I love it when shots from Ogre just show up in funny places. This time, it’s from a comic strip called Stolen Pixels on the Escapist, where Ogre-powered games Torchlight and Zombie Driver have been used for comedic purposes:
Thanks to BuschnicK for the heads-up on the Torchlight one, I was surprised to see Zombie Driver just days earlier too!
Zero Punctuation reviewed Torchlight yesterday!
Of course he was both inaccurate (you don’t have to keep clicking at all, you can hold the button down) and overly harsh, but still very funny. It’s odd to enjoy watching something you had a hand in (albeit in a background technology way in my case) being ripped to shreds, but when it’s done in such an amusing way somehow it’s ok. I guess this is why Yahtzee hasn’t had his teeth kicked in by disgruntled game developers yet 
As Runic’s Twitter said: “We’ve arrived!”.
I really enjoyed the original Professor Layton, and was glad to get the sequel (Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box – for some cultural reason ‘Diabolical Box’ on the web site, I assume internationally some people haven’t heard of Pandora’s Box) from a friend as an early Christmas present. So far it seems like more of the same “puzzles embedded in slightly hokey but nonetheless enjoyable story, set in a whimsical Victorian era”, which is precisely what fans of the original (which includes me) wanted. In many ways it reminds me of reading The Famous Five books as a child, to the extent that I’m expecting someone to propose the consumption of ‘lashings and lashings of ginger beer’ and for Timmy to say ‘woof’ in his traditional enigmatic fashion, at any moment.
There’s only one problem. They seem to have decided to increase the amount of voice acting this time around (at least in the introductary sections), and Luke – the Professor’s constant companion and apprentice mystery solver – has an absolutely terrible mockney accent. I actually had the US version of the original (because EU distribution was terrible), where Luke’s accent was fairly standard ‘public school received pronunciation’ style, but in the EU version they mocnkeyfied him it seems. Here’s a comparisoin of the two Curious Village versions:
This time I’ve got the EU edition and they seem to have decided to let it all hang out and compete with Dick van Dyke for the oscar of Worst Cockney Accent Ever. And you know, I think they’d win. It’s that bad. I can’t find any videos online of the EU version, but this basically sums it up:
“Bloimey Prowfesha, wot’s that?”
NNNnnggg. As heart-warming as the rest of the game is, and as trivial as this issue is (and in no way does it detract from the game’s enjoyment), when this boy chimes in it’s like nails down a blackboard for me and probably anyone else in the country; I hate to think how Londoners would take it.
I know the game is taking an incredibly whimsical view of the world, that’s part of its charm, but how did anyone not notice how grating that accent was? My only conclusion is that it was acted and organised by people who have watched Mary Poppins several hundred times over until they are slightly unhinged.
My broadband connection was on the blink this morning, which affected me less than it would usually would have because I had a dentist appointment, so I didn’t think too much of it. I heard on the radio when driving to said appointment that the whole island was affected so that made me feel a little better, and everything came back about an hour after I returned.
However a friend of mine works at one of the local telecoms companies (and which is also the broadband wholesaler to the others – kind of like our local version of BT) phoned me at lunchtime to ask if my connection was back, since he hadn’t seen me on Skype (I’d actually just forgotten to turn it back on). He informed me that the reason for the technical difficulties was a massive spike in internet traffic caused by everyone playing Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2
Yes, it seems lots of people decided to take the day off today to play the new release; even in our small juristiction over 100 people queued outside the local HMV at midnight to get their copy early, so it seems that many more people bought it at 9am and went home to fire it up. Given that the game had a day 1 patch (at least for PS3 for a trophy bug, I don’t know about 360) I presume that plus lots of people jumping online all at once was a bit much for the system to handle.
It appears I’m the only person in the world who isn’t obsessed with COD:MW2 
It’s nice when software reflects a programmer’s sense of humour and humility. This message appeared when I restarted Firefox 3.5.3 after an XP crash:
Bravo – thanks for making me chuckle, and thus forgive you instantly for any error (and it might not even have been yours). Bless.
For those of you who grew up in the late 70′s / early 80′s and were into games (particularly in Britain), you’ll like this:
Via NimbleBit – thanks!
Oh, this is so ripe for satire I really can’t believe Microsoft didn’t see it coming. Or, perhaps they did and just ran with it anyway, for funsies. It appears Microsoft’s Australian website is encouraging people to switch to IE8 by offering an online treasure hunt, where a series of clues will lead you to a site identifying the location of the $10k (AU$ presumably), which can only be viewed with IE8. They gleefully point out:
“But you’ll never find it with old Firefox. So get rid of it, or get lost.”
So, let’s stack up the issues here:
A Mozilla dev has already fired back a response, but really I don’t think it needed one. I think the fact that this promotion exists at all, and the tone which it takes, speaks volumes about how much the browser landscape has changed in recent years.
Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire hit BBC2 last night, having been previously aired in the US via Comedy Central (this was a joint BBC and CC production). As a spoof of a fantasy genre, it was pretty much required watching by yours truly, being as I am torn between indulging my inherent sci-fi/fantasy geekdom, and being cynical about the general derivativeness of most of the genre.
It was a strange beast – a real melting pot of some genuinely funny moments mixed in with some predictable gags; occasional comic gems mixed with a smattering of naff, crude humour. I can see why many of the critical reviewers hated it, but I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoyed it. I can happily ignore the duff bits, because the good bits were fun, and the subject matter is right down my alley – how often do you actually get to enjoy a spoof fantasy story written deliberately for comedy effect (rather than being accidentally hilarious, which is sometimes good too)? Ok, so this wasn’t exactly The Princess Bride, but at times it was channelling elements of it, even if it was erratically.
The stars of the show were Sean Maguire (Krod), as the delightfully insecure hero, and Matt Lucas (Dongalore) as a public-school educated, fantasy version of Dr Evil. Lucas was the more consistent, being almost 100% funny for his entire screen time; even though I’m personally not much of a Little Britain fan, I think he was very good in this. Maguire definitely had his moments though as a post-modern male hero.
I’ll definitely be watching the next episode: if you’re willing to not be too critical about the weaker parts and just want some fantasy-oriented laughs, it’s on Thursdays at 9pm, BBC2.
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