the Chichester branch. Many more post phone camera footage onto YouTube of the riot that ensued in the branch and the resulting armed police presence sent to quash them. Dave Watson’s story, however, is sold to Meridian television and broadcast across the nation that evening. Thousands of people turn up at the Halifax branches the following morning in dismay and those that can, withdraw or transfer all their savings. The inevitable knock on effect and rioting occurs in every major city in the UK. No Bank is safe as people stupidly horde cash which is rapidly declining in value. Jails overflow and the BBC news website reports scenes of brutal Police crackdowns all over the country. By the end of the week, the economy "crashes". The cities descend into anarchy; riots, protests and looting are rife. The police battle to restore order against the populace, their lines of riot shields reflecting the fires that are raging in the husks of looted electronics stores and supermarkets.

Week 24: The Future

The cities across England are all smouldering husks. The inhabitants of which pick their way through the broken buildings, seeking out food and water to add to their caches. Several gangs have taken refuge in shopping centres and the larger supermarkets, defending their stores of food with fierce and deadly aggression. The police and fire brigade have broken down, unable to cope with the strain. The brave men and women who managed to hold a resistance against the massive tide of looters and rioters have elected to save their own families and flee to more rural areas. Martial law has been declared across the nation and a thin force of British soldiers Police what little is left and enforce curfew. What is left of the emergency medical services use their dwindling supplies to treat the wounded in small makeshift emergency medical HQ's. Dave Watson, reporter for the Chichester Local Newspaper, shivers alone in a dark abandoned flat, his mind crazed through regret and remorse as he sees the outcome of his sensationalist news report.

Week 48: The New Curse

Driven mad through grief, remorse and hunger, Dave Watson - Reporter for the Chichester Local Newspaper- steps barefoot into an abandoned street. His filthy black fingernails scratch at a sore on his back, his gums bleed and his matted hair is thinning through mal-nutrition. He casts his glazed and vacant stare slowly from one end of the street to the other, looking for movement. There is none. No one will go near Dave Watsons street. Dave Watsons street is a cursed and fearful place. 

These are some pics I took with my phone at the butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum, London. (click on them to see them better)