The weekend had come and gone, Monday rolling round again with all the inevitability of a PSN update from HiddenAway, and as the blogsters began to surface through the fug some took umbrage with P-K1ng, testicles seemingly intact, and his frankly objectionable proclamation of it being a glorious day. It’s Monday, man, nothing glorious about it unless you’re unemployed.
Of particular note this week was the bittersweet returns from (separate) honeymoons of makar27 and Sorbicol who, faced with 600 work emails upon his arrival back at work, bravely decided to ignore them all and join us on the Box. Following up this shocking display of work-shyness, he also managed to be two hours late for work on Wednesday. Ahh, the life of the newly-wed. Well-played that man, and congratulations to both on your conjugals! That was the happiest day of your life, i.e. it’s all down hill from there. Even childbirth doesn’t cut it, “Depraved and Barbaric” as TonyHayers put it. I’m sure he knows.
Fortunately for both of them, Umboros showed him that marriage doesn’t mean gaming days are over, as despite it being his anniversary he still managed to get in some games of SF4 whilst his romantic M&S meal for two was heating in the oven. We can only hope they were fighting each other and not that he was ignoring her whilst getting his arse handed to him by online opponents. However, BarryEans needs to take a leaf out of Umboros’ book and remove himself from underneath his wife’s thumb, as he admitted he wouldn’t be joining any blog games of Grand Slam Tennis on the Wii because his wedding anniversary was on Thursday and he “won't remain married for very long if [he ends] the celebrations early to play tennis online”. Come on dude, Man up.
Unusually for GamesBlog, this week saw plenty of talk about games, with many bloggers having spent their weekends storming beaches in newly released Battlefield 1943, and despite there being a few grievances (the squad creation system, the unflyable planes and the voice comms), the overall reception has been positive. Chubster was his usual hyperbolic self, proclaiming,
Wake Island (Best game map ever? One of, surely?)
Wrong. That award goes to CS_Assault. And in the fine tradition of the Graun’s unbiased journalism, we have this from Zelos,
I just tried the BF1943 demo. It's not bad but they really have chosen the worst maps from BF1942...
After the dust had settled on the sands of Iwo Jima, unflyable planes, undrivable tanks and unwieldy sniper rifles scattered across the virtual world, occasional poster Pokemon invited us all to comment on which games we thought were the hardest we’d played, after revealing he’d been unable to unlock any achievements on Metal Slug 3. Stand out suggestions seemed to be Gitaroo Man, the original Discworld game, Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins, almost anything on the Spectrum and Rhythm Tendoku on Gameboy Advance, “because it's in Japanese and trying to work out what to do is frankly impossible at times”. CommodoreSchmidlapp there with that pearl of wisdom.
Unfortunately the camaraderie was short-lived after a throwaway comment from PirateCaptain, proclaiming that he enjoyed the dialogue of the GTA games, led into a full-blown discussion about which GTA was the best, why IV was crap, why VC was the best because of the music and the styling, no, why SA was the best because it had a mountain, no, why IV wasn’t that bad after all actually… And I’ll leave it there, except to say…will you be buying GTA V?
A few bloggers finally caught up with the times and saw Transformers 2 over the weekend (McBegbie with the best summation I’ve seen for a while, “Michael Bay films should be avoided at all costs”). But generally Chatterbox reactions have been positive. Giant Transforming Robots…you can’t really go wrong. Game talk and film talk seem to be things we do quite well on the box and the big releases this week included Brüno (GamesBlog quick caption review: Not as good as Borat) and Harry Potter. I hadn’t realised it was two and a half bloody hours long. Not that I was going to see it but damn, that’s almost a Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately McBegbie blew all film review credibility by admitting that he’d been to see it through choice and then complained about the plot. Although admittedly removing the Half Blood Prince storyline from a film called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince does seem a little nonsensical. But IT’S A KIDS FILM. Enough said. Hermione though? ('her-me-uh-ne'? her-my-uh-ne?' 'her-me-own'? ‘hermy-owny’? Much discussion ensued) Needless to say bloggers agreed she’s matured well, though not fast enough for Limni.
Games and films are all well and good, but less familiar territory for the ‘box is the world of fashion. Whether it was just the release of Brüno that spurred us on, but Lazybones felt he needed some advice on t-shirts, feeling less secure working them in his old age. Polo shirts, string vests and Shirts (rejected for their need to be ironed) were all mooted, but CraggyIsland summed my thoughts up best with,
“Is it really a good idea to be asking that question here? You’re going to end up in the upper-body equivalent of the Chino pant.”
For those who don’t like to rely on Hadley Freeman for their fashion advice, games t-shirts and band t-shirts (with tour dates) are big NOs in the GamesBlog fashion world but a smart t-shirt and jeans can be enjoyed by a man of any age. Though if you’re developing a middle-aged paunch you may want to go with dark fabrics and heavier grade cottons.
Following on from the previous week’s cheerful discussion about serious medical conditions, on Tuesday cameroon decided to give us all a scare by admitting to a DIY based head trauma that he’d suffered the previous night and how he was still feeling ‘doped up’ that morning, a condition to which he is no stranger. Ever the concerned friends, numerous bloggers advised him to go see a doctor. All that is except onedaveofmany, who instead wondered how we’d actually know if something tragic befell any chatterboxer. One has to wonder if this hasn’t happened already, with many already having disappeared without a trace. Surely all of them can’t have succumbed to vigorous IT based work policies? Numerous bloggers of old were then trotted out, along with spurious and possibly libellous suggestions for their demise. Luckily Lazybones has a solution should he ever shuttle off this mortal coil without a computer and internet connection at hand to alert us all,
If I die I'm going to push my login details into someone's hand. Lazybones will live on ...
Like a blog version of Ace Rimmer (without the catchphrase) or the Dalai Lama (without the Buddhism), as others saw fit to point out. Fortunately for us all, the doctor confirmed that cam’s head trauma was nothing serious, so he used it as an excuse to avoid going to the gym instead. Still, it was a better excuse than missing it because of the two toasties he had for lunch on Wednesday.
Thoughts of our own mortality turned into concerns about blog acquaintances struck down by the dreaded swine flu, with Bosses, colleagues, colleagues’ children/wives and other assorted tenuous relationships to the blog having come down with the porcine equivalent of manflu. P-K1ng was seen to tempt Fate itself by asking for opinions on the Pepper Pig game for the DS, for his ‘little un’. Fortunately one cannot catch diseases through a blog or, as, as Craggyisland pointed out, we would all have been joining Tony in his frequent courses of antibiotics last year. Painful peeing? Indeed.
Continuing with the morbid theme, special commiserations go to John Hartson who it was revealed had a really bad cancer-ridden week. Balls, Brains and Lungs. Worth repeating Goody’s advice to all bloggers to have a feel for lumps later. Better yet, have someone else do it for you.
Quote of the Week:
“Childbirth- our last sprog born on our bed, I had his head in my hands at the delivery tunnel just before the paramedics arrived…
Had to buy a new mattress the next day. Messy business getting a wean out. “
Mollocate gives us the facts on home birth.
NB/ This Best Of could have been longer, but I’d reached the word limit and to be honest, I had to use industrial strength bleach expunge most of Thursday and Friday from my mind.
Limni
15 Jul 09, 3:03pm (about 21 hours ago)
Hermione - I saw an interview with her, she reckons the day after her 18th birthday, she went to a red carpet event and there were photographers trying to slide under the parked car to get knicker shots for the Sport.
She was appalled to be considered fair game. I was appalled they'd missed a full day.
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