Guardian Hell

I have a problem with the Guardian Website. I think its just me but it seems to be the worst designed and most difficult to use website I've come across in a long while (And I've checked up Steam's tech support)

Now I don't ask for much, all I really want to do is look up http://www.guardian.co.uk/, and from there search for a certain columnist called Charlie Brooker who's ranting I particularly enjoy, and to any sane person the best way to do this would be to pull up the site and search for Charlie Brooker, or Brooker or some combination of those. Particularly as I'd like to read his comment columns as well as his ever popular screenburn.

However I'm thwarted at the first hurdle. Instead of taking me to the Guardian's homepage, which I would expect, I'm forwarded to the guardian's log in screen. But I just want to read your articles, why do I have to log in? Fortunately I did create a Login for here in the dim and distant past, and I actually remember the e-mail and password I used. So no bother and soon I'm looking at my details. Same as I left them, so i press the finish button and am prompted for my password again, which I dutifully give only to be brought back to my details screen. In fact just about any link I click here takes me to my details, why, will you not let me look at your website unless I agree to let you pass my name along to Internet scammers?

Frustrated I decide to google the guardian. First result, with the most detail brings me to, my personal details again. Second result brings up something resembling a homepage, I'm even logged in (So I bloody should be, I've typed my password about 4 times). Could we be making progress?

Well I can read papers by published date but if I wanted to trawl through the Guardian I'd buy it, but they have a search box, only apparently it can't find any of charlie Brookers articles no matter what permutations I use. In fact searches on things such as Gordon brown don't bring up anything other than the childishly coloured "Sorry" message. So, a search function that doesn't search. Joy.

Oh it could be in Guardian unlimited, lets go there, nope, you want my password again, I'm not falling down that hole again, back we go.

Looks like its trawling the A-Z listings for his name. Last ditch in bad web design. So I find Mr Brooker's name and sure enough a nice list of articles under a picture of him. Could this be it? Hang on last one is dated March 15th, either he's on holiday or this isn't all his stuff. Running down the comment is free section reveals a further truncated list of articles. No use there.

I know he posts up 2 articles a week, but due to a non functioning search and completely absent architecture on the site I seem doomed not to read it.

Is it just me, or is the guardian's website monumentally badly built. Perhaps I can e-mail Mr Brooker and ask him to send me his articles, I think its the path of least resistance.

Allegiance

Lord goldsmith, in his wisdom, has suggested to our dear leader that all children on leaving school should pledge allegiance to Queen and country. Apparently this will instill a sense of "Belonging" and "Britishness" and boost national pride. Full article is here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7287984.stm

Now I'm all for a new bank holiday to celebrate Britishness that is also suggested on the condition that its mandatory, is additional to my current bank and public holidays and in no way shape or form will I be expected to partake in any Britishness event, by britishness cards or release a britishness badger into a stream.

You may think I'm down on Britain. I'm not, as a country it has its proud and not so proud moments in history. It's achieved many things, produced great thinkers, orators and scientists and is not a bad place to live. However we don't suit being a bombastic, flag waving nation boasting about our achievements, it harks back too much to when we oppressed billions. No, Britishness involves, Cynicism, sarcasm, politeness, good sportsmanship and knowing how to queue. It also involves quietly nodding and smiling during other nations bombast and subtly getting things done. Sadly our current government feels we should be more like America, with a flag on every porch, pledges of loyalty and indeed to boost has joined America's illegal wars, and is cracking down on personal freedoms like America.

America makes good TV and has a real knack for good customer service, but that's it. Everything else they do, they do either badly or wrong. Democracy, they have something every close to a workable electoral system, but they bung in the Electoral College so that the system is actually less fair than ours. And its like this across the board. Indeed who we should really be looking to for guidance is Europe, our closest neighbours. Of course many Scandinavian nations have solved their problems with national pride by use of transparent, trustworthy government and by doing things to make their nations proud. For example not cowtowing to America, going their own way and encouraging international co-operation.

So, please if anyone is reading this, refuse an oath of allegiance. Instead I propose the opposite. The Queen and all of government must pledge an oath to only act in the best interests of the people of Britain, and to represent their constituents before minority interests.

Pennance

Not the most controversial thing to come out of Civil war but still one that received a lot of attention was the conversion of goofy comedy character Speedball into the dark, brooding, self harming Penance. At the end of his first solo series I decided to review how well this new direction has gone and most importantly, will this open up new stories.

I'm normally quite up for a change in characters. I still think the world may be more interesting if Ben Reilly remained Spider-Man and Peter Parker was allowed to retire with a family (And a dead Aunt May) you could have had a young, single Spider-Man with a supporting cast of youngish friends. He could be skint, possibly even at college. Oh wait, like he is now but with less Satan.

