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Welcome to the War Tomatoes, the single most pointless place on the internet. Featuring fruit, fear and a modicum of idiocy, as well as a site description that can only be described as lacklustre.

Fuck you Don Mattrick

Posted 8 Months, 1 Week, 3 Days, 11 Hours, 30 Minutes ago

Dear Don Mattrick

At the presentation of project Natal you said controllers are the barrier seperating games from the general public, a point proven by the Wii.
. .
. .
. So your solution is to remove them?

WHY?

If you have a pack of Wolves behind a door, you don’t open the door because their pelts are worth money!

Why would you want to get rid of controllers anyway! Video games which require you to jump about are not video games, they’re toys for children and grandparents, if you get rid of the controller then games are dead! Let’s ignore the fact that attempts to make games mainstream has ruined hopes of any great games in the future, but now the act of gaming itself is in danger too?

I’ll make this clear, project Natal is not gaming, the Wii balance board is not gaming and the Wii mote barely registers as gaming, you take away controllers and you won’t be able to make actual games anymore, I would much rather be pushing buttons to shoot people than standing in the middle of my living room holding a pretend gun, and I’m guessing so would the vast majority of gamers.

Pissy gimmicky things like Natal and all motion sensitive rubbish is ok for if you need for some reason to make your family play games or if it’s 2am, everyone’s drunk and you have guitar hero, but for real games, ones with guns and violence and storylines you need a controller, at least until genuine virtual reality is invented, but that’ll be the end of civilisation anyway, so that doesn’t count.

The art of storytelling

Posted 8 Months, 1 Week, 4 Days, 4 Hours, 43 Minutes ago

No one can say with a straight face that modern videogames have generally improved story-wise from the days of old, the
main reason for this being they’re mostly sequels of games from the days of old. Recently I was thinking about whether
or not sequels are ever really necessary, obviously there’s Half Life, but I don’t particulary think the sequels were
better, they looked better of course, but in terms of story.... eh

I don’t actually know whether real storytellers are employed in games development, if they are they can’t be very good, I
mean most recent games barely bother with a story, look at brand new games; prototype, infamous and bionic commando,
they may as well not have a story.

I know it’s telling of my age that I can talk like this but, I remember when I liked games for the story, I’m sure I’ve made
the argument before that it’s due to the better and better graphics that the stories are suffering.

Now I’ve had a successful rant I’ll inform you now, after hearing all the negative comments for Transformers 2 I
intend to see it myself and give you my own opinions, so watch this space.

Hardest to learn game ever?: Dwarf Fortress

Posted 8 Months, 2 Weeks, 2 Days, 4 Hours, 43 Minutes ago

For those of you who aren’t hopeless nerds with less of a social life than a comatose cobra and less grasp of reality than a drunken hillbilly, the next few paragraphs are either going to be amusing or disturbing.

For those of you who are, they are likely going to be very familiar.

Are you sitting comfortably? good, then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time a game developer decided to make a strategy game about dwarves. Naturally he wanted to make it as detailed as possible so you could follow every little aspect of your dwarves lives, from their actions last week on a tuesday right down to their favourite shoe colour. This game was duly made and released in alpha form to the masses.

Now, the game itself was brilliant. A work of genius. You could sink hours and hours into it, getting your dwarves to dig tunnels, make fortifications, mine and cut gems and sell them to gullible traders for extortionate prices, that kind of thing, however it did have some less enduring features.

(Now I’m going to drop the fairytale past tense so i can actually get a damn review done)

The first and most minor of these less endearing features is the graphics. They are, to put it bluntly, as basic as it’s possible to get. Literally. They’re meant to be. The entire game is shown as ASCII characters blipping about on the screen, but this is OK, after a short time you get your eye into what everything means and your imagination starts to take over as to what it actually looks like. iIt’s awesome when this happens, because then instead of seeing the ASCII characters that make no sense you see vast dwarven halls filled with pillars and carvings.

