Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism: The Daily Mail

In case you’re still pondering what to nominate for the RR Award for the Most Ridiculous Statement Masquerading As Games Journalism (as if), here’s another couple of entries to add to the list:


“If you were to imagine playing a Sims character within a fantasy adventure full of side missions and surprises you would be heading in the right direction.”

The Daily Mail’s James O’Brien reinvents the action-RPG genre in his review of Fable 2. A game which, frankly, is second only to Braid in terms of attracting reviews consisting of two thousand words of waffling bollocks that abjectly fails to tell the reader about the game in anything approaching an entertaining or informative way. COUGH*EUROGAMER*COUGH*EDGE*COUGH


“Bikes, when you think about it, should lend themselves to video games more readily than cars – they are smaller and accelerate faster.”

The Daily Mail’s James O’Brien barely manages to stop short of adding “and they go brrrroooom” to his review of MotoGP 08.

***

We’ll be announcing the first RR Award winners soon. The voting will stay open for all categories until they’re individually announced, but we’re going to leave the Most Overrated Pile Of Shite Award until last so you have chance to vote for November’s releases. Like, say, Mirror’s Edge.

Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism: Far Cry 2

“You have two options. You can leave her to die in pain. Or you can euthanize her. You put a gun to her mouth. She’s in so much pain she practically swallows it whole. She wants you to kill her. So you do.”

PC Gamer’s Tim Edwards describes the fate of the sub-ed who was the first to read his review of Far Cry 2. In very short. Sentences.

More On The PC Zone Walkout

Original story

Considering how long we’ve sat on this story, we’ve been surprised at how few people actually knew about it. So, here are some more details for you.

First of all, if your life’s ambition is to edit an ailing mag that’s being ground down to sawdust, you’re in luck as Future hasn’t found a replacement for Porter. Considering he’s leaving on October 17th, this could potentially be quite awkward for them. Well, we say awkward, but we really mean lucrative, as considering key staffers aren’t being replaced (including Ed Zitron due to centralisation), it’s not a huge stretch to envisage the mag being swallowed whole by the Future corporate whore machine.

The one and only new guy brought in to replace the four writers that have left is a chap called David Brown who’ll be getting whipped for peanuts alongside the only remaining writer, Steve Hogarty. Curiously, Hogarty doesn’t seem particularly upset about the walkout.

In summary, Zitron, Sefton and the Art Editor have gone, and Porter and Blyth depart October 17th. They’re having a party. Wouldn’t you?

By the way, while you’re reading this story on certain other sites, you’ll have to add the “Source: RAM Raider” part yourself, as not all of them can be arsed to include it.

Walkout At PC Zone

Five of PC Zone’s staff, including its editor and art guy, have finally tired of Future’s bullshit. Disc Editor Ed Zitron and Chief-Editor-In-Chief-Editor-In-Chief Jamie Sefton have already walked (Zitron responded to a job offer in New York, and Sefton's contract was up), and Editor Will Porter and Best Games Journalist This Country Has Jon Blyth are following. The reason? Take your pick:

The page count and budget have both been slashed. Again. This means the staff writers are going to have to take on more work for the same money, and won’t be able to assign as much out to freelancers. Is this saving being passed onto the readers? Is it fuck – the lower page count means they’re getting less for their money.

The publication frequency is going up to 14 issues a year. Again, this equates to more work for the team, but they’ll still be getting the same money. It also means the regular readers will have to pay for one extra issue a year to get the same amount of content.

The hardware section is written by the same guy who does PC Format’s and PC Gamer’s bit. Once upon a time, PC Zone used to have a reputation as the daring wild child with strong opinions that had no truck with Gamer’s wishy-washy sixth form philosophising. This has naturally been diluted beyond belief since the mag was bought out by Future, but now that chunks of the mag are going to be written by someone from Gamer, any personality it once had is now warmly dribbling down its inside thigh.

Disc Editor Ed Zitron isn’t being replaced because the cover disc is going to be handled in the same way as hardware – so one guy will be dealing with the coasters for several mags. Again, an opportunity could have been taken here to ditch the disc (which died the day everyone got broadband) and lower the price of the mag. It’s no secret that they cost barely pennies, and are only there to justify the fucking silly prices Future charge.

We’ve been predicting PC Zone’s demise for some time now, but now know that it’s due to keep on running for a while yet. But despite having a special soft spot for the former cool kid, we really wish it had already gone under instead of being centralised, cut-back, sanitised and cheapened by the Future Publishing corporate bland-o-thiser. At least it would have cashed its chips whilst on a relative high, instead of rolling on with none of its talent left, fleecing its three readers month after month until it inevitably slips into the not so great shithouse in the sky.

We wish our best to the dearly departed, and salute them for fucking off away from Future's dick of doom before it rogers them into obscurity.

Dennis Publishing’s legacy is well and truly dead. Does that make you sad?

(Big thanks to our Anonymous Knights)

EDIT: Update posted

Things Cunts Say

It’s fair to say that the true star of the Official Top 50 Games Journalists (And Industry People) 2008 this summer was its partner feature, Things Cunts Say. We’re toddling off for a couple of weeks before we open up the voting for the RAM Raider Awards, so we thought we’d leave you with the complete run down of the diabolically cunty things rattled out by journos who believe their own hype, even when they don’t have any. Memorise this list, because we’re going to be waving it over the heads of all like a turd on a shovel.

Don’t forget to add your own entries in the comments thread at the bottom. But before you do, here’s a brand new entry:

“Here’s something cunts say – anything said by RAM Raider.”

The Anonymous Knight who originally suggested this was quick off the mark. Well done, Anonymous Knight. However, the seven thousand people who suggested it afterwards are bereft of imagination, wit, originality, and – yes – are all cunts.

Now, for the rest of the list:


“… will make you grin.”

Fuck off. We never, EVER, “grin” when playing games. Ever. If you “grin” when you play games, then you need professional help. If you think a game will make your readers “grin”, then you can fuck right off, because you’re a cunt.


“… is a near-religious experience.”

