Beyonce And Her Pseudo-Feminist Lies

Excellent video about how Beyonce’s latest femme-anthem (antfemme?) might be hindering more than it’s helping.

A Poor Gamer’s Plight

I promised myself when I started this blog that it wasn’t going to feature too much throwaway material, hence the quite sporadic updates. A keen blogger, I wanted the content on DTB! to be sort of universally appealing instead of just me musing incoherently as most of my previous blogs have been. Writing this entry makes my skin itch a little for these reasons, as it is probably much more written “for” me than for anybody else. I apologise in advance.

The sad fact is that I am very poor right now. I could give you a number to describe my current monetary situation and it would only feature two digits. As it is it doesn’t look like this is going to change any time soon either so I trawl forward on other people’s charity and my own tears for rudimentary sustenance. One would think that this state of sedentary poverty would be golden for my gaming and writing interests, but that would be a faulty assumption.

Due to my personal budget collapse I have been forced to a solitary gaming existence where AAA-titles zoom by in the world outside and me unable to grab any for myself. I have not played Portal 2, LA Noire or even any of the Assassin’s Creed games. I managed to get my hands on the original Mass Effect which was on sale for less than a tenner due to the broken plastic box, but that is about as connected I have been to the mainstream release schedule. When I was working and had the funds I ironically found myself sans any free time to indulge in any gaming. Working 12 hours per day will take it out of the best of them and since I spent all that time playing games at work I was less than in the mood to do the same on my few hours of freedom.

So I fled. I fled into the world of cheap indie-games. I fled to my iPod and my XBLA where I have been nesting for the well over a year by this point. I have played Limbo, Braid, Sword & Sworcery EP, Angry Birds, The Nightjar, Canabalt, Archon, Infinity Blade and Plants Vs. Zombies for hours on end and been thoroughly enjoying myself. As the rest of the world is busy swooning over the facial animations in LA Noire I’m far too invested in the adventures of The Scythian and Dogfella to notice the hubbub. I am in a vacuum. An iVacuum.

I love games and I keep up with the industry to the best of my abilities, but right now I’m on the fringe, which I count as both a blessing and a curse. One day I will (hopefully) be back at some sort of normal schedule with a relatively steady stream of income to boot at which point I will pick up where I left off, but until then I’m having way too much fun with my iPod to really care.

And yes, I will review Sword & Sworcery.

It’s Jedwednesday! 18/05

Here’s a new recurring segment I am going to call Jedwednesdays where I present the past weeks best tweets from the best band in history; Jedward. For those unfortunate enough to have missed their Twitter feed, it is a glorious amalgamation of dadaistic poetry and childlike exuberance. So for the first time ever, let’s dissect the past week through the eyes of Jedward.

“we just want to let you know that you guys are the best ever and we love you all so much”

Aww, isn’t that a nice start? We love you too, guys.

“whats up people! you know who we are talking about whats up people! can we get an encore! whats up people dont pee yo people?”

I admire the energy here, which seems to be these guys’ standard setting. I’m surprised they can even get to sleep at night without running in place like a pair of dreaming dogs. And what’s up? Since we took your advice to not pee, the answer is urinary tract infection.

“Jumping! Jumping like a Polaroid Picture Hey YA! http://twitpic.com/4wkkmc“

There’s a lot of jumping in these boys’ weird lives, but this one caught my eyes since I’m not entirely sure they know what a polaroid picture is.

“whos going to the gym? we are not we have never been in a gym without an awkward person trying to compete with us! last time it was a lady”

See, that’s exactly why I don’t go to the gym either. Those damn ladies and their primal competitive instincts.

“Teddy Bears! some people hug them and others give them as gifts we don’t do any of that we have teddy bear trainers on now!”

That’s a pretty impressive plot twist for a 140 character tweet. I thought I knew all there was to know about teddy bears until they hit me with that sneakers bomb. Where can I get some?

“EMERGENCY WE FOUND A HOSPITAL BED AND WE JUST HAD TO CHECK IT OUT! http://twitpic.com/4x6isf“

Exhibit A for why there needs to be a Jedward photo book made by Taschen right away.

“Louis Walsh says hello to everyone he has a very cool dicky bow!”

I stopped reading this tweet five characters from the end because it made too much sense.

“We are never late the Movie is simply early! So weird when you miss the beginning of a movie! It’s like who’s that! What’s happening?”

Seinfeld couldn’t have done it better.

“We have a burning desire to burn some toast! It’s like no don’t burn bread!”

Jedward is all about the duality between one’s primal desires and external stigmas. And toast.

“Feeding a Baby some baby food! silly baby! but the person is not a baby! silly baby person!”

Say this quickly and it starts to sound like Lady Gaga lyrics.

