Okay, So It’s Not Quite This Bad…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m an MS fanboy at heart (when it comes to consoles, anyway), and I appreciate that it’s the busiest time of the year for Live, so I should be quite forgiving. Not in this case, though, as it seems Microsoft have been slacking off, and, surprise surprise, thanks to the popularity of the 360 this Christmas, account signup (as well as a few other things) is well-and-truly broken.

How do I know that Microsoft are slacking off? Well, this Bungie weekly update gives us a hint:

“…there won’t be a Holiday playlist in the vein of our fun Halloween list – the reason being that nobody is around here or at Xbox Live to make sure it doesn’t assplode.”

Excuse me? There’s nobody around at Xbox Live to make sure it doesn’t die a horrible death? At the time of year when it’s going to be inundated with new account signups, and people just wanting to chill and play some games over the festive season?

This, Microsoft, is very poor form indeed.

But how does this rant come about? I’ve been an Xbox Live member for donkey’s, after all, and I don’t generally play online a lot anyway. Well, you see, I got a new memory unit for Christmas, and promptly managed to leave it (with my profile on) round a friend’s house, meaning that I couldn’t access Xbox Live. No problem, the account recovery tool is here to save me, so I decide to recover my account onto my HDD.

But oh noes! Error message! Account Singup is temporarily unavailable!

No matter. I manage to retrieve the memory unit, plug it in, and…

Oh.

The profile on there is out-of-date, as the “new” nonexistent copy I downloaded replaces it.

This was yesterday morning, and I’ve been trying to recover my account ever since. True, MS have acknowledged the issues on the Xbox Live Support site, and when the status changed today to “up and running”, I decided to give it another go. And you know what?

It failed.

Again.

On the bright side, I immediately went back in and tried again, and it seems to be recovering – albeit incredibly slowly (slower than usual, and that’s quite a feat). Hopefully it’ll make it to the end and this will just be a distant memory that I can laugh about with my grandkids. For millions of kids all over the world who unwrapped their lovely new 360 on Christmas morning, though, and haven’t been able to sign up for an account ever since, this is going to leave a very, very sour taste in their mouths.

Microsoft, how could you be so stupid?

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[Update]

I did finally get my account to recover, but now I’ve lost all my savegames! I’m hoping for a RRoD next just to top the weekend off. Perhaps it is time I got a Wii.

Here we have the first gameplay footage of Capcom’s upcoming sequel-tastic fighter, Street Fighter IV, courtesy of 1UP and Gamevideos.com.

Do I like it?

Well, no, not really.

Ho hum. Does anyone else have an opinion on the general look and feel of this?

Big In Japan: “Every Party” Is As Mad As A Badger – A Very, Very Mad One.

Back at the time of the Xbox 360 launch (well, shortly afterwards, actually), I decided that I just had to have one. I’d been a happy Xbox owner for a couple of years and knew that Microsoft were going to go on to bigger and better things. I also knew that I wanted the premium pack with the hard disk, but I didn’t have a great deal of money.

No matter, though, as Microsoft had failed to conquer Japan, and there were plenty of unloved brand new Japanese Xboxes floating around. I picked one up on eBay for about £50 less than a UK model – a wise decision in hindsight, as I’ve never had to pay more than £30 for a game (although I do generally have to wait 4 days for the postage from Japan), and it came with the spiffy little media remote.

It also means that I can play some Japanese games that the rest of the world can’t. Not RPGs or anything interesting, as I’m not really into them, but crazy stuff like Aquazone (an insanely detailed aquarium simulator), and one of my new favourite games, Every Party. I should probably point out at this moment that I do not speak or read any Japanese whatsoever, not that I think it would aid in my understanding of this game in any way, shape, or form anyway.

This Game Is Fairly Self-Explanatory. For A While.

So, from what I have gathered in the last 3 days playing it, the main meat of Every Party seems to be a giant board game, set on the surrealist streets of some imaginary Japanese cities. Players have spinners which decide how many turns they can take, and spinners with special characteristics (like being able to move other players around, win instantly for a steep price, or just have more chance of getting a particular number) can be collected.

Also, gold coins are picked up and traded for stuff in the game, and squares that are guarded by a cast of crazy characters can also be won, which can penalise other players for landing on them. I chuckle under my breath when I say penalise, as the squares do indeed look like a penis – albeit one with a happy face. Fortunately for you, dear reader, I can’t find a screenshot of it at this precise moment in time, but rest assured that I am still looking.

Anyway, every so often, sometimes related to another event and sometimes seemingly at random, a minigame will appear which has all of the players doing battle against each other for prizes. The minigames are really well thought-out and varied, much like the excellent WarioWare games but a little bit more complex, and a bit more insane. There’s also a multiplayer mode which allows up to four players to battle each other head-on in a succession of minigames, but you’ll want to unlock the more interesting ones in the main game first.

As a perfect example of the madness of this game and the sheer lack of understanding I have of it, I present to you the minigame pictured below. It features what appears to be a crazed paedophile in leopard-print hotpants, and some kind of bee helmet, chasing terrified children around his garden. If you survive to the end without getting caught, it’s revealed to you that his businessman neighbour was watching over the fence all along, smiling silently.

Don’t Let The Bad Man Catch You!

Along a similar theme, at certain parts of the game an old lady will appear and, depending on which option you choose, will either take you away or get arrested by the police. In fact, a lot of this game seems to feature adults doing bizarre things to children, which leaves me to ponder whether there isn’t something I’ve missed here.

Ahem.

