Two boobs good, four boobs better

Beep. Plink. Beep beep bop.

Beep plink plinky plinky plinky plinky

DE NENE NENE NENENSHFUCKING YEEEAHHHHMOTHERFUCKER DENENENENENNENEEEEENNNNN!!!

That’s how it starts. The best opening to any album I have ever heard.

And it goes on like that. Until the end. It’s like the album is so good that it’s laughing at you, and you want to laugh along.

Then you want to get up and dance, and smash some shit up, and laugh some more and stick a plastic bag on your head and run around for a bit.

There’s riffs here that would make AC/DC shit themselves, and keyboards that would scare the fuck out of the Prodigy.

It sounds like ELO having amphetimine fuelled sex with an Atari 2600 while listening to Kraftwerk. I mean that as the greatest compliment that I can pay to a band.

Look at that cover for God’s sake.

IT’S TWO ZEBRAS RUNNING AROUND IN TRON!!

Christ, I’m listening to ‘Micromachines’ now and it reminds me of the White Stripes, Daft Punk, Redneck Manifesto and Michael Jackson all at once.

My music muscle is literally ERECT.

Fucking brilliant. This is what all music should sound like.

Listen here and buy it now from Tower Records or download it here for a fiver.

10/10

What’s going down amigo’s?

Had a couple of weeks off, was away doing stuff that wouldn’t interest even the most bored of loser, so I won’t go into it.

But I came back from where I was to find that the X Factor had come back to the telly.  I, like all straight men, hate the X Factor.  Apart from the auditions.  However, unlike most straight men I hate football and all things Premiership.  So this time of year when the football starts back to clog up my Saturday afternoon television and fill the pubs with yobs in jerseys while I try and enjoy a pint of the local, I weep for the future mon amis.

The X Factor is even better this year with the auditions filmed in front of a live studio audience just like Cheers was.  It’s a pity that there are no buzzers for the judges to hit when it looks like it’s going tits up, but then again that’s where the epic epicness of epic failures and face palmage comes from.

It’s as if the producers of the X Factor sit outside the stage door of the Jeremy Kyle show and lure the biggest freaks into a van with the promise of a pasty and a can of Carling.

Take the first lot that took my eye as the missus took control of the remote and made me watch the mess.

“Hi, we’re Abby and Lisa”

“Hi, what’s the name of the band?”

“Abby and Lisa!”

Genius.  They look like they were the inspiration for the Little Britain character.

Yur but no but yur but no but yur but no but…

I don’t care which team you support, that’s more entertaining than any highlights from men who haven’t seen a football in over 20 years saying things like “at the end of the day”.

Although I can bet just by looking at those two girls that it wasn’t the first time one of them was on the business end of the other one’s fist.

Moving on…

Of course I missed the whole Mary Byrne thing, but was well informed when I got back.  Don’t know who Mary Byrne is?  You may have heard that she’s the “Irish Susan Boyle”.

Now I’m all for saluting someone with actual talent, but so far the Irish reaction has been laughable.

Here’s a few comments from her videos on Youtube…

“Naomi Campbell was discovered on a till in Tesco’s and look where she ended up!! So here’s hoping Mary has treble the success cause she sure has a million times the talent. Mary you are fantastic, wonderful and surely the net big Diva to hit the music scene. Wishing you all the best xxxxxxx”

“Beautiful job, Mary! Keep going. You have a wonderful voice and a presence to go very far. I hope you win and go on to bless us with many albums! All the best from the USA.

She’s PERFECT for the next James Bond theme.”

And my personal favourite Irish praise from a person who isn’t even fucking Irish…

“Mary, you make all the Irish people very, very proud. I’m not Irish, but I’m really proud I live just around 10km from such a superstar:). All the best, you don’t need to win the competition, you already a winner and I’m sure your career has just started”

And of course one from the blind….

“Stunning+Inspiring woman.”

Like I said, I won’t knock anyone for getting up in front of that amount of people and singing, and singing well.  I’m just never amazed at how Irish people claim credit for someone else, just by association of nationality.

I like her, she reminds me of my aunt and she’s just a normal and seems to be a decent soul.  But I’m not about to gush over her and claim that Ireland is onto a winner.

Still, it’s better than watching football.

After all, if our Mary doesn’t make it through are we going to petition to have her as the 33rd team to take part?