The times we’ve read this in a review reaches into double figures, but it never fails to make us vomit wildly. Religion is where people believe in one or more gods, and involves praying from time to time. Games are things you play and enjoy. THERE IS NO COMMON GROUND BETWEEN THE TWO. If you think there is, then well done, you’re a fucking cunt.


“If you don’t like [insert game title or facet here], then you have no soul.”

This is, without doubt, the cheapest cop out in journalistic history. If the reader doesn’t like the game that you’re so blinkered about you can’t comprehend that other people might not like it, then it means you’ve fucked up the review. It also means that you’re a cunt.


“Teh interweb.”

In a parallel universe, referring to the internet, the net, the web, or the world wide web as the “interweb” is considered to be the height of wit and a demonstration of the writer’s mental aptitude. Likewise, the deliberate misspelling of “the” as “teh” leaves the reader gasping at the braveness of the writer in having the guts to transpose a joke which was never that funny on internet forums into a journalistic piece of writing. However, in the universe we live in, it means you’re an absolute fucking arseholing cunt.


“Here in the office, [worthless anecdote about one of the writer’s colleagues].”

Writer sits at keyboard. Writer can’t think of anything prescient to say about the game he’s supposed to be telling you about. Writer crowbars in an anecdote about another writer on the magazine. Writer sits back and smiles smugly, satisfied that his comments will be appreciated. And they will be appreciated – by the person in the anecdote, the seven other people in the office with him, and the three readers that are so hardcore they cut out the staff photos and stick them to their bedroom walls so they don’t have to bother rolling over when they’re knocking out a sweaty half-hearted wank. To the thousands of other readers who don’t know or care who writes for the mag, the writer will be correctly considered to be an indulgent cunt.


“If you don’t like [game that reviewer has been paid to like, but there’s a remotely slender chance that other people might fucking not], then you just don’t get it.”

Guess what – we don’t like you. Not because we don’t get “it”, but because you’re a cunt.


“I”

Have a look through that pile of paperwork on the floor. Underneath your contract and your commissions, there’s a style guide. What does it say? Does it instruct you to write something witty and informative about the game you’re dealing with? Yes. Does it instruct you to tell the reader about your boring, crappy, shitty life? Does it fuck. So don’t. Because, guess what? That’s right – nobody gives a fuck, because they’re buying a magazine to read about games, not your fucking autobiography. Save it for your blog that nobody reads, or your angsty diary you keep by your bed whilst harbouring delusions that one day it’ll be published. It won’t be published, because nobody cares about your life. Because you’re a cunt.


“Meh.”

One of the privileges of serving the mighty cause of games journalism is being able to write colloquially and getting away with it. Exasperated? Then render that tutting sound you would usually make as a “tsk”. Need to express your incredulity as you would in conversation? Then you may use “pah”. But how about if you’re not really that bothered about the subject of the piece you’re writing? Then perhaps you should justify to the reader why they have to sit through an account of something you’re not interested in. Explain to them why it is that you feel the subject needs to be mentioned, but should be treated with apathy. If it makes you tired just thinking about it, pick from “yawn” or “zzz”. But who within the wide expanses of this fucking miserable arsehole of a planet has ever opened their mouth and said “meh”? Who? That’s right – nobody. Nobody ever says “meh”. So why write it? Oh, that’s right – because you’re a fucking thick cunt.


“Games are art.”

Here we FUCKING go. Games are things that you play and enjoy. Sometimes they can invoke other feelings, such as excitement if you’re blowing the fuck out of everything with your cock hanging out of your trousers, or screaming rage if you’re playing Alone In The Dark, or, if you’re a particular breed of “enthusiast”, arousal whenever the protagonist in the latest Final Fantasy or some hardcore “JRPG” appears on the screen looking like a half-dressed teenage androgynous boy. When you’re in the Barbican or the Science Museum at one of those games exhibitions, the only emotions evoked in relatively sane and normal people are frustration because the fucking pads don’t work, apathy because the game’s shit even if the pads do work, or bewilderment at the guy standing next to you with both hands bunched up in his pockets as he’s drawing out a hefty sweat in front of Rival Schools. So this is a long-winded way of saying that games are games that are there to be played and enjoyed or wanked over. If you think they’re art, then step up to the line and take a proud bow, because very well done – you’re a cunt.


“The first rule of [something fucking tenuously linked to Fight Club] is, you do not talk about [something fucking tenuously linked to Fight Club]”

Can’t think of anything funny or original to say? Then how about bastardising one of the wittiest lines from one of the best films of the 20th century? Because that’s not been done before in the near-fucking decade it’s been out, has it? And seeing as you’ve already shown your readership what an utter cunt you are, how about mentioning the cake is a fucking lie?


“…will remind you why you like gaming.”

Have you ever spent five years alone in your flat staring blankly at the wall because you’ve forgotten why you like watching TV? Have you ever spent a month feeling peculiarly frustrated and suffering random erections, the likes of which you’ve not seen since you were a teenager, because you’ve forgotten why you like wanking? Have you ever collapsed in a heap on the floor, clutching your throat and turning blue because you’ve forgotten why you like breathing? No? Then you’re hardly fucking likely to forget why you like gaming, then. Cunt.


And now, our guest contributions.


Anonymous Knight:

“No pun intended.”

Yes, you mean the pun to be intended. Fuck off.


Naïve Student Journo:

"Hello this is [PR dickhead] at [soulless publishers]. I'm currently out of the office until [a date that was three weeks ago], please feel free to leave a message after the tone."

Just calling around to try and scrape up some shitty review code, and I've had the above message from the last four numbers. It seems publishing city has turned into a ghost town of never ending summer breaks. With practically no games to promote, where the fuck is everybody?

We’d like to add that it’s not only during the summer that the PR cocks are failing to do their mind-implodingly simple jobs. Try putting together a new-year preview for a mag in early November (and, seeing as it’s a mag, they’ll give you slightly less than a day to produce six pages of copy), and you’ll find out that even at the busiest time of the year for games releases, the useless fucknuts still piss off out of the office so they’re unreachable for weeks.

Us: “Hello, I work for [games mag that used to be popular], and we really need some assets so we can advertise your game for free.”