The second, and more problematic thing, is the user interface. This is the reason I said that only nerds with no social life would find this familiar. If you have ANYTHING to do with your life other than sit at a computer pressing keys you do not have time to learn how to play this game. Even I, unsociable as I am, had a damn hard time trying to wrap my head around the dizzying combination of keypresses required to make anything meaningful happen. Seriously.

In one menu the buttons for scrolling up and down might be the up and down arrow keys. In another they may well be the - and + keys. U K M and H seem to be used for resizing things, but the arrow keys don’t always move the cursor.

Want to make a refuse stockpile? Press p then r then enter on one corner of the stockpile then enter on the next. Want to make a garbage dump (which is a completely different thing, believe me) then its i then enter on one corner then enter on another then g then spacebar twice.

I have never, never come across a game so hard to get the hang of. I’ve spent three days playing it pretty much solid and I still can’t get along without the dwarf fortress wiki pages open in the background. If it wasn’t for the menu detailing exactly what buttons to press I’d be utterly lost (and even with it I sometimes am).

On the other hand, I have also never come across a game that is such a gem of design. You wan’t a drawbridge over a moat of lava to stop enemies getting into your fortress? Find some lava, channel it without getting your dwarves killed, build a bridge and bingo. One famous example of this game features someone making an entirely viable doomsday weapon, which, upon the pull of a lever, flooded the entire area outside his fortress with magma and water, resulting in everything outside being either drowned, immolated or super-steamed.

I myself made an absolutely awesome (although it took some time) system of indiana jones style spikes that I then forced a cow to run down, resulting in cow kebabs. My butcher then promptly proceeded to try get the cow corpse for meat, resulting in butcher kebabs.

Seriously, if you have a month or so spare, the patience of job and the will to make crazy shit happen in a world populated by ASCII dwarves, then this game is for you. If not, don’t even bother trying.

Retro-Review: Pokemon Snap for the N64

Posted 8 Months, 2 Weeks, 5 Days, 4 Hours, 31 Minutes ago

The game under the microscope today Is Pokemon Snap, anther addition to the already plentiful back catalogue of nintnedo released games about this particular franchise. This game however brings something new to the table. Instead of being the usual stary eyed newbie pokemon trainer who sets out into the world to seek fame and fortune, this time you’re a stary eyed newbie pokemon photographer who ventures onto a mysterious Island alone with Professor Oak. Ignoring the creepy undertones there and moving on, its “Todd Snap’s” mission to provide good quality pictures for a report that Oak is writting, from his secluded Island...thats mostly untouched by humans… *ahem*

You are given a buggy called the Zero-One, and are sent off to the first location to fulfil your mission.

Gameplay wise Pokemon Snap is akin to a rail shooter such as House of the Dead, but instead of horrible zombies who wish nothing more than to suck out all of the delicious nutrients through your still beating heart there are cute and fluffy animals. But don’t let that fool you, Pokemon Snap can still thrill even a veteran gamer. The camera is pretty simple point click and can take up to 60 pictures per level. Point click photography may seem a little dull but again its deceptively simple. The better the picture the more points your awarded for it. For example, a picture of a lone Pidgey thats half out of the frame would bring in a meager amount of points. However a picture of a group of Pikachu all performing thunder shock attack would get a great score, because its rare and interesting. The incentive to get try to get better and more interesting pictures is that the points you score are also used to unlock special items and new levels, so its always worth playing a level through once or twice to make sure you got everything.

Level variation is good, you get different Pokemon in different habitats, although on occasion it does feel like some crowd favourites *cough*Pikachu*cough* are crowbared into every level. There are seven levels in total: Beach, Tunnel, Volcano, River, Cave, Valley and the hidden special course, the “Rainbow Cloud” level. In addition to the different Pokemon available in each level each level also has a special “Pokemon Sign” that you have to photograph to unlock the special last stage.

The graphics are pretty solid in its generation, although sometimes things can suffer from looking a little blocky, but over all the graphics hold their own for this title.