Get ta fuck with your football, tune into the X Factor auditions for a better larf altogether.

Even if it does let fucktards out into the real world…

Fuck and Tard

Thankfully, the 80′s revival is on it’s last legs.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved the nostalgia factor as much as the next man but enough is enough.

Ireland’s biggest and best 90′s band, Pump Up The Jam, agree and together with Boob.ie, they are offering a lucky reader 2 complimentary tickets to “Pump Fiction”, their Pulp Fiction themed night on the 25th of September in The Sugar Club located on Dublin’s Leeson Street.

This promises to be a balls-out fantastic night, kicking off with 90′s Karaoke at 9pm, followed by a “Jack Rabbit Slims Twist Contest” and then topped off with a fantastic live performance by none other than Pump Up The Jam themselves.  And if you still aren’t satisfied (you greedy bastards) then there is a DJ on afterward who’ll play 90′s music into the wee hours to keep you happy!

For any of you who have never seen Pump Up The Jam live, you don’t know what you are missing.  I was at their Baywatch themed night last month and it felt like I was right back in my local disco lined up against the wall, trying to pluck up the courage to ask a girl to “meet” me.  Great crowd, great music and a great venue.  What more could you ask for?

Some of you stupid fuckers paid in or around ONE HUNDRED Euro to see Guns ‘n’ Roses as a nostalgic trip down memory lane.  Hang your head in shame!  Pump Up The Jam are the ULTIMATE nostalgia trip bar none!

The band cover all of your favourite 90′s classics and you could easily be mistaken to think that you are listening to a CD.  They really are that damn good.   From 2 Unlimited to MC Hammer, it’s all there and it’s still as fucking excellent/cheesy/rocking as you remember.

So dust off your Eclipse Jeans, Gore-Tex and Naff Jackets get down to the Sugar Club on the 25th.  Tickets are a steal at 10 Euro or if you want to immerse yourself in the spirit of the “Pump Ficton” night, you can dress up like a Pulp Fiction character and get in half price!!!!  So there is no excuse to not join the boob.ie crew and pump the fuck out of the jam!!

To be in with a chance to win two complimentary tickets, just add a comment underneath this article, or on our Facebook Page telling us what your favourite 90′s lyric is and why!!!  The most original/funny comment will pick up the prize.

It couldn’t be more simple!

Wow!

Words really can’t do justice to the experience myself and Maxi had in Thorpe Park last weekend.  But considering that this is an article on a website, I better try.

The fantastic people at Thorpe Park asked us over to test our manliness on their assortment of gravity defying, vomit inducing rides and rollercoasters.  Now us here in this small island are spoilt with choices of funfairs and amusement parks.  We have Funderland once a year and we have……erm…….well that’s about it.  So both Maxi and I jumped at this opportunity to go to a REAL theme park.

Maxi went over on the Friday and due to work commitments, I was unable to go until the following day.  Much to my amusement, Maxi decided his extra day in London wouldn’t be used to go out on the razz, go clubbing or even get pissed in a genuine cockney boozer.  No, no, no.  Maxi, the editor of my beloved Boob.ie, decided that he would buy tickets to see Les Miserables!! (or as he puts it “Les Mis”).  What a man!!!

So after catching the 1st flight to Heathrow, I hurried to Thorpe Park, eager to get started as early as we could and avoid the queues for the rides due to the fact that it was a Bank Holiday weekend in England.  I had arranged to meet Maxi at 9:30am and I arrived at the park bang on time.  But where was Maxi?  After numerous ignored phonecalls, I finally  contacted him and was informed that he was running late (due to something about Les Mis tickets, I dunno, my gay filter ensured I missed most of the story)   What’s an Irishman to do in such a situation??  I decided to get a bus back to Staines and find the nearest pub and wait.

2 hours and 7 pints later, Maxi arrived and we headed back to Thorpe Park, both excited about the prospect of completely scaring the shit out of ourselves.  As soon as we got there, my excitement turned sharply into absolute terror.  You see these rollercoasters on adverts or on telly and they look pretty intimidating but Jesus Christ, when you are actually stood underneath one of these monstrous contraptions, you better hope you aren’t wearing white trousers.

Thankfully, a mix of adrenaline and alcohol convinced me that it was a good idea to join the queue and get on the 1st ride of the day.