PR Cunt’s Secretary: “Well, [useless PR cunt whose sole purpose in their miserable fucking life is to promote that game] is away for two weeks.”

Us: “But my deadline’s tomorrow, and he said he’d get the assets to me a week ago. Is there anyone else who can help me?”

PR Cunt’s Secretary: “No. Fuck off.”

And yes, Codemasters, and yes, THQ, and yes, Ubisoft, we’re looking at you, you hateful incompetent fucking wankers.


Keza:

"Insert pun/joke about X here."

No. No I shall not. You are a fucking WRITER. It is YOUR job to think up passably amusing puns, not the reader's. Presenting the reader with the constituent parts of a POTENTIAL joke is not the same as actually being funny, you lazy tosser. I understand that a staffie job can wear one down to the point where even thinking of jokes becomes a joyless, tiring experience, but have some pride.


Anonymous Knight:

"We [insert activity here] so you don't have to."

The single most asinine, faux-chummy cop-out available to lazy writers/subs.


DX:

"As I type this…"

Going on, of course, to insinuate that they are engaged in some ‘cool’ activity, rather than simply staring cunt-eyed into a monitor, marvelling at the inane shit pouring from their fingers, the sole purpose of which being to convince themselves that they're not better off dead.


DX:

"As in some other magazines I could mention."

Yes, but you never fucking do, do you? Instead, you're quite happy to rest on the laurels that at least half the retarded chavs reading your mag will clench anally in rapturous self-satisfaction, as they briefly believe that what they're reading is the best of the bunch, despite the fact that they've never read anything other than whatever arse-towel they're holding while delighting in the scent of their own morning gravy.


DX:

"Gaming has never been more popular."

Particularly cunty when opening an editorial, and usually from the pen of a journalist who's made editor after ten years of giving up his social life, his marriage, his kids, his integrity, his ability to tell the truth, his ability to tell the difference between good, bad, or cunty, his ability to get a hard-on, his means to keep his eyelids anything higher than half mast and most importantly, the means to take another career path now that he's painted himself into this filthy shit-smelling corner. But that's okay. Because games have never been more popular.


Anonymous Knight:

"War-hunnh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"

Every shitty preview of a war FPS has contained this innocuous, arse-standard lyric over the past 20 years. Surely the true sign of a proper cunt?

But Anonymous Knight 2 disagrees:

That's more the sign of the first time someone's ever written about a war game. The true sign of a cunt is:

"War - what is it good for? Well, the developers of this game, actually!"

At least people who do the vanilla lyrics don't think they're fucking clever.


Anonymous Knight:

“Eye popping”

The amount of sub-eds who let this through in national newspapers, magazines and even TV scripts is mind-boggling. What an absolute fuckbag of a phrase. Whose eyes actually pop?

But Sinister Agent says:

It's not as bad as “mind-blowing”. The instant I see that in any piece, I stop reading before I'm overwhelmed by the urge to hunt down the writer and show them a far more effective way of blowing out their feeble mind.

Finally, another Anonymous Knight weighs in with this:

“Whose eyes actually pop?”

Probably the same people whose minds boggle, you dozy cunt.

Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism: Braid Special

You must have heard of Braid. It’s an above-average but overpriced puzzle-platformer out for Xbox Live Arcade. Because it’s August and there’s not much about, and because Braid’s story was written by sixth-form philosophy students taking the piss, some people have got a little too excited about it. As a service to you, dear reader, we’re going to spare you from having to plough through the very worst efforts of a couple of reviewers by calling them up right here, right now.

First up, the Unreliable Eurogamer’s 10/10 review by Dan Whitehead:

“Its creative importance reminds me most of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' seminal graphic novel, Watchmen. Both are works of homage and deconstruction, commentaries on the way we interact with their respective media.”

Or maybe it’s just a puzzle-platform game, and has fuck all to do with a graphic novel.

“His mission is to find a princess. She's not a literal princess though, but a metaphor - the romantic cliché of that perfect soul mate as filtered through popular videogame motifs. In the context of Braid's melancholy mood, it becomes a bona fide commentary on the human condition.”

Still on the subject of the story (which really is awful), Whitehead goes on to recite straight from the pages of Things Cunts Say. We’ve italicised the offending portion:

“You can sprint past these sections, should you wish, but to do so means missing the point quite spectacularly. Surrender to the game's reflective intentions and it can be quite profound. I have no problem admitting that I found myself thinking about people and places that I'd not considered for years. Relationships that ended too soon. Some that went on far too long. Memories that no longer seem reliable. Others that are still painfully vivid.”

So see a fucking shrink. And stop fiddling with yourself.

Anyway, the music – it’s quite basic, but fits the style of the game nicely. Or, if you’re a twat:

“Music box nursery rhymes play off against levels that explore the friction between childhood and adult freedoms.”

Brace yourselves now, readers, for you’re about to experience the holy grail of games reviewing. It’s… THE SENTENCE FROM HELL:

“You could argue that by using the doomed romanticism of an introspective male as its core that the game is treading clichéd creative soil but in a medium as emotionally stunted as videogames it still represents an enormous leap towards realising the potential of the form.”

And to round it all off, Whitehead rewards anyone who’s miraculously got to the end of the review without emptying both barrels of a shotgun into their own skull by throwing in one of the cuntiest entries from the Things Cunts Say canon:

“Still wondering if games can be art? Here's your answer.”

According to Whitehead, the answer is “10”. For anyone who isn’t a cunt, the answer is “no”.

Just so the usual crowd of green tea sipping hippies don’t start whinging to us that we’re picking on Whitehead / EG, here’s a cheeky little something from Xbox World 360’s Michael Gapper:

“In a world without Mario and Valve and the Bethesda hit factory Braid is indeed the best game ever made.”

That’s right, Gapper – and if your aunt had a big hairy pair of bollocks swinging between her legs, she’d be your uncle.

We were going to work our way down the list in MetaCritic to bring you more, but we’ve just given in to the compulsion to rip the sound card from our PC and flagellate our own faces with it.