Every Party also features Xbox Live functionality, although I’ll be buggered if I can work out how it’s supposed to work. It has lots of options and messages in Japanese and can never seem to connect to anything. Still, it looks, er, quite comprehensive, and I don’t know if I want to be playing against people who actually understand what’s going on anyway.

Digging through the game’s menus we discover a character customisation mode, and a shop where we can spend our in-game winnings. Also there are high score tables and some pictures of all the wacky characters we have met along the way – some of these can actually be used as players in the game. There’s also a single player story mode which is identical to the multiplayer mode, but with nonsensical cutscenes every so often which advance the, err, story.

In conclusion, this game is a lot of fun, even moreso as I don’t understand a single word of what’s going on. It’s easy to get into and has a lot of customisation and depth for a simple party game, and as I have proven, you don’t need to be a Japanese speaker to appreciate it. I’ll happily give it 7/10, and it would also be recipient of my personal “Game Of The Year” award if it weren’t for the existence of The Orange Box.

Every Party will have to take the “Crazy Random Japanese Game With Paedos In It Of The Year“ award, then. A very prestigious award indeed, as I’m sure you will agree.

(Screenshots via IGN.com)

I’m willing to bet that this kid is better at Guitar Hero than you. In fact, he’s better at Guitar Hero than pretty much everyone. Here we see the boy wonder only identified as “Ben” and his attempt at Dragonforce’s cheesy lame-fest Through The Fire And Flames on Expert, where he hits a whopping 95% of the notes and scores over 750,000 points. Oh, and did I mention that this kid is only 9 years old?

I’m sure he’ll still be living with his Mum when he’s 39 years old though… </bitter>

As if I hadn’t posted enough Portal-related things already, here’s another one. No idea what the story is behind this, but how could I not enjoy something that combines two of the bestest things in the whole world?

(Via)

Like A Virgin… Touched For The Very First Time…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that owning an iPhone and being hopeless with women are things that go hand-in-hand, but anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that, sadly, it’s a very real possibility. Gadget freaks, after all, don’t necessarily get out much.

Be thankful then for this, rubMyClit, a web-based app that lets iPhone owners practice their lady pleasing skills on a lovingly hand drawn virtual minge, all in the comfort of their own home. There’s also a high score board, to compare your bean-flicking prowess with the rest of the iPhone-owning populace.

Of course, rather than playing with your iPhone, you might be better off getting out and meeting some real women – women who’ll let you touch their lady parts, hopefully. Although I do suggest you don’t try the chat-up line “do you want to play with my iPhone”, as that probably wouldn’t quite cut it.

Not with the type of ladies you actually want to be with, anyway.

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Update: Welcome Reddit users – you sick little puppies! If you like this, you’ll probably like some of our other random game and gadget-related stuff. We do have an *ahem* post archive *ahem* you know…

/shameless plug

My Cake! Finally!!

So little time, so much Orange Box… Over on the “official” Aperture Science homepage, there’s a little Christmas message for Portal fans. It’s not much, but it’s the thought that counts, and the Christmas mix of “Still Alive” makes it well worth the visit.

Also, look at that, sitting on the mantelpiece – it’s my old friend Norm the Gnome!!

I’ve Been Expecting You, Mr. Freeman…

There have been 7 games set inthe Half-Life universe so far (Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, and Portal, in that order) so you’d be forgiven for getting a little confused about the whole story. Hell, I’ve played all of them, some of them multiple times, and even I hadn’t pieced together all the parts of the story. To cut a long story short, this is a tale that makes Halo look like Spot The Dog.

So I was glad to stumble across this site today, which tries to piece together all of the different parts of the story into one coherent whole. Of course, a lot of it is completely open to interpretation, but this is definitely the best attempt I’ve seen yet at trying to make sense of what we’re told and shown in the games. It even manages to fit Portal into the timeline, which may not star Gordon Freeman or the G-Man, but is certainly based in the Half-Life universe, as are Aperture Science (who I believe will have a large part to play in Episode 3, when Gordon should be discovering the dark secrets of their long-lost freight ship, the Borealis).

Aaaanyway, this is good for a read if you’ve played all of the games through and want to make sense of everything that’s happened, or if you just want to know what Half-Life is all about. It’s been a long time since the original, after all.

Oh, and it goes without saying that you shouldn’t read it if you haven’t played all of the games yet, as the story will be well-and-truly spoiled for you.

I’m Talking Old-Old-Oooold Skool

10 years ago, waaaay, way back in 1997, 3D Realms announced a sequel to their most popular game of the time. The name of that game was Duke Nukem 3D, and the sequel was to be known as Duke Nukem Forever – the gaming world was, understandably, excited.

Fast forward to today, however, and we still don’t have our DNF – and as any good geek knows, 10 years is a very long time in the world of tech. It’s a very long time in anyone’s money, to be fair, and The Duke Nukem Forever List have been tracking the world-changing events that have taken place since DNF was announced.

Everything from the launch of every single Radeon and GeForce graphics card ever made, to the speed of the average home internet connection increasing tenfold is recorded in this fascinating and comprehensive list. We’ve also had the launch of the iPod, every single P2P file-sharing program (including the original Napster), and 5 whole releases of Windows.

Yeah. 10 years is that long – and still no new Duke!

I think Theremins are awesome, and I also happen to love the nectar of the gods, tea. So there wasn’t much chance that this excellent tea-based example wasn’t going to be featured here on TTB. In fact, this gives me a thought – how long until the first tea-powered computer? Or is that just a waste of good brew?

Video best enjoyed with sound, obviously…