Merry Christmas.

The Sleeping Englishman would like to extend his warmest wishes for this holiday. Whoever you are, wherever you are and whatever you're doing, (Within reason.) I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas. Or a Happy Channakah. Or whatever.

SEASONS GREETINGS.

Completely Unrelated: Casual Magic Night.

So, tonight I went to my first Magic: The Gathering meetup. It usually takes place on Fridays. At least, I think it does. But this one was happening on a Wednesday because super-special Christmas.

I brought my Deck along, 60 cards crammed into a 2012 Chandra Nalaar box which I'd gotten from a friend back in probably 2012 before signing up officially.

Here are my sign up bonuses.

5 30-card packs. 150 cards of all five types. Just plopped on the counter like glamorous casino chips. I immediately shuffled open the glorious 2014 Chandra Nalaar box and started to improve my existing deck which was no more than a starter pack, a mana bulk up, and several I'd traded last week.

I still have yet to spend any money on Magic and eternally feel bad about it. I need to buy something as soon as I'm not broke.

DCI Membership Card. This card stores info of each session and is a requirement if you so much as want to go near a tournament. So that's pretty cool. I've already logged in my info and authenticated it. Still, it's going to live in my wallet for the forseeable future. (I.e. forever.) It's pretty neat that it automatically logs progress.

Also, the webcam contrast is at it's highest so my name, number and authentication scratch number are whited out. Just in case you're wondering what all that empty space is about. Can't be too careful.

I also won some Minstrels and got given a Christmas Card and a big ol' box of Chocolates. Because it's Christmas, I got more swag than I could have foreseen. It's incredible. I was only expecting a promo card.

And since it's every Friday, upstairs in Game On in Winchcombe Street, they continued running the shop WHILST running the duels that were happening on the 1st floor. Like, how awesome is that? Very.

I must buy things when my wallet stops producing comical moths, indicative of how poor I am.

Everyone was pretty chill too, which was nice. It's usually hard being the new guy, but nobody seemed to have a problem with the fact that I often forgot to tap cards, had absolutely no clue between permanent and non-permanent monsters and didn't own a single Planeswalker. They were genuinely lovely people. 

I partook in a mini-tournament thing called The Cube.

Basically, a guy who's clearly a regular and knows his stuff has a massive metal box (The Cube) and in this box are the History of Magic. Tonnes of cards from every expansion. Jeez, they looked incredible. One person complained that his eyes hurt from looking at the sheer number of holofoils.

45 cards are sectioned around the table. In three piles of fifteen, the same number of cards you'd find in a booster pack.

You pick up 15, choose one, and pass on the cards to the person seated beside you, who will then pick one and pass it on. When they have all been exhausted, the next pile will be picked up, you will choose one and then pass the cards in the opposite direction. After you get yourself a nice little deck, you reduce it down.

The rules are simple:

- Leave your own cards off the table.

-Request your land at the end.

- Pick a card from a hand of land. (Dr Seuss eat your heart out.)

-Play an opponent who drew the same one.

These guys were pretty pro. I played against a person who casually put down a monster that negated a win-state, decimated me down to -3, and then killed his monster which, in turn, destroyed me. They knew it.

Inside out.

It was fantastic fun. 

Off to re-arrange my deck now.

Video Game News: YouTube, Stop.

So if you've been following gaming news recently, you may have heard that Let's Players are finding their job suddenly got a whole lot more difficult. 
For those who are new, Let's Players are people who film themselves playing sections of videogames for extended periods of time. 
Generally, (very generally) there is peace between YouTube and Game Developers. Here's how the dialogue goes.

Game Developer: "Aw gee, I sure do like people watching our new and latest video game in these playthroughs done by members of the gaming community. However, what about spoilers and content that doesn't belong to us that's used alongside the game?

YouTube: "Don't worry, we'll make sure that doesn't happen by automatically running Content ID on every video that gets uploaded! That'll check for copyrighted material and anything illicit!"

Game Developer: "k thanks babe."

And so there was peace in the kingdom. Well, until now.

Every day, hundreds of videos are taken down every day due to YouTube... er.... I'm not even sure what they've done this time. Ballsing it up royally is how they usually roll.

"But Charlie," I hear you interrupt. "don't you hate Pewdiepie and wish to eat his skin? Aren't you glad that now he'll suffer because of the increase in flagged Let's Play videos?"

Well, as much as I hate the torturous Swedish girl-man, he is a strange sort of necessity.

Let's Players (Including Pewds) are responsible for more of a game's publicity than we give them credit for. We now live in an age where people will not buy a game until they've seen footage of regular people playing the game. This is where companies get mistaken and they'll always pout their pouty lips and go.

"Don't you want to see our footage? It's prettier and we spent ages filming it and making sure the shots were good. Wouldn't you prefer to see something that's much more nicer? It's shorter too. Only all the good bits."