“Ring Ring! Alarm Alarm! Wake Up! did you have a good sleep! what did you dream of! who did you dream of? did someone go baby wee wee”

Again with the Urine Policing.

“Seeing Skinny jeans for the first time! always wearing skinny jeans but never said hello just went into a shop and bought them hows yo jeans”

I don’t even

“its not that we are crazy everyone needs to wake up! have a bowel of energy and top it with some jumps and flips!”

I’m embroidering this on a pillow right now.

“There is a weird smell around us but we smelt ourselves and is deffo the people infront of us! Get the new fragrance it’s called ‘I smell’”

Not everyone can hold it in forever, guys.

“Just had a race to the aeroplane toilet against this dude guess who won? Jedward! didn’t just walk! jumped over the seats”

As you have evidently found out for yourselves.

“Really want to go to the dessert! It’s kinda like a huge sand castle that fell apart and left a dessert”

And in the “dessert” we’ll leave our heroes until next week. Stay tuned for more Jedwednesdays!

Gearbox And The Gay Robot Trick

Let us first take a look at this classic DTB-excerpt from last April 22nd:

now I hope to return to some kind of semi-regular updating schedule

Yeah, I got your hopes up and I crushed them. Sorry about that. My empty promises aside, let’s blog again. Here we go!

The big hubbub during the last 24 hours has surrounded the cutT gay character in the constantly-upcoming Duke Nukem Forever. According to Gearbox there were plans to include a sidekick for the Duke whose sexual preference was to be slightly at odds with Nukem’s own. The story’s been covered everywhere since Randy Pitchford made the non-announcement and everybody’s having opinions about this non-existent character that won’t show up in a game. Whether it would have been a disaster (it almost certainly would have been) or not is sort of irrelevant now though – the character wasn’t taken out of the game during the late beta-stage or anything, but only ever existed briefly as a possible inclusion and never made it past the ideas stage. For a game that’s been in development as long as Duke Forever, I would have been surprised if “gay robot sidekick”* wasn’t brought to the table at least once.

It’s therefore odd that Gearbox has even taken the time to bring the whole thing up in the first place. PR seems to be the easy answer; get people talking about something you almost discussed having in your (probably) terrible game is a good, easy strategy to get the internet buzzing with… I dunno, excitement? Gearbox played the “gay” card because that still holds quite a lot of power in today’s gaming industry. Holy crap, a GAY character? What, in, like, a real game? The thought! Gasps everywhere, for a plethora or reasons; would it have been homophobic? Empowering? Funny? Icky? How would it have turned out if it had happened?

I don’t know. And I see no reason to care. This is a non-story entirely brought about because Gearbox are buying time since people are – again – losing interest in their vaporware. The Gay Robot story is pure PR disguised as something else and far too few gaming news outlets have called them on this. Everybody is asking “why was this cut?” when they should ask “why are you telling us this? Characters, maps, music, story elements and concepts get cut in games all the time up until release day, so why do you expect us to think it’s interesting just because this one particular item had the word ‘gay’ attached to it in mile-high neon letters? We’re forward-thinking, progressive and the word ‘gay’ does not frighten or excite us so stop your petty marketing crap on us, Mr Pitchford. Go finish your fucking game instead.”

*I used to play bass for “Gay Robot Sidekick”

I Made An Album

You may have noticed how my online presence have been somewhat limited the past month or so. I apologise for this as it has been no intention to leave anybody in the dark as for my whereabouts. The truth is I have been neglecting my writing about games, music and such in order to make something of my own, which is now complete and ready for anybody to pass their judgement.

That thing is my new album Ooroo made under my weird moniker Imhotep Is Invisible which you can listen to right here:

What is it then? It’s six tracks totalling just under 50 minutes of ambient, electronic droning noise. I’ve always been a fan of dark ambient artists like Kammarheit, Raison d’Être and Sephiroth to name a handful and the footprints they left on me can surely be spotted in my work. I am a complete amateur and most of this is built up of sampling, distorting and feebly trying to create some sort of order in the chaotic. I’m not sure it worked but I’m still proud of the damned thing. I sincerely hope you’ll like it and if you didn’t notice it’s up for FREE download right now at this link. Listen and let me know what the hell you reckon!

Props should go out to my boys in Starship Amazing for letting me create an entire track solely out of various snippets and samples from their songs. That track is opener “Then They Handed You A Gun” and one of my own favourites. I hope they and you aren’t too fussed with my blasphemy.

So now I hope to return to some kind of semi-regular updating schedule. As I’m broke as a farmer with slim pigs, I won’t be able to buy, play and subsequently review many games in the near future, namely Portal 2, but I hope to be able to provide some sort of entertainment regardless. You lot deserve it.