Stealth.

This bad-boy is a ridiculously steep and faeces inducingly high rollercoaster.   I have never been more exhilarated and terrified in my life.

As with most rides in Thorpe Park, It really has to be experienced to be believed.  There is the Nemesis Inferno and Colossus and many many more.  I won’t go into the details of all the rides we went on but you can check them out for yourselves here:  http://www.thorpepark.com/rides

But I would be wrong not to give a special mention to what I feel was the highlight of the trip.  You may have seen the ads on telly.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…..SAW ISLAND!

First to assault my nerves was the Saw Live Action Maze.  I get shitted up by the thoughts of the Ghost Train in Funderland so this should have been a definite no-go for me.  But due to excessive alcohol consumption giving me false courage and the fact that I was not going to be less of a man than our Les Mis loving Maxi who was bounding about like an excited puppy on Viagra, I joined the queue.

First up, it’s not a maze.  It’s a set path and you can’t get lost.  Secondly, it’s absolutely pantwettingly brilliant.  I can’t go into too much detail as the whole experience is about being surprised, shocked and disgusted.  It more than delivered on every count.  It doesn’t last too long but if you are like me, you are kinda glad it’s over and you are back in daylight.

Then there was the reason I wanted to come to Thope Park.  You’ve all probably seen the ads on the telly for it.  If not, check this out :

This was my Everest.  I knew that if I could do this, I could do anything.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that it was a bank holiday and Maxi ensured we were nearly 3 hours late, there was a 2 hour queue.  2 long bloody hours.  To be fair to Thorpe Park though, half way through the long winding queue, they have a concession stand set up to break the monotony.  The only thing that was concerning me though was the fact that I was getting an alarmingly low level of Alcohol in my blood stream and while queueing, you are left looking at the ride and listening to the terrified screams of the punters that were on it.

When we finally got on, we were both giddy with excitement.  And it did not disappoint.  There is no feeling in the world like it.  Shit inducing pitch black drops, completely vertical ascents to the big 100 degree drop, blades twirling around your head and all the while Jigsaw telling you that you are pretty much going to die screaming in a horrible crumpled mess.  It was the best experience I’ve had in a long time.

It’s was pretty pathetic to see the reaction of both me and Maxi afterwards.  We were like giddy kids just laughing uncontrollably and debating whether or not we should queue up again immediately afterwards.  Thankfully, we didn’t as there was so much more to see.

I’m not going to harp on about all the rides but I promise, there is something there for everybody.  It’s not all gut churning rollercoasters.  There are log flumes, hobby horses, various different carnival games, entertainers.  It’s got the whole lot!  Just look at this map!!  http://www.thorpepark.com/plan-your-visit/park-map.aspx

From the biggest adrenaline junkie to the complete pussy, from the tee-totaller to the raging alcoholic and from the Stag Night to the family holiday, Thorpe Park can cater for you all.  We had initially intended to only stay for a few hours but ended up being one of the last to leave.

I implore, nay, I DEMAND that you visit this park as soon as possible.  They are having Fright Night specials on in October so there is plenty of time to book AER LINGUS (not Ryanair) flights and get your accommodation.  I guarantee you will have an experience to remember.

So get over to their website www.thorpepark.com and have a look for yourselves.

Again, we here at boob.ie would like to give our huge thanks to all the staff at Thorpe Park and especially Sarah Morris who made it all possible.  We hope to see you again soon!

P.S.  If Maxi says anything about Cheerleaders and the song Hey Mickey, he is a liar.

If you’re a die hard gamer, you’ll have this one already and if you do, you’ll have done one of two things:

• Become entirely underwhelmed by the start of it, but give it a chance in the hope it gets better
• Realise that you’ve seen it all before and bring it back to shove up the arse of the fucker who took your hard earned money for it

If you’re a new gamer you might have this and think it’s great.  It’s not.  You poor poor fool you.

I saw Paddy eye this one up in the airport on our recent trip to Thorpe Park, I have to admit that I’d never heard of it, or even the first one.  I’m pretty sure that in order for there to be a 2 of something, there must have been a 1.

So when my Xbox died and I got a game “free” with the new one, I decided to opt for this one.