No, I would rather watch community footage or screenshots than official screenshots and footage. I mean, they pretty much answered the question of "Why?" themselves. I think the answer is straightforward.

I do not own an expensive computer or rig. I own a few games consoles.

I do not own the best TV money can buy. I have an old ALBA with a HDMI output.

I want to see footage and screenshots that relate to ME. I want to see undoctored footage complete with glitches and bugs. Take off all that stupid make up, game developers. You know it'll start to smudge the second I pick up my controller, so why are you setting me up for disappointment?

It's a matter of trust. I trust the gaming community more than official videos and journalists because the community has no reason or incentive to lie about the game or manipulate the playthrough/footage.

Not many people would have heard of Amnesia: Dark Descent is Pewdiepie hadn't played it, unfortunately. 

I'd say the same with Dark Souls, but that's always kind of had its following.

The truth of the matter is that if we take Let's Players away, the general public will buy a game with more of a blindfold. The corporations, paid journalists/critics and gaming developers will dominate. 

And that leads to lazier design and cut corners. Why innovate when you're closer than ever to guarenteeing purchases? It's not as if anyone can go on the internet and find parts of a game that might cause someone not to buy it. No, this the future of only positive reviews and corporate hooks pulling up a rictus grin on the Orwellian-faces of the gaming public.

The only thing that stops this from happening of course, isn't restraint or taste.

It's money.

Ubisoft, Blizzard, Deep Silver and Camcom all stood up and tweeted to Let's Players who had been flagged to contest the flag so their video can be approved. I mean, why wouldn't they?

It's free advertising of their game. And right now it's the only freely available, honest, non-biased advertising that's around. And it's only going to get more popular from here on in. At least, that's my take on it.

                              Read more here @: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25351123

Video Game News: Stupidity Has Rewards.

We all remember young Peter Clatworthy, an impressionable 19 year old from Nottingham who purchased a picture of an Xbox One from eBay for £450.

I mean, the auction stated that it was a picture. It was all there. In print. For him to read. If he couldn't read, someone should have read it to him. Slowly.

His response was "It was in the category of Video Games, so I thought it was legit."

Evidently. Despite the fact that it was affiliated with video games and therefore listed as such. Did you expect to find it categorised under "Pieces Of Paper Relating To Video Games"?


 So naturally he tried to contact the seller, Paypal and possibly Obama and got a slap on the wrist when he asked for his money back.

Only that never happened, because he received both a full refund through PayPal in addition to the home console which was donated by CEX. Here's a picture of the man and the Assistant Manager of the store.

I just want to say, whilst I'm here, and I have this domain, and whilst there is breath flowing through my body and I still own fingers which can type down whatever idle thought crosses my merry little head.....

What the fuck is wrong with you all?

I mean did anybody seriously buy into that little sob story about the man wanting to purchase the Xbone for his little four year old? Name one Xbox game that is suitable for a four year old or that a four year old might enjoy playing. Go on, one Xbox One launch title for a four year old. Name one.

I'm calling complete bullshit. That's his console, not his son's. 

Look at that picture, he tried to get the edition which came alongside Fifa 14. He's wearing a football top in the EXACT same photo. Come on everyone, use your eyes.  That game would not interest a four year old.

The only games for a young child are under the flag Nintendo. And possibly Sony. We all know that Xbox caters to the "mature" gamer. Although that phrase couldn't be farther from the truth, all things considered.

And why did he get someone pregnant at 14/15? Did he go into Boots or a Drugstore and come out with a picture of a condom instead of the actual goddamn thing? Can we really cite this as a good thing? Really?

The comments I've seen. "Good guy CEX." "Faith in humanity: restored."

Your faith in humanity was restored because a store decided to put a retard on a podium in order to do some good, old fashioned, corporate advertising and raise public relations with the great unwashed?

(I include myself in this, of course, although my last bath was yesterday.)

Whatever dawg.

Video Game Review: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. (Part 1/3)

I've heard every single phrase ever heard thrown at this game. Every single insult or piece of praise ever written has been directed, at some point, towards this game.

Skyrim is the fifteenth installment (Counting phone games and Knights of The Nine/Shivering Isles) of the Elder Scrolls series. But V is a lot catchier than XV, so it's the fifth.

It was released in 2011 and had it's largest expansion slightly over a year ago. The Legendary edition, including all the expansion packs, was released earlier this year in June.

It's an action-adventure RPG by Bethesda Studios which is fronted by Todd Howard who looks like that kid who comes over to your house and will always use your favourite controller instead of the crappy one.

I mean, I don't care if he makes a game that's sold 7 million copies, he just looks like that kind of kid. Or the kid that always went on camping trips with his family and told you stories about how they got attacked by a bear even though you know that's totally bullshit. I honestly think this is the face of one of THOSE kids.