First, the general character would have been pretty laughable if he was conceived from the ground up. Powers that only work when he's in pain, so he has a suit with hundreds of spikes on the inside to make his powers work. It is very late '90s and screams "I'm angst ridden aaaaargh" and in itself it doesn't really hold much interest. But all that's done is take one minor B-List character and turn him into another minor B-lister. There has been some abuse of this inside the marvel camp and you could object but for the most part its been really funny. I do feel for the writers of Civil War: Frontline, who dealt with the speedball to penance transformation but the GLI summer special where squirrel girl tries to talk him back into being speedball (And we see his cat Niels is dead, now all that remains is P-Cat, the penitent puss.)

What is surprising is that Marvel have been trying to give him a push. He had his own Limited series where he (Spoiler warning) takes bloody revenge on Nitro (Although notably doesn't kill him) which was actually really good, as has his depiction in Thunderbolts as he receives therapy from Doc Samson. So while I still think the makeover and nature of the powers are questionable, there is no doubt that Robbie Baldwin is getting some far greater character development. Indeed while he seems to have an obsession with pain and masochism once he's clear of his survivors guilt he may grow further. Penance: Relentless showed Robbie becoming more confident, where as before he was a self hating loon living in spartan quarters. He still lives up to his frequent nickname Captain Emo for now, but I have to say, I'm more interested in Robbie Baldwin's journey as penance that I was with speedball.

I know Kung-Fu

I like beat-em-ups. while they've somewhat fallen from favour these days nothing gives entertaining 2 player action like an old beat-em-up. What I want out of a beat em up is simple

1. Story. I want a premise for my fighting, a Tournament is fine but I'll want that expanded on. Each character must have more than just looks, I expect a character bio, personality traits and rivalries with other characters. I also want an ending, preferably an animated conclusion but text and pictures is fine. I remember the disappointment of Street Fighter Ex plus Alpha, where the endings were animated, but didn't seem to relate to any plot going on. It was annoying (Possibly the actual details were just left out on the translation)

2. Kung-Fu. This is the most important, and also in some ways hardest to define. I can't remember which one of my friends coined the phrase. All I know is that it was said during a bout of Street Fighter II, and it was at the point that we were both significantly good enough to really have a good fight.

Kung-Fu, in this context, which is only appropriate to myself and 2-3 other people, refers to the state in a fighting game when the combat flows. That's still quite vague isn't it. Think of it this way, if you remember the original Mortal Kombat, where every character could do the stock roundhouse/sweeps etc. ell an example of Kung fu would be ducking a roundhouse by doing a sweep and tripping your opponent. Its when you exchange blows but each block correctly high or low. In short its where a spectator could watch the screen and see it as a choreographed set piece rather than two people playing a game.

One of the things that left me cold about the more hardcore fighters Tekken and Virtua Fighter was that, while I'm told that when you have 2 people who really know the games it looks great, even after a bit of practice you look like someone hammering buttons. It also requires decent character models and animation (Why despite being cited as my example Mortal Kombat wasn't great for Kung-Fu)

SO, my top 3 list of games which lend themselves easily to Kung-fu.

3 - Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance/Armageddon - Yes, its 2 games, but its important to note that they ditched the odd combo system from Deception in favour of most of DAs fro Armageddon. While a rookie won't Eb pulling off style branch combos any time soon the way the game animates itself and the way the fights flows lends itself very quickly to kung-fu. Particularly on the weapon fighting styles. MK also has full rich stories for its characters and is never afraid of a downer ending.

2 - Soul Caliber 2 - Actually quite well respected in fighting circles what I like is the simple button allocations (Overhead slash, sideways slash, kick/punch and grab) with stick direction, position and frequency of button mash dictating what you see on screen. with the addition of a solid block and better, an easily applied shedding block that allows for a free hit fights look fantastic with very little effort or experience. The characters all have a little history and the overreaching plot fits everything in nicely.

1 - Dead or Alive 2 - Ok, could have been 3 as well. Dead or alive is the button masher's dream. Scorned by hardcore fans for being too simplistic (it unashamedly is) and for being quite obsessed with, ahem, CG women, hell the unlockable costumes is a major part of the game. Besides all this what you have is a game that still lets you feel like you're in control, but where the computer fills in much of the gaps to make for spectacular fights with little or no experience. Its like the computer wants the thing to look good. If you can master some counters this is amplified considerably. The characters once again have a back story and the single player is more of a story mode and will usually have several cutscene supported battles.

I do sometimes wonder when games are reviewed as too flashy or easy. Because to me the Kung-Fu factor is primary, if the characters look like they're randomly stumbling as opposed to performing ballet like martial arts I just enjoy it less. And surely fun is the most important part of gaming.