Knowing nothing about the first game, I can’t tell you if it’s better than the first one or not.  But I will say this, if it is an improvement on the first one, how was a sequel justified?

The only game that SCREAMS to mind when the gameplay starts is GTA, only set in 1940′s mafia territory.  If it sounds like a larf, it will be, for about 10 minutes.

The start off missions begin like any other game, as softly softly missions to ease the newbie to the games into the world.  Fair enough.  Trouble is though with gamers with a little more experience, they tend to judge the gameplay on these first few missions.  And it’s during these early stages that the whole thing begins to go tits up.

There’s so much wrong with this game it’s hard to know where to start, so rather than bitch about them for 1200 words, here’s some handy bullet points

• It’s shit
• Yup, that’ll do it

The fist fights involve you waiting for your turn to throw a punch or dodge your opponent’s jabs.  It’s a three button affair that screams of my Mega Drive days playing Streets of Rage.  The map is Huuuuuuuuuuuge and there’s fuck all to fill it in terms of places to go, or things to do.  You can explore the map, but that’s all you’ll be doing.  There is no interaction in the map, with characters or environment unless you’re on a mission.  So it’s not like GTA where you can just pick randomers off with a Tommy Gun.  The missions are standard stuff like, drive this guy here, take this package there, have a boring and frustrating fist fight every now and again and get chased by the fuzz.  This also may have been a glitch, but at one point I got so bored that I started a fight with a copper, only to run around a corner and lose all the flashing stars that were out to get me.

There is an interesting feature of having to pick locks to steal cars, instead of just running up to one and finding that the owner has left the keys in it.  But this does fuck all when you’re being shot at.

Although, all you’ll have to do in this instance is hide behind something like an orange box and you’re shielded by the bullets.  Popping your head out of cover for a head shot and you’re done.

I don’t know why, but for some reason the first time you get control of the main character (Vito) is in WW2.  This is where you’ll learn to get cover, shoot and kill suckers.  Is this because there’s so many of us stuck playing war games?  Dunno, but it makes no sense to me.

You have to go to bed to rest, you have to eat to replace energy levels, which all sounds like they want to keep a sense of some sort of reality in the game, but it’s all too little that no one gives a shit about.  Plus it’s frustrating as fuck.

There are some good points though.

And they lie in the cinematic sections.  You’ll look forward to these more than the actual game, which is great for the animators of the sections, and shite for the programmers.  They are beautifully put together and really are like mini movie segments, instead of just fillers for game makers who realise that they’ve a shit game.  But then, that may have been what happened here.

It’s out now and costs around the €50 mark for a new copy and probably about €30 for a second hand copy.

Unless you loved the first one and Nurse Ratched took your brain like poor old McMurphy, leave it where you see it.

If you don’t believe me, check out this mega boring gameplay trailer from last years Gamescom.

Over all I’ll give it 2/5.

So Paramount sent over a DVD for us to review and I have to admit I hadn’t heard much about this movie until they did.

She’s out of my League stars Jay Baruchel, who you’ll recognise from Knocked Up as one of the stoner friends of Seth Rogen.  He’s also doing the rounds with Nicholas Cage in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Jay plays Kirk, an average bloke who’s still hung up on his bitch ex girlfriend.  He’s such a loser that even after 2 years of a “break” he still gives her little presents and begs her to get back together.

Kirk works security in an Airport and almost immediately after the obligatory supporting character scene where he’s humiliated by everyone, his luck begins to change.

The slow motion confident stroll of the female lead, Molly (Alice Eve, of nothing we’d know about unless you were dragged along to Sex and the City) introduces the girl who’s out of his league.  She is completely out of his league, and instead of it starting off the way we think it will, with her being a bitch and him falling for her, it doesn’t.

It starts with the two of them hitting it off because of his charm and some other shit.

Whoever wrote that review line never saw The Hangover

Let’s be honest, this is a rom com and guys don’t go to see rom coms, so I wasn’t expecting too much from this and it didn’t let me down.

The characters are 2 dimensional, and we know that we don’t need character development that a Godfather trilogy would wet itself over, but still.

The story of boy meets girl gets a bit of a switch.  Instead of it being about the boy thinking he’s good enough for the girl and then having to convince her of that, she in fact has a thing for the boy but the boy can’t handle it because he reckons he’s a 5 and she’s a 10 on the scale of hotness.