So Skyrim is an action-adventure RPG, a term I will not stop using solely because I believe all the best games ARE action-adventure RPG's. I picked it back up again a couple of hours ago after a break of four months so I thought "Well, I might as well review this one I guess." Gotta do it some time or another.

Whilst the game hasn't aged perfectly in the past few year:

- The American actors trying out horrible strained Scandinavian accents.

- The wall textures that look like brown-grey jell-o.

-The draw distance makes everything over five miles away look as if it's melting.

It's still an incredibly fun game. To the point where it's just instinctual after the bajillionth playthrough.

This is the bit with the spiders. This bit coming up is the bit with the bear, there's the cart with the gold coin purse underneath the wine bottles. This is the cave with the miner over there with the journal next to him, there are enemies over there, there and one down there.

I could play this with my eyes shut I'm so familiar with it.

Since Patch 1.9 it now also has a Legendary mode in which you can raise a skill to 100 points, reset it and gain back all the perk points you spent on the skill tree and then continue from the bottom.

It effectively makes levelling endless.

If you want every perk in the game, you have to reach around Level 250. Don't ask me how I know that.

It'd be nice to see a Prestige system put into the actual game though. Some way to send items/gold between characters or whatnot. That's be pretty cool. One thing I should also mention about Skyrim are the mods which allow you to do everything from changing your character appearance to a Lego Bionicle......

To looking stunning. This one has over 100 graphical enchancement modifications.

Pretty stuff. There are also little things in the game that weren't in there at launch or in previous titles such as horse combat. I don't know why it's the little things that get me hooked, but they always do. 

I've started replaying due to my sadness at the fact that www.thesurvivor2299.com was an elaborate hoax and no Fallout 4 announcement has been made yet. Shame that Bethesda took so long to debunk it.

Oh well. 

I'll be doing some more Skyrim throughout the week so just keep popping back for the occasional update.

Video Game Discussion: Is Gaming Too Expensive?

Aviva's yearly financial report has found that consumers have slightly more disposable income than they had in previous years. In just 2012, the average consumer household had only £27.00 per month of disposable income.
In lieu of this, I was wondering. Is gaming too expensive?

Let's take the two new next-gen- Sorry, current-gen consoles. I really ought to stop saying that now.

Both of them cost upwards of £350/£429 respectively. (PS4/Xbox One.)

Now let's take into consideration the games. The cheapest are £45 but some titles cost £55. Expensive? EA would have you paying £63 as standard per title, bought online or bought as a physical copy.

Let's throw into the mix microtransactions which are in every game that's been released for the new consoles so far. Forza 5 has about 100 cars in the game. Not bad, until you realise that you have to pay for the other 300. Ryse? Microtransactions.

You're not even safe with free game downloads. Games such as Angry Birds Go on the mobile are free to download but contain stupid amounts of premium content that you can buy. (Including a single car for seventy pounds.)

But those are microtransactions and fee-to-play games. Surely they can't phase you.

Well how about games such as Elder Scrolls Online which insist that you have to pay for the console, pay for the game, pay for online and pay a monthly subscription fee and presumably pay for DLC in order to keep up with your friends. Count the number of times I said pay in that sentence.

And what if I told you that it didn't have to be this way?

What if I told you they could fund their servers, pay their employees, pay for art assets and engine costs AND make a firm and tidy profit without charging you for extra online content, subscription fees or online?

You'd call me crazy.

Well what if I told you that they're already doing it?

Forza 5 has immense quanitites of DLC. And costs sixty dollars. And features product placement which includes Top Gear. Powered by an ad-supported AND subscription based game console, which is also sponsored by good ol' Mountain Dew.

Know what that gives Microsoft and Sony? Here's a picture to help you.

Probably even more.

It wouldn't piss me off so much if the gaming industry didn't plead poverty constantly, mentioning how pirating is ruining the industry and games cost tonnes to produce.

If you can look me dead in the eyes and tell me "Charlie, no other possible combination would work. There can be no cheap AAA games with product placement and in-game advertisements and no DLC. There can be no free AAA games with heavy advertising, multiple sponsors and intense DLC. There can be no expensive AAA games with no adverts or product placement at all and limited DLC. There can be no very expensive AAA games with adverts and product placement but multiple packs of free DLC." then I will give you a look that will make you melt into your fucking chair.

Don't give me shit such as "Servers cost tonnes and are incredibly complex. You can't understand them." DOOM had server hosting in the 90's. It's not new.

Stop insisting that servers are magical pieces of alien technology that have just arrived. They've been around long enough for most of them to become old and decommissioned.