Korn And Skrillex Make Sweet Noise Together

In preparation for a new EP to be released in May, Korn and Skrillex are offering up their new single for free download and you can listen to the result above. Don’t be too surprised if this dubstep-laced metal cookie doesn’t go down too well with some puritanical fans, but it’s certainly surprising and refreshing to see the band try new things and new collaborators, especially considering how stale “Korn III: Remember Who You Are” turned out. It’s an impressive little neutron bomb with some characteristic weltschmerz for good measure and it could be an interesting new direction, if only a temporary one.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You

DIOYY painted themselves into a bit of a corner with their brilliant debut “You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into” it seems. It was mad, jumping almost seamlessly from Daft Punkian house via guitar-heavy grime metal to melody-driven power-pop, often sounding like a split-LP made by four separate bands from vastly different musical backgrounds. And despite this, it still managed to avoid sounding fragmented or lacking identity. It was eclectic and it’s schizophrenic delivery made perfect sense in context. But where do you go when you’ve already gone everywhere at once?

It had to happen. They had to go nuts to go anywhere at all. Almost everything that made “You Have No Idea How Annoying These Long Album Titles Are To Type Out” so glamorously insane  and insanely good is still here in plentiful supply but it’s been hypercharged since last time. The beats are grimier, the riffs are heavier, the vocals are louder and the melodies are catchier. “Don’t Say…” is an intense experience to say the least, especially due to the causalities the production must have suffered in the Loudness War. Seriously, it sometimes hurts to listen to with headphones if you’re too careless with that volume knob. Everything is louder and bigger and grander and more monstrous than last time, and the only price was that the red thread holding all their disparate elements together snapped like a dead twig.

The heavy is heavier and the soft is softer and somewhere along the line the curtains seized to match the carpet, as it were. There is a good deal of decent songwriting here but you won’t find a “Dawn Of The Dead” or “We Are Rockstars” among this bunch, which would be an unfair comparison had the album retained the same sense of maniacal structure as its predecessor. As it is, it lacks the flow of a cohesive album and this forces the songs to stand up to scrutiny more on their individual merit than before, and they don’t quite measure up as well as hoped. ”We Are The Dead“, “Pull Out My Insides” and the Prodigyesque “John Hurt” are proof as good as any that “You Have No Idea…” was no fluke, but I miss a few real stand-out “oh shit” moments. Everything’s a bit over-considered and under-cooked, but when it comes down to it, this is still a gratifying and fun album, just not as expertly crooked as their previous. Those second albums, eh?

Megan Amram And The Best Glee Audition Tape Ever

Not only is she an expert on stain removal and one of the funniest people on Twitter, Megan Amram is now surely a shoe-in as the next big talent to join the cast of Glee with this spectacular audition tape. If this doesn’t do it, surely nothing will.

Kaufman would be proud.

Soon You Can Buy Resident Evil 4 – Again!

Capcom is about to please a very particular type of fringe-demographic with their latest announcement: the people who still haven’t played Resident Evil 4. In fact, it’s fair to assume that most people who have played RE4 b4 have also bought it at least twice in any of its previous five dozen incarnations (or at least 10), considering the game was once called a “Gamecube exclusive”. I own it for the Gamecube, the Playstation 2 and the Wii, which is quite impressive for a game it took me two playthroughs before I stopped thinking it was a disappointment. Soon you will be able to buy it all over again for the 360 and PS3 with the impossibly diffuse title “Resident Evil Revival Selection HD Remastered Version.”

Yes, it’s a classic and yes, it could be quite nice to see it in HD and maybe get something out of the online capabilities, but apart from crisper graphics is there any real reason to pay money for this game again? It feels futile to further satirise Capcom and their eagerness to milk their successes, but surely even they must draw the line somewhere. RE4 is a great game, one of the greatest ever, but it was great when we lived it through on the microscopic TVs we had to suffer before HD rolled around and saved our eyes from screens smaller than a single atom cleft in twain.

And that’s not all! Be sure to stay tuned for the 3D version coming out in 2012, brining us a new dimension of fear.

Feeder Announce Charity Single For Japan

Feeder have just announced their intent to release a charity single called “Side By Side” in support of Japan following the recent earthquake and tsunami which has devastated the country. The single will be released digitally on the 27th of March and all proceeds with go to the rescue efforts. It is available for pre-order for a measly 79p in their online store and you can’t go wrong with the combination Feeder + charity, can you?

A snippet can be enjoyed right here:

A striking resemblance to Pushing The Senses/Silent Cry era Feeder there, abstaining from the misguided garage rock of Renegades is probably a good idea. Hopefully a good sign of what’s in store and a further review will probably follow. Besides, it’s for charity so it doesn’t really matter if it’s any good, as Michael Jackson and Band Aid have proved in the past.