I dunno, it’s entertaining enough I suppose.  Trouble is that it’s completely predictable.  Although there are a few amusing moments as I’ve said, one in particularly being the ball shaving scene.

All in all if you owe the missus one in exchange for making her watch the Steven Segal marathon boxset, there are worse movies you could sit through.

It’s not the fault of the movie itself, I could go on a rant about how safe movies like this are made to fill the gaps between the studio’s money makers.  But I’ll save that for another day.

She’s out of my League is out on Paramount DVD and Blue Ray on Monday September 27th.

What the crowd should have done after 2 minutes

1. Drink my mother’s piss.

2. Sit in somone elses shit for a day and a half.

3. Kill myself.

4. Let George Hook cum on my face.

5. Listen to Ray D’Arcy for an entire day.

6. Wank off my boss.

7. The Leaving Cert.

8. Finger a badger’s arse.

9. Watch ‘Naked Camera’.

10. Jedward. Orally & Anally.

A fairly conclusive list I think.

I didn’t even have a ticket for the gig tonight. I wouldn’t have bought a Guns N’Roses ticket if it was 1990 for fuck’s sake. Why on earth would you want to see some botoxed cunt with ginger dreadlocks doing karaoke versions of some shit old songs from 25 years ago anyway?

Anyone who complains about the gig – and you know that they will – needs to have their head kicked in.

Axl Rose has been doing this shit for about 20 years now. And still, people are stupid enough to fork out 60 quid or whatever disgrace of a price they paid to see him do it all over again. Late in Leeds, booed off. Late in Reading, booed off. What makes you think he’ll drag his fat, spandex clad, 80′s throwback arse out of the brothel in order to get on stage in time in Dublin?

If you want to hear Sweet Child O’Mine, then save your hard earned money and go to any shithole Dublin suburban superpub on a Thursday night and listen to ‘Toe The Line’ or ‘The Frenzy’ or whatever bunch of kids are playing it there for free.

They’ll do a better job, and you won’t be charged 7 quid for a pint either.

So.

What would YOU rather do than go to a Guns N Roses gig?

Or, if you were actually AT the gig, on a scale of 1-10, how much of a spastic are you?

Shank is, and I mean this in just a cool a way as it sounds, Danny Trejo: The Game. Like the recently released Limbo, Shank is a perfect example of how downloadable games can be gorgeous looking and fun alternatives to their more expensive store released brothers.

Story

The story is something like The Crow crossed with Kill Bill on the set of Dusk Till Dawn. You play as Shank, the titular hero, who has been wronged by his previous employers and left for dead after they slaughtered and (it is implied) raped the shit out of his lady. The game starts you out seven years after the betrayal/rape/beating, with Shank kicking the living snot out of a bar full of scumbags, trying to track down the group who fucked him over. You then spend the rest of the game shooting, stabbing, and chainsawing your way to justice.

The story is nothing revolutionary, and some moments will have you laughing outright at the silliness of it all, but it makes for an amusing yarn. Any doubts as to whether the tongue is placed firmly enough in the cheek will leave you when you fight a certain boss who is decked out in S n’M gear and sends henchmen furries after you. It’s pulpy, trash, funny entertainment – and it works a treat.

Design

Shank shows Barney the "Finglas Cuddle"

One of the best things about Shank is the co-operative multiplayer option. Normally when predominantly single player games throw in a co-op mode it doesn’t actually bring anything new to the table, but newer releases like Splinter Cell: Conviction and now Shank are offering new storylines and narratives to the multiplayer element. Co-op mode takes the form of a prequel to Shank’s tale of vengeange. You team up with a dude named Falcone and bash, stab and bludgeon your way through waves of enemies. It’s slightly different to the single player mode in that you can do double takedowns, and you occasionally have to make tactical decisions about how to dole out weapons and health. A new storyline and bosses make this a very worthwhile addition, but players should be warned that co-op can only be played locally. This is great news for me, a firm believer that couch co-op is infinitely more fun and satisfying than the social black void of headset multiplayer, but it may irk some.