The industry lives in financial decadence but is still making money on games, consoles, ads, promos, tie-in apps like Pizza Hut delivery and many other things that I could name but they make me taste something in my mouth that was in my stomach half a second ago.


Yes, gaming IS too expensive. And worse than that, it doesn't have to be.

Video Game Idea: Fallout 4.

Yep, you supposed I'd update on Tuesday or Thursday. Nope, tonight you're getting your content a mere few hours after the RPG update. Mainly because it kind of links in. You need to know all that stuff before I can lay down my ideas for Fallout 4.

Basically, I'm updating the currency.

This is the humble bottlecap. It's the currency in the Fallout universe and I want to shake things up a bit. Make them a little bit more Arr-Pee-Ghee-ish.

That's why I would like to put in Red Bottlecaps, Blue Bottlecaps, Green Bottlecaps and Black Bottlecaps.

Red Bottlecaps are the main currency, used to buy weapons, ammo, food, stimpaks and other miscellaneous items.

Blue Bottlecaps are uncommon and are used to unlock stat challenges. Now, your character has one hundred stat challenges that are randomly unlocked at the beginning of their playthrough. There's no indication of which ones they have until they've completed them. Upon completing them, the character gets a stat bonus. Here are some examples:

RADSISTENCE

"Kill 50/100/250/500 Feral Ghouls and gain 0.5/1/1.5/2% Radiation Resistance."

FORESIGHT

"Explore 10/25/50/100 locations and gain 1/2/3/4% Bonus Critical Hit Damage"

THE HARDY ENDURE

"Break 20/40/80 limbs and gain 3/6/9% Physical Damage Resistance"

FIREFIGHTER

"Get shot 1000/2000/4000/8000 times and gain 2/4/6/8% Weapon Damage Resistance"

Basically, your character throws five blue bottlecaps into a large hole/statwell/magical dumpster/whatever and they unlock a stage of a stat challenge. Note that I said stage. If there are five thousand stat challenges (Perfectly do-able, they could be anything from shooting two-headed cows with submachine guns or picking up washing-up powder.) then the player needs to have (4,900 x 4 x 5) 98,000 of these blue bottlecaps to unlock. Well, that's if there weren't infinite stages. Can you see the pattern in the above stat challenges? Yeah, they could just continue that way forever. I think that would be neat.

Onto Green Bottlecaps.

Green Bottlecaps are rare and allow you to purchase weapon mods with a fun little system included. All weapon mods are free, but useless. You have to choose HOW MANY Green Bottlecaps you wish to spend on the mod which will determine its power. Lets say you get three Green Bottlecaps in each segment of the game/30 minute dungeon battle or whatever. If you saved up a hundred and sank them all into a sniper rifle scope, then you could snipe an enemy two hundred miles away. They'd despawn before you could collect the loot but, you know, RPG. Do what you want. Freedom. You could sink them all into a submachine gun extended magazine and have a horrifyingly overpowered gun that almost never needs reloading. Or put them all into a flashlight/laser scope that becomes so powerful that it melts faces. Oh and you can now mod clothes. Want to run around in pajamas? Great, sink all those green caps into damage resistance and it'll just be as good as armour. Who cares if it doesn't make sense? RPG! Freedom!

And Black Bottlecaps.

Black Bottlecaps are VERY rare and can offer any of the following.

- A free random perk (Which you usually get by spending your talent points you get from levelling up.)

-Pointless but rare and often hilarious pieces of clothing like a Mankini or a Viking Helmet with a base stat bonus that can also be modified.

- A huge bonus to a random skill.

- Keys to access several hidden parts of the map (SUPER rare.)

-Exclusive weapons.

Also, you can exchange Red Bottlecaps/Blue Bottlecaps/Green Bottlecaps at Merchants. They won't always be the same and will vary according to time and settlement so it's a good idea to check multiple settlements to try and get the best bargains or you could try and beat the market by buying low and trading high. However, you cannot barter your way to more Black Bottlecaps. If you find a SINGLE one, every single NPC is instantaneously hostile towards you and if they manage to kill you, you will respawn without the Black Bottlecap. You must find the randomly allocated place to exchange the Black Bottlecap which will change with every game. Pretty neat. Oh and I also had a great idea for different modes after you complete the game/main storyline.

Options to change the enemy level difficulty from scaling to area based. 

If you encounter an enemy, it is automatically scaled to a level close to yours in Fallout. Some players prefer areas with loads of difficult enemies and areas with not so many difficult enemies. I enjoy games which do that because once I get my ass kicked by the difficult enemies, I can go back to earlier spots to completely steamroll enemies and take my anger out. Always fun. For serious.

The game should also have more recipes. Everyone liked the Deathclaw Hand, Nuka-Grenades and Rock-It Launchers. Why not do some schematics for clothing? And traps you can set for enemies? Why not make all of the useless environmental clutter like irons/tea trays/empty cans/bottles useful? Hell, why not make the game so that EVERY object has a use?