For those about to ROCK!

There are several things that can make me buy a game, but there are 2 which can be almost guaranteed.

1. Unlockable content, I'm a real sucker for repeating the same tasks to see extra gubbins.
2. Zany peripherals, If I'd had a gamecube, I'd have bought Donkey Konga, a Saturn, Samba del amigo or whatever it was called. In fact I still yearn after a singstar set despite the game being pretty duff if not mixed with other people and copious amounts of booze.

One series that scratched both of these was Guitar hero. I mean not only is it a fun rhythm based game but it has unlockable content (Characters, tracks etc) and an absurd controller, plus the rock music I so dearly love.

I counted the original as my last extravagant purchase before responsible co-habiting life, and really enjoyed it.

There was some criticism from people that Guitar Hero was a bit sad, and that players of it should buy a guitar and learn for real. For gods sake, I'm playing a game. I know I can't get up in front of a crowd and play Texas flood unless I have my comedy plastic guitar and a PS2. The amount of hostility from your common or garden bedroom guitar player was really surprising, what had guitar hero done to deserve such wrath? Did they think that people would just play guitar hero instead of taking up the guitar? is it one prop too many for air guitar? Are all these games ok but rock, particularly with a guitar shaped peripheral, is sacred?

I love rock like I love pies, and to me this was a great idea. Rockers could play a fun game, kind of air guitar with a score attached, while gamers would be introduced to a world of rock. Ok covers in GH1 but still I imagined gamers walking away thinking "I'd like to hear some Judas Priest" or "Man Boston are excellent" and indeed there were stories of players taking up the guitar. Still, the hate was confusing.

Guitar Hero 2 really just fixed the few problems in 1, adding co-op 2 player with one on bass and the encore system while still keeping the game's rock themed humour made this so far the pinnacle of the series. Sadly disaster struck. Harmonix and Acclaim had a falling out. Harmonix went on to team up with MTV to produce Rock Band (More on that later) while Acclaim got Harmonix's cooperation on Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s and hired Neversoft to do Guitar Hero III.

Rocks the 80s was good, exactly what I wanted, just more tracks with the guitar hero II engine, a few graphical tweaks but to be honest I was quite happy with just more songs, about the only issue was that, with reduced extended content the game was still sold initially at full retail. It just wasn't value for money. Shame as I would have been quite happy with many expansions based around the GH2 engine (Its not like you're coding much new) at around the £15 price point, and would have picked them up as, lets face it, having the controller I tend to want to use it so I'm a bit of a captive audience. Just started GHIII and I'm a Little put off. Its clear they wanted to make it more "Next Gen" or wanted some separation from Harmonix, perhaps Neversoft wanted their own stamp, but the look and feel of the game just doesn't work as well. Still it has some killer tracks.

There was, however, competition this time around. Rock Band. This was a bold move by Harmonix and MTV, for starters it would have all songs by the real artist as opposed to Guitar Hero's "Made famous by" majority. Also a full set (around $200 in the US) included 2 guitars, with 6 extra buttons for special sections, a mic for singing and a drum kit. The idea is that you and 3 friends can get together and play as a band, or you can play each part individually (a nice touch since the bass tracks in GHII were only available in 2 player co-op) Sadly my inner killjoy points out that in total I've played 2 player guitar hero 3 times. How often could I actually get 3 others to play rock band. Rock band also has an uphill struggle. See, quite a few people have guitar Hero SGs (The guitar peripheral) and while Rock Band may be the better game, we'll most likely go for the one which we can buy at the cheaper solus price.

SO, what do I want from each company. For both, keep releasing on the PS2, you've got a userbase there who most likely now own 4 games for their controller, none of us are going to buy a PS3 to own a 5th. Although by all means release a PS3 version alongside your Wii and 360 ones. Also consider allowing other companies to make guitar based games using the SG or rock band guitars (Preferably compatible with both) having other dance games didn't hurt Dance Dance revolution nor did other singing games dent singstar, so compatibility throughout.

Rock band - Open the game up to 3rd party controllers, give me a guarantee that my Guitar hero SG will work with rock band and I'll probably buy it for more songs to play. hell I may even buy your mic as I hear with a stand you can sing and play guitar (If you are able to concentrate like that, apparently its not easy) preferably I could attach any PC voice Chat mic and I'd probably buy one of those and also use it for voice chat on my PC. Regardless if my two SGS were compatible I'd definitely buy Rock band when it becomes available.

Guitar Hero - More tracks in expansions. Similarly open up the SG so anyone can code a guitar game, allow compatibility with Rock band guitars as well and just give us a raft of extra tracks in expansions around the £15 point.

Keep this up and I'll keep rockin.