At certain points Shank reaches a near-biblical level of difficulty. Yep, the old-school difficulty curve can be hard to get used to for us modern day molly-coddled gamers, but you can rest assured that it never gets too difficult for too long – apart from one fiendishly hard boss on the co-op campaign, which took me and a buddy nearly 40 minutes to beat. Like its ancestors, Shank features some frustrations that will drive you completely round the bend – such as one level where it rains missiles at random for the entire duration. Thankfully, these wont mar your experience too much, and most are thankfully brief. While it has some hiccups, the game is well balanced enough so that Shank will always feel like the biggest bad ass in the world when you’re in control of him.

Gameplay

Shank is nothing if not ballsy

Shank is strictly 2-D, meaning you wont have to worry about much except moving forward and fighting dudes, with the odd platforming section thrown in. The combat works very well, for the most part. All of Shank’s hand drawn animations look beautiful and feel great to pull off. There has been some hubbub on message boards across the net about the animations taking a while to complete and leaving Shank vulnerable. Yes, this happens, but it’s not gamebreaking in the least, and the exact same thing features in a whole slew of games from Street Fighter to God of War with the intention of forcing the player to think outside the button mashing box and plan their attacks.

You collect a bunch of different weapons to compliment your namesake knives as you progress through the story, and you’ll definitely find a favourite amongst them. Certain weapons are needed for the odd occasion but for the most part they merely serve as more options to dispense with the waves of baddies coming towards you.

The second playable character, Falcone, looks the head off Danny Trejo. Awesome.

And murder them you will. Fuck their day up entirely you will. Annihalate the shit out of them YOU WILL! And by god is it fun. You have basic melee attacks, a heavy attack, and guns and grenades – but the best part is mixing all these together to create that ultimate bad-ass death combo. You can get by at the start fairly easily by mashing buttons, but soon you’ll have to mix up your ranged and close-up attacks carefully. This is great fun thanks to the interesting grapple and pounce mechanics, which feature more prominently than in other beat em ups. The pounce button enables you to pin smaller enemies, you can then stick them a couple of times to keep them compliant as you use your guns to keep more dangerous enemies at bay. Jesus how psychotic did that sound?

The enemies are varied enough and good craic to fight. There are definitely some that will drive you batty but this makes it all the more satisfying when you jack them up proper. Boss battles are well designed and fun, tasking you with staying alive until you figure out the right combination of moves or which weakness to exploit to win.

There is one very odd design choice in that the same button that is used for picking up health replenishing items and weapons also happens to be the main attack button. Oftentimes you’ll accidentally drink all your nourishing cervezas by accident in the heat of a boss battle, or steal some grenades or health that your second player desperately needs in co-op. This is a baffling and frustrating problem in an otherwise tight and responsive game.

Presentation

Only Shank can draw cocks with the blood spatter from his chainsaw.

Shank is absolutely stunning to look at, featuring a slick hand-drawn look that echoes Samurai Jack and the short lived Clerks: The Animated Series cartoon shows. The whole vibe is a wonderful super-polished old school. You get the names of the baddies you’re fighting á la Streets of Rage, which is a nice touch. Environments are nicely varied, making the game feel a lot bigger and deeper than it actually is, with Shank travelling everywhere from a speeding train to a seedy strip club to an old castle on his quest for vengeance.

The Music is great, once you get over the fact that it is heavily informed by the spanish guitar-led Mexicorchestral pieces that Robert Rodriguez has been featuring in his movies as far back as El Mariachi and Desperado. Voice works also fares well, falling  just the right side of 80′s ridiculousness, with Shank himself being voiced by someone doing a pretty good Danny Trejo impression

I may have mentioned a lot of elements Shank has borrowed from, but it is one of the examples of video games taking from movies (that at least this time wasn’t fucking Aliens) where it really works and for this it should be applauded. It has enough of it’s own style and approach that it lands a good deal inside the lovely land of homage, instead of the festering clungepit of rip-off valley.

Overall

The single player campaign lasts about 4-5 hours, with about 3 hours to get through the co-op campaign. When you consider that this game might last you longer than a lot of action titles, then the asking price seems quite fair. As I said in my Limbo review, you’d also be supporting a new studio who have made something genuinely fresh instead of another Gears of War, Resident Evil or Call of Duty clone.

Klei Entertainment have created a fun and addictive old-school brawl em up, with visual flair in spades. Sure there are flaws, but if games like Prototype, The Force Unleashed and The Punisher taught us anything, it’s that a few minor flaws are easy to overlook when you give a player so many different ways to destroy someone – in style!