I'd also like to introduce Locked Junkboxes. Locked Junkboxes are scattered all over the place and are replenished every week. (Real time, not game time, reset your console's clock and the game will notice and say bad things about your mom or something.) 

You can buy keys for a hundred caps that will open the junkboxes that might contain packets of drain cleaner and a mop or a useful gun/piece of clothing. (Previous Fallout games have had hundreds of thousands of junk items. There's never exactly a shortage of mundane items.) 

Oh and the option to move bottlecaps around characters would be great too. If I complete the game, I'd like the option to transfer my money over and start again.

Finally, make player housing have some sort of impact. I want to be able to make strange labs/research stations/crazy and usable bits of furniture/arenas for captured bandits.

This. This would be my ideal Fallout 4.

Video Game Discussion: The Ideal RPG.

So with Fallout 4 on the horizon (C'mon, a website and Bethesda's Twitter officially mentioning a surprise in two days.) I'd like to talk to you about ar-pee-jhees. Now the RPG is a very shy and often misunderstood genre of videogame. Next to the standard FPS and Action-Adventure, the RPG sits at the bottom of the stairwell next to RTS games that are literally hanging on to the corroding staircase by their fingertips and screaming.

90% of the people reading this do not know what RTS stands for. That is a statistical fact.

So the RPG can be defined by three single points.

Point One: Emphasis on Character Customization. (Aesthetic or otherwise.)
Point Two: Strong Exploration/Story Building/Non-Linear path progression.
Point Three: Experience Points/Levels/Abilities.

This is barebones. If you have those in a game, your game is a sandbox game.
But let's take it a step forward for the clandestine among my readers. Here are three MORE points that will help distinguish an even more devout RPG game.

Point Four: Character Customization that affects abilities/combat skills.
Point Five: Unlimited exploration through the use of random/procedural generation.
Point Six: Levels outside of Levels/Player experience/Custom abilities.

This is an RPG.

At its heart, RPG's offer freedom. Point four is a continuation of point one. Point five is a continuation of point two and point six is a continuation of point three.

Above is the classic RPG, Dwarf Fortress. Or to give it its full name: 

Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress

Not the best name anyone's ever come up with.

If you look at this image and go "That's not an RPG! That's a bunch of pixels! Skyrim is an RPG! RPG's are new things that have only been around since 2011! Charlie has no idea what he's talking about!" then please click the little white "x" in the top corner of your screen.  I do not need such tainted site traffic such as yourself.

Dwarf Fortress has

-Permadeath.

-Procedurally generated universes, text and characters.

Now let's talk about subsections of RPG's.

Roguelikes: Roguelikes are tricksy mistresses. They offer procedural or random levels and often if you die then you have to start the entire game all over again. It's massive in Japan and remains in relative obscurity in every other market. Well, sort of. You may not know it, but you see hallmarks of roguelikes everywhere. For example:

Borderlands and Borderlands 2. Which I think, before you get incredibly angry at me, is more of an RPG than Skyrim.

Borderlands has:

-Exploration

- Levels/Abilties/Levels outside of Levels

I should explain Levels outside of Levels. In Borderlands 2 there's something called a "Badass Rank" and you get Badass Points if you do certain things like "Kill 100 Bandits" or "Open 1000 boxes" or "Look through 10 telescopes" and the list is endless. When you get a certain amount of points, you get a token that you can use to upgrade your stats by a small amount. Because the number of points you need to get a token increases and the skill increase becomes smaller as you continue to play, you have a "Levels outside of levels system." which is just a regular leveling system. But upgraded so it's technically unlimited.

Now I may as well talk about "Player Experience" whilst I'm here.

Player experience is something different to experience points (Exp/Levelling/Upgrades) which set it apart.

In Borderlands 2, Corrosive weapons melt armoured enemies and machines, electric weapons bring down enemies or machines with shields and fire weapons bring down enemies with health. The game has pre-requisites and YOU, the player, have to learn them. 

If you think you've never played anything like this before, then think about Pokemon. Grass, Fire, Water? Same thing. Same ballgame. Randomised wild Pokemon encounters too. You can nickname Pokemon and are encouraged to play with them in some form. Pokemon is technically an RPG.

So that's Roguelikes. 

Next we have MMORPG's or MUD which we won;t waste time on. Christ, I spent half my teenage life on Warcraft. Tactical Role-Playing games or RTS's (Real-Time Strategy) Games which include Civilisation, The Sims, Simcity and perhaps League Of Legends/DOTA 2

Action/Shooter RPG's which include Zelda, Final Fantasy, Diablo and all point and clicks and games like Half-Minute Hero.