The BBFC – Down Wit’ Da Kidz

The next time it’s on, watch “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”. It’s a documentary about censorship, specifically about how films in the US are rated. The director hires a couple of lesbian private detectives to track down the classifiers, and then route through their rubbish to take a look at the forms they fill in when rating films. The upshot of it all is that the raters are a bunch of clueless fuckwits that are more concerned about illicit connections to certain studios and their obsessions with box office takings than the actual content of the films.

In the UK, we have the British Board of Film Classification. That silly so-called “TV psychologist” (why hire a proper psychologist when you can get a headline hunter instead?) Tanya Byron recommended a considerably more hands-on role for the BBFC when it comes to classifying games, although they already have a fairly major part to play.

We know what you’re thinking: aren’t the BBFC a bunch of old farts who don’t know the difference between a game and a hand job? The BBFC know that’s what you’re thinking, as they sought to dispel that “myth” when BBC News interviewed them for their technology programme Click.

Here’s what the BBFC guy had to say about rating games:

“It will be a team of two examiners. These are people typically in their early 30s, not the kind of blokes in suits with bowler hats. And they’re people who in some cases actually come from the games industry.”

Just as the guy said that, the camera cut to an apparent demonstration of two examiners rating a game. Here they are:

Just to remind you: “early 30s… not…blokes in suits.” For a guy in his early 30s, the guy on the right must have lived a full and unrelenting life.

As if to mock this statement further, the cameraman then zooms in on his liver spots:

And here they are trying to work out what the fuck Bioshock is:

Shortly afterwards, they were shown playing The Golden Compass. Just as Iorek Byrnison says, “I enjoy fighting as you enjoy breathing,” the following exchange takes place:

BALDY LIVER SPOT: Now what kind of message is that sending?

PINK SHIRTED MR BEAN: Encouragement of violence. Erm, that might be ambiguous. He is a polar bear.

WE’RE NOT MAKING THIS UP. You can watch it here
to confirm it wasn't the product of a psychotic break.

Microsoft – Even Bigger Cunts Than You Realised

As the days go by, we’re finding it harder and harder to give a fuck about the news stories popping up. Apathy is a terrible thing, and we’re full of it. We couldn’t give a fuck about sales figures for GTA IV, what analysts think is going to happen (especially when they almost always get it totally wrong), or about some fucking press junket. However, this particular story enraged us.

Some guy who’s both a real life gay and a real life gamer had “TheGayerGamer” as his gamer tag on Xbox Live. Microsoft took exception to this, and changed it.

Obviously, and rightly, this homophobic zealotry upset quite a lot of people.

As these people voiced their concerns, you might think Microsoft would put its hands up and say, “Hey, we outsource this shit to minimum wage lowbrows – we’ll put it back to how it was. Sorry!”

Well, maybe not that last part, as Microsoft would sooner bite off its own nipples than apologise for anything.

But no – instead, one of their mouthpieces started wielding the Xbox Live terms and conditions on his blog, in particular claiming that the name constituted sexual innuendo. Seriously.

It’s bad enough that this kind of pig ignorant bollocks goes on in the first place, but to actually stand up and defend it is something else. We’re surprised that Microsoft’s legal team of vultures hasn’t already pointed out to the company that discriminating against people on the basis of their sexuality was outlawed quite a long time ago.

At the least, Microsoft is being hatefully homophobic and interfering with some guy’s right to represent himself through his gamer tag as being both gay and a gamer. At the most, it’s breaking the law by doing so. We’d like to hope someone sues them, but if they’re too fucking arrogant to ignore sanctions slapped on them by the European Union, then they’re sure as hell not going to bother with the gay community, or anyone else for that matter.

Gays may not like cunts, but Microsoft has just shown itself to be a company full of cunts that don't like gays.

We Are Three (Years And One Month Old)

So strong is the apathy surrounding this blog that even we forgot its birthday last month until it was too late. (EDIT: And even this month we forgot to publish this when we were supposed to.) It’s kind of a shame not to mark the occasion, though.

There’s not much point in going over the story yet again of how The RAM Raider was born, why it was born, and why nobody gives a fuck, because we’ve already done that for our first and second birthdays which are in the archive. Looking back over the years though, it strikes us just how similar the games industry is now compared to when we first started writing for the arse-end of the internet.

What surprises us the most is just how naive the majority of gamers still seem to be. When Jeff Gerstmann was sacked from GameSpot last year, there was genuine shock and surprise amongst their readership. Gamers were mortified that that kind of stuff was going on behind closed doors. At the same time, we, along with every other games journalist, were surprised only that GameSpot had let this dirty little secret be displayed so publicly.

Being the egomaniacal Google-masturbators that we are, we often skulk around search engines to see who’s talking about us. More recently, readers have been discussing the “official” review of GTA4 by Officially Corrupt Xbox 360 Magazine. They’re surprised. They’re surprised that the review was based on unfinished code. They’re surprised that this was admitted in the review. They’re surprised because they apparently think that every game reviewed is done so honestly, with no influence from PR shite-bags or advertisers, based on gold code.

We’re not surprised – we’re fucking shocked. We can’t believe that, even in the open age of the internet, so many gamers are still completely unaware of how this business works.

So – mission failed, then? Probably.

Still, we read with interest an editorial in PC Gamer last week where editor Ross Atherton (who must thank the lord-god-Future daily for not making him the editor of nearly-dead PC Zone) denounced PR influence on future features in his mag. The piece itself was still slightly politicised in its wording (only noticed recently – is that a joke?), but the intention is noble.

You could argue that he goes and throws away the credibility gained by presenting an advert for a book written by one of his writers as “news”, especially as Edge (of all mags) at least had the decency to criticise it in their one-page advertorial (here’s the translation: “meandering”, “indistinct in purpose” and “circuitous” = indulgent). But still, it’s progress, especially if they stick to it.

Assuming this sudden in-public recognition of the overbearing PR machine on this once hobbyist pastime is an epiphany, no matter how small, can we take any of the credit? Of course not. Yes, they all know about us, and yes, they all read us. Hell, we even get more readers in a month than the majority of Future’s games mags. The problem is that no matter how long we bang on like stroppy autistic zealots, there are always going to be many more readers who have never heard of us, and never will, so will carry on without actually knowing “how things work”.

Still, as much as joyful little events like the Driv3r scandal and the Gerstmann fiasco garner the real attention, we’re going to carry on banging on like grumpy fucks for as long as people keep coming back to the blog for more. And if we’ve had even the slightest, most infinitesimally minor effect on the way the gaming press works, then that’s three years well spent.

Anyway, we’ve had enough gloom and moaning for the time being. Stay tuned for yet another one of our “lists” that people like so much over the summer as the world of gaming grinds to a halt, and here’s to another year of angriness, infuriation, the same old jokes, being called cunts, and good old-fashioned piss-taking.

The RAM Raider salutes you, dear reader.

Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism: An Occasional Series

“How perfect is it to have Satan -- the Father of Lies and ultimate evil of one of the world's great mythologies -- reduced to little more than a bored corporate functionary worrying about Evil(TM) losing its market share? Throughout Season Two we've watched as classic cultural tropes with rich histories such as Santa Claus, the Fountain of Youth, the Easter Island statues, vampires, zombies, UFOs, mariachi music and even the humble birthday cake get stolen from their proper settings, robbed of their true power and regurgitated back at us in a soulless family-friendly version for the purpose of selling us useless junk. In such a world the deranged nihilism of Sam and Max actually becomes the only sane response.”

Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch from GameSpy.com enlightens the delighted reader with his discourse on the social commentary of Sam & Max: What’s New, Beelzebub?

Ironic Comment Of The Day

An interview linked to by videogaming247.com caught our eye today. Dan Houser, Rockstar’s co-founder and “creative VP”, had this to say:

“The intellectual property is the main asset in the company. That’s why “GTA” is still relevant 10 years later. We haven’t put one out every year. We haven’t fleeced it. And we haven’t put it on 50 different formats.”

We’d like to personally congratulate Rockstar for not being tempted to fleece GTA by putting one out every year on 50 different formats, as it must have taken a gargantuan level of restraint to settle for only releasing GTA, GTA: London, GTA 2, GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, GTA: Vice City Stories, GTA: San Andreas, GTA: San Andreas Stories, and GTA IV, on the PC, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation, Dreamcast, PS2, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360, and PS3 in less than a decade.

We’d also like to say “well done!” in a hearty fashion for their treatment of several review outlets, as only the very finest companies pick and choose who they let in for their love-ins based on whether they’ve given them good review scores in the past. Good going, guys, and you just keep on bribing those reviewers with freebies, because it’s not like the readers will ever find out.

N’Gai Croal: An Academic Responds

We’ve never been accused of being the home of reasoned debate, but we received this response to N’Gai Croal’s Racist Evil 5 rant from an Anonymous Knight. It makes us sad to see that the internet’s so full of ignorance that anyone trying to argue that there’s not only another side to the argument, but that the other side doesn’t have to be racist, is instantly vilified. So we’ve put the whole piece here for you to make up your own mind:


“I never thought I’d live to see the day when the faux-intelligentsia of games journalism declared all out war on the common gamer. By the faux-intelligentsia, I am of course referring to all of those who have sat through a sixth-form philosophy class, or once read a whole book on politics, and like to drop what they remember into any discussion about gaming like bricks into a playpen. The kind of second-rate hack that’s so insecure about the legitimacy of gaming, they have to start flinging in giveaway words like “lifestyle”, “culture”, and “motif” to persuade fellow members of the faux-intelligentsia that the videogame they’re talking about is actually an allegory of a subject that’s of world importance. Dare to question the mutual respect of the faux-intelligentsia, and risk getting shouted down as an unenlightened halfwit.

So, N’Gai Croal, then. A games journalist of no great relevance nets himself an enormous amount of attention by accusing a large development team of being racist. The trailer in question is for the trashiest of big-name franchises, Resident Evil. The teaser in question is overblown and cheesy, even slightly embarrassing as it depicts the tight-topped Chris Redfield pacing into town and becoming embroiled in a host of clumsy firefights with zombies straight out of any Romero movie, replete with a dopey voice-over.

Everybody who has half a brain is aware of the world’s shameful history when it comes to matters of slavery, disregard of basic human rights and terrible treatment of black persons, amongst others. In a world where this kind of treatment was both commonplace and not considered at the time to be utterly wrong lends support to the argument that we should be reminded frequently about just how bad this situation used to be in order to avoid it happening again.

Modern day society has little time for outmoded and flawed theories of the black man being inferior to the white; the positivistic studies which pushed entire nations towards thinking that, in criminological terms, races can be cleansed by the genetically superior super-beings to eradicate the pollution of their own race and discard the criminal element in a Darwinistic fight for the survival of the fittest. Yet Charles Murray, the US right-wing social theorist, still argues that the “underclasses”, particularly black persons, are of lower than average intelligence. Until the 1970s, the state of Virginia was actively sterilising those found to be “feebleminded”. Whilst it’s easy to point the finger at Hitler’s Germany taking ethnic cleansing to tragic levels, it is uncomfortable to recall that Churchill’s pre-war view and social policies took on a lower level support for such theories.

A thankfully low minority (although any number is still too many) will fail to acknowledge that the historical episodes Croal refers to, amongst many others, were far from the finest hours of the nations involved, whether the United States, the British Empire, or otherwise.

I wonder, then, how many of this majority – the decent gamer who despises racism – were amongst those who disagreed with Croal’s comments, only to be shouted down in an abusive manner by other commentators. Many of the issues that have been raised by these gamers have been absolutely valid, yet have not been greeted with the courtesy of a reasoned response.

Croal has made a serious allegation. Whilst it is likely that the development team at Capcom responsible for producing and designing Resident Evil 5 predominantly (if not entirely) consists of Japanese males, one still has to feel sorry for them as the sudden accusation of racism is thrust at them. As far as can be seen from the brief trailer (and that is all that these comments are based upon), Capcom have done no more or no less than any number of developers. Whether pitching the gamer against a glut of Germans, mowing them down indiscriminately without stopping to question their views on the party some have been made to fight for, or even asking the gamer to become the Nazis fighting against the Allied forces – the practice is commonplace.

Some argue that intention is not a relevant factor, but this is quite simply not true. There wasn’t an eyelid batted when GTA: San Andreas arrived, despite the potential for its black central protagonist to be mistaken for the stereotypical rap-loving, gang-raping, drug-dealing “gangsta” worrying the good multicultural folk going about their daily business. That’s because that character was merely that: a character, placed in a scenario for the purpose of narrative in an open-ended games world, where you could indiscriminately murder any nationality you wish.

To take a game where the zombies are black and the protagonist is white for reasons of narrative and accuse it of being a racist premise is to do a great many injustices. It cheapens the issue of racism, which is dangerous. It alienates the audience you’re supposed to be writing for, to be supporting, by telling them that their right to enjoy a simple videogame is contested. Any commentator who has pig-ignorantly attacked these people for stating their views on the matter, to question their moral fortitude for simply arguing that they don’t see the game as racist, is beyond contempt.

And worst of all from Croal’s perspective, he’s shown himself up as a charlatan. By throwing around serious allegations in the same casual manner that MP Keith Vaz wrongly associates videogames with the murder of one of his constituents, and that Jack Thompson wrongly associates videogames with just about everything that’s broken in the world, he’s destroyed his own credibility. The real tragedy is that he’s taken down with him the thin veneer of maturity the games industry has been trying to build up for itself for so long.

For the sake of some cheap column inches, N’Gai Croal has hurt much of what he purports to love. I hope his new-found notoriety was worth it.”

Officially Corrupt “World Exclusive” GTA IV “Review” From The Officially Corrupt Xbox 360 Magazine

If you’re sick of that embargo-busting dogshit review we posted last week of Grand Theft Auto 4, you’ll be jumping up and down with apathy at the news that a good citizen has scanned in the Officially Corrupt “World Exclusive” GTA IV “review” from the Officially Corrupt Xbox 360 Magazine. Y’know, the one they’ve been banging on about in full-page ads for the last three months.

The game predictably receives 10/10 which, by the Officially Corrupt Xbox 360 Magazine’s standards, makes it just as good as Perfect Dark Zero. For us, the stand-out quote from the review is this:

“Rockstar was still making the final tweaks as I played, so I can’t say whether my minor grumbles – the cover system stumbling in box-filled environments, slightly over-enthusiastic target lock-on, the occasional pop-up – will be present in the box you buy in two weeks’ time.”

Now hang on – surely you’re not saying you reviewed unfinished code? Surely you’re not admitting that this 9-page Rockstar love-in is actually a preview, what with it not being based on finished code?

We’re curious whether Jon Hicks (who’s a decent fellow, so we’re not giving him any shit) would have still awarded a score of 10/10 if the finished game was riddled with pop-up and had an unreliable cover and combat mechanism.

Whilst we’re asking him, you can read the (p)review here so you don’t have to do anything silly like buying a magazine that’s not satisfied with being merely corrupt, but is no less than Officially Corrupt. Go, Team Future!

[EDIT] Jon Hicks very politely declined to comment specifically when we asked him if he would have given the game a 10 if the unfinished code was sold in that state, and he also passed up the opportunity to settle the big question on everybody's lips: is GTA 4 better than Perfect Dark Zero? He did point out that he stands by his review, though. Thanks, Jon Hicks!

A Good Question

Amongst the many and varied emails we received during our brief hiatus was this tale from an Anonymous Knight. He’s a freelancer who apparently has some experience in the business, and poses a question to editors that we think they’ll find quite tricky to answer. Take it away, Anonymous Knight:


“I sent out personally addressed emails to carefully selected editors of a variety of periodicals, big and small. If I didn’t get a reply, I followed up with a conventional letter. In each case, I always offered a couple of ideas for articles.

The only responses I got were from people I knew already. The majority did not bother even to reply.

It seems that most journalists in high positions are not interested in authors they do not already know, or ideas which challenge them to think. Either that or they’re not interested in communicating with would-be contributors outside their social circle.

When I used to write mailed letters offering articles I got an answer to every single one and many of them resulted in mutually rewarding work. Perhaps email enables us to not communicate more effectively than ever before.

The Guardian’s George Monbiot, for instance, invites feedback from his website, but replies to emails with an automatically generated message saying that he is too busy to answer them.

I’m busy too and I have been in the commissioning seat. And it would never occur to me not to acknowledge an email, let alone a letter, which is written to me personally. At least, “thanks, but no thanks,” which takes ten seconds to type and send; it’s just courtesy.

My intention here is not to moan but to solicit information. I’d love to hear from any fellow journalists, especially editors, how they like to receive information and what their policy is on responding to ideas they receive.”


Editors – you can send your answers to the usual address. After all, you’re not all a bunch of jobs-for-the-boys nepotistic tits who ignore stuff that’s from people you don’t know, or aren’t from eager readers doing your job for you for free at the right time. Are you…?

RR Corruption Or Lie Of 2007: Sony

Despite a late flurry of votes for the shameful Gamespot Jeff Gerstmann corruption, Sony still managed to stay comfortably ahead with yet another year packed full of lies, back-pedalling, and shameless bullshitting about the PS3.

Despite years of heckling as press release after never ending press release packed full of lies are issued to the games industry, Sony has still somehow failed to turn the PS3 around into something that isn’t entirely shit.

Read UK:R for some hardcore Sony-baiting, as Cutlack has more time on his hands than we do. We’ll just conclude the mighty RAM Raider Awards 2007 with this video which, despite starting out fairly amusingly, turns into sheer hilarity when Phil Harrison quotes are layered into the soundtrack:

Congratulations, Sony – The RAM Raider salutes you.

RR Most Ridiculous Statement Masquerading As Games Journalism 2007: BioShock Review For PC Gamer By Tom Francis

A new category for this year’s awards, the “Most Ridiculous Statement” entries had us torn between screaming with laughter and sobbing with despair. We were surprised at first that there weren’t more entries from Edge, considering you could drop it into a turd and the chances are it would fall open onto a page full of eligible prose, but that would mean admitting to reading the bollock cloth.

PC Gamer’s very own Tom Francis, a man accustomed to thinking he’s writing his sixth-form philosophy and politics homework when typing out games reviews, lifts the trophy for his raping of BioShock. Take it away, Anonymous Knight:

“Tom Francis, for his review of Bioshock, in which we discover the man - who obviously suffers from a form of mental premature ejaculation - celebrating how much the game was like System Shock 2, while exaggerating like an utter cunt about how good it was. In his review he wrote:

‘BioShock had already made me physically gape several times by this stage, but here my mouth fell open and stayed open, only widening further as the scene became more extraordinary with every passing second.’

After which Ken Levine probably thrust his erect member into the mouth of young Tom Francis.”

Anonymous Knight, via comments


Although the entry was for the RR Games Writer Twat Of 2007 award, the inclusion of the statement (and the huge amount of entries we had for that award) saw it getting moved to a more suitable category.

The number two spot also goes to a PC Gamer writer nominated for the Games Writer Twat award:

“Alec Meer (PCGamer)Purely for his The Witcher "review".

A small excerpt for you:

‘It goes something like this: wave the little sword icon over an enemy, click and hold the button down. Realise it's not worked, try again. Eventually a circle appears around the icon and Albino Viggo will start swording. Keep holding until the icon turns orange. Click nownownow to activate a stronger attack, unless the enemy has moved slightly. Repeat.’

Here's a clue for you; if you are going to earn a living reviewing games, at the very least learn how to play the fucking things first. The whole point of the combat is the timing between the clicks, complaining that holding down the button and then clicking frantically like some kind of arthritis ridden spastic doesn’t work; is akin to repeated jamming your car keys into your eyes and then complaining that your car won’t start.

Cunt.”

Ross, via comments


Finally, a dishonourable mention goes to GameSpot for this truly unforgivable sin spotted by a reader:

“‘Ultimately, if you take a step back and look at the big picture, you'll see that real life is an impressive and exciting experience, despite its occasional and sometimes noticeable problems.’

This cunt at Gamespot reviewed "Real life" ROFL ROFL ROFL. Cunt.”

Anonymous Knight, via email


Congratulations, Tom Francis from PC Gamer – The RAM Raider salutes you.

Proud To Be British

The US has E For All. Germany has the Leipzig Games Convention. Japan has the Tokyo Game Show.

And Britain has the London Games Festival…

Top 5 Misconceptions About Games Reviewers

Having a chat with an Anonymous Knight the other day, we smiled wistfully as he said he wouldn’t make a good games reviewer as he didn’t read many magazines. After we’d finished weeping face down into the rug we like to roll around naked on at remembering days when we were that innocent and naïve, it dawned on us that the comment reminded us about something we started on a while ago but never finished – the Top 5 Misconceptions About Games Reviewers. If it educates just one reader or wannabe reviewer, that’s good enough for us.


1 – Games Reviewers Can Write

Games reviewers being a form of journalist, and journalists being a form of writer, it wouldn’t be massively unreasonable to assume they could string together a sentence without fucking something up. It would also be massively wrong. Like all the misconceptions listed here, we’re not saying that it applies to every working games journalist out there. Just a surprisingly large proportion of them.

Most of the time when you read a review, it’s been tidied up by a sub-ed. It’s their job to take the mangled, ridiculous musings of half-cut lunatics and turn them into something readable. One way of cutting through who can write and who can’t is by reading their blogs or forum posts. They’re not edited, so you know that the authors of the decent ones are worthy of their job title. The rest aren’t just being lazy or ironic – they really are shit at writing.

Yes, they can put ideas and comments about games into a paragraph. No, they have no grasp of how to communicate them grammatically correctly or even colloquially.

(Quick note to the person who’ll spend hours trawling the blog for a typo before posting it in the comments box – well done, ten points to you)


2 – Games Reviewers Know About Games

It used to be said by reviews editors that finding an employable games reviewer is incredibly difficult as plenty of people know about games and plenty of people know how to write, but very few people can boast about possessing both accolades. As Misconception 1 decrees, we already know most of them can’t write without letting their dicks get in the way. Not knowing about games, though – isn’t that slightly disappointing?

Most get away with it with their saviour Google, but it’s the over reliance on press releases and PR trips that poses the biggest danger. Walk through a mag office, and you’ll see mountains of games still in their shrinkwrap. Have a conversation with a reviewer about games, and we mean the big releases, and a look of fear darts into their eyes as they realise one wrong move could expose them for the idle, blagging charlatans they often are.

Some of the funniest (in the unintentional sense) days and evenings we’ve had have been with the staff of mags discussing those little compilations of games they like so much, like group tests or top 100 games lists. Major games come up, and three-quarters of the room are shaking their heads having not even heard of them, never mind played them.

In conversation away from the safety of the old boys’ networks, the biggest giveaways are “I haven’t had chance to play that one yet,” or, if you’re a reader, they’ll always pull the “I can’t talk about that yet because of the NDA” cracker (an NDA being a non-disclosure agreement, which reviewers have to sometimes sign when they’ve played unfinished code and the review they’ve cobbled together off the back of it can’t be published until a date commanded by the publisher or PR).

Mag style guides (the instructions telling reviewers the house rules of the mag) invariably instruct reviewers to lie about gaps in their gaming knowledge so you’ll never find out about it. Yep, the mags tell their reviewers to lie – bet you never saw that one coming.


3 – Games Are Given To Reviewers Based On Their Specialist Knowledge

Another promise the mags are printing every month in the header page of their reviews section is the empty pledge that games are matched up to reviewers who are specialists in certain genres. Bollocks.

Most mags have something like a little white board with all their reviewers’ names written on them, and next to the names go the games they’ve been assigned to review. The big games (6-8 pages) will usually go to the staff writer regardless of the genre, because freelancers get paid by the word and will get assigned whatever small time shit that’s left over randomly, and that includes pickings for staffers from mags completely unrelated to gaming as an old boy favour. As well as avoiding a payout, this also sidesteps the problem of sending the reviewer to the PR/publisher’s office for a day or two to play it, as only freelancers who have their dicks very firmly wedged up an editor’s arse (i.e. ex-staffers) will get an expenses-bonanza like that.

For lesser games, you’ll find that shit which nobody else wants like the flight sims and the hardcore strategy dross does sometimes go to the peculiar specimen in the freelance pool who really does like those kinds of game. The trouble there though is they almost always overrate games from their specialist genre. Got a hardcore racing sim that nobody who plays games for fun will enjoy? Then it'll get 85%, because they like hardcore racing sims that nobody who plays games for fun will enjoy.

We’re tempted to launch into our argument about why more than one reviewer should play every game reviewed here, but that’s for another post.


4 – Games Reviewers Always Complete Their Games

This one is excusable for several reasons. First up, it’s rarely necessary to complete a game to get a decent write up from it. A day or two, or a few respectably sized evening sessions, gives you everything you need to know about whether the code is worth spending money on.

Second up, when a reviewer has only spent an hour or two on a game, it isn’t always their fault. It may be so unfinished that it’s barely playable. It may have a high reliance on multiplayer action, which means there’s artificiality to playing against beta testers or against other mag staff over a LAN. They may be sat in a developer/publisher/PR’s office with a husk on their shoulder telling them what to do and where to go before showing them the door. There may be a stupidly unrealistic deadline of less than 24 hours. The review might be only taking up a quarter or an eighth of a page, in which case other stuff has to take priority, or a freelancer’s only getting £20 for it so can’t be arsed.

Despite the rain of shit flying in reviewers’ faces when it comes to playing decent chunks of games, they’re still often not spending enough time with them. Look at something like Teletext’s GameCentral – when two reviewers are producing reviews daily along with news and letters, how much time are they actually getting to play the things?

If you’re familiar with a game that’s been reviewed you can play a game of “spot the screenshots from the first level”, but the beta code we get to review often comes with codes to skip to later parts of the game, for shame.


5 – Games Reviewers Read Games Magazines

And that’s what takes us back to the comment that re-inspired us to write this post. Most of them don’t even read the mags they write for, although that’s as much to do with cunts like Future being too tight to bother sending copies to their own contributors as it is with laziness.


We could have made this a top 10, but there’s already enough on here about games reviewing being a job that stopped being good many moons ago, and being too commercialised now, and the old boys’ network who still hilariously deny they exist, and the shit pay, and review scores being adjusted in exchange for advertising/covers, and the frequent fuck ups stemming from all of this which you can find out about by sidling up to a reviewer and mentioning Headhunter: Redemption, DRIV3R, Unreal 2 or Doom 3.

The most depressing thing about this list is, really, all 5 of the misconceptions should be standard industry practice. Of course reviewers should be able to string together sentences without getting lost up their own sphincters and ejaculating along the way. Of course they should know about the games industry without having to crib from Metacritic.

Are these unreasonable expectations to have of the people who review games in exchange for your money?

Sadly, yes.

Sony = Liars, EA = Hypocrites, RR = Obsolete

Assuming we don’t have that mental disorder where you think things happen but they don’t, people keep emailing us asking why we don’t update very often any more. It’s because this industry has become such a self-parodying joke, it doesn’t need people like us to deride it.


Par example:

Friday 6th July 2007, Sony Corporation President Ryoji Chubachi announces there are “no immediate plans” for a PS3 price drop.

Monday 9th July 2007, SCEA drop price of PS3 by $100 with immediate effect.

What is there is to say, other than to rub in the knowledge that the PS3 costs £200 in North America, and £425 in the UK?


Par example (deux):

EA CEO John Riccitiello slagging off the industry:

“For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat. There’s been lots of product that looked like last year’s product, that looked a lot like the year before.”

That’s EA. As in Electronic Arts. Words fail us, because they’ve all been said.


What’s next? The PR departments of the world unite and announce games aren’t selling well because they can’t do their fucking jobs properly? Future Publishing announces the credibility of games journalism is being damaged by the magazine industry reviewing unfinished games? Microsoft announces the Xbox 360 has an inherent design flaw after 18 months of denying it?

It’s actually happened – we’ve become obsolete. There’s nothing for us to do but just sit back here and let the games industry take the piss out of itself until it implodes.

EDIT: We’re so fucking incompetent, we can’t even tell the difference between the “save” and “publish” buttons. Sorry. We’re officially out of date as well as obsolete.

Sony: Edgy & Fresh, Or Cunts?

A few posts ago, we weighed into the flash in the pan debate about Sony’s idiotic God Of War 2 press event and mentioned this:

“We remember a friend who had been into hospital and had a head x-ray about 10 years ago. A week or two later, a mailing marked “urgent” arrived, and in it were plastic reproductions of head x-rays with a letter worded as though he had a serious illness. He realised as he read further down the letter that it was some bullshit Sony “game brain” crap, but not until he’d almost had a nervous breakdown at the thought of being notified to see his doctor urgently after having a head x-ray. Complaining to Sony, they just sent back a letter saying how they were being “fresh”. No Sony – you were being fucking arseholes.”


Courtesy of an Anonymous Knight, we can bring you a fully illustrated account of Sony’s idiocy.

Imagine you’ve just had your head x-rayed. A week later, this envelope arrives:

Inside is this image, printed on the same transparent plastic material x-rays are printed on:

And with it is this letter (address and name removed):

"Matter of urgency... progressive condition... marked deterioration... potentially serious... please make an immediate appointment with your local consultant". It only took a minute or so for our Anonymous Knight to realise that it was Sony advertising, but in the minute leading up to his realisation, he thought he was being told that he had something seriously wrong in his head. Yes, doctors tend to call you in to tell you bad news, but in the heat of the moment and with the NHS being how they are, anything’s possible.

When he wrote to Sony to complain how this had scared the pulsating shit out of him, they wrote back telling him that he was overreacting to their “edgy” and “fresh” marketing. Presumably in the sense of them existing on the “edge of humanity”, and being “fresh out of ideas that won’t make us come across as complete cunts”. And it was for fucking Medievil, of all things.

Needless to say, being privileged enough to be on the receiving end of Sony’s “edgy” and “fresh” advertising made him feel much better about thinking he was dying. Well done, Sony. Be proud.