Danny Trejo for Taoiseach!!

Shank is available on XBLA for 1200 MS Points (14.40) or PSN for €12.99.

So first off thanks to Element Pictures for the invite to review a screening of The Last Exorcism last night in Dundrum.  Myself and Paddy went along and if it wasn’t for the fact that we turned up well after the rest of the press we wouldn’t have had to sit in the very front two seats.

It was just because Paddy didn’t want to move past people already seated in case they sighed or something.  Puss to the Y.

So with neck cramps intact, the film began.

Documentary type settings, or mockumentaries, or whatever you want to call them work every now and again.

The Blair Witch Project obviously springs to mind as one that got lots of people to believe what they were seeing was real.  Paranormal Activity is the most recent one to adopt this style, and if it wasn’t for the last 15 seconds, I for one may have been suckered into thinking it was real.

There are too many reasons for us not to believe that The Last Exorcism actually took place.

The shaky hand held camera at times felt forced to distract us from seeing what we want to see.

The go into every room in the house without ever turning on a single light switch.  I don’t know about you, but if I’m in a house where there’s a girl who reckon’s she’s possessed, ample lighting is a must.

And who puts a score under the film of a documentary?  Especially one that ends the way this one ends.  I won’t spoil it, but I will say this – if you found a tape and watched it all the way through to the ending, the last thing on your mind would be “Hey, what would make this seem even more tense?  I know, some ominous sounds!”

There are some genuine jumps and even a couple of “eew” moments, but apart from that, it’s not the movie I was expecting.

We kick off with Cotton Marcus, a preacher who admits to only believing in what he has to to sell his sermons.  He tells us in one sentence that if you believe in God you must believe in demons.

12 seconds later he tells us that he doesn’t believe in demons.

Telling stories of how he would rig exorcisms to help people over their delusions that they were actually possessed, he sees himself as a helper to the superstitious.

He picks a random letter requesting help off his desk and brings the camera crew with him to the family looking for help.

Once at the house we find that the mother died a while ago, leaving behind a widower, son and daughter.  The daughter, Nell is the one who seems to be in trouble.

Her father, Louis believes that Nell is the one killing his livestock, but of course Nell remembers nothing of any of the events.  We’re painted a picture of a god fearing family still coming to terms with the death of a loved one, who seek out the help of a preacher (Cotton).

Cotton shows the camera crew his various tricks for making witnesses to exorcisms believe what they think they’re seeing.  Demon voices on MP3 players, acme style finger buzzers to give the victim the feeling of being shocked by an unseen force and a book of latin demonology that he reads from.

He performs, literally, the exorcism and collects his sizeable payment from Louis and heads on his way.  Shit hits the fan when Nell turns up at his hotel that night, comatose and bewildered.  He and the camera crew take her to the hospital and we’re reminded that this should be a documentary by nurses shouting for the camera to be shut off.

It’s not enough.

From here on there are so many twists and turns that we don’t know who’s having who on.  There’s a preacher who has performed a fake exorcism who is now faced with what could actually be the need for a real one.  There’s a family who say they don’t know what’s going on, when really they might just.

The last 10 minutes is a complete mind fuck of twists and stuff going on that I was personally left wondering just what the story was.

I was left to make up my own mind, and for a better film that would have been a good move.  There are plot holes and unanswered questions, but most of all no explanation to what was wrong with Nell, if anything.

Anything else I say will ruin the ending and spoil it, and I don’t want to do that.  It’s an enjoyable film.  Don’t let the fact that Eli Roth’s name is attached put you off it.

Get the popcorn in, leave your beliefs and senses at the door and find a good seat so that you don’t have to look like you’re watching a tennis match during busy scenes.

Over all, I’ll give it 3/5.

The Last Exorcism is out everywhere tomorrow.

We couldn’t actually make it to Gamescom this year, although the invite was there, we were doing other things like getting lap dances.  Still a good friend of mine did happen to be there and offered to share all the things she saw and people she spoke to.

In a guest post from English Mum (A person for whom the terms “yummy mummy” and “milf” were created) she dishes the dirt on Gamescom 2010.