The difference is that these RPG's are prone to include:

Choices and Consequences: Fable and Elder Scrolls.

RTS Elements. Sometimes the two go hand in hand.

A story involving mythos, end-of-the-world, save the princess etc.

I've just realised that Super Mario is umbrella'ed under RPG. What is life.

So those are all types of different RPG's.

The most RPGest RPG will have the following six points. If it has the next three, it is the god of the RPG's.

Point Seven: TOTAL character customisation.

Point Eight: ENDLESS exploration.

Point Nine: UNLIMITED player development.

So the final RPG will just kind of be a reflection of life. It must have total character customisation that has no definitive character end, endless exploration using more than procedural/random scripts and somehow add in extra landmass and new art assets on request and unlimited levelling, which I suppose Borderlands 2 has achieved.

In reality, the perfect RPG is a goal that will never be met. It is a goal that is being stretched towards, however. And the most stretchiest are the closest to calling themselves RPG's.

Tune in next time when I'll be showcasing my Fallout 4 ideas!

Video Game News: Xbox None

So I've found this wonderful piece of news about the Xbox One that I wish to share with you all today whilst extending a welcome to whomever is reading this blog from Indonesia.

So, the Xbox One has been released and everything's going peachy (Apart from all the chewed up discs, but that's for another day.) but the console does not function.

No, it does not function. Straight out of the box, it does not function.

Once you connect to the internet and apply a patch, you can play. If you do not have an internet connection....

There it is. This is what you've spent £429 on. A big, colonial, brick. It may have fancy logos but that's what you've purchased. A brick.

The Xbox One cannot play games unless you apply the hotfix via USB or internet connection.

No other product in the history of time has done that.

No iPad, No iPod, No Laptop, No TV, No Nintendo product, No Sony product.

Nothing. Ever. At all.

And I don't care about the people who'll go "Oh, just update it at a friend's house." or "Well this is the 21st century, you should have a reliable internet connection despite statistics showing that it's hard to maintain one." because that just isn't the point, is it? The console does not work as a standalone product. 

Bottom. Line.

That is a 100% indisputable failure rate.

Forget the marginal 0.4% of PS4's that don't work. I mean, who cares about 1/1000? 

Not a single Xbox One works. Not a single Xbox One has been sold legitimately without fields of lies and marketing. Not a single Xbox One will be bought by people who are sane and rational humans.

Video Game Review: Sleeping Dogs

Okay, let's discuss Square Enix's open-world action-adventure game called Sleeping Dogs released in August 2012.

It's very much GTA: Hong Kong, only with emphasis on fighting mechanics. In the first tutorial, you are shown how to counter enemies when they wind up a punch and flash red, how to grapple enemies and throw them into dumpsters, turbines and, on occasion, the ocean. It also has combos for when you mash the attack button and heavy attacks for after you've finished mashing and hold the button down.
In terms of combat, this game gives you a choice of three different food platters and then leaves the room. You're encouraged to mix and match to get more exp, but you're generally left to find out what works for you.
I like that.
Most games will offer you a choice and then hover around the table and it decides to either move some of the plates away, to force you to try out new things, or just beats you around the head if you so much as look at something other than what you're offered.

You will not find better combat in an open world sandbox game. You will not. You have already failed.

Another thing it does well. COLLECTIBLES.

Get all the 11 Jade Statues and increase your melee! Health shrines! For every five you find, you get a health boost! Hack all the cameras! Find all the lock boxes which contain money and items! Beat all the fight clubs/martial arts classes! It's collectible heaven. Seriously. I got this game when it came out and I still haven't found everything. There is no such thing as too many collectibles. In any game. The more there is, the better.

Now enough about that, let's get playing!

Tonight's playthrough is sponsored by Smarties Mix. 

Not even a Smarties bag. Just a full on industrial-size "this-was-meant-for-the-mcdonalds-milkshake-machine-and-not-your-face" Smarties bag. You can tell by the way it has almost no branding.

Because fuck it, if my coronary bursts in my mid-thirties, you may as well all be here to read, support and encourage. I expect nothing less of my dear, dear, readers. I'm shortening my life expectancy by the mouthful, but hey, this is the way gamers are supposed to eat. Like a fucking hamster on methadrone.

So you play as Wei Chen, an undercover police agent (Don't worry, that's totally not a spoiler. It's revealed after literally five minutes of gameplay.) as he tries to infiltrate the notorious Sun On Yee, which is responsible for more organised crime that the sunburn you'd expect it to be causing. It's like the super-Triads, I guess.

Like Super-Aids is to Aids.

I don't particularly know why Wei Chen can mingle with the triads when he seems to have it all upstairs but no member of the triads does. And why does he help them out by murdering other triads? That's not being undercover, that's being a triad and being paid by the police. 