In all Pokemon Snap is a classic title. It has a solid base in the Pokemon franchise ensuring it will be greatly recieved. On top of that it has revolutionised the somewhat stale norm of the Pokemon games, introducing a new way to interact with the creatures. Its also varied enough to keep gamers going back again and again, the replay for the game is very high. I’d say people will be playing it for years after its release. Although sometimes it can suffer from poor design and layout its otherwise a great game. I give Pokemon Snap 8/10.

Angels or demons, Hit or shit? -part 1

Posted 9 Months, 1 Week, 2 Days, 16 Hours, 21 Minutes ago

Angels and Demons the number one seller from genius writer Dan Brown is the prequel to the amazing Da Vinci Code. Now personally I enjoyed the book thoroughly, finding it an interesting new take on the old conspiracy of the illuminate verses the catholic church however I’m the first to admit that I am sceptical that the movie will be able to live up to the books genius. Even though the cast list includes Tom Hanks, who is in my opinion one of the best actors of our time and Ewan McGregor (in my opinion one of the fittest actors of our time) I think that the metaphorical boots are hard to fill for the movie. I have seen the previews and find that although the movie looks action packed and awesome that maybe the advertisers have been very clever and packed all the action into the preview, maybe cloaking the real themes of the film (which are sometimes quite complex and hard to follow) to try and make the movie more enticing to a wider audience. Similarly to the Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons has sections of highly descriptive plot telling, which I am guessing are missed out of the film and as much as talky talky is often quite boring in a film I can’t help but feel that a book as complex and intricate as Angels and Demons needs this jargon to make sense.  Sorry I’m just putting this out there I’m watching Friday night with Jonathon Ross and I have noticed two things the first is that Ewan McGregor is very very good looking and the second is that Eminem is very moody and attractive. Now back to the point at hand, I suppose I can only speculate at whether Angels and Demons is going to be a hit or shit but I have the feeling that it will be the extreme of either. Maybe it will be the new Lord of the Rings or maybe it will be the new Lion, the witch and the wardrobe (which I might add in my humble opinion is one of the best children’s book ever created but one of the worse film adaptations) I guess only time will tell the fate of Angels and Demons however I find myself hoping that Dan Brown will be able to hold this head up high and say that no only are his books genius but that they translate beautifully to film also.

The ultimate hangover cure?

Posted 9 Months, 2 Weeks, 3 Days, 1 Minute ago

Now, on friday it was technically my last day of public schooling ever. The end result of this fact was me, snake, cloud and another friend getting absolutely wasted. I realised that I was going to have a killer hangover, but due to the fact I had another party to attend the evening after I simply stayed pickled all day. I then drank vaguely sensibly at the second party and got a decent nights sleep.

The end result was surprising. I woke up this morning with not a trace of a hangover. Not a jot of a headache. So I have formed the hypothesis that drinking mildly throughout the day after drinking stupidly heavily gives your body the chance to sort itself out.

Due to the awesomeosity of this theory I’m using it as my rationalisation for freshers week. It’s not a week of drinking, it’s a week long hangover cure for the first night.

Lesbian zombies

Posted 9 Months, 2 Weeks, 3 Days, 8 Minutes ago

Now...Bear With Me On This…

Now...me and a friend were thinking the other day right...and...what would happen if a lesbian was bitten my a zombie? Now...this might seem like something very silly and random to end up talking about, and I’ll admit, it really is. But if you actually think about it, it aint totally cut and dry. Here’s what was bugging me.

Would a lesbian zombie only bit other women? Now if you think about it, it kinda makes sense, in a round about sort of way. Lesbians enjoy eating other women, so makes sense that a zombie lesbian would too, just move onto other bits of her flesh.

Another point, would like really butch man hating lesbians carry that trait forwards too, hate all things man? And would that make them attack man folk? Or just like be kinda hostile towards them but in a non flesh eating way…

And would the lesbianism think apply to all other worldly beings? Like vampires, and werewolves and junk?

Food for thought it is. Pun not intended.

No wait fuck it I’m taking credit.

Why nintendo is killing gaming

Posted 9 Months, 2 Weeks, 3 Days, 19 Hours, 27 Minutes ago

Now, don’t get me wrong, in their hay day Nintendo rocked. In fact the N64 is probably my favourite console ever. But that’s in the past, and modern Nintendo could well be the downfall of the modern games industry. And do you know why? Well of course not until I tell you, and I’m about to do just that.