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Admit it, you’ve all got a person in your mind when you think about a gamer. I wouldn’t say there was a ‘type’ exactly, but arriving at Gamescom 2010 in Cologne, there certainly seems to be an awful lot of Comic Book Guys around, plus it’s pretty hard to spot a woman (oh, unless she is dressed up as Lara Croft in tight leather, obviously).

First up, though, I do meet a woman. Not just any old woman, admittedly, but Shannon Loftis, Studio Manager at Xbox and co-creator of the new Xbox Kinect. Shannon is adamant that Kinect, being controller-free (it recognises your body movements from a sensor placed on the TV) will make gaming more inclusive ‘I trialled the Kinect in my home, and everyone from the kids to the grandparents were joining in and having fun – removing the controller means that anyone can walk up to the TV and join in the game.’

As my kids play river rafting on Kinect Adventures (the launch title going out with every Kinect console), we chat about online gaming, and how she feels that it is becoming less ‘niche’: ‘I hope there’ll be a time when it’s not just young men that have gamer tags. I want it to be a safe environment for kids and a welcoming environment for women, too. Hopefully the Kinect will play a part in that’.

I tell her of my own son’s addiction to Halo and ask whether there’ll be ‘shoot ‘em ups’ released on Kinect? ‘I think with technology this new, it deserves new concepts designed from scratch’, hence she doesn’t see a Kinect version of Halo or Fable in Xbox’s future, but is certain that the platform will embrace every genre of game.

And what about the competition? I ask if it bothers her that there’ll be people taking her design apart and trying to copy it the minute it hits the shops. ‘Bring it on. I’m here to inspire the industry. My team designed most of the major technology in the Kinect system, and if that technology starts appearing on the market, then I’ve done my job well’

So with Kinect ready to launch, and ‘most of the bugs’ ironed out (‘I offered my kids $1 a bug, confident they wouldn’t find any – they found 19!’, she laughs), what’s next for gamers? ‘I can’t say too much, but we’re looking at technology that reads facial expressions – potentially the game could react differently to different emotions, and there’s 3D too’. As we leave, and the next German film crew are ready to come in, she asks if we can stay a bit longer: ‘it’s not been like working at all!’ – too late, though, because Comic Book Guy is already in the room.

Kinect goes on general release in November.

Fable III

Next up, I’m introduced to Peter Molyneux, the enigmatic creator of Fable and legendary games designer. He’s rushing off but quickly wants to show me the new Fable III. As we’re playing, he tells me that he wanted Fable III to be completely different. ‘I talked to a lot of people who had played Fable II and they couldn’t really tell me the story of the game. This time, I wanted it to have a beginning, a middle and an end – to be a real ‘quest’.’ He shows me several areas of the game that he’s really proud of. As usual, the setting is atmospheric and beautifully detailed. Gone are the difficult to navigate menus, and a new area with a ‘personal butler’ is easy to navigate. We ‘walk through’ and he shows me how you can try on costumes, rather than see a flat image of them. He laughs when he says his team wanted him to voice one of the characters in the new game. He thought it would be ‘naff’, (they settled on John Cleese instead), but as he rushes off he tells me that if you look closely, you’ll see his name on a gravestone – ‘that’s enough for me’.

Fable III is out 29/10/10.

Halo Reach

Lastly, I meet Brian Jarrard who heads up the 100 strong team from Bungie that have been working on the new Halo Reach ‘unlike ODST which was really just a small project with a few people working on it’. Brian explains that Halo Reach is a prequel game – the ending of which takes you to the beginning on the first Halo – and walks me through several parts of the game. Although, like with Fable III, we can only view a tiny section of the as yet unreleased game, he shows me Firefight, which now has customisable skulls, meaning endless possibilities for game play, and co-op which is now engineered so that the more people play, the harder the game becomes.

As we’re looking at the new armoury (I choose pink armour for my Spartan – well you have to don’t you?), Brian shows me some of the new armour effects (look out for ‘inclement weather’, which although it costs about ten million credits, will make your Spartan crackle and pop with lightening). Money’s not everything though – you need to work your way through the ranks to unlock a lot of the new armour.

Brian is proud of the new vehicles in the game, and explains that with new ‘motion capture’ techniques, they are more realistic than ever. As we wrap things up, Brian mentions that the game will be released on September 14th, and although time differences mean that the game will actually ‘go live’ in Australia first, his team will all be online playing it. I might even join them.