Actually, no, that makes perfect sense. Chen has the best job in the world.

He's also got to deal with his past all coming back, after one of the triads killed his sister, Mimi, by introducing her to illegal substances and stuff. And then the police are all "Aw, be more sneeeeeaky Wei." whenever the police haul his ass in after he's arrested whilst punching up a Yakuza chain gang.

Vehicles are fun too. You can throw your vehicle into chase cars at the touch of a button, perform action highjacks and jump from one car to the other and when you're on your phone and enter a car, you DON'T HAVE TO HANG UP THE PHONE, GODDAMN IT GTA IV, I'M TALKING TO YOU.

Other touches are nice too. Certain clothes give bonuses to mission cash, melee bonuses, gun bonuses and enemies might try and run away if they're the last two standing after a shoot out. Tracking them down and finishing them off is always a joy. A dark, primal, joy which lurks in some farspace in the back of my head.

You can pick up a used copy for £7.99, which makes it a good buy if you still can't afford the fifty quid GTA V which will never go down in price from now until the very end of time, when all consoles cease to exist.

I should mention though, it doesn't have flyable heli's or planes.

Oh well, maybe you'll like the game on the next review, eh?

Video Game Review: GTA: Online Beach Bum Pack

So yeah, Rockstar are giving out freebies left, right and center.

Have a free car in the tutorial mission of multiplayer! Have $500,000, Have a free update pack!

It's almost as if they're going to start charging us incredibly soon and are bracing themselves for it by offering up free things!
No, really, that's totally why this is happening. Nobody gives out nice things just to be nice.

So the update has new cars, boats and camper vans including the BF Bifta Dune Buggy and Bravado Paradise camper.

Combed the beach. Couldn't find any. Despite the fact that everyone else had hundreds.

Two new weapons! The SNS pistol, which is clearly a little bit pre-meditatively implimented because I have all tints already unlocked for some reason, and the broken bottle. Neither of which I can equip. There's seemingly no way to equip items. Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Maybe the game recognizes that I have a better pistol and so will only let me equip that? Who knows.

There's also new shirts and shorts! They're hideous! Yay!

Even Michael doesn't like it, and Michael dresses horribly anyway.

One thing I did notice is when I went to the gun store to get my free gun, I got thirty free bullets along with it, which somehow ended up in my combat pistol w/ suppressor/ext. mag and flashlight.

I then swerved round the corner, shot a person through his windshield with a couple o' slugs and collected a cool $3000. Then I robbed some stores, stumbled upon a $5000 car for Simeon and pretty much cashed out.

So I bought some new threads and a secondary car. Just an Albany. I can't bring my sports car anywhere. Too many players with gasoline cans and sticky bombs and whilst I get a replacement if it 'splodes, I can't afford it.

Time to suit up.

And car up.

Then I went to the pier to look for some more buggies only to have a group of buggies run me over repeatedly on the white hot sands. Aren't people lovely? That was a rhetorical question, obviously. 

So I just took my anger out on a nearby bench by punching it. Just a little.

Maybe just a little more than a little.

That's all for today!

Also, I'm stopping the GTA:O stories for a while, so we can concentrate on some game reviews. Starting tomorrow. Also, nice to see the blog stats going interesting again. "sveiki" to our reader from Latvia this week. Additionally, what would you guys like to see me do a review on? Be sure to comment below. If you can. I'm not sure if that section even works, to be honest. If not, I'll just choose something myself then. Ciao!

Video Game News: Don't Believe Everything You Read. Especially This.

So the PS4 had a pretty successful launch, with over one million units sold in North America alone on the first day.

Times it by two or three and that's how many are going to go out in Japan or Europe in the following two weeks.

Even Microsoft gave Sony a stiff nod with their message, congratulating them.

Here's the image, doctored by 4Chan to make fun of the red line of death and the fact that the console wobbles slightly.

Goofballs, all of you.

And there have been generally favourable reviews outside of Amazon.com.

Over 1,000 5 * reviews on Amazon.

But then you notice 550 1 * reviews.

I've been skimming through the reviews and they all seem to more-or-less say that the console was DOA and wouldn't function at all when plugged in.

Are all these reviews legitimate? Probably not. There are going to be a couple of people simply decrying Sony. Are they all fake? Well judging by the 340 people that have backed the most unfavourable review of the console on the site, it would seem escapist to do so. There's clearly something there.

Generally, there is an estimated 0.4% of consoles that will brick up. I think of it as 0.5% because it's easier to mention in conversation that one in every one thousand PS4's won't work because it makes me sound less like someone who wears taped-up glasses, lives with his mother, hates everything, spends all day discussing console specs and has chronic asthma.

Obviously I do not want to sound like that.

I do not have asthma and my vision is perfect.

So there's this 0.4% figure being thrown around but yet around 40% of people are reporting broken consoles on Amazon. Doesn't really add up, does it?

I don't know what to believe. There's literally no way to discern what the truth is, given the fact that you do not need to have a Playstation 4 in order to make a review of the machine on Amazon.com.

There are other interesting pieces of information, such as the failure of both Kotaku and IGN's Playstation Quatro's. (However, they did have more than one and some worked fine.)

All in all though, there's no way to tell whether there are serious design faults until it launches worldwide late in the month.

Until then, just avoid the debate. Because all the information is conflicted. Best not to get involved until the dust settles down and we can see the machine in action, hear about returns that have happened locally and problems friends are having.

Then get the console when it seems the sensible option to you, hopefully at a cheaper price with a larger launch library.

Video Game Idea: Mr Clicker

First up, thanks for over 750 views. Thank you to someone in South Korea tuning in this week. Thank you to the people who are somehow reading this on BlackBerry's. Blog data is fantastic.

Anyway, here's an idea I had.

It's a button. Just a button that comes in a little coloured plastic bag or blister pack. Whatever looks nicer.

Okay, so it's an almost entirely online product. A merchandised e-game, if you will.

You may not have heard of Cookie Clicker, but if you have, you may know where I'm going with this.

Basically it's called Mr Clicker and it's a button. Just a button.

That's all it is. In pretty tortoiseshell packaging Once you buy the button, you get a code with the pack which allows you to make an account on www.mrclicker.com or whatever URL is available.

You then create an avatar that looks like yourself

Obviously I'm using an Xbox Live one as an example.

Then you enter the game. In the game, your character will walk up to an on-screen button and stand there.

When you press your button, the character on screen presses the button and you get a token.

Once you get five tokens, you will be able to "buy" the ability to make the virtual you click the button independent of whether you actually click the button or not.

It will continue to rack up if you are not on the site. Pushing the button, however, will cause your score to rack up faster.

So kids will be taking it everywhere. And they'll look totally friggin' odd. Just standing there and compulsively pushing a button. It might look sad, but I bet you it'll create shock advertising.

But here's where it gets evil. (Because I work in retail and like to think of marketing ploys daily.)

There are prizes for the top scorers of every month as well as the highest scoring weekly.

In addition to this, kids can spend button tokens on customizing their own avatar, changing the virtual background behind the virtual button and other options. For example, you can save up a thousand clicks and "buy" a virtual helper who walks on to the screen and starts pressing your button, bringing your clicks per second from a measly one to a godly two. Soon, kids will be comparing CpS in the playground (Clicks per second.) "Ha! I have +5 and you only have +3!"  And my god, kids are competitive.

Maybe if you save up two thousand you can get a helper who does it even faster and is a different colour. And if you save up three thousand you can get one who does it EVEN FASTER and is another different colour.

More customization options would roll out every couple of days, naturally. "Limited edition item! Only 500 clicks for this purple trilby! Gone tomorrow! Show off to your friends!"

It'd be truly interesting to see if kids buy items that help them click faster or spend tokens on items that accessorize a pointless avatar.

1st wave would be the buttons. They're all red, cheap as can be, in varying shapes. Kids are encouraged to collect them all.

2nd wave would be blue ones of varying shapes. Of course, every click on a green one is worth two clicks. Got a red one from the previous series? Great! You can connect it and get 3 TOKENS PER CLICK.

Connect it with your friends and get even MORE tokens!

Just imagine the kids, all connecting their buttons in long rows and clicking like mad. What a sight. 

Again, shock advertising.

3rd wave is green buttons. You can see where this is going. Three tokens per click. Connect them to a blue AND a red one to start a combo chain! 9 tokens per click! That way, people will continue to buy older sets. Which won't need to go down in price, importantly.

Oh and the blue one is double the price of the red and the green is triple the price of the red. Despite the fact that they cost the same to produce. And you know they'll sell. Once they're ingrained in the market, they call the shots.

4th wave is purple buttons which work slightly differently and can be pressed once a day to get a cosmetic bonus for your avatar as well as foil packs of cards with codes on them. Each code would unlock backgrounds and accessories which veteran kids could spend extra click tokens on if they're getting bored and can't find anything to use their clicks on.

Finally, kids are encouraged to share pictures of their avatar on Facebook and Twitter. You get an extra fifty tokens for doing it on Facebook and an extra twenty for doing it on Twitter. Free marketing at no cost and keeps the kids happy.

THIS IS THE BEST IDEA EVER AND WOULD BE THE BEST SELLING TOY OF ALL TIME. AND IT'S JUST A SMALL PLASTIC DISC THAT INHERENTLY DOES NOTHING.

Have you got any toy ideas? Share them with me in the comments below, or on my Facebook.

Have a good afternoon, everyone!