People who have played video games for a long time have come to expect some quality from their games. Be it platform; beat ‘em up, FPS, RPG, gamers who’ve been around long enough to know what the 64 in N64 stands for have evolved with the games. We’ve been through the dark murky waters of the yester years, weathered bad titles and rode of the success of good ones. For every classic there were three very bad titles. But when something was good, it was mind blowing. And real gamers (and I call them that for a reason that will become apparent) have come to know a level of dedication and, well, love for the job from games manufacturers. A sense that getting up on a morning and going to work was a real joy for the development team. Lately however, something has gone awry, and it seems that standards are slipping. And I blame Nintendo.

Since Nintendo released the Wii, a console that requires virtually no skill to play, there has been an influx of people who call themselves gamers. It’s suddenly cool to be nerd, people who’s only knowledge of games coming from the balance board Wii Fit brand of games. At the same time Nintendo realised they didn’t have to try hard anymore with new games released. Just make some cutesy family game, slap on a celebrity endorsement and its easy money. And people lap it up, because to them it’s good gaming, because they don’t really know. However this is having a nock on effect with the rest of the games industry, because it’s not only the Wii that’s got newbie’s hooked. Unfortunately the bland and mediocre virus of Nintendo is catching on.

Now I’m not going to say that all new games are crap, and that everything made years ago is a shining example of how things should be, because that’d be wrong. Kind of. It seems that something has been lost in the games development world. Quite a lot of games pushed out at the moment are made with the new fan base in mind, meaning they developers can call it in really. They don’t have to put in the effort to out do themselves like they used to do with a smaller audience. Back in the day a game had to beat all its predecessors, now most of the people who’re buying the games don’t have anything to compare newer titles to, and it’s killing the industry. If you look at a lot of modern titles, really look at them, totally new games, there’s something missing from them. I mean, some titles are unaffected by it. Sports games, for example, can’t really cock them up can you? And regular shooters like Call of Duty. But look at brand new titles, and there’s always something missing, always a problem. In any given review on any new game there will always be something very wrong, always a new feature that doesn’t work, always bad level design, or bad story, anything. And I think it’s because developers know that they don’t have to work so hard to sell the games, because the audience is so much bigger now. It doesn’t matter if all the die hard fans complain, they can afford to loose them, and still be making money. Which is a shame.

Also, a lot of companies seem to be obsessed with revolutionising things. Now, I’m a massive fan of RPG’s, Final Fantasy being my number one. Now, since the move up to PS2 and the change from Square soft to Square Enix they’ve constantly being trying to improve upon a pretty solid formula for a game. The new battle systems are a prime example. To me, and this may just be to me, but it seems like all the time in development goes into figuring out new and complex ways to fight. I’m sorry, but an RPG is supposed to be character and story driven, combats just something to link one side quest to the other, and string together the cut scenes and story development. It’s just there to keep us busy whilst we run from one side of the map to the other. To me it seems like progress for progress’ sake. I know its good to keep trying to push the envelope and try new and interesting things, otherwise things will become stale, but I just don’t see how it’s working. Since Final Fantasy 10 (arguably, some will say that 10 was the start of the suck) the series has gone downhill, and pretty much every game since people have bitched about because of how stupid things are, mostly because of the infuriating characters, or the ludicrous combat systems. To me it seems clear what fans want. Male protagonist saves the princess using turn based combat in a fantasy setting. Okay, that’s a little cliché even for me, but to be fair it’s better than Final Fantasy X-2...Sometimes keeping things simple works better, sometimes change for changes sake is just a waste of time.

It’s a shame that in a time when technology is advancing at such an astonishing rate I’ve become disillusioned with my favourite past time. In these days of better graphics and more power the games should be getting better, not worse, which is sadly what it seems like to me.

Blimey that was a bit of an essay eh? Normal schedule to be resumed shortly just needed that